Fortune's Fool: The Life of John Wilkes Booth

by Alford, Terry

  Booth was back in Franklin, Pennsylvania, on September 7, 1864, to close out his oil affairs. After paying two thousand dollars to Tom Mears as his share of the purchase price for the Allegheny River land, he surprised Joe Simonds by announcing that he intended to give his property away.26 He wished two-thirds deeded to June. The other third was to go to Simonds himself in consideration of his attention to Booth’s business affairs in Venango County. Booth told Simonds nothing more than that “he wished to dispose of every interest he had in this section as they served to draw away his mind and attention from his profession to which he intended to devote all his faculties in the future.” An interest in a property called Pithole was conveyed to Rose. Booth expressed the hope that the properties would one day be valuable. He seemed concerned that the assignments be properly done, taking the precaution of carrying them personally to the registry office.27 Simonds subsequently mailed him the final papers, and Booth signed them while in New York City on October 29, 1864. John chose not to mention the gifts to June or Rose, however, perhaps for fear of alarming them. With these transfers Booth’s oil adventures came to a close. Contrary to stories of exaggerated wealth that he himself encouraged, Booth made no money in oil. “From neither of these interests did he ever derive a single dollar benefit,” wrote Simonds. Booth’s investment, about six thousand dollars, was a total loss.28

  “My old luck,” as Booth said.29 During his visit to Franklin, Booth seemed changed.30 Normally agreeable, the actor appeared downcast and distracted to his barber, James Lawson. “Towards the end of his stay here, this preoccupation was noticeable,” Lawson felt. “Something was evidently weighing heavily on his mind.” While one might imagine that Booth was devoting thought to the abduction plot, these episodes appear instead to be periods of genuine mental abstraction. Lawson would observe him “often fall into a deep study or reverie during which he would pay no attention to what was going on around him.”

  Booth was, in a measure, in shock. What he had begun three months earlier in such optimism was blasted as Booth met the fate of most small-time speculators. The actor had always taken pride in making money, and even defined himself by it. Now, “morose and nervous,” he was left with an experience that shook his self-image and estranged him further from the North. The truth was so painful that in the future he deceived friends about his success in oil, boasting to them of how well things were going.31 If he acknowledged a loss, it was not his fault. Rather it was bad advice or flooding or something else.32

  Increasingly only one thing aroused him. Booth was in Lawson’s barbershop in Franklin, standing with his back to the wall, when Caleb Marshall, an African American brick mason, came in. Marshall, a refugee from North Carolina and a bit of a hothead, began to rejoice over a recent Northern victory. Booth listened for a moment, pointed his finger at Marshall, and asked sternly, “Is that the way you come among gentlemen, and with your hat on, too?”

  “When I go into a parlor among ladies, I take my hat off,” replied Marshall, “but when I go into a bar-room or a barber shop or any other public place, I keep my hat on.”

  Lawson saw Booth’s face go “white as a sheet.” The actor shoved his hand into his hip pocket to retrieve a pistol. Mears, sitting in a chair near Booth, leapt to his feet. Pinning Booth’s arms against his side, he and another man succeeded in getting Booth outside and down the street. Booth was intensely excited, and Lawson felt that he would have killed Marshall except for the prompt intervention of Mears. Jerry Allen, a local awning maker who also recalled the incident, agreed that Booth would have shot Marshall on the spot if he had not been stopped.

  Booth departed Franklin for the final time on September 29, 1864. He left behind many friends and a good opinion, as he did wherever he went, but also some perplexity. When acquaintances asked him where he was going, Booth gave a memorable reply.

  “I am going to Hell,” he said.33

  booth packed the accoutrements of his professional life into two trunks and one long box. The trunks contained his dressing case and wardrobe of velvet suits, crowns, caps, plumes, doublets, shoes, and accessories. Also included were fifty-six bound and pamphlet volumes of plays, many with stage notes in his hand, together with correspondence, photographs, and clippings of old reviews. The large box was filled with stage swords and pistols.34 He was off to Canada to fulfill an engagement, he declared to the family.35 No one had reason to doubt him. Such preparations and departures were common with the Booths.

  He arrived with his cargo in Montreal by train on October 18, 1864. A principal order of business was to seek out Patrick C. Martin, a former Baltimore merchant engaged in blockade-running. Martin made his home a resort for Southern refugees, and Booth called, hoping to find George P. Kane, the former Baltimore police marshal whose arrest in 1861 had so angered the actor. Kane had returned to the Confederacy earlier in the year, however, and Booth was greatly disappointed not to find him in Montreal. The Martin family welcomed Booth nevertheless, and “he became intimate at my house with my wife and daughter,” Martin informed Kane. The blockade-runner agreed to arrange shipment of Booth’s trunks to Nassau in the Bahamas. From there they could be slipped past the Yankee fleet and be sent on to Richmond.36

  Montreal was a friendly place to Southerners. It swarmed with Confederate agents, exiles, fugitives, escaped prisoners of war, adventurers, spies, and ne’er-do-wells. John F. Potter, the American consul in Montreal, characterized this jetsam as “enemies of the United States, scoundrels [who are] too cowardly to stay at home and fight, too indolent to labor.”37 It infuriated Potter that these villains were “harbored, entertained and treated with consideration” in the city, but the reality was that Southerners enjoyed a necessary sympathy from Canadians anxious over the size and growing power of the United States. Officials and citizens did little to stop (and some abetted) smuggling, intrigue with the Copperheads, plots to liberate prison camps or steal ships on the Great Lakes, and worse.

  Like most Southerners with any money, Booth checked into the St. Lawrence Hall, a hotel whose owner, Henry Hogan, described as the unofficial headquarters of Confederate agents and refugees.38 A picturesque coterie of twenty to thirty of these men could always be found here. Settled into room 150, Booth was therefore immersed into a cauldron of Canadian rebeldom. Then, on the morning following his arrival in Montreal, an event occurred that electrified the hotel’s residents. Confederate soldiers based in Canada dashed across the border, raided St. Albans, Vermont, and fled back across the frontier for sanctuary. A diplomatic uproar ensued, filling the Hall with judges, lawyers, detectives, and civil and military authorities of every description. The excitement was intense and the hotel accommodations so taxed that “three and four guests to a room was the rule,” recalled Hogan.39 Booth followed these developments closely, good news sending him “scattering small silver pieces round among the newsboys and bell boys.”40

  Fond of actors, Hogan liked Booth. “He was a most genial gifted man in many ways, a fine actor, and a great favorite,” recalled Hogan.41 The owner’s reminiscences and an article titled “When Wilkes Booth Was in Montreal,” both of which appeared in the Montreal Star in 1902, reveal that Booth made friends quickly at the Hall. Notable among them was the former Florida senator James D. Westcott, “a most bitter hater of everything ‘Yankee’ who thoroughly despised every soul from the North,” according to Hogan. Westcott, his hair pulled behind his head in an old-fashioned queue, joined Booth at cards together with Dr. Luke Blackburn of Kentucky, later accused of plotting to send infected clothing to President Lincoln; Dr. Montrose Pallen of Missouri, observed spying on the American consulate office; and Beverly Tucker of Virginia, an American diplomat turned Confederate purchasing agent. These uncompromising rebels were happy company. There was no need for Booth to argue the justice of the Southern cause with them, but he impressed upon any Canadian or British friends who joined the table his hope “that the ‘Redcoats’ would soon be on the march across the border to attack the Federa
l forces in the rear.”

  Booth also met with George N. Sanders, a Kentuckian who was perhaps the most radical of the Confederate principals in Canada. Sanders, stopping at the Hall to arrange the defense of the St. Albans raiders, was seen frequently in Booth’s company by Hosea B. Carter, a federal detective living at the hotel.42 The two were also observed in confidential conversation by John Deveny, an American draft dodger. “They were standing outside of the hotel, talking on the portico,” Deveny stated, Sanders leaning against a pillar and Booth directly in front of him. Deveny also saw them drinking together at Dolly’s Chop House, a nearby tavern.43 The burly, piratical-looking Sanders was dangerous company. He had associated intimately with European nationalists in the 1850s, once engaging in a plot to assassinate Napoleon III of France. America had no more ready defender of tyrannicide. He told George Augustus Sala, an English journalist visiting Montreal at this time, “of the plotting of atrocities which would make the world shudder.” Regrettably, no eavesdroppers overheard what Booth and Sanders discussed. As Deveny admitted, Sanders’s “conversation [was] always confidential, always whispered.”

  First among equals in the Confederate junta was Jacob Thompson, a former Mississippi congressman and secretary of the interior under Buchanan. Thompson was one of three so-called commissioners sent to Canada by Jefferson Davis. He controlled a purse believed to contain up to one million dollars for use in freeing prisoners, buying friends, staging counterrevolution in the North, and waging retaliatory warfare.44 Thompson was heard at his headquarters at the Queen’s Hotel in Toronto declaring that Lincoln “was not fit to be President of any country and never would be President again—the people had had enough of such Presidents.”45 Thompson’s prominence and his ability to endow mischief later led to his name being connected with Booth’s in Lincoln’s death. Booth never visited Toronto, where Thompson was based, however, and probably never met Thompson. The senior commissioner passed through Montreal on a return visit from Quebec in mid-October, but it has not been established that he was in the city at the same time as Booth. Thompson later denied any connection with the actor. “I have never known, or conversed, or held communication, either directly or indirectly, with Booth, the assassin of the President, or with any one of his associates,” he wrote in a public letter to the New York Tribune six weeks after Lincoln’s murder.46

  Booth had time on his hands, according to George Iles, an errand boy who met the actor. James Baillie, Iles’s pro-Southern employer who was a regular at Westcott’s card parties, lent Booth several of Walter Scott’s romances. Once, to break the boredom, Booth donned a heavy coat and yellow fox-skin cap and rode to Lachine, eight miles below the city. He returned chilled to the bone, Iles recalled.47 Billiards were also diverting for the actor, and Booth enjoyed playing with Joseph Dion, manager of the billiard room in the basement of the Hall, or with fellow guests.48 He struck one opponent with “the wandering character of his conversation and the wild ideas.” Seeing that Booth had been drinking, the man put his erratic talk down to that and to “a slight mental derangement or excitement.”

  The topic of the American presidential election came up over the billiard table. Booth remarked with great feeling that “it made d——d little difference [who was elected], head or tail—Abe’s contract was near up, and whether re-elected or not, he would get his goose cooked.” Meanwhile Booth’s opponent made a good run, drawing from the actor the observation that his rival seemed to have a “partiality for the pockets.” Inspired by the analogy, Booth raised his own cue and said excitedly, “Do you know I have got the sharpest play laid out ever done in America? I can bag the biggest game this side of —— . You’ll hear of a double carom one of these days.”

  Accompanied by Martin, Booth went to the Ontario Bank on October 27, the morning of his departure for the United States. He opened an account in his own name, depositing $455. He also purchased a bill of exchange for sixty-one pounds, twelve shillings, and ten pence. The bill of exchange may be thought of as a nineteenth-century traveler’s check. Made payable to him, it could be cashed only by Booth himself, as he took pains to determine from a teller, Robert A. Campbell.49 Innocuous in themselves, these bank transactions demonstrate a revealing line of thought. The funds on deposit would give Booth a nest egg if he needed to make a hasty retreat across the border to Canada, a notion that had already crossed his mind. The bill of exchange would be welcomed anywhere. Safer than gold, which could be lost or stolen, it was better than Northern greenbacks and far superior to Southern paper money.

  With this business done, Booth’s visit to Montreal concluded. He left with helpful letters of introduction from Martin to rebel agents living along the route by which an abducted Lincoln would pass through southern Maryland.50 Other than that, nothing is definitively known of other arrangements he may have made or understandings reached with Confederate officials. Cautious in speaking about his plans to outsiders, he could keep his mouth shut. John Deveny experienced his wariness when Booth brushed off his fellow Marylander’s question as to what he was doing in Montreal with the reply “A little business.” When Deveny repeated his question, Booth repeated his answer.

  Back in the States, Booth stopped in New York to visit his mother. He was still seething over his August run-in with Edwin. “If it were not for mother I would not enter Edwin’s house,” he told Asia. “She will leave there if we cannot be welcomed, and I do not want her to be unhappy for me.” On November 8, the day of the presidential election, he ran into June in Baltimore. The older brother knew that John was not acting, but, when questioned, John directed the conversation to oil, stating he could make more money doing that. To explain the time he intended spending in Washington, he told June that he was also forming a company to purchase farmland along the Potomac River. The brother was satisfied with their talk, relieved that the topic of the war did not come up when Baltimore was in a state of political excitement. It is not known if John voted. When he learned that Edwin, in New York, cast a ballot for Lincoln, “he expressed deep regret and declared his belief that Lincoln would be made king of America,” that brother wrote in 1881.51

  On November 11 Booth took the stagecoach from Washington to Bryantown, a village some thirty miles south of the capital, in Charles County, Maryland. Booth once boasted, “Maryland is true to the core—every mother’s son.”52 That claim, never entirely correct, was less so now than ever. Incredible changes were taking place around Booth, changes that redefined what it meant to be a Marylander. Deemed a loyal state and thus unaffected by the Emancipation Proclamation, Maryland adopted on its own a new constitution on November 1, 1864, which abolished slavery without compensation to slave-owners.53 Lincoln’s reelection followed with a predictable sweep of the Northern states. But the weary president, who received less than 3 percent of Maryland’s 1860 vote, won the 1864 vote with 55 percent of the total over George McClellan, his Democratic rival. Smuggled through Baltimore in 1861 when “not one hand reached forth to greet me,” Lincoln now received cheers and applause in the city. “The change from then till now is both great and gratifying,” Lincoln remarked at a charity event for soldiers in Baltimore. “We cannot fail to note the world moves. When the war began, three years ago, neither party, nor any man, expected it would last till now. Each looked for the end, in some way, long ere to-day. Neither did any anticipate that domestic slavery would be much affected by the war. But here we are.”54

  Nowhere were these changes more deeply resented than in southern Maryland, where Booth now traveled. Occupying a peninsula formed by the Potomac on the west and the Chesapeake Bay on the east, it was the oldest settled region in the state. A farming district, it was Catholic in religion and conservative in politics. Slavery had been long established. Close to Washington in terms of miles, the area was relatively isolated, unbroken by a railroad track or even a telegraph pole until the military strung a line for its use during the war. George Alfred Townsend referred to one neighborhood through which Booth’s stage p
assed, the hamlet of Surrattsville, as “a suburb of Richmond, ignorant and rebel to the brim.”55 His charged phrases provided to Northern minds an accurate social and political description of southern Maryland as a whole. Contraband goods, mail, and passengers flowed through this peninsula across the river into Virginia while Confederate agents came and went. Raids by the authorities disrupted their activities periodically but angered residents profoundly. Emancipation had substantially diminished the net worth of many farmers in the blink of an eye. Already disloyal, white citizens were embittered by the new state of affairs. Since the federal government had bigger fish to fry elsewhere, it never took the time to overawe the region. Townsend concluded that this had a most tragic consequence. “One single hanging at the roadside might have saved the life of Mr. Lincoln,” he believed.56

  Booth arrived in Bryantown bearing letters of introduction to Dr. William Queen, Dr. Samuel A. Mudd, and possibly a third local physician.57 Martin had plugged Booth into the “Doctors’ Line,” a network of pro-Southern doctors whose profession gave them plausible excuse for traveling at odd hours to carry out underground activities.58 Queen’s son Joseph, a medical student, met Booth at the hotel in Bryantown and escorted him to the Queen home several miles away. Arriving about dusk, Booth met Queen, who introduced him in turn to his son-in-law John C. Thompson.59 The pair looked over Martin’s letter. Through it or in person, Booth made his needs known to the men. Queen and Thompson were Marylanders of Southern stripe and had suffered for it. Queen owned more than a dozen slaves when the conflict started, but now those who had not fled previously were emancipated. As for Thompson, the war had swept away his fortune.60 Booth was at the right house.