Fortune's Fool: The Life of John Wilkes Booth

by Alford, Terry

  “Have no fear about me. I am among friends now.” With that Booth wheeled about and galloped after Jett and Ruggles.

  Bainbridge never forgot what Booth had just done. “Without a parole as I was and in my own country, our own homes near, among the friends of boyhood, among scenes with which I had been familiar since childhood, I felt the dread of capture. If he felt any premonitions of danger, he gave no signs of them. He seemed as light-hearted and careless as a schoolboy just released from his studies. Booth impressed me at that moment as the most reckless man I had ever met.”3

  Several hundred yards down a country lane, the riders came to the home of Richard H. Garrett. The farmer was summoned by a barking dog to the front yard, where he discovered the men on horseback awaiting him.

  “Mr. Garrett, I suppose you hardly remember me,” said Jett. “No, sir. I cannot recall you,” was the response.4 Jett had never been introduced to Garrett, although he knew him on sight and felt certain Garrett knew his father, whose name the soldier mentioned by way of introduction. Jett also knew the farmer had Southern sympathies to which an appeal could be made. “Here is a wounded Confederate soldier,” the private explained. The man had been injured in the fighting near Petersburg. His name was Boyd. He was a Marylander and an individual of good character. “We want you to take care of [him] for a day or two. Will you do it?” Jett asked.

  “Yes,” said Garrett. “Certainly.” Blessed by the safe return of his own sons Jack and Will from the war, Garrett could not refuse. The hospitable old fellow was willing to take in any suffering stranger so introduced. It was the neighborly thing to do.

  Booth made his way up a sandy walkway to the porch. Taking a drink of water, he made himself comfortable in an armchair that was brought out of the house for his use. As supper was not served until dark, he napped until called. Once fed, he returned to the porch and settled on its broad low steps. Calling for some tobacco and a light, he fired up his pipe and chatted away the balmy spring evening. Lincoln’s death was but one of many rumors swirling about the countryside, and it was not mentioned. At about ten Jack suggested they retire for the night.5

  Jack and Will shared an upstairs bedroom to which Booth made his way. Unbuttoning his coat and vest, Booth removed his armaments. Without discussion Booth claimed Jack’s bed and draped his small arsenal of two revolvers and a bowie knife on the bedstead. Eyeing them, Jack pulled the boot off the assassin’s right leg. Swollen and bandaged, the left leg looked dreadful. “Riding jarred it,” Booth said, but it was not very painful unless touched.6

  “Good night,” Booth said abruptly. He turned over in the bed and in a moment was sound asleep. “I thought that I had never seen so sweet and sound a sleeper,” recalled Will.7

  It was late on the morning of April 25, 1865, when Booth woke, and he discovered the household already astir. Will had left to turn out the cattle, Jack to run errands. Their sturdy little brother Richard was there to attend him. Tardy for the summons to breakfast, Booth was told not to concern himself. Soldiers were privileged characters, he was told, and might eat when they got ready.

  Booth’s hosts lived in a whitewashed two-story house framed with large bookend chimneys, not a manor by any means, but a comfortable country home set in a grove of locust trees. Fruit trees in bloom lay before it, and wooded gullies ran on either side. A pleasant pastoral feeling pervaded the property. Garrett, his wife, Fannie, and their large family had a nice place. They were nice people. Richard later wrote Edwin Booth that his family “did everything in their power to make your brother comfortable even when they did not know who he was, and, had they known, it would have made no change in them.”8

  It was as if the Garretts had granted Booth a sanctuary. Reveling in his newfound sense of safety, Booth left his pistols in the sons’ room and ventured unarmed—for the first time in months—onto the porch for his morning smoke. The smells of the day’s baking greeted him. Booth hobbled through a gate in a crossed-rail fence and made his way toward a weather-beaten barn. Beyond it were corncribs and a cattle shed.

  Back on the porch, he stretched out on a bench. He was always fatigued from his injury and soon dozed off. When he awoke, Will was nearby. The twenty-year-old was drawn to Booth as “the finest-looking man I ever saw” and asked his story. The wayfarer was happy to comply. He explained that he was from Annapolis. Attempting to go home after the surrender, he learned that he had to take the oath of allegiance to do so. That he would never do. He decided to return to whatever was left of the army and take his chances. Falling in with a cousin, he took off on a drinking spree and ended up shooting it out with federal cavalry. After hiding in Maryland’s swampy pines, he slipped back into Virginia. Now here he was, disabled, disheveled, and nearly broke after paying an extortionist for a boat. This fantastic concoction of falsehoods seasoned with a pinch of fact seemed to satisfy young Will.

  The day was warm—the warmest in months—and the invalid moved out to lounge in the yard. He lay down on a carpet of spring grass so green and thick that it felt like velvet. Lilly, Hettie, and Cora—ages nine, six, and three respectively—gathered near the stranger. “We were full of romp and frolic,” said Lilly, and she and her sisters danced around him, pulling on his shirt sleeves. The girls noticed his tattoo, so he explained it to them; the letter J stood for James, he said. That was his name. Pulling out his pocket compass, he showed them how it worked. Their puzzlement when he made the needle move by holding the point of his pocketknife above it made him laugh. “Pretty good sort of man,” thought their brother Robert, who was seven. As they lounged about, an occasional white blossom from the apple tree overhead fluttered past them like a snowflake.9

  The innocence of the children put him in a wistful mood. He spoke of his mother, with a sort of childlike tone that seemed odd in an adult. It was noticeable that his frame of mind was erratic. Despondent one moment, he was elated the next. He grew feverish and asked for water as his leg began to pain him again. He remained polite, however, and the Garretts charitably ascribed his flightiness to his injury and other wartime experiences.10

  The dinner bell brought everyone inside, but more than food was on the table. Jack said that while he was out he met a man with a recent Richmond newspaper. It reported that Lincoln was indeed dead and a large reward was being offered for the capture of his killer.

  “What reward?” asked Booth.

  “$140,000,” replied Jack.

  Booth asked Jack to repeat the figure, which he did. “I would sooner suppose $500,000,” Booth responded. With professional composure, the actor gave no sign of uneasiness as he spoke.

  “I wish he would come this way,” laughed Will. “I’d like to get that amount.”11

  Booth, sitting opposite Will at the table, could hardly believe such a remark from a young man still wearing a Confederate uniform. “I hadn’t taken you for that bloodthirsty kind of man.” responded Booth incredulously. “Would you do such a thing?” The assassin turned toward him, smiled, and waited for an answer.

  “I would indeed,” replied Will, adding that times were hard.

  “Not as hard as hearts,” countered Booth.12

  “He is young and foolish,” interrupted the father. “He does not mean what he says.” The father had the final word on the murder—“No good will come of it”—and the conversation turned to other topics.

  Later, on the porch, the Garretts’ daughter Annie told Booth that it was unfortunate the assassination happened at a time when Southern prospects were so poor. Attempting to put a better face on things, Booth disagreed, asserting that since Johnson was a drunkard, “it would cause a revolution and be the best thing for the South.”13 “Well,” she continued, “I suppose there were a good many people in the North as well as the South who were anxious to get rid of the President.” She had little doubt they paid the assassin for his work. “No, Miss, it is my opinion he was not paid. He did it for notoriety’s sake,” countered Booth, mocking newspaper reports of his motive.14

>   Nevertheless the family’s remarks depressed him. “The ship’s gone down, down, down, never to rise again,” he was overheard whispering sullenly. “Down, down, down.”15 It was hard for him to hear Southerners express indifference or antagonism to his act. To deal with the rebuke, Booth could only fall back on the standard response of reactionaries in every era. He believed that the public had grown too degraded and corrupt to appreciate his sacrifice. “I cannot see any wrong [I have done],” he wrote in his diary, “except in serving a degenerate people.”

  One statement brought out this attitude vividly. It also revealed that Booth’s long-standing love affair with Virginia was at an end. He told the family, “Men are all selfish, North and South. You might as well die for a nation of Yankees as of Virginians.”16

  Booth noticed a large map of the United States hanging in the house. His mind back on his business, he asked Jack to take it down and put it on a table. Booth studied the map with care, taking notes as he drew a pencil line down to Norfolk, then on to Charleston, to Savannah, and through the Gulf of Mexico to Galveston. Richard, who stood watching, asked him where he wanted to go. “To Mexico,” replied Booth.17 But such a route was a fantasy, given Union control of the coast. More practically he renewed with Jack his interest in getting west to Orange. Having heard that there were rebels from Maryland there, he hoped to secure a horse from them and reach Johnston’s army in North Carolina.

  The day had grown hot. Booth returned to the porch, sitting in his shirtsleeves and writing in his diary. Jack sat nearby on the steps.

  “There goes some of your party now,” said the brother, pointing to a group of riders passing along the main road about a quarter mile east of the house. Booth rose and looked out at the horsemen. He had no party and immediately sensed trouble. “Will you please go and get my pistol,” he said. When Jack hesitated, Booth commanded, “You go and get my pistols!”

  Jack went upstairs, saw the horsemen heading away, and returned to tell Booth. Richard followed with the heavy belt of weapons.

  “Why are you so nervous?” the older brother asked.

  “I feel safer when I am armed” was his answer.18

  The riders proved no danger. It was only Ruggles and Bainbridge heading back to Port Royal and to their homes across the river in King George County. They had stopped to deposit Herold, and in a few moments his familiar form came down the lane. Carrying a Spencer carbine slung over his shoulder on a homemade cotton strap, he limped along, a sore-footed hobo.19

  Booth was relieved to see him. Meeting Herold at the gate, he drew him away from the house for a talk.

  Herold’s twenty-four-hour furlough had given him a taste of freedom, and he relished it. “I am sick and tired of this way of living,” he announced. “I would like to go home.” He said the words as if picking up his former life were a simple matter. “What do you intend to do?” he asked Booth.

  “Well, I intend to stay here all night,” responded the assassin.20

  Herold following, Booth returned to the house, where he introduced the newcomer as a cousin. “Can I stay here?” the younger man asked Jack.

  Garrett grimaced. Having been on twenty-one battlefields over four years of war, he had an instinct for anything amiss. He was suspicious of Booth’s behavior on the porch, and now here was a new ragtag seeking hospitality. Herold was relaxed and bantering, but all was not right, Jack realized. He put the men off by saying that he would have to speak to his father. Jack’s tone was not welcoming.

  Only minutes elapsed before a thunder of hooves sounded. Ruggles and Bainbridge reappeared, riding hard down the lane toward the house.

  “Well, boys, what’s in the wind now?” Booth called out.

  “Marylanders, you had better watch out,” shouted Ruggles. “There are forty Yankee cavalry coming up the hill. You must seek refuge in the ravines. Get over there at once and hide yourself.”

  A determined look swept Booth’s face. He bit his lip. “I will do as you say and go at once,” said the assassin, straightening himself. He held out his hand in thanks, first to Ruggles, then to Bainbridge. “It will never do for you boys to be found in my company, so leave me. I thank you from my heart for what you have done, and God bless you.”

  Herold, who had stepped away, was back, and someone from the house pointed them to a secluded area. “I will never be a prisoner,” Bainbridge heard Booth mutter as the two fugitives hurried off.21

  Booth headed to a heavy stand of pine and scrub oak at the rear of the barn. Plunging into it, the assassin took cover. Had he found his vaunted “last ditch”? The phrase originated with William of Orange during that prince’s seemingly hopeless resistance to a French invasion of the Netherlands in 1672 when he said memorably that there was one certain way to ensure that he never saw his country lost: “I will die in the last ditch.”22 Southerners revived the expression to indicate their willingness to fight to the bitter end, and even Grant echoed it in 1864 when he wrote that the rebels, in their dogged defense of the Old Dominion, seemed to be digging that ditch at last.23 During the heady days of the abduction conspiracy Booth wrote, “They say [the South] has found that ‘last ditch’ which the North have so long derided and been endeavoring to force her into. Should I reach her in safety and find it true, I will proudly beg permission to triumph or die in that same ‘ditch’ by her side.” Ingloriously, this ditch was a pile of underbrush.24

  After five suspenseful minutes Herold ventured back to the yard to determine if the report of cavalry was true. A passing rider confirmed it, and soon Herold and Jack saw a torrent of mounted bluecoats flow past on the road to Bowling Green. While Herold deliberated that sobering sight, Jack told him that he was uncomfortable with the men’s presence on the farm. They needed to leave.

  “We will not get you into any trouble,” Herold laughed. The young man was bright and reassuring. And he was hungry, too, he wanted Jack to know, and ready for something to eat. Herold’s cheerfulness stemmed from a childlike conviction of his own innocence. After all, he had not shot anybody. By his road-weary logic he had done nothing over the past two weeks more egregious than lie about Booth’s identity. “That is the worst thing I have done.”

  It was indisputably time to get moving, however, and Herold implored Jack to help them find the means to do so. The latter went to see a neighbor who occasionally rented a wagon. Having no luck, he returned home, bringing with him the realization he would have to transport the men himself if he wanted to get rid of them. Herold gave Jack a ten-dollar note to sweeten the prospect, and Jack promised to take them toward Orange in the morning.

  As night fell, Booth lingered in the brush, and old man Garrett told Herold matter-of-factly, “You had better go down and tell Mr. Boyd to come up and get his supper.” The young man went and called for Booth, and the assassin wobbled forward from the woods. He handed Herold the carbine to carry, and, taciturn and pale, he made his way to the house and joined the family.25

  Having overstayed his welcome, Booth found the Garretts less sociable than the previous night. Jack thought the invalid suspiciously interested in the family’s horses, while Herold’s claim of service in the Confederate army seemed demonstrably false. The latter was a liar, the former a potential horse thief. This was all wrong.

  “I don’t want you to stay in the house,” Jack told the men as they gathered on the porch after eating.

  “Well, what’s in that barn, then?” asked Herold. “We’ll sleep in there.”

  It was well after eight when the Garretts and their guests walked out toward the looming square structure. The family called this building its tobacco house, although it had been some time since it served that purpose. The wicket door, creaking on its hinge when opened, revealed to Booth a planked floor filled on one side with hay and corn fodder for the farm’s livestock and on the other with a wheat-threshing machine, a wheat fan mill, cradles, scythes, hoes, rakes, and plows, together with furniture from homes in Port Royal stored here for safety.26 The space
was chilly and uninviting, and as they entered it a bat fluttered above Booth’s head.

  Gathering a pile of corn husks and straw, Booth fashioned himself a pallet and said good night. Jack departed, still suspicious that the men might attempt to steal horses in the night. He lingered outside the barn, hoping to overhear Booth and Herold’s conversation, but the fugitives talked in whispers and he learned nothing. Meanwhile, Will locked the door, effectively trapping the men inside. If the pair attempted to come out under those circumstances, they would raise a racket. As an added precaution, Jack and Will took blankets and settled down near the barn in a shed where feed was stored.

  A bed of dry corn blades proved just as uncomfortable as it sounded, and Booth was unable to sleep. While Herold slumbered away, he tossed and turned. His groaning and grumbling were audible to the sons in the corn house, a restlessness that reminded them of a distressed animal.27 Sometime after 2:00 a.m. the assassin heard noises—barking dogs, galloping horses, shouts, footsteps.

  Not all nightmares occur when one is asleep, as it now—and most plainly—unfolded. Herman Neugarten, a broad-shouldered corporal in the 16th New York Cavalry, was outside the barn. The Prussian-born soldier, with shot and saber wounds of the leg, hip, hand, and face, was there in the manner of an undertaker. He was directing half a dozen men to surround the barn and outbuildings.28 They were part of a force of twenty-nine, led by Lieutenant Edward P. Doherty, who, along with two federal detectives, Everton Conger and Luther B. Baker, swarmed the farm. These were the same men Herold had seen on the road that afternoon.

  They were pointed that way because Rollins, the fisherman at the Port Conway ferry, and his wife, Bettie, had fingered Jett. That teenager, discovered and threatened at a hotel in Bowling Green, led the cavalrymen to the farm. The troopers, determined to learn the whereabouts of the strangers, were on the point of extracting the information from the elder Garrett by lynching him when Jack emerged from the shuck house. “Don’t injure father,” he exclaimed. “I will tell you all about these men. They are in the barn.”29 He pointed off into a night so dark the soldiers could scarcely see the building beyond his finger.