The house where Lincoln was carried was owned by a German-born tailor named William Petersen. Born Wilhelm Petersen on August 16, 1816, in Hanover, Germany, Petersen immigrated with his young wife to the United States in 1841. He was twenty-five years old, she was twenty-two. In 1849 Petersen purchased a lot on Tenth Street nearly opposite the Tenth Street Baptist Church and built a three-story brick house. The entrance to the house was above street level and was reached by a curving stairway of ten risers. There was a basement entrance in the front that led to Petersen’s tailoring shop that was located in the front basement room.19
The Petersen family consisted of mother and father and seven children ranging from the age of three months to sixteen years.20 In addition there were nine other residents of the house who were boarders. Included among the nine were Henry Ulke and Julius Ulke, both photographers, who on Saturday, April 15, 1865, visited the room minutes after Lincoln’s body had been removed. Setting up their wet plate camera, they took one of the most haunting photographs in history. The scene showed the bed moments after Lincoln’s body was removed; a blood-soaked pillow hung over the side, evidence of the ghastly scene that had taken place.
The large number of people who lived in the house were accommodated in eleven rooms. The basement area had two rooms, the first floor contained a front and back parlor and a rear bedroom, the second floor consisted of three rooms, and the third floor contained three rooms. On entering the front of the house on the first floor, a narrow hallway passed the two parlors on the left before ending at the doorway to the rear bedroom. It was this rear bedroom where Lincoln was carried and placed on a bed. The room measured nine and a half feet wide by seventeen feet long and had a small dresser and two chairs in addition to the bed. The front parlor would serve as a mourning room for the duration of the deathwatch while the rear parlor would serve as the war room for the government of the United States. Here Stanton would assume control of the only two activities the government would concern itself with for the next eight hours, assassination and war, in that order.
The bed in the rear room was too small to hold the president’s long body. Removing the foot of the bed was not possible without breaking the bed, which would render it unusable. So the body was laid diagonally across the bed, placing the head nearest the door and the feet nearest the wall. The bed was pulled away from the wall so that the doctors could move freely around three sides. Leale made the president as comfortable as possible, then asked that everyone leave the room except the medical doctors so that a careful physical examination could be made. The room soon emptied except for Mrs. Lincoln, who had followed directly behind the president. Leale tactfully explained the situation to Mary Lincoln and she moved to the front parlor where she waited.21
Leale, with help from the other doctors, stripped Lincoln’s clothes off and examined his naked body. No other injuries could be found, only the small hole in the back of his head. Leale noted that Lincoln’s extremities were extremely cold and ordered several hot water bottles, hot blankets, and ingredients to make a “sinapism,” the medical term for a mustard plaster.22
After carefully arranging the bed covering, the doctors sent for Mary Lincoln and placed her in a chair at the president’s head. Mary was grief stricken. She kissed her husband several times, pleading with him to speak just one word to her.23 It was no use. Despite her pleadings, Lincoln lay comatose, unresponsive to all stimuli. Mrs. Elizabeth Dixon, wife of Senator James Dixon of Connecticut, comforted Mary Lincoln. Elizabeth Dixon had been asked to come and be with Mary by Robert Lincoln after he arrived at the house. She stayed by Mary’s side all through the night, escorting her back to the White House following Lincoln’s death.24
Mary’s pleadings were distracting to the doctors. They asked Mrs. Dixon, to take her to the front parlor and keep her there. Leale continued to remove the small clot that kept forming in the small hole in Lincoln’s skull. A small piece of skull acted much like a valve blocking the flow of blood through the opening. Each time Leale displaced the small fragment and cleared the clot he noticed a marked improvement in the President’s respiration and pulse. At this point the doctors agreed there was little that could be done other than make the president as comfortable as possible. The deathwatch began.
Now that the president was stabilized Leale sent a note to the Reverend Phineas T. Gurley, pastor of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church where the Lincoln family worshiped. The church was only a few blocks from the Petersen house. Leale also sent word to Surgeon General Joseph K. Barnes, Surgeon Willard Bliss (Leale’s superior at the Armory Square Hospital), Dr. Robert K. Stone (the president’s family doctor), and each member of the cabinet, telling a young soldier to go first to Secretary Stanton’s house and bring him at once.25
Earlier that afternoon, Ellen Stanton had reminded her husband that they had been invited to go with the Lincolns to the theater that evening. Stanton told his wife to decline the invitation if she wished. Stanton was very much opposed to the president’s theatergoing and had no interest in accompanying him. On the way home from his office he stopped by the home of Secretary of State William Seward to see how he was recovering from injuries sustained in an earlier carriage accident. After a short chat with Seward, Stanton returned home where he was greeted by a group of War Department clerks who had come to serenade him. There was a great spirit of joy among everyone. The feeling of victory seemed almost boundless.
Following the serenade, the singers began to move away in the direction of Ford’s Theatre, where they would wait for the president and the first lady to emerge so that they could serenade their commander in chief. It was a few minutes past ten o’clock when Stanton locked up the house and went to his bedroom. His wife looked in on the children, who had bedded down a few hours before. They were peacefully asleep.26
As Stanton began to undress he was startled by his wife’s scream from the floor below, “My God! Mr. Seward has been murdered!” Stanton’s first reaction was one of disbelief. He had left Seward a little over an hour ago, and he was resting comfortably despite his serious injury. Stanton quickly pulled on his clothes and hurried downstairs. An excited messenger stood in the front hallway, hat in hand. It was true. Seward had been murdered. Stanton rushed outside where a carriage stood near the door. Climbing aboard, he told the driver to hurry to the Seward house.27
As Stanton arrived at the Seward home, Gideon Welles appeared simultaneously. Welles was also preparing for bed when a messenger yelled up to him that Lincoln had been shot and Seward murdered. Welles asked where the president was shot. The messenger said at Ford’s Theatre. Welles told the man that he must be mistaken. Seward was confined to bed and could not possibly be at the theater with Lincoln. There seemed to be great confusion. He decided to go to Seward’s house immediately. Hurrying on foot he found a large crowd gathering outside. Welles pushed his way into the house and made his way to Seward’s bedroom. He met Stanton at the door. The two secretaries found Seward lying in bed attended to by Seward’s family physician, Dr. Tullio S. Verdi. The bed sheets were saturated with blood. In an adjoining room, Seward’s son, Frederick, lay unconscious, his skull fractured. There was blood everywhere.28
At the very moment Booth was making his way into the president’s box at Ford’s Theatre, Powell was forcing his way into Seward’s home. An ex-druggist’s clerk, Powell used the ruse of bringing an important medicine from Seward’s doctor, Tullio Verdi. A black servant, William Bell, admitted Powell into the house. Bell said that he would take the medicine to the convalescing Secretary, but Powell insisted he was instructed to deliver it personally. Powell pushed past Bell and began to make his way up the stairs when Frederick Seward appeared. The two men argued, Powell insisting that he must personally give the medicine to the Secretary. Fanny Seward, the Secretary’s young daughter, was in her father’s room tending to him. She opened the door to see what the commotion was all about. The alert Powell looked at her and asked, “Is the Secretary asleep?” Fanny answered w
ithout thinking, “Almost.”29 Fanny Seward had inadvertently told Powell where Seward was resting. Frederick Seward stepped in front of Powell to block his way and Powell turned to leave. He had descended no more than a few steps when he erupted. Aiming his revolver at Frederick Seward, Powell pulled the trigger. The gun misfired. He then used the gun to bludgeon Seward, fracturing his skull and leaving him comatose on the floor. A wild melee ensued. Within minutes five members of the household were injured, three critically. George Robinson, Seward’s nurse, Emerick Hansell, a State Department messenger, and Augustus Seward, William Seward’s eldest son, suffered various wounds from Powell’s large bowie knife. All five would survive the attack, but they would carry the scars of Powell’s assault for life.
Although Stanton and Welles found Seward seriously wounded, he was alive. Satisfied that he would survive, the two men decided to go to the theater immediately. As they emerged from the house they were besieged by several people who told them it was too dangerous. Stanton and Welles hesitated for only a moment and then climbed into the carriage that had brought Stanton to Seward’s house. At this point Major General Montgomery Meigs joined the pair along with District of Columbia Supreme Court Justice David Kellogg Cartter. Meigs climbed into the carriage next to Stanton and Welles while Cartter climbed up alongside the driver. As they were about to depart, Major Thomas Eckert rode up on horseback.30 Eckert tried to persuade Stanton from going near Tenth Street. There were thousands of people milling in the streets and it would be too risky.31 Welles and Stanton ignored Eckert’s pleas and ordered the driver to hurry. Eckert followed closely behind. Arriving at Tenth Street the men were told that the president was no longer in the theater. He had been taken to a house across the street. Welles later described the scene in his diary:
The President had been carried across the street from the theater, to the house of a Mr. Petersen. We entered by ascending a flight of steps above the basement and passing through a long hall to the rear where the President lay extended on a bed, breathing heavily. Several surgeons were present, at least six, I should think more.… The giant sufferer lay extended diagonally across the bed which was not long enough for him. He had been stripped of his clothes…. His slow, full respiration lifted the clothes with each breath that he took. His features were calm and striking. I had never seen them appear to better advantage than for the first hour, perhaps, that I was there. After that, his right eye began to swell and that part of his face became discolored. ... The night was dark, cloudy, and damp, and about six it began to rain.32
It was “a little past eleven” when the two secretaries stepped down from their carriage and made their way into the tailor’s house.33 A few miles to the southeast a lone rider galloped up the long incline of Harrison Road (now Good Hope Road) east of the Anacostia River. Cresting the hill he slipped past the lonely pickets who were standing guard, protecting the city against its enemies. No one could get into the city without being challenged. Leaving the city was another matter.
Viewing the president, Stanton became alarmed. The president’s labored breathing was like a death rattle to the secretary. He knew the president’s life was slipping away with each passing minute. No doctor need tell him the wound was mortal. Mrs. Lincoln was in the front parlor attended by two ladies who were among her closest friends. She was in a state that alternated between semiconsciousness and near hysteria. Her grief was overwhelming. Her husband had cared for her and protected her from all who disliked her and would abuse her. Soon she would be alone. The one true comfort of her life was slowly passing away from her and no matter how hard she tried to reach out and pull him to her, it was futile. Although Stanton disliked Mary Lincoln, he felt compassion for her at this dreadful moment. Leaving her in the front parlor, he set up his acting government in the rear parlor.
For the next several hours Stanton assumed the role of acting president. He was without constitutional authority, but such times called for action, not debate. The succession to the presidency should the president and vice president be incapacitated fell first to the Senate president pro tempore and then to the Speaker of the House.34 The secretary of war was not within reach of acting president.
Often maligned for his vigorous pursuit of the war, Stanton now fulfilled his enemies’ characterization as a usurper of power. In truth, he stepped into the breach at a moment of national crisis and brought a steadying influence. Both the president of the United States and his secretary of state seemed to be dying and the belief that a major conspiracy was still in the process of unfolding was widespread. And why shouldn’t it be believed? As the hours passed it became more evident that conspirators were popping up all over the place in what clearly looked like a plot to overthrow the constitutional government by assassination. Welles summed up the general belief when he said, “Damn the Rebels, this was their work.”35
Stanton set up a makeshift office in the rear parlor where he and Judge David Kellogg Cartter began taking testimony to the night’s grizzly events. They sat at a small table in the rear parlor with one of the army clerks acting as a recorder. It was a few minutes before midnight when the first witness began telling his story. It soon became obvious that recording the narrative by longhand was too cumbersome and would slow the process. General Christopher Columbus Augur walked out onto the front stoop and called out for someone who knew shorthand. Albert Daggett, a clerk with the State Department, was standing on the balcony of the house next door. He knew someone who was proficient in the art of phonography, a fellow boarder in the large rooming house. His name was James Tanner. Tanner had been standing on the balcony only moments before and had gone back inside his room that was just inside the large window that led onto the balcony. The General told Daggett to get Tanner and send him next door immediately.36
Corporal James Tanner had just turned twenty-one ten days earlier. At the tender age of eighteen he became a battle-hardened veteran. At the second battle of Bull Run on August 30, 1862, he suffered terrible wounds when a Confederate shell exploded near where he lay, its shrapnel tearing his legs apart. After he was taken to a field hospital, his legs were amputated below the knees. He was eventually fitted with artificial legs, and after a long rehabilitation period he returned to service in 1864 in the Ordnance Bureau of the War Department.37
Tanner had been at Grover’s Theatre that night and learned of Lincoln’s assassination when the owner interrupted the play to announce the tragic news. Like others he left the theater and made his way back to his rooming house on Tenth Street opposite Ford’s Theatre. Tanner rented the second-story front room. It had a balcony that overlooked the street, and Tanner and his fellow boarders would frequently come out onto the balcony and spend their leisure time watching the people as they passed by. Now, the balcony afforded a front row seat to the events unfolding beneath it. Tanner had been on the balcony with Daggett watching the huge crowd that continued to fill the area between E and F Streets. He had stepped inside briefly just as General Augur had emerged from the Petersen house calling for a phonographer.
When Tanner entered the Petersen house he was taken straight back to the rear parlor where Stanton and Cartter were sitting. Tanner described the scene: “I found Secretary Stanton sitting on one side of the library [parlor] and Chief Justice Cartter of the Supreme Court of the District at the end. They had started in to take what testimony they could regarding the assassination, having some one write it out in longhand. This had proved unsatisfactory. I took a seat opposite the Secretary and commenced to take down the testimony.”38
For the next hour and a half Tanner hurriedly copied down every word. By 1:30 A.M. the last witness had been interviewed. There were six witnesses in all, and all six had been an eyewitness to the shooting in the theater. Tanner apparently listened to the substance of the testimony as well as the words. Two days later in a letter to one of his fellow phonographic students living in Syracuse he wrote: “In fifteen minutes I had testimony enough down to hang John Wilkes Booth, the assassin, hig
her than ever Haman hanged.”39
By the end of the testimony there was more than enough evidence to order the arrest of Booth. Still Stanton hesitated, and his hesitation became sufficient to lead some future writers to weave his delay into a sinister web of conspiracy. By delaying, his critics claimed, Stanton allowed Booth to slip free of the confines of the city and make his escape. This was nonsense, of course. No amount of celerity on Stanton’s part could have trapped Booth within the city or at any point immediately outside the city. By the time the first bit of evidence was being heard Booth and Herold were arriving at the Surratt tavern in Surrattsville some thirteen miles away. Years later, historian Otto Eisenschiml would write that Stanton had deliberately taken steps to allow Booth time to escape the military’s defenses ringing the city. Eisenschiml claimed there “was an interruption of all telegraphic communication between Washington and the outside world, lasting about two hours.”40 Eisenschiml was mistaken. While a commercial telegraph line was disabled for two hours, the military lines remained open and functioning.41 Proof of this is seen in a telegram that was received in the War Department telegraph office dated 11:00 P.M., April 14, and a second outgoing telegram dated 12:00 midnight, April 15, which Eckert himself sent to General Grant.42 The first telegram that Stanton sent went out at 1:10 A.M. to New York Police Chief John Kennedy.43 All three of these telegrams show that the military telegraph was functioning during the critical hours immediately following Booth’s attack on Lincoln. Eisenschiml’s suggestion that “there might be a traitor in the ranks of the telegraphic corps” was nothing more than poor research on his part.
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