Atzerodt stared at the yellow flame coming from one of the gas jets above the bar. He had been drinking for the better part of the day, and everything around him appeared hazy. Picking up his drink, he swallowed the bitter liquid in a single gulp and, shoving the glass across the bar, turned and left the hotel without saying a word. The barkeep was used to a more garrulous Atzerodt. He sloughed it off as too much drink.
His courage evaporated, Atzerodt mounted his horse and galloped down the avenue in the direction of the capitol. As he passed Tenth Street he saw several soldiers and civilians running in the direction of Ford’s Theatre.2 Could Booth have gone through with his plan? Had he really killed Lincoln? Now Booth would find him and kill him too for failing to carry out his end of the plan. He spurred his horse and galloped east until he reached the Pennsylvania House located on C Street between Sixth and Four and a Half Streets. The Pennsylvania House was Atzerodt’s favorite hotel whenever he needed a place to bunk. It was also one of his favorite watering holes. Entering the bar he ordered another whiskey and, swallowing it, headed back out the door. He next returned his horse to the stables of Kelleher and Pywell where he had rented it that afternoon.3
For the next three hours Atzerodt wandered aimlessly about. In one of many moments of anxiety he tossed his knife into the street, where it landed beneath a carriage step.4 Walking down to Pennsylvania Avenue he climbed aboard a horse trolley and rode to the Navy Yard, where he tried to talk an old acquaintance into letting him share his room with him. The man refused, telling Atzerodt to go back to his own hotel and stay there for the night.5 Atzerodt climbed back on the next trolley and returned to the Pennsylvania House. It was now 2:00 A.M. and he was tired. The effects of his drinking had finally worn him down. Checking into the hotel, Atzerodt was assigned to room 53 where he flopped into bed with four other patrons who were sound asleep.6
At 6:00 A.M. Atzerodt awoke, pulled on his boots, grabbed his rumpled hat, and left the hotel. He walked out without paying his bill. His mind was still clouded by Booth and what the man might do to him for not “putting Johnson through.” He had decided it was time to get out of the city. Twenty-five miles to the northwest was the small community of Germantown in Montgomery County, Maryland. Twenty-one years earlier George’s father, Henry Atzerodt, had come to the sleepy Maryland community from Germany and purchased a farm along with his brother-in-law Johann Richter. Henry Atzerodt eventually sold his interest in the farm to Johann and moved his family to Virginia while Johann continued to work the farm with his son Ernest.7 Ernest Hartman Richter, or Hartman as he was known to his family, eventually took over the farm from his father and continued farming in the peaceful Maryland community.8 Over the years Atzerodt visited his cousin at the old family homestead. Now he decided he would be safe there.
Setting out on foot, Atzerodt headed for Georgetown, located to the west of the city. From here he could catch the stage to Rockville which would take him close to his destination. By the time he reached the bridge that crossed over Rock Creek, Abraham Lincoln’s body was being loaded aboard an ambulance for transportation to the White House.
Arriving in Georgetown, Atzerodt stopped by the general store of Mathews and Company located on High Street (now Wisconsin Avenue) where he pawned his revolver for ten dollars.9 His next stop was at the home of the widow Lucinda Metz where he was given breakfast. Lucinda had spent her early years in Germantown where Atzerodt had come to know her. He had grown hungry from the long walk, and he knew he could count on her for breakfast.10 His appetite satisfied, Atzerodt walked two blocks to the Montgomery House where he bought a ticket and boarded the stagecoach for Rockville.
Atzerodt’s first problem came only a few miles up the pike on the road to Rockville. Army pickets stationed at the military road that serviced several of the forts on Washington’s northern border were stopping traffic headed out of the city and searching all wagons and suspicious characters. The stage was held up along with the rest of the traffic. Atzerodt, ever personable and friendly, got out of the stage and began walking to the head of the line. He was either incredibly brash or incredibly stupid, but such a behavior tended to make him seem less suspicious.
Reaching the head of the line he struck up a conversation with several of the soldiers standing picket. The officer in charge, Sergeant Lewis L. Chubb of the Thirteenth Michigan Light Artillery, had received verbal orders to pass no one out of the city. This order was soon amended around 1:00 P.M. directing the guards to search every wagon, arrest anyone looking suspicious, and record the names of everyone allowed to pass through the pickets. Atzerodt soon engaged the sergeant in friendly conversation and bought him and his men a round of hard cider with the money he had picked up pawning his revolver.11
At the head of the long column of travelers was a farm wagon driven by William Gaither. Gaither had traveled into Georgetown the night before with a load of butter and eggs and was on his way home when he became caught up in the blockade. Atzerodt bid the soldiers goodbye and turned his attention to Gaither. The two men chatted amiably and Atzerodt wound up buying Gaither two glasses of hard cider. The farmer would later recall that Atzerodt was a friendly sort, quite polite to everyone, and generous with his money. He described the German as “kind of a Jewish-looking man, about 5 feet 8 or 10 inches tall, lightish complexion, sandy moustache.”12 The pickets soon cleared Gaither, and Atzerodt climbed up alongside the farmer as if they had been traveling together all along. It was that simple. Two and a half weeks later Sergeant Chubb was court-martialed on two counts: drunkenness and disobeying orders. After hearing the testimony and weighing the evidence, the court ruled that Chubb was not guilty on both charges.13
It was near dusk when Atzerodt and Gaither arrived at the turnoff to Gaither’s farm three miles north of Rockville. Here the main road heading north forked, sending off a tributary to the west. Having reached the end of his free ride, Atzerodt climbed down from the wagon and bid his new friend goodbye.14
Atzerodt was now within eight miles of his final destination. He had traveled the first twenty miles without a major incident, riding past Stanton’s pickets much the way Booth and Herold had ridden past the pickets the night before. Located near the fork in the road where he climbed down from Gaither’s wagon was a tavern and blacksmith shop owned by John Mulligan.15 Atzerodt had time to drop in and have a drink or two. With the balance of his ten dollars he did not have to rely on the hospitality of the tavern keeper.
From Mulligan’s Atzerodt continued on foot, eventually arriving at the old Clopper Mill a few miles south of Germantown. Atzerodt knew the miller, Robert Kinder, from his many visits to the area and decided to beg a place to sleep for the night. Kinder obliged Atzerodt and told him he could sleep in the mill by the fireplace.16 The miller would spend the next six weeks in Old Capitol Prison for his kindness. It was midnight when Atzerodt fell sound asleep.
Easter Sunday broke clear and sunny after a week of rain. Atzerodt’s fear had subsided substantially as he started out once again on foot along the final stretch toward the home of his cousin. He had not gone far into his walk when he stopped by the house of Hezekiah Metz, a mile down the road from the old mill. The affable Metz invited Atzerodt to join the family for the noonday meal and the gregarious German was more than happy to oblige.17 During the dinner the conversation turned to the assassination.18 Atzerodt soon joined in. Yes, the president was assassinated. Seward’s throat was cut but he did not die. Rumor was that Grant was also assassinated. Atzerodt seemed clear in his answers: “If he was killed, he must have been killed by a man that got on the same train or the same car that he did.”19 To the other guests Atzerodt seemed nervous as he talked. The very subject of Lincoln’s murder had excited him.
The dinner over, Atzerodt thanked his host and set out on the final leg to his cousin’s farm. It was three o’clock in the afternoon when George arrived at the Richter farmhouse.20 For the next three days he strolled around the farm doing odd jobs to earn his keep. It was good to
be back with his cousin on the old homestead. He planned on staying as long as his cousin would have him. On Wednesday, April 19, George crawled into bed along with two hired hands that were helping Richter put in the spring crops. The night was clear and the spring chill had become noticeable only after the sun had gone down. George was soon fast asleep.
Around 5:00 A.M. Atzerodt was abruptly awakened by a rude shaking. Standing over him was a blue-clad officer shoving the cold barrel of an army .44 against his head. Ordered to get up and get dressed, he was roughly pushed down the stairs into the front hall where several soldiers stood with their weapons drawn. A frightened Richter, still dressed in his nightshirt, stood shaking between two cavalrymen. Their uniforms were covered with mud, giving evidence of hard riding. Sergeant Z.W. Gemmill of the First Delaware Cavalry was looking for a recent visitor to the area who had been talking knowingly about the assassination, about Lincoln and Seward, and about General Grant. After a brief conversation Gemmill was satisfied Atzerodt was the man they were looking for.
Atzerodt and Richter were taken under military guard to Monocacy Junction just south of Frederick, Maryland. From Monocacy Junction they were taken to the small village known as Relay on the outskirts of Baltimore. At Relay they were placed on a special military train and taken to Washington. It was Thursday, April 20, and Atzerodt had been at large for just over five days. He would never see a free day again. Just how the troopers managed to find Atzerodt at Richter’s house is an example of how widespread and efficient the military’s dragnet was. It was a series of fortuitous circumstances that brought the little German into custody.
Atzerodt’s good luck turned bad on Wednesday, April 19, but he didn’t know it. One of the guests that had joined the Metz family for Easter dinner was Nathan Page. Following Easter dinner Page ran into another local farmer by the name of James Purdom. Purdom worked as an army undercover detective passing information about his neighbors to the military. Page told Purdom that a suspicious character was staying at the Richter farm and that the man spoke of the assassination as if he knew more than the papers reported. Purdom took note of Page’s information and later that evening passed it on to one of his army contacts, Private Frank O’Daniel of the First Delaware Cavalry stationed at Monocacy Junction.21 Purdom asked O’Daniel to pass the information on to his sergeant, George Lindsley.
It was near midnight when O’Daniel returned to camp and reported his conversation with Purdom to Lindsley.22 Lindsley immediately took the information to his commanding officer, Captain Soloman Townsend.23 After a short delay, Townsend called Sergeant Z. W. Gemmill to his tent and instructed Gemmill to pick six troopers and go to Richter’s house and check out Purdom’s information.24 Gemmill rounded up the disgruntled troopers and headed south toward the farm of James Purdom. With Purdom as guide, the soldiers arrived at the Richter farm and dragged the “suspicious character” from his bed. Within the half hour, the posse had taken Atzerodt, Richter, and two other farm hands into custody and was heading back to Monocacy Junction.25
Shortly after Atzerodt’s capture a second group of men rode up the long lane leading to the house of Hartman Richter. This second group had come from Baltimore under orders from Provost Marshal James L. McPhail. McPhail, acting on a tip from Atzerodt’s own brother, John Atzerodt, sent out a posse to the Richter farm. John Atzerodt was McPhail’s deputy and had been on an assignment in Charles County when Lincoln was shot. On learning that the government was looking for his brother, John Atzerodt telegraphed McPhail suggesting he check out the Richter farm in Germantown. By the time McPhail’s men reached the Richter farm it was too late. Atzerodt was already in custody. McPhail’s men would lose out on the $25,000 reward money that had been allotted for Atzerodt’s capture.26
McPhail’s office was in the thick of the hunt for all of the conspirators. Three days earlier, on Monday, April 17, he had engineered the arrests of Samuel Arnold and Michael O’Laughlen. McPhail’s efforts were a model of efficient detective work. Following the abortive capture plot on March 17, Sam Arnold had returned to Baltimore frustrated with Booth and his antics. He applied for a job as clerk in the store of John W. Wharton at Fortress Monroe, Virginia. Arnold reported to work on Sunday, April 2.27 At the time Lincoln was shot Arnold was working at Fortress Monroe apparently oblivious to what Booth had done.
Early Saturday morning government detectives were searching Booth’s room at the National Hotel in Washington. Among several items found in a trunk in the room was a letter addressed to Booth which was signed “Sam” and carried the address “Hookstown.” Neither “Sam” nor “Hookstown” registered with the detectives in Washington at the time of the letter’s discovery. Hookstown, it turned out, was the name of a small community in northwest Baltimore where Sam’s father, George William Arnold, had purchased a farm in 1848. When Samuel Arnold returned home from Confederate service in 1864, he spent part of his time living on the old farm. At the time Arnold wrote his letter to Booth from “Hookstown” he was staying at the old Arnold farmhouse in northwest Baltimore.28
Arnold’s arrest, however, did not come about as a result of the incriminating letter, as most written accounts have assumed. McPhail was unaware of the letter or its contents on Saturday morning when he sent two of his detectives in search of Arnold. After McPhail received word shortly after midnight on Friday, April 14, that Lincoln had been shot by John Wilkes Booth, one of his detectives, Voltaire Randall, told McPhail that Sam Arnold and Booth were old friends. Perhaps there was a connection. McPhail also remembered that Michael O’Laughlen had lived across the street from the Booth family in Baltimore. McPhail was a shrewd enough detective to realize that these two Baltimoreans just might be connected to Booth—and if not, they might know where to find him. He immediately telegraphed the War Department in Washington before word of the “Sam” letter reached Baltimore: “Sir: Samuel Arnold and Michael O’Laughlen, two of the intimate associates of J. Wilkes Booth, are said to be in Washington. Their arrest may prove advantageous.”29
McPhail didn’t wait for Washington to respond. He swung into immediate action. As a former Confederate soldier, Arnold was required to register his address with McPhail’s office.30 Checking his register, McPhail found “Hookstown” next to Arnold’s name. Still unaware of the “Sam” letter, McPhail sent Randall and a second detective by the name of Eaton Horner to Hookstown to find Arnold. At Hookstown the two detectives learned from a “colored woman” that Arnold had taken a job at Fortress Monroe in Virginia. Randall and Horner returned to Baltimore where they visited Arnold’s father at his bakery located a half mile from McPhail’s headquarters.31 It was at this time that the detectives learned of the “Sam” letter from the morning papers. They were now convinced that Arnold was a conspirator in Lincoln’s murder. Arnold’s father confirmed that his son was working at Fortress Monroe, Virginia. Randall and Horner set out Sunday morning for the fort.
On reaching the fort, the two detectives found Arnold and placed him in custody. It was a major collar and showed how efficient McPhail had been in his investigation. He was well ahead of his counterparts in Washington. The Baltimore Clipper ran a brief note under the byline “Fort Monroe, April 17: Two detectives arrived here this morning from Baltimore, Md., and arrested the clerk of a sutler store at this place on suspicion of having been in some way connected with the assassination of the President.”32
After taking Arnold into custody, Horner began questioning him about his relationship with Booth. Stonewalling at first, Arnold soon realized that the detectives knew a great deal about him and the relationship as a result of the damaging “Sam” letter. Arnold began talking freely. He told Horner about a Dr. Mudd of Charles County, Maryland, whom Booth had visited in November 1864. Booth, he said, carried a letter of introduction from someone in Canada. Horner later testified at the conspiracy trial about his arrest and questioning of Arnold, telling the court of Arnold’s statement about the letter of introduction. When Horner was asked whom the letter was dire
cted to, he answered bluntly: “ [Arnold] said that [Booth] had a letter of introduction to Dr. Mudd and to Dr. Queen.”33 Before Horner left the witness stand he was cross-examined by Mudd’s defense counsel, Thomas Ewing. Ewing attempted to soften the damaging testimony against his client. He asked Horner if he did not mean to say that Booth had a letter of introduction to Dr. Queen or Dr. Mudd. Horner was clear in his answer, “I understood him to say and Dr. Mudd.”34 The statement was devastating to Mudd’s case.
Horner’s testimony about a letter of introduction to Dr. Mudd is supported by the statement of another conspirator, George Atzerodt. Shortly before he was hanged, the local papers published a statement by Atzerodt that they described as a “confession.” The Baltimore American wrote under the headline “Confession of Atzerodt”: “Atzerodt said Booth was well acquainted with Mudd, and had letters of introduction to him [emphasis added]. Booth told Atzerodt about two weeks before the murder that he had sent provisions and liquor to Dr. Mudd for supplying the party on their way to Richmond with the President.”35
Returning to Baltimore with Arnold, Horner handed him over to McPhail. McPhail had Arnold write out a statement for the record. McPhail turned a copy of Arnold’s statement over to Stanton. Attached to the copy of the statement was a note by McPhail: “Note.—Besides this written statement of Arnold’s, he verbally communicated the fact that Booth was the correspondent of Doctors Mudd, Garland, and Queen.”36
There is a second point, albeit subtle, that emerges from Arnold’s arrest. It is this. Arnold told the authorities on April 17 about the letter of introduction, a full day before the military detectives first visited Mudd at his farm or had even heard the name of Dr. Mudd. Arnold could not possibly have learned about Dr. Mudd from anyone connected with the investigation in Baltimore. Government detectives did not learn of Dr. Mudd until Sunday afternoon when George Mudd visited Lieutenant Dana in Bryantown. Arnold could have learned about Mudd from only one source, John Wilkes Booth. This point has been lost in the histories of Lincoln’s murder. Those who claim we would never have heard of Dr. Mudd if Booth had not broken his leg have missed this important point. Regardless of whether Booth had availed himself of Dr. Mudd’s medical services or not following his murder of Lincoln, Arnold’s statement linking Mudd and Booth through a letter of introduction would have sent detectives to Mudd’s house in search of the doctor. It was Booth’s cohorts, Samuel Arnold and George Atzerodt, who pointed the finger at Mudd early in the investigation.
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