Rebel Souls

by Justin Martin

  The elation was short-lived. Only six days later, Whitman awakened to the terrible news. Lincoln had been assassinated. In the Whitman household, the family read through every newspaper and extra edition they could lay their hands on. His mother made breakfast, then lunch, but nobody ate a thing. Portland Avenue was still, so still; the only sound was the tolling of church bells.

  In the afternoon, Whitman took a ferry across to Manhattan. It was a Saturday, ordinarily a workday, but all the businesses had already closed. The streets and sidewalks were virtually abandoned. Whitman made his way to Broadway. As he so often had, he took out a notebook and began to record his impressions. He reported that he saw “no pleasure vehicles, & hardly a cart—only the rumbling base [sic] of the heavy Broadway stages incessantly rolling.” Among the few people out and about, he noted that their faces showed a “strange mixture of horror, fury, tenderness, & stirring wonder brewing.”

  As Whitman walked, the day grew overcast. Thunderheads began to roll in over Manhattan. “Lincoln’s death—black, black, black,” he wrote, “—as you look toward the sky—long broad black like great serpents slowly undulating in every direction.” Then the heavens opened up, and it started to pour.

  From the moment the news broke, Whitman and the world knew who had shot the president. Even the morning editions of papers screamed the name: John Wilkes Booth. Only over time, however, did the specific details begin to emerge. Later, too, Whitman would be privileged to hear a firsthand account of this event.

  Booth, it seems, had spent considerable time in and around Washington during the first months of 1865, hatching schemes as leader of a small, ragtag group of Confederate sympathizers. It included an unemployed malcontent, an apparent psychotic (other than Booth), and an imbecile, for lack of a better term. If anything, this set of conspirators was even more hapless than the group behind the Manhattan hotel fires. As the spring progressed, as it looked increasingly likely that the war was drawing to a close, their schemes became ever more desperate and harebrained. They entertained a variety of ideas: perhaps they would kidnap Lincoln, or kill him, maybe even kill some other Union leaders as well.

  On the morning of April 14, Booth went to Ford’s Theatre to pick up his mail. He had mail privileges there, although owner John Ford had grown tired of the actor’s provoking comments about the Confederate cause. It was during this visit that Booth learned that Lincoln and General Grant were expected at the theater that very evening. The two men and their wives would be attending a performance of Our American Cousin, a farce about a Vermont naïf who travels to Britain to claim an inheritance.

  Booth dashed off to make preparations. In an instant, it seems, the scheme was adjusted to take advantage of this new information. Booth now could kill both Lincoln and Grant. His sidekicks would take care of Andrew Johnson and Seward. In a single night’s coordinated effort, the group could assassinate the president, his top general, the vice president, and the secretary of state.

  At 8:00 p.m., as the curtain rose for Our American Cousin, Booth and his fellow conspirators remained huddled in a room at a nearby boardinghouse, working out the details of their individual assignments.

  Lincoln was late to the theater, held up by various state obligations. He left the White House at 8:15 p.m. in his black frock coat and a silk hat. Mary Todd, head covered in a coal-scuttle bonnet, wore a coat of black velvet edged in ermine over a black-and-white-striped gown. There had been a change of plans about who would accompany the first couple. Julia Grant detested Mary Todd, so the general and his wife had backed out at the last minute, pleading another engagement. Instead, the Lincolns’ carriage swung by to pick up Henry Rathbone, a young army major, and Clara Harris, his fiancée.

  The party arrived at Ford’s Theatre at 8:35. As they entered the presidential box, situated in the balcony, stage left, word began to travel through the theater: Lincoln was here. The play halted, and the orchestra struck up “Hail to the Chief.” Lincoln acknowledged the crowd with a bow. Then he sat down in a rocking chair, provided especially for his comfort. Mary Todd sat beside him in a chair. Nearby, on a small couch, sat Major Rathbone and his fiancée. Lincoln loved the theater, enjoying everything from Shakespeare tragedies to light drawing-­room comedies that allowed him “to take a laugh,” as he put it. He’d even seen a performance of Our American Cousin the previous year.

  By now, the conspirators had set off on their various errands. Booth sat alone at the Star Saloon, next door to Ford’s Theatre. He was wearing a dark suit, slouch hat, and high riding boots with spurs. He tossed back a whiskey. Then he left the bar and made a short walk down the street. John Buckingham, the Ford’s ticket taker, had placed his large frame in the theater’s front door, blocking off entry. Grasping Buckingham’s hand lightly with two fingers, Booth requested that he be let into the theater for free. The ticket taker let him go.

  The actor knew Ford’s Theatre well. Over the years, he’d performed here many times; only a month earlier, in fact, he’d been in a production of The Apostate, playing the villain Pescara. Booth climbed the stairs to the balcony and then made his way down a sloping side aisle. For the evening, a single DC police officer had been assigned to guard Lincoln. He had abandoned his post, going next door for a drink at the Star Saloon. Nobody was monitoring the door that provided access into the presidential box.

  Booth opened that door. He stepped into a short passageway, about ten feet in length, which led to a second door. Beyond it was the presidential box. (Neither door had a working lock.)

  Booth walked to the end of the passageway and stood there. The second door had a peephole, making it possible for him to look into the box. Not only was he familiar with Ford’s Theatre, but he was also well acquainted with Our American Cousin. The play was nearing a point, Booth knew, where one of its biggest laugh lines would be delivered. That would be his cue. Booth peered through the peephole. And waited. Onstage, an actor said, “Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal—you sockdologizing old man-trap!” The audience burst into laughter.

  Booth opened the door. He leveled his pistol. He shot Lincoln in the back of the head.

  To audience members who heard it, the single-shot derringer’s report was a muffled pop, like someone bursting a paper bag. Lincoln slumped forward in the rocking chair, his chin falling onto his chest. For the handful of theatergoers who turned around, a haze of bluish smoke could be seen in the presidential box. Something was going on, but in the moment it seemed so fast moving and chaotic; many figured it was simply part of the play. Booth lunged through the box, making for the railing. When Rathbone blocked his way, the actor drew a dagger and slashed the major’s arm.

  Booth climbed over the railing, preparing to drop onto the stage. But one of his spurs got fouled in the red-white-and-blue bunting that was draped along the front of the box. This caused him to fall awkwardly. When he landed, twelve feet below, he fractured his fibula, right above the left ankle. Booth straightened from a crouch, stood there unsteadily, gazing out over the audience and waving the bloody dagger. “Sic semper tyrannis,” he shouted.

  Then he staggered off the stage. “Stop that man!” yelled Major Rathbone. Booth pushed through the theater’s back door and into an alley, where a getaway horse waited. Back inside, a sustained unearthly shriek rose above the pandemonium. Mary Todd.

  Meanwhile, Booth’s fellow conspirators had fanned out across the capital. One, posing as a physician’s courier delivering medicine, managed to get inside the Seward residence, whereupon he burst into the secretary of state’s bedroom and stabbed him, though not fatally. The man charged with killing the vice president lurked outside Johnson’s house for some minutes before, losing his nerve, he repaired to a saloon and drank himself into oblivion. Due to a change of plans, General Grant was safely away from the theater that night.

  Sic semper tyrannis. Thus always to tyrants. It’s what Marcus Brutus, the historical figure,
supposedly uttered when he stabbed Julius Caesar, though Shakespeare didn’t use the line in his play.

  During the recent benefit, Edwin had handed himself the role of Brutus. Now, his younger brother had stolen the part. Real life and the stage, ancient history and the present: they all bled together for John until it was impossible for him to tell them apart. He was the son of the Mad Tragedian, truly—took the insanity beyond the beyond. But here’s one thing John Wilkes Booth appears to have understood with clarity. He seems to have grasped, intuitively, that the bar for spectacular mayhem is so much lower than the bar for great art.

  He was late to move on his plot—waiting, in a ludicrous twist, until after the war had ended—and the conspirators failed to dispatch three of their four intended victims. But the fourth was president of the United States.

  One week later, on April 22, Whitman returned to Washington, where he resumed his job as a clerk. Already, he was having grave doubts about Drum-Taps. It was intended as a Civil War collection, yet it lacked the necessary poems about Lincoln and the assassination. In an instant, his new collection had been rendered obsolete. Even though five hundred copies of Drum-Taps had already been printed, Whitman decided to put the project on hold. He elected to wait and not to offer the book for sale just yet.

  On a piece of paper, Whitman began a long list: “Melancholy . . . heavy-hearted . . . eloquent silence . . . pain of mind . . . cast down . . . affliction.” These are words and phrases related to grief and mourning. Making this list represented, for Whitman, the first raw step in crafting poetry about Lincoln’s death. He had devoted the past several years to compiling a set of poems about the war. But that didn’t matter. Time and effort be damned. The collection would be woefully incomplete, he recognized, without a fitting tribute to the fallen president. As a gift, Whitman gave his new love the printer’s proof of the withheld edition of Drum-Taps, all marked up in pencil.

  Doyle had something precious for Whitman in return. During Whitman’s recent trip home to Brooklyn, Doyle, who remained in Washington, had learned that the president would be attending a play. He grew intrigued with what sounded like an exciting event. On the night of April 14, 1865, Doyle attended Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theatre. “I heard the pistol shot. . . . It was sort of muffled,” he would recall. “I saw Booth on the cushion of the box, saw him jump over, saw him catch his foot, which turned, saw him fall on the stage.”

  Doyle had been there. He’d seen and heard it all. He would share his account with Whitman, helping the poet to achieve a sense of presence at Lincoln’s assassination, making it possible for Whitman to cast his deep, empathetic understanding into one of history’s most momentous events.

  16: A Brief Revival

  THE FUNERAL TRAIN bearing Lincoln’s body moved slowly through Philadelphia and New York and Cleveland and Indianapolis, traveling 1,662 miles. It followed virtually the same route taken to the capital after the victorious 1860 election, now in reverse, carrying the president past a fresh set of onlookers—thousands of them, mostly silent, many sobbing, some in full black mourning dress—until the journey ended where it had begun in Springfield, Illinois.

  As peace settled across the land, many sought a chance for renewal. Henry Clapp had waited out the entire Civil War in an underground saloon. Now, like one of those locusts that remain buried for years in suspended animation, he burst forth.

  Somehow he lined up new investors, scraped together the necessary funding, and managed to resuscitate the Saturday Press. On August 5, 1865, after half a decade’s silence, the debut issue of the journal’s second iteration appeared. In an editor’s note, Clapp offered his sly explanation:

  “What did you ever stop it for?”

  “For want of money.”

  “Why do you revive it, then?”

  “For the same reason.”

  Clapp picked up exactly where he’d left off. The new SP was everything the old one had been: clever, worldly, opinionated, and, most of all, irreverent. It featured articles such as “How to Write War Lyrics,” offering helpful tips such as “You may make Slain rhyme with Again”; “Muck-a-Muck,” a send-up of one of James Fenimore Cooper’s noble savage tales; and a piece on new findings in astronomy, written in a faux scientific style, and asserting among other things that earthlings will soon discover an “inconceivable number of worlds . . . peopled like our own,” but can take comfort in the fact that we’ll be superior to them all.

  By now, Clapp’s original circle of writers was widely scattered. Where necessary, he simply recruited substitutes. Queen Clare was no longer in the SP stable; to provide a witty female perspective, he turned instead to a writer and actress named Olive Logan.

  Nearly every issue carried an advertisement for Pfaff’s. The saloon was now in a new location, though. Right after the Civil War ended, it moved up Broadway a few doors to No. 653. On one wall, the new Pfaff’s had a mural depicting a natural scene. There was a garden out back where Charlie Pfaff kept a pet eagle, which subsisted on sauerkraut, pretzels, and other specialties of the house. “The National bird received the same nourishment as American arts and letters,” according to a reminiscence, “and was fed with the same generous hand.”

  Clapp continued to go to the saloon every night without fail. Even though the new establishment didn’t feature a separate vaulted room, it appears that Herr Pfaff furnished him with a long table once again.

  Bohemianism itself remained a topic of endless discussion in the SP. The August 12 issue featured a poem called “Beerdrinkers Song,” and a subsequent number included a brief sketch called “Life in a Bar-Room.” Clapp sought, once again, to create a seductive yet intimidating tone of insiderism, always a winning journalistic formula. Clapp even published an update of a piece that had run in 1860, listing various public eminences and historical figures, divided neatly into Bohemians and those who failed to make the club. Where Washington had been deemed a Bohemian in the original article, among those who now got the nod was Lincoln: “Abraham Lincoln was a most worthy member of our order.”

  On nearly every page, Clapp’s fierceness was also on display. Evidently, he came back with a vengeance. The new SP, like its predecessor, was filled with assorted nose thumbings at orthodoxy, takedowns of figures considered ponderous by Clapp, and savage critiques of books, plays, and paintings. Once again, he reserved his greatest bile for the citizens and customs of New England. His editor’s note for August 19 included the following: “A teetotal correspondent in Boston . . . objects to our having printed, last week, two poems on beer. He can’t bear the sight or sound of the word. He objects even to our mentioning Meyerbeer. What is to be done with such people?” (“Meyerbeer” is a reference to Giacomo Meyerbeer, a German opera composer.) The swipe is but a sample of the tireless assault Clapp continued to wage against the region of his birth.

  The SP was off to a fast start. But what happened next is nothing short of extraordinary. Clapp managed an editorial coup for the ages. Within the space of a month, he published a pair of timeless works, by two different American masters.

  First came Whitman’s “O Captain! My Captain!” published in the SP’s November 4, 1865, issue. This ode to Lincoln is one of several that Whitman had recently completed. After putting his Civil War collection on hold, he had focused his creative energy on composing a series of fitting tributes to the assassinated president. He collected these new works in a pamphlet called Sequel to Drum-Taps. The pamphlet, in turn, was sewed into the binding of the existing edition of Drum-Taps, already printed and waiting.

  Whitman sent the new collection to Clapp. Right after the war, the two men renewed their friendship, although they no longer lived in the same city. Clapp sometimes clipped interesting newspaper articles and mailed them to Whitman in Washington, a gesture that pleased the poet mightily. On at least one occasion, Whitman visited Clapp in New York.

  “O Captain! My Captain!” is based on a recurrin
g dream Lincoln supposedly had following monumental events such as Antietam and Gettysburg. He was aboard a mysterious ship quickly approaching an unknown shore. The night before the assassination, Lincoln had the dream again—or so claimed a spate of newspaper accounts. The president took this as a promising sign, perhaps related to some aspect of the newly dawned peace.

  Whitman gave Lincoln’s dream the tragic twist it now warranted. In his poem, the voyage is complete; the ship has arrived at that distant harbor, but at a terrible cost:

  O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,

  The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,

  The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,

  While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;

  But O heart! heart! heart!

  O the bleeding drops of red,

  Where on the deck my Captain lies,

  Fallen cold and dead.

  “O Captain! My Captain!”—rhymed and metered—is a departure from Whitman’s trademark free-verse style. But a certain formality seemed necessary to properly commemorate such a somber event.

  The sublime “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” was also part of the new collection. This poem in particular exhibits Whitman’s rare gift for empathy. It draws on Doyle’s account of the assassination. But it does so emotionally rather than literally, for it doesn’t include a single specific from the event. (In the future, Whitman would rely on the details of Doyle’s account, but for a purpose other than poetry.)

  “Lilacs” never even mentions Lincoln by name, a brilliant stroke. Instead, it explores the feeling of losing “him I love,” a phrase that becomes a fevered refrain. In the poem, the emotions from those magical early months of 1865 run together with those surrounding the night of April 14. What seemed such hopeful signs—the low-hanging evening star, the scent of lilacs—are understood to be ominous portents as well. Forever after, they’ll have complex, ambivalent associations, joy mixed with dread: