Manhunt

by James L. Swanson

  Herold made a quick decision. He didn’t need that carriage after all, he told Mudd. Booth can still ride a horse. Before the troops could spot them, Davey turned his horse around and galloped immediately back to Mudd’s farm to warn Booth. Puzzled by Davey’s skedaddling (Booth hadn’t told the doctor yet that he was Lincoln’s assassin), Mudd continued into Bryantown at a leisurely pace, just as he had done countless times on a quiet Saturday afternoon.

  Mudd went about his business, purchasing supplies—calico and pepper from Mr. Beans’s store—and iron nails from another establishment. He greeted friends and neighbors he passed in the street, as always. But a strange, wild atmosphere hung over Bryantown. “The town was full of soldiers and people coming and going all the while,” noted one of the manhunters, Colonel H. H. Wells. The determined cavalrymen’s faces glowered with anger and the seriousness of their purpose. Mudd wondered what had happened.

  Then somebody blurted it out. Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated in Washington last night. He died early this morning. The cavalry is here in pursuit of the assassin who escaped. Detectives and soldiers are going to turn over Charles County hunting for the murderer. Did Mudd’s mind flash back to the 4:00 a.m. knock on his door? Could it be?

  Who killed the president? the citizens demanded of the soldiers. The secret was impossible to keep. It was the actor. Booth. Edwin Booth? voices in the crowd wondered aloud. No, not Edwin, but his brother John, the soldiers told them. Lincoln’s assassin was John Wilkes Booth.

  Mudd displayed no outward signs of alarm. And no eyes fixed him with accusing stares. He remained calm and did not, by word or deed, betray the terrible secret known, at this moment, to him alone: America’s most wanted man was hiding in his house, less than five miles away. The Thirteenth New York could be there in half an hour.

  Back at Mudd’s farm, David Herold jumped off his horse and scurried to the house. Frances was in the kitchen supervising the servants as they prepared the next day’s Easter Sunday dinner. Davey, spying her through a window, tapped on the pane and she opened the front door. She asked Herold if he had found a carriage. “No, ma’am,” Davey replied. “We stopped over at the Doctor’s father’s and asked for his carriage, but tomorrow being Easter Sunday, his family had to go to church, and he could not spare it. I then rode some distance down the road with the Doctor, and then concluded to return and try the horses.” Herold was convincing enough that he aroused no suspicion in Mrs. Mudd.

  Davey excused himself and hurried upstairs. Booth was still in bed, but he wouldn’t be for long. The cavalry is here, Davey warned his master; they are at Bryantown, just down the road. Herold explained how he turned back, and how Dr. Mudd rode into town. Booth sat up immediately. Davey helped him out of bed and Booth propped himself up on the crutches. Frances was alerted by the creaky floorboards above her head—“I heard them moving around the room and in a short time they came down”—and waited for them at the foot of the stairs. As Booth hobbled on his crutches, his right leg encased in his knee-high riding boot and his left foot bare, and a brace of heavy, holstered revolvers belted around his waist, his face presented a “picture of agony” to Frances Mudd. She implored Davey to leave Booth there to rest, but the young man reassured her: “If he suffers much we won’t go far. I will take him to my lady-love’s, not far from here.”

  It was around 3:00 p.m., Saturday, April 15, and Booth was in grave danger. Only one man, Samuel Mudd, stood between him and disaster. Over in nearby Bryantown, Mudd had the power to end the manhunt that afternoon. All Dr. Mudd needed to do was tell the soldiers. He could do it with a few well-chosen words: John Wilkes Booth and an accomplice are hiding at my farm; he’s in the front bedroom on the second floor; he has a broken leg; he cannot run away; I’ll take you there now. All he had to do was speak those words, and Dr. Samuel A. Mudd would become, overnight, a national hero.

  Booth faced the most difficult choice of his escape. Should he leave Mudd’s farm at once or wait for the doctor to return? Both options presented risks. Mudd’s farm was in the land of the great Zekiah swamp, and he and Davey did not know the ground. A wrong turn might trap them in the notorious, fearful morass. Moreover, although Booth knew that rebel operatives lived nearby, including William Burtles, he did not know the way to their homes. If he and Davey fled now, it would put them on the roads in broad daylight without knowing where to go.

  Waiting for Dr. Mudd to come home presented great risks, too. If the doctor had betrayed him to the troops in Bryantown, Booth was a dead man. If they did not kill him on the spot at Mudd’s farm, then the manhunters would escort their captured prey back to Washington for a hanging. Booth had seen that once before. He had to decide now. Yes, perhaps he should have taken Mudd into his confidence. It would have been better for the doctor to have heard the truth from him rather than from the soldiers in town. Still, Booth concluded, Mudd would not betray him. Instead of fleeing the farm immediately, he waited for the doctor’s return.

  Booth’s assessment of Mudd’s character proved true. When the doctor finished his business in Bryantown, he got on his horse and, ignoring the troopers he passed on the way, rode calmly out of town. He decided to protect Booth and said nothing to anyone. But he had some choice words to say to Booth face-to-face.

  In Washington, Clara Harris, her father, and JUSTICE Cartter returned during daylight to the scene of the previous night’s crime. Together they scrutinized the locks on the doors leading to the president’s box, examined the little spot in the wall where Booth had scraped away the plaster, and peered through the hole through which the assassin espied Lincoln. At first they thought it was a bullet hole— evidence that Booth had shot at Lincoln blindly, the ball passing through the door before finding its target. Then they realized it was a peephole. They went into the box. The theatre was eerily quiet now and showed little evidence of the previous night’s mayhem—just some overturned chairs, scattered pieces of paper littering the floor, and the bare box, already stripped of its flags and bunting by souvenir hunters. The bloodstains were still there.

  Stanton wanted to see the box, too, and so, like one of his detectives prowling for clues, he too retraced Booth’s steps to visualize each scene in the assassin’s script. He also wanted to see the play. Perhaps a reenactment of Our American Cousin would provide a vital, hitherto neglected clue. Stanton rounded up what cast members could be found, commandeered Ford’s, and ordered a surreal, private performance in the empty theatre. No one laughed this time at the once silly but forever-more riveting line: “You sockdologizing old mantrap.” When Stanton and his aides heard the words echo through the house, did their eyes dart involuntarily up to the president’s box? The run-through of the play confirmed it—Booth had cleverly timed his attack to coincide with Harry Hawk’s funny, solitary moment onstage.

  Stanton was determined to preserve the scene of the crime. He ordered that it be surrounded by a twenty-four-hour guard. And he decided that he wanted photographs of the interior, to record exactly how it appeared at the moment of the assassination. He allowed Matthew Brady and his assistant to set up their big, wet-plate camera and make a series of exposures that, together, offered a panorama of the entire stage and its scenery during act 3, scene 2. Then Brady photographed the exterior of the president’s box, newly decorated with replacement flags and bunting for this purpose. He also photographed the approach to the box, and the outer door leading to the vestibule. The job challenged Brady’s skill. Photographing the vast interior, illuminated only by gaslight, and perhaps by whatever daylight reached the stage from opened doors and windows on the opposite end of the theatre facing Tenth Street, required long and careful exposures to allow the glass-plate negatives to absorb sufficient light to capture the necessary details.

  Back at the farm, Booth and Herold waited patiently for Dr. Mudd. But there was no sign of him. It was close to 6:00 in the evening and he still had not come home from Bryantown. What was taking him so long? Mudd’s tardiness was a good sign, though. I
f the doctor had betrayed Booth, the cavalry would have galloped to the farm two hours ago.

  Finally, sometime between 6:00 and 7:00 p.m., a rider turned from the main road and approached the farm. It was Dr. Mudd. He was alone and brought no cavalry escort. Booth’s knowing judgment was correct—the doctor was no Judas. But he was angry.

  Mudd rode up to his guests, dropped down from the saddle, and strode toward Booth. His face could not conceal his distress. He ordered Booth and Herold to leave his farm at once, and accused the actor of lying to him. Booth did not tell Mudd what he had done, and had put the doctor and his family in great danger.

  Ignoring Mudd’s anger, Booth seized upon the priceless news that the doctor brought back from Bryantown. The president was dead, and the fame was his. Twenty hours after the assassination, Dr. Mudd had just given John Wilkes Booth the first official confirmation that he had killed Lincoln. True, the assassin did not see how he could have missed. But it had all happened so fast. Lincoln moved at the last moment, and then Rathbone attacked Booth, leaving the actor no time to pause and admire his handiwork. There was a chance that the wound was not fatal. There had been enough room for doubt that in Surrattsville, Booth had qualified his boast to John Lloyd, saying only that he was “pretty certain” he had assassinated the president.

  Dr. Mudd was not as jubilant as his patient about this news. Booth might rejoice at the tyrant’s death, but Mudd was angry and afraid. By coming there, Booth had placed Mudd and his entire family in great danger. Yes, Mudd had agreed to facilitate the kidnapping of Abraham Lincoln, but no one had consulted him about murder. But now, by offering Booth his hospitality, he had unwittingly implicated himself in the most shocking crime of the Civil War, indeed, in all of American history—the murder of the president of the United States.

  Mudd continued to demand that Booth and Herold leave his farm at once. A patrol from the Thirteenth New York Cavalry might descend upon them without warning within the hour. Were federal troops to discover Lincoln’s assassin hiding out in his home, Dr. Mudd feared he would suffer terrible consequences. The only way to avert that disaster was to make Booth and Herold saddle their horses and ride away.

  But Mudd was still sympathetic to the assassin’s plight. He was no fan of Abraham Lincoln, the Union, or the black man, and he would have rejoiced at the kidnapping of the president. Booth may have abused his hospitality, but not enough to make Mudd betray him. He assured Booth that, as long as he and Herold agreed to leave now, he would still help them.

  First, he gave them the names of two trustworthy Maryland Confederate operatives, William Burtles and Colonel Samuel Cox. Then Mudd explained the route to the next stop on their underground rebel railroad. They must travel southeast in a wide arc to swing around and below Bryantown to avoid the troops there. Then, turning west, they would find Burtles’s place, “Hagen’s Folly,” about two miles due south of Bryantown. Cox’s farm was several miles southwest from Burtles’s, and from there the two men would be within striking distance of the Potomac River and, on its western bank, Virginia. Mudd gave Booth the name of a doctor on the Virginia side in case his leg continued to trouble him.

  Mudd promised Booth that he would not betray him. He would not ride back to Bryantown this evening and report that Lincoln’s assassin came calling in the dead of night. Dr. Mudd would hold his tongue and give Booth a head start. If the soldiers came to question him, he would say only that two strangers in need of medical assistance stopped briefly at his farm. Then he would send the manhunters in the wrong direction.

  Davey helped Booth mount his horse, eased him onto the saddle, and handed him the crude but sturdy crutches Samuel Mudd and John Best fashioned for him. The actor balanced the sticks horizontally across his saddle, thrust the toe of his right boot through the stirrup, and then gingerly slipped his other foot, sheathed in an unlaced, loose-fitting brogan, into the left stirrup. The shoe was a parting gift from Dr. Mudd—Booth would never have squeezed his left foot into his other boot. He abandoned the luxurious, expensive piece of footwear, now scarred by Mudd’s scalpel, on the bedroom floor. Awkwardly his hands manipulated the crutches and reins at the same time. Herold vaulted into the saddle with ease. Samuel Mudd, relieved by their departure and by his own escape from near disaster, watched them ride off to the southeast until they vanished from sight.

  It was around 7:00 p.m., April 15, fifteen hours since David Herold pounded on Mudd’s door and just over twenty-one hours since John Wilkes Booth shot the president. As dusk faded to dark, Booth and Herold continued south, careful to watch the western horizon, on their right, for signs of cavalry out of Bryantown. They had a long night’s ride ahead of them. But they had survived until the sunset of the first day.

  Back at his farm, Dr. Mudd went about his usual end-of-the-day business. In the hours that followed Booth’s departure, a peaceful quiet settled over his place. Horses stabled, servants done with their chores, his own work completed, and his family safe behind locked doors, Mudd contemplated his encounter with history, and danger. Bedtime approached, and no soldiers had come. He and Frances turned down the lamps. Tonight no strangers—assassins or manhunters—materialized in the night to awaken him suddenly from his dreams. He, too, had survived this day.

  •••

  Although Dr. Mudd had identified the route they must take, Booth and Herold got lost anyway. Fortunately, they found a local man, Oswell Swann, half black and half Piscataway Indian, wandering about on foot. Swann knew the territory. He had heard about the president’s murder, but showed no alarm when two strangers on horseback approached him in the dark, asking if he knew the way to William Burtles’s. They offered Swann $2 to serve as their guide, asked if he had any whiskey, and told him to go to his cabin and get his horse. Then, inexplicably, for reasons he never revealed, Booth changed his mind. Forget Burtles, the assassin said, and take us straight to Captain Cox. Booth offered him an extra $5. Swann agreed.

  The swamp angel Oswell Swann earned his pay this night. Booth and Herold, free of the muck, snakes, and wild, overgrown vegetation of the infernal Zekiah morass, returned to the civilization of cultivated Maryland fields and familiar farmhouses. Swann had guided them safely to the very doorstep of Captain Samuel Cox, master of Rich Hill. It was between midnight and 1:00 a.m. of the new day, April 16, Easter Sunday, approximately twenty-six hours since the assassination, and seventeen hours since Abraham Lincoln died.

  Good Friday 1865 was America’s darkest day since the unexpected death of George Washington on December 14, 1799, sixty-six years earlier, a moment that elderly Washingtonians recalled from their youth. The Sunday following Lincoln’s death was Easter, and it would be forever known as “Black Easter” to those who lived through it. The Sunday Morning Chronicle summed up the mood of the nation when it said the murder transformed “a season of rejoicing to mourning,” and there arose “a wail throughout the land.” Across the land ministers stayed up late Saturday night and by candle, lamp, or gaslight scratched out the final phrases of fresh sermons they began composing as soon as they heard, on the morning of the fifteenth, the terrible news.

  In the early hours of Black Easter, Booth and Herold sought their salvation, not in a church, but at the door of a faithful Confederate. If Cox turned them away, Christ’s dying words on Good Friday’s cross, “it is finished,” would describe their fate. The assassins were still too far north. Booth’s broken leg bone and the unplanned medical detour to Dr. Mudd’s farm cost them not only fifteen precious hours but took them to the east, out of their way, so that their escape timetable was now almost a day behind schedule.

  Booth and Herold approached the Cox house. They decided to use the same strategy they used at the Surrattsville tavern: Booth would hang back in the shadows while Herold did the talking, but with Captain Cox they would not immediately blurt out their secret. If necessary, they were willing to beg for their lives. Cox was their last hope in Maryland, and there was no turning back if he refused them. David Herold dismount
ed, walked up the front piazza of the finely built, expansive farmhouse, and sounded the knocker. Booth remained on his horse under the cover of a shaggy ailanthus tree in the yard. Cox poked his head out from a second-story window and asked, “Who’s there?” Herold refused to give his name, unsure if he could trust the captain. He disclosed only that he accompanied a man who needed help. Cox spotted Booth lurking under the tree’s shadow, hiding from the moonlight. Herold asked if they could come in.

  Suspicious but intrigued enough to come downstairs, Cox opened the door and appraised the worn-out, crazy-eyed man standing be-|fore him. The callow-looking stranger seemed more like a boy than a man. The wily farmer’s eyes scanned the vicinity. Perhaps Herold was an outlaw and his plea was a trick to let other desperadoes rush the house. Uneasy, and sensing that the stranger held back his real story, Cox began shutting the door. Desperate, Booth dismounted with some difficulty and hobbled up the porch to the door. In great pain, he pleaded with Cox for aid. According to the captain’s son, “it was there by a brilliant moon that Cox saw the initials ‘J.W.B.’ tattooed on his arm.” And it was there that the honey-tongued thespian, as he did with Sergeant Cobb at the Navy Yard Bridge, again used his seductive art to win over a man to his cause. Cox swung open the door and invited the fugitives into his home. To the nation, Black Easter dawned as a day of great mourning; to John Wilkes Booth, it began as a day of salvation.