Manhunt

by James L. Swanson

  If Powell chose to fight, the clock would start ticking at the first blow.

  If he was quick, he could administer a second, skull-smashing strike by the time their hands reached for their holster flaps, and perhaps manage even a third swing of the pick before the survivors could draw, cock, and raise their revolvers. If Powell were lucky, he might deliver a fourth blow before a soldier could jerk the trigger and get off the first panicked, hurried shot. If the bullet went wild, or hit him but failed to kill him instantly, Powell could respond with a fifth, mighty swing of the ax.

  He could do all of this in less then ten seconds and when it was over, he could, just as he had at Seward’s, step past the broken bodies of men with crushed skulls and gaping wounds and walk out Mrs. Surratt’s front door into the night. Powell glared at the soldiers. He could swing that ax quicker than they could draw their pistols. It was his move.

  Then the mighty Lewis Powell did something extraordinary. Inexplicably, meekly, without protest, he surrendered without a fight.

  The soldiers arrested Powell, Mary Surratt, her daughter Anna, Lewis Weichmann, a friend of John Surratt’s, and the rest of the boarders, including the terrified little Miss Appolonia Dean, an eleven-year-old schoolgirl who lived alone without her parents at Mary Surratt’s.

  The soldiers searched the house and uncovered, or so they believed, additional incriminating evidence: photographs of Confederate generals—one of President Jefferson Davis, some stray small-arms ammunition, a bullet mold. And the coup de grâce—a picture of John Wilkes Booth, hidden behind a picture frame.

  Powell and Mary Surratt were taken to General Augur’s headquarters for questioning. Before leaving the boardinghouse, Mary Surratt begged Colonel Wells to allow her to say a prayer. She fell to her knees and prayed silently.

  If Lewis Powell had not blundered into the government’s hands this night, he might have escaped Washington and vanished from history. Instead, the government celebrated his capture as the first major break in the manhunt. The capture of Seward’s assassin on the third night since Good Friday was a triumph, secondary in importance only to finding the archfiend, John Wilkes Booth. Rival Washington photographers salivated at the prospect of taking the first photos of Lewis Powell and selling copies to a public desperate for news and images of the great crime. But Stanton wasn’t quite ready to grant permission. With Booth, Herold, Atzerodt, and John Surratt still at large, forcing Powell to pose for souvenir photos while the manhunt was still under way might come across as an act of premature celebration. There would be time later for photos—of all of them.

  Wells tried to question Powell but the laconic assassin refused to cooperate. The colonel noticed bloodstains on his shirt cuffs.

  “What do you think of that?” Wells taunted him.

  “That’s not blood,” Powell weakly claimed.

  Within hours of Powell’s arrest, William Bell, Seward’s servant, identified Powell as the knife-wielding maniac. And when Gus Seward came to see him, he was instructed to grab hold of Powell just as he had during the attack. Then Wells ordered Powell to say two words to Gus: “I’m mad. “Yes, Seward, affirmed, this was the man.

  Henry Wells wanted to interrogate Mary shortly after her arrest so she would have little time to reflect, and to craft well-rehearsed answers to his questions. Perhaps the experienced lawyer and officer was expecting an easily intimidated woman whom he could browbeat into revealing all she knew about her son, about John Wilkes Booth, and about the other conspirators. If so, Wells was wrong. Mary Surratt proved his match, behaved coolly, and divulged no clues to help the manhunters track Booth. At the outset, she admitted freely facts that she was sure Wells already knew from other sources, especially her connection to Booth: “[Booth] has been coming to our house about two months; sometimes he called twice a day; we found him very much a gentleman. I think my son invited him home.. . . My son is a country-bred young gentleman. I was not surprised that he should make the acquaintance of such a man as Mr. Booth because I consider him capable of forming acquaintances in the best society.” Wells began the interrogation:

  “What was it that brought your son and J. Wilkes Booth together?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Has not the question occurred to you since the murder?”

  “Yes, Sir; but I could not account for it, and I think no one could be more surprised than we were that he should be guilty of such an act.” Wells questioned her about John Surratt’s connection to Booth’s other conspirators.

  “Don’t you know of his making the acquaintance of a Mr. Atzerodt?”

  “He was a German, I think. The name he gave me was ‘Port Tobacco.’ He remained only part of a week, when I found some liquor in his room; no gentleman can board with me who keeps liquor in his rooms.”

  Wells shifted the interrogation to the subject of Lewis Powell. The colonel suspected that he had visited the boardinghouse recently posing as a minister named “Wood.”

  “What was the name of the other young man?” “I think his name was Wood.”

  Wells showed her a photograph of David Herold and she denied knowing him. That much was true. Neither Booth nor John Surratt had ever brought Herold to the boardinghouse. Wells continued to play cat and mouse with Mary, inviting her to name other visitors to her home and implying that she might as well tell him because he already knew the answers. “I assure you on the honor of a lady that I would not tell you an untruth.” Unimpressed, Wells countered, “I assure you, on the honor of a gentleman, I shall get this information from you.” But Wells wasn’t getting anywhere. He took a break. “Reflect a moment, and I will send for a glass of water for you,” he told Mary. After an aide served her, Wells asked a number of apparently innocuous questions about horses before shifting suddenly to the real subject of his interest—Lewis Powell.

  “Did you meet the young man arrested this evening within two or three days and make an arrangement with him to come to your house this evening.”

  “No, Sir; the ruffian that was in my door when I came away? He was a tremendous hard fellow with a skull cap on, and my daughter commenced crying, and said these gentlemen [Major Smith’s raiding party] came to save our lives. I hope they arrested him.”

  “He tells me now that he met you in the street and you engaged him to come to your house.”

  “Oh! Oh! It is not so, Sir; for I believe he would have murdered everyone, I assure you.”

  “When did you see him first?”

  “Just as the carriage drew up, he rang the door bell, and my daughter said, ‘Oh! There is a murderer.’”

  Perhaps Wells appreciated the ironic truth of Mary Surratt’s statement. Indeed, she was correct. Powell was a killer, but one who posed no threat to Mary Surratt, her daughter, or the occupants of H Street. During her interview with Colonel Wells, Mary stonewalled the experienced investigator and served Booth well. Yes, she had admitted the Atzerodt connection, but the manhunters had known about that for three days. On the night of the assassination, John Fletcher had identified Atzerodt’s bridle and recognized the one-eyed horse, and detectives had also connected him to Booth from their search of the German’s room at the Kirkwood House. But Mary Surratt did not tell Henry Wells about Booth’s April 14 visit to her, the field glasses, her carriage ride to Surrattsville, the “shooting irons”—or that she had seen Lewis Powell before.

  The interrogation over—for now—Wells refused to allow Mary to return home. He told her that she was still under arrest, and that he was sending her to the Old Capitol prison, where she would join the many other suspects and witnesses arrested after the president’s murder. Although she did not suspect it this night, Mary Surratt would never see her boardinghouse again.

  Monday, April 17, closed as the most successful day in the three-day-old manhunt. Earlier that day government agents arrested Samuel Arnold in Baltimore. On April 14, detectives had ransacked Booth’s room at the National, on Sixth and Pennsylvania, a short walk from Ford’s Theatre. The
“Sam” letter, discovered within hours of the assassination, had, along with a detective’s tip, led to Arnold’s arrest. Arnold, age thirty-one, a former schoolmate of Booth’s and a Confederate army veteran, confessed that he’d participated in Booth’s earlier scheme to kidnap the president, but he denied any involvement in or knowledge of the assassination. He argued that the “Sam” letter, rather than proving his guilt, was evidence that he had quit the conspiracy weeks before the assassination.

  Michael O’Laughlen, age twenty-eight, another of Booth’s boyhood friends and also a former Confederate soldier from Baltimore and participant in the kidnapping plot, was also seized on April 17. Provost Marshal McPhail knew O’Laughlen’s family, and Michael turned himself in to “spare his mother.” After O’Laughlen’s arrest, Charles Dana telegraphed McPhail in Baltimore with instructions on how to transport him to Washington: “Bring [him] here in the train which leaves Baltimore at 6 p.m. Have him in double irons, and use every precaution against escape, but as far as possible avoid everything which can lead to suspicion on the part of the people on the train and give rise to an attempt to lynch the prisoner. A carriage will be in waiting at the depot to convey him to the place of confinement.”

  Edman Spangler, the thirty-nine-year-old Ford’s Theatre stagehand who briefly held the reins of Booth’s horse, had been arrested on April 15, and was then released, only to be rearrested on April 17 along with Arnold, O’Laughlen, and Powell. In Spangler’s room, detectives made what they thought was an ominous discovery: a long coil of strong rope. Was it for Booth to rappel down from Lincoln’s box to the stage? Under any other circumstance, a rope is an innocent stagehand’s accessory, but in the aftermath of Lincoln’s murder, it led to Spangler’s arrest. Poor Spangler had nothing to do with the assassination—or the earlier kidnapping plot. But his long association with Booth, the rope, holding the bay mare’s reins, and the allegation by another theatre employee that Spangler said not to tell pursuers which way Booth went down the alley, earned him a cell in the Old Capitol prison. Many other people in the theatre were rounded up, including the Fords. Edwin Stanton declared the theatre a lair to which Lincoln had been lured, and surely those connected to it must have conspired with the assassin. How else could Booth have escaped so smoothly and easily? The theatre building itself was “arrested” by the government—it was ordered closed and was eventually confiscated from the Fords.

  These were not the only arrests. The dragnet rounded up more than one hundred suspects: Junius Booth, one of the assassin’s brothers; a strange Portuguese sea captain named Celestino; various Confederate sympathizers and agents; and others who expressed disloyal sentiments.

  Although the arrest of one suspect after another filled the headlines, Booth and Herold had vanished. The New York Herald reported Booth sitting nonchalantly aboard a train to Philadelphia; Washington papers argued Booth was hiding in the capital. One of the most famous and recognizable men in America remained free. The American people demanded vengeance. Across the country, mobs beat suspected Booth sympathizers, and in several cases murdered them. A Union soldier named John F. Madlock, an officer of the U.S. Colored Cavalry in Port Hudson, Louisiana, wrote “a man who rejoiced at Lincoln’s death received 16 bullets in his carcass . . . served him right.” Vigilante groups and soldiers forced Booth sympathizers to wear crude, hand-painted wooden signs around their necks reading “assassination sympathizer.” According to the Daily Morning Chronicle, in nearby Baltimore, an unidentified group of men set upon a photographic studio when rumors spread that the owner sold prints of the infamous actor.

  The tumultuous news of the assassination raced the breadth of the nation by telegraph and soon reached U.S. Army posts in California. In San Francisco, General McDowell issued an order to arrest anyone who spoke against Lincoln.

  Head Quarters Department of the Pacific San Francisco, Cal., April 17, 1865.

  GENERAL ORDERS, No. 27

  It has come to the knowledge of the Major-General commanding that there have been found within the Department persons so utterly infamous as to exult over the assassination of the President. Such persons become virtually accessories after the fact, and will at once be arrested by any officer or provost marshal or member of the police, having knowledge of the case.

  Any paper so offending or expressing any sympathy in any way whatever with the act, will be at once seized and suppressed.

  BY COMMAND OF MAJOR GENERAL McDOWELL:

  R. C. DRUM, Assistant Adjutant General

  In Grass Valley, California, a minister wrote a letter to a friend back east describing the violence that followed the arrival of the news: “When the news came of the assassination of Lincoln the excitement was tremendous! Several men were shot right down dead by the Copperheads! And others were killed by Republicans in self defense! I loaded my double guns, with four small balls to each barrel and kept it in my study ready for any emergency. I thought I would pray God have mercy on our Country, but I would have a little lead for the Rebels!”

  In Illinois, a U.S. Marine wrote a letter to his mother in Lockport, New York, describing the danger to those who spoke against Lincoln.

  Mound City, Ill. April 18th, 1865

  Dear Mother,

  We are all in an uproar in this place about the death of the president and one or two has been shot in this place for using disloyal sentiments and there will be more shot if they do not keep their mouths shut. I hope that the president will hang every one of them now and not leave one just exterminate the whole race. It is not safe for any one to be out after dark in this place although I am up all hours of the night . . . it will not do to use any disloyal sentiments where we can hear it or they would get smacked very quick. I was in hopes that the war was nearly over but as things look I am afraid it has just begun but I hope not . . . it was hard for Lincoln to die now when he was just on the eve of seeing this rebellion trodden under foot when every body was rejoicing in his administration and when every thing looked bright for him. I would like to have my say with that Booth. I’ll bet he never would want to kill another president. I would take a pair of shears and cut him in pieces as you would cut a piece of cloth. Then I would dig out his eyes and then pour in boiling hot oil. I’d fix him well . . . mother give my love to all the folks and believe me your affectionate son.

  Wesley Severs

  U.S. Marine Barracks

  Mound City, Ill

  Booth’s escape incensed, but also thrilled, the nation. Photographs of him became so popular that soon the government banned their sale. Impossible to enforce, Stanton had the order rescinded. Ads appeared in Harper’s Weekly, Frank Leslie’s, and other newspapers that shamelessly offered Booth photos for sale—alongside mourning ribbons, badges, and photos of the martyred president. In Boston, a lithography

  “The Assassin’s Vision.” Lincoln’s ghost haunts the fleeing Booth.

  company commissioned an artist to create a handsome bust portrait of the assassin that it sold in two sizes—small carte-de-visite form for the family album, and as a large print suitable for framing. Other printers rushed out less flattering products—fantasy prints of Satan whispering in Booth’s ear moments before he shot Lincoln, and of Booth riding furiously through a swamp infested with alligators and monsters. A carte-de-visite reproduced an allegorical painting titled The Assassin’s Vision, depicting Booth fleeing Washington, the great dome visible in the distant background, and multiple images of Lincoln’s ghost sprouting in the trees above him. A Boston publisher released a piece of sheet music—“The Assassin’s Vision Ballad/Words and music by J. W. Turner”—to accompany the eerie artwork. It was the first song written about John Wilkes Booth and the manhunt.

  The Assassin rode on his fiery steed, His murd’rous work was done— In the darksome night with fleeting speed, Through woods his courser run!

  As he hurried away from the scene of death, On his brow were looks of despair: Before him! around him! The evening’s breath Told him God’s vengeance was t
here! The pale moon beamed as onward he fled, The stars looked down from on high, The hills and valleys were crimson red As blood to the murd’rer’s eye! He shuddered! he trembled! And oft looked around, And dreary seemed each passing breeze, And lo! the assassin at ev’ry bound Saw a vision appear in the trees. Heaven had witnessed! He could not escape! The assassin’s fate was sealed— “ Vengeance is mine!” saith God in his might, As the vision that night revealed. The assassin rode on with trembling and fear, And mournfully murmur’d the breeze; Before! around him! All vivid and drear, The vision appeared in the trees.

  Edwin Stanton needed help. By the third day it had become obvious that he could not devote his time and brainpower exclusively to the manhunt. He had a lot on his mind. The president’s murder was not only a national tragedy, but also a deep personal loss to the secretary. Ever since the wild carriage ride on the night of the fourteenth, and his first sight of his friend in the deathbed, Stanton had used his iron will to suppress his powerful emotions. He had almost broken down at the Petersen house after Lincoln died, but his brain was able to rule his heart. There were other concerns. He had a war to win. Just because Lee had surrendered did not mean that the Civil War was over. Strong Confederate armies remained in the field in North Carolina, Texas, and elsewhere, and their generals had not followed Lee’s example. Jefferson Davis was still at large, the subject of another sensational manhunt. And like the search for Booth, the manhunt for Davis had failed. Soon the conflict might degenerate into a brutal, guerrilla war that might take years to win. And without Lincoln at his side, Stanton had to go on alone. The new president was not ready to assume the role of commander in chief.