Manhunt

by James L. Swanson

  Ferguson’s observation of Booth entering the box appears in Poore, The Conspiracy Trial, volume 1, pages 190–191. Also see Pitman, The Assassination of President Lincoln, page 76.

  The last words that passed between Mary and Abraham Lincoln were preserved by Dr. Anson Henry, in a letter to his wife dated April 19, 1865, the same day as Lincoln’s White House funeral. The Henrys were old Illinois friends of the Lincolns living in Washington, and Mary Lincoln confided in a private conversation with the doctor the last words spoken by the president. Henry’s letter appears in Milton S. Shutes, Lincoln and the Doctors (New York: The Pioneer Press, 1933), page 132.

  For the complete dialogue from act 3, scene 2, see Taylor, Our American Cousin, pages 80–85.

  The exact time of Booth’s shot cannot be fixed, in part because no one knows the precise time that the performance began. Ford’s, like many theatres at the time, was somewhat casual about curtain time. Witnesses could not agree, and surviving testimony, letters, and oral history support multiple conclusions. Booth may have shot Lincoln as early as 10:13 or as late as 10:30 p.m. I suspect that the time was close to 10:15 p.m., but as late as 10:20 p.m. For a fuller discussion of this, and for a number of recollections from those at Ford’s Theatre, see Timothy S. Good, We Saw Lincoln Shot: One Hundred Eyewitness Accounts (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1995). Good believes that Booth fired close to 10:30 p.m.

  David Donald describes the tough, Clary’s Grove boys in Lincoln, at pages 40– 41, and Donald confirms, on page 568, that in the spring of 1865 Lincoln “continued to be a physically powerful man.”

  Ferguson’s description of Lincoln’s position at the moment he was shot appears in Poore, The Conspiracy Trial, volume 1, pages 190–191.

  Major Rathbone reported that Booth shouted “Freedom.” Rathbone’s account of the assassination and knife attack appears in Poore, The Conspiracy Trial, volume 1, pages 195–198. Also see Pitman, The Assassination of the President, at pages 78–79. Clara Harris also described the stabbing in her April 29, 1865, letter. See Good, We Saw Lincoln Shot, at pages 69–71.

  Witnesses disagreed about what Booth said, and where he said it. Booth later claimed that he cried “Sic semper” while standing in the box before he shot Lincoln, but Rathbone remembered only the word “Freedom.” During the manhunt Booth wrote in his makeshift diary: “I shouted Sic semper before I fired.” See Rhodehamel and Taper, “Right or Wrong,” at page 154. Based on the available evidence, I believe that Booth said in the box and onstage the words I attribute to him in the narrative. For an extensive discussion, see Good, We Saw Lincoln Shot.

  Rathbone’s testimony on the barred door is in Poore, The Conspiracy Trial, volume 1, at page 195.

  Ferguson described Booth’s exultation to Stanton at the Petersen house on the night of the assassination, and James Tanner recorded his statement that Booth said “I have done it.” See Good, We Saw Lincoln Shot, at page 32. Later, at the trial, Ferguson neglected to mention “I have done it” in his testimony as published in Poore, The Conspiracy Trial, volume 1, page 197.

  The first words of Rathbone appear in Poore, The Conspiracy Trial, volume 1, page 197.

  Booth’s broken bone has become the subject of minor controversy. A handful of assassination buffs insist that Booth was not injured when he fell to the stage at Ford’s Theatre. Instead, they argue, not long after he crossed the Navy Yard Bridge, his horse slipped and fell on the roads outside Washington, breaking a bone in the actor’s left leg. Although a fascinating diversion, the issue of where Booth was injured, onstage at Ford’s between 10:15 and 10:30 p.m., or on the roads between the Navy Yard Bridge and Surrattsville sometime before midnight, is a tempest in a teapot in the story of the manhunt. However it happened, Booth’s broken leg made a visit to Dr. Mudd essential. I agree with Edward Steers that in this matter we should accept, along with other evidence, Booth’s own account of his injury, when he wrote: “In jumping broke my leg.” Rhodehamel and Taper, “Right or Wrong,” at page 154.

  Seward’s carriage accident is covered in Glyndon G. Van Deusen, William Henry Seward (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), at page 411.

  A number of accounts describe the events at the home of Secretary of State Seward. See Glyndon G. Van Deusen, William Henry Seward (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), pages 412–415; and Benjamin Thomas and Harold M. Hyman, Stanton: The Life and Times of Lincoln’s Secretary of War (New York: Knopf, 1962), pages 396, 397. For Fanny Seward’s account of the attempted assassination of her father, I relied primarily upon her diary as featured in Patricia Carley Johnson, “I Have Supped Full of Horrors,” American Heritage, October 1959, volume 10, number 6, pages 59–65 and 96–101. An account by Sergeant Robinson appears in Poore, The Conspiracy Trial, volume 1, pages 479–480. Also see Pitman, The Assassination of the President, pages 155–156. William Bell’s testimony appears in Poore, volume 2, page 130, and in Pitman, pages 154–155; Augustus Seward’s testimony is in Poore, volume 2, page 5, and in Pitman, pages 156–157; Dr. Tullio S. Verdi’s testimony appears in Poore, volume 2, page 100, and in Pitman, pages 157– 158; and the testimony of Surgeon General Joseph K. Barnes appears in Poore, volume 2, at pages 21 and 60, and in Pitman at page 157.

  Other valuable sources for the Seward attack include Dr. Tullio S. Verdi’s article, “The Assassination of the Sewards,” published in Republic magazine in July 1873 and reprinted in Frederick Hatch, ed., Journal of the Lincoln Assassination, vol. 16, no. 3, December 2003, page 46; Frederick Hatch, “I’m Mad! I’m Mad,” Journal of the Lincoln Assassination, vol. 3, no. 3, December 1989, pages 34–38; and Dr. John K. Lattimer, “The Stabbing of Lincoln’s Secretary of State on the Night the President Was Shot,” Journal of the American Medical Association, vol. 192, no. 2, April 12, 1965, pages 99–106. Dr. Lattimer also covers the Seward attack in his book, Kennedy and Lincoln: Medical and Ballistic Comparisons of Their Assassinations (New York: Harcourt Brace Jo-vanovich, 1980).

  CHAPTER THREE

  Joseph B. Stewart’s account appears in Trial of John H. Surratt (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1867), volume 1, pages 125–127, and in volume 2, pages 984–987.

  Mary Anderson’s description of the knife appears in Poore, The Conspiracy Trial, volume 1, page 237; and her account of Booth galloping away is on page 239. Mary Ann Turner’s account of the hoofbeats is in Poore, volume 1, at page 234.

  Booth’s command to John Peanut comes from Peanut’s statement, as does the description of the assassin’s blow to the head and kick.

  Sergeant Cobb’s account of his encounter with Booth at the bridge appears in Poore, The Conspiracy Trial, volume 1, pages 251–252. Also see Pitman, The Assassination of President Lincoln, pages 84–85. That Booth disclosed his real name, and his destination, the vicinity of Beantown, remains inexplicable.

  For this continuation of the events at the Seward house, see the Seward source notes in chapter 2.

  Sergeant Robinson’s letter requesting Powell’s knife is illustrated in Swanson and Weinberg, Lincoln’s Assassins, page 44. A period bronze casting of Robinson’s medal appears on the same page.

  Clara Harris’s description of the stabbing is in Good, We Saw Lincoln Shot.

  Dr. Leale’s account appeared in Harper’s Weekly in 1909.

  The description of Laura Keene claiming center stage and beseeching the audience appears in John Creahan, The Life of Laura Keene (Philadelphia: The Rodgers Publishing Company, 1897), at page 27.

  Fletcher’s testimony about Atzerodt’s promise of a present is in Poore, The Conspiracy Trial, volume 1, at pages 328, 331. Also see Trial of John H. Sur-ratt, volume 1, at page 229. Fletcher’s pursuit of Herold and the horse is in Poore, volume 1, at pages 328–334. Also see Pitman, pages 83–84, and Trial of John H. Surratt, pages 227–229. The exchange between Fletcher and Sergeant Cobb appears in Poore, volume 1, at page 329. Also see Pitman, page 84. Fletcher’s description of the horse is in Poore, volume 1, at page 332. Also see Pi
tman, at page 84.

  The Mrs. Ord episode is discussed in Donald, Lincoln, at pages 572–573.

  For more on Laura Keene, see Creahan, The Life of Laura Keene; Vernanne Bryan, Laura Keene: A British Actress on the American Stage, 1826–1873 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 1997); and Ben Graf Hen-neke, Laura Keene: A Biography (Tulsa: Council Oaks, 1990).

  George Alfred Townsend’s description of Lincoln on the floor of the president’s box appears in his book The Life, Crime, and Capture of John Wilkes Booth (New York: Dick & Fitzgerald, 1865), at page 10.

  Asia Booth Clarke’s derogatory comments about Lincoln’s choice of Good Friday entertainment appear in her memoirs, at page 99.

  John Lee’s testimony about the search of Atzerodt’s hotel room is in Poore, volume 1, at pages 63–66. Also see Pitman, Assassination of the President, page 144.

  Seaton Munroe’s comments appear in Creahan, The Life of Laura Keene, at page 28, and in Seaton Munroe, “Recollections of Lincoln’s Assassination,” North American Review, April, 1896, pages 424–434.

  Bersch did paint his scene of Lincoln being carried across Tenth Street to the Petersen house. It is now in the collection of the National Park Service, and is illustrated in Victoria Grieve, Ford’s Theatre and the Lincoln Assassination (Alexandria, Virginia: Parks & History Association, 2001), at page 60. Sadly, at the time Manhunt went to press, the Park Service had removed the painting from display at Ford’s Theatre, where it had hung for years.

  For more on Safford, see Steers, Blood on the Moon, at page 123, and Kauffman, American Brutus, at page 19.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  For a description, based on period newspaper accounts, of how news raced through Washington by word of mouth after the fall of Richmond and Lee’s surrender, see Swanson and Weinberg, Lincoln’s Assassins, pages 9–11.

  Lincoln described his reliance upon Stanton with a magnificent tribute: “He is the rock on the beach of our national ocean against which the breakers dash and roar, dash and roar without ceasing. He fights back the angry waters and prevents them from undermining and overwhelming the land. Gentlemen, I do not see how he survives, why he is not crushed and torn to pieces. Without him I should be destroyed.”

  An account of how Stanton received the news of the assassination appears in Thomas and Hyman, Stanton, at page 396. For a discussion of the friendship between Lincoln and his Secretary of War, and how it grew at the president’s summer retreat, see Matthew Pinsker, Lincoln’s Sanctuary: Abraham Lincoln and the Soldiers’ Home (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). Also see Elizabeth Smith Brownstein, Lincoln’s Other White House: The Untold Story of the Man and His Presidency (Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 2005). Thomas and Hyman give an account of Stanton’s evening prior to the assassination on pages 395–396.

  Seward’s boast, which Lewis Powell proved to the secretary to be tragically wrong, is from a July 15, 1862, letter to John Bigelow, and was published in Bigelow’s Retrospectives of an Active Life (New York: Baker and Taylor, 1909), volume 1, page 505. More conveniently for modern readers, the relevant passage is quoted in Rhodehamel and Taper, “Right or Wrong,” at page 1.

  Thomas and Hyman describe how Stanton and Welles rushed to the Seward house, then to Ford’s Theatre: Stanton, pages 396–397. The navy secretary also described the events in his diary: Beale, Diary of Gideon Welles, volume 2, pages 283–286. Brief accounts can also be found in J. E. Buckingham, Reminiscences and Souvenirs of the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln (Washington: Press of Rufus H. Darby, 1894), at pages 21–22, and, for details not available elsewhere, Moorefield Storey, “Dickens, Stanton, Sumner, and Storey,” Atlantic Monthly, April 1930, pages 463–465. The article recounts a long ago dinner attended by the four men during which Stanton described the wild night of April 14, 1865.

  Mary Surratt’s country tavern in Surrattsville (now Clinton), Maryland, still stands, and is a splendid museum and research center maintained by the Surratt Society.

  The language from John H. Surratt’s postal commission comes from a reading of the original document, now in a private collection.

  My account of the visit of Booth and Herold to the Surrattsville tavern, and their direct quotations, come from the testimony of John Lloyd. See Poore, The Conspiracy Trial, volume 1, pages 118–126; and Pitman, The Assassination, pages 86–87.

  The primary source for Dr. Leale’s actions is his own account, published, among other places, in Charles Leale, Lincoln’s Last Hours (n.p.: privately printed, 1909).

  Maunsell Field’s abbreviated recollections were published in an article and in his memoirs, Memories of Many Men and of Some Women (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1874), pages 321–329.

  For another account of what happened inside the Petersen house, this one by George Francis, one of the boarders, see Ralph G. Newman, “The Mystery Occupant’s Eyewitness Account of the Death of Abraham Lincoln,” Chicago History, Spring 1975, pages 32–33. Francis’s May 5, 1865 letter is the source for two of Mary Lincoln’s statements: “Where is my husband! Where is my husband!” and “How can it be so? Do speak to me!”

  Rathbone described his fainting in Poore, The Conspiracy Trial, volume 1, at page 197. Also see Pitman, Assassination of the President, at page 79.

  For more on the doctors, see Harry Read, “ ‘A Hand to Hold While Dying’: Dr. Charles A. Leale at Lincoln’s Side,” Lincoln Herald, Spring 1977, pages 21–25, and Charles Sabin Taft, “Abraham Lincoln’s Last Hours: From the Note-Book of an Army Surgeon Present at the Assassination, Death, and Autopsy,” Century Magazine, February, 1895, pages 634–636.

  Dr. Taft’s recollections were also published in Abraham Lincoln’s Last Hours: From the Notebooks of Charles Sabin Taft, M.D., an Army Surgeon Present at the Assassination, Death and Autopsy (Chicago: privately printed, 1934).

  Welles’s account appears in his diary, volume 2, at pages 283–290.

  The midnight telegram to General Grant, and all other telegrams in this chapter, appear in The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1884–1899; Official Records). The telegrams are collected in series 1, volume 46, part 3, and appear in chronological order at pages 752–989.

  For more on Corporal Tanner, see Howard H. Peckham, “James Tanner’s Account of Lincoln’s Death,” Abraham Lincoln Quarterly, March, 1942, pages 176–183. Tanner is the source of Mary Lincoln’s statement, “Oh, my God, and have I given my husband to die?”

  The quotations from Walker, Greenawalt, and Keim about George Atzerodt come from Poore, The Conspiracy Trial, volume 1, at, respectively, pages 391–395, 341–352, and 400–402. Hezekiah Metz’s testimony appears at pages 353–357, and Sergeant Gemmill’s at pages 357–361.

  Dr. Abbott’s statistics on the stricken president’s pulse and respiration were published in all the major newspapers, including the New York Times, New York Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer, and, in Washington, D.C., the Daily Morning Chronicle and National Intelligencer. They also appeared in contemporary books about the assassination, including The Terrible Tragedy at Washington: Assassination of President Lincoln (Philadelphia: Barclay & Co., 1865), at page 28.

  The account of the first raid on Mary Surratt’s Washington, D.C., boarding-house is drawn from Floyd E. Risvold, ed., A True History of the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln and of the Conspiracy of 1865, by Louis J. Weichmann, Chief Witness for the Government of the United States in the Prosecution of the Conspirators (New York: Knopf, 1975), at pages 174–179. Also see Steers, Blood on the Moon, pages 173–174.

  The sources on Dr. Mudd include his three written statements, based on interrogations of him by Lieutenant Lovett and Colonel Wells, and on the testimony of those officers at the conspiracy trial. Lovett’s testimony appears in Poore, The Conspiracy Trial, volume 1, pages 258–272, and in Pitman, The Assassination of President Lincoln, pages 87–88. Wells’s testimony appears in Poore at volume 1, pages 281–29
3, and in Pitman at pages 168–169. Joshua Lloyd’s testimony appears in Poore, volume 1, at pages 273–281, and in Pitman at page 90; William Williams’s testimony appears in Poore, volume 1, at pages 294–301, and in Pitman at pages 88–89; and Simon Gavacan’s testimony appears in Poore, volume 1, at pages 301–304, and in Pitman at pages 89–90.

  The best account of Dr. Mudd is Edward Steers Jr., His Name Is Still Mudd: The Case Against Doctor Samuel Alexander Mudd (Gettysburg, Pennsylvania: Thomas Publications, 1997). Steers’s Blood on the Moon includes updated coverage on Mudd at pages 144–154. Also see Edward Steers Jr., “Dr. Mudd and the ‘Colored’ Witnesses,” Civil War History, volume 46, December 2000, pages 324–336.

  The material on Mudd’s treatment of Booth’s leg comes from the doctor’s three statements, and all Mudd quotations come either from his three written statements or from the testimony of Lovett and Wells. Mudd’s statements are collected in From War Department Files: Statements Made by the Lincoln Conspirators Under Examination, 1865 (Clinton, Maryland: The Surratt Society, 1980) at pages 29 and 34.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The “Sam” letter, originally published in newspapers all over the country within a few days of its discovery in Booth’s hotel room, can be found in Kauffman, American Brutus, at pages 66–67.

  Stanton’s telegram to General Dix, revealing some of the content of the Sam letter, appears in the Official Records, as do all other telegrams quoted in this chapter.

  The lock of Lincoln’s hair cut by Stanton and presented by him to Mary Jane Welles, the envelope addressed by Stanton, and the dried flowers from the president’s White House funeral were examined in a private collection. Most accounts of Lincoln’s death quote Stanton as saying that Lincoln belongs to the “ages,” not the “angels.” In my view, shared by Jay Winik, the most persuasive interpretation supports “angels” and is also more consistent with Stanton’s character and faith.