The Day Lincoln Was Shot

by Jim Bishop

  There is no record tracing the origins of Booth’s opposition. Somewhere, it had a beginning. These men had never met. Their personal paths never crossed, and Booth sought nothing that could be termed a favor. Still, abiding hatreds start somewhere, and it may be that Abraham Lincoln offended the actor by proclaiming, in the election of 1860, his intention of holding the Union together against the wishes of the Southern secessionists. Booth, an adolescent in politics, pictured the South as a land of courtly and proud people; the North, to him, was a land of crude mercenaries of enormous brute strength.

  Whether it was this, or an accumulation of presidential acts designed, by necessity, to bring the South to its knees, no one knows, but it was a passionate and violent hatred of the self-feeding type. Lincoln had to do no more than breathe to cause John Wilkes Booth to loathe him the more each day. Wilkes argued with his family about Lincoln, was stunned when he learned that his brother Edwin had voted for Lincoln in 1860 and would do so again in 1864.

  There is substance to the story that Wilkes hated Lincoln so much in 1864 that he was certain that his feelings were shared by a majority of the electorate and he was sure that the President would be turned out of office. Booth’s venom was so strong that he found it impossible to understand people who had a kind word for Lincoln. In this he was sincere.

  He was not insane—if his acts and his conversation can be weighed psychologically—any more than another man might be called psychotic for fearing snakes or wasps to the point of becoming a nuisance on the subject. He was emotionally immature—his sexual excesses and his inability to take orders alone tend to give one that impression—but he was also shrewd and generous and a loyal friend.

  Above all, Booth had pride. He thought of his family as one of the finest in Maryland although his father had been called an insane alcoholic, and had not married his mother until years after the first babies had been born. His love for his sister amounted to melancholy adoration. His affection for his older brother Edwin was, for political reasons, more restrained.

  Wilkes’s father, an emotional sentimentalist, had studied the Koran, occultism and Catholic theology and, in his spiritual confusion, believed that all animals were reincarnated humans, so that, when a sparrow fell at Bel Air, Mr. Booth, Sr., gave it a complete funeral service. In anger, young Wilkes once killed a litter of kittens and the mother cat. His father wept uncontrollably. At another time, in summer, Wilkes forced a horse to pull him to town and back in a sleigh to win a bet.

  In 1855, at the age of seventeen, he made his debut at the St. Charles Theatre in Baltimore. He put more fire into the role of Richmond than the part required, but the audience, which remembered the lines better than he, hissed him. After that, he studied harder, but he would always be known more for his spirit and his acrobatics than for his measured cadence. Two years later, Asia Booth Clarke prevailed upon her husband to give the boy a chance at the Arch Street Theater in Philadelphia, and John Sleeper Clarke quickly found himself with one more actor. The boy developed into an outrageous scene thief, but he played his parts with such heightened enthusiasm that the audiences idolized him.

  By 1860, he was an established theatrical star and toured the South and West to jammed houses, although he was only twenty-two. His backstage conquests were buzzed from New York to Philadelphia to Baltimore to Washington to Richmond to Columbus, Georgia. In Madison, Indiana, pretty Henrietta Irving slashed at the star with a knife, missed, and plunged the blade into her own breast. Wilkes took his women as he took his brandy, in long careless draughts, and tossed the empties on a refuse heap.

  John Wilkes Booth always played at love and always carried small photos of his special girls. One was Bessie Hale, the plump, dark daughter of Democratic Senator John P. Hale of New Hampshire. Another was Ella Turner. She is the only girl, a tiny redhead, who enjoyed the semi-permanent status of mistress to Booth. When he wasn’t at the National Hotel, he ordered her to stay at her sister’s house of prostitution on Ohio Avenue, around the corner from the White House. He never carried Miss Turner’s picture.

  Booth was a Southerner by choice. Geographically, his roots were in northern Maryland, at Bel Air, and, although many Marylanders served the Confederacy in the War Between the States, the state itself remained officially Northern. Booth did not enlist to fight for the cause he loved. He had served for a little while in a Virginia company which took part in the capture of John Brown, and the records of that company indicate that Booth may have been present at the hanging of Brown, but he was not under arms when the Civil War began. When friends asked why he did not enlist, he said that he had made a promise to his mother. Booth’s apologists say that he had an unnatural fear of having his face scarred, and that this kept him from fighting in the Confederate cause.

  Whatever the reason, his inability to fight and die for a cause he so fervently espoused could, in time, have become sickening to him. When Lincoln was elected for a second term, Booth decided that it was time to contribute, in a big way, to the Confederacy. He would kidnap the President. He would kidnap him, and smuggle him through the lines into Richmond. This plan, if executed, would achieve several results, all desirable to Booth: (1) it would make a historic figure of the actor; (2) it would humble the man he hated; (3) it would force the North to exchange prisoners with the South, something the man-rich North refused to do for the man-poor South.

  The word “kidnap” is not Booth’s. In his later dealings, he used the word “capture,” and there is a difference because, in Booth’s idealistic righteousness, kidnapping was a crime, capture in wartime was not. Lincoln, as commander in chief of the armies, was a soldier and a soldier is liable to capture.

  Mr. Booth decided in November 1864, to work his scheme. He had no fear for his life. In his vanity, it was more important to be remembered forever than to live long. His paramount fear was that the world might misunderstand his great act; might attribute the deed to mean motives, and so he resolved to leave a note to the world, so that the history books of tomorrow and yet tomorrow would have the story straight.

  In the late autumn, Booth explored the exits from Washington. There were four ways out of the city to the Southern states. The farthest from the White House was the Georgetown Aqueduct, which lay to the northwest. He declined this escape route at once because it entailed a ride of a mile and a half through the city to reach it and, once across the Aqueduct, he would be on Virginia soil and, being northwest of Washington City, he could be cut off easily by any patrol leaving the city in a southerly direction.

  A second escape route, considered and discarded at once, was at the opposite end of town. This was Benning’s Bridge, to the east. It lay beyond the poorhouse and would carry him across the east branch of the Potomac River (now called Anacostia River) into Maryland, but he would then find himself on the road to Annapolis, in a southeasterly heading rather than south.

  The third possibility was Long Bridge, a few blocks south of the White House. This route aimed directly at Richmond, a hundred miles away. The virtue of this road was also its vice. The Army of the Potomac had been using it, on and off, for four years, and parts of it were heavy with the traffic of regiments and brigades heading for the front, or heading home for leave. Big sections of this country had been broken into Union area commands, and the War Department could get in touch with any of these by telegraph in a matter of minutes. Booth rejected Long Bridge.

  There was but one other way. This lay across the Navy Yard Bridge, at the foot of Eleventh Street. On the far side was southern Maryland, a big peninsula of little villages and secessionist intrigue. Southern Maryland had been almost isolated from the war. No armies stirred the mustard dust of its roads; no villages were fired in raids; it was neglected by both of the big protagonists, except as a courier route for spies. Mr. Booth explored this route, from the Navy Yard Bridge down to Silesia and Pomfret and Port Tobacco, where, for a price, one could secure a boat and cross into Virginia slightly below Fredericksburg. He rode back up through
Indian Head Junction and Bryantown and Surrattsville, stopping here and there to question the people and to pose as a farm buyer and a horse trader.

  Booth decided that this was to be the escape route. He tested the sympathies of the people he met with adroit questions, and he came to feel that this was friendly country indeed. On one of his trips, he was between Waldorf and Bryantown and he was introduced to Dr. Samuel Mudd, a humorless farmer who had not practiced medicine in years. The Mudds, and their kin, owned a lot of good property in the area and they were anxious to make a sale to the actor. On one occasion, Booth was invited to spend the night at the home of Dr. Mudd. Still, Booth did not buy a farm and probably never intended to buy one. He did buy two horses from a Mudd friend—a small saddle horse and a large one-eyed roan with fetlocks like a brewery horse.

  The first outward intimation of the type of crime Booth planned came in the winter of 1864–1865 when, on a trip to New York, he stopped on an icy evening to visit an actor friend, Mr. Samuel Knapp Chester. This man was a fair character actor who depended, for work, on friendly stars like Booth. He lived at 45 Grove Street with his wife and children.

  On this evening, Booth stopped by and asked Chester to take a walk with him. They went crosstown, heads bent into the collars of their capes, and they stopped at the House of Lords, a tavern on Houston Street. They talked about the theater season, gossiped about fellow actors, talked about “side” investments in other businesses, and the chance of Chester getting some work at Ford’s Theatre in Washington City, or at Grover’s.

  They ate and drank. Chester listened. He hoped that Booth would talk about his land speculations, because Chester had received a note from him telling about the big money to be made in southern Maryland farms and livestock. Mr. Chester never made a great deal of money and, between engagements, he was always hard pressed for cash. But Booth kept talking theater and, at last, Chester said:

  “Tell me about your speculations.”

  “I have a new speculation,” said Booth.

  “I want to hear it.”

  “You will—by and by.”

  There was no point in pressing Booth. He would talk about it, Chester knew, when he was ready. They left the House of Lords and stopped at an oyster bar under the Revere House and Booth was suddenly quiet. They ate and drank considerably. Booth was weighing a momentous decision—whether to tell this man or not. Once told, if Chester refused to participate in the conspiracy, Booth would be at the mercy of his friend.

  The two men went out into the night and walked up Broadway, almost in silence. When they reached Bleecker Street, Chester said that, if Booth did not mind, he would turn west here and go home. Booth asked him to walk a little farther. At Fourth Street and Broadway, Booth said: “Broadway is still crowded. Let us walk down Fourth.”

  After a block or two, with no one in sight, Booth stopped under a streetlamp. He looked at his friend and began a preamble about how few friends a man could really trust in these days, and, when Chester saw that his patron seemed to lack the confidence to continue, he said: “For God’s sake, Wilkes, speak up!”

  Booth blurted out that he was now engaged in a conspiracy to capture the heads of the United States Government, including Lincoln, and he planned to bring them to Richmond. There was a silence. Chester, fumbling for words, afraid to believe the ones he had heard, said: “You wish me to go in this?”

  “Yes,” said Booth.

  “It is impossible, Wilkes.” Chester held out his hands in supplication. “Only think of my family.”

  “I have two or three thousand dollars I can leave for them.”

  “No,” said Chester. He was shocked and bewildered. He had expected a business proposition, a chance to make some “side” money, and now he was being offered a chance to help perpetrate a deed so foul that he had to keep staring at Booth to be assured of the seriousness of his friend. It was beyond comprehension. He wanted to go home.

  Booth wanted to talk. They stood under the lamp for twenty minutes. The sum of Booth’s argument was that the North had forced the South into war, that the South wanted, in honor, to exchange prisoners of war with the North but that Lincoln had refused to do it. The reason for this, Booth explained, was that the North had an inexhaustible supply of men while the South was now using fourteen-year-old boys, in uniform, to guard prisoners. The South did not want prisoners and could not afford to feed them and, in the light of the embargo, could not even give them medicine. All the South wanted was a fair exchange—man for man. Each day, she grew a little weaker. Each day, she faced defeat unless, in some way, the President could be forced to agree to an exchange of prisoners.

  Booth said that he could assure Chester that there would be a fortune, and honor, for those who helped to capture Lincoln. A man could find himself rich almost overnight.

  “No,” said Chester.

  “Then you will not betray me?” said Booth quietly. “You dare not.”

  “You do not have to be afraid of me, Wilkes.”

  “I will implicate you anyhow.”

  “That is unnecessary.”

  “Our party is sworn to secrecy, Sam, and if you betray us, you will be hunted down through life.”

  “I will forget all that you have said.”

  “I urge you to come in with us.”

  “No.”

  “Your work will be simple, Sam. You understand theaters. All you will have to do is open the back door of Ford’s Theatre at a signal.”

  “In Washington?”

  “It is easy and you will succeed.”

  “Wilkes, please. I have a family.”

  “Your family will get good care. We have parties on the other side who will co-operate with us. There are between fifty and a hundred people in this.”

  “Wilkes, I must say good night.” Chester went home.

  The shreds of evidence, held together, say that John Wilkes Booth was lying. At best, there were never more than seven persons in his plot. In the main, they were simpleminded schemers, not one of whom rose above the rank of private in the Confederate Army. Each—with one exception—had a greater personal loyalty to Booth than to the South. None had qualities of leadership. So far as parties on “the other side” are concerned, there were none. Booth wanted none. He wanted to do this thing alone, with the assistance of courageous men smaller in stature than he. At no time did he seek official sanction, or even unofficial sanction, from the South.

  Booth was a loner.

  Between January 1865, and April, the conspirator put about $4,000 of his money into the “capture.” The biggest part of this was spent for supporting his fellow conspirators; a little went for horses and feed, and some went for fleeing Washington when successive plots failed.

  These plots were movements of opportunity. In retrospect, some of them have comic aspects. Throughout January, February and March, the element of coincidence was on the President’s side and, as each plot failed, the conspirators felt that the failure indicated that the government was aware of the Booth band; this bred panic, and the group dispersed. At no time, with one exception, did the United States Government know about the conspiracy and, on that occasion, the administration gave it little attention.

  The first attempt at “capture” was scheduled for the night of Wednesday, January 18. It had been announced that Mr. Lincoln and two friends would attend Ford’s Theatre to see Edwin Forrest in Jack Cade, a play about the Kentish revolution.

  A few days before, Booth stopped at the home of his sister Asia, in Philadelphia, to sign an important letter he had left in her keeping. It was to be released only if he was captured or killed. This was the letter to the history books. It is a rambling document, replete with the customary calls to God to bear witness, the breast beating, the indictment, heartbreak, mother and flag. The substance of it is as follows:

  Right or wrong, God judge me, not man. For be my motive good or bad, of one thing I am sure, the lasting condemnation of the North. I love peace more than life. Have loved t
he Union beyond expression. For four years have I waited, hoped and prayed for the dark clouds to break and for a restoration of our former sunshine. All hope for peace is dead. My prayers have proved as idle as my hopes. God’s will be done. I go to see and share the bitter end.

  I have ever held the South were right. The very nomination of Abraham Lincoln, four years ago, plainly spoke war, war upon Southern rights and institutions. His election proved it. “Await an overt act.” Yes, till you are bound and plundered. What folly. The South was wise. Who thinks of argument or pastime when the finger of his enemy presses the trigger? In a foreign war, I too could say “Country right or wrong.” But in a struggle such as ours (where the brother tries to pierce the brother’s heart) for God’s sake choose the right! When a country like this spurns justice from her side, she forfeits the allegiance of every honest freeman, and should leave him, untrammeled by any fealty soever, to act as his conscience may approve. . . .

  The country was formed for the white, not the black man. And looking upon African slavery from the same standpoint held by the noble framers of our constitution, I, for one, have ever considered it one of the greatest blessings (both for themselves and us) that God ever bestowed upon a favored nation. Witness heretofore our wealth and our power; witness their elevation and enlightenment above their race elsewhere. I have lived among it most of my life, and have seen less harsh treatment from master to man than I have beheld in the north from Father to son. Yet, Heaven knows, no one would be willing to do more for the Negro race than I, could I but see the way to still better their condition.

  But Lincoln’s policy is only preparing a way for their total annihilation. The south are not, nor have they been, fighting for the continuation of slavery. The first battle of Bull Run did away with that idea. Their cause since the war have been as noble and greater far than those that urged their fathers on. Even should we allow that they were wrong at the beginning of this contest, cruelty and injustice have made the wrong become the right, and they stand now (before the wonder and admiration of the world) as a noble band of patriotic heroes. Hereafter, reading of their deeds, Thermopolae will be forgotten. . . .