by Jim Bishop
On that day, President Lincoln had no appointment after 1 P.M. He planned to be at the matinee, and none of the patients at Soldiers’ Home needed the relaxation more than he. He was ready to leave when Governor Oliver P. Morton, an imposing-looking man with arched brows and full black beard, walked in and said that he had just learned that one of his own regiments—the 140th Indiana—was coming down Pennsylvania Avenue and wanted to present a captured Rebel banner to him, and would Mr. Lincoln come along. The President reluctantly agreed.
So, at 2 P.M., while Booth and his band waited on Seventh Street road, the President was standing on the front steps of Booth’s hotel, the National, telling an array of soldiers at parade rest that the war would soon be over and that they could then return to their families with the fervent thanks of the whole country.
On the morning of Saturday, March 25, two things of small moment happened. John Wilkes Booth returned to Washington and took a room at the National Hotel. John Surratt and a Mrs. Slater rented a buggy and drove off from the H Street boarding house. The widow Surratt said later that “John has gone to Richmond with Mrs. Slater to get a clerkship.”
A notice appeared in the Washington Star on Monday, March 27, saying that the President and his family had reserved boxes at Ford’s Theatre for the Wednesday night performance of the Italian opera Ernani. Booth saw the notice and wired O’Laughlin to come to Washington on Wednesday with or without Sam Arnold.
WE SELL THAT DAY SURE. DO NOT FAIL.
Neither showed up. Arnold had just learned that Wilkes Booth had stopped off in Baltimore last week, and had not even tried to find him. So Sam wrote a letter about it.
Hookstown, Balto. Co. March 27, 1865
Dear John:
Was business so important that you could not remain in Balto. till I saw you? I came in as soon as I could, but found you had gone to W——n. I called also to see Mike, but learned from his mother he had gone out with you. . . . How inconsiderate you have been! When I left you, you stated that we would not meet in a month or so. Therefore, I made application for employment, an answer to which I shall receive during the week. I told my parents I had ceased with you. Can I, then, under existing circumstances, come as you request? You know full well that the G——t suspicions something is going on there; therefore, the undertaking is becoming more complicated. Why not, for the present, desist, for various reasons, which, if you look into, you can readily see, without my making any mention thereof. You, nor any one, can censure me for my present course. You have been its cause, for how can I come after telling them I had left you? Suspicion rests upon me now from my whole family and even parties in the country. I will be compelled to leave home any how, and how soon I care not. None, no not one, were more in favor of the enterprise than myself, and to-day would be there, had you not done as you have—by this I mean, manner of proceeding. I am, as you well know, in need. I am, you may say, in rags, whereas to-day I ought to be well clothed. I do not feel right stalking about with[out] means, and more from appearances a beggar. I feel my dependence; but even all this would and was forgotten, for I was one with you. Time more propitious will arrive yet. Do not act rashly or in haste. I would prefer your first query, “Go and see how it will be taken at R——d” and ere long I shall be better prepared to again be with you. I dislike writing; would sooner verbally make known my views; yet your non-writing causes me thus to proceed.
Do not in anger peruse this. Weigh all I have said, and, as a rational man and a friend, you can not censure or upbraid my conduct. I sincerely trust this, nor aught else that shall or may occur, will ever be an obstacle to obliterate our former friendship and attachment. Write me to Balto., as I expect to be in about Wednesday or Thursday; or, if you can possibly come on, I will Tuesday meet you in Balto., at B——.
Ever I subscribe myself, Your friend,
Sam.
Booth wrote no reply. Arnold was out of the conspiracy, and he needed money. A second letter was delivered at the same time. This was from John Wilkes Booth’s mother.
My dear Boy:
I have got yours. I was very glad to hear from you. I did part from you sadly, and still feel sad, very much so. June* has just left me. He staid as long as he could. Rose† has not returned yet. I am miserable enough. I have never doubted your love and devotion to me; in fact I always give you praise for being the fondest of all my boys, but since you leave me to grief I must doubt it. I am no Roman mother. I love my dear ones before country or anything else. Heaven guard you, is my constant prayer.
Your loving mother,
M. A. Booth.
The words “since you leave me to grief” cause one to ask “What grief?” Wilkes planned no known venture which could cause a mother to write about grief. The ensuing thoughts: “I am no Roman mother. I love my dear ones before country . . .” almost sound as though Mrs. Booth knew, or suspected, the plot. If she did, who in the family could have told her? Only Asia Booth Clarke, now pregnant in Philadelphia, could have known. It was with her that Wilkes left a letter to be made public in case of capture or death; the letter blamed Lincoln for all the woes of the South, and closed with “A Confederate doing duty on his own.”
The end of March and the early days of April were dull for the conspirators. Lewis Paine—”The Reverend Mr. Wood”— was no longer welcome at the H Street boardinghouse and he checked into Herndon House at the corner of Ninth and F Streets. Mrs. Martha Murray, wife of the owner, gave him a big corner room on the third floor. She asked him if he would also take his meals at Herndon House and he said yes. Dinner, she said, was served at 4 P.M. promptly.
The conspiracy was almost dead. Not quite, but close to it. Surratt had quit and had gone south, not for the clerkship he told his mother about, but to contact Mr. Judah Benjamin and to get a job sneaking Confederate dispatches to Canada. Sam Arnold was out of it too. He was getting a job in a grocery store outside Fortress Monroe, Virginia. Mike O’Laughlin was finished with plotting, although he was trying to achieve the delicate balance of not answering Booth’s summons while keeping his friendship.
What was left after successive failures was Booth, Paine, Atzerodt and Herold. A brilliant actor, a stupid killer, a drunkard and a boy. That was the conspiracy, two weeks before the big day. Worse, Booth found himself out of funds. He took a train to New York, to borrow from his family and his friends. He saw Sam Chester and asked for the fifty he owed. He would not be asking it, Wilkes said, except that he was out of money and had to sell his horses. The ghost of the spurned plot was brought out, and Booth volunteered the information that, on inauguration day, he was as close to Lincoln “as I am to you.” He could have shot the President, and now regretted that he had not.
These setbacks, poignant as they may have been to the conspirator, should have been as nothing compared to the one awful fact that there was no longer a Confederacy. It was, at this moment, in its death throes. In a trice, Mr. Booth had no cause, no country, no one to bring Lincoln to. In a day or two, the President would be in the place where Booth tried so desperately to bring him—Richmond.
Except that he would be there as a conqueror.
At 9 P.M. on Monday, April 3, John T. Holahan, tombstone carver and boarder at the Surratt House, was in bed. He wasn’t close to sleep when he heard a soft rap on the bedroom door. He got up, pulled trousers over his nightshirt, went to the door and said: “Who is it?”
It was John Surratt. He had just come home on the Leonardtown stage from Richmond. He had left three days before, with an assignment which would take him to Montreal, Canada. He had been assured by Confederate authorities that, no matter what he heard in the North to the contrary, Richmond would not fall and the South would not surrender. He believed this.
“What is it?” said Mr. Holahan.
“John,” said Surratt. “I would like to have some money.”
Holahan opened the door and came outside.
“How much do you want?”
“Fifty dollars.”
&nb
sp; “You can have it. Wait here.”
Holahan went inside and got the money. He counted it out.
“Now, is that enough, John?”
Surratt studied the money in his hand and said: “I would like to have ten dollars more, making sixty in all.”
Holahan went back into the room and got ten more. When he gave it to the landlady’s son, Surratt said: “Take these,” and gave Holahan two twenty-dollar gold pieces.
“I don’t want them,” Holahan said. “You can keep them. You are good enough to me for that amount of money.”
“No,” said John. “I want you to have them.” Holahan took the forty dollars in gold for the sixty in paper.
That night, Surratt left for Canada. Train travel was slow and tedious; connections were poor. Whatever the specifics of his mission were has never been proved. It has been surmised that (1) his work had something to do with warning the Confederate group in Canada to flee (if so, this would be a sealed message and he would have no personal knowledge of it); (2) his mission had something to do with trying to free Confederate prisoners held in northern New York State.
At almost the same time that Surratt left Washington City, the clerk of the Aquidneck Hotel in New York City was presenting the register to an imposing young man and a pretty girl.
“J. W. Booth & Lady” the young man wrote. “Boston.”
The couple was assigned to room number 3. Less than a month before, Booth had sat at dawn on a hotel bed with another girl, and had written on the back of an envelope:
Now in this hour that we part,
I will ask to be forgotten never
But, in thy pure and guileless heart
Consider me thy friend dear Eva.
Underneath, with whatever sad tenderness a dawn may be tinged, Eva had scrawled:
For of all sad words from tongue or pen—the saddest are these—it might have been. March 5, 1865, in John’s room.
The morning of Tuesday, April 11, was rainy. The nation of towns and villages was still celebrating, still drinking and snapping its galluses over the surrender of General Robert E. Lee. On this night, the official celebration of the surrender would take place in Washington, but Mrs. Mary Surratt had no heart for it.
“Mr. Wiechman,” she said, “won’t you go around to the National Hotel and tell Mr. Booth that I sent you for his horse and buggy, and desire to know whether I can have it?”
At the National, Wiechman parroted the message and Booth shook his head.
“I have sold the horse and buggy,” he said. Then he reached into his pocket. “But here are ten dollars. Go you and hire one.”
Wiechman recalled that John Surratt had boasted that he owned the horses. “I thought they were John’s horses,” he said.
“No,” said Booth. “They were my horses.”
Wiechman accepted the money and walked in the rain up Seventh Street to Howard’s Stable. He rented a high narrow buggy, with an oiled-cloth top, and a black horse. At 9:30 A.M. he chirruped to the horse and he and Mrs. Surratt started off for Surrattsville. It was a brisk drive—ten miles to Surrattsville, and ten home—and Mrs. Surratt always referred to it as “going down to the country.”
This, to the widow, was just one more trip in an effort to reconcile her financial troubles. She was going to try to collect $479 and thirteen years of interest from a Mr. John Nothey. Long before, he had purchased seventy-five acres of farmland behind the tavern from her late husband. She had tried, by patience, by tact, by mail, to collect this money because one of her creditors was threatening suit. Now she was off to see Mr. Nothey and she hoped to come to some agreement with him before returning to Washington City tonight. In addition, she carried a small message from Booth to John Lloyd to have the “things” ready or the “guns” ready (the testimony varies) to be picked up.
It is this incidental message which makes Mrs. Surratt’s trip so important because, three months from this day, she was going to be the first woman hanged in the United States and she would be hanged largely on the spirit and context of the message to Lloyd. The government would declare that this message proved that she was part of the John Wilkes Booth conspiracy—an active party to it. And she would go to her death denying that she was part of it; denying that anyone, including her son, told her about the conspiracy, and denying, in the presence of a priest, that she had been told to tell Lloyd anything about “guns.” She was told solely to advise him to have the “things” ready. She was told, she said, that Lloyd would know what things.
The road began to dry on the Maryland shore. The skies were clearing and fresh as the buggy reached the rise of a hill. There was little conversation. The widow was angry with Mr. Nothey and she promised herself that she would squeeze him for every penny that was due.
At 11 A.M. the buggy was passing a crossroads called Uniontown when Mrs. Surratt noticed a rig passing in the other direction.
“Mr. Lloyd!” she yelled. “Oh, Mr. Lloyd!”
Wiechman pulled to a stop and, about a dozen yards behind them, John Lloyd pulled to the opposite side of the road. In his buggy sat Mrs. Emma Offutt, his sister-in-law, and her child. Lloyd got out of his buggy and walked across to Mrs. Surratt. The tavern tenant was sober and his hair was slicked. He smiled like a man who isn’t sure that he won’t regret it. He said he was going into town to make purchases and the widow said that she was going to the tavern to see Mr. Nothey. Lloyd said that he had seen Nothey around the tavern a few days ago, but wasn’t sure that he was around today.
In a low voice (according to Lloyd) she told him to have the guns ready. “They will be needed soon,” she said. Wiechman tried to listen, but said later that her voice was so low that he could not understand the words.
“I heard that the house is going to be searched,” Lloyd said. “I do not like this, Mrs. Surratt.” (This too is Lloyd’s version of the conversation, and it was first quoted after his imprisonment.)
They chatted for a moment. “John has gone away,” she said. “He will not be back for a while.” Lloyd said that he had heard gossip that the government was about to arrest John for going to Richmond while it was still under siege.
The widow laughed. “Anyone in these days who can get to Richmond and back in six days must be smart indeed.” The inference was that the government would have a hard time trying to prove that it could be done. She waved to the other buggy and shouted greetings to Mrs. Offutt, and resumed her journey.
They arrived at the tavern around noon and Mrs. Surratt became excited and shrill when she learned from the bartender that Mr. Nothey was not in the neighborhood.
“Please send someone,” she said, “to fetch Mr. Nothey.”
She and Wiechman drove to Bryantown for dinner. When they got back, Nothey was waiting in the front parlor. There was a private conference with the widow, and, late in the afternoon, Wiechman drove her home.
It seems impossible, almost a century later, to pin down the truth about this trip. Within a few days, most of these parties would be under arrest and those in charge of questioning them would be free with threats of death unless they “cooperated.” Wiechman, a self-admitted coward, would strain himself to build up a case against the widow who befriended him; Lloyd, an alcoholic, would be told that he would hang with Mrs. Surratt unless his memory improved. It was his testimony which would send her to the gallows, although, within two years, he would recant and admit that he did not know whether she said “guns” or “things.”
The next day, Wednesday, April 12, it was John Deery who noticed a change in Booth’s attitude. Mr. Deery owned a saloon on E Street where it melts into Pennsylvania Avenue. It was directly over Grover’s Theatre and it attracted the theater crowd plus devotees of cue and chalk because Mr. Deery was national billiards champion.
On this day, John Wilkes Booth stopped in before noon, asked for a bottle of brandy and water, and Deery remarked to himself that he did not remember the actor ever having done so much drinking as in the past few days. Also, Booth had
never been so uncommunicative.
Deery polished glasses and tried to engage his old friend in conversation. Had Mr. Booth noticed, he asked, that the city council had been goaded into ordering a grand illumination of its own? All of the victory celebrations had been undertaken by the Federal Government and now the people had demanded that Mayor Wallach do something on a city level, and the council had decreed that tomorrow night— Thursday—would be their big night.
John Wilkes Booth looked up from the bar. He was dark and melancholy. Yes, he said, he had noticed. He wondered if he could have a little more water. Deery gave it to him. That closed the conversation.
Thursday the 13th was a picture-postcard day. The sun was yellow and billions of buds laced the trees in outrageous chartreuse. Tulip beds along the Mall began to display colored chalices. Forsythia showed graceful yellow everywhere and spun the buds on the breeze. The black earth cracked, and robins, fighting for space in an elm, cared not who lived in the White House. It was a clean good day, a day on which a warm breeze from the south warmed the cold stone of the Washington Monument and congealed the mud in the roads.
It was a nothing day to Booth until he learned that General and Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant were in Washington City. The news electrified him. The hero of heroes was in town and, Booth knew, the least that the Lincolns could do would be to invite him to stay at the White House and stage a state ball or a theater party for him. The heart of the arch-conspirator must have bounded with joy, because this news was custom-made for an assassin. Somehow, somewhere, there would have to be a public appearance of the President and the Man Who Won the War. Booth asked nothing more than to learn when, and where.
Gossip was common that the Lincolns avoided state receptions because Congress had complained about White House expenses, and Mrs. Lincoln had huffily changed to the inexpensive theater party.