by Jim Bishop
The translucent quality of his happiness was such that Mrs. Lincoln began to feel disturbed. He seemed to read her thoughts as the carriage neared the Navy Yard.
“I never felt so happy in my life,” he said. It was as simple and unequivocal a statement as he had ever made, and he was noted for them.
And she, a hysteric tortured by fears, said: “Don’t you remember feeling just so before our little boy died?”
At the Navy Yard, the President got out, stretched his legs, and was induced to walk the deck of the monitor Montauk. Then he stepped back into the carriage, nodded to Burns, and they were off for the return trip.
Booth walked his mare up the Avenue. He waved to friends, raised his hat now and then, and continued on to Fourteenth Street where he saw the actor John Matthews. This is the man who refused to become a part of the scheme, and of whom Wilkes said: “He is a coward and not fit to live.” Now, he pulled rein and smiled and reached down to shake Matthews’s hand.
The star dismounted and slapped dust from his trousers. They talked of plays and bookings. Matthews was flattered to be seen on terms of intimacy with Booth, and he was determined not to bring up the matter of the ridiculous plot that Wilkes had told him about.
Booth had a favor to ask—a small thing. Would his friend John deliver a letter for him tomorrow? He withdrew it from his pocket. It was just a note to the editor of the National Intelligencer and he would have done it himself except that he expected to be out of town tomorrow. Would Matthews do it? Certainly. Matthews would be glad to do it—could do it now if it would help.
Oh, no, said Booth. Not now. I would do it myself if it could be delivered now. The letter contained a matter of news for the National Intelligencer and it must be delivered tomorrow, preferably just before noon. Matthews took the letter and told his friend to consider it done.
“What’s so important about it?” Matthews said.
Booth was looking across Pennsylvania Avenue at a new group of marchers. They were bedraggled and dejected.
“Who are those men?” he said.
Matthews squinted.
“They look like officers of Lee’s army.”
Booth mounted his mare and looked despairing as he swung away.
“Good God!” he said. “Matthews, I have no country left!”
The marching men looked sullen and some thrust their hands into their tunics as they shuffled along. A few limped.
John Matthews put the letter in his pocket.
Booth raced up to Fifteenth Street, turned and started back slowly, just as a carriage pulled away from Willard’s. Two cavalrymen rode behind the carriage. The actor knew that none but important government personages used outriders, so he spurred his horse and passed the carriage, which was headed down the Avenue toward the Capitol. As he flew by, he looked in the carriage and saw two women. One was Julia Dent Grant. A woman friend was seeing her off at the station. On the box, up front, was the coach driver and Lieutenant General Ulysses Simpson Grant.
The actor reined his horse, some distance ahead, and then turned and came back toward the carriage at a walk. He stared hard at Grant, and he looked into the carriage at the ladies with such intent that both of them remembered the strange, wild-eyed rider later. He nodded to the cavalrymen and went back to Willard’s corner. He said to a man:
“Wasn’t that Grant?”
The man nodded.
“I thought he was going to Ford’s tonight, with Lincoln.”
The man shrugged. “Somebody said he’s going to Jersey.”
The only railroad running between Washington and Burlington, N.J., was the Camden & Amboy. There were four northbound trains daily. The one chosen by the general was the slowest.
The schedule:
Lv. Washington City 6 P.M.
Arr. Baltimore 7:25 P.M.
Arr. Philadelphia 12 midnight
Change trains
Lv. Philadelphia 6 A.M.
Arr. Burlington 7 A.M.
Total time: thirteen hours. If the Grants had remained at the Willard overnight, they could have boarded the 7:30 A.M. express and would have been in Burlington, N.J., at 2:58 P.M. after seven and a half hours of travel and a night’s rest.
The Surratt carriage arrived at John Lloyd’s tavern and, as Mrs. Surratt alighted, Wiechman said that he would like to run the horse up and down the road. The widow assented and took the small package with her. Inside, she met Mrs. Offutt and she asked for John Lloyd and learned that he was appearing in court at Marlboro that day.
She asked about Mr. Nothey and was told that no one knew his whereabouts but that he had been around telling neighbors that he had tried to settle the widow’s claim of $479, but that she didn’t want to reach an agreement. This confirmed what she had learned by mail and it outraged her because, at the boardinghouse, she had been existing on a day-to-day basis and, in Maryland, Mr. Calvert had won two judgments against her because she couldn’t pay money she owed.
Wiechman came in and Mrs. Surratt asked him to write a letter for her. It was posted at once:
Surrattsville, Maryland, April 14, 1865
Mr. John Nothey
Sir:
I have this day received a letter from Mr. Calvert intimating that either you or your friends have represented to him that I am not willing to settle with you for the land. You know that I am ready and have been waiting for the last two years, and now if you do not come within the next ten days, I will settle with Mr. Calvert and bring suit against you immediately. Mr. Calvert will give you a deed on receiving payment.
M. E. Surratt
Administratrix of J. H. Surratt.
According to the trial records, Lloyd and Wiechman testified to the following:
At 5:30, John Lloyd, home from court and a card game, drove up the farm lane beside the tavern and drew to a stop beside the kitchen wood pile. He got out, staggering, and managed to lift a bag of oysters. Mrs. Surratt saw him, and came out by the kitchen entrance and met him halfway down the flagstone walk. She was smiling.
“Talk about the devil,” she said, “and his imps will appear.”
Lloyd glared and tried to focus on her. “I was not aware that I am a devil,” he growled.
“Well,” she said, “Mr. Lloyd, I want you to have those shooting irons* and some whiskey ready. There will be parties here tonight who will call for them.” She handed the small, paper-wrapped package to him. “Hide this, for tonight.”
He had trouble holding it, and the oysters too. He went inside, Mrs. Surratt holding the door for him, and when he got to the sitting room Lloyd fell on a couch. He felt ill. Nausea hit him in waves. After a while, he raised himself on an elbow, panting.
The widow came in, looked, and shook her head sadly. She said that a spring had broken on her buggy and could John do something about it. Lloyd tried to say that he would tie it with rope but the best he could do was to mumble “Rope. Rope.”
Somehow, he managed to stand, and somehow, he summoned the required amount of coordination to walk out front and tie the buggy spring so that it would hold together. He stood on the porch to wave farewell as Wiechman and Mrs. Surratt started back to Washington City.
Lloyd, head and hands shaking, staggered back into the bar and asked bartender Joe Nott for a glass of whiskey. He got it down and kept it down and then he remembered the little package in his hand. He hid it upstairs with the other stuff, after peeling the wrapping paper off and taking a look.
Field glasses.
In the War Department, Mr. Stanton buttoned his coat and went inside to the telegraph office.
“I have changed my mind about tonight, Eckert,” he said. “I will not return.”
The telegraph chief always stood in the presence of the Secretary of War. Mr. Stanton did not tell him what the important night duty was to have been.
“Yes, Mr. Stanton,” said Eckert.
“Good night, Eckert.”
“Good night, Mr. Stanton.”
The secretary did not h
ave to say anything about night orders for the telegraph office. The men on duty knew those orders. No matter how late the hour, the secretary was to be awakened at home and acquainted with any important news. If there were any messages addressed to President Lincoln, the same rule applied.
On a side street, Booth saw a familiar figure on foot. He drew up alongside George Atzerodt and dismounted and held a whispered conference. He told George that the “elimination” of Lincoln was easier now, because Grant had just left town. It was important, he said, that Atzerodt time his attack on the Vice President for 10:15 P.M. or as near to that minute as possible, because the other attacks would be made at the same time, and if all hands finished at the same time, they would meet on the far side of the Navy Yard Bridge at almost the same time.
Atzerodt, drunk and brazen, said that he “enlisted” for capture, not murder. Booth sneered at the carriage maker and called him a coward. George started to whimper and said that he had spent a day investigating the Vice President and he had learned that Mr. Johnson was a brave man. Booth told him that he had gone too far already, and might as well go the rest of the way.
The little man agreed. “I am in trouble,” he said, “and I will never be shut of it.” Booth slapped him on the back and wished him luck. The actor got on his mare and rode off. Atzerodt watched him go, probably wondering if he would ever see him again, knowing that he wouldn’t. At this moment, he knew lots of things. He knew that he would go back to Kirkwood House, deceiving himself as to his intentions, and that he would drink and debate whether he had the nerve to kill Johnson and then, finding that he did not, he would drink some more and curse himself for being a coward. He remembered what the men in Port Tobacco had said of him: “George is a man who can be insulted without taking offense.”
He walked to a stable where he had a horse. He had rented the horse at one stable, and left it at another. He considered this necessary to a complicated plot.
Atzerodt drove out of the stable, and up past Ford’s Theatre, which he studied as he went by, and shook his head. He turned and passed the Patent Office and, at that point, tossed away a bowie knife in a sheath. He decided then to ride aimlessly for a while, pausing at different saloons and only having one or two drinks in each one.
The only use George Atzerodt was to anyone now was that he was a man who knew a secret.
6 p.m.
The day was dying the way it was born—gray The warm breeze spent itself and there was a stillness and a coolness and flags hung lifeless and cloaked the staffs with color. The smoke from an outbound train hung like a crayon apostrophe behind the Capitol and farmers came in from outlying counties to sell feed to the stables.
Many of the principals of this day were, at this time, on the road. Mrs. Surratt and Wiechman were bound for Washington City. The President and his lady were being driven back to the White House by a different route than they had taken to the Navy Yard. Atzerodt, on a horse, was in search of friendly faces. David Herold had left Naylor’s Stable and was looking for Booth. Paine was wandering, waiting for the proper time to meet his idol and pick up his horse. Stanton was homeward bound, a few blocks from his office. So too was Major Thomas Eckert. John Wilkes Booth dismounted at F Street between Tenth and Ninth, opened an old billboard gate leading to the alley behind Ford’s Theatre, led his horse inside, and slammed the gate, which hooked on a latch.
He rode slowly down the alley, between the shanties of the Negroes, carefully skirting the little groups of children playing, passed the backs of the Ninth Street boardinghouses with their clothespoles and outdoor lavatories, and dismounted at the back door of the theater.
He shouted “Ned!” and, in a moment, Spangler came out and so did James Maddox. Booth asked his friend to stable his mare and he asked for a strong halter because she was known to shred them and run away. Spangler said he had a good one in the property room and yelled to Jacob Ritterspaugh to get it for him.
When the mare had been given water and feed, Booth invited the stagehands next door to Taltavul’s for a drink. At this hour, only Spangler, Ritterspaugh and Maddox were in the theater, with the exception of a ticket seller out front. The conspirator invited everyone except the ticket man to join him in a drink.
He led them backstage, then down into the subterranean passage single file, then out through the south alley to the tavern. There he bought drinks and learned that a boy had been in looking for him—Herold. Booth had the respect of the stagehands because he was friendly without being condescending. He joked with them and, in conversation, asked if they had to be onstage for any particular work right now, and they said no, that this was dead time, that the scenery for tonight had already been set up and they were killing time.
Booth said that he had an errand to do, but, before he left, he bought a bottle of whiskey for the men and advised them to “drink up.” He left the group, saying that he might see them tonight, and went back through the alley and through the underground passage and up onto the stage. He picked up a ll/2-by-3-inch pine board which had held a music stand. A single brace of gas lamps was burning over the stage and, in their feeble light, he could see the flag-draped box.
He hopped offstage onto the orchestra floor and walked toward the back of the theater and on up the stairs to the dress circle. He moved along the aisle to the south and down to where a cane chair sat before the white door leading to the State Box. The actor paused, looked around, and saw no one.
Booth tried the door and it opened easily. He went inside, and closed it behind him. He struck some matches and tried to brace the pine board between the inside of the white door and the rear wall of Box 7, which jutted into the corridor. The board was about half an inch too long. He had a penknife, but it would take an interminable time to whittle the board and time now was of the essence. Again he braced the board against the door—just above the knob—and tried to fit it against the wall. Where it jammed, he gouged plaster from the wall, holding a kerchief just below the spot and catching the fragments. In a few minutes, he had a niche into which the board fitted well.
Tonight, if anyone tried to follow him from the dress circle, they would find that the harder they pushed on the door, the more firmly wedged the board would become. He expected that, if he had to stab the guard outside the white door, there might be an outcry and people would try to follow. The board was important. He removed it and set it in a dark corner near the door.
Next he looked into the box. The partition was gone, the sofas and chairs had been arranged, and here, in the rear of the box, was President Lincoln’s rocker. Both box doors were tried, and both worked easily. As he had known all along, the locks were broken.
Now he stood between the President’s rocker and Mrs. Lincoln’s chair and studied the jump to the stage. It wasn’t much. If he stood on the ledge and jumped, it would be two feet higher, but if he swung himself over the ledge, hung on by his hands, and dropped, it would be shorter and safer.
John Wilkes Booth went out into the little corridor, with the door open, and crouched and studied the position where the President would be sitting. Then he closed the door and lit some matches. He withdrew a spiral-fluted gimlet with a wooden handle from his jacket pocket. The door had two panels, a top one and a bottom. At its thickest, the door was three-eighths of an inch deep. The panels were recessed and considerably thinner. He set his gimlet against the lower right-hand corner of the upper panel and leaned against it. He turned the handle and shavings began to fall off. In a moment, he had a small hole drilled through. He pressed his eye against it, with the door closed, and he had a hazy view of the upper part of the rocker. From his pocket he took a penknife, and began to gouge and ream the little hole and to peel the shavings from it. Again he stooped and looked. This time he had a good view of the spot where the President’s shoulders and head ought to be.
Booth struck some more matches, and scooped up the shavings. He went back to the entrance to the corridor and, under matches, looked for grains of plaster. He s
cooped up the dust, dropped it into his pocket, and stepped outside the white door into the dress circle. Carefully, he studied the stage, the orchestra, and the dress circle. No one was in sight and he could hear no one.
He went downstairs and out the back way and got his mare. This time, instead of going up to F Street and opening the gate, he swung the other way in the T-shaped alley and went out Ninth Street, where there was no impeding gate. He went back to the National Hotel to eat and rest.
Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln were pulling into the White House driveway when the President saw two men leaving. They were two old friends from home—Dick Oglesby, new governor of Illinois, and General Isham N. Haymes—and Mr. Lincoln stood in the barouche and yelled to them.
At the door, Mrs. Lincoln left the men, and advised the President that supper would be ready in a few minutes. Lincoln said that he wouldn’t be long and he took his cronies into the office. The two, seeing the one so unusually happy, fell into a mood of horseplay and, in reminding each other of old events which only they would remember, all three roared with laughter.
The President had a column clipped from a newspaper and he said that it was one of his favorites and he would read it to his friends. It was written by David R. Locke, who wrote coarse dialect under the name of Petroleum Vesuvius Nasby. Sometimes, the President would read these columns in bed, and would laugh hard and slap his thigh and, wiping tears from his eyes, would appear at the bedroom door in his nightgown looking for someone to share them with.
This one read:
“I survived the defeet uv Micklellan (who wuz, trooly, the nashen’s hope and pride likewise) becoz I felt assoored that the rane of the Goriller Linkin wood be a short wun; that in a few months, at furthest, Ginral Lee wood capcher Washington, depose the ape, and set up a constooshnal guvernment, based upon the great and immutable trooth that a white man is better than a nigger.”
The Confederates had “consentratid” and had lost Richmond. “Linkin rides into Richmond! A Illinois rale splitter, a buffoon, a ape, a goriller, a smutty joker, sets hisself down in President Davis’s cheer and rites dispatchis! . . . This ends the chapter. . . . The Conferasy hez at last consentratid its last concentrate. It’s ded. It’s gathered up its feet, sed its last words, and deceest. . . . Linkin will serve his term out—the tax on whiskey wont be repeeled—our leaders will die uv chagrin, and delerium tremens and inability to live so long out uv offis, and the sheep will be scattered. Farewell, vane world.”