by Jim Bishop
The paunchy captain swung his sword and roared: “Out of the way, you sons of bitches!”
The night, now, was clear. The mist gone. The wind cool and gusty. The moon threw the shadow of Ford’s Theatre across the street.
Every few steps, Leale stopped the party and pulled a clot loose. The procession seemed to be interminable. When they got across the street, the steady roar of the crowd made it impossible to hear or to be heard. Leale wanted to go into the nearest house, but a soldier on the stoop made motions that no one was home and made a helpless pantomime with a key. At the next house toward F Street, Leale saw a man with a lighted candle standing in the doorway, motioning. This was the William Petersen house at 453 Tenth Street. Mr. Petersen was a tailor.
Lincoln was carried up the steps and into the house. Part of the crowd followed. The man with the candle motioned for the doctors to follow him. They moved down a narrow hall. To the right was a stairway going up to the second floor. To the left was a parlor, with coal grate and black horsehair furniture. Behind it, also on the left, was a sitting room. Under the stairway was a small bedroom.
Here, the President was placed on a bed. A soldier on leave, who had rented the room, picked up his gear and left. He was Private William T. Clark of the 13th Massachusetts Infantry. The room measured fifteen feet by nine feet. The wallpaper was oatmeal in character. A thin reddish rug covered part of the floor. There were a plain maple bureau near the foot of the bed, three straight-backed chairs, a washstand with white crock bowl, a wood stove. On the wall were framed prints of “The Village Blacksmith” and Rosa Bonheur’s “The Horse Fair.” The bed was set against the wall under the stairway.
It was too small for the President. Leale ordered it pulled away from the wall. He also asked that the foot-board be taken off, but it was found that, if that was done, the bed would collapse. The body was placed diagonally on the bed, the head close to the wall, the legs hanging off the other end. Extra pillows were found and Lincoln’s head was propped so that his chin was on his chest. Leale then ordered an officer to open a bedroom window—there were two, facing a little courtyard—and to clear everybody out and to post a guard on the front stoop.
At the back end of the room, Leale held his first formal conference with the other doctors. As they talked in whispers, the man who had held the candle went through the house lighting all the gas fixtures. The house was narrow and deep, and behind this bedroom was another and behind that a family sitting room which spread across the width of the house.
Leale, in the presence of the other doctors, began a thorough examination. As he began to remove the President’s clothing, he looked up and saw Mrs. Lincoln standing in the doorway with Miss Keene and Miss Harris. He looked irritated and asked them to please wait in the front room. The patient was undressed and the doctors searched all of the areas of the body, but they found no other wound.
The feet were cold to the touch up to the ankles. The body was placed between sheets and a comforter was placed over the top. A soldier in the doorway was requisitioned as an orderly and the doctors sent him for hot water and for heated blankets. They sent another soldier for large mustard plasters. These were applied to the front of the body, covering the entire area from shoulders to ankles.
Occasionally, the President sighed. His pulse was forty-four and light; breathing was stertorous; the pupil of the left eye was contracted; the right was dilated—both were proved insensitive to light. Leale called a couple of more soldiers from the hallway, and sent them to summon Robert Lincoln, Surgeon General Barnes, Dr. Robert K. Stone, President Lincoln’s physician, and Lincoln’s pastor, Dr. Phineas D. Gurley.
The death watch began.
At ten minutes past ten, Lewis Paine and David Herold rode into Madison Place, across the street from the White House. They stopped in front of The Old Clubhouse. Three doors away, a sentry lounged in front of General Augur’s personal quarters. Two gas lamps lost a battle with darkness. Paine dismounted, handed the reins to Herold. He repeated the name of the doctor “Verdi, Verdi” as though it was difficult to remember. He ordered Herold to wait for him and not to move from in front of the door.
He removed a bottle from his jacket pocket. David Herold, sitting his horse and holding the awkward blind one, watched Lewis Paine walk up to the front door and rap hard with the knocker. Through the chased glass panels light could be seen.
No one answered. Paine rapped again and waited. A shadow grew on the glass and the door opened: A young Negro in a white coat stood inside. This was William Bell.
“I have medicine from Doctor Verdi.”
William reached for it. Paine pulled his hand away.
“It has to be delivered personally.”
“Sir,” said the boy, “I can’t let you go upstairs. I have strict orders—”
The rare temper began to crumble. “You’re talking to a white man,” Paine said. “This medicine is for your master and, by God, I’m going to give it to him.”
“But, sir . . .”
“Out of my way, nigger. I’m going up.” Paine pushed his way into the big reception hall, and started up the stairs, William a step or two behind, pleading softly. Paine walked heavily. William Bell asked him to please walk easily.
“I’m sorry that I talked rough to you,” Bell said.
“Oh,” said Paine, at the top of the first flight, “that’s all right.”
On the top floor, Frederick Seward, Assistant Secretary of State, heard the commotion and the tramp of heavy boots. He had been in bed with his wife, and now he had put on a dressing robe and hurried out.
He saw Lewis Paine coming up toward him, and saw Bell directly behind him. Seward, angry, whispered a demand to know what the commotion was all about. Paine, stopping two steps below the top, whispered back that he had a prescription from Dr. Verdi and that this fresh nigger tried to stop him.
Seward held out his hand. He would see that the prescription was delivered. Paine shook his head. The doctor had told him twice to make certain that this medicine got into no other hands than those of the Secretary of State. If he was permitted to hand the bottle to Secretary Seward, he would leave at once. The young official didn’t know whether to throw the messenger and his medicine out, or to reason with him. In his mind, Seward figured that this man was one of those dull mentalities who know no better than to obey orders literally.
“My father may be sleeping,” he said. “I will see.”
He went up to the front of the hall to a door on the left side. Until then, Paine had no idea where the Secretary of State might be. Now he knew. In a moment, Seward was back.
“You can’t go in,” he said. “He’s sleeping. Give it to me.”
“I was ordered to give it to the secretary.”
“You cannot see Mr. Seward. I will take the responsibility of refusing to let you see him. Go back and tell the doctor that I refused to let you see him if you think you cannot trust me with the medicine. I am Mr. Seward and I am in charge here.” The voice began to rise in tone. “He will not blame you if you tell him I refused to let you see him.”
Paine hesitated. Then he said: “Very well, sir. I will go.”
He turned and faced down the stairs. He pulled his pistol, whirled, and fired at the middle of Frederick Seward. The hammer clicked. There was no explosion. Paine jumped to the top step and, before Seward could lift his hand, the rare temper brought the butt of the gun smashing down on Seward’s head. He fell and Paine bent over him, smashing again and again at head and neck.
Bell, halfway up the stairs, turned and ran down, screaming “Murder! Murder!” He ran down the second flight of stairs, still screaming the litanous word and out into the street. “Murder! Murder! Murder!” David Herold watched him. Quickly, the assassin’s escort dismounted, tied Paine’s horse to a tree, remounted, and galloped off. As he turned into Pennsylvania Avenue at Fifteenth, Booth was at the other end of the Avenue, turning into Capitol South.
Upstairs, Paine found that he ha
d broken his pistol. He threw it at the unconscious man and drew a knife. He hurried to the front bedroom. When he pushed against the door, he found that someone was leaning against it. Paine moved back a step and crashed his weight against the panel. The door flew open and Paine fell, inside. The room was in darkness except for a slice of light from the hall.
The assassin got up, saw a moving figure, and slashed at it. He heard a man scream in pain. His duty was to kill the Secretary of State and he had no time for others, so he jumped on the bed and, when he felt the helpless figure beneath him, he struck with his knife again and again. He heard small moans and he lifted the knife once more, as high as he could. Someone jerked his arm from behind and he turned and found that, in the darkness, he was battling two men.
They were trying to pull him off the bed. No words were spoken. The Secretary of State, still conscious, had the presence of mind, when his assailant was removed, to roll off the bed onto the floor against the wall, even though he knew that he was falling on the broken arm. Paine hacked at the restraining arms around him. The three fell into tables and chairs and, when he felt himself free, Lewis Paine got up and ran out into the hall, yelling, “I’m mad! I’m mad!”
There he saw a young lady, in nightdress, screaming. At the same time, he saw another man coming toward him. This man was well dressed and seemed confused by all the noise. He walked toward Paine blindly. The assassin permitted him to come close, then raised his knife and plunged it into the stranger’s chest up to the hilt. Mr. Hansell, State Department messenger, fell without uttering a word.
Paine hurried downstairs and out into the street. He looked for Herold, and found that he had been deserted. He untied his horse, mounted, and, mopping his face, turned north toward H Street. He walked the horse and William Bell, seeing him, followed behind, cupping his hands and yelling “Murder!” Soldiers came running from Augur’s sentry box. They passed the assassin, passed the Negro boy, who was pointing at Paine, and ran up the steps of The Old Clubhouse.
Bell was stubborn. He kept behind Paine until the assassin turned, annoyed, and spurred his shaggy-shanked horse into a trot. The boy still followed, for a block and a half. Then he stopped and hurried back to Mr. Seward’s house.
The Seward home looked unreal. Hansell, barely conscious, was bleeding profusely and gagging on his blood. At the top landing, Frederick Seward lay curled on his side, in a coma. On the rug beside him was a broken pistol and a black felt hat—Paine’s. A male nurse, Sergeant Robinson, was badly hurt and bleeding. Augustus Seward was injured, but not bleeding. Miss Fanny Seward, who had been smashed and knocked down when Paine had first entered the sick room, was unconscious on the floor. She was one of the “men” he thought he had been battling.
When William Bell got back to the house, Major Augustus Seward was standing in the doorway with a huge pistol in his hand. People came running from all over Lafayette Square. Little Bell tried to tell his story, and point to which way the man had gone, but no one had time to listen to him.
Paine outdistanced the shouts of murder and soon he found that he was in a maze of streets, all of them dark and lonely. He remembered that “Cap” had said to turn right, so he turned right. He trotted his horse and he walked his horse. After a half hour, houses became infrequent and he saw dark fields. In the moonlight, he saw some soldiers coming toward him, so he got off the horse and hid in a field. He was in the East Capitol section, but he didn’t know it. He was also about a half mile from the Navy Yard Bridge, but he didn’t know that either.
The streets of downtown Washington were alive with running people who shouted to darkened houses that assassins were at large and that the Secretary of State had been murdered in his bed. This wave of hysteria, as John Wilkes Booth figured, met an opposite wave which roared that the President had been killed in cold blood in Ford’s Theatre.
The news reached different people in different ways. Major Eckert was standing before a mirror in his room, shaving, when a friend burst in and said that Seward had just been killed. Mr. Stanton was undressing for bed, having been serenaded by the arsenal band, when a soldier banged on the broken pull bell and then rapped on the door. Stanton heard the news about Lincoln and Seward, went back upstairs, and told Mrs. Stanton that it was humbug. He was getting into bed when more people came with the same wild news. He dressed and someone got him a hack and he hurried to Seward’s home. Robert Lincoln had just arrived home, and was sitting with members of his father’s staff, when the tragic news came. Surgeon General Barnes was homeward bound in his carriage and was passing Willard’s Hotel when a cavalryman rode up, looked in, and advised the doctor to go to Ford’s Theatre at once—the President had been shot.
Barnes ordered the driver to take him to his office at top speed. He wanted to get his instruments. He was packing them in a bag when a wild-eyed soldier burst in and said that Secretary of State Seward had been stabbed and to please hurry. The Surgeon General said that he had heard about the alarm, but that the man must have been confused because he had said it was the President, and the place was Ford’s Theatre. Barnes went off to Seward’s home. There he was dressing the wounds of Frederick Seward when a Negro hack driver pleaded his way up the stairs and begged Barnes to come at once to Tenth Street, the President of the United States was dying.
Robert Lincoln and John Hay raced to Tenth Street in a carriage. The President’s oldest son did not believe the news. When the driver tried to turn off G Street into Tenth—a block and a half from the theater—a mass of humanity blocked the road and Robert Lincoln put his head in his hands and moaned. When soldiers tried to turn the carriage away Lincoln, in anguish, said:
“It’s my father! My father! I’m Robert Lincoln!”
With help, he got through on foot. When he saw his mother, in the parlor of Petersen House, he burst into tears.
In the Seward home, Nurse Robinson and Miss Fanny Seward had turned the gas up and Robinson had found the secretary on the floor between bed and wall. His eyes were open, staring into pools of his own blood.
Miss Fanny said: “Is my father dead?”
Robinson felt for a pulse and found none.
“He has no pulse,” he said.
Miss Fanny threw up the front window and screamed “Murder! Murder!” Robinson tore the nightshirt open and listened for a heartbeat. He heard one, and it sounded strong. The Secretary of State whispered: “I am not dead. Send for a surgeon. Send for the police. Close the house.”
The nurse lifted Mr. Seward and said: “Do not talk. It makes your bleeding worse.” The patient was put back on the bed. Robinson got the twisted bedclothes off the floor and wrapped them around the secretary. Then he looked at the face on the pillow. With a cloth, he wiped the red mask off and saw two pulsing wounds, one on each cheek. The right cheek was slashed from ear to lip and hung in a flap over the lower jaw. From the side, Robinson could see the inside of Mr. Seward’s mouth. The leather-covered iron brace around neck and jaw had saved the man’s life.
Vice President Andrew Johnson heard a pounding on a door. He was half asleep, half awake. He heard it and yet he didn’t hear it. It continued for some time. He got up, fumbling for the lamp beside his bed. Outside, former Governor Leonard J. Farwell said: “Governor Johnson, if you are in this room, I must see you.” Johnson got the door open as Farwell was trying to peer over the transom.
The Vice President invited him in.
“Someone,” Farwell whispered, “has shot and murdered the President.”
Johnson, lighting the living-room lamp, swung around. He did not believe the news. Then he saw Farwell’s wild, agonized expression and he ran to the man and they threw their arms around each other as though, without support, each would collapse. Farwell opened the door and peered both ways down the corridor. He rang for servants and asked for guards. One man was put inside the door and told to admit no one.
Someone knocked and Farwell, frightened to frenzy, refused to permit the door to be opened until he recognized the
voice of a Congressman. The Congressman said that there were five hundred people in the lobby. Johnson emerged from his bedroom shoving his shirttails into his trousers.
“Governor,” he said, “go back to the theater and find out how the President is.”
In a little while, Farwell was back with Major James Rowan O’Beirne, Provost Marshal of the District of Columbia. There were a lot of people in Johnson’s two rooms and the men were in such a state of excitement that they were ready to believe any idiocy. Farwell assured everyone that the President was dying; that Seward was dead, and that it was part of a gigantic plot to kill Johnson and all Cabinet ministers.
O’Beirne said that it was his opinion that Johnson should remain in his rooms with his friends. The Vice President bridled and insisted that his place was at the side of the President and that’s where he was going. The Provost Marshal was opposed, but said that if Johnson had to do it, to wait until O’Beirne returned for him, when the excitement in the streets had died a little.
The stone had been dropped into the still pool. Now the wave began to ripple outward, evenly for the most part, and it spread to all parts of the city. Ella Turner, the prostitute who had loved Booth, heard of the deed and the name of the assassin. She went to her room, placed a photo of John Wilkes Booth under her pillow, and pressed her head into a rag soaked with chloroform.*
The news jumped from house to house, from street to street. In nightclothes, citizens gathered on the sidewalks, talking, and other citizens threw up the windows and demanded to know what the noise was for. In time, the wave reached reporter L. A. Gobright of the Associated Press. He was closing his office for the night—had the key in the door—when he heard the first wild rumor and, without waiting to check it, wired his New York office: