A Night of Horrors: A Historical Thriller about the 24 Hours of Lincoln's Assassination

by Berry, John C.

  “I’ll be damned,” he murmured aloud. “It’s already beginning.”

  The news on the past Sunday of the surrender of the great Robert E. Lee and the inimitable Army of Virginia had pitched the citizens of Washington City into a frenzy far beyond that of the news of the fall of Richmond just five days before. Everywhere Wilkes Booth went he was confronted with the self-congratulatory air of the Union sympathizers. The thoughts of facing another day of having to listen to these pleasantries while he mourned the loss of his country, the Confederate States of America, made him want a drink. But he didn’t duck his head back under his covers.

  Booth sat up on the side of the bed and ran his fingers through his thick curly hair as he tried to smooth the tousling he’d created earlier in his attempts to awaken and rouse himself. He stretched and yawned and tried to get the blood moving in his veins. The glint and gleam were already returning to his hazel eyes. John Wilkes Booth was famous for his lustrous eyes, pools of hazel and chocolate into which countless women had lost themselves. Women came for many a mile to sit in the theater audiences at the hope of a glance their way as he strutted and stunted across the stage in his various roles. His black hair rose a bit high on his crown for a man in his early twenties, but the receding hairline was compensated for by piles of dark curls. He sported a black moustache that softened the length of his nose. There was a refinement to his features that hinted at an easy and pampered life. Though Booth liked to play the part of the wealthy actor, he had worked very hard at his stagecraft. He had worked tirelessly in smaller roles, building himself up until he had become one of the most successful actors in the United States. Booth knew how to work the starring system, and had appeared in the top bill all over the North during the war. His celebrity, expensive clothes, and dark looks came together to give Wilkes Booth a darkly fierce beauty that many women, and men, found too much to resist. He was the vitality of perfect manhood.

  Booth stood up from the bed contemplating what he would do if he had the chance to stand before Robert E. Lee. It was strange to him to nurture these new emotions of hatred toward a man he had literally worshipped as the singularly bravest and most brilliant military leader in history. But it was true, in three short days he had come to revile Lee with a ferocity that sometimes surprised himself. But then he would sigh and realize that his anger and hatred for Lee were a distraction from the true focus of his disdain. But the war could not be over! The battle for freedom could not now be lost!

  “Great God,” he said aloud and straightened up with a realization. “I have no country. The Confederate States of America are no more.” He shook his head.

  As the last several days had passed, the celebrations grew larger and brighter and louder than the day and night before. With each day, the commendations of Ulysses Grant grew more verbose. Even worse were the adulations of that tyrant, Abraham Lincoln. With each day the praise for the President grew more fervent, bordering on religious ecstasy. To Booth, Lincoln was turning the office of President into a monarchy. The oafish man paraded and preened and pretended to the greatest office in the land. The cheers of the drunken Unionists became obnoxious to him.

  And there it was, that man. That name. That Usurper in Chief. He was never far from Booth’s waking thoughts. He did not think he could bear another day of listening to the banter of how that tyrannical king had supposedly saved the nation.

  “Destroyed a people is more like it.” Booth spit the words with perfect elocution from his mouth. “Destroyed my people. Ruined my land. Took my country is what he did. The man is a butcher.”

  Wilkes Booth went to the dresser and poured water from the pitcher into the basin. He leaned over and splashed water onto his face and rubbed it onto his hands and forearms. He splashed the water again and let the coolness awaken him and he felt his anger course through his veins like liquid fire. He splashed the water onto his face again and then stopped, motionless. His face hovered above the surface of the rippling water. Clear crystal water drops clung to the tips of his nose and beaded along his cheeks rough with the stubble of his beard. His thick black moustache shined with the tiny droplets, clinging to each rich hair. He blinked his eyes and slowly stood up. He looked into the mirror at his now gleaming dark eyes. A small smile spread across his lips and Booth slowly nodded his head. He had come to a conclusion, a decision. His face was pale and there were dark circles around his eyes, reflecting the sleepless nights and anxiety he was battling. He slowly blinked. He nodded his head again, this time with a bit more urgency. It wasn’t the first time that he had entertained this thought, but this morning there was a finality to the thinking … a determination that made the statement an oath and a pledge to the country he had so dearly loved and lost.

  “I will do it. I will kill that bastard Abraham Lincoln.”

  Domestic Idyll

  April 14th was a balmy spring morning, filled with bright sun. The breezes carried the scent of seawater as they rolled off the Chesapeake Bay. The bright waves of the bay glinted and leapt and lapped along the shoreline. The briny water was clear and still cold from the winter months. It washed along the endless shoreline and mixed with the fresh water rolling down the Potomac and churned the ocean water from the Atlantic into the estuary where the blue crabs scuttled across the floor of the bay. The great Potomac River seemed to flow clearer and fresher that year in 1865. The trees that hung over these flowing waters were protected from the piercing bullets and blistering grapeshot of the cannons that earlier filled Petersburg, Virginia, and the James River, where the Union and Confederate forces had been facing each other for months. No, the waters of the Potomac ran cool, clean, and clear the farther up the Potomac you went. These flowing waters were just as inviting to Maryland as they were to Virginia. They were just as welcoming to North as to South. To Union as to Confederate.

  An Osprey took wing and soared into the air, with its piercing yellow eyes scanning the land below for its prey. It crossed from Port Royal on the Rappahannock River and reached Port Tobacco on the northern branches of the Potomac. The sun bleached and dried the back roads of Charles County in Southern Maryland, where the war had not reached in actual battles but the secret secessionists lived and breathed threats against the Union Army. In a small village called Bryantown there was a crossroads. When you came to this place you could take small back roads leading east and west, but most people would take the main road and choose north or south, the choice forced on all people in the United States at that time. The road going north, stretched and snaked like a tendril, arrived at a small town called Surrattsville. From here it reached further still until it crossed the Anacostia branch and into the Capital of the nation.

  There the spring sun shone down on the great dome of the recently completed Capitol, making it gleam and glow like a shining beacon, beckoning the nation to keep hope and press forward. The Executive Mansion, rebuilt and repainted after the War of 1812, had troops bivouacked on the front lawn, spilling around the back and across the Ellipse towards the same Potomac River that flowed south into the great Chesapeake Bay below. The bright buds of spring were breaking out in a riot of color. The red blossoms of Judas Trees, bursting along the thin limbs and trunks, were in contrast to the greens of the oaks and pines. Wispy Willows swayed in the breeze along the Potomac behind the Executive Mansion. The bright whites and soft pinks of Dogwoods on thin limbs seemed suspended on invisible trays in the air. Occasionally, the breeze wafted the unsavory smells of the canal that ran through the Capital and held the flotsam and cast-off of Washington City. For the most part, though, the breeze was balmy and warm, smelling of the impending humidity of summer months.

  On this particular Friday, Good Friday of 1865, the colors of the ladies’ dresses, bonnets, and parasols seemed brighter even than the blooming trees of spring. The step of the men was lighter and more self-assured, particularly those in their blue uniforms. The clopping of the horses and bumping of the wagons and carriages down the cobblestones of Pennsylvania Avenu
e seemed gay and almost celebratory.

  Abraham Lincoln awoke on this Friday morning, the day after the great Illumination celebration, feeling more refreshed than at any time since he’d moved into the Executive Mansion. He pulled on his robe and faded slippers and ambled down the hall to the family library on the second floor of the Executive Mansion, directly above the Blue Room. His over-sized feet made padding noises on the wooden floors. The big man scratched his head and rumpled his hair as he went into the library and took a seat in his favorite rocking chair. His long legs jetted out at awkward angles from the chair that was too small for him, but so was all of the furniture he owned. As on every morning, Lincoln began his day by reading two chapters from the Bible. He had spent many a day reading and rereading the brooding warnings of the prophet Jeremiah as he dispensed God’s judgment on the nation of Israel. Lincoln had taken these judgments to heart as he struggled to grasp the magnitude and endurance of the great war he had wanted to end so dearly. Lincoln had taken to heart those passages that said, “The fierce anger of the LORD shall not return, until He hath done it, and until He hath performed the intents of His heart.” Now he read those passages where God reminded Israel, through Jeremiah, there would be an end to the pain and desolation. Though He would “correct thee in measure, and will not leave thee altogether unpunished,” a time for rescue would come. He flipped back to the 29th chapter that had given him much encouragement of late and read, “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.”

  Lincoln closed the book over his long bony finger and he held it to his chest and put his head back on the chair and rocked back and forth. He pondered this passage and its promise of a new future—an expected end. He drew a deep breath and slowly exhaled. It was a deep sigh from the depths of his soul. The war was indeed over—though there still might be some fighting since Jefferson Davis, the President of the so-called Confederate States, had not been captured and there remained some 175,000 Confederate troops in various armies still in the field because they had not yet surrendered. But Sherman had Johnston and his men pinned down in Greensboro, North Carolina, and they were the largest of the armies. He hoped for good news from Sherman today. The family library had a couch and a stuffed chair, but Lincoln invariably sat in the rocking chair. He often rocked slowly forward and back as he read and pondered the passages of scripture. Or he would take up Shakespeare or one of the satirists that he so enjoyed reading and laughing about. The man didn’t simply read these works of literature and holy creeds, he consumed them. Lincoln was famous for his ability to quote long passages of Shakespeare to those who came to visit him.

  Lincoln’s dark hair sprouted up from his head in a variety of directions. He referred to his unruly hair as bristles. His ears, like the rest of his body, were enormous and stuck out from the side of his head like flaps. His face, never handsome, was now more creased and lined from the years of worry with the war. The seemingly endless nights of huddling with the Secretary of War, the reams of paper used to write letters prodding and pushing reluctant generals into attacking, the hours waiting for word of the outcomes of the great and bloody battles had sucked the very life out of the him. The president had become a shrunken man. Lincoln was so thin that his face and head resembled the skull beneath his skin rather than the face of the leader of a nation. His cheeks, always thin, now appeared to have been sucked into his mouth. His skin was now pallid and his lips tight and drawn. Lincoln had devoted every day and night to the cause in which he believed so dearly these past four years and his vital energies seemed to be waning. His nose, another over-sized feature of his face, protruded so far out it made his eyes look smaller and more closely set together than they were. The mole that was evident on his right cheek only added to the man’s awkward looks. He kept his beard closely trimmed to his chin. With the streaks of gray that had grown into it over the past few years, it was now the one distinguishing feature of his face. But his eyes were bright and brown. No matter how drawn and tired his face became, Abraham Lincoln’s eyes remained bright and clear, always looking forward and seeing a certainty to the future that seemed to elude those around him.

  This morning, as was usual for him of late, his hands were cold and clammy so he started a fire and returned to his chair and his thoughts. The President had not only had the unprecedented challenge of managing a civil war, but he also had to endlessly navigate the political waters of the North, where many had been calling for his resignation or even his impeachment from the beginning. Civil war in a democracy was an oddity and the United States was not even a century old. Lincoln had also made sure that a general election came off in the midst of the bloody battles. That was something that had never happened in a republic before. Added to the strains of keeping his political allies and enemies—often hard to tell apart by the vituperous language leveled at the head of the President—was the personal burden of the death of his beloved son Willie. He sighed once again. These were deep cleansing breaths not the sighs of a man in doubt, but those of a man energizing himself with fresh supplies of oxygen. He had complained to his wife over the past couple of years that no amount of attempted rest or trips to the theater could touch the tired spot. It was a place that was so deep in his chest that neither sleep nor distraction could soothe or nourish it. It was a hole in his heart that sucked the very energy out of his body and mind. The tired spot had so grown and consumed him that he collapsed just a few months earlier and been confined to his bed to recover. But last night he had experienced a deep and restful sleep and the tired spot felt much smaller than it had been in many weeks. It was barely noticeable.

  He scratched his big ears as his mind began to ponder and organize his thoughts around what had to happen next. The cares of his administration had not only become visible on his large face. The concerns and woes of the nation had finally stooped his once six-foot, four-inch frame to a lesser height. He slumped in the rocking chair for a moment and then turned back to the Bible in his hands.

  “I know the thoughts I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil.” Lincoln quoted aloud without looking back at the text. He had come to believe that the institution of slavery, so long sheltered and promoted by his country, had been justly judged and the bloody war between the states, bloodier than anyone had thought possible, was the penalty of holy God’s justice. But now, it appeared, God’s justice had been spent and He was promising peace. Lincoln’s mind went back over the new work that lay ahead of him: reconstructing the Union that had almost been torn apart. “To bind up the nation’s wounds,” he had described it in his inaugural address less than six weeks earlier. His fingers played across the beard. His chance to serve as President—a peace President—was now at hand. He had always been a President at war and looked forward with great anticipation, almost yearning, to the work at hand: bring north and south together as one nation and in peace. The outcome was clear in his own mind. There would be no bloody work of hanging and punishing, but the South would be brought back into the Union. The specific steps to reach that end were still unclear to him. Lincoln knew it would happen, state-by-state, leader-by-leader, but the specifics were still forming in his mind. There would be a restoration of the national authority over the entire United States.

  With that thought, Lincoln unfolded his large frame and stood slowly from the rocking chair and shuffled out to the central hallway and down to his office. The room that Lincoln used for his office was large and spacious. It was on the back of the Executive Mansion and visitors to the office could see the Potomac River in the distance, behind the half-erected monument to the nation’s first president. Lincoln’s desk actually faced away from this window. There was a large table in the center of the room, and around this table Lincoln held his Cabinets on Thursdays and Mondays. There was a single fireplace in the room as well as a sofa and sitting chairs. Strewn about the room were various maps rolled and leaning into corners. Th
ese had been the maps used to plot and chart the progress of individual battles and identify the locations of armies both North and South during the war.

  The President sat down at his desk, desiring to conduct some business before breakfast. Though he did not typically have much more for breakfast than a cup of coffee and a single egg, Lincoln thought some bacon and even toast were in order in light of the events of this week. Also, Robert, his oldest son, would be joining him, Mary, and Tad, his youngest son, for breakfast. The proud father looked forward to Robert’s news and account of Lee’s surrender. He read through the stack of papers on his desk, writing instructions and answering requests directly onto the papers and letters he read. One letter brought a smile to his face. It was a special request asking the President to grant special passage to Richmond, Virginia. Lincoln took his pen and wrote,

  No pass is necessary now to authorize any one to go to & return from Petersburg & Richmond. People go & return just as they did before the war.

  His smile broadened, showing some of his yellowed teeth as he signed his response: A. Lincoln.

  ‘Just so,’ he thought. ‘People can come and go just as before the war. I’ve done it myself recently.’

  Next, Lincoln wrote a note to be sent to William Seward, his Secretary of State. Seward had suffered a terrible accident in his carriage on Wednesday, April 5th, where he broke his jaw and bruised himself badly. The secretary was confined to his bed with a leather and wire frame strapped around his head to hold his jaw in place. His son Frederick Seward was the Assistant Secretary of State and acting for his father. Seward had always managed the Cabinet meetings for the President. The note was brief and asked for the Cabinet to assemble at 11:00 AM that morning and that General Grant would be in attendance. Then, Lincoln scribbled one more note to be delivered to General Grant himself: