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

by Berry, John C.

  “From the city,” Booth answered noncommittally and waved vaguely back towards Washington City.

  “Where are you going, sir?” Cobb continued the standard interrogation.

  “Why I am heading home,” Wilkes said flashing another smile. His teeth gleamed in the moon like the ivory keys of a piano reflecting the floodlights on a stage.

  “And where is home?”

  “Well, sir, home is in Charles,” the actor responded.

  “Charles is a big county. You must live in a town?” Cobb pushed for details, his voice rising in a question.

  “I live close to Beantown, but do not live in the town,” Booth responded coolly and smoothly. He was pleased with the casual banter that he had created with the Sergeant.

  “Why are you out so late? Don’t you know the rule that persons are not allowed to pass over the bridge after 9:00?” Cobb asked firmly. This was news to Booth and he thought fast because he had to get across the bridge, and now!

  “That is a new rule to me, sir,” Booth answered truthfully. “I was visiting a friend in the city and stayed later than I meant to. I stayed until this hour so I would have the moon to ride by,” Booth explained calmly and motioned to the sky and the bright moon that shone down.

  Sergeant Cobb ran his eyes over Booth’s fine woolen coat, expensive riding pants and shiny boots. This man was obviously well to do. His responses had come easily and were all very natural and plausible. He didn’t appear to the Sergeant to be any kind of danger to society.

  “If I allow you to pass, you will not be allowed to return until morning, Sir,” Cobb said finally.

  “Hell, that is fine with me as I am goin’ home.” Sergeant Cobb stepped aside and motioned towards the bridge.

  “Thank you, sir,” Booth responded and tapped his horse into motion. But the horse almost bolted and Booth had to rein her in, calming her down to a walk. Cobb thought it odd that the horse was so nervous and then noticed the lather on the mare as she walked by with her chatty rider. Something in the back of Cobb’s mind told him that something was amiss, but he couldn’t place it other than the lather on the horse. He kept his eyes on the rider as he clopped onto the low wooden drawbridge. As the black-coated rider and bay horse blended into the depth of the night, Cobb realized what had bothered him. The rider seemed so calm and jovial, but the horse was lathered and jumpy. Why was there such a contrast between the two?

  Lincoln’s assassin had gotten past one more guard and had easily passed through to wider freedom. On the bridge, Booth exulted in the stupidity of the Union Army and the ease with which he had stabbed and gotten past the Major and now he had so casually disarmed not one but two guards with his easy banter. When the assassin stepped off the bridge and into the environs of Uniontown, he sunk his spurs into the sides of the mare and she immediately responded and galloped away. This time Booth gave her a loose rein and guided her to Harrison Road that led away from Uniontown and south. Eventually they would arrive at Surrattsville. He was heading for Mrs. Surratt’s tavern to pick up the field glasses and shooting irons that he’d given her that afternoon at her boardinghouse. Booth allowed his left leg to hang out of the stirrup now, attempting to ease some of the pressure on the continually throbbing limb. The galloping motion of the horse jostled the broken leg, sending pain searing up his calf and into his hips. It felt as if there were barbs of wire inserted beneath his skin that tore at his flesh. He clung to the mane of the horse with his left hand to keep himself stable in the saddle. Harrison Road began a long ascent and as he rode up the hill the night sky spread out before him. He felt as if he was riding into the field of stars.

  Booth knew that he was already getting closer to the rebels, because Charles County was a hotbed of Southern sympathizers. But he wasn’t free yet, and he had to keep his concentration up. Wilkes needed to get past the two Union forts at the top of the hill. He prayed that Mary Surratt was right when she’d told him that afternoon that there would be no pickets on the road. As he crested the hill, Booth pricked the horse’s sides with his spurs to keep her moving. He did not receive a challenge and he was relieved as he galloped on. His next stop would be Soper’s Hill, about five miles past the forts. This was the rendezvous point the conspirators had agreed to earlier today.

  Sergeant Cobb had just gotten back to the guardhouse and was stepping inside when another man came out of the darkness on a roan horse. David Herold was nervous, but he knew if he could get across the bridge he would be as good as free. It was a good thing he had spent his life hunting in the woods of Charles County in particular. He knew the woods and back roads of the county like the veins on the back of his hand. Herold’s trip to the Navy Yard Bridge had not been as eventless as Booth’s. He had ridden away from the Seward home, convinced that poor Lewis Powell had been captured. But by the ferocity of the lady’s screams pouring from the window, he assumed that Powell at least had killed the Secretary of State. The thought brought a brief smile to his lips. He pulled the light roan horse to a stop beneath a gas lamp on the street. He was taking in his surroundings, making one last check for Powell, and then he was high-tailing it out of the city to Soper’s Hill to link back up with Booth. As Herold was turned in his saddle, looking over his shoulder, he heard a man’s voice call out.

  “You there! That’s my horse and she was due at the stable hours ago!” Herold spun around and saw John Fletcher, the stableman from whom Herold, Powell, and Atzerodt had rented their horses that afternoon, running toward him from across the street. The stableman was furious that all three of the horses were still out, far past their time to be back. Fletcher would be damned if he was going to get in trouble for the missing horses. He knew that Thomas Nailor, the owner of the stable, would hold him accountable. John Fletcher had been at the stable working earlier in the evening when George Atzerodt came by and asked if Fletcher would like a drink. Fletcher was familiar with Atzerodt, because John Wilkes Booth had told the stableman some weeks ago that Atzerodt would be selling a one-eyed bay mare for him, but until he sold her, Atzerodt could keep the horse at Nailor’s along with another horse and Booth would cover the cost. Atzerodt hadn’t been by the stable for a number of days, but then he came by the stable twice that same Friday in the afternoon. The second time he came by, he took the one-eyed horse, saying a friend was going to ride her, and then he had made an odd request of Fletcher: keep the stable open until 10:00 o’clock that night. Fletcher obliged, but when Atzerodt came by a third time close to 10:00 to pick up the mare, instead of taking the horse, he had asked Fletcher if he’d like to get a drink. The stableman was always open to some good warm ale, so he went with the German man to a bar close by, though he’d always thought the German was a bit off his rocker. Fletcher thought that the man might have already been drinking, becoming convinced he was drunk as they sat at the bar. Atzerodt was speaking more oddly than usual. After a glass, Fletcher said that he should get back because one of the horses was out still and he needed to make sure he was there if the man brought her back.

  As the two men walked back to the stable, Atzerodt suddenly said, “If this thing happens tonight, you will hear of a present.” Fletcher, didn’t bother to ask the man to explain his comment, he knew he was drunk. When they got to the barn, the roan was still missing, and Atzerodt mounted the mare.

  “You reckon you should be ridin’ in your condition?” Fletcher asked.

  “I’m fine,” Atzerodt responded.

  “I don’t reckon I’d ride that animal through the streets at night. She looks a’might skittish,” Fletcher observed. Atzerodt looked at Fletcher, then leaned down and patted the horse’s neck.

  “She’s fine. She’s good on a retreat.”

  ‘A retreat?’ Fletcher really thought the man might not be a drunk after all, but a maniac. As Atzerodt turned the horse to go, Fletcher suddenly recalled that Atzerodt and the man with the light roan had visited the stable together with the actor, John Booth, in the weeks before.

  “You know that
younger man with the brown hair that you have come to the barn with? He’s taken a horse, a light roan who is a single-footed pacer, Charley’s his name.” He looked up at the drunken Atzerodt.

  “What of it?”

  “He’s not returned it. Do you know where he is? I need to get that horse back or Mr. Nailor will hold me responsible. I’ll be damned if I’m takin’ the blame ‘cause your friend didn’t bring him back.” Atzerodt looked back at the stableman.

  “Oh don’t worry. He’ll be back after a while,” Atzerodt responded vaguely and then slowly walked the horse up the street. The stable was located close to Willard’s Hotel on Fourteenth Street. Fletcher suddenly became distrustful of Atzerodt and Herold. Here is a man talking of surprise “presents” and “retreats” and his friend has kept a horse out past its allotted time. ‘They are probably up to no good,’ Fletcher thought, so he followed the man on horseback down Pennsylvania Avenue until he watched him go into Kirkwood House around 10:00 PM. Fletcher walked back to the barn in a circuitous route, listening for the roan’s distinctive gait and scanning his eyes down the streets in hopes of finding her. After almost an hour of walking the streets, he found himself near Fifteenth Street. As he neared the Treasury Building, he thought he made out Charley’s gait and jogged toward the sound. He stopped and listened again. Across the street, he saw a rider stop beneath a gas lamp and look around. He was sitting on a roan horse! It was the man he was searching for!

  “You there! That’s my horse and she was due at the stable hours ago!” He yelled and ran toward the man. Before he could get close at all, the man kicked poor Charley into a gallop and fled the area. Fletcher, determined not to pay the price for the stolen horse, ran back to the barn and quickly saddled a horse. He had a feeling the man was heading toward the Navy Yard Bridge.

  David Herold had been surprised by the stableman suddenly running across the street and yelling at him. “Damn fool!” Herold cursed him and kicked the horse to urge him on even faster. He responded and Herold was easily away from the pursuing stableman. “That’s it,” he pronounced to himself. He was now determined more than at any time in his life to leave Washington City. He had no plans to return any time soon, if at all. His stomach sprang into life like moths fluttering around a candle. He would ride south and east to arrive at the Anacostia Bridge. He put Fletcher and his curses behind him and galloped down the street. He fled through the streets of Washington City efficiently, following a similar route as Booth. He slowed his horse as he neared the bridge and approached the picket at what he hoped would appear to be a casual walk.

  “Who goes there?” Sergeant Cobb called out to Herold. He held his hand up to stop him from going by.

  “My name is Smith,” Herold lied.

  “Where are you heading to?”

  “I am going home to White Plains,” Herold responded with the name of a town he knew well in Charles County.

  “You can’t pass as it is after 9:00 o’clock. It is against the rules,” Cobb explained.

  “How long have them rules been out?” Herold demanded, his voice rising.

  “For some time, sir. Ever since I’ve been assigned to this post. How come you weren’t out of the city before this time of night?”

  “I couldn’t very well do that. I stopped to see a woman on Capitol Hill,” Herold said and smirked and winked toward the Sergeant. Cobb looked up at Herold and considered the response. He was a bit surprised with this man’s candor and assumed the intimate detail was shared out of nervousness and, therefore, assumed it was an honest response.

  “Well, if I were to allow you to pass, you could not return until sunrise,” Cobb responded. Herold felt a flood of relief course through him like rushing waters after a summer storm.

  “I don’t plan on a’ comin’ back,” Herold said truthfully and walked on.

  Cobb listened to the clopping of the horses on the low wooden drawbridge. Cobb and the other guard had not been talking too long when a third rider approached the bridge; this time at a gallop. It was John Fletcher in pursuit of the light roan horse, Charley.

  “Did a man with no whiskers and in his twenties come by? He was ridin’ a roan horse,” Fletcher was breathless. He had pushed the horse hard to try to make up for the head start that Herold had on him.

  “Yeah, I just let a man pass on a roan,” Sergeant Cobb answered. “Just a short time ago.”

  “God! I must pass because he has my horse.”

  “If I let you go across, you cannot come back until after sunrise,” Cobb explained.

  “But I just need to retrieve my horse and return. I must get back to the stable and care for the rest of the horses,” Fletcher protested.

  “That’s a rule, sir. You can’t come back until after sunrise.”

  Fletcher looked out over the bridge stretching across the river, the farther end disappearing in the night. He slowly shook his head and tightened his mouth. “Damn it,” he said more to himself than to the Sergeant. He turned his horse and headed back into the city at a much slower pace than when he left it.

  Booth sat on his horse, his left leg still hanging loose out of the stirrup. It was throbbing, and he could feel that it was swollen and pushing against the constraint of the boot. Booth looked from side to side in the dark, straining his ears for sounds of riders in the night. He wondered how much more time he’d have before the Army was called out and the cavalry began the inevitable pursuit of the killer of Abraham Lincoln. He shifted in the saddle, but there was no relief from the throbbing pain in his leg. The mare slammed her hoof down, impatient to be galloping again. She dragged her hoof in the dirt. Then he heard the distant sound of approaching riders—no it was a single rider. Booth gently pulled the reins to lift the horse’s head in case he needed to flee quickly. The hooves pounding the dirt grew louder and then slowed as the rider came over the hill. Booth suddenly felt uneasy and exposed. He had dropped the pistol and only had the Bowie knife as a weapon. He would get the carbine rifles from Mrs. Surratt’s tavern, but now he was essentially defenseless if he was about to be accosted by a Union officer.

  “John? You there?” The rider called out. Booth exhaled. It was Herold.

  “Davey, I am here,” he called out and prodded the horse to step out of the shadows. “Where are the other two?” Booth demanded as the other conspirator approached.

  “I don’t think Tobacco did nothin’ and dunno where he is,” Herold answered.

  “What about Seward?” Booth demanded of Powell’s effort to kill Seward.

  “I think he killed Seward, but we got separated,” Herold lied.

  “But he killed the Secretary of State?” Booth pressed the other.

  “I don’t know for sure, but I think so. That’s what he said, a’ fore we got separated,” he repeated. “What ‘bout Lincoln? Did you kill ‘im?” Herold asked, because he was genuinely curious, but he also wanted to change the topic.

  “He is dead. I shot him in the head,” Booth pronounced the deed in his deep baritone stage voice. Then he winced dramatically to ensure that Herold saw it.

  “Are yeh shot, John?” Herold asked.

  “No. But my leg’s broken. A Colonel was in the box with Lincoln and I had to fight him off after I made my way through tens of the tyrant’s friends and guards to get at him.” Booth embellished ranks and numbers in his rendition, building on the grandiosity of his deed. “He grabbed at me as I leapt from the box, my spur tangled in the flag and I fell funny. I think my leg’s broken, damn it!”

  “Let’s go find a doctor,” Herold said.

  “We have to go to Surrattsville and retrieve the shooting irons at the tavern,” Booth said, wincing once more.

  “Oh, yeah. Well let’s go then,” Herold replied, and waited for Booth. Booth wrapped the fingers of his left hand into the horse’s mane. Before he prodded his horse to head down the road, he paused to listen once more for sounds of Powell’s horse on the road behind them. But there was only silence and the bone-white moon above him. Bo
oth’s spirits sank a bit at not hearing Powell’s horse. He wasn’t disappointed about his friend’s potential capture. He simply wanted the assurance that two of the three targets had been killed that night. Nonetheless, Booth had killed the tyrant and delivered the South a victory that would reenergize the War and their struggle of freedom.

  “Let’s go, Davey. I ‘spect two dead are better than none.” Booth pricked his spur to the horse’s side and the two started down the road towards Surrattsville.

  Panic had begun to spread across Washington City from Tenth Street like a fever running rampant in a dying man. Word of Lincoln’s assassination was shared from house to house and street to street. Theatergoers at Ford’s had stopped at friend’s and family’s homes to tell them of the horrible event. They, in turn, ran over to their friends and family to tell them of the news. Meanwhile, neighbors and soldiers who had viewed the carnage at the Seward’s home had also begun to describe the wreckage to anyone who would listen. Soon, the two stories combined and grew until the city was anxiously awaiting confirmation that the entire Cabinet had been killed along with Ulysses S. Grant. Fear soon followed the news and citizens began to lock their doors and windows. Panic came shortly on the heels of fear as word spread that the murders were but a precursor to a Confederate attack on the city. Citizens looked about anxiously for some sign that the Union Army was in control of the city, but there was none in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. The city streets were emptied except for F Street, outside Petersen’s house, where President Lincoln had been taken. There a growing crowd of people stood, nearly silent, except for brief breathless conversations that took place as the vigil began at the deathbed of Abraham Lincoln.

  “Did you hear that Seward was attacked and killed?” One would whisper to the man next to him, whether he knew him or not.

  “And Stanton as well.”

  “They said the entire Cabinet was attacked, but Welles escaped.”