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

by Berry, John C.

  “Have you news of Grant’s condition? I heard he was shot while sleeping.”

  Agitated citizens cleared the streets and locked their doors. Worried men looked over their shoulders to see if friend or foe had fallen into step behind them. An unruly crowd made their way to the Old Capitol prison, where thousands of Confederate prisoners were being held. They had heard that the rebel army was on their way to attack the guards and free the prisoners. With this force they could easily capture Washington and the war would suddenly take a horrific turn. When they arrived and found the guards safe and the prisoners in hand, the crowd became mob-like and grew angry and demanded to be let in to kill the prisoners for somehow aiding in Lincoln’s assassination.

  Mothers held their children closer on this Good Friday night and men looked through the drapes at the streets outside, peering into the dark for the furtive Confederate soldiers. The President of the United States had been shot for the first time in history. The Secretary and Assistant Secretary of State had also been attacked. Suddenly, the security and confidence of the Union victory drained away in the darkness of night. In just a few short hours, the very foundation of the United States seemed to chip and crack and possibly crumble as the very head of Government had been decapitated. The citizens of the nation’s capital were left with questions and the fear of what the answers might be. With each passing minute the unknown was filled with stories of additional slain leaders and the specter of not only a leaderless country, but also a nation without a government. The hearts of citizens beat restless and mournful in the deep hours of the night.

  When Lewis Powell had “skedaddled” away from the Seward’s home, he headed east. As he had lectured Herold on the need to have things well planned, he had secretly looked at a map and knew there was an alternative bridge to get him over the Eastern Branch and into southern Maryland. As he had fled from Lafayette Park, he had hoped that he was heading towards Benning Road, which would get him to a bridge north of the Navy Yard Bridge that he knew Booth and Herold both planned to take. Powell made his way across the city and found Benning Road with only a few stops to maintain his bearings. He was sweating, had lost his hat, and he felt very exposed without it. ‘What kind of a man rides around the city without his hat on?’ So far he was skedaddling without mishap, but he quickly saw that he had a problem. The bridge across the river and out of the city was gated! Powell pulled the horse up and sat there studying the gate. He cursed his poor luck.

  Powell considered his options as he sat looking through the moonlight at the locked gate. He could head back into the city, try to find a room for the night and then ride to southern Maryland in the morning. That didn’t sit right with him though. You never go towards the enemy when they are making war preparations. Powell knew the city would be crawling with the Union Army and Cavalry now that he’d attacked Seward and Booth had shot the President. He didn’t even consider that Booth had not followed through with his plan to kill Lincoln. So at least two of the most powerful men in the nation had been attacked and the Army would be on high alert. Powell could find the road to Baltimore and head up there. He had friends in Baltimore who would help him. Or, he could just find a place off the road and sleep on the ground. He’d done it many, many times when he was with the Confederate Army. The last option kept him away from the city and the Union Army and offered him the comfort of a country setting. Powell knew that he’d be able to maneuver in the night much more easily in the country than he could the streets of Washington City that were so unfamiliar to him.

  So Powell tapped the one-eyed horse with his heels, but she didn’t move. The damn horse was being stubborn again. He kicked her a bit harder with the heels of his boots, but she continued to stand there.

  “Walk on,” he commanded and kicked her again. The mare stood as still as a stone. “Damn it. Walk on!” He yelled and sunk his heels into her flanks. The horse bolted and Powell barely held on. The mare thundered down Benning, then took a right onto Bladensburg Turnpike, going north. Powell had regained control of her, and was happy to exit the city with as much speed as possible. Now that they were getting out of the city, the houses were far apart. The trees quickly grew thick and dense. The bright moonlight created shadows and odd shapes in the dark.

  As Powell was looking from side to side to make sure there wasn’t a group of soldiers hiding in the trees, the horse suddenly stopped short and dropped her head. Powell tried to keep his seat in the saddle, but the abrupt halt caught him unaware and he fell forward over the lowered head of the horse, flipping in the air. He found himself on the ground, flat on his back and slightly dazed. He lay there for a moment, then stood and brushed his hands. As he was cleaning himself up, the one-eyed horse turned and cantered down the road, back the way they had just come. Powell stood there, his hands hanging empty at his side, and watched her leave him alone on the the road..

  He decided to continue heading north, now on foot. After a short walk, he saw a smaller road forking to the left. He took the fork, deciding if he was off the main roads, there was less likelihood of running in to the Union Army. Powell assumed the Army would have been called out and put on full alert by now if both the President and the Secretary of State had been killed. He knew that Port Tobacco was essentially a coward and had no real love for the Confederacy, so he assumed Andrew Johnson was safe. But Booth was a man of a different color. If Powell was a wagering man, he’d put two dollars down on Lincoln not being alive at this moment. The dirt on the road was always mucky as it never completely dried out before the next rain came.

  Powell walked on the side of the road as much as possible to avoid the wetter patches. It was hard to place his attack on the Secretary of State into the context of his own life. He had been raised as a good Christian boy in the home of a Baptist minister, who was also a schoolmaster and farmer. All of the Powell boys went to war when the North tried to dictate to the South how they should run things. It wasn’t right for the Federal government to tell the states how to manage their own land and their own people. Once his two older brothers had enlisted, Lewis had snuck off at seventeen years of age to enlist in the Confederate army, too.

  He realized that he was approaching a fort off to his right, so he took a road that went the opposite way, which turned out to be Bladensburg Road. Worrying that he would be discovered with blood on his coat, he took it off, rolled it into a ball and tossed it into a small wooded area. As he walked along, he came by another fort, Bunker Hill. It loomed out of the darkening night like a hulk on the ocean. It was a rectangular brick and earthenwork fortification. The air was cooling quickly and clouds were gathering as he walked

  Powell kept his distance from the fort and took a small road south, ending up in Glenwood Cemetery. The gravestones of the cemetery dotted the hillsides like sheep arrayed in perfect symmetry. Ahead he could see a small monument rising in the moonlight, marking the resting place of a wealthy man and his family. The monument was carved with angels and horns. Powell thought it was obscene for a man to create such a thing just to try to retain a sense of glory about himself after he was dead. ‘I done earned my glory. I done earned it tonight,’ he thought to himself. But he had murdered an innocent man. He had not met him on the battlefield but had snuck into his room like a common criminal.

  As he walked across the cemetery, he continued to fret that he would be discovered without his hat. He took off his shirt, draping it over a tombstone, and tore off one of the sleeves from his gray woolen undershirt. He took this and wrapped it around his head tying it behind. Tying cloth around your head was a makeshift hat of the Confederates who lost their proper hats in battle. He ran his hands over the hat in the darkness and adjusted it so it was comfortable and looked proper. He put his shirt and suit coat back on.

  As he walked down a row of graves, he came upon an open gravesite. He stood looking down into the hole opening up before him. The clouds dimmed the moonlight so it didn’t penetrate to the bottom of the open grave. It was perfect blackness.
Powell’s eyes strained to make out the bottom of the grave, but there was nothing there. It was an open hole with no end to it. The grave seemed to be gaping wider and wider and drawing him down into it. He imagined that if he fell forward into the grave he would never hit bottom. He would fall for an eternity. And he would wonder for that eternity if he had done right that night. If he had served his country like he told himself or if he had some how served a mere stage actor. But Mosby had given him the assignment and he was following orders. That would be his eternal conversation … and wondering if Seward had actually died. He stood there mute before the gaping mouth in the earth and realized his life was never to be the same.

  There was a pickaxe stuck in the ground next to the dirt pile that had been dug to make the gravesite. There would be yet another funeral here tomorrow. Powell thought about how many people had been killed because of Lincoln and Seward and the entire administration. He was glad that Booth had killed him and he only hoped that Seward was dead as well. Powell grabbed the pickaxe and propped it on his shoulder. He would take the pickaxe with him. He now had both a weapon and a laborer’s tool. He would claim to be a hired hand. Powell headed to a copse and decided to settle in for the night. It had to be midnight or later.

  The moon shined on John Wilkes Booth and David Herold as they galloped south towards Surrattsville. It was a small town in Prince Georges County, but it would be a friendly place for Booth and Herold, the actor had made sure of that. He had been to Surratt’s Tavern before with John Surratt. The widow had decided to lease the tavern to John Lloyd just a year and-a-half before while she tried to make ends meet by focusing on the boardinghouse in Washington City. Her son John had assumed the position of Postmaster for the town in place of his father John, Sr., until the government figured out that the boy, like his father, was a Southern sympathizer. When they did, John Surratt, Jr., quickly lost the job and income of Postmaster and Mary had no choice but to lease the tavern. Booth hoped that Lloyd, who tended to tipple throughout the day and was typically right smart in liquor at night, would be awake and ready to give them the rifles, field glasses, and whiskey, as he’d asked Mrs. Surratt to ensure that afternoon.

  Galloping through the night did not lend itself to conversation. Booth had planned to relive the assassination by recounting it to Herold, but the man did not ride close enough to hear him. So Booth had relived the attack in his own mind over and again. With each reliving, he began to imagine it differently, more grand and more dramatic. ‘Our cause being almost lost,’ he thought, ‘something decisive and great had to be done. So I struck boldly, walking with a firm step through a thousand of his friends,’ morphing the theatergoers into a series of guards and pickets who were posted to guard the President. ‘And when I was stopped, I pushed on,’ changing the President’s footman into an armed guard in his bold imagination. ‘A Colonel,’ he embellished, ‘was at his side, but I did not allow this to stop me. I shot the tyrant, fought the Colonel off and then leapt to the stage. In the leaping, I broke my leg, but I have been riding these thirty miles with the bones tearing at my flesh. I rode past his pickets on the road leading out of Washington City.’ His mind raced back and forth over the story, reliving it, adding to it where he felt it was needed, and changing the actual details that didn’t quite suit him.

  ‘I can never repent the act,’ he thought. ‘I hated to kill, but our Country owed all of her troubles to him and God simply made me the instrument of His punishment. This Country is no longer what it was. The forced union of South and North is not what I have loved. I do not care to outlive my Country, but I will flee and fight with all that I have in me. I have done the very thing that Brutus was honored for and I will, in turn, be welcomed as a hero when I arrive in my Country. I struck for my Country and that alone. She groaned beneath this tyranny and prayed for its end. I cannot see any wrong except in serving a degenerate people. I do not repent the blow I struck. I may before God, but not to man.’ He looked up at a bank of clouds glowing luminescent and gray from the moon shining behind them as he turned these unrepentant thoughts over in his mind.

  “It’s just over here,” Herold called to him over his shoulder, holding his hand up in case Booth didn’t hear him. They slowed their horses, Booth wincing as the change in pace sent waves of lancing pain up his leg, into his spine. They pulled up and walked their horses towards a small white tavern. The roof was slanted and there was woodpile stacked behind the tavern house.

  “I cannot get off the horse, Davey. Get the whiskey and the carbines and let’s get on with it. Tell that drunkard Lloyd to hurry the hell up.” Booth rubbed the thigh of his left leg and watched Herold dismount. He took a pocket watch from his vest leaning back to get the moon to shine on its face. It was after midnight. They were keeping in pace with his escape plan.

  The young man jumped onto the porch of the tavern, rapped on the door and then immediately went inside without waiting for an answer. Lloyd was sitting at the bar sipping a drink.

  “Lloyd, fer God’s sake make haste and get them things,” Herold said to him by way of greeting. Lloyd looked at him briefly and then headed upstairs without saying a word. Herold went behind the bar and grabbed a bottle of whiskey. He poured a glass full for himself, downing it in two quick gulps. It burned, but the familiar warmth dulled the angst created by the night. He took the bottle with him and went out to give it to Booth.

  Upstairs, John Lloyd had gone to his bedroom. He had laid out the package wrapped in brown paper from Mrs. Surratt along with two carbine rifles. Several weeks before, on the day of the failed attempt to kidnap Abraham Lincoln, David Herold had given him the two rifles and told him to hide them and they’d come back for them later. Lloyd had not felt comfortable keeping the rifles, so he had gone to an unfinished room in the house and hidden them between the joists and ceiling. When Mrs. Surratt had told him to have the shooting irons ready because someone would come for them that night, Lloyd had taken them out and laid them out in his bedroom to keep them safe and out of sight. He had been drinking all afternoon and most of the night. He was thoroughly drunk at this point. He had fallen asleep at about 8:00 but had awakened around midnight and gone down to the bar to get another drink as a sleep aid when Herold had knocked loudly, bursting into the tavern a bundle of nervous energy.

  Lloyd carried the guns down to the bar and found it empty, so he went outside. There he found Herold standing on the porch, pacing. Outside, he saw a man sitting on a lighter colored horse with a smaller roan pony standing unmounted. He assumed the roan was Herold’s ride.

  He saw the man on the horse tip a bottle up and realized that Herold had taken a bottle of whiskey from the bar. “Here,” he spoke for the first time and thrust the rifles at Herold. Lloyd also held out the field glasses wrapped in brown paper. Herold unwrapped the glasses and let the paper and string fall to the ground. He carried the glasses to Booth, whom Lloyd did not know, and lifted up one of the rifles.

  “I cannot take the rifle, Davey. I won’t be able to hold it and hang on to the horse. I have a broken leg.” Booth made this last statement to Lloyd standing on the porch. Lloyd nodded his head mutely. Herold brought the rifle back and propped it against the wall of the tavern. He handed the near empty bottle back to Lloyd.

  “Here. I owe you a couple dollars,” he said and handed Lloyd a single dollar coin. Lloyd looked vacantly down at the coin in his hand.

  “I will tell you some news if you want to hear it,” Booth called from his horse as Herold remounted.

  “I am not p’ticular,” Lloyd replied. His voice was thick from the alcohol and the words seemed a surprise to him as they came out of his mouth. “Use yore own pleasure about tellin’ it.”

  “Well, I am pretty certain that we have assassinated the President and the Secretary of State.” Booth blurted and didn’t wait for a response from the tavern keeper, but sank his spurs into the tired mare and galloped off into the night. David Herold kicked the roan pony and trailed behind him. John Lloyd stood on
the porch looking at the empty place where the midnight visitors had just been. He could smell the dust the horses had kicked up hanging in the air. He turned the sentence over in his hazy head and realized that no good was to come of this dark night. He scratched his head then turned and went inside to get something more to drink. He would go to sleep and not tell anyone of these men who had visited the tavern so late at night.

  Back Parlor Government

  Edwin Stanton entered Petersen’s house with Gideon Welles, Chief Justice Cartter, and General Meigs. He removed his hat and coat. The house felt small to him and the world now seemed concentrated into the three rooms of the first floor of the boardinghouse that were teeming with people. The men and a few women moved by him more slowly than he was accustomed to. There were but a few people huddled in the first room on the left and Stanton realized that one of them was Mrs. Lincoln. The three men stepped inside to briefly speak with her, while General Meigs slowly walked down the hallway in search of President Lincoln. She sat with Miss Harris at her side on a sofa. They were still dressed in evening gowns for the theater. It seemed such a normal scene, as if two friends had returned from the play and were talking in a room while their husbands were off enjoying cigars in the gentlemen’s room. As they entered, Clara Harris stood to speak with them. The three men stopped together. Miss Harris was a creature from a nightmare and each man stopped breathing for a moment. Stanton’s spine stiffened in surprise. Miss Harris was elegantly dressed with her hair pulled up and held in place with tortoise shell combs. But her lovely dress was heavily spattered across the front with dark brown specks that were smeared into brown smudges in places. Her delicate high cheekbones also were smudged. Stanton at first thought it was carelessness with make-up until he realized it was blood. The dull brown of dried blood covered her dress, smudged her face, and was in her hair. She was a walking nightmare.