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

by Berry, John C.

  “Your mother has sent me.” Bangs faltered and stopped there. He could feel tears beginning to well up in his eyes.

  “Sent you for what purpose?” Robert asked, fear rising up in his chest as he saw the tears gathering in Bangs’ eyes.

  “The President… Your father has been shot, Captain Lincoln. Your mother greatly desires you to be at her side.” Bangs dropped his eyes to the floor as he said these final words.

  “Shot? That can’t be,” Robert blurted out. “How is he?” He quickly asked, looking from Bangs to the guard and then back again. Bangs looked down and responded with an almost imperceptible shake of the head.

  “My God, Robert. We must go at once. Where is he? I thought they were at the theater,” Hay said, picking up his hat. Robert stood still staring before him, but not taking in his surroundings. He was suddenly devastated to find that he would not have his father casting his long shadow and bright laughter over his days.

  “Where was he shot? Where is he now?” Robert suddenly asked Bangs.

  “He was shot while watching the play at Ford’s. They have brought him to a boarding house across the street,” he answered.

  Robert Lincoln nodded in response. He allowed himself to be led from the room, down the grand staircase to the carriageway at the north portico of the Executive Mansion. As they were walking out of the door, Senator Charles Sumner drove up in his carriage. Sumner was the senior senator from Massachusetts and he and Lincoln had become political allies and friends during his time in the Executive Mansion. The Senator was an abolitionist from the heart and a staunch supporter of voting and education rights for the Negro.

  “Well, Robert, what sad news is this that I have heard of your father? What is his condition?” Sumner asked walking up to the President’s son and putting his hand on his shoulder.

  “Senator, I have just learned of the shooting myself. This young man is taking me to the President … to my father,” he stopped and cleared his throat, choking back the sobs that were welling up in his chest. Sumner squeezed his shoulder with his hand.

  “It is okay, Robert,” he said softly.

  “Senator, please join us,” was all that Robert could say in response. He stepped up into the hackney carriage with Hay and Sumner. Bangs sat up front with the driver and they rode at breakneck speed a block down Pennsylvania and then down E Street until they arrived at Tenth Street. The crowd outside of Petersen’s House was so large at this point that it was spilling out onto E Street. The hack stopped the carriage and Bangs hopped down and told the three men to follow him. He would clear a way.

  As they began pushing through the crowd, Bangs called out, “Clear the way for the son of the President. Clear the way for the son of the President.” It was like the waters parting. Men and women stood aside to allow them to pass unmolested. Some mumbled words of comfort. Men removed their hats in honor of the fallen President. Robert walked along in the moonlight with tears running down his face. When they reached the steps leading to the house, Bangs walked ahead of them and opened the door. As Senator Sumner and John Hay walked in, Robert Lincoln stopped to speak with Bangs.

  “Mr?” He asked by way of getting his name.

  “C. C. Bangs is my name, sir.”

  “Mr. Bangs, you have been very kind to come to get me.” As they were speaking, Dr. Stone, the family physician greeted Robert. Sumner and Hay were standing just inside the door awaiting the President’s son, holding their hats in their hands.

  “Dr. Stone, how is my father?” Lincoln asked.

  “Robert, your father will not live much longer, I am afraid. He was shot in the back of the head at close range. He has been unconscious since the attack. It is impossible for him to recover.” He had taken Robert’s hand in greeting and now held it in comfort. Robert dropped his head and squeezed his eyes shut, fighting back the tears.

  “It is as I believed,” he said while still looking at the floor. He then looked up and scanned the house, looking for someone. “Where is mother? Is Mrs. Dixon here?”

  “I don’t believe she is here,” Dr. Stone replied.

  Robert Lincoln then turned back to C. C. Bangs. “Mr. Bangs, if I could ask you for one more kindness. Mrs. Dixon is the wife of Senator Dixon. If you would be so kind as to get her and bring her here I would be most appreciative. She is a dear friend to my mother, who will be needing a kind soul to comfort her right now. You have done much already, but this additional kindness would be well done.”

  “Of course, right away,” Bangs replied and started back down the steps in search of Mrs. Dixon.

  “Please take me to my father,” Robert said to Dr. Stone and followed him down the hallway to the room at the end. Sumner and Hay were trailing behind Robert.

  Their footsteps sounded hollow in the short hallway. Robert saw a door open at the end of a small room cramped with people. As he entered, he realized it was a small room and men and a few women were crowded around a bed. He looked down and saw his father laying unconscious on the bed with his head upon a blood-stained pillow. Robert Lincoln silently looked down at the President of the United States, shot and dying. This man was his own father—full of laughter and wisdom. This man had also been the hope of the nation, delivering her from a civil war and promising a united future. This man whom half the country reviled and another half praised and loved—though they truly did not know him—was his own father. The one who’d taught him, raised him, scolded him, and laughed with him. The son was the hope of the family, returning from war and about to finish his studies at Harvard. The father-son tableau was now turned on its head. The father was still and dying in the bed. The son was standing, taking on the weight of his family and the history of this night. Robert could not keep from looking at his father’s right eye. It was swollen and distended. The purple and blue mottling now spread out from his eye socket and colored the pale cheek. It was his father’s face, and yet it was so distorted, he did not recognize him.

  The son suddenly sobbed loudly. He stood erect for a brief moment, stifling the sobs, but then it was all too much and he completely fell apart. He reached out and wrapped his arms around Charles Sumner and laid his head on his shoulder, weeping bitterly. His body heaved as the sobs shook him. Sumner closed his eyes tightly and held the President’s son like a babe. No one spoke as the son gave vent to his emotions. After he calmed himself, Robert said he was going to check on his mother, tugging on the hem of his suit coat to straighten his clothes.

  Senator Sumner took the chair that was next to the bed and faced Lincoln. He took Lincoln’s hand. “Mr. President? Mr. President? Do you hear me? There is still much work that must be done. We do have to make decisions on what we will do for …”

  “Senator Sumner, he cannot hear you. It is of no use. He is as good as dead,” Dr. Taft said to him.

  “He is not dead!” The Senator snapped back. “He is breathing isn’t he? Look at his face. He is breathing. Mr. President, can you hear me?” Sumner kept speaking to the unconscious President as if to soothe himself more than anything.

  Robert quietly approached his mother in the front parlor. He placed his hand on her back and spoke softly. “Oh, Mother, what’re we to do now? What’re we to do now?” She looked up at her son and wailed. The sound of her voice, riddled with desperation and despair, filled the house like the disconsolate sound of a wolf baying at the moon.

  “Why did they not kill me? Why am I here and he is gone? I do not understand why I am here, Robbie. Why am I here?” Suddenly her voice was calm and she looked at Robert with some clarity in her eyes as if she expected an answer. He looked at her blinking and before he could say anything she broke into another wail. “Why not me? Why not me? I don’t want to be here without him.” He collapsed into the couch beside her and held her, rocking her back and forth. The son was holding the mother and rocking and shushing her as if she were the child.

  General Christopher Columbus Augur was the commanding general of the XXII Corps and the Department of Washingt
on. As such, he was responsible for the troops and garrisons in and around Washington City. Augur cut a fine figure as he made his way around the city. Though he was in his mid forties, he had a full head of gray hair and long flowing whiskers that touched his shoulders. He was always immaculately dressed and drew the eyes of appreciative women on the streets. He had served as the commandant of the Military Academy at West Point earlier in his career and commanded troops in battle during the war. He had been wounded in action during the vicious fighting at Cedar Mountain and assigned to protect the Capital City upon his recovery.

  General Augur’s headquarters were at the corner of Seventeenth and I Streets, just a couple of blocks north of Lafayette Square where Seward’s house was located. One of the officers on Augur’s staff, Captain Theodore McGowan, was at Ford’s Theatre earlier that night and watched Booth hand his card to Abraham Lincoln’s footman. McGowan had no idea that he was quietly watching the assassin of the President wile his way into Lincoln’s private box. He had immediately gone to find the General at home to inform him of the attack on the President and the two quickly learned about the fate of the Secretary and Assistant Secretary of State. Augur and his officers did not wait for formal orders from Secretary Stanton. Augur immediately detached soldiers to guard Seward’s house and he put the rest of his men on alert and ordered an investigation to begin. It wasn’t long before Augur’s office was flooded with men and women coming to provide testimony of what they’d witnessed that night. The General immediately put the seventy-two forts encircling the nation’s capital on alert, called the cavalry to mount, and put the infantry on guard. Augur issued orders for the exits from the city to be closed. His goal was to put units of soldiers and mounted cavalry out to patrol the streets of Washington City in a show of force to calm the nerves of the citizens who would naturally fear that the war was about to begin again in earnest. Though the orders were quick to be made, it took time for them to be relayed from garrison to garrison and to be telegraphed from fort to fort.

  Edwin Stanton had given vent to his grief, but he had also given vent to the fears that he harbored in his heart. The scene at Seward’s house had almost unnerved him. The President, laying prone and near death on the bed in the room next to him, had caused his heart to break. But once he had allowed himself to weep, he had collected himself and set his mind to the work at hand. He holed up in the room next to where the President lay dying and got down to work. He would not become unhinged and he would not allow the Confederacy to steal away the victory that was in his grasp. Stanton had decided that he would take his grief and channel it into anger and allow his anger to drive him forward. The rest of the Cabinet, except William Seward, had collected at Petersen’s house over the past hour and with the President’s presence, albeit unconscious, this was now officially the Executive Mansion and the seat of power for the United States Government. Stanton controlled the most resources of anyone in the administration and he was not about to let another minute go by without taking action to prevent any further attacks on the Cabinet, the Capital, or his beloved leader. Stanton began to issue orders to be carried to officers around the country. He reinforced Auger’s orders to seal the city. He sent word to have the railroads from Washington to Baltimore stopped and searched. He alerted the officers in Virginia to watch for the assassins along the Potomac. He told the officers in West Virginia to watch at Harpers Ferry.

  Stanton, once one of the most renowned trial attorneys in the country, set up a court of inquiry in the room where he sat. David Cartter, the Chief Justice of the District of Columbia Supreme Court, who accompanied him to the Petersen house served as the chief investigator. Britten Hill, an attorney, and Abram Olin, a former congressman from New York and a justice on the District of Columbia Supreme Court, were in the Petersen House. Stanton immediately made the other two men members of the de facto court. They began taking testimony almost immediately. Men and women filed in; the three men began to receive their testimony, capturing everything in long hand.

  The process quickly became tedious. General Halleck, who was in the room with them, suggested that they take the testimony down in shorthand. General Augur, who had come to the Petersen House to check on the President and consult with Edwin Stanton, went out to ask the crowds outside the house if anyone knew where a phonographer could be found to take down the testimony in shorthand. A man standing on a balcony of the house next door told him that a James Tanner was a lodger in the Petersen House where the General stood and he was a phonographer. General Augur went to the second floor room and pounded on the door. Tanner had served in the 87th New York infantry for the Union army during the war. He had been severely injured in the Second Battle of Bull Run when a cannonball nearly severed his feet from his legs. As he was carried face-down on a stretcher from the field, he regained consciousness and looked underneath the stretcher and noticed his feet hanging by the skin from his legs. He called out that he was worried his feet would fall off, so the soldiers carrying him graciously placed his feet on the stretcher next to his legs.

  James Tanner had gone to Grover’s National Theatre earlier in the night to see Aladdin. The show was very enjoyable and he was having a supremely good time. Suddenly, the whole thing came to a halt and a pale gentleman came onto the stage. It was the manager. He calmed the crowd and then announced that President Lincoln had been shot. There was a moment of stunned silence and then a young man screamed. Tanner and everyone else in the audience turned to see little Tad Lincoln, the President’s youngest son, break into tears at the news that his father had been shot. Tanner had left the theater and made his way home, only to discover that the President had been brought to the boarding house where he stayed. By coincidence, General Augur had escorted Tanner through the crowds, when he learned this man was a veteran of the war and could not get to his room because of the crowds filling the street between Petersen’s house and the Ford Theatre. Otherwise, he might have been out roaming the streets. Tanner had gone upstairs and was looking at the gathering crowd on the street below when someone pounded on his door. As Tanner walked toward the door, he assumed that the worst had happened and someone was going to tell him that President Lincoln had died in one of the rooms below.

  “What is it?” He asked as he opened the door.

  “Secretary Stanton is requesting your help in taking testimony.” Tanner, stunned, looked back at General Augur.

  “Me?”

  “Oh, it is you is it?” Augur replied recognizing the young man he’d helped through the crowd. “Yes, he needs a phonographer because it’s taking too long to write the witnesses’ testimony out. Come on.” He turned and left, expecting Tanner to follow. The phonographer was so dumbfounded that he forgot to grab a pen, inkstand, and paper. But when he walked into the room, he saw that a table was laid out before him with all of the necessary instruments. He glanced around the room, realizing that it was not only Secretary Stanton, but other members of the Cabinet in the room as well. Tanner blinked and felt his stomach lighten at the thought of serving along side all of these great men at such a time.

  It was a little past midnight when Tanner settled himself into the chair and was ready to take down the testimony. He saw a paper in front of him that had ten or eleven lines of writing on it already. He scanned it quickly and realized it was testimony that had been taken in longhand. He simply skipped a line and began to take the testimony in shorthand.

  The first man to speak was Alfred Cloughly. “I was walking through Lafayette Park when I heard screams coming from the Seward’s house. I immediately ran over to see what was the matter and saw a man come running from the house. He was screaming something, and he quickly got onto his horse. I immediately ran to the Seward’s, realizing that something terrible had happened. My first thought was to rush down to Ford’s Theatre to inform President Lincoln. On the way there, I discovered that Lincoln had been attacked as well. I was terribly afraid and rushed to Senator Conness’ house to tell him. When I got there I told both S
enators Conness and Sumner, who was visiting Conness.”

  Next were witnesses from Ford’s Theatre and Tanner soon began to write a recurring name: John Wilkes Booth. Harry Hawk, the only actor on the stage when Booth jumped from the President’s Box, at first said that he was “not positive” that it was Booth. But later in his short statement, he then said he did “not have any doubt but that it was Booth.” Tanner forced his mind to listen to the statements and capture them accurately in shorthand. The news was stunning—John Wilkes Booth, the actor, had shot the President of the United States—but Tanner had to focus and not let his mind wander on conjecture and fascination. James Ferguson was next to take the seat in front of Edwin Stanton.

  “Major Eckert?” Stanton called out for the head of the Telegraph Office, interrupting the proceedings. When the Major came over, Stanton talked in a low voice and ordered him to inform General Grant of what had happened and to request his prompt reply so that he could be assured that his top general was safe. He also wanted Grant in the city as quickly and safely as he could be here. Eckert left the room and Stanton resumed his seat with a distracted look about him. As Justice Cartter was about to begin questioning James Ferguson the entire room went quiet. Through the open doorway came the sound of Abraham Lincoln’s labored breathing. It was stertorous and rasping. With each labored effort, each man in the room wondered if the President would have the strength to take another breath. Without meaning to, each man held his own breath, urging their leader to take another himself. The rasping sound continued for perhaps two minutes and then eased again. Without a word of acknowledgement, Cartter began taking James Ferguson’s statement.

  “I own a restaurant next to Ford’s. Because my place is so close to the theater, I had become acquaintances with Wilkes Booth since he would often come by to eat when he was performing at the theater or picking up his mail. The Ford Brothers told me that both Lincoln and Grant would be at the play tonight, so I got tickets early to make sure I could attend as well. I had taken a seat opposite of the President’s Box, so I could look through my opera glasses directly into the President’s Box. I was looking at the President when the shot had been fired.