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

by Berry, John C.

  After Lee, the Major, and their men had completed their search of the hotel, he went over to talk with the bartender. After all, he thought, the bartender has a chance to see all visitors to the hotel as well as guests who are staying in the rooms. It wasn’t long before the bartender, a man by the name of Michael Henry, told Lee of a dirty gentleman that he considered peculiar. This particular man had checked in to the hotel earlier today, spoke with a German accent, and had appeared in the bar at about 10:00 that very night. Henry reported that the man seemed nervous and looked around all the time. Even though the clock was clearly visible, he had repeatedly asked the bartender for the time. Then he left the bar after downing two quick whiskeys some time before 10:30.

  Lee thought that a “dirty man” was out of place with the fine appointments of the Kirkwood House and he became suspicious. He asked the bartender to bring him the register and point out this man’s name and room. Henry ran his finger down the list and stopped at a name scrawled across the line: G. A. Atzerodt.

  “It looks like a child’s writing,” Lee observed.

  “I tol’ you he was an odd one,” Henry replied.

  “He is staying in room 126. Is he still here?”

  “I don’t reckon he’s checked out.”

  “Then bring me the key at once,” Lee ordered.

  “I done checked and it ain’t there. I think he’s got it with him.”

  “Then take me to the room and bring the house key ring. If there isn’t a key in the hotel, I’ll break the door in. We must inspect his room.” The two men, with others trailing, walked past Johnson’s room, now with a single guard posted, up the stairs. They stopped in front of room 126.

  “My God, isn’t this room directly above the Vice President’s room?” Lee asked.

  “I reckon it is,” Henry answered.

  “Did he request this room?” Lee asked, but the bartender had no idea. “An odd coincidence, if it is one.” Lee turned the knob to go in, but the door was locked. He jiggled it some more and pushed against the door, but it was secure. He took the hotel key ring from the bartender and patiently tried each key on the ring, but none of them worked.

  “I’ll have to burst it open,” he said and began to slam his shoulder against the door until it gave way, splintering the doorjamb. Inside, they turned up the gas jets to see better. The warm yellow light filled the room and revealed a sparse room with a coal black coat hanging from a hook on the wall to the left of the door. Lee methodically looked around, taking it all in, then set about inspecting each item in the room thoroughly and systematically. He checked underneath the rug, looked around the washstand, went through each drawer in the bureau, and got onto his hands and knees and looked underneath it. Moving in a circle, he examined each piece of furniture and each object. He next took the time to inspect the fireplace and sifted through the ashes to see if anything had been hidden or recently burned there. Nothing seemed out of order so far. He stepped over to the bed and pulled up the bedspread and ran his hands over it entirely.

  “What’er you doin’ that for?” Michael Henry asked.

  “I’m checkin’ to see if anything has been sewn into the spread or quilt.” He dropped each one to the floor as he completed his inspection. He picked up the pillow and stopped. “What’s this?” He’d discovered a pistol and carefully examined it. “It’s loaded and capped,” he said more to himself.

  At this point Lee was so absorbed in his inspection that he barely realized anyone else was in the room with him. When he ran his hand down the sheets on the bed, he felt another metal object. He pulled the sheet back and found a Bowie knife in the middle of the bed. He then took out a slip of paper and catalogued everything they’d found in the room. He listed everything from a piece of licorice to an old newspaper to three boxes of .44-caliber cartridges. He then went back to the black coat he first noticed when he entered the room and went through its pockets. He found two handkerchiefs and noted that the first one had “F. M. Nelson” embroidered into it. He set it on the table, then unfolded the second handkerchief and read another name sewn into the fabric: “Mary A. H. Booth.” He took out two small books from the other pocket. The first was a copy of Perrine’s Map of the Southern States. The second appeared to be a bankbook. He flipped through it and saw that it was an account book from the Bank of Ontario and read the name of the account holder.

  “Didn’t you say this room was checked out to a G. A. Atzerodt?” Lee asked the bartender.

  “Yes, that’s that queer man’s name. Why do you ask?”

  “Because this account book is in the name of John Wilkes Booth.”

  “I don’t reckon I seen him here. Ain’t he that actor?”

  “I believe you are right, Mr. Henry. I believe you are right. You there, take hold of these things and don’t lose them. I am going to tell Major O’Beirne what we’ve found. Our Mr. Atzerodt was armed and loaded tonight for some deed. I think the Major should know about it.”

  By the time Lee got down to Johnson’s room, it was empty. The Vice President had decided he would go to the President’s side if even for a brief moment. It was important to him that he pay his respects to the President. The man deserved it. But Johnson also did not want to appear as if he was some how grasping for the office of President. It was not a promotion that he relished. So Johnson told O’Beirne and Farwell to accompany him. He buttoned his coat and pulled his hat down low to disguise his face. The three men walked unaccompanied and without weapons the few blocks to the Petersen House. It was about 1:30 in the morning by the time they got through the crowd and stepped inside. The word quickly spread to Stanton and the other Cabinet members that Vice President Johnson had arrived. Johnson removed his hat and inquired in which room the President lay. He then walked slowly down the hallway and into the room. The window had been thrown open to keep fresh air circulating and to cool the room that had become stifling from the number of people standing around the bedside. The entire Cabinet, except Seward, was in the house and often times in the room with Lincoln at the same time. Johnson stepped into the room and a few people stepped aside to allow him to stand next to Lincoln. He looked down at the President and his own eye twitched slightly at the sight of Lincoln’s protruding left eye, mottled with a purplish bruise. Johnson breathed slowly and steadily, aware that all eyes in the room were on him now rather than the President. He wasn’t but a couple of minutes in the room when Senator Sumner stepped next to him and whispered softly in his ear.

  “Sir, Mary Lincoln would like to come and sit next to her husband. I believe it will be better for her and all of us here if she did not see you in the room. It will only serve to unsettle her.” Sumner was playing the role of emissary for his friend Abraham Lincoln and, particularly, for his family. Mary Lincoln hated Andrew Johnson with a venom beyond what she felt even for Edwin Stanton. She believed that he was an uncouth drunkard whom Lincoln should never have chosen as his running mate for re-election. Robert Lincoln, and all who’d been witness to Mary’s incessant whimperings and sudden screams of terror, could only imagine the paroxysm of pain and grief that would erupt from the First Lady if she found Andrew Johnson at the side of her husband. She would assume the worst—that he was here to hurry on the death so he could ascend to the highest office in the land. Johnson listened to what the Senator said and then nodded ever so slightly just as Stanton stepped into the room.

  “Mr. Vice President, you can leave now,” the Secretary of War announced icily. Johnson stiffened his back and swallowed, ignoring Stanton’s snub and disrespect. He kept his eyes down and focused on Lincoln laying before him. This is the man under whom he was supposed to serve the country he loved. He felt a hollow point in his heart suddenly widen and fill his chest at the loss of this man whom he truly respected. ‘It was sad that the world would no longer have Abraham Lincoln in it,’ he thought. Then he said quietly, to no one in particular, “I believe I shall leave now as my space can be better used by the doctors.” With that, Johnson left t
he Petersen House and returned to the Kirkwood with Farwell.

  While O’Beirne and John Lee were searching Kirkwood House for signs of additional conspirators and going through Atzerodt’s belongings, Colonel Timothy Ingraham, the Provost Marshal for the defenses of North Potomac, had become aware of two important pieces of information. First, he had learned that John Wilkes Booth was suspected of shooting the President. Ingraham had been the commander of the 38th Massachusetts infantry before becoming a Provost Marshal. He was an older man with a balding head and he wore spectacles. He was outraged to learn that the President had been gunned down in cold blood while he was trying to find relaxation at the theater. A number of officers and theatergoers had stopped by his office at Nineteenth and I Streets that night to provide information and to see if they could elicit information from the gruff Colonel.

  The second piece of information came from a general who shared with Ingraham that Booth was known to stay at the National Hotel and he imagined that much could be learned from inspecting the man’s belongings. That was enough for Ingraham. He summoned Lieutenant William Tyrell, a man on whom he had relied repeatedly since becoming Provost Marshal, along with a few men and sent them to the National Hotel to see what they could find.

  Like many men in the Provost Marshal service, William Tyrell had served in the war. He had been wounded five times in various battles, each time returning to serve in the Union Army. Tyrell and his men rode their horses east across I Street until they came to Fifteenth Street, which they took until they got to Pennsylvania Avenue, which led them to the National Hotel at Sixth Street. It was now getting past one o’clock in the morning. The night sky was beginning to cloud up, but the moon still shone bright against the sky, dimming the stars. The air was brisk though it was the beginning of spring and Tyrell pulled his coat closer around him. He and his men were wary with all that had gone on and they looked about for any sign of Confederate soldiers who might be lurking in the shadows of Pennsylvania Avenue. Even as he looked, the detective was struck by how odd it was that he felt the need to search for conspirators. But the President of the United States had been mortally wounded and the Secretary and Assistant Secretary of State had both been viciously attacked on the same night and at the same time. It was a new day in the nation’s Capitol and it was a particularly dark day presenting new and unsettling possibilities.

  The men tied their horses off at the National Hotel and walked inside. Tyrell asked for the night manager, but the only person available was the clerk at the front desk at this time of night.

  “Well, my good man, then let me explain to you what I need you to do. I am Lieutenant Tyrell of the North Potomac Provost Marshal office. President Lincoln and Secretary of State Seward have both been attacked tonight.”

  “Yes, I heard. Awful business,” the man interjected.

  “Well, we are very sure that John Booth, the actor, has been staying here.” He ended his statement by allowing his voice to rise so it came across to the clerk as a question. The clerk was pulled in and nodded his head in confirmation.

  “Mr. Booth has been staying in room 228 up on the fourth floor,” he explained. “But you don’t think that Mr. Booth had anything t’do with this awful business?” The clerk asked with wide eyes. “He did and I’ll be wanting into his room shortly. Have you seen Booth recently?” Tyrell asked the clerk.

  “No, sir, not since about seven o’ clock, I believe. He left the hotel at about that time tonight and I haven’t seen him since.” The clerk was crestfallen, obviously a big fan of Wilkes Booth and disappointed to discover that his idol was an assassin.

  “We must search his belongings because he is still out there and we want to capture him. And there were other men involved and we want to find them right away,” the Lieutenant said, bringing the clerk back from his thoughts as he went to retrieve the house key. Then Tyrell turned to his men. “Go and search the hotel and make sure it’s secure and that Booth isn’t hiding somewhere. I’ll go look into his things. Meet me at the room when you are done.”

  Once the clerk had unlocked the door, Tyrell quietly opened the door and ducked his head in and out, trying to see if there was someone in the room without stepping in directly and making himself vulnerable to danger. The man had every right to be wary as just ten months prior, in June of 1864, Tyrell was arresting a draft dodger when the man suddenly resisted and, in the ensuing struggle, Tyrell was shot in the neck. Once satisfied that Booth’s room was empty, he stepped carefully inside.

  “Please turn up the jets,” he said to the clerk. As the room came into full light, the Lieutenant looked around the room. It was a spare room, certainly not one of the best at the National Hotel, but well above the average hotel room in Washington City. Tyrell was not as systematic as John Lee, but he made his way around the room and through Booth’s belongings. He did not find anything of interest or out of the ordinary as he looked in the bureau of drawers and over the small table in the room. He did not find much more than everyday items such as a clothes brush, slippers, plug tobacco, and a comb. In the drawers were a few clothes and some hair oil.

  “So, my good clerk, does anything look odd to you?” Tyrell asked as he looked at a pair of boots on the floor.

  “There’s somethin’ that’s not quite right. I can’t quite think of it though,” the clerk responded looking around the room.

  “Yes, indeed. It has the feel of a man who has left quickly—who has made a hasty exit, doesn’t it?” Tyrell stepped around the bed and saw a large trunk against the wall. “What do we have here?” He asked aloud to himself. “J Wilkes Booth” was stenciled across the top of the trunk and below that “Theatre.” It was a black box and the edges of the letters were rough and chipped. The trunk itself was nicked and faded and showed signs of being well used and moved around a lot. Tyrell lifted the lid and looked inside. His eyes widened and he realized that he was looking at a trove of evidence. “Can you straighten the covers on the bed so that I can lay out these things on the top of it?”

  Tyrell methodically went item by item in the trunk and those things that he thought would be useful in a trial to incriminate Booth, he laid out on the bed. As he finished, he stepped back. By that time his men had joined him and helped to arrange the evidence. On the bed lay a gimlet, like you’d use to drill into wood; two pairs of handcuffs; a large quantity of papers, which would have to be reviewed later; the dress coat of a Colonel in the Union army; and pistol cartridges. Tyrell bundled up the evidence in one of the sheets from the bed to take with him to Colonel Ingraham’s office. He asked the clerk to gather up the rest of Booth’s belongings, put them into the trunk, and then take the trunk to the hotel baggage room for safe keeping.

  After Edwin Stanton curtly dismissed the Vice President and soon-to-be-President of the United States from Lincoln’s bedside, he went back to his newly made office in the small room next to where Lincoln’s deathwatch was occurring. He sat down to write a telegram to John Kennedy, Chief of Police in New York City. Stanton realized that New York had the most developed detective system in the country. He wanted to have the best and brightest working for him on the hunt for the assassins. He took up a pen and quickly scribbled:

  Send here immediately three or four of your best detectives to investigate the facts as to the assassination of the President and Secretary Seward. They are still alive, but the President’s case is hopeless, and that of Mr. Seward nearly the same.

  In the meantime, word was making its way across the military’s telegraph lines of the news and orders were sent to alert forts and place troops on guard as far south as Southern Maryland and to make all troops in the field aware throughout the land. Stanton continued to issue orders and orchestrate movements of men and material. Every other Cabinet member sat or stood at Lincoln’s side, except for the injured William Seward. Stanton went back and forth between the deathwatch and this room where he set in motion the manhunt for the assassins, oversaw the small court of inquiry into what happened, posit
ioned troops around the city to neutralize any potential attacks, ordered all trains to be inspected for suspicious characters, and closed all roads leading out of the Capital. While Lincoln breathed uneasily, he remained the President of the United States. The Vice President, hated and distrusted by the Cabinet, had been ordered back to his hotel room like some toady of the Secretary of War. The Speaker of the House, Schuyler Colfax, sat in the room next to Stanton in a state of disbelief. All the while, Edwin Stanton issued orders, arranged matters, and took control of the vast United States government. During the state of war, Stanton had gained responsibility for the vast majority of the human and other resources of the United States—simply through the sheer size of the war effort. While his peers on the Cabinet wept and watched their dying leader, Stanton had become the de facto President of the United States. As he continued to orchestrate the various resources at his disposal and establish some kind of order in the midst of this chaotic night, James O’Beirne and John Lee interrupted Stanton.

  “What is it, O’Beirne? Have you found them?” The War Secretary asked hopefully.

  “No, sir, but Lee here has found something that I think you’ll want to see directly yourself,” the Provost Marshal of Washington replied holding his hand out to Lee, who stepped up at the acknowledgement from his senior.