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

by Berry, John C.

  Stanton stood behind the Reverend with tears streaming down his face and into his beard. His nose was running into his mustache. But he did not wipe his face. He simply stood looking through his blurred vision at his Old Chief, who lay dead on the bed before him.

  “Now he belongs to the ages,” he pronounced. Several in the room nodded their heads in agreement and many more dissolved into tears.

  Robert Lincoln collected himself and took a deep breath. He needed to tell his mother the news. As he walked into her room, he saw that she was sitting upright for the first time. She was calmer than she’d been at any point in the night.

  “Mother,” he said gently and she turned and looked up at his tear-stained face. Her eyes widened already knowing what he was about to say.

  “He is gone, Mother. Father has died,” he said and put his hand on her shoulder. She collapsed against Mrs. Dixon and wailed and shrieked at the top of her voice.

  “Why did you not tell me he was dying? Why did you not tell me?” Her wails filled the entire house and announced the death of the President of the United States to those who were in the rooms above, who were just waking. When she had finally spent her initial grief at the final news, Robert took her to Lincoln’s bedside. She fell on his body and wailed again. They allowed her to grieve without interruption. After a time, she calmed herself and sat back. Robert helped her to her feet.

  “Come, Mother. We must go back to the Executive Mansion to tell poor Taddy the sad news. Let’s go.” He helped her down the hallway. He put her cape around her shoulders and Mary Lincoln, still dressed in her elegant gown for the theater, stumbled her way to the front door. Robert opened the door and as Mary stepped out onto the small stoop, she looked out over the crowd of people standing silently in the street. The faces turned up in expectation and hope at the sight of the First Lady. She looked at Ford’s Theater across the street.

  “I wish that building had never been built,” she said to her son. “I wish we’d never gone out last night. Oh, Robby, why did they kill him and not me? Why did they not kill me?” Robert practically carried her down the steps and helped her into the carriage. The driver slowly worked his way through the crowd. Their faces were wet with tears and the rain. Watching the weeping First Lady drive away in her carriage had answered their question.

  Abraham Lincoln had died.

  This long night had finally come to an end.

  Afterword

  Within three hours of Abraham Lincoln’s last breath, Chief Justice of the United States, Salmon Chase, swore Andrew Johnson in as the seventeenth President of the United States of America. Stanton’s and Speed’s plan to achieve an orderly succession worked brilliantly. When the news of Lincoln’s passing broke in the newspapers, it was accompanied by the announcement that Andrew Johnson was the new president. The days, weeks, months, and even years that followed the death of Abraham Lincoln were just as eventful, though not as compressed, as the day of his death and worthy of a novel or two of their own.

  The Conspirators

  Lewis Powell roamed the city for a day, but eventually returned to Washington City with his pickaxe. Not knowing where else to go, he found his way to 591 H Street and Mrs. Surratt’s boardinghouse. He knocked on the door on the evening of April eighteenth, just four days after his attack on the Sewards. His timing couldn’t have been worse. When he knocked on the door, Major Henry Smith of the War Department was interviewing Mrs. Surratt. Within minutes Powell was apprehended and was placed under arrest and held on the USS Montauk, the very same ironclad that Abraham and Mary Lincoln had toured on the last carriage ride they would take together.

  George Atzerodt would spend the next day in another drunken stupor, but he eventually made his way out of Washington City and north to Germantown, Maryland. There he stayed with family. Never one to hold his tongue, Atzerodt made several suspicious comments about the assassination at a meal. A friend, who became concerned, reported these to an officer and Atzerodt was arrested at four o’clock in the morning on April twentieth, just six days after the assassination. Atzerodt was also held on the monitor Montauk. Atzerodt and Powell were both tried, convicted, and hanged for their part in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the attacks on the Sewards.

  Mary Surratt would avoid arrest for more than a week, but eventually Edwin Stanton became convinced that she had supported John Wilkes Booth and provided the “nest that hatched the conspiracy.” Though many, including Lewis Powell, claimed that she was never a formal part of the conspiracy, she was found guilty and became the first woman in United States history to be executed for her crimes.

  David Herold hid with John Wilkes Booth in the woods of southern Maryland and then in northern Virginia for 12 long days. When the United States Army finally caught up to them, Herold surrendered and was taken to the monitor Mantauk to join the other prisoners. He, too, was tried, convicted, and hanged with Atzerodt, Powell, and Surratt on a hot July seventh, just three months after the attacks.

  John Wilkes Booth evaded capture for a dozen days. Stanton played cat and mouse with the assassin, engrossing the nation with each twist and turn of the chase. Booth finally found some newspapers and read with horror of the reaction of the nation to his deed. Both North and South were mortified and called him a common criminal. He was dejected, but moved south anyway in an attempt to flee the enclosing net. He was finally chased down on the Garrett farm just north of Bowling Green, Virginia. Rather than surrender with Herold, he stood in the barn that was being burned down around him. He was fatally wounded by a bullet to the neck that severed his spine and paralyzed him. Where Lincoln clung to life for nine long hours, Booth expired in less than fifty minutes. He whispered, “Tell my mother I die for my country,” as he died.

  The Leaders

  Andrew Johnson went on to serve a full term as President of the United States, but faced a hostile Congress who failed to impeach him by just one vote. Johnson, after vowing to maintain and implement Lincoln’s plans for reconstruction, soon turned to his Democratic friends and attempted to implement a policy that would have allowed many of the former leaders of the Confederacy to assume roles in the reinstated southern states.

  Edwin Stanton served as Johnson’s Secretary of War, but he did so out of the stubborn belief that he could work to undermine Johnson from the inside of his administration. Their hatred for each other came to a head when Johnson finally tried to remove Stanton from his position and the Secretary, in response, literally boarded himself into his office in the War Department. Stanton eventually resigned his position as War Secretary and helped to elect Ulysses Grant as the eighteenth president of the United States. He was nominated, by Grant, to the United States Supreme Court, but fell ill just several days after the Senate confirmed the nomination and died in the early hours of Christmas Day, 1869, at the age of fifty-four.

  Gideon Welles served as the Navy Secretary for Andrew Johnson often siding with the embattled president over Edwin Stanton, his long-time colleague and nemesis. Welles’ meticulous diary would eventually be published shedding important light on the inner workings of two administrations in crisis. It is also an important source for key passages of this novel.

  William and Frederick Seward both recovered from their wounds. William went on to serve as the Secretary of State for Andrew Johnson. During his tenure, he orchestrated the purchase of the Alaska Territory from Russia. He would live the rest of his days with a large scar on his left cheek as a constant reminder of the vicious attack he survived on April 14th, 1865. Frederick continued as Assistant Secretary of State in Andrew Johnson’s administration and then served in the same position for Rutherford B. Hayes.

  Major Henry Rathbone survived his wounds from Booth’s attack on April fourteenth. He and Clara Harris married and Rathbone went on to become the United States consul to Hanover, Germany. As time went on Rathbone began to show signs of mental instability and on the night of December 23, 1883, Rathbone stabbed his wife to death and then stabbed himself in a
failed attempt at suicide. He spent the rest of his life in an asylum for the criminally insane.

  Mary Lincoln was never the same after the death of her beloved husband. She embarrassed herself by attempting to publicly sell her gowns in an effort to make money to repay the many debts she had created while her husband was in office. Due to her obsessive spending habits and increasingly erratic behavior, Robert would eventually have her committed to an insane asylum.

  Tad Lincoln tried to comfort his mother as best he could in the months after his father’s death. He finally started formal schooling after the family returned to Chicago, but his life was cut tragically short when he died at the age of 18, most likely from tuberculosis.

  Robert Lincoln resigned from the army and, once he had moved to Chicago with his mother, he went on to practice law as his father had wished. He would lead a distinguished life, serving as Secretary of War and Minister to Great Britain before becoming the President of the Pullman Company.

  Abraham Lincoln’s body would be transported around the country in an unprecedented funeral train that traveled more than 1,600 miles and retraced the route that Lincoln took for his first inauguration. Booth was still at large when he was buried in his hometown of Springfield, Illinois. The nation’s outpouring of grief in sermons, songs, poetry, and speeches quickly transformed the simple lawyer from Illinois into a man of the ages, as Edwin Stanton had prophesied at his death.

  Author’s Note

  No one can write about the events of April 14th, 1865, without first assessing a mountain of research and materials that are available to the curious and scholarly. In an effort to make my novel a historical thriller, I both researched the events surrounding the events of April 14th, 1865, as well as the events and their timing on that day. I have also taken advantage of the letters and historical documents of Lincoln and Booth that are available to use as dialogue in the story itself. For example, while we do not have a record of what Booth said to his conspirators at the Herndon House just a couple of hours before they attacked Lincoln and Seward, I have put words into his mouth that he actually wrote in his journals and letters in the months leading up to the assassination attempt. This allowed me the opportunity to use his own words for some of his key dialogue, but I have, obviously, violated historical veracity in doing so.

  I also know that there are many writers, historians, and Civil War lovers who have studied, re-studied, and developed their own theories about these events, the sequence in which they occurred, and the things that were said. Some will agree whole-heartedly with my fictional retelling and others will take serious issue with my story. Elements that we take as gospel because of our elementary school history classes, such as Booth breaking his leg when he leapt from the President’s box onto the stage, have been challenged by a number of experts in recent years. To all I simply say, this is a novel. I have done my best to write a highly accurate thriller, but I have focused on the thrilling aspects of these historical events. I have written a novel, which is a fictional treatment of the history.

  What follows is a shortened version of my comprehensive bibliography and a limited set of footnotes to provide credit for those few passages where I have quoted from sources for dialogue in my novel. For a complete bibliography and other materials about April 14th, 1865, please visit my website:

  www.johnberrynovels.com.

  Brief Bibliography

  Participants in the Events

  Bates, David Homer. Lincoln in the Telegraph Office: Recollections of the United States Military Telegraph Corps During the Civil War. University of Nebraska Press, 1995.

  Booth, John Wilkes. Rhodehamel, John and Taper, Louise, ed. “Right or Wrong, God Judge Me,” The Writings of John Wilkes Booth. University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 1997.

  Clarke, Asia Booth. Alford, Terry, ed. John Wilkes Booth, A Sister’s Memoir. University Press of Mississippi, Jackson, 1996.

  Good, Timothy S., ed. We Saw Lincoln Shot, One Hundred Eyewitness Accounts. University Press of Mississippi, Jackson, 1995.

  Keckley, Elizabeth. Behind the Scenes, or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House. Penguin Books, New York, 2005.

  Leale, Charles A. Lincoln’s Last Hours. 1909, republished by Leale Estate via Kessinger Publishing.

  Lincoln, Abraham. Basler, Roy P., ed. The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. University Press, New Brunswick, NY, 1953.

  Nicolay, John G. and Hay, John. Abraham Lincoln, A History. The Century Co., New York, 1890.

  Pittman, Ben, ed. The Assassination of President Lincoln and the Trial of the Conspirators. Moore, Wilstach & Baldwin, New York, 1865.

  Seward, Fanny. Johnson, Patricia Carley, ed. “I Have Supped Full of Horrors,” American Heritage, vol 10. October 1959.

  Taylor, Tom. Our American Cousin. 1858

  The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1880-1901.

  Weichmann, Louis J. Risvold, Floyd E., ed. A True History of the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the Conspiracy of 1865. Vintage Books, New York, 1975.

  Welles, Gideon. Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson. Houghton & Mifflin Company, Boston and New York 1911.

  Historians and Writers

  (I have included here the core set of modern historians that I have found invaluable in their research and writing on Abraham Lincoln, his cabinet, and the events of April 14th, 1865.)

  Donald, David Herbert. Lincoln. Touchstone, New York, 1995.

  Goodwin, Doris Kearns. Team of Rivals, The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. Simon & Schuster, New York, 2005.

  Kaufman, Michael W. American Brutus, John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies. Random House, NY, 2004.

  Reck, W. Emerson. A. Lincoln, His Last 24 Hours. McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, Jefferson, North Carolina, and London, 1987.

  Steers, Jr., Edward. Blood on the Moon, The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln. The University Press of Kentucky, 2001.

  Swanson, James L. Manhunt, The Twelve-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer. Harper Perennial, NY, 2007.

  Thomas, Benjamin P. and Hyman, Harold M. Stanton: The Life and Times of Lincoln’s Secretary of War. Alfred A Knop, New York, 1962.

  Winik, Jay. April 1865, The Month that Saved America. Harper Perennial, New York, 2001.

  Limited Footnotes

  (These are not meant to be exhaustive but to provide appropriate credit for the handful of cases when I used actual writings to serve as dialogue, primarily for John Wilkes Booth.)

  Throughout the Novel

  All written cards and letters of Abraham Lincoln from his last day that are in the novel come from The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol VIII, pp 410-413.

  All orders and telegraphs written by Stanton come from the A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies.

  “Paperwork”

  “Years ago,” he started, already smiling…” Lincoln’s story about the Maying party and the Cresswell conversation come from A. Lincoln His Last Twenty-Four Hours, pp 24-25.

  “A Plan Falls into Place”

  “To My Countrymen…” This letter is recorded in a number of different sources. I have quoted passages from that version in Right or Wrong, God Judge Me, pp 147-150. Booth gave a letter to John Matthews on the day of the assassination to give to the newspaper. Matthews, however, burned it out of fear of being incriminated himself. He recreated the letter a number of years later; however, it is most certainly based on a different letter, the “To Whom it May Concern” letter that had been published between the assassination and Matthews’ recreation (see notes on pages 150-153).

  “The Final Word”

  “I tell you, sirs, now is the time to act…” This passage is taken from the draft of a speech that Booth wrote, but never gave, shortly after the first election of Lincoln. See Right or Wrong, God Judge Me, pp 58-59.

  “O
h how I have…” This passage is from Booth’s famous “To Whom It May Concern” letter. See Right or Wrong, God Judge Me, pp 124-127.

  About the Author

  John Charles Berry has spent more than 20 years as an executive in the High Tech and Banking industries. During that time he has also published articles, speeches, and fiction in Newsweek, The Financial Times, The Harvard Business Review, Vital Speeches of the Day, and After Hours. He earned a Ph.D. in English. He resides in Charlotte, NC, with his beloved wife and children.

  Visit the author's website at http://www.johnberrynovels.com

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