Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer

by James L. Swanson

  Gus Seward, dressed in his nightshirt, raced to his father’s room and saw the shadows of two men fighting. Confused, he thought his father had become delirious and the male nurse was trying to restrain him. As soon as Gus seized the shadowy figure he believed was his father, he knew it was someone else. Now combating two men, Powell fought harder, slashing wildly with the knife. When Robinson got behind him and wrapped him in a bear hug, Powell reversed the knife, thrust it blindly over his shoulder, and stabbed Robinson twice in the shoulder, deeply and to the bone. Robinson ignored the wounds and kept fighting. In the dark it was hard to see the knife coming clearly enough to parry the blows. Throughout the battle Powell hadn’t said a word. When the sergeant and Gus wrestled Powell into the hall and into the bright gaslight, Powell and Gus, their faces inches apart, locked eyes. Then Powell spoke for the first time during the attack. In an intense but eerily calm voice, the assassin confided to Gus, as though trying to persuade him, the strangest thing: “I’m mad. I’m mad!”

  Secretary Seward’s wife, alarmed by Fanny’s screams, emerged from her third-floor, back bedroom in time to witness the climax of the hallway struggle between Powell and her son Gus. Uncomprehending, she assumed that her husband had become delirious and was running amok. Fred’s wife, Anna, rushed to the scene, and Fanny ran out of her father’s bedroom and shouted, “Is that man gone?” Bewildered, Mrs. Seward and Anna replied, “What man?”

  Powell wound his arm around Robinson’s neck in a choke hold, and the sergeant braced himself for the knife that was sure to follow at any moment. Then, in a curious act of mercy, Powell let him go and, instead of stabbing him again, punched him with his fist. Powell fled down the stairs. On his way out, he caught up with Emerick Hansell, who was running down the staircase, trying to stay ahead of the assassin. The State Department messenger, on duty at Seward’s home, was fleeing rather than joining the battle. But Powell gave Hansell a parting gift as he ran past him—an inglorious stab in the back. Hansell crumpled to the floor. He had been stabbed over the sixth rib, from the spine obliquely toward the right side. The cut was an inch wide and between two and a half and three inches deep, but the blade had not penetrated the lungs. Powell ran into the street, his eyes searching desperately for David Herold, but found nothing more than his lone horse. Powell tossed his knife to the ground, mounted his horse, and, instead of galloping into the night, calmly and inconspicuously trotted away. William Bell, flailing in the street, pursued Powell on foot for a few blocks, yelling all the way. Unable to keep pace with the horse, he gave up and returned to the Clubhouse.

  Fanny ran back to her father’s room only to find the bed empty. “Where’s father?” she cried in panic. She spotted what she thought was no more than a pile of discarded bedclothes on the floor—but it was the secretary of state, bloody and disheveled. To save his life he had rolled out of bed during the attack and crashed to the floor, hoping to escape Powell’s reach in the dark room. That agonizing tumble aggravated his broken bones and sent spasms of pain through his body. Fanny slipped on a big puddle of blood and tumbled to the floor beside her father. He looked “ghastly … white, and very thin.” And that made her scream: “O my God, father’s dead.” Sergeant Robinson, ignoring his own wounds, flew to her side, lifted the broken Seward from the floor, and laid him tenderly in his bed. Seward opened his eyes, looked up at his terrified daughter, and, in unimaginable pain and fighting off the effects of shock, concentrated his mind, spit the blood out of his mouth, and whispered: “I am not dead; send for a doctor, send for the police, close the house.”

  Chapter Three

  “His Sacred Blood”

  BACK AT FORD’S THEATRE THE MANHUNT FOR BOOTH ALMOST ended before it began when one man, an army major and lawyer named Joseph B. Stewart, rose from his front-row seat to pursue the assassin. Stewart, long-limbed at six foot five, and rumored to be the tallest man in Washington, decided to leap from the first row across the orchestra pit to the stage. But the wide opening served as Booth’s moat, sealing off any pursuit by the audience. Stewart slipped before he could make his leap. It was too far. He regained his balance and then, in an acrobatic display, danced across the pit by tiptoeing along the chair tops. In a few moments he reached the stage and followed Booth into the wings. Within days, newspaper woodcuts immortalized Stewart as the solitary audience member who thought of chasing after Booth.

  Booth continued rushing through the wings and down the passageway leading to the back door that opened to Baptist Alley. A few more seconds, and he would be in the saddle. But he knew he wouldn’t be safe even then. Alert audience members from the rear of the theatre, guessing that the assassin would head for the alley, might sprint out onto Tenth Street to cut off his escape. At this moment, as Booth reached for the back door, interceptors might be running right on Tenth, then right again on F, to cut him off at the mouth of F and Baptist Alley. Even worse, someone might have already mounted a horse to chase him down.

  Booth may have been focused on the alley, but the more immediate danger lay behind him, closing fast. Stewart, following him into the wings and down the passageway, was shortening the distance between them with every stride.

  Booth prayed that Ned Spangler or John Peanut stood on the other side of that door, still holding his horse. If either one had tired of holding the animal and taken it back to the actor’s stable a few yards down the alley, or had tied her off behind the theatre, only to have her break free, Booth was doomed. He burst through the alley door, sucked his lungs full of fresh, spring night air, and slammed it shut behind him. Mrs. Anderson saw him run out "with something in his hand glittering." Where was the bay mare? She wasn’t where he left her. Was Booth trapped, about to suffer the same fate as Shakespeare’s Richard III—abandoned on enemy ground without his steed? But when Booth turned his head to the right he saw salvation: his horse, standing quietly in the alley, just a few steps away. In a split second Booth’s eyes raced the length of the leather reins, following them into the hands of a man reclining on the wood carpenter’s bench near Ford’s back wall. It was John Peanut! "Give me my horse, boy!" Booth commanded as he lunged for the animal. There was no wood stepping box nearby to elevate him to the stirrups. With brute strength, he yanked himself onto the black-legged bay mare with a white star on her forehead and grabbed the reins. John Peanut rose to surrender them. As thanks, Booth, still clutching his dagger stained with Major Rathbone’s blood, popped Peanut in the head with the pommel, then kicked the youth away hard with his boot heel. Better that than a cut to the throat of the harmless Peanut. Booth balanced himself in the saddle, and at that moment Stewart swung open the theatre door and saw Booth about to gallop away.

  From the ground Stewart looked up and saw the assassin, illuminated by the rising moon. Stewart reached for the reins, but Booth, an experienced rider, spurred and pulled the horse in a tight, quick circle away from Stewart. The horse really could move like a cat. Stewart tried for the reins again, but once more Booth outmaneuvered him from the saddle. Stomping hooves pounded the ground until Booth finally broke free, settled low, and kicked the bay horse hard. She exploded into a gallop that Booth steered down the alley, then guided left toward F Street, vanishing from sight.

  Mary Anderson, standing no more than twenty-five feet away, witnessed the assassin’s escape: “He had come out of the theatre-door so quick, that it seemed like as if he had but touched the horse, and it was gone in a flash of lightning.” Mary Ann Turner, her next-door neighbor, heard the commotion but wasn’t quick enough to witness Booth’s escape: “I only heard the horse going very rapidly out of the alley; and I ran immediately to my door and opened it, but he was gone.”

  With F Street coming up fast, Booth looked ahead to the alley’s mouth. Had his pursuers reached it before him? No one blocked his way. He emerged onto F Street and reined his mount hard to the right. No one was chasing him. Booth galloped east down F Street. He had escaped from Ford’s Theatre—barely. But now he faced an even more difficult c
hallenge. Could he escape from Washington, war capital of the Union, its streets filled with thousands of soldiers and loyal citizens, all there to celebrate the end of the Civil War?

  By now, back in the alley, a number of people had poured out the door in pursuit of the assassin. “Which way did he go?” they asked Mrs. Anderson. “Which way did he go?” She asked a man what was the matter. “The president was shot,” he answered. “Why, who shot him?” “The man who went out on that horse: did you see him?”

  A block down F and to his right, Booth rode past the Herndon House, where just two hours ago he had met with his gang and dreamed of this moment. As Booth continued another block east on F he approached two of Washington’s grandest landmarks. To his left he saw the Patent Office, his dark figure silhouetted by the white glow of the huge marble building that was the scene of Walt Whitman’s ministrations to wounded soldiers and, just six weeks ago, Lincoln’s inaugural ball. To Booth’s right, he saw the massive marble pile of the Post Office, where just ten hours ago Harry Clay Ford picked up the letter that he handed to the actor on the front step of the theatre. Gaslight bounced off the slick, polished walls of both buildings and bathed Booth in a searching glow. Past the buildings in seconds, Booth galloped right and cut across Judiciary Square to Pennsylvania Avenue.

  Few people saw him as he fled through downtown Washington. That was understandable, however, because Booth rode away from the celebrating crowds that clogged the upper avenue. He rode east, then southeast, in the opposite direction from the throng, aiming for Capitol Hill. And what interest was one man on a horse to thousands of jubilant men? Booth crossed the Capitol grounds, riding beneath the shadow of the great dome, completed in time for Lincoln’s second inauguration. Booth then cut over to the southeast part of Pennsylvania Avenue. He galloped on to Eleventh Street and turned right, swinging south in the direction of the Navy Yard Bridge that led out of Washington and into Maryland. One thought possessed him. Could he reach that bridge and cross the Potomac’s eastern branch (now the Anacostia) before pursuers, or news of the assassination, caught up with him? Luck was with him that night. His hard riding kept him ahead of the news. As he neared the river he reined his horse and slowed to a trot. He saw guards ahead. Be natural, he instinctively thought. Don’t arouse suspicion.

  sERGEANT SILAS T. COBB WAS STANDING WATCH AT THE Washington side of the bridgehead. He’d been there since sunset and was on duty until 1:00 A.M. Looking off into the distance, he saw an approaching rider. Cobb knew his orders: allow no one to cross the bridge after dark. Cobb and the handful of men under his command prepared to challenge the rider. Booth, with the flair only a master thespian could muster under such duress, prepared for an impromptu performance—talking his way across the bridge. The time was between 10:35 and 10:45 P.M.

  “Who goes there?” Cobb challenged.

  “A friend,” the actor replied. Perhaps Cobb would recognize the stage star and wave him across with a smile, his horse not even breaking stride. No such luck.

  “Where are you from?”

  “From the city,” Booth said vaguely.

  Cobb asked his destination.

  “I am going down home, down in Charles County.”

  The sergeant noticed that the horse’s coat was wet and had been ridden hard. He studied Booth’s features: “Clear white skin … his hands were very white and he had no gloves on … [he] seemed to be gentlemanly in his address and style and appearance.” Cobb also noted that while Booth carried himself nonchalantly, he seemed to possess reserves of muscular power. Cobb continued to press the matter, asking Booth if he knew that the bridge leaving Washington closed at 9:00 P.M.

  The actor claimed he didn’t and said he’d chosen a late start on purpose because “it is a dark road ahead and I thought if I waited a spell I would have the moon.”

  Cobb pondered for a moment. Booth was at his wit’s end. Every second was precious, and this fool was wasting time with his stupid questions. Then Cobb agreed reluctantly to allow Booth to pass.

  Booth adopted a reassuring, theatrical voice to calm the dutiful sergeant: “Hell, I guess there’ll be no trouble about that.”

  Booth gave his horse a gentle tap with the spurs. Then Cobb noticed something unusual. Unlike its cool and collected rider, the horse was restive and nervous, so much that Booth had to rein her in so that she would walk, and not gallop, across the bridge. Cobb wondered why. Booth had handled Cobb perfectly. Except for two things. When the sergeant asked his name he responded, inexplicably, “Booth.” And when Cobb asked where he was going, Booth answered, “Beantown.”

  This was a lucky moment for the assassin. If Cobb denied him passage, he had no alternate route of escape. He could not turn back to the city. He had to cross the river now, at this spot, into Maryland. Open, isolated country beckoned him from the other side of the bridge. He would find friends there. He had to cross. Armed with only a knife, Booth could never have fought his way across. Had he tried, the sergeant and his sentinels would have shot him out of his saddle, and the manhunt would have ended that night, less than an hour after John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln.

  Once over the bridge, Booth turned to see if his cat’s-paws—David Herold, Lewis Powell, or George Atzerodt—followed in the distance. This was their route, too. Booth saw no one, neither conspirators nor pursuers, behind him, but as he gazed across the river he saw a beautiful scene. The moon, two days past full, rose high over Washington, and under its cool, lunar light the great dome glowed like a twin moon descended upon the earth.

  Like Lot’s wife, who paused, turned, and dared look upon the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Booth could see the sleeping city from which he fled, and he knew it would awaken soon and hear of the destruction he had wrought. He had done it. And he had escaped.

  BOOTH AND LEWIS POWELL HAD LEFT BEHIND SO MUCH blood. Sergeant Robinson and Fanny Seward worked feverishly to save the secretary of state’s life. Seward had more wounds than the sergeant had hands, and Robinson had to teach Fanny how to stanch the flow of blood with cloths and water. “I did not know what should be done,” she said. “Robinson told me everything.” Sprawled across sheets sheared by Powell’s knife, she knelt beside her father and, with all of her strength, pressed the ersatz bandages tightly against the cuts. Robinson played doctor and examined Seward’s body for additional wounds. Punctures to the lungs, stomach, or heart? No. Any nicked or severed arteries? No. If they could stop the bleeding and Seward could just hold on until Dr. Verdi, Dr. Norris, or Surgeon General Barnes arrived, he might live.

  Within minutes messengers returned with the doctors, who relieved Fanny and Robinson. Their examination confirmed it. Despite their hideous appearance, the wounds were not fatal. Seward—who to Dr. Verdi looked like “an exsanguinated corpse”—would live. Verdi turned to the family and spoke: “I congratulate you all that the wounds are not mortal.” Robinson finally allowed himself to be treated by the doctors. He, too, would live, along with Gus Seward and Hansell. But Powell had inflicted a grievous and potentially fatal wound upon Frederick Seward. The Whitney revolver fractured his skull and exposed his brain. Fred wandered about the house like a zombie, babbling the same phrase, “It is … it is,” over and over unable to complete the thought, while touching the back of his head with his finger. Fred smiled at Dr. Verdi and seemed to recognize him.

  Secretary of State William H. Seward and daughter Fanny.

  Verdi, interpreting Fred’s hand gesture, asked: “You want to know whether your skull is broken or not?”

  “Yes,” Fred replied.

  Within half an hour Fred passed out for fifteen or twenty minutes, then woke up. Verdi and others helped him to bed, where he passed out again. When he awakened three days later, he had been unconscious for sixty hours. But he would live.

  As the evening wore on, Fanny became increasingly fearful that Powell might return, or other assassins might be lurking in the house. Her mother ordered her not to wander off alone in the big ma
nsion, but Fanny disobeyed and, prowling from room to room, searched alone—until others joined her—for concealed assassins. Finding none, she returned to her father’s bed and sat beside him. Weakly, Seward lifted his left arm and opened a soothing hand to Fanny to calm and reassure her. His good, brave girl had done well this night.

  The house became quiet again. Everywhere she looked Fanny saw signs of the horror that she and her family had just survived. “All the white woodwork of the entry was covered with great dashes of blood,” she wrote in her diary, “the drugget on the stairs was sprinkled with it, all the way down to the floor below … on the inner side of the door of father’s room there was, in blood, the distinct impression of a hand … blood, blood, my thoughts seem drenched in it—I seemed to breathe its sickening odor … the bed had been covered with blood—the blankets and sheets chopped with several blows of the knife.” Then she looked at herself: her hands, her arms, her long pretty dress, all drenched in blood. She could not stop screaming.

  Sergeant Robinson, too, could not forget the blood, and later he sought a bizarre, gruesome relic of the battle that night. Might he, the fearless nurse queried the secretary of war, have the knife that Powell used to stab him and Secretary Seward? Stanton granted the unusual request:

  War Department/Bureau of Military Justice, Washington, D.C., July 10th, 1866. Sir. Your application for the knife used by Payne [one of Powell’s pseudonyms], in his attempt to assassinate the Honorable William H. Seward, Secretary of State of the United States, at Washington D.C. on the night of the 14th of April 1865, having been referred to the Secretary of War, has been by him approved, and I am directed by him to comply with your request. Your conduct on the occasion mentioned is now a matter of history, and none will hereafter doubt but that by your self possession and courage in grappling with the assassin, you contributed largely to saving the life of the Secretary of State, at the extreme hazard of your own—a most meritorious public service, nobly rendered, and of which the weapon now committed to your keeping will be an enduring memento. Very respectfully, Your obedient Servt. J. Holt. Judge Advocate General.