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

by James L. Swanson

  This was no time for a geography lesson. Booth should have departed Locust Hill at first light, and certainly no later than several hours ago, when he awoke in late morning. He was still too far north, and Garrett’s farm sat within striking distance of Union troops. In truth, as the afternoon lengthened, Booth shouldn’t be there at all. The manhunters could appear at any moment without warning. He should leave at once; he dare not remain there any longer than one more night. Finished with the map, Booth came out onto the porch and sat on the bench. John Garrett saw him remove from his pocket “a small memorandum book” and begin writing. From his position, sitting below Booth on the front steps, John could not see what he wrote.

  Distracted by noise from the road, Garrett looked up and saw a few riders moving past their front gate. “There goes some of your party now,” John said, guessing the riders were the same men who had dropped Booth at Locust Hill yesterday afternoon. Booth looked up from his book. He asked John to go into the house, walk up to the bedroom, and get his pistol belt. Confused, Garrett asked why Booth wanted his revolvers. “You go and get my pistols!” the assassin commanded without explanation. Garrett obeyed, but when he got to the bedroom and looked out the window, the men were gone. They had ridden past the gate, in the direction of Port Royal, without turning into the farm. He left the gun belt hanging on the headboard, returned to the front porch without the pistols, and told Booth that the men were gone. The assassin and Garrett took their seats.

  Five minutes later John Garrett noticed a stranger, on foot, walking from the gate toward the house. Booth rose from the bench and shouted for eleven-year-old Richard Garrett to run upstairs and bring down his pistols right away. In a flash, the child was back on the porch carrying the heavy gun belt. Quickly, Booth swung the belt under his coat and wrapped it around his waist, cinching the buckle tight. Then he stepped off the porch and began walking toward the approaching stranger. John and little Richard Garrett watched transfixed, expecting a gun battle to break out in their yard at any moment. Booth and the stranger, who had a carbine slung around his shoulder, met midway between the road’s inner gate and the farmhouse. Booth did not draw his pistols and the stranger did not level his long arm. It was David Herold, who was back from his overnight stay a few miles southeast of Bowling Green at the home of Joseph Clarke, a friend of Bainbridge. After waiting for Davey all day, Booth had begun to wonder if he was coming back.

  Booth and Herold stood in place about fifty yards from the house and talked for several minutes. “What do you intend to do?” asked Davey.

  “Well, I intend to stay here all night,” Booth announced.

  Herold did not like the sound of that plan. Lingering in one place too long increased their risk of capture. And he was losing heart for life on the run: “I would like to go home. I am sick and tired of this way of living.”

  Then, together, they walked to the house. Booth introduced Davey as his cousin, David E. Boyd. Booth asked John Garrett if cousin Boyd could spend the night, too. Naturally, after the regal treatment the Garretts had accorded Booth, the assassin assumed that Garrett would offer his cousin similar hospitality.

  John’s reply shocked him: “I told him that father was the proprietor of the house and that I could not take him in.” John adopted a sudden, brusque manner and cold tone of voice to convey an additional message, “intending by what I said to let him see that I did not want to take him.”

  Booth’s panic at the sight of the riders and of the stranger walking up the road had made Garrett suspicious. To discourage the Boyds, John added that his father was away and he had no idea when he would return to approve or veto Booth’s request. Unperturbed, Herold offered to sit on the porch steps and wait as long as it took for old man Garrett to come home. After eleven days of hiding out, he was used to waiting.

  aND AFTER ELEVEN DAYS OF SEARCHING, SOME OF THE MANHUNTERS were getting frustrated. Captain William Cross Hazelton of the Eighth Illinois Cavalry, one of the units pursuing Booth in Maryland, wrote a letter to his mother that typified the exasperation felt by many of the soldiers and detectives in the field:

  I have been endeavoring to get an opportunity to write you but have been so constantly on the move for the last two weeks that I’ve had no chance to write.

  We were first ordered to Washington to form part of the military escort at President Lincoln’s funeral, immediately after which we were sent here into Maryland in pursuit of Booth and some of his accomplices who were known to have come here. We traced Booth to the house of a Dr. Mudd where he went to have his leg set, a bone which had been broken by a fall off his horse. At this Doctor’s he arrived on the morning after the murder. He had with him a man by the name of Harrold, one of his accomplices and a desperado well known in these parts. Here he remained until 2:00 o’clock in the afternoon of the same day. From here we were unable to trace him farther for some days. In vain we scoured the country in all directions. I was out with my Company night and day. With us were some of the most expert detectives of the United States, but all our efforts to trace him further failed until at length a free negro came in and reported that he acted as a guide for them to the house of a Captain Cox some fifteen miles from here. At that time I happened to be the only officer off duty, and at 12:00 o’clock at night started with thirty men, two detectives and this same negro guide for the home of Captain Cox.

  We reached there just at daylight, saw Captain Cox (a notorious “secesh!”) but he denied all knowledge of the parties.

  We obtained evidence, however, that Booth and Harrold remained at his house some four hours in private conversation with him. They then mounted their horse, Booth being lifted on the horse by the negro guide whom they dismissed, and again we lost all trace of them. Cox we arrested and he is now in the Old Capitol prison.

  The great difficulty is the people here are all traitors, and we can get no information from them. A report reached us the day before yesterday that they had been seen not far from where I am now writing. They came to the edge of a woods and called for this colored woman (our informant) to bring them some food. She describes the men and said one of them had crutches. We immediately surrounded and one hundred of our men searched it through and through, but found nothing. The country here is heavily wooded, making it next to impossible to find one who makes any effort to escape. I hope, however, we will yet find him if he is not across the Potomac.

  Captain Hazelton’s hope was in vain. Booth had crossed the Potomac days ago, leaving behind him and the hundreds of other troops, detectives, and policemen who still, clueless, hunted for him in Maryland. Unbeknownst to them the theatre of action had shifted across the river, to Virginia.

  THE SIXTEENTH NEW YORK CAVALRY RODE INTO PORT CONway, Virginia, on Tuesday, April 25, between 3:00 and 4:00 P.M. William Rollins, sitting on his front steps, watched their arrival. Luther Baker spotted him and walked over to his house. Had Rollins seen any strangers cross the river at this spot in the last couple days? Baker asked. The detective was not interested in any parties crossing from Port Royal to Port Conway, just those that crossed over from the Port Conway side. Of course he had, said Rollins: “There were a good many people crossing there.” How about a man with a broken leg? Baker continued. Yes, he crossed yesterday around noon, the fisherman revealed. The report jolted Baker. It must be Booth. Finally, eleven days after the assassination, and more than a week after Booth seemed to fall off the face of the earth for several days during his pine-thicket encampment, the manhunters picked up a fresh scent of their prey. If it was Booth, then Lincoln’s assassin was only a little more than a day’s ride ahead of them.

  Rollins offered additional details: “[T]wo men came … in a wagon the day before … and … crossed the river … I had some conversation with them.” Only yesterday, Booth and Herold had stood on this spot, in front of these same steps, conversing with Rollins just as Baker spoke to him now. The detective devoured every morsel of intelligence that Rollins could recall. These men wanted to go to Bo
wling Green, said Rollins, and they offered to pay him to take them there in his wagon. But, impatiently, they refused to wait for him to set his fishing nets. Instead, the lame man and his young companion made other plans as soon as they fell in with three Confederate soldiers, each mounted on horseback. They all crossed over the Rappahannock together on Thornton’s ferry.

  Baker was intrigued by these Confederate soldiers. Earlier intelligence—reports from Surratt’s tavern and Dr. Mudd’s farm—indicated that Booth and Herold were traveling alone. This was the first time anyone heard that they had linked up with rebel troops. If Rollins was telling the truth, it might mean that the assassins had come under the protection of the Confederate army and were being escorted south on horseback. That would make it tougher to catch them now. Rebels with knowledge of the country could move fast and would be able to outrace the Sixteenth New York. Furthermore, the three soldiers at the ferry could be part of a larger Confederate force, superior in numbers to the Union patrol. The deeper Baker, Conger, and Doherty probed into rebel territory with their small, lightly armed unit, the greater their risk of being ambushed by Confederate forces, guerrillas, or bushwhackers.

  Luther Baker decided to worry about those things later. Yesterday, John Wilkes Booth was in Port Conway. Today Baker had no choice but to pick up the chase from that spot. Baker reached into his pocket and withdrew three small, sepia-toned, carte-de-visite paper photographs, fresh from the photography lab at the U.S. Army Medical Museum. He showed the first carte to Rollins: is this one of the strangers who crossed the river yesterday? The image was of a tall, lean man without facial hair. No, replied the helpful fisherman. He had never seen that man. Rollins, without realizing it, had just given Baker a valuable piece of intelligence. John Surratt, Confederate operative, son of Mary Surratt, and wanted man, was not traveling with Booth.

  Baker held out the second photograph, a full-length image of a younger man—he looked like a teenager—posing with his hand resting on a tabletop. What about this man? Yes, Rollins responded, that is the man who arrived in Port Conway on the wagon with the lame man. They were together and he did most of the talking for the fellow with the broken leg. Rollins had just identified David Herold. Baker’s excitement grew as he handed Rollins the final photograph—a bust portrait of a handsome, black-haired man with a black moustache, clothed in a black frock coat. The details in this photo were sharper than in the other two and appeared to be more professional.

  Baker didn’t say a word while William Rollins studied the photograph. Baker read the hesitation on Rollins’s face and grew concerned. Rollins looked puzzled. “I was not sure whether he had a moustache,” the fisherman admitted. Baker relaxed. Rollins had now confirmed what the manhunters suspected—that Dr. Mudd had told the truth about the razor and the shave. And, indeed, the latest edition of the April 20 reward broadside was correct when it proclaimed: “Booth … wears a heavy black moustache … which there is some reason to believe has been shaved off.”

  Rollins added another qualification: “And when I saw him his cap was pulled down over his forehead.” At that Baker was unsure if Rollins had seen the lame man’s face or not. “But,” continued Rollins, “I thought there was a likeness across the eyes.” Booth’s piercing eyes were hard to forget. Yes, said Rollins, this is “the likeness of the other man with the broken leg.” Baker rejoiced. Rollins had identified John Wilkes Booth. They were on the right track. Although the assassin enjoyed a full day’s head start over the manhunters, he would have to stop somewhere to rest. Baker believed that hard riding by the Sixteenth New York could close the gap.

  In addition to providing positive identifications of Booth and Herold, and confirming that they had crossed to Port Royal, Rollins had more information that made him an invaluable resource to the MANHUNTERS. He could also identify one of the three Confederate soldiers who had escorted the men across the river. His name was Willie Jett, and Rollins had a pretty good idea of where that rebel was headed. He lived in Westmoreland County, and Rollins guessed that after landing in Port Royal, he rode straight for Bowling Green: “[He] was in the habit of staying there a good deal of his time.” The strangers had asked Rollins to take them to Bowling Green; wasn’t it plausible that they requested the same of Jett, and that the rebel escorted them there? They might still be in Bowling Green: the lame man’s companion told Rollins that they needed to rest for a couple days.

  Mrs. Rollins had even more to tell before they shoved off. In addition to Jett, she named the other two Confederate soldiers—Bainbridge and Ruggles—who had crossed with Booth and Herold. Then she offered up a true gold nugget of gossip: Jett, according to local rumor, “was courting a young lady by the name of Gouldman, whose father kept a hotel at Bowling Green.” She was Izora Gouldman, the innkeeper’s sixteen-year-old daughter. Jett and Ruggles stayed there on the twenty-fourth. Bainbridge had a friend, Joseph Clarke, whose widowed mother, Virginia Clarke, owned a thousand-acre farm southwest of Bowling Green. Herold and Bainbridge spent the night there, then retrieved Ruggles from Star Hotel, stopped at Trappe, then dropped Davey at the Garretts’ farm.

  The Sixteenth New York’s mission was obvious: boots and saddles at once, and immediate pursuit. But first, before they could gallop to Bowling Green—or anywhere else—they had to float across the Rappahannock on the slow ferry. The crossing would consume valuable time, but they had no choice. The ferry could not hold more than nine men and nine horses per trip. It would take three crossings—requiring six one-way trips by the ferryboat—and almost two hours, to transport the entire command to Port Royal. Baker ordered a black man to go out on the dock and hail the ferry to come over right away from the Port Royal side. In the meantime, Lieutenant Doherty, followed shortly by Detective Conger, came over and spoke to Rollins. While they waited for the ferryboat, Conger had time to take down a statement in writing from Rollins.

  Luther Baker, pleased with Rollins’s cooperation and the quality of information he provided, decided to press him into temporary service. The fisherman should accompany the cavalry across the river and lead the pursuit of Booth to Bowling Green. Will he, Baker asked, “Go of [his] own accord or under arrest?” Rollins considered his options. He did not object to joining the troops, but he and his wife, Betsy, worried what their neighbors might think. Cooperating with the Yankees might not go over well with the locals, and the family might suffer repercussions later. Rollins asked Baker to go through the ritual of placing him under mock arrest to avoid the appearance of impropriety. The detective agreed to the charade if it meant securing Rollins’s assistance.

  Rollins got his horse and led the animal onto the ferry. On the other side a corporal whom Baker let in on the ruse took charge of Rollins and paraded him through Port Royal like a prisoner. By 4:30 P.M. on April 25, the entire patrol was across. With his reputation as a good Southerner secure, Rollins guided the Union cavalry toward Bowling Green. En route, about three miles out from Port Royal, they encountered a black man riding toward them from the direction of Bowling Green.

  Not wanting to stop the cavalry’s progress to the Star Hotel, Doherty spurred forward to intercept the rider: “Not wishing to lose time, I rode ahead of the column and directed the negro to turn back and ride beside myself.” Brief questioning suggested that Jett was still in Bowling Green. Farther down the road, the patrol stopped at a halfway house between Port Royal and Bowling Green, the notorious den called “The Trappe.” Rollins stayed outside while Conger and Baker went inside for between half an hour and forty-five minutes to question the occupants.

  Never was a Civil War roadside tavern more aptly named. Widow Martha Carter and her four or five unmarried daughters kept what Luther Baker described discreetly as “a house of entertainment.” The cavalry found no men at the log house, but, noticed Baker, “when we were searching the premises the ladies seemed very much excited.” The women disclosed that four men had passed through on April 24, but only three of them passed back on the twenty-fifth. It did not soun
d to Baker like Booth was among them: “From their description, we could not ascertain that the lame man was along.”

  IT WAS 4:00 P.M. ON TUESDAY, APRIL 25. THE SUN WOULD set in a few hours, and John Garrett could tell that the Boyd cousins were not planning to go anywhere that night. Ten minutes later, as Garrett fretted about what to do with his now unwanted guests, an even more disturbing incident occurred. Two horsemen, riding rapidly from the direction of Port Royal, burst through the Garretts’ outer gate and galloped toward the house at top speed. Booth and Herold left the porch to meet them. Garrett recognized Ruggles, one of the two Confederates he’d spied from his bedroom window yesterday afternoon when they delivered Booth into his father’s care. Bainbridge was at his side.

  Like Paul Revere, Ruggles and Bainbridge carried electrifying news—the cavalry was coming! “Marylanders you had better watch out,” one of them shouted. “There are forty Yankee cavalry coming up the hill!” Even as they spoke, the patrol was crossing the Rappahannock River on the ferry between Port Conway and Port Royal. The Confederates had seen them with their own eyes from a hillcrest overlooking the ferry landing. And the soldiers had spotted them on the crest, watching their movements from across the river. Soon the whole troop would be across the river and riding southwest, following the identical route that Ruggles and Bainbridge had just raced down. Without even reining their animals to a complete halt, the riders warned Booth and Herold to hide themselves. Then they turned their horses around and galloped to the southwest, away from Port Royal and toward Bowling Green.