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

by James L. Swanson

  BOOTH AND HEROLD LOOKED AT EACH OTHER AND, WITHout exchanging a word, made for the woods behind Garrett’s barn. They waited for a time, but no cavalry came. Was it a false alarm? After a while Herold emerged from the forest and walked back to the farmhouse, where John Garrett stood in the front yard. Amiably, seemingly unworried, Herold asked Garrett what he thought about the news of Union cavalry at Port Royal. Was it credible? Garrett did not think so; he could not imagine how the cavalry would have gotten to Port Conway. As they spoke Garrett spotted a “black boy” named Jim coming down the road from Port Royal. Jim had belonged to J. H. Pendleton, and Garrett knew him. Leaving Herold in the yard, Garrett hailed Jim and questioned him about cavalry crossing on the ferry. It was true all right, confirmed Jim. The Union troops were already over the river and in Port Royal when he left there.

  Garrett reported the news to Herold, who acted unconcerned. If the pistol incident worried Garrett, Booth’s flight into the woods with Davey frightened him even more. Garrett complained vociferously: “I told him … that since he had come here my suspicions were aroused that all was not right with him and [Booth], and I would be very glad if they would leave our house for we are peaceable citizens and did not want to get into any difficulty.”

  Herold laughed off John Garrett’s concern: “There is no danger. Don’t make yourself alarmed about it; we will not get you into any trouble.” Davey asked for something to eat but Garrett refused him: “I told him we had nothing cooked and that he could not get anything to eat … until supper unless he promised that he would leave.”

  While Garrett and Herold stood in the front yard bickering, a thunderous sound coming from the direction of Port Royal shook the earth and caught them off guard. “There goes the cavalry now!” Garrett exclaimed. Incredibly, the soldiers, racing for Bowling Green, rode right past Locust Hill and the front gate that led to the Garrett farmhouse. Oblivious to their surroundings, the soldiers—either failing to notice or taking no interest in the two men standing in the front yard—galloped on by. Even their local guide, William Rollins, did not spot David Herold, owner of that beautiful blanket. “Well, that is all,” Davey observed nonchalantly.

  John Garrett, certain that Davey knew the patrol’s purpose, asked him again to leave Locust Hill.

  The cavalry out of sight, obscured by a trailing dust cloud, Herold turned to Garrett and asked if he knew where he could buy a horse. John said not likely: “Both armies had stripped the country pretty well of horses.” If horses can’t be bought at any price, then what about hiring a team and a wagon, Davey proposed. John told him about a colored man named Freeman who lived nearby and sometimes hired out a conveyance. And what did Garrett estimate it might cost to engage transport to Orange Court House? Freeman, John confided, had a weakness for specie—coin money—and he might drive as far as Guineau’s Station for $6. Herold possessed no coins, but dug his hand into a pocket and pulled out a piece of paper currency: “Here’s a Secretary Chase note; I’ll give this to get there.” Would that be enough? The former druggist’s clerk picked up a twig, sat on the ground, and drew the mathematics of the value conversion in the dirt, calculating that the $10 note was worth $7.30 in coin, more than enough to pay the price of a wagon ride.

  HEROLD HANDED GARRETT THE CASH AND ASKED HIM TO arrange the ride. Leaving Davey on the front porch, Garrett rushed to Freeman’s place as fast as he could. If he could find him at home, and induce him with the $10 note to transport the Boyds, the Garretts could be free of the suspicious strangers within the hour, well before sundown. When Garrett returned home, Herold and Booth were waiting for him in the yard. “What luck?” Herold asked. Garrett told them that Freeman was not home, but he would nonetheless find a way to send them on their way, even if he had to take them himself. Garrett said he knew Booth could not walk, and he didn’t expect them to leave Locust Hill on foot.

  But John Garrett did not tell the Boyd cousins what else he had learned from Freeman’s wife. After confirming to John that the horsemen were Union cavalry, she revealed what they were after: “They asked [me] if there were any white men there.” Mrs. Freeman was sure that the soldiers were hunting for someone. She confirmed Garrett’s every suspicion about the strangers. Yes, he must make them leave now, this very afternoon, as soon as he returned home from the Freeman place. He would give them the ride himself. When would they like to go? asked Garrett, implying that he was prepared to get under way at once. He didn’t get the answer he wanted. Unhurried, Booth and Herold said they did not want to leave until tomorrow morning. They would go on the morning of April 26. But it was suppertime now, and the “Boyds” were hungry.

  This night’s table did not sustain yesterday’s convivial banter. Although Richard Garrett was back at his farm, his son John spoke for the family now. In the presence of their guests, they talked no more of the Lincoln assassination. After supper Booth brought up his departure and asked John Garrett how he planned to send them to Orange Court House. There were only two options: wagon team or horseback. Garrett spoke vaguely, claiming that he had not decided yet, but said it would probably be the latter.

  Booth responded enthusiastically: “Well that’s the very thing, send us horseback.”

  The assassin’s eagerness exacerbated John’s suspicions about them: “I thought at once they wanted to go on horseback, so as to make way with the horses.” And why was Booth always hobbling around the place, especially near the barn? Was he staking out the stable for some horse stealing? Garrett could imagine how the scene might unfold the next morning: alone on an isolated road, outnumbered two to one by the heavily armed Boyd cousins, they would steal the horses—maybe even kill him—and he would be powerless to stop them. “Never mind,” Garrett reassured his guests, before morning’s light he would decide what to do with them.

  Booth and Herold excused themselves from the table and adjourned to their favorite spot, the bench on the front porch, where they sat side by side for a long time. John Garrett joined them. Then Davey started behaving oddly. Always chatty, he started to babble a fantastic tale to Garrett: “Herold [was] running on and on and talking a great deal of nonsense so that I thought he was the worse for liquor.” Davey boasted that he, too, like his cousin James Boyd and the Garrett boys, had served in the Confederate army. Recklessly, Davey claimed affiliation with the Thirtieth Virginia Infantry regiment. He even specified his small unit, Company “C,” and named his commander, Captain Robinson. All lies. Garrett confronted Davey and revealed his personal knowledge of that regiment; he said he knew that “Captain Robinson” did not exist. Booth’s voluble companion backed down and qualified his tale: “To tell you the truth I was there only one week. I was then on picket and the first night I was wounded.” Eagerly, Herold rolled up a sleeve again to show off not one of his juvenile tattoos, but a scar that he claimed had resulted from a battle wound. Davey’s foolish monologue convinced John Garrett even more that he shouldn’t trust them.

  It was dark now. Booth and Herold remained on the bench, watching the evening sky’s last clouds and colors fade to black. The fragrant scent of the spring night filled their nostrils until the sweetly burning smoke rising from Booth’s pipe flavored the air. It was more pleasurable to experience nature’s beauty from the comfort of a front porch than from the cold ground of their pine thicket, Indiantown, and Gambo Creek encampments. Those painful days were behind them now. They could tell that the Garrett family had turned against them, just like Dr. Stuart, but that did not matter now. The Locust Hill oasis had sustained and revived Booth. Tomorrow morning, Wednesday, April 26, he would continue his journey south toward his final destination, yet unknown. It would be the twelfth day.

  IN THE MEANTIME, BOOTH AND HEROLD NEEDED TO REST for the morning’s work. Booth signaled his man that it was time to retire, and they proposed to John Garrett that they turn in. Davey helped his master stand up, the actor tucked his crutches under his arms, and they walked to the front door. They planned to share Booth’s bed, just as John
and William Garrett shared a bed to accommodate Booth. Two in a soft bed in close quarters was better than two on the unyielding ground in a pine forest with room enough to spare. John Garrett stood between them and the door and barked a stunning question:

  “I asked them where they thought of sleeping.”

  Why, “in the house,” of course, Booth replied.

  “No, gentleman, you can’t sleep in my house.”

  Booth was incredulous. Was John Garrett denying him the bed that, only a night before, was his? Booth sensed the weight hanging from his hips. He was still wearing the pistol belt. He had never unbuckled it since the cavalry rode past that afternoon. And Davey’s carbine was close by. With his revolvers and knife within easy reach, Booth considered Garrett’s poor manners. Doctor Stuart’s crime was bad enough—he refused shelter to a wounded, desperate man. But John Garrett’s offense was worse—his father had kindly offered Booth shelter one day, and John cruelly robbed it from him the next. The prospect of another night sleeping on the ground was hateful to Booth. He could always threaten the Garretts, just like when he had menaced the cowering William Lucas. His weapons would certainly get him back upstairs, onto that restful mattress and soft pillow.

  John Garrett still did not know the true identity of the man he was throwing out of his house. He was pretty sure that the Boyd cousins were in some kind of trouble, but he failed to imagine its magnitude, and that Lincoln’s killer was a guest at his family’s dinner table. This was the man who put a bullet in the brain of the president of the United States, who ordered the murders of the vice president and secretary of state, and who threatened to cut the throat of a harmless, black freeman who dared refuse Booth the accommodations of his humble cabin. John Wilkes Booth fancied himself a paternalistic, courtly man, and in truth he often was. But when pressed he could also become a ruthless, vicious one. What, then, was Booth to do with the young, rude Mr. John Garrett?

  David Herold intervened: “We’ll sleep under the house then.” Davey hoped to defuse the situation, but the obstinate Garrett would not budge an inch.

  Impossible, he retorted. The dogs sleep under there and would bite them, perhaps even attacking them in their sleep.

  Gamely, Herold tried again: “Well, what’s in the barn then?” Hay and fodder, John Garrett replied.

  “We’ll sleep in the barn then,” Herold announced in a voice indicating that the matter was closed. Garrett relented. He could not eject them from Locust Hill by force. There were children in the house. The Boyds were better armed, and any violence might endanger not just him, but the whole family.

  Booth and Herold headed toward their new quarters, a modest-sized tobacco barn, forty-eight by fifty feet, with a pitched roof that stood one hundred fifty to two hundred feet from the main house. In addition to the hay and fodder that Garrett mentioned, the fugitives discovered several pieces of furniture. Neighbors from colonial Port Royal who wanted to protect their Early American furniture from vandalism or theft by Yankee raiders had stored some valuable pieces in the barn. The Garretts did not offer Booth and Herold mattresses, blankets, lanterns, candles, or other comforts. Booth wrapped himself in his shawl and plain wool blanket, while Herold unrolled his big, fancy blanket, “smooth on one side and with a heavy shag on the other, about the color of a buffalo robe.” It was an impressive piece of craftsmanship that had attracted not only William Rollins at Port Conway but also John Garrett. By 9:00 P.M. Booth and Herold had lain down on the plank floor and settled in for the night. Unbeknownst to them, the Garretts, already guilty of inhospitality, were at that moment conspiring to commit a worse crime, treachery. Lincoln’s assassin had just walked into a trap.

  John and William Garrett swung the barn door shut behind the fugitives. Neither Booth nor Herold paid heed to the black, iron lock. Perhaps, blinded by the dark, they failed to see the sturdy piece of hardware as they passed through the doorway. As soon as the door closed, John Garrett whispered to his brother, “We had better lock those men up.” John was sure that the Boyds were scheming to steal their horses in the middle of the night. What better way to foil the theft than by imprisoning the strangers in the tobacco shed until tomorrow morning? John crept around the perimeter of the building until he found a crevice between the boards, close to the ground. Dropping to his belly, he pressed his ear to the crevice and eavesdropped on Booth and Herold. John wanted to “see if I could find out anything about them. I thought that maybe they would be talking together and I might learn what their intentions were.” But the strangers frustrated Garrett’s primitive effort at intelligence gathering: “They were talking to each other in a low tone [and] I could not distinguish a word they said.”

  While his brother John eavesdropped, William Garrett tiptoed to the front door and, as quietly as he could, inserted the key into the lock. To avoid alerting the barn’s occupants he turned the key slowly, so the locking mechanism would softly grind, and not loudly snap, into place. It worked. Booth and Herold did not hear the sliding bolt; they did not know that they were prisoners. The brothers returned to the house in time for nightly family worship conducted by their father. After evening prayers they retired to their room, each with a bed to himself again, now that they had thrown Booth out of the house. Still, John Garrett remained uneasy. What if the Boyds broke out of the barn? Then they would, in their anger, steal the horses for sure. John suggested to William that they spend the night outside and keep the barn under surveillance. Both Garretts grabbed the blankets from their beds, William seized his pistol, and they hustled outside. They chose one of the two corn houses as their guard post: “We unlocked the corn house between the barn, or tobacco house, and the stables and spread out the blankets and lay down there.” There they watched and waited, observing the barn and listening keenly for suspicious sounds in the night.

  THE CAVALRY PATROL APPROACHED BOWLING GREEN AT around 11:00 P.M., April 25. About half a mile out, Doherty ordered ten of his men to dismount, and, by stealth, to follow Detective Baker into the town. Doherty, Conger, and Rollins rode quietly with the main body into the town and, by midnight, found the Star Hotel. They immediately commanded their men to surround the hotel and allow no one to leave. But their mission was thwarted, albeit temporarily, by an embarrassing incident. Lincoln’s assassin might be sleeping inside, but, comically, they could not get in. “We knocked about fifteen minutes at each door without receiving any reply,” according to Doherty. When no one answered the front door, they tried the side door, but no one answered there, either. Eventually they saw a black man walking down the street, and they dragooned him for assistance. He took Conger and Doherty around to the back and showed them the entrance to the “Negro house” at the rear of the Star. Baker was already lurking at the front door. They crept into the building and almost immediately encountered another black man. Where is Willie Jett? Doherty asked. In bed, the servant replied. Conger demanded to know where the room was.

  Mrs. Julia Gouldman, now awake, opened the door between the hotel and the Negro house. Doherty and Conger pushed through without an introduction and asked her a single question: where was her son, Jesse? She led them upstairs to a second-floor bedroom. Prepared for anything, the officer and detectives rushed in and discovered Jesse Gouldman and Willie Jett sharing a mattress. Already awakened by the commotion, Jett tried to get out of bed. “Is your name Jett?” Conger demanded. “Yes, sir,” came the meek reply. “Get up: I want you!” the detective thundered. Jett stood up and yanked on his pants. Then they seized him, hustled him downstairs roughly, and confined him in the parlor. The trio did everything possible to frighten Jett: “We … informed him of our business,” said Doherty, “telling him if he did not forthwith inform us where the men were, he should suffer.”

  Conger reclined in a chair and studied their captive: “Where are the two men who came with you across the river at Port Royal?”

  Jett, eyeing Baker and Doherty nervously, approached Conger and whispered a plea: “Can I see you alone?” “Yes, sir:
you can,” Conger replied magnanimously. Conger asked his counterparts to leave the parlor. The moment they departed, Jett extended his hand to the detective in supplication and betrayed John Wilkes Booth: “I know who you want; and I will tell you where they can be found.”

  “That’s what I want to know,” Conger encouraged him.

  All that this Confederate Judas begged in return was privacy: Willie wanted no audience to witness his shame.

  “They are on the road to Port Royal,” Jett confided, “about three miles this side of that.”

  But where, exactly, queried Conger: “At whose house are they?”

  “Mr. Garrett’s,” Jett said, adding, “I will go there with you, and show where they are now; and you can get them.” Willie Jett proved not only a Judas, but an enthusiastic one: “I told them everything from beginning to end. I said I would pilot them to the house where Booth was.”

  Conger realized that Jett would be an invaluable guide. Without him it might be difficult, if not impossible, to locate the Garrett farmhouse in the middle of the night.

  “Have you a horse?” Conger asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Get it, and get ready to go!”

  Conger sped Jett upstairs under guard to finish dressing. Quickly he put on his shirt and coat and pulled on his boots. By the time he returned to the parlor, the detectives had already sent a black servant to get his horse.