American Brutus

by Michael W. Kauffman

  Nearly all the evidence pertaining to Dr. Mudd is ambiguous, but I cannot interrupt the narrative to explain every plot development in terms of his guilt, then again in terms of his innocence. For practical purposes, I must write from a single perspective all the way through. So I chose a particular view based on the totality of the evidence. My opinion on Dr. Mudd’s case will rankle those who have always understood the facts to be different, but I ask them to suspend their disbelief, and in time, they will see how the story develops and why I made the choices I did. My arguments on reasoning and evidence are fully laid out in the notes.

  A great many history buffs have given their lives to this subject, and they’re always quick to point out factual errors. They howled at Jim Bishop’s description, in The Day Lincoln Was Shot, of Corporal James Tanner tiptoeing quietly up to the president’s deathbed, because in fact Tanner had lost both feet at Bull Run. They smirked at the frequent references to John Surratt’s “acquittal” on murder charges, when in fact it was a hung jury. They cringe at the phrase “Lower Maryland”; down here it’s Southern Maryland. Trivial though they are, such details often say a lot about the bigger picture. For example, whether Booth hobbled across the theater stage or deliberately strode is of little importance in itself. But the “stagey stride” described by eyewitnesses speaks of self-possession, not panic. And the fact that Booth lost his hat on the stage would hardly be worth mentioning, except that he had put a spare in his saddlebag. This demonstrates, as we shall see, an astonishing degree of premeditation.

  I have tried to remain faithful to the original records. The only liberty I have taken is to arrange the order of events to make sense of them chronologically. The times and dates given in the original records were hopelessly confused, and their lack of consistency was a constant source of frustration. Rest assured that the timing I give for every event is corroborated by other evidence.

  For me, the study of Lincoln’s assassination was not merely an exercise in historical detection. It was an interactive affair, and required personal involvement. I’ve walked the same roads and alleys that Booth took; rowed the same waters on the Potomac; jumped to the stage of Ford’s Theatre; and spent more than four hundred nights in the Booth family home. I’ve even burned down a tobacco barn like the one in which Booth was trapped. And as I drive home across the Navy Yard Bridge at night, I look for the moon that rises over the heights in the distance. On some nights it is enormous; it gives me chills to think that this same moon lighted the way for Lincoln’s killer as he passed this spot in his first hour on the run.

  This story will always have an element of mystery, but its solution may not be out of reach. Though many questions remain, many answers have been hidden for all these years in plain sight. It is time to take another look.

  ONE

  “BY GOD, THEN, IS JOHN BOOTH CRAZY?”

  GOOD FRIDAY HAD NEVER BEEN A WELL-ATTENDED NIGHT at the theater, but on that evening, the city of Washington was in a partying mood. On Palm Sunday, General Robert E. Lee had surrendered his Virginia troops to General Ulysses S. Grant at the village of Appomattox Court House. Though some forces remained in the field, Lee had been the greatest obstacle on the path to victory. Now that his troops were out of the way, the bloodiest war in America’s history would soon be over, and the celebrations had already begun. Four years to the day after its surrender, Fort Sumter was again under the Stars and Stripes. The flag raising there that day was marked with speeches, music, and prayers of thanks. There were prayers in Washington as well, but a lighter, more carefree atmosphere prevailed. There, buildings were “illuminated” with gas jets configured in the shape of stars, eagles, or words such as “peace” and “victory.” The city’s population, which had ballooned to more than two hundred thousand during the war, had gone crazy. The streets were crawling with silly, drunken revelers—soldiers back from the war, tourists passing through, and all the usual odds and ends—staggering from one bar to another in search of a party and another toast to the military victors. All things considered, maybe this Good Friday 1865 was not such a bad night for the theater after all.

  Ford’s Theatre, on Tenth Street, was one of Washington’s leading establishments. It had all the amenities of a first-rate playhouse. Its owner, John T. Ford, presented the finest talent the American stage had to offer. The audience that turned out this night made up a pretty fair cross section of Washington society: clerks, businessmen, politicians, tourists. And of course, there were soldiers. An ever-present part of life in the capital, they came to Ford’s from every camp, fort, and hospital in the area, their dark blue uniforms scattered among the hoopskirts and crinolines. Some wore the light blue of the Veterans’ Reserve Corps, whose members once served in the ranks but were no longer suited for combat or strenuous duty. Here, they mingled comfortably with socialites, power brokers, and people from all walks of life. It was a diverse crowd, but nearly everyone had something in common, which explained, in large measure, the need to be in a house of entertainment on such a holy day: these people had been through hell.

  One could hardly name an event in recent history that someone in this audience had not witnessed. Here were the veterans of Bull Run, Shiloh, and Gettysburg; the political warriors who shaped the nation; and the commercial giants of the age. One man had survived the horrors of Andersonville prison, and others had just arrived from Appomattox. This was more than just a “large and fashionable audience”; the people who came to Ford’s Theatre that night had already been eyewitnesses to history. No doubt they were eager to get back to an ordinary life.1

  The play was Our American Cousin, a popular British comedy from the 1850s. Its humor was derived from the homespun “Yankeeisms” of Asa Trenchard, a backwoods Vermonter, and the physical eccentricities of Lord Dundreary, a self-important British nobleman. The star was Laura Keene, a London native, whose character, Florence Trenchard, believes that her cousin Asa (played by actor Harry Hawk) has just inherited the family fortune. Florence and her British relatives try to stay in Asa’s good graces, but find it difficult to overlook his crass country-boy manners. It is this culture clash that carries the play.2

  For most of the audience that night, however, Our American Cousin was not the main attraction. A notice in that day’s Evening Star had announced that President Abraham Lincoln and his wife would attend the performance. Their guest would be Ulysses S. Grant, lieutenant general of the army, victor of the recent war, hero of the hour. Their surprise reservation had come in that morning, and it sent Harry Clay Ford, brother of the theater’s owner, on a mad dash to organize a special program. A patriotic song called “Honor to Our Soldiers” was written for the occasion, and Ford sent notices of it to the Evening Star. He even redesigned the evening’s playbill to reflect the new developments. By late afternoon, the reservations were rolling in. A normally dismal night was now showing some promise. By curtain time, at eight o’clock, Ford’s Theatre had a fairly good house.3

  Abraham Lincoln was famously fond of the theater, and had passed many an evening at Ford’s or its competitor, the National. At Ford’s, he always occupied the same box, on the right side, directly above the stage. It was an oddly shaped space with sharp angles and cramped, narrow corners, accessible only through a narrow passageway just off the balcony. It actually consisted of two boxes, numbered 7 and 8, which were normally divided by a partition. Stagehands set aside the divider and brought in more comfortable furniture to fill the space. For the president, a large walnut rocker, upholstered in burgundy damask, was placed in the corner nearest the door. A matching sofa went along the rear wall of the box, and the third piece, a large, comfortable armchair, was placed in the “upstage” corner, farthest from the door. The box had just enough space for those chairs, plus a small one for Mrs. Lincoln.

  American flags were hung on either side, and two more were draped over the front balustrade. The blue standard of the Treasury Guards hung on a staff in the center, just above a gilt-framed portrait of George Wash
ington. The flags added more than just a festive dash of color. They let everyone know where to look for the hero of Appomattox. Make no mistake about it: General Grant, and not Lincoln, was the evening’s chief attraction.

  James P. Ferguson was keeping an eye out for the general. Ferguson owned a saloon next door to the theater, and he always made a point of attending when the president was there. But he took a particular interest in Ulysses S. Grant, whom he claimed to have known since boyhood. When Harry Ford told him that Grant was coming, Ferguson bought two tickets for the dress circle, or first balcony, with a clear view into the box directly opposite. With the best seats in the house, “Fergy” brought along his young sweetheart so she could see the general as well.4

  They were in for a disappointment. General Grant had taken an afternoon train home to Burlington, New Jersey. A young couple came to the theater in his place. The presidential party arrived late, and as they appeared in the dress circle, the audience burst into a long, spontaneous ovation. The president acknowledged the approbation with a smile, then took his seat, partly hidden behind a flag. Miss Clara Harris took a seat at the far side of the box, and her fiancé, Major Henry Rathbone, sat on the sofa just behind her. Though Grant’s absence was a disappointment, many in the audience assumed he would appear later. Ferguson, for one, kept a lookout for him.

  By ten-fifteen, Our American Cousin had progressed to the second scene of the third act. Asa Trenchard had just told a woman named Mrs. Mountchessington that he hadn’t inherited a fortune after all, as everyone thought, and the character (played by Helen Muzzy) had a change of heart about the marriage she had hoped to arrange between Asa and her daughter Augusta.

  ASA (to Augusta): You crave affection, you do. Now I’ve no fortune, but I’m biling over with affections, which I’m ready to pour out to all of you, like apple sass over roast pork.

  MRS. MOUNTCHESSINGTON: Mr. Trenchard, you will please recollect you are addressing my daughter, and in my presence.

  ASA: Yes, I’m offering her my heart and hand just as she wants them, with nothing in ’em.

  The president’s guests seemed to enjoy the play. Miss Harris had been the Lincolns’ guest here before. Major Rathbone, of the 12th U.S. Infantry, was not quite so familiar to them. He had commanded a company under Burnside at Antietam and Fredericksburg. More recently, he had served as the head of disbursing for the Provost Marshal General’s bureau. Henry and Clara had known each other since childhood, when her widowed father married his widowed mother.5

  Mary Todd Lincoln seemed especially pleased to make a public appearance that night. Sitting next to the president, she looked radiant in her flowered dress. She seemed to be enjoying a rare moment of happiness, her mind unburdened, for now, by personal loss and suffering. One lady in the audience noticed that Mrs. Lincoln smiled a great deal, and often glanced over at her husband.

  The years had weighed heavily on Abraham Lincoln, and an occasional night out gave him a much-needed diversion. But even the theater did not free him from the weight of his duties. Twice he was interrupted by the delivery of messages. Charles Forbes, the White House messenger, brought one dispatch, then took a seat outside the entrance to the box. A newspaper reporter named Hanscom brought the other. Neither message seemed to require an immediate response, and the president settled quietly back in his rocking chair, head propped in his hand, looking lost in thought.

  Though Lincoln was hidden from view most of the time, he occasionally leaned over the box railing to look down into the audience. That is how Isaac Jacquette, in the dress circle, got his first look at him. It was halfway into the play, and a woman sitting nearby remarked that she had never seen the president before. A man whispered that she might see him now, as he was leaning forward. Every time he came into view, the president stole the show. 6

  On the far side of the dress circle, James Ferguson, still watching for General Grant, had borrowed his girlfriend’s opera glasses for a closer view. He noticed a dark-haired man with a large black mustache walking toward the box from the rear of the dress circle. It was the actor John Wilkes Booth—as usual, immaculately dressed and groomed. Ferguson watched Booth inch his way past a clump of people who had moved their chairs against the wall for a better look at the stage. Booth then stopped near the entrance to Lincoln’s box and stood there for a moment, hat in hand, looking around.7

  On stage, Augusta Mountchessington realized she’d been wasting her time with the American cousin. She left the room in disgust, and her mother turned to Asa. “I am aware, Mr. Trenchard, you are not used to the manners of good society, and that, alone, will excuse the impertinence of which you have been guilty.” She stormed off stage right, away from the president’s box. Now alone on the stage, Trenchard said, half to himself, “Don’t know the manners of good society, eh? Wal, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal—you sockdologizing old man-trap!” 8

  The actor Harry Hawk had turned to follow the lady off stage when he was startled by a loud pop. Spinning around, he saw a commotion up in the president’s box. A man in black made a quick jerking movement, then stepped out of the shadows, his face glowing eerily from the stage lights below. The man stood there, wrapped in a veil of smoke, and hissed out the words “Sic semper tyrannis!” Then he suddenly vaulted over the balustrade and dropped to the stage more than twelve feet below. Landing slightly off balance, he rose to his full height, then raised a gleaming dagger triumphantly over his head. “The South shall be free!” he cried. With that he dashed straight toward Hawk, who turned and fled in terror. The man disappeared into the wings.9

  In the box office next to the lobby, Harry Ford was tallying receipts while ticket agents Joseph Sessford and Thomas Raybold talked with Laura Keene’s manager. They all heard the gunshot, and Ford looked up from his tally. “That was not in the piece,” he said. The men exchanged puzzled glances, then made a dash for the window that looked out toward the stage. Ford reached it just in time to see a man rising to his feet with a knife in his hand. He looked familiar, but before Harry Ford could even form the words, Joe Sessford spoke for him. “By God, then, is John Booth crazy?”

  John Booth. To those who knew him, this dramatic interruption did not make sense. Booth’s late father had been known for his antics on stage and off, but his son had always tried to live that down. He had led a decent life, traveled in good society, and made a respectable name for himself. He was a longtime friend of the Fords, and disrupting one of their productions was entirely out of character for him. To Sessford, it smelled like a cheap stunt, nothing more serious than that.

  Nearly everyone was slow to catch on. People in the audience thought something new had been added for the president’s appearance. Some wondered if a piece of the set had collapsed, and one audience member even thought a pistol shot had been incorporated into the script. John F. Sleichman, a scene shifter, was standing backstage with James L. Maddox, the property man, when they heard the shot. Sleichman figured a part of the president’s box must have collapsed. But when he told Maddox, the property man stepped into position for a look. What he saw instead was John Wilkes Booth darting across the stage with a knife.10

  A piercing scream came from the president’s box, and in an instant everyone knew. To Isaac Jacquette, in the dress circle, that scream was like a slap in the face. A murder had been committed right in front of him, and neither he nor anyone else had done a thing about it. Edwin Bates, a businessman from Vermont, thought it was fear that froze everyone in their seats. “The actors seemed no more to comprehend the matter than the audience,” he wrote that night. “Or they might perhaps [have] stopped the man as he ran right past them[.] If [only] they had not been intimidated by his dagger.” In fact, the audience was full of men in uniform, and dozens of them were armed. One would have thought that after four years of war, somebody in the house would have recognized the sound of gunfire. But the element of surprise worked against them. A moment of hesitation was all the killer needed. As Charles Addison Sanf
ord, a young student, put it: “Everybody was confounded & paralyzed . . . no one comprehended the moment. . . .Then all rose up trying to recover themselves—imagining anxiously what it meant & if the President had been assassinated. It was an awful moment.”11

  Major Joseph B. Stewart was the first to react. Stewart, sitting in the front row, had just turned to say something to his sister when he heard the shot. He couldn’t tell where the sound had come from, but looking around, he caught a glimpse of a man in black dropping to the stage. The knife in his hand told the story. At six feet five, Stewart might easily have overpowered the assassin, but he never got the chance. By the time he bounded onto the stage, the killer had already vanished into the wings. Stewart followed, but his path to the back door was blocked by a couple of bewildered actors who had wandered into the dark passageway. By the time he got outside, all he saw was the faint silhouette of a man struggling with a horse. Stewart took a swipe at the reins, but the man gained control of the animal, then turned it around and galloped into the darkness.12

  Like a slow-burning flame, awareness of the shooting built momentum as it swept through the house, and the audience, at first at a low simmer, started to boil. A murder had just been committed in front of them all, and the killer had strode right past them. He had taunted them, and had gotten away with it. In minutes, the stage swarmed with people—men leaping over the orchestra pit, kicking over chairs, and clambering over one another to reach the president’s box. Shock and indignation were etched on every visage. Even the veterans had tears streaming down their faces. Some, looking into the box, could see a look of horror frozen on Mrs. Lincoln’s face. She let out another shriek, then swooned and fell out of view. Other women in the audience fainted as well.13