American Brutus

by Michael W. Kauffman

  Saloon owner James P. Ferguson, on the far side of the first balcony, had recognized the man in black as John Wilkes Booth. Ferguson was sure that Booth stared right at him as he ran across the stage. Was he to have been another victim? Not taking any chances, he pushed his female companion to the floor, shielding her behind the balcony railing. As Booth darted across the stage beneath them, they heard him whisper, “I have done it!” 14

  The assassin may have gotten away, but certainly not by intimidation. Many of those present had faced far greater dangers than a man with a knife. Lt. John J. Toffey of the 10th V.R.C., for example, was one of those who froze when Booth ran by. Once, while serving with the 33rd New Jersey Infantry, Toffey had launched a ferocious assault on the enemy that would earn him a gunshot wound in the hip and (eventually) a Medal of Honor. Yet in Ford’s Theatre, all he could do was stare vacantly as the killer fled. Self-reproach ate at him. “I had a Revolver with me,” he wrote, “and would to God I had presence of mind enough at the time the man jumped down to have shot him. Several other officers had revolvers but the thing was done so quick that there was hardly time to draw them and shoot.” 15

  In fact, nobody even drew, and though a few men did make a rush for the back door, for a variety of reasons they went no farther. James S. Knox and E. D. Wray were among those who ran to the stage. Wray made a detour to pick something up off the stage, and others stopped when they heard a woman say, “They’ll get him” or “They’ve got him”—nobody was sure which. Only a few actually went out the back door, and the only person they found there was a frightened young boy, who said that Mr. Booth had struck him on the head with something as he mounted his horse.16

  In the president’s box, Mrs. Lincoln clutched her husband, pleading with him to open his eyes, to say something, to let her know that he would be all right. Major Rathbone stood a few feet away, bleeding and in pain. Rathbone had not seen Booth enter the box. He heard the shot, and the next instant turned to see the assassin lunging at him with a knife. He sprang to his feet, but managed only to deflect the blow, taking a deep cut in the arm. He was the only man close enough to have prevented the assassination, but he didn’t have the chance.

  A pounding noise brought Rathbone to his senses. People were trying to reach the box, but could not even get into the passageway leading to it. Apparently the outer door was blocked. Rathbone rushed to help. Fumbling for the door handle, he discovered that one end of a wooden bar had been placed against the door and the other end jammed into the plaster of the opposite wall. The killer had barricaded himself in with the Lincolns and their guests—for how long, he did not know. A few blows dislodged the board, and the door flew inward, flooding the narrow space with people. One of them was Dr. Charles A. Leale, who pushed his way in to see the president.

  In the dress circle, Isaac Jacquette went numb. All he remembered saying was “Oh, God! The President is murdered!” followed by pandemonium. A few seats to his right, Captain Theodore McGowan looked down and saw “a heaving, hoarse-sounding sea of men.” Helen DuBarry said that even strong men were sobbing. Some were completely overcome, as much from frustration as grief. A rumor went around that Booth had been captured, and cries of “Hang him!” tore through the crowd. That was the first of many such false alarms, and each was followed by louder shouts for revenge. This time, one man stood on a chair and shouted, “Take out the ladies and hang him here on the spot!”17

  Laura Keene tried to restore order. Stepping up to the footlights, the actress called, “Order, gentlemen!” But her words were swallowed up in the din of a thousand voices. Jim Maddox thought she was asking for water, and he ran to the green room to get some. When he returned with four tumblers and a pitcher, Miss Keene had disappeared into the crowd.

  Some of the men talked of mounting a pursuit. Stewart and others were sure the assassin had gone down the alley, then turned north toward F Street. After that, his direction was anybody’s guess. But even if they knew where he was headed, catching up with him would not be easy. Booth already had a long lead, and it would take some time for anyone to get a horse saddled and on the road.18

  While the men felt embarrassed that Booth had gotten away, the women were simply terrified. “It was the coolest, most cold-blooded deed ever heard, read, or dreamed of,” wrote Sarah Hamlin Batchelder. Hours after the shooting, Sarah was still trying to find the right words for what she had witnessed:

  “It certainly unnerved me. My own shadow . . . would have startled me. . . . This is terrible, awful horrible, nothing can describe the intense feeling of fear & dread of more to come and none can judge in the least degree its depth save those who witnessed the horrible scenes.” 19

  Lt. John T. Bolton, 7th V.R.C., managed to get into the president’s box. As officer of the day for the provost guards, Bolton had come into town to check soldiers’ passes. Ford’s was to be his last stop for the night, and after looking around, he had settled in to watch the play. Booth’s shot startled him back into action. Unable to push through the aisles, he vaulted over seats to get to the stage. By then the assassin was gone, so he turned his attention upward. The president’s box was getting crowded, and nobody seemed to be in charge. With help from a couple of bystanders, Bolton pulled himself up and over the balustrade.20

  The place was jammed to suffocation, and Henry Rathbone was beginning to panic. He recognized Captain McGowan in the crowd, and asked him to keep anyone else from entering—unless, of course, they were surgeons. Dr. Leale was already attending to the president. Only twenty-three years old, Charles Leale had earned his medical degree just six weeks before. Yet he never hesitated. He called for medicinal brandy and water, then began an examination of the patient. Mr. Lincoln still sat in his rocker, locked in the arms of his wife. Unresponsive, he appeared to be comatose. Mrs. Lincoln pleaded, “Oh, doctor, do what you can for my dear husband. Do what you can for him.” Leale assured her he would do all he could, but at this point he wasn’t even sure how or where the president had been wounded. He remembered the knife in the assailant’s hand and assumed the president had been stabbed. At first glance, though, no cuts were apparent.21

  Just down Tenth Street, Sergeant John F. Drill was in charge of the detective desk at police headquarters. So far, this Friday night had been relatively quiet. A thirty-five-year-old prostitute had been brought in for attacking a man. A forty-year-old man had been bailed out after assaulting another man with a pistol. Considering how dense, drunk, and noisy the celebrations had been, the level of violence had stayed remarkably low. Though drunken soldiers occasionally got out of hand, that was a problem for military authorities. Civilian police had had nothing to complain about. Until now.22

  A rumbling sound wafted down from Ford’s Theatre, but Drill paid little attention. He was used to strange noises at night. In this quiet neighborhood, the still night air carried all kinds of sounds from the theater half a block up the street. Martial music, the clash of arms, and the roar of an audience were nothing to get excited about, especially when the windows were open. Then suddenly A. C. Richards, superintendent of the force, burst through the front door. James Ferguson and James Maddox followed. They could hardly get a word out between gasps for air. Richards fired off questions. Who did it? How did he get out of the theater? With a quick enough response, they might still capture him. Messengers were sent out, and the entire force was put on alert.23

  Back in the theater, the press of the crowd was getting out of hand as onlookers pushed toward the stage for a better view of the box. Looking down on them, Lieutenant Bolton now ordered everyone to disperse. But the audience had worked itself into a frenzy, and nobody paid much attention to the provost guards officer. Dr. Charles S. Taft, a surgeon for the Signal Corps, saw that his wife, Sarah, was in danger of being crushed against the wall of the orchestra pit. He managed to boost her onto the stage, where at least she would have room to breathe. Her friend Annie Wright was forced to improvise. Annie’s husband, John, was the stage manager at Ford’s,
and she was anxious about his safety. She tried to pull herself up with a bass viol from the orchestra pit, but a couple of failed attempts left her straddling the instrument in a painful and awkward position. 24

  The crush had Lue Porterfield in a panic. A petite young woman, Lue lacked the size and strength needed to push her way through the crowd. She was about to fall underfoot when a large man appeared out of the audience and lifted her up over the footlights. Actor E. A. Emerson, seeing her on the stage, thought she was about to faint. He took her in his arms and fanned her with his Lord Dundreary wig. In less grim circumstances, the scene would have been comical.25

  Dr. Charles Taft was torn by indecision. His distraught wife wanted desperately to go home, but he was a surgeon and someone in the box was calling for help. He couldn’t just walk away. Taft found Annie Wright and asked her to look after Sarah. Then he looked up at the box, and a man asked, “Do you want to get up there?” Taft nodded, and Daniel Beekman offered him a boost.26

  Far too many people were in the box already. Actress Laura Keene was there, and a young obstetrician named Albert Freeman Africanus King had also pushed his way in. Like young Dr. Leale, King had just received his medical degree. When Dr. Taft finally pulled himself up over the railing, he found that he was the senior man in attendance, although he was only thirty.

  Dr. Leale was still searching for the wound. He knew he didn’t have much time. The president was in a state of paralysis. His eyes were closed, and his breathing was labored. The doctor could find no pulse, and though he needed to examine the patient, he couldn’t do so in such a tight space. So with the help of a few soldiers, he lifted Mr. Lincoln out of his rocking chair and laid him on the floor. As he did so, he noticed a small clot of blood on the president’s coat near one of the shoulders. Leale thought he had found the area of the wound, but when he tried to look at the president’s neck, he found that the tie was too tight. He struggled to loosen it, and one of the men huddling over him suggested he just cut it off. He handed Leale a penknife.

  Leale pulled off the president’s coat and peeled back his shirt. But even with the shoulders and chest exposed, he could find no knife wounds. Fanning his fingers through the president’s hair, at last he found something. On the back of the head, a little to the left of center, was a bullet hole. The tissues around it had swelled, and a clot had formed in the opening. Leale pulled his hand away, and the wound bled. As it did, the president began to breathe more freely.

  Lieutenant Bolton stood to the side, awaiting orders. The crowd showed no signs of calming down. Though they should probably leave the building, Bolton alone was powerless to make them do that. Curiosity outweighed their fear, and even with the threat of a stampede, many refused to leave unless someone forced them out.27

  Dr. Charles Taft quickly took in the situation. From the look of things, a couple of soldiers were preparing to carry the president back to the White House. Taft didn’t think Lincoln could survive such a trip, even in a carriage. He announced that he was an army surgeon, and in his professional opinion, the president should be taken someplace close by—perhaps the nearest house. Dr. Leale concurred, then briefed Taft on the patient’s injury. Such a wound, Dr. Taft said, would have to be mortal. Though Leale had already said as much, the older man had paid little attention; he didn’t realize that the man who spoke to him was also a doctor. Nevertheless, Leale still had the soldiers’ attention. He gave the signal, and six men lifted the president’s limp, unwieldy form. As they carried him out of the box, someone noticed Mr. Lincoln’s coat lying in the corner. Some papers had fallen out of the pockets, and at Dr. Leale’s suggestion, they were handed over to Captain Edwin Bedee, 12th New Hampshire Infantry, who happened to be standing in the box.28

  Witnesses flooded into the police station faster than anyone could deal with them. A sense of urgency forced detectives to dispense with formalities, and consequently, little of what anybody said was put in writing. Still, it is not hard to imagine the drift of the investigation. Police asked the usual questions—What was he wearing? Which way did he go?—and witnesses bickered over the details. On stage, actor Harry Hawk had been in a better position than anyone else to have observed what happened; yet of all the eyewitnesses interviewed, nobody remembered the shooting quite the way he did. He was the only one who recalled hearing Booth say, “Sic semper tyrannis!” while still in the box; others thought Booth had first jumped to the stage. A few had also understood Booth to say, “Revenge for the South!” Hawk was the only eyewitness who heard “The South shall be free!”29

  As they talked to police, and to one another, eyewitnesses found it difficult to make sense of their fragmented memories. Not everyone had heard a gunshot, but all agreed that Booth had flashed a knife. Everyone had seen him leap to the stage, and most remembered seeing him land slightly off balance. A few had heard the sound of tearing fabric, and assumed he had torn his clothes in the jump. But Ferguson, sitting across from the Lincolns’ box, was sure Booth had caught his spur in the blue flag; he even saw it fall to the stage in tatters. Nobody else reported anything of the kind. These differences would not have surprised investigators. In cases such as this, confusion and contradiction are the rule, not the exception. But fortunately for police, the identity of the assassin was not in dispute. John Wilkes Booth was a well-known figure in Washington, especially at Ford’s Theatre.

  If any one person stood out among eyewitnesses, it was James P. Ferguson. A tall, wiry man of thirty-five, “Fergy” had an adventurous past and a thirst for notoriety. He relished the unique opportunity to tell this story. He swore out a statement for the police, repeated his story for the War Department, and sought out newspaper reporters, to whom he gave interviews. His chief claim was that he knew the assassin and was the only person looking at him when he fired the shot. Little wonder that Jim Ferguson was so much in demand.30

  At police headquarters, Superintendent A. C. Richards tried to bring order to the maelstrom of witnesses. Nehemiah Miller, the police justice, came over to take their sworn statements while detectives listened and jotted down ideas. They took a special interest in Booth’s movements around the theater that day. He had been in and out of Ford’s all afternoon, they learned, and had made a few trips to the neighboring restaurants as well. Almost everyone on the crew knew him and enjoyed his company. He took them to lunch, bought them drinks, and generally made them feel at ease. He always treated the crew as equals, and not many stars did that.31

  Jim Maddox said that Booth had not been around much until the previous Christmas. That’s when he had started coming to Ford’s regularly. Booth had said that he was in the oil business and wanted to hire a clerk. He also needed a stable for his horse. Maddox found him one in Baptist Alley, about sixty yards down from the back door of the theater. It was actually a shed, twenty by thirty feet, and Mary Ann Davis, a widow living on E Street, rented it to Booth for five dollars a month. Ned Spangler fixed it up to accommodate a buggy, and Booth had been using it ever since. Some of the theater people looked after the horse and ran other errands for Booth as well. Until Friday night, nobody thought anything of it.

  Superintendent Richards wanted his men to keep a watch out for the horse Booth was riding, and fortunately a description was easy to get. “Peanuts” Borrows had been holding the mare at the time of the shooting. Though he was just a boy, he turned out to be an excellent observer. He described the horse as a light bay mare with a long, wavy tail and a heavy fetlock. She had a small, flat forehead; small nostrils; and a very small, thin neck that was rather arched. Her mane fell on the left side, her ears were small, and her rump sloped. Richards was delighted to have such a wealth of detail, right down to the “uneasy” temperament, which would prove to be important. Booth was a superb horseman and wasn’t the least bothered by her nervous disposition. On Friday afternoon, he had been showing her off to Ferguson. “See how she will start off?” Booth said. And with that, he had darted up Tenth Street.32

  Doctors, officers
, and investigators needed to know what had occurred, yet the government had no general plan for notifying its people in the event of an emergency. Eyewitnesses took care of that on their own initiative. It was they who spread the news of the shooting. Captain Joseph Findley told his military supervisors about the assassination. Samuel J. Koontz of the Treasury Department hustled out to summon a doctor. Dr. George B. Todd, surgeon of the U.S.S. Montauk, ran dispatches to the nearest telegraph office.

  At the National Theatre, three blocks to the west, the news brought an abrupt halt to a long-awaited event. Manager C. Dwight Hess had spent a fortune on an “illumination” of gaslights to commemorate the flag raising at Fort Sumter that day. Hess had invited the Lincolns, but they declined. Their twelve-year-old son, Tad, however, wanted to go in their place. He was there enjoying a spectacular performance of Aladdin; or, The Wonderful Lamp when a man burst in and cried, “The President is assassinated in his private box!” As spectators made a rush for the exits, a man in the audience called for order. “Sit down!” he yelled. “It is a ruse of the pick-pockets!” Miraculously, that worked. The house quieted down, and the play resumed. A dangerous stampede was averted. But a few minutes later, the performance was halted once more. An actor stepped up to center stage and announced that the news about the president was true after all. This time, the audience filed out in an orderly way. Tad Lincoln, confused and shaken, was hustled off to the White House. 33