Had he only shared the bitter end, then, in the common trench, his
memory might have been hidden. The end had come when he appeared to make
of benignant victory a quenchless revenge. One more selection from his
apostrophe will do. It suggests the manner of his death:
"They say that the South has found _that_ 'last ditch' which the North
have so long derided. Should I reach her in safety, and find it true, I
will proudly beg permission to triumph or die in that same 'ditch' by
her side." The swamp near which he died may be called, without unseemly
pun--a truth, not a _bon mot_--the last ditch of the rebellion.
None of the printed pictures that I have seen do justice to Booth. Some
of the _cartes de visite_ get him very nearly. He had one of the finest
vital heads I have ever seen. In fact, he was one of the best exponents
of vital beauty I have ever met. By this I refer to physical beauty in
the Medician sense--health, shapeliness, power in beautiful poise, and
seemingly more powerful in repose than in energy. His hands and feet
were sizable, not small, and his legs were stout and muscular, but
inclined to bow like his father's. From the waist up he was a perfect
man; his chest being full and broad, his shoulders gently sloping, and
his arms as white as alabaster, but hard as marble. Over these, upon a
neck which was its proper column, rose the cornice of a fine Doric face,
spare at the jaws and not anywhere over-ripe, but seamed with a nose of
Roman model, the only relic of his half-Jewish parentage, which gave
decision to the thoughtfully stern sweep of two direct, dark eyes,
meaning to woman snare, and to man a search warrant, while the lofty
square forehead and square brows were crowned with a weight of curling
jetty hair, like a rich Corinthian capital. His profile was eagleish,
and afar his countenance was haughty. He seemed throat full of
introspections, ambitious self-examinings, eye-strides into the future,
as if it withheld him something to which he had a right. I have since
wondered whether this moody demeanor did not come of a guilty spirit,
but all the Booths look so.
Wilkes spoke to me in Washington for the first time three weeks before
the murder. His address was winning as a girl's, rising in effect not
from what he said, but from how he said it. It was magnetic, and I can
describe it therefore by its effects alone. I seemed, when he had
spoken, to lean toward this man. His attitude spoke to me; with as easy
familiarity as I ever observed he drew rear and conversed. The talk was
on so trite things that it did not lie a second in the head, but when I
left him it was with the feeling that a most agreeable fellow had passed
by.
The next time the name of Wilkes Booth recurred to me was like the
pistol shot he had fired. The right hand I had shaken murdered the
father of the country.
Booth was not graceful with his feet, although his ordinary walk was
pleasant enough. But his arms were put to artistic uses; not the baser
ones like boxing, but all sorts of fencing, manual practice, and the
handling of weapons.
In his dress, he was neat without being particular. Almost any clothes
could fit him; but he had nothing of the exquisite about him; his
neckties and all such matters were good without being gaudy. Nature had
done much for him. In this beautiful palace an outlaw had builded his
fire, and slept, and plotted, and dreamed.
I have heard it said that Booth frequently cut his adversaries upon the
stage in sheer wantonness or bloodthirstiness. This is a mistake, and is
attributable to his father, the elder Booth, who had the madness of
confounding himself with the character. Wilkes was too good a fencer to
make ugly gashes; his pride was his skill, not his awkwardness. Once
he was playing with John McCullough in the last act of "Richard." They
were fighting desperately. Suddenly the cross-piece on the hilt of
McCullough's sword flew off and cut the owner deeply in the forehead.
Blood ran down McCullough's face, though they continued to struggle, and
while, ostensibly, Booth was imitating a demon, he said in a half
whisper:
"Good God, John, did I hurt you?"
And when they went off the stage, Booth was white with fear that he had
gashed his friend.
As an actor, Booth was too energetic to be correct; his conception of
Richard was vivid and original, one of the best that we have had, and he
came nearer his father's rendering of the last act than any body we have
had. His combat scene was terrific. The statement that his voice had
failed has no valid foundation; it was as good when he challenged the
cavalry-men to combat as in the best of his Thespian successes. In all
acting that required delicate characterization, refined conception or
carefulness, Booth was at sea. But in strong physical parts, requiring
fair reading and an abundance of spring and tension, he was much finer
than hearsay would have us believe.
His _Romeo_ was described a short time ago by the Washington
_Intelligencer_ as the most satisfactory of all renderings of that fine
character. He played the _Corsican Brothers_ three weeks on a run in
Boston. He played _Pescara_ at Ford's Theater--his last mock part in
this world--on to-morrow (Saturday) night, six weeks ago.
He was fond of learning and reciting fugitive poems. His favorite piece
was "The Beautiful Snow" comparing it to a lost purity. He has been
known by gentlemen in this city to recite this poem with fine effect,
and cry all the while. This was on the principle of "guilty people
sitting at a play." His pocket-book was generally full of little
selections picked up at random, and he had considerable delicacy of
appreciation.
On the morning of the murder, Booth breakfasted with Miss Carrie Bean,
the daughter of a merchant, and a very respectable young lady, at the
National Hall. He arose from the table at, say eleven o'clock. During
the breakfast, those who watched him say that he was lively, piquant and
self-possessed as ever in his life.
That night the horrible crime thrilled the land. A period of crippled
flight succeeded. Living in swamps, upon trembling hospitality, upon
hopes which sank as he leaned upon them. Booth passed the nights in
perilous route or broken sleep, and in the end went down like a bravo,
but in the eyes of all who read his history, commanding no respect for
his valor, charity for his motive, or sympathy for his sin.
The closing scenes of these terrible days are reserved for a second
paper. Much matter that should have gone into this is retained for the
present.
LETTER IV.
THE ASSASSIN'S DEATH.
Washington, April 28--8 P. M.
A hard and grizzly face overlooks me as I write. Its inconsiderable
forehead is crowned with turning sandy hair, and the deep concave of its
long insatiate jaws is almost hidden by a dense red beard, which can not
still abate the terrible decision of the large mouth, so well sustained
by searching eyes of spotted gray, which roll and rivet one. This is the
face of Lafayette Baker, colonel and chief of the secret service. He has
played the most perilous parts of the war, and is the capturer of the
late President's murderer. The story that I am to tell you, as he and
his trusty dependents told it to me, will be aptly commenced here, where
the net was woven which took the dying life of Wilkes Booth.
When the murder occured, Colonel Baker was absent from Washington, He
returned on the third morning, and was at once besought by Secretary
Stanton to join the hue and cry against the escaped Booth. The sagacious
detective found that nearly ten thousand cavalry, and one-fourth as many
policemen, had been meantime scouring, without plan or compass, the
whole territory of Southern Maryland. They were treading on each other's
heels, and mixing up the thing so confoundedly, that the best place for
the culprits to have gone would have been in the very midst of their
pursuers. Baker at once possessed himself of the little the War
Department had learned, and started immediately to take the usual
detective measures, till then neglected, of offering a reward and
getting out photographs of the suspected ones. He then dispatched a few
chosen detectives to certain vital points, and awaited results.
The first of these was the capture of Atzeroth. Others, like the taking
of Dr. Mudge, simultaneously occured. But the district supected being
remote from the railway routes, and broken by no telegraph station, the
colonel, to place himself nearer the theater of events, ordered an
operator, with the necessary instrument, to tap the wire running to
Point Lookout, near Chappells Point, and send him prompt messages.
The same steamer which took down the operator and two detectives.
brought back one of the same detectives and a negro. This negro, taken
to Colonel Baker's office, stated so positively that he had seen Booth
and another man cross the Potomac in a fishing boat, while he was
looking down upon them from a bank, that the colonel, was at first
skeptical; but when examined the negro answered so readily and
intelligently, recognizing the men from the photographs, that Baker knew
at last that he had the true scent.
Straightway he sent to General Hancock for twenty-five men, and while
the order was going, drew down his coast survey-maps. With that quick
detective intuition amounting almost to inspiration, he cast upon the
probable route and destination of the refugees, as well as the point
where he would soonest strike them. Booth, he knew, would not keep along
the coast, with frequent deep rivers to cross, nor, indeed, in any
direction east of Richmond, where he was liable at any time to cross our
lines of occupation; nor, being lame, could he ride on; horseback, so as
to place himself very far westward of his point of debarkation in
Virginia. But he would travel in a direct course from Bluff point, where
he crossed to Eastern Tennessee, and this would take him through Port
Royal on the Rappahannock river, in time to be intercepted there by the
outgoing cavalry men.
When, therefore, twenty-five men, under one Lieutenant Dougherty,
arrived at his office door, Baker placed the whole under control of his
former lieutenant-colonel, E. J. Conger, and of his cousin, Lieutenant
L. B. Baker--the first of Ohio, the last of New-York--and bade them go
with all dispatch to Belle Plain on the Lower Potomac, there to
disembark, and scour the country faithfully around Port Royal, but not
to return unless they captured their men.
Conger is a short, decided, indomitable, courageous fellow, provincial
in his manners, but fully understanding his business, and collected as a
housewife on Sunday.
Young Baker is large and fine-looking--a soldier, but no policeman--and
he deferred to Conger, very properly, during most of the events
succeeding.
Quitting Washington at 2 o'clock P. M. on Monday, the detectives and
cavalrymen disembarked at Belle Plain, on the border of Stafford county,
at 10 o'clock, in the darkness. Belle Plain is simply the nearest
landing to Fredericksburg, seventy miles from Washington city, and
located upon Potomac creek. It is a wharf and warehouse merely, and here
the steamer John S. Ide stopped and made fast, while the party galloped
off in the darkness. Conger and Baker kept ahead, riding up to
farm-houses and questioning the inmates, pretending to be in search of
the Maryland gentlemen belonging to the party. But nobody had seen the
parties described, and, after a futile ride on the Fredericksburg road,
they turned shortly to the east, and kept up their baffled inquiries all
the way to Port Conway, on the Rappahannock.
On Tuesday morning they presented themselves at the Port Royal ferry,
and inquired of the ferry-man, while he was taking them over in squads
of seven at a time, if he had seen any two such men. Continuing their
inquiries at Port Royal, they found one Rollins a fisherman, who
referred them to a negro named Lucas, as having driven two men a short
distance toward Bowling Green in a wagon. It was found that these men
answered to the description, Booth having a crutch as previously
ascertained.
The day before Booth and Harold had applied at Port Conway for the
general ferry-boat, but the ferryman was then fishing and would not
desist for the inconsiderable fare of only two persons, but to their
supposed good fortune a lot of confederate cavalrymen just then came
along, who threatened the ferryman with a shot in the head if he did not
instantly bring across his craft and transport the entire party. These
cavalrymen were of Moseby's disbanded command, returning from Fairfax
Court House to their homes in Caroline county. Their captain was on his
way to visit a sweetheart at Bowling Green, and he had so far taken
Booth under his patronage, that when the latter was haggling with Lucas
for a team, he offered both Booth and Harold the use of his horse, to
ride and walk alternately.
In this way Lucas was providentially done out of the job, and Booth rode
off toward Bowling Green behind the confederate captain on one and the
same horse.
So much learned, the detectives, with Rollins for a guide, dashed off in
the bright daylight of Tuesday, moving southwestward through the level
plains of Caroline, seldom stopping to ask questions, save at a certain
halfway house, where a woman told them that the cavalry party of
yesterday had returned minus one man. As this was far from
circumstantial, the party rode along in the twilight, and reached
Bowling Green at eleven o'clock in the night.
This is the court-house town of Caroline county--a small and scattered
place, having within it an Ancient tavern, no longer used for other than
lodging purposes; but here they hauled from his bed the captain
aforesaid, and bade him dress himself. As soon as he comprehended the
matter he became pallid and eagerly narrated all the facts in his
possession. Booth, to his knowledge, was then lying at the house of one
Garrett, which they had passed, and Harold had departed the existing day
with the intention of rejoining him.
Taking this captain along for a guide, the worn out horsemen retraced,
though some of the men were so haggard and wasted with travel that they
had to be kicked into intelligence before they could climb to their
saddles. The objects of the chase thus at hand, the detectives, full of
sanguine purpose; hurried the cortege so well along that by 2 o'clock
early morning, all halted at Garrett's gate. In the pale moonlight three
hundred yards from the main road, to the left, a plain old farmhouse
looked grayly through its environing locusts. It was worn and
whitewashed, and two-storied, and its half-human windows glowered down
upon the silent cavalrymen like watching owls, which stood as sentries
over some horrible secret asleep within. The front of this house looked
up the road toward the Rappahannock, but did not face it, and on that
side a long Virginia porch protruded, where, in the summer, among the
honeysuckles, the humming bird flew like a visible odor. Nearest the
main road, against the pallid gable, a single-storied kitchen stood, and
there were three other doors, one opening upon the porch, one in the
kitchen gable, and one in the rear of the farmhouse.
Dimly seen behind, an old barn, high and weather-beaten, faced the
roadside gate, for the house itself lay to the left of its own lane; and
nestling beneath the barn, a few long corn-cribs lay with a cattle shed
at hand. There was not a swell of the landscape anywhere in sight. A
plain dead level contained all the tenements and structures. A worm
fence stretched along the road broken by two battered gate posts, and
between the road and the house, the lane was crossed by a second fence
and gate. The farm-house lane, passing the house front, kept straight on
to the barn, though a second carriage track ran up to the porch.
[Illustration: Plan of Garrett's House.
_A_ Door through which the dying man was brought. _B_ Corner at which
the barn was fired. _C_ Spot in the barn on which Booth stood. _D_ Point
where Corbett fired. _E_ Porch where Booth died. _G_ Door at which
Lieutenant Baker knocked. _H_ Shed. _I_ Kitchen.]
It was a homely and primitive scene enough, pastoral as any farm boy's
birth-place, and had been the seat of many toils and endearments. Young
wives had been brought to it, and around its hearth the earliest cries
of infants, gladdening mothers' hearts, had made the household jubilant
till the stars came out, and were its only sentries, save the bright
lights at its window-panes as of a camp-fire, and the suppressed
chorusses of the domestic bivouac within, where apple toasting and nut
cracking and country games shortened the winter shadows. Yet in this
house, so peaceful by moonlight, murder had washed its spotted hands,
and ministered to its satiated appetite. History--present in every nook
in the broad young world--had stopped, to make a landmark of Garrett's
farm.
In the dead stillness, Baker dismounted and forced the outer gate;
Conger kept close behind him, and the horsemen followed cautiously. They
made no noise in the soft clay, nor broke the all-foreboding silence
anywhere, till the second gate swung open gratingly, yet even then nor
hoarse nor shrill response came back, save distant croaking, as of frogs
or owls, or the whizz of some passing night-hawk. So they surrounded the
pleasant old homestead, each horseman, carbine in poise, adjusted under
the grove of locusts, so as to inclose the dwelling with a circle of
fire. After a pause, Baker rode to the kitchen door on the side, and
dismounting, rapped and halloed lustily. An old man, in drawers and
night-shirt, hastily undrew the bolts, and stood on the threshold,
peering shiveringly into the darkness.
Baker seized him by the throat at once, and held a pistol to his ear.
"Who--who is it that calls me?" cried the old man. "Where are the men
who stay with you?" challenged Baker. "If you prevaricate you are a dead
man!" The old fellow, who proved to be the head of the family, was so
overawed and paralysed that he stammered, and shook, and said not a
word. "Go light a candle," cried Baker, sternly, "and be quick about
it." The trembling old man obeyed, and in a moment the imperfect rays
flared upon his whitening hairs and bluishly pallid face. Then the
question was repeated, backed up by the glimmering pistol, "where are
those men?" The old man held to the wall, and his knees smote each
other. "They are gone," he said. "We hav'n't got them in the house, I
assure you that they are gone." Here there were sounds and whisperings
in the main building adjoining, and the lieutenant strode to the door. A
ludicrous instant intervened, the old man's modesty outran his terror.
"Don't go in there," he said, feebly; "there are women undressed in
there." "Damn the women," cried Baker; "what if they are undressed? We
shall go in if they haven't a rag." Leaving the old man in mute
astonishment, Baker bolted through the door, and stood in an assemblage
of bare arms and night robes. His loaded pistol disarmed modesty of its
delicacy and substituted therefor a seasonable terror. Here he repeated
his summons, and the half light of the candle gave to his face a more
than bandit ferocity. They all denied knowledge of the strangers'
whereabouts.
In the interim Conger had also entered, and while the household and its
invaders were thus in weird tableaux, a young man appeared, as if he had
risen from the ground. The muzzles of everybody turned upon him in a
second; but, while he blanched, he did not lose loquacity. "Father," he
said, "we had better tell the truth about the matter. Those men whom you
seek, gentlemen, are in the barn, I know. They went there to sleep."
Leaving one soldier to guard the old man--and the soldier was very glad
of the job, as it relieved him of personal hazard in the approaching
combat--all the rest, with cocked pistols at the young man's head,
followed on to the barn. It lay a hundred yards from the house, the
front barndoor facing the west gable, and was an old and spacious
structure, with floors only a trifle above the ground level.
The troops dismounted, were stationed at regular intervals around it,
and ten yards distant at every point, four special guards placed to
command the door and all with weapons in supple preparation, while Baker
and Conger went direct to the portal. It had a padlock upon it, and the
key of this Baker secured at once. In the interval of silence that
ensued, the rustling of planks and straw was heard inside, as of persons
rising from sleep.
At the same moment Baker hailed:
"To the persons in this barn. I have a proposal to make; we are about to
send in to you the son of the man in whose custody you are found. Either
surrender to him your arms and then give yourselves up, or we'll set
fire to the place. We mean to take you both, or to have a bonfire and a
shooting match."
No answer came to this of any kind. The lad, John M. Garrett, who was in
deadly fear, was here pushed through the door by a sudden opening of it,
and immediately Lieutenant Baker locked the door on the outside. The boy
was heard to state his appeal in under tone. Booth replied:
"Damn you. Get out of here. You have betrayed me."
At the same time he placed his hand in his pocket as for a pistol. A
remonstrance followed, but the boy slipped quickly over the reopened
portal, reporting that his errand had failed, and that he dared not
enter again. All this time the candle brought from the house to the barn
was burning close beside the two detectives, rendering it easy for any
one within to have shot them dead. This observed, the light was
cautiously removed, and everybody took care to keep out of its
reflection. By this time the crisis of the position was at hand, the
cavalry exhibited very variable inclinations, some to run away, others
to shoot Booth without a summons, but all excited and fitfully silent.
At the house near by the female folks were seen collected in the
doorway, and the necessities of the case provoked prompt conclusions.
The boy was placed at a remote point, and the summons repeated by Baker:
"You must surrender inside there. Give up your arms and appear. There is
no chance for escape. We give you five minutes to make up your mind."
A bold, clarion reply came from within, so strong as to be heard at the
house door:
"Who are you, and what do you want with us?"
Baker again urged: "We want you to deliver up your arms and become our
prisoners."
"But who are you?" hallooed the same strong voice.
Baker.--"That makes no difference. We know who you are, and we want you.
We have here fifty men, armed with carbines and pistols. You cannot
escape."
There was a long pause, and then Booth said:
"Captain, this is a hard case, I swear. Perhaps I am being taken by my
own friends." No reply from the detectives.
Booth--"Well, give us a little time to consider."
[Illustration: Garrett's House, Where Booth Died--Sketched by W. N.
Walton, for "Harper's Weekly" for May 30th, 1865]
Baker--"Very well. Take time."
Here ensued a long and eventful pause. What thronging memories it
brought to Booth, we can only guess. In this little interval he made the
resolve to die. But he was cool and steady to the end. Baker, after a
lapse, hailed for the last time.
"Well, we have waited long enough; surrender your arms and come out, or
we'll fire the barn."
Booth answered thus: "I am but a cripple, a one-legged man. Withdraw
your forces one hundred yard from the door, and I will come. Give me a
chance for my life, captain. I will never be taken alive."
Baker--"We did not come here to fight, but to capture you. I say again,
appear, or the barn shall be fired."
Then with a long breath, which could be heard outside, Booth cried in
sudden calmness, still invisible, as were to him his enemies:
"Well, then, my brave boys, prepare a stretcher for me."
There was a pause repeated, broken by low discussions within between
Booth and his associate, the former saying, as if in answer to some
remonstrance or appeal, "Get away from me. You are a damned coward, and
mean to leave me in my distress; but go, go. I don't want you to stay. I
won't have _you_ stay." Then he shouted aloud:
"There's a man inside who wants to surrender."
Baker--"Let him come, if he will bring his arms."