want to surrender."
Baker--"Hand out your arms, then."
Harold--"I have not got any."
Baker--"You are the man that carried the carbine yesterday; bring it
out."
Harold--"I haven't got any."
This was said in a whining tone, and with an almost visible shiver.
Booth cried aloud, at this hesitation: "He hasn't got any arms; they are
mine, and I have kept them."
Baker--"Well, he carried the carbine, and must bring it out."
Booth--"On the word and honor of a gentleman, he has no arms with him.
They are mine, and I have got them."
At this time Harold was quite up to the door, within whispering distance
of Baker. The latter told him to put out his hands to be handcuffed, at
the same time drawing open the door a little distance. Harold thrust
forth his hands, when Baker, seizing him, jerked him into the night, and
straightway delivered him over to a deputation of cavalrymen. The fellow
began to talk of his innocence and plead so noisily that Conger
threatened to gag him unless he ceased. Then Booth made his last appeal,
in the same clear unbroken voice:
"Captain, give me a chance. Draw off your men and I will fight them
singly. I could have killed you six times to-night, but I believe you to
be a brave man, and would not murder you. Give a lame man a show."
It was too late for parley. All this time Booth's voice had sounded from
the middle of the barn.
Ere he ceased speaking, Colonel Conger, slipping around to the rear,
drew some loose straws through a crack, and lit a match upon them. They
were dry and blazed up in an instant, carrying a sheet of smoke and
flame through the parted planks, and heaving in a twinkling a world of
light and heat upon the magazine within. The blaze lit up the black
recesses of the great barn till every wasp's nest and cobweb in the roof
was luminous, flinging streaks of red and violet across the tumbled farm
gear in the corner, plows, harrows, hoes, rakes, sugar mills, and making
every separate grain in the high bin adjacent, gleam like a mote of
precious gold. They tinged the beams, the upright columns, the
barricades, where clover and timothy, piled high, held toward the hot
incendiary their separate straws for the funeral pile. They bathed the
murderer's retreat in beautiful illumination, and while in bold outline
his figure stood revealed, they rose like an impenetrable wall to guard
from sight the hated enemy who lit them. Behind the blaze, with his eye
to a crack, Conger saw Wilkes Booth standing upright upon a crutch. He
likens him at this instant to his brother Edwin, whom he says he so much
resembled that he half believed, for the moment the whole pursuit to
have been a mistake. At the gleam of the fire Wilkes dropped his crutch,
and, carbine in both hands, crept up to the spot to espy the incendiary
and shoot him dead. His eyes were lustrous like fever, and swelled and
rolled in terrible beauty, while his teeth were fixed, and he wore the
expression of one in the calmness before frenzy. In vain he peered with
vengeance in his look; the blaze that made him visible concealed his
enemy. A second he turned glaring at the fire, as if to leap upon it and
extinguish it, but it had made such headway that this was a futile
impulse and he dismissed it. As calmly as upon the battlefield a veteran
stands amidst the hail of ball and shell, and plunging iron, Booth
turned at a man's stride, and pushed for the door, carbine in poise, and
the last resolve of death, which we name despair, set on his high,
bloodless forehead.
As so he dashed, intent to expire not unaccompanied, a disobedient
sergeant at an eye-hole drew upon him the fatal bead. The barn was all
glorious with conflagration and in the beautiful ruin this outlawed man
strode like all that, we know of wicked valor, stern in the face of
death. A shock, a shout, a gathering up of his splendid figure as if to
overtip the stature God gave him, and John Wilkes Booth fell headlong to
the floor, lying there in a heap, a little life remaining.
"He has shot himself!" cried Baker, unaware of the source of the report,
and rushing in, he grasped his arms to guard against any feint or
strategy. A moment convinced him that further struggle with the prone
flesh was useless. Booth did not move, nor breathe, nor gasp. Conger and
two sergeants now entered, and taking up the body, they bore it in haste
from the advancing flame, and laid it without upon the grass, all fresh
with heavenly dew.
"Water," cried Conger, "bring water."
When this was dashed into his face, he revived a moment and stirred his
lips. Baker put his ear close down, and heard him say:
"Tell mother--and die--for my country."
They lifted him again, the fire encroaching in hotness upon them and
placed him on the porch before the dwelling.
A mattrass was brought down, on which they placed him and propped his
head, and gave him water and brandy. The women of the household, joined
meantime by another son, who had been found in one of the corn cribs,
watching as he said, to see that Booth and Harold did not steal the
horses, were nervous, but prompt to do the dying man all kindnesses,
although waived sternly back by the detectives. They dipped a rag in
brandy and water, and this being put between Booth's teeth he sucked it
greedily. When he was able to articulate again, he muttered to Mr. Baker
the same words, with an addenda. "Tell mother I died for my country. I
thought I did for the best." Baker repeated this, saying at the same
time "Booth, do I repeat it correctly." Booth nodded his head. By this
time the grayness of dawn was approaching; moving figures inquisitively
coming near were to be seen distinctly, and the cocks began to crow
gutturally, though the barn was a hulk of blaze and ashes, sending
toward the zenith a spiral line of dense smoke. The women became
importunate that the troops might be ordered to extinguish the fire,
which was spreading toward their precious corn-cribs. Not even death
could banish the call of interest. Soldiers were sent to put out the
fire, and Booth, relieved of the bustle around him, drew near to death
apace. Twice he was heard to say, "kill me, kill me." His lips often
moved but could complete no appreciable sound. He made once a motion
which the quick eye of Conger understood to mean that his throat pained
him. Conger put his finger there, when the dying man attempted to cough,
but only caused the blood at his perforated neck to flow more, lively.
He bled very little, although shot quite through, beneath and behind the
ears, his collar being severed on both sides.
A soldier had been meanwhile despatched for a doctor, but the route and
return were quite six miles, and the sinner was sinking fast. Still the
women made efforts to get to see him, but were always rebuffed, and all
the brandy they could find was demanded by the assassin, who motioned
for strong drink every two minutes. He made frequent desires to be
turned over, not by speech, but by gesture, and was alternately placed
upon his back, belly and side. His tremendous vitality evidenced itself
almost miraculously. Now and then, his heart would cease to throb, and
his pulses would be as cold as a dead man's. Directly life would begin
anew, the face would flush up effulgently, the eyes open and brighten,
and soon relapsing, stillness re-asserted, would again be dispossessed
by the same magnificent triumph of man over mortality. Finally the fussy
little doctor arrived, in time to be useless. He probed the wound to see
if the ball were not in it, and shook his head sagely, and talked
learnedly.
Just at his coming Booth had asked to have his hands raised and shown
him. They were so paralyzed that he did not know their location. When
they were displayed he muttered, with a sad lethargy, "Useless,
useless." These were the last words he ever uttered. As he began to die
the sun rose and threw beams into all the tree-tops. It was of a man's
height when the struggle of death twitched and fingered in the fading
bravo's face. His jaw drew spasmodically and obliquely downward; his
eyeballs rolled to-ward his feet, and began to swell; lividness, like a
horrible shadow, fastened upon him, and, with a sort of gurgle and
sudden check, he stretched his feet and threw his head back and gave up
the ghost.
They sewed him up in a saddle blanket. This was his shroud; too like a
soldier's. Harold, meantime, had been tied to a tree, but was now
released for the march. Colonel Conger pushed on immediately for
Washington; the cortege was to follow. Booth's only arms were his
carbine knife, and two revolvers. They found about him bills of
exchange, Canada money, and a diary. A venerable old negro living in the
vicinity had the misfortune to possess a horse. This horse was a relic
of former generations, and showed by his protruding ribs the general
leanness of the land. He moved in an eccentric amble, and when put upon
his speed was generally run backward. To this old negro's horse was
harnessed a very shaky and absurd wagon, which rattled like approaching
dissolution, and each part of it ran without any connection or
correspondence with any other part. It had no tail-board, and its shafts
were sharp as famine; and into this mimicry of a vehicle the murderer
was to be sent to the Potomac river, while the man he had murdered was
moving in state across the mourning continent. The old negro geared up
his wagon by means of a set of fossil harness, and when it was backed to
Garrett's porch, they laid within it the discolored corpse. The corpse
was tied with ropes around the legs and made fast to the wagon sides.
Harold's legs were tied to stirrups, and he was placed in the centre of
four murderous looking cavalrymen. The two sons of Garrett were also
taken along, despite the sobs and petitions of the old folks and women,
but the rebel captain who had given Booth a lift, got off amidst the
night's agitations, and was not rearrested. So moved the cavalcade of
retribution, with death in its midst, along the road to Port Royal. When
the wagon started, Booth's wound till now scarcely dribbling, began to
run anew. It fell through the crack of the wagon, dripping upon the
axle, and spotting the road with terrible wafers. It stained the planks,
and soaked the blankets; and the old negro, at a stoppage, dabbled his
hands in it by mistake; he drew back instantly, with a shudder and
stifled expletive, "Gor-r-r, dat'll never come off in de world; it's
murderer's blood." He wrung his hands, and looked imploringly at the
officers, and shuddered again: "Gor-r-r, I wouldn't have dat on me fur
tousand, tousand dollars." The progress of the team was slow, with
frequent danger of shipwreck altogether, but toward noon the cortege
filed through Port Royal, where the citizens came out to ask the matter,
and why a man's body, covered with sombre blankets, was going by with so
great escort. They were told that it was a wounded confederate, and so
held their tongues. The little ferry, again in requisition, took them
over by squads, and they pushed from Port Conway to Bell Plain, which
they reached in the middle of the afternoon. All the way the blood
dribbled from the corpse in a slow, incessant, sanguine exudation. The
old negro was niggardly dismissed with two paper dollars. The dead man
untied and cast upon the vessel's dock, steam gotten up in a little
while, and the broad Potomac shores saw this skeleton ship flit by, as
the bloody sun threw gashes and blots of unhealthy light along the
silver surface.
All the way associate with the carcass, went Harold, shuddering in so
grim companionship, and in the awakened fears of his own approaching.
ordeal, beyond which it loomed already, the gossamer fabric of a
scaffold. He tried to talk for his own exoneration, saying he had
ridden, as was his wont, beyond the East Branch, and returning, found
Booth wounded, who begged him to be his companion. Of his crime he knew
nothing, so help him God, &c. But nobody listened to him. All interest
of crime, courage, and retribution centered in the dead flesh at his
feet. At Washington, high and low turned out to look on Booth. Only a
few were permitted to see his corpse for purposes of recognition. It was
fairly preserved, though on one side of the face distorted, and looking
blue like death, and wildly bandit-like, as if beaten by avenging winds.
Yesterday the Secretary of War, without instructions of any kind,
committed to Colonel Lafayette C. Baker, of the secret service, the
stark corpse of J. Wilkes Booth. The secret service never fulfilled its
volition more secretively. "What have you done with the body?" said I to
Baker. "That is known" he answered, "to only one man living besides
myself. It is gone. I will not tell you where. The only man who knows is
sworn to silence. Never till the great trumpeter comes shall the grave
of Booth be discovered." And this is true. Last night, the 27th of
April, a small row boat received the carcass of the murderer; two men
were in it they carried the body off into the darkness, and out of that
darkness it will never return. In the darkness, like his great crime,
may it remain forever, impalpable, invisible, nondescript, condemned to
that worse than damnation,--annihilation. The river-bottom may ooze
about it laden with great shot and drowning manacles. The earth may have
opened to give it that silence and forgiveness which man will never give
its memory. The fishes may swim around it, or the daisies grow white
above it; but we shall never know. Mysterious, incomprehensible,
unattainable, like the dim times through which we live and think upon as
if we only dreamed them in perturbed fever, the assassin of a nation's
head rests somewhere in the elements, and that is all; but if the
indignant seas or the profaned turf shall ever vomit his corpse from
their recesses, and it receive humane or Christian burial from some who
do not recognize it, let the last words those decaying lips ever uttered
be carved above them with a dagger, to tell the history of a young and
once promising life--useless! useless!
LETTER V.
A SOLUTION OF THE CONSPIRACY.
[The annexed Letter, which has been cavilled at, as much as copied, is a
rationale of the Conspiracy, combined from the Government's own
officers. When it was written it was believed to be true: the evidence
at the trial has confirmed much of it: I reprint it to show how men's
ingenuities were at work to account for the conception and progress of
the Plot.]
Washington, May 2.
Justice and fame are equally and simultaneously satisfied. The President
is not yet in his sarcophagus, but all the conspirators against his
life, with a minor exception or two, are in their prison cells waiting
for the halter.
The dark and bloody plot against a good ruler's life is now so fully
unraveled that I may make it plain to you. There is nothing to be gained
by further waiting; the trials are proceeding; the evidence is mountain
high. Within a week the national scaffold will have done its work, and
be laid away forever. This prompt and necessary justice will signal the
last public assassination in America. Borgia, and Medici, and
Brinvilliers, have left no descendants on this side of the world.
The conspiracy was both the greatest and the smallest of our cycle.
Narrowed in execution to a few, it was understood and connived at by a
multitude. One man was its head and heart; its accessories were so
numerous that the trouble is not whom to suspect, but whom not accuse.
Damning as the result must be to the character of our race, it must be
admitted, in the light of facts, that Americans are as secretive and as
skillful plotters as any people in the world. The Rye House plot, never
fully understood; the many schemes of Mazzini, never fastened upon him
sufficiently well for implication, yield in extent, darkness and
intricacy, to the republican plot against the President's life and those
of his counselors. The police operations prove that the late murder as
not a spasmodic and fitful crime, but long premeditated, and carried to
consummation with as much cohesion and resolution as the murder of
Allessandro de Medici or Henri Quatre.
I have been accused of cannonizing Booth. Much as I denounce and
deprecate his crime--holding him to be worthy of all execration, and so
seeped in blood that the excuses of a century will fail to lift him out
of the atmosphere of common felons--I still, at every new developement,
stand farther back in surprise and terror at the wonderful resources and
extraordinary influence of one whom I had learned to consider a mere
Thespian, full of sound, fury, and assertion.
Strange and anomalous as the facts may seem, John Wilkes Booth was the
sole projector of the plot against the President which culminated in the
taking of that good man's life. He had rolled under his tongue the sweet
paragraphs of Shakspeare refering to Brutus, as had his father so well,
that the old man named one son Junius Brutus, and the other John Wilkes,
after the wild English agitator, until it became his ambition, like the
wicked Lorenzino de Medici, to stake his life upon one stroke for fame,
the murder of a ruler obnoxious to the South.
That Wilkes Booth was a southern man from the first may be accounted for
upon grounds, of interest as well as of sympathy. It is insidious to
find no higher incentive than appreciation, but on the stage this is the
first and last motive; and as Edwin Booth made his success in the North
and remained steadfast, Wilkes Booth was most truly applauded in the
South, and became rebel. A false emotion of gratitude, as well as an
impulse of mingled waywardness and gratitude, set John Wilkes's face
from the first toward the North, and he burned to make his name a part
of history, cried into fame by the applauses of the South.
He hung to his bloody suggestion with dogged inflexibility, maintaining
only one axiom above all the rest--that whatever minor parts might be
enacted--Casca, Cassius, or what not--he was to be the dramatic Brutus,
excepting that assassin's negativeness. In other words, the idea was to
be his own, as well us the crowning blow.
Booth shrank at first from murder, until another and less dangerous
resolution failed. This was no less than the capture of the President's
body, and its detention or transportation to the South. I do not rely on
this assertion upon his sealed letter, where he avows it; there has been
found upon a street within the city limits, a house belonging to one
Mrs. Greene; mined and furnished with underground apartments, manacles
and all the accessories to private imprisonment. Here the President, and
as many as could be gagged and conveyed away with him, were to be
concealed in the event of failure to run them into the confederacy.
Owing to his failure to group around him as many men as he desired,
Booth abandoned the project of kidnapping; but the house was discovered
last week, as represented, ready to be blown up at a moment's notice.
It was at this time that Booth devised his triumphant route through the
South. The dramatic element seems to have been never lacking in his
design, and with all his base purposes he never failed to consider some
subsequent notoriety to be enjoyed. He therefore shipped, before the end
of 1864, his theatrical wardrobe from Canada to Nassau. After the
commission of his crime he intended to reclaim it, and "star" through
the South, drawing money as much by his crime as his abilities.
When Booth began "on his own responsibility," to hunt for accomplices,
he found his theory at fault. The bold men he had dreamed of refused to
join him in the rash attempt at kidnapping the President, and were too
conscientious to meditate murder. All those who presented themselves
were military men, unwilling to be subordinate to a civilian, and a mere
play-actor, and the mortified bravo found himself therefore compelled to
sink to a petty rank in the plot, or to make use of base and despicable
assistants. His vanity found it easier to compound with the second
alternative than the first.
Here began the first resolve, which, in its mere animal estate, we may
name courage. Booth found that a tragedy in real life could no more be
enacted without greasy-faced and knock-kneed supernumeraries than upon
the mimic stage. Your "First Citizen," who swings a stave for Marc
Antony, and drinks hard porter behind the flies is very like the bravo
of real life, who murders between his cocktails at the nearest bar.
Wilkes Booth had passed the ordeal of a garlicky green-room, and did not
shrink from the broader and ranker green-room of real life. He assembled
around him, one by one, the cut-throats at whom his soul would have
revolted, except that he had become, by resolve, a cut-throat in
himself.
About this time certain gentlemen in Canada began to be unenviably
known. I abstain from giving their names, because unaware of how far
they seconded this crime, if at all. But they seconded as infamous
things, such as cowardly raids from neutral territory into the states,
bank robbings, lake pirating, city burning, counterfeiting, railway
sundering, and the importation of yellow fever into peaceful and
unoffending communities. I make no charges against those whom I do not
know, but simply say that the confederate agents, Jacob Tompson, Larry
McDonald, Clement Clay, and some others, had already accomplished enough
villainy to make Wilkes Booth, on the first of the present year, believe
that he had but to seek an interview with them.
He visited the provinces once certainly, and three times it is believed,
stopping in Montreal at St. Lawrence Hall, and banking four hundred and
fifty-five dollars odd at the Ontario bank. This was his own money. I
have myself seen his bank-book with the single entry of this amount. It
was found in the room of Atzerott, at Kirkwood's Hotel. From this visit,
whatever encouragement Booth received, he continued in systematic
correspondence with one or more of those agents down to the commission
of his crime. I dare not say how far each of these agents was
implicated. My personal conviction is that they were neither loth to the
murder nor astonished when it had been done. They had money with
discretion from the confederacy, though acting at discretion and outside
of responsibility, and always, at every wild adventure, they instructed
their dupes that each man took his life in his hand on every incursion
into the north. So Beale took his, raiding on the great lakes. So
Kennedy took his, on a midnight bonfire-tramp into the metropolis. So
took the St. Albans raiders their lives in their palms, dashing into a
peaceful town. And if these agents entertained Wilkes Booth's suggestion
at all they plainly told him that he carried his life in his dagger's
edge, and could expect from them neither aid nor exculpation.
Some one or all of these agents furnished Booth with a murderer. The
fellow Wood or Payne, who stabbed Mr. Seward and was caught at Mrs.
Surratt's house in Washington. He was one of three Kentucky brothers,
all outlaws, and had himself, it is believed, accompanied one of his
brothers, who is known to have been at St. Albans on the day of the
bank-delivery. This Payne, besides being positively identified as the
assassin of the Sewards, had no friends nor haunts in Washington. He was
simply a dispatched murderer, and after the night of the crime, struck
northward of the frontier, instead of southward in the company of Booth.
The proof, of this will follow in the course of the article.