calling him, like Macbeth, the "prince of cut-throats," I am equally
certain that Booth's project was unknown in Richmond. No word, nor
written line, no clue of any sort has been found attaching Booth to the
confederate authorities. The most that can be urged to meet preposterous
claims of this sort is, that out of the rebellion grew the murder; which
is like attributing the measles to the creation of man. But McDonald and
his party had money at discretion, and under their control the vilest
fellows on the continent. Their personal influence over those errant
ones amounted to omnipotence. Most of the latter were young and sanguine
people, like Beale and Booth; their plots were made up at St.
Catharine's, Toronto, and Montreal, and they have maintained since the
war began, rebel mail routes between Canada and Richmond, leading
directly passed Washington.
If Booth received no positive instructions, he was at any rate adjudged
a man likely to be of use, and therefore introduced to the rebel
agencies in and around Washington. Doubtless by direct letter, or verbal
instruction, he received a password to the house of Mrs. Surratt.
Half applauded, half rebuffed by the rebel agents in Canada, Booth's
impressions of his visit were just those which would whet him soonest
for the tragedy. His vanity had been fed by the assurance that success
depended upon himself alone, and that as he had the responsibility he
would absorb the fame; and the method of correspondence was of that
dark and mysterious shape which powerfully operated upon his dramatic
temperament.
What could please an actor, and the son of an actor, better than to
mingle as a principal in a real conspiracy, the aims of which were
pseudo-patriotic, and the end so astounding that at its coming the whole
globe would reel. Booth reasoned that the ancient world would not feel
more sensitively the death of Julius Cęsar than the new the sudden
taking off of Abraham Lincoln.
And so he grew into the idea of murder. It became his business thought.
It was his recreation and his study. He had not worked half so hard for
histrionic success as for his terrible graduation into an assassin. He
had fought often on the boards, and seen men die in well-imitated
horror, with flowing blood upon his keen sword's edge, and the strong
stride of mimic victory with which he flourished his weapon at the
closing of the curtain. He embraced conspiracy like an old diplomatist,
and found in the woman and the spot subjects for emulation.
Southeast of Washington stretches a tapering peninsula, composed of four
fertile counties, which at the remote tip make Point Lookout, and do not
contain any town within them of more than a few hundred inhabitants.
Tobacco has ruined the land of these, and slavery has ruined the people.
Yet in the beginning they were of that splendid stock of Calvert and
Lord Baltimore, but retain to-day only the religion of the peaceful
founder. I mention it is an exceptional and remarkable fact, that every
conspirator in custody is by education a Catholic. These are our most
loyal citizens elsewhere, but the western shore of Maryland is a noxious
and pestilential place for patriotism. The county immediately outside of
the District of Columbia, to the south, is named Prince Gorgia's and the
pleasantest village of this county, close to Washington, is called
Surrattsville. This consists of a few cabins at a cross-road,
surrounding a fine old hotel, the master whereof, giving the settlement
his name, left the property to his wife, who for a long time carried it
on with indifferent success. Having a son and several daughters, she
moved to Washington soon after the beginning of the war and let the
tavern to a trusty friend--one John Lloyd. Surrattsville has gained
nothing in patronage or business from the war, except that it became at
an early date, a rebel postoffice. The great secret mail from Matthias
Creek, Virginia, to Port Tobacco, struck Surrattsville, and thence
headed off to the east to Washington, going meanderingly north. Of this
poet route Mrs. Surratt was a manageress; and John Lloyd, when he rented
her hotel, assumed the responsibility of looking out for the mail, as
well the duty of making Mrs. Surratt at home when she chose to visit
him.
So Surrattsville only ten miles from Washington, has been throughout the
war a sect of conspiracy. It was like a suburb of Richmond, reaching
quite up to the rival capital; and though the few Unionists on the
peninsula knew its reputation well enough, nothing of the sort came out
until the murder.
Treason never found a better agent than Mrs. Surratt. She is a large,
masculine, self-possessed female, mistress of her house, and as lithe a
rebel as Belle Boyd or Mrs. Greenhough. She has not the flippantry and
menace of the first, nor the social power of the second; but the
rebellion has found no fitter agent.
At her country tavern and Washington home Booth was made welcome, and
there began the muttered murder against the nation and mankind.
The acquaintance of Mrs. Surratt in Lower Maryland undoubtedly suggested
to Booth the route of escape, and made him known to his subsequent
accomplices. Last fall he visited the entire region, as far as
Leonardstown, in St. Mary's county, professing to be in search of land
but really hunting up confederates upon whom he could depend. At this
time he bought a map, a fellow to which I have seen among Atzerott's
effects, published at Buffalo for the rebel government, and marking at
hap-hazard all the Maryland villages, but without tracing the highroads
at all. The absence of these roads, it will be seen hereafter, very
nearly misled Booth during his crippled flight.
It could not but have struck Booth that this isolated part of Maryland
ignorant and rebel to the brim, without telegraph or railways, or direct
stage routes, belted with swamps and broken by dense timber, afforded
extraordinary opportunities for shelter and escape. Only the coast
survey had any adequate map of it; it was _ultima thule_ to all intents,
and treason might subsist in welcome upon it for a thousand years.
When Booth cast around him for assistance, he naturally selected those
men whom he could control. The first that recommended himself was one
Harold, a youth of inane and plastic character, carried away by the
example of an actor, and full of execrable quotations, going to show
that he was an imitator of the master spirit both in text and
admiration. This Harold was a gunner, and therefore versed in arms; he
had traversed the whole lower portion of Maryland, and was therefore a
geographer as well as a tool. His friends lived at every farmhouse
between Washington and Leonardsville, and he was respectably enough
connected, so as to make his association creditable as well as useful.
Harold, whose picture I have seen, is a dull-faced, shallow boy,
smooth-haired, and provincial; he had no money nor employment, except
that he clerked for a druggist a while, until he knew Wilkes Booth, who
looked at him only once, and bought his soul for a smile. Harold was
infatuated by Booth as a woman by a soldier. He copied his gait and
tone, adopted his opinions, and was unhappy out of his society. Booth
gave him money, mysteriously obtained, and together they made the
acquaintance of young John Surratt, son of the conspiratress.
Young Surratt does not appear to have been a puissant spirit in the
scheme; indeed, all design and influence therein was absorbed by Mrs.
Surratt and Booth. The latter was the head and heart of the plot; Mrs.
Surratt was his anchor, and the rest of the boys were disciples to
Iscariot and Jezebel. John Surratt, a youth of strong Southern
physiognomy, beardless and lanky, knew of the murder and connived at it.
"Sam" Arnold and one McLaughlin were to have been parties to it, but
backed out in the end. They all relied upon Mrs. Surratt, and took their
"cues" from Wilkes Booth.
The conspiracy had its own time and kept its own counsel. Murder except
among the principals, was seldom mentioned except by genteel
implication. But they all publicly agreed that Mr. Lincoln ought to be
shot, and that the North was a race of fratricides. Much was said of
Brutus, and Booth repeated heroic passages to the delight of Harold, who
learned them also, and wondered if he was not born to greatness.
In this growing darkness, where all rehearsed cold-hearted murder,
Wilkes Booth grew great of stature. He had found a purpose consonant
with his evil nature and bad influence over weak men; so he grew
moodier, more vigilant, more plausible. By mien and temperament he was
born to handle a stiletto. We have no face so markedly Italian; it would
stand for Caesar Borgia any day in the year. All the rest were swayed or
persuaded by Booth; his schemes were three in order:
1st. To kidnap the President and Cabinet, and run them South or blow
them up.
2d. Kidnapping failed, to murder the President and the rest and seek
shelter in the confederate capital.
3d. The rebellion failed, to be its avenger, and throw the country into
consternation, while he escaped by the unfrequented parts of Maryland.
When this last resolution had been made, the plot was both contracted
and extended. There were made two distinct circles of confidants--those
aware of the meditated murder, and those who might shrink from murder,
though willing accessories for a lesser object. Two colleagues for blood
were at once accepted--Payne and Atzerott.
The former I have sketched; he is believed to have visited Washington
once before, at Booth's citation; for the murder was at first fixed for
the day of inauguration. Atzerott was a fellow of German descent, who
had led a desperate life at Port Tobacco, where he was a house-painter.
He had been a blockade-runner across the Potomac, and a mail-carrier.
When Booth and Mrs. Surratt broke the design to him, with a suggestion
that there was wealth in it, he embraced the offer at once, and bought a
dirk and pistol. Payne also came from the North to Washington, and, as
fate would have it, the President was announced to appear at Ford's
theater in public. There the resolve of blood was reduced to a definite
moment.
On the night before the crime Booth found on whom he could rely. John
Surratt was sent northward by his mother on Thursday. Sam Arnold and
McLaughlin, each of whom was to kill a cabinet officer, grew
pigeon-livered and ran away. Harold true to his partiality, lingered
around Booth to the end; Atzerott went so far as to take his knife and
pistol to Kirkwood's, where President Johnson was stopping, and hid them
under the bed. But either his courage failed, or a trifling accident
deranged his plan. But Payne, a professional murderer, stood "game," and
fought his way over prostrate figures to his sick victim's bed. There
was great confusion and terror among the tacit and rash conspirators on
Thursday night. They had looked upon the plot as of a melodrama, and
found to their horror that John Wilkes Booth meant to do murder.
Six weeks before the murder, young John Surratt had taken two splendid
repeating carbines to Surrattville and told John Lloyd to secret them.
The latter made a hole in the wainscotting and suspended them from
strings, so that they fell within the plastered wall of the room below.
On the very afternoon of the murder, Mrs. Surratt was driven to
Surrattsville, and she told John Lloyd to have the carbines ready
because they would be called for that night. Harold was made
quartermaster, and hired the horses. He and Atzerott were mounted
between 8 o'clock and the time of the murder, and riding about the
streets together.
The whole party was prepared for a long ride, as their spurs and
gauntlets show. It may have been their design to ride in company to the
Lower Potomac, and by their numbers exact subsistence and
transportation; but all edifices of murder lack a corner stone. We only
know that Booth ate and talked well during the day; that he never seemed
so deeply involved in 'oil,' and that there is a hiatus between his
supper here and his appearance at Ford's theater.
Lloyd, I may interpolate, ordered his wife a few days before the murder
to go on a visit to Allen's Fresh. She says she does not know why she
was so sent away, but swears that it is so. Harold, three weeks before
the murder, visited Port Tobacco, and said that the next time the boys
heard of him he would be in Spain; he added that with Spain there was no
extradition treaty. He said at Surrattsville that he meant to make a
barrel of money, or his neck would stretch.
Atzerott said that if he ever came to Port Tobacco again he would be
rich enough to buy the whole place.
Wilkes Booth told a friend to go to Ford's on Friday night and see the
best acting in the world.
At Ford's theater, on Friday night, there were many standers in the
neighborhood of the door, and along the dress circle in the direction of
the private box where the President sat.
The play went on pleasantly, though Mr. Wilkes Booth an observer of the
audience, visited the stage and took note of the positions. His alleged
associate, the stage carpenter, then received quiet orders to clear the
passage by the wings from the prompter's post to the stage door. All
this time, Mr. Lincoln, in his family circle, unconscious of the death
that crowded fast upon him, watched the pleasantry and smiled and felt
heartful of gentleness.
Suddenly there was a murmur near the audience door, as of a man speaking
above his bound. He said:
"Nine o'clock and forty-five minutes!"
These words were reiterated from mouth to mouth until they passed the
theater door, and were heard upon the sidewalk.
Directly a voice cried, in the same slightly-raised monotone:
"Nine o'clock and fifty minutes!"
This also passed from man to man, until it touched the street like a
shudder.
"Nine o'clock and fifty-five minutes!" said the same relentless voice,
after the next interval, each of which narrowed to a lesser span the
life of the good President.
Ten o'clock here sounded, and conspiring echo said in reverberation:
"Ten o'clock!"
So like a creeping thing, from lip to lip, went:
"Ten o'clock and five minutes."
(An interval.)
"Ten o'clock and ten minutes!"
At this instant Wilkes Booth appeared in the door of the theater, and
the men who had repeated the time so faithfully and so ominously
scattered at his coming, as at some warning phantom. Fifteen minutes
afterwards the telegraph wires were cut.
All this is so dramatic that I fear to excite a laugh when I write it.
But it is true and proven, and I do not say it but report it.
All evil deeds go wrong. While the click of the pistol, taking the
President's life, went like a pang through the theater, Payne was
spilling blood in Mr. Seward's house from threshold to sick chamber. But
Booth's broken leg delayed him or made him lose his general calmness and
he and Harold left Payne no to his fate.
I have not adverted to the hole bored with a gimlet in the entry door of
Mr. Lincoln's box, and cut out with a penknife. The theory that the
pistol-ball of Booth passed through this hole is exploded. And the stage
carpenter may have to answer for this little orifice with all his neck.
For when Booth leaped from the box he strode straight across the stage
by the footlights, reaching the prompter's post, which is immediately
behind that private box opposite Mr. Lincoln. From this box to the stage
door in the rear, the passage-way leads behind the ends of the scenes,
and if generally either closest up by one or more withdrawn scenes, or
so narrow that only by doubling and turning sidewise can one pass along.
On this fearful night, however, the scenes were so adjusted to the
murderer's design that he had a free aisle from the foot of the stage to
the exit door.
Within fifteen minutes after the murder the wires were severed entirely
around the city, excepting only a secret wire for government uses, which
leads to Old Point. I am told that by this wire the government reached
the fortifications around Washington, first telegraphing all the way to
Old Point, and then back to the outlying forts. This information comes
to me from so many creditable channels that I must concede it.
Payne, having, as he thought, made an end of Mr. Seward--which would
have been the case but for Robinson, the nurse--mounted his horse, and
attempted to find. Booth. But the town was in alarm, and he galloped at
once for the open country, taking as he imagined, the proper road for
the East Branch. He rode at a killing pace, and when near Fort Lincoln,
on the Baltimore pike, his horse threw him headlong. Afoot and
bewildered, he resolved to return to the city, whose lights he could
plainly see; but before doing so ho concealed himself some time, and
made some almost absurd efforts to disguise himself. Cutting a cross
section from the woolen undershirt which covered his muscular arm, he
made a rude cap of it, and threw away his bloody coat. This has since
been found in the woods, and blood has been found also on his bosom and
sleeves. He also spattered himself plentifully with mud and clay, and,
taking an abandoned pick from the deserted intrenchments near by, he
struck at once for Washington.
By the providence which always attends murder, he reached Mrs. Surratt's
door just as the officers of the government were arresting her. They
seized Payne at once, who had an awkward lie to urge in his
defense--that he had come there to dig a trench. That night he dug a
trench deep and broad enough for both of them to lie in forever. They
washed his hands, and found them soft and womanish; his pockets
contained tooth and nail brushes and a delicate pocket knife. All this
apparel consorted ill with his assumed character. He is, without doubt,
Mr. Seward's attempted murderer.
Coarse, and hard, and calm, Mrs. Surratt shut up her house after the
murder, and waited with her daughters till the officers came. She was
imperturbable, and rebuked her girls for weeping, and would have gone to
jail like a statue, but that in her extremity, Payne knocked at her
door. He had come, he said, to dig a ditch for Mrs. Surratt, whom he
very well knew. But Mrs. Surratt protested that she had ever seen the
man at all, and had no ditch to clean.
"How fortunate, girls," she said, "that these officers are here; this
man might have murdered us all."
Her effrontery stamps her as worthy of companionship with Booth. Payne
has been identified by a lodger of Mrs. Surratt's, as having twice
visited the house under the name of Wood. The girls will render valuable
testimony in the trial. If John Surratt were in custody the links would
be complete.
Atzerott had a room almost directly over Vice-President Johnson's. He
had all the materials to do murder, but lost spirit or opportunity. He
ran away so hastily that all his arms and baggage were discovered; a
tremendous bowie-knife and a Colt's cavalry revolver were found between
the mattresses of his bed. Booth's coat was also found there, showing
conspired flight in company, and in it three boxes of cartridges, a map
of Maryland, gauntlet for riding, a spur and a handkerchief marked with
the name of Booth's mother--a mother's souvenir for a murderer's pocket!
Atzerott fled alone, and was found at the house of his uncle in
Montgomery county. I do not know that any instrument of murder has ever
made me thrill as when I drew this terrible bowie-knife from its sheath.
Major O'Bierne, of New-York, was the instigator of Atzerott's discovery
and arrest.
I come now to the ride out of the city by the chief assassin and his
dupe. Harold met Booth immediately after the crime in the next street,
and they rode at a gallop past the Patent Office and over Capitol Hill.
As they crossed the Eastern branch at Uniontown, Booth gave his proper
name to the officer at the bridge. This, which would seem to have been
foolish, was, in reality, very shrewd. The officers believed that one of
Booth's accomplices had given this name in order to put them out of the
real Booth's track. So they made efforts elsewhere, and so Booth got a
start. At midnight, precisely, the two horsemen stopped at
Surrattsville, Booth remaining on his nag while Harold descended and
knocked lustily at the door. Lloyd, the landlord, came down at once,
when Harold pushed past him into the bar, and obtained a bottle of
whiskey, some of which he gave to Booth immediately. While Booth was
drinking, Harold went up stairs and brought down one of the carbines.
Lloyd started to get the other, but Harold said:
"We don't want it; Booth has broken his leg and can't carry it."
So the second carbine remained in the hall, where the officers afterward
found it.
As the two horsemen started to go off, Booth cried out to Lloyd:
"Do you want to hear some news?"
"I don't care much about it," cried Lloyd, by his own account.
"We have murdered," said Booth, "the President and Secretary of State!"
And with this horrible confession, Booth and Harold dashed away in the
midnight, across Prince George's county.
On Saturday, before sunrise, Booth and Harold, who had ridden all night
without stopping elsewhere, reached the house of Dr. Mudd, three miles
from Bryantown. They contracted with him for twenty-five dollars in
greenbacks to set the broken leg. Harold, who knew Dr. Mudd, introduced
Booth under another name, and stated that he had fallen from his horse
during the night. The doctor remarked of Booth that he draped the lower
part of his face while the leg was being set; he was silent, and in
pain. Having no splits in the house, they split up an old-fashioned
wooden band-box and prepared them. The doctor was assisted by an
Englishman, who at the same time began to hew out a pair of crutches.
The inferior bone of the left leg was broken vertically across, and
because vertically it did not yield when the crippled man walked upon
it.
The riding boot of Booth had to be cut from his foot; within were the
words "J. Wilkes." The doctor says he did not notice these, but that
visual defect may cost him his neck. The two men waited around the house
all day, but toward evening they slipped their horses from the stable
and rode away in the direction of Allen's Fresh.
Below Bryantown run certain deep and slimy swamps, along the belt of
these Booth and Harold picked up a negro named Swan, who volunteered to
show them the road for two dollars; they gave him five more to show them
the route to Allen's Fresh, but really wished, as their actions
intimated, to gain the house of one Sam. Coxe, a notorious rebel, and
probably well advised of the plot. They reached the house at midnight.
It is a fine dwelling, one of the best in Maryland. And after hallooing
for some time, Coxe came down to the door himself. As soon as he opened
it and beheld who the strangers were, he instantly blew out a candle he
held in his hand, and without a word pulled them into the house, the
negro remaining in the yard. The confederates remained in Coxe's house
till 4 A. M., during which time, the negro saw them drink and eat
heartily; but when they reappeared they spoke in a loud tone, so that
Swan could hear them, against the hospitality of Coxe. All this was
meant to influence the darkey; but their motives were as apparent as
their words. He conducted them three miles further on, when they told
him that now they knew the way, and giving him five dollars more--making
twelve in all--told him to go back.
But when the negro, in the dusk of the morning, looked after them as he
receded, he saw that both horses' heads were turned once more toward
Coxe's, and it was this man, doubtless, who harbored the fugitives from
Sunday to Thursday, aided, possibly, by such neighbors as the Wilsons
and Adamses.
At the point where Booth crossed the Potomac the shores are very
shallow, and one must wade out some distance to where a boat will float.
A white man came up here with a canoe on Friday, and tied it by a stone
anchor. Between seven and eight o'clock it disappeared, and in the
afternoon some men at work in Virginia, saw Booth and Harold land, tie
the boat's rope to a stone, and fling it ashore, and strike at once
across a ploughed field for King George Court House. Many folks
entertained them without doubt, but we positively hear of them next at
Port Royal Ferry, and then at Garrett's farm.
I close this article with a list of all who were at Garrett's farm on
the death of Booth.
1. E. J. Conger, \ Detectives.
2. Lieut. Baker, /
3. Surgeon from Port Royal,
4. Four Garrett daughters.
5. Harold, Booth's accomplice,
_Soldiers_.--Company H, Sixteenth New-York Volunteer Cavalry, Lieutenant
Ed. P. Doherty commanding: Corporals A. Neugarten, J. Waly, M. Hornsby:
Privates J. Mellington, D. Darker, E. Parelays, W. Mockgart;
Corporals--Zimmer (Co. C), M. Taenaek; Privates H. Pardman, J. Meiyers,
W. Burnn, F. Meekdank, G. Haich, J. Raien, J. Kelly, J. Samger (Co. M),
G. Zeichton,--Steinbury, L. Sweech (Co. A), A. Sweech (Co. H), F.
Diacts; Sergeant Wandell; Corporals Lannekey, Winacky; Sergeant Corbett
(Co. L).