The day (April 14, 1865) seems to have been a pleasant one throughout
the whole land--the moral atmosphere pleasant, too--the long storm, so
dark, so fratricidal, full of blood and doubt and gloom, over and
ended at last by the sunrise of such an absolute National victory, and
utter breaking down of secessionism--we almost doubted our senses! Lee
had capitulated beneath the apple tree at Appomattox. The other
armies, the flanges of the revolt, swiftly followed.
And could it really be, then? Out of all the affairs of this world of
woe and passion, of failure and disorder and dismay, was there really
come the confirmed, unerring sign of peace, like a shaft of pure
light--of rightful rule--of God?
But I must not dwell on accessories. The deed hastens. The popular
afternoon paper, the little Evening Star, had scattered all over its
third page, divided among the advertisements in a sensational manner
in a hundred different places: "The President and his lady will be at
the theatre this evening." Lincoln was fond of the theatre. I have
myself seen him there several times. I remember thinking how funny it
was that he, in some respects the leading actor in the greatest and
stormiest drama known to real history's stage through centuries,
should sit there and be so completely interested in those human
jack-straws, moving about with their silly little gestures, foreign
spirit, and flatulent text.
So the day, as I say, was propitious. Early herbage, early flowers,
were out. I remembered where I was stopping at the time, the season
being advanced, there were many lilacs in full bloom. By one of those
caprices that enter and give tinge to events without being at all a
part of them, I find myself always reminded of the great tragedy of
that day by the sight and odor of these blossoms. It never fails.
On this occasion the theatre was crowded, many ladies in rich and gay
costumes, officers in their uniforms, many well-known citizens, young
folks, the usual clusters of gas-lights, the usual magnetism of so
many people, cheerful, with perfumes, music of violins and flutes--and
over all, and saturating, that vast, vague wonder, Victory, the
Nation's victory, the triumph of the Union, filling the air, the
thought, the sense, with exhilaration more than all perfumes.
The President came betimes and, with his wife, witnessed the play,
from the large stage boxes of the second tier, two thrown into one,
and profusely draped with the National flag. The acts and scenes of
the piece--one of those singularly witless compositions which have at
least the merit of giving entire relief to an audience engaged in
mental action or business excitements and cares during the day, as it
makes not the slightest call on either the moral, emotional, esthetic
or spiritual nature--a piece ("Our American Cousin") in which, among
other characters so called, a Yankee, certainly such a one as was
never seen, or at least ever seen in North America, is introduced in
England, with a varied fol-de-rol of talk, plot, scenery, and such
phantasmagoria as goes to make up a modern popular drama--had
progressed through perhaps a couple of its acts, when in the midst of
this comedy, or tragedy, or non-such, or whatever it is to be called,
and to offset it, or finish it out, as if in Nature's and the Great
Muse's mockery of these poor mimics, come interpolated that scene, not
really or exactly to be described at all (for on the many hundreds who
were there it seems to this hour to have left little but a passing
blur, a dream, a blotch)--and yet partially to be described as I now
proceed to give it:
There is a scene in the play representing the modern parlor, in which
two unprecedented English ladies are informed by the unprecedented and
impossible Yankee that he is not a man of fortune, and therefore
undesirable for marriage catching purposes; after which, the comments
being finished, the dramatic trio make exit, leaving the stage clear
for a moment. There was a pause, a hush, as it were. At this period
came the murder of Abraham Lincoln. Great as that was, with all its
manifold train circling around it, and stretching into the future for
many a century, in the politics, history, art, etc., of the New World,
in point of fact, the main thing, the actual murder, transpired with
the quiet and simplicity of any commonest occurrence--the bursting of
a bud or pod in the growth of vegetation, for instance.
Through the general hum following the stage pause, with the change of
positions, etc., came the muffled sound of a pistol shot, which not
one-hundredth part of the audience heard at the time--and yet a
moment's hush--somehow, surely a vague, startled thrill--and then,
through the ornamented, draperied, starred, and striped space-way of
the President's box, a sudden figure, a man, raises himself with hands
and feet, stands a moment on the railing, leaps below to the stage (a
distance of perhaps 14 or 15 feet), falls out of position, catching
his boot heel in the copious drapery (the American flag), falls on one
knee, quickly recovers himself, rises as if nothing had happened (he
really sprains his ankle, but unfelt then)--and the figure, Booth, the
murderer, dressed in plain black broadcloth, bare-headed, with a full
head of glossy, raven hair, and his eyes, like some mad animal's
flashing with light and resolution, yet with a certain strange
calmness, holds aloft in one hand a large knife--walks along not much
back of the foot-lights--turns fully towards the audience his face of
statuesque beauty, lit by those basilisk eyes, flashing with
desperation, perhaps insanity--launches out in a firm and steady voice
the words _Sic Semper Tyrannis_--and then walks with neither slow nor
very rapid pace diagonally across to the back of the stage, and
disappears. (Had not all this terrible scene--making the mimic ones
preposterous--had it not all been rehearsed, in blank, by Booth,
beforehand?)
A moment's hush, incredulous--a scream--the cry of murder--Mrs.
Lincoln leaning out of the box, with ashy cheeks and lips, with
involuntary cry, pointing to the retreating figure, "He has
killed the President." And still a moment's strange, incredulous
suspense--and then the deluge!--then that mixture of horror, noises,
uncertainty--(the sound, somewhere back, of a horse's hoofs clattering
with speed) the people burst through chairs and railings, and break
them up--that noise adds to the queerness of the scene--there is
extricable confusion and terror--women faint--quite feeble persons
fall, and are trampled on--many cries of agony are heard--the broad
stage suddenly fills to suffocation with a dense and motley crowd,
like some horrible carnival--the audience rush generally upon it--at
least the strong men do--the actors and actresses are there in their
play costumes and painted faces, with moral fright showing through the
rouge--some trembling, some in tears, the screams and calls, confused
talk--redoubled, trebled--two or three manage to pass up water from
the stage to the President's box--others try to clamber up--etc., etc.
In the midst of all this the soldiers of the President's Guard, with
others, suddenly drawn to the scene, burst in--some 200
altogether--they storm the house, through all the tiers, especially
the upper ones--inflamed with fury, literally charging the audience
with fixed bayonets, muskets and pistols, shouting "Clear out! clear
out!..." Such the wild scene, or a suggestion of it, rather, inside
the play house that night.
Outside, too, in the atmosphere of shock and craze, crowds of people
filled with frenzy, ready to seize any outlet for it, came near
committing murder several times on innocent individuals. One such case
was especially exciting. The infuriated crowd, through some chance,
got started against one man, either for words he uttered, or perhaps
without any cause at all, and were proceeding at once to hang him on a
neighboring lamp-post, when he was rescued by a few heroic policemen,
who placed him in their midst and fought their way slowly and amid
great peril toward the station house. It was a fitting episode of the
whole affair. The crowd rushing and eddying to and fro, the night, the
yells, the pale faces, many frightened people trying in vain to
extricate themselves, the attacked man, not yet freed from the jaws of
death, looking like a corpse, the silent, resolute half dozen
policemen, with no weapons but their little clubs, yet stern and
steady through all those eddying swarms--made indeed a fitting side
scene to the grand tragedy of the murder. They gained the station
house with the protected man, whom they placed in security for the
night and discharged in the morning.
And in the midst of that night pandemonium of senseless hate,
infuriated soldiers, the audience and the crowd--the stage, and all
its actors and actresses, its paint pots, spangles and gaslight--the
life blood from those veins, the best and sweetest of the land, drips
slowly down....
Such, hurriedly sketched, were the accompaniments of the death of
President Lincoln. So suddenly, and in murder and horror unsurpassed,
he was taken from us. But his death was painless.
[10] _By permission of David McKay._