USA > Washington DC > Washington DC > Washington : the capital city and its part in the history of the nation > Part 14
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through the theatre, and those in the audience unfamiliar with the play thought it a part of the performance.
Not so the occupants of the box. Rathbone, who had sprung to his feet at the sound of the shot, grappled with the intruder, only to receive a blow from the dagger which Booth now held in his hand. Rathbone's hold relaxed, and Booth, appearing at the front of the box, shouted, "Sic semper tyrannis!" and vaulted the railing. A stirrup on his boot caught in the folds of one of the flags forming part of the draperies, and he fell heavily to the stage below, a distance of fourteen feet. His left leg bent and a bone snapped as he struck the floor. But he was on his feet in an instant, and, facing the wondering house, cried tragically, " The South is avenged !" Then, still brandishing his bloody knife, he turned and disappeared behind the scenes. Not, however, before more than one bewildered witness of his entrance and exit had said to himself, " Why, that's Wilkes Booth !"
A startling realization of the tragedy that had befallen now burst upon the audience, and a dozen voices joined in a terror-stricken, " The President is shot!" In the confusion of
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the moment, two men from the audience leaped upon the stage and followed Booth in close pur- suit. But the assassin struck at one with his dagger, eluded the other's grasp, plunged through a familiar exit, leaped to the saddle of his waiting horse, and galloped away into the darkness. Others, meantime, thought only of reaching the box, from whence now issued the moans of a woman in deep distress. They found the President, when Rathbone succeeded in unbarring the door so securely closed by Booth, still sitting in the large arm-chair, with his hands on its arms and his head fallen for- ward on his breast, as if asleep. Ensign William Flood, of the navy, first to enter the box, lifted the silent figure from the chair and laid it on the floor. Surgeon Charles A. Leale, also of the navy, followed just behind Flood, and his hurried search disclosed that the ball had entered the head back of the left ear and was lodged in the brain. Soon army officers brought in a stretcher. The President was gently lifted on to it, and, with the blood dripping faster and faster from the wound, he was carried from the box, through the dress-circle, down the stairs into the street, and thence to a room in
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a lodging-house across the way. There he was laid on a bed, and Leale, with other physicians who had gathered to his aid, began a desperate, unavailing fight to rescue him from death.
News of the tragedy spread with the swift- ness of the wind, and as it spread met other news which doubled the horror of that awful night. Vice-President Johnson was scathless, for Atzerot's nerve had failed him at the last moment, but Payne, endowed with more brute courage, had turned the house of Secretary Seward into a human shambles. At the same hour that Booth had shot Lincoln, Payne had appeared at the door of the Seward home with the statement that he had been sent by the doctor to administer an important prescription to the Secretary, who was then confined to his bed with a broken arm and fractured jaw, the result of a runaway accident some days before. Denied admittance by the colored servant, Payne pushed him aside and strode heavily up the stairs towards Secretary Seward's room. The noise brought Frederick W. Seward to the door ; and after a few words with the intruder, in which he was told that the Secretary could not be seen, Payne struck him on the head with his
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heavy pistol, breaking a portion of the cartridge- extracting apparatus, so great was the force of the blow. Seward, however, continued to grap- ple with his assailant until he fell in a swoon, from which he did not emerge for many days. Left free to work his will, Payne rushed into the sick-chamber, slashing right and left with his large knife; and after wounding Colonel Augustus H. Seward and two male nurses, fell upon the defenceless Secretary in bed, and in- flicted three stabs upon his neck, as a result of which his life hung for weeks as by a thread. Then Payne, while the neighborhood resounded with the colored servant's cry of "Murder!" succeeded in making his escape.
Such was the terrible story brought to or by those who gathered in the house in Tenth Street where the President lay. These included, be- sides his wife and son Robert, Secretaries Stan- ton, Welles, and Usher, Attorney-General Speed, Senator Sumner, Private Secretary Hay, Dr. Gurley, Lincoln's pastor, and several physicians and friends. Robert Lincoln's grief at first over- powered him, but soon recovering himself, he leaned his head on the shoulder of Senator Sum- ner, and so kept silent vigil during the long
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night. Mrs. Lincoln remained in an adjoin- ing room, but made frequent visits to her husband's side. On the last of these she fell fainting to the floor, and with difficulty was restored to consciousness. The others gathered in the house seemed as incapable of thought and action as the helpless sufferer within the little chamber. Stanton alone was master of himself. For hours he dictated orders, one after another, which an assistant wrote out and sent swiftly to the telegraph, directing here an arrest and there some precaution that needed to be taken until the crisis was over. Grant, now returning to Washington, was warned to exercise care on the journey and to send an engine in front of his train. Last of all, the great war Secretary, working within sound of the moans of his dying chief, prepared and sent out an official account of the assassination, which after the lapse of the years remains the best brief story of the night's awful work.
The President at midnight was still alive, but unconscious and breathing heavily, and the surgeons, after a more careful examination of the wound, said there was no hope. A man of less vitality, they declared, would have been
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dead within the hour. The night waned into morning with no perceptible change in the Presi- dent's condition. Those about the bed anxiously watched each feeble inspiration; and as the un- broken quiet would seem to prove that life had fled, they would turn their eyes to their watches. Then, as the struggling life within would force another fluttering respiration, they would heave deep sighs of relief and once more fix their gaze upon the face of the dying man. Soon after daylight the breathing became easier and the features took on a more peaceful expression. " Symptoms of immediate dissolution," ran the bulletin issued at seven o'clock, and twenty- two minutes later Lincoln died. "Now he belongs to the ages," said Stanton, breaking the solemn silence which followed the announce- ment that the great heart had ceased to beat. There was a prayer, and then, one by one, the watchers withdrew, and the dead was left alone. Two hours later the body of the President, wrapped in an American flag, was borne from the house in which he died, and carried through streets already garbed in mourning to an upper room in the private apartments of the White House. There he lay until three days later a
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sorrowing people were allowed to look for a last time on his face.
Attempts to capture Booth began within an hour of his crime. As soon as news of it reached the War Department the long roll was beaten all over the city, and soldiers, policemen, and detectives were despatched to guard every ave- nue of escape, either by land or river, with or- ders to arrest all persons who sought under any pretext to leave Washington. But it was too late. Booth, passing unchallenged through the heart of the city, had effected a meeting with Herold on the farther side of the Eastern Branch, and was already in rapid flight through lower Maryland, a region well-known to his companion. It was his plan to cross the lower Potomac, pass through the Confederate lines, and then effect an escape to Mexico. Early in the morning of April 15 Booth and Herold reached the house of Dr. Samuel A. Mudd, in Charles County, Maryland. Booth had met the doctor some months before, but he was now so disguised by a false beard that he was not rec- ognized, and, when Herold stated that while riding rapidly his companion's horse had fallen on him and broken his limb, Mudd promptly
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offered the fugitives the hospitality of his house and dressed the actor's broken leg. They re- mained at the Mudd homestead until four in the afternoon, and then rode away in the direction of the Potomac, which they declared they were anxious to reach that day. Twelve hours later they arrived at the residence of Captain Samuel Cox, a Southern sympathizer living in the south- western portion of Charles County, four miles from the Potomac. Calling Cox from his bed, Booth made himself known, threw himself upon a stranger's mercy, and begged for assistance in crossing the river. Cox, moved by this ap- peal, directed Booth and Herold to hide a short distance from the house, and later in the morn- ing guided them to a more secure refuge in a dense thicket of young pines nearer the Potomac and remote from any roadway. Then he sent for his foster-brother, Thomas A. Jones, and placed the fugitives in the latter's charge.
Booth and Herold lay concealed in the thicket until the following Friday, while Jones daily brought them food and watched his opportunity to take them to the river. But that region was then overrun by ten thousand cavalry and one- fourth as many detectives, called into the field
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by the large rewards offered for Booth's capture, and nearly a week passed before the favorable opportunity came. Meantime, their horses, through fear that their neighing might betray them, were led to an adjacent swamp and shot. The night of Friday, April 22, was one of rain and almost impenetrable darkness, and Jones counted the conditions favorable to lead Booth to the river. The assassin was lifted upon a horse, and Jones led the way to a boat which had been left in a secluded spot by a faithful negro and former slave of its owner. Herold took the oars; Booth was placed in the stern, and, after a fervent good-by to Jones, the boat pushed out into the darkness.
It was their purpose to reach Upper Macho- doc Creek, on the Virginia shore, but a heavy flood-tide carried them far out of their course. Dawn found them at Nanjemoy Cove, on the Maryland side, and, lying concealed during the day, they did not reach Machodoc Point until Sunday morning. Booth hid in a secluded spot, while Herold made his way to the house of Mrs. E. R. Quesenberry, to whom they had been directed by Jones. The woman gave them food and succor, and on Monday morning,
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guided by a freeborn negro named Lucas, they started for the Rappahannock, reaching Port Conway, the northern terminus of the ferry across that stream, at three in the afternoon. Here they were waiting for the ferryman, Wil- liam Rollins, to convey them across the river. when three Confederate soldiers, William Jett, M. B. Ruggles, and A. R. Bainbridge, return- ing from the front, rode into the little hamlet. Booth disclosed his identity to the new-comers. The latter, after a moment's hesitation, agreed to take him to a place of safety, and, having crossed the river. Booth was mounted behind Jett, and Herold behind Ruggles. A ride of three miles brought them to the house of Wil- liam Garrett, a farmer. Bainbridge. Ruggles, and Herold halted at the gate, while Jett and Booth rode up to the house, where Jett intro- duced Booth to Garrett as " James Boyd," the son of an old friend, who had been wounded in the Confederate service. Jett asked the farmer to care for "Boyd" until Wednesday morning, when he would return for him. His request was granted, and Booth slept Monday night at Garrett's. Herold and the three sol- diers found a camping-place in a nearby piece
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of woods, but separated next morning, Bain- bridge and Ruggles setting out for their homes, Jett going to the neighboring town of Bowling Green, where lived his intended wife, and Herold joining Booth at the Garrett home- stead.
Meanwhile, a negro who had observed Booth and Herold's landing at Nanjemoy Cove three days before had reported that fact to one of the detectives of Colonel L. C. Baker, chief of the federal secret service. The negro was hurried to Washington to appear before Baker in per- son, and when shown a large number of photo- graphs at once selected the pictures of Booth and Herold as being the persons whom he had seen in the boat. Baker realized that he had a clue of the first importance, and early in the afternoon of Monday two of his most trusted men, L. B. Baker and E. J. Conger, with a squad of cavalry to guard them, were steaming down the Potomac on a government tug to take up the pursuit. The detectives and their escort landed late that night at Belle Plain, and at five o'clock Tuesday afternoon reached Port Conway. There Rollins, the ferryman, identified a photograph of Booth as that of a
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lame man who had crossed the river the day before, adding that Jett, one of the lame man's comrades, had a sweetheart at Bowling Green.
Rollins was placed under arrest and compelled to guide the pursuers to Bowling Green. Booth and Herold, lounging in front of the Garrett homestead, saw the troopers pass and were seen by them. A little later Booth told the elder Garrett that he had had "a brush with the Yankees over in Maryland," and asked that he and Herold be allowed to sleep in the barn that night. The identity of the fugitives was still unknown to their host, but their actions had already aroused the suspicions of John and Wil- liam Garrett, young men who had just returned from the war. The latter now saw in Booth's request a ruse to secure their horses during the night, and so, after Booth and Herold retired to the barn, they quietly locked the door after them, having first removed their horses, and then slept in the nearby corn-crib.
The detectives and troopers, guided by Rol- lins, reached Bowling Green at midnight. Jett was aroused from his bed in the village tavern, and forced under the threat of death, to tell where he had left Booth and Herold, and to
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guide the pursuers back to the Garrett home- stead, which was' reached shortly after three o'clock Wednesday morning. John Garrett, when awakened, disclosed the hiding-place of the two men, and was ordered to go into the
barn and tell them to surrender. Booth re- fused to yield, even when informed that if he did not the barn would be fired, adding, "But there is a man in here who does want to sur- render pretty bad," whereupon Herold presented himself at the door and was taken into custody. A moment later the building was fired by Con- ger, the detective, and as the flames lighted up its interior, a soldier, Boston Corbett, stole up to the side of the barn, placed his revolver to the crack between two boards, took aim and fired. Corbett's act was in disobedience of orders, and he was afterwards court-martialled for insubordination. The bullet entered Booth's head in almost the same spot as the shot he had fired at the President. He pitched forward into the flames, but soldiers, rushing into the barn, lifted him up and carried him to the porch of the house. He died without recovering con- sciousness, three hours after he was shot. His body was carried to Washington and secretly
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buried in a cell in the penitentiary, but later it was given to his family, and now lies in a cemetery in Baltimore.
Booth's associates demand a closing word. Herold, along with Payne and Atzerot, who were captured without delay, died upon the gal- lows, and a like fate was meted out to Mrs. Mary E. Surratt. The parties to the plot to abduct Lincoln, one of whom was her son, had held their meetings at her house in Washing- ton; she had had repeated interviews with Booth on April 14, and these facts, with other evidence, were regarded as conclusive proof that she was an accessory before the fact to the murder of the President. Arnold, O'Lough- lin, and Dr. Mudd, who had set Booth's leg on the morrow of his flight, were sentenced-the latter, as is now known, most unjustly-to hard labor for life at the Dry Tortugas. Thither also, with a six years' sentence, went Edmund Spangler, the scene-shifter at Ford's Theatre. There is little doubt of Spangler's innocence. But he had cared for Booth's horses, and wit- nesses also testified that they had seen him talking to Booth outside of the theatre just before the assassination. These facts, so bitter
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was the feeling at the time against all who hap- pened to be associated with the assassin that day, sufficed to convict the luckless scene-shifter of aiding Booth in his escape. O'Loughlin died in prison, and in 1869. Mudd, Spangler, and Arnold were pardoned by President Johnson. John H. Surratt fled to Canada and thence to Europe, but was arrested at Rome, while serving in the Papal Zouaves, made his escape only to be re-arrested in Egypt, and was finally brought back to this country on an American frigate. He was tried at Washington by a civil court, early in 1867, charged with complicity in the plot to kill the President. The jury disagreed at the end of a three months' trial, during which more than two hundred witnesses appeared on the stand, and the government did not prosecute the case farther.
The body of the dead President lay in an upper chamber of the White House from Satur- day morning until Monday night. It was then placed in the casket prepared for it and laid under a magnificent catafalque in the centre of the great East Room. The following morning the public were admitted to view the face of the dead. All day long a sorrowing, tearful II .- 20
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throng surged past the bier, and when the gates were closed at night Lafayette Park and the adjoining streets were still packed with people waiting for admission. Wednesday had been chosen for the funeral, and at the noon hour of that day representatives of all that was eminent and powerful in the North foregathered in the East Room. However, the great assembly con- tained but one person related to Lincoln or bearing his name,-his son Robert. Mrs. Lin- coln was unable to leave her room, nor could little Tad be induced to be present. General Grant, separated from the others, sat alone at the head of the catafalque, and more than once was moved to tears.
Bishop Simpson and Dr. Gurley, both inti- mate friends of Lincoln, conducted the solemn services, and the tolling of bells and the booming of minute-guns announced their conclusion. A little later the coffin was borne from the White House, placed in a funeral car, and, headed by a fitting military and civilian escort, conveyed slowly to the Capitol. Uncounted thousands waited for it to pass, all with uncovered heads and many in tears. The east front of the Capi- tol reached, the procession halted, and the body
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was borne across the portico and placed on a catafalque under the dome of the rotunda, which had been darkened and draped in mourning. There, after a brief service, it was left alone, save only for a guard of soldiers; but on Thurs- day the Capitol was opened, and again, as, on Tuesday, from early morning until nightfall, a steadily lengthening throng, gathered from every part of the Union, paid to the dead its last tribute of affection and respect. It was an unforgetable scene. Guards marshalled the peo- ple into a double line which separated at the foot of the coffin, passed on either side, was reunited and was guided out by the opposite door, which opened on the great portico of the building on its east front.
In the early morning of Friday, April 22, the coffin of the President, followed by repre- sentatives of every branch of the government, was carried from the Capitol, through streets lined with another silent, uncovered multitude, to the railway-station, where it was placed in the funeral car of the train which was to con- vey the remains from Washington to Spring- field. Beside it was placed a smaller coffin, that of Willie Lincoln, who had died in February,
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1862, for Mrs. Lincoln had requested that father and son should make together their last earthly journey. Sharply at eight o'clock the train of nine cars left Washington. It had been de- cided, after much discussion, that the funeral procession should follow the same route which was taken by Lincoln when he left his home to become President. The way led through Balti- more, Harrisburg, Philadelphia, New York, Al- bany, Buffalo, Cleveland, Columbus, Indianap- olis, and Chicago to Springfield. The progress of the train was the signal for a demonstration of grief without a parallel in history. At each of the larger cities the body lay in state for brief periods, and mourning crowds, with bowed heads and moistened eyes, filed past in un- counted numbers to look at the dead man's face. Tolling bells, salutes of guns, and camp-fires built along the course marked each resumption of the westward journey, and in the country districts, the plain folk whom Lincoln loved poured from their homes, and stood for hours, in storm and darkness, to see the train sweep by. And so he came for the last time unto his own people. It was on the morning of May 3 that the funeral train reached Spring-
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field. There the body lay in state for twenty- four hours, while men and women of town and countryside, who had known Lincoln as neighbor, helper, and friend, sorrowed as over tlie coffin of a father. Then, on the afternoon of May 4, with prayer and dirge, the reading of his last inaugural, and a noble funeral oration by Bishop Simpson, the Supreme American was laid to his dreamless rest in Oakland Cemetery, a shaded and beautiful burial garth, two miles from Springfield.
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CHAPTER XII
REBUILDING A NATION
F IVE weeks after the funeral of Lincoln Washington was the theatre of another and a very different pageant. On April 26 Joe Johnston surrendered to Sherman in North Carolina ; eight days later Dick Taylor surren- dered to Canby in Alabama ; and on May 26 the forces west of the Mississippi commanded by Kirby Smith laid down their arms. The war was, indeed, over, and the million Union soldiers in the field were now free to return to their former pursuits. Orders for their disbanding followed each other in quick succession. Men from the army of Thomas rendezvoused at Nashville and Louisville, and those from that of Canby at New Orleans, Vicksburg, and Mobile, while the armies of Meade and Sher- man, until muster- and pay-rolls had been made out, went into camp around Washington.
By May 20 two hundred thousand men were encamped along the Potomac, opposite the capi- tal. Then, as a splendid climax to all that had
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gone before, Secretary Stanton ordered that Meade's army on May 23 and Sherman's on the 24th should pass in grand review before the Administration. It was the noblest spectacle ever witnessed in this land. For six hours on one day and seven on the other a great throng gathered from all parts of the North, watched the men in the ranks, marshalled by generals whose names had become household words, pass sixty abreast through the wide Washington ave- nues. All the States of the North were repre- sented among the bronzed, weather-beaten sol- diers, whose cadenced advance suggested the might and power of an ocean tide. Those who witnessed, with mingled pride and awe, the pas- sage of the stern-faced men who made up the long column knew now what Lincoln meant when he talked to them of "veterans;" and were brought also to a sudden, glad realization of the truth that the government that could call such an army into being would " not perish from the earth."
Another month, and the Grand Army of the Republic had melted back into the heart of the people, while the new President and his advisers had turned to deal, as best they could, with the
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arduous and perilous question of Reconstruction. Lincoln, as is now well known, had decided the choice of the man whom Booth's bullet made his successor. One of the means by which he sought to strengthen his cause in the contest of 1864 was the nomination of a conspicuous War Democrat for Vice-President along with himself for President. Many of the men who had acted with the Democratic party in 1860 against Lincoln's election had patriotically en- tered the military service and won distinction by their heroism, and these represented a very large class of Democratic voters upon whom Lincoln felt he must rely for re-election. Han- nibal Hamlin, then Vice-President, had been a Democrat ; but he did not come under the class of War Democrats, and, besides, he had allowed himself to drift into the embrace of the oppo- sition to his chief. Andrew Johnson, on the other hand, represented a distinctive and influ- ential class of citizens, who, though still pro- fessing to be Democrats, were ready to support the war under Lincoln until it should be suc- cessfully terminated by the restoration of the Union. Johnson had been a Senator from Ten- nessee when that State seceded, but he had
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