Lincoln Part 59

On one of his visits to the War Department, Lincoln asked Stanton if Major Thomas T. Eckert, chief of the telegraph bureau, could accompany him to the theater. Eckert was a man of exceptional strength, who once, in order to demonstrate the poor quality of the cast-iron pokers that were supplied for use at the War Department grates, broke five of them by striking them across his left arm. Here surely was a man who could defend the President against whatever danger Stanton feared. But the Secretary said that Eckert was needed for important work. Going over Stanton's head, the President approached Eckert directly. "Now, Major," he cajoled, "come along. You can do Stanton's work to-morrow, and Mrs. Lincoln and I want you with us." But Eckert, in deference to the Secretary's wishes, declined.

The Lincolns next turned to a young couple of whom they were fond: Clara Harris, the daughter of the senator from New York, and her stepbrother (who was also her fiance) Major Henry R. Rathbone, who had served with distinction in the war and could presumably offer the President protection. After picking up their guests, the Lincolns drove to Ford's Theatre on Tenth Street through streets still illuminated in celebration of the recent victory.

By the time they arrived, at about eight-thirty, the performance had already begun, though the spectators kept glancing at the empty presidential box. There had been some grumbling because, in antic.i.p.ation that both Lincoln and Grant would attend, scalpers bought up most of the tickets, which regularly cost $.75 or $1.00, and resold them for $2.50 each. But when the President and his party entered, the orchestra, led by William Withers, interrupted the actors and played "Hail to the Chief," and the audience rose and cheered. As he climbed the stairs to the dress circle, the President walked slowly, and his shoulders seemed noticeably stooped. Carrying his high silk hat in his left hand, he led the way along a narrow corridor to the presidential box. (Actually it was two boxes, but the management had removed the part.i.tion between them to give more room for the presidential party.) The audience continued wildly cheering, and, one witness remembered, "the President stepped to the box rail and acknowledged the applause with dignified bows and never-to-be-forgotten smiles." Knowing that the President preferred a rocking chair, Harry C. Ford, brother of the owner of the theater, had thoughtfully provided one from his private quarters, and there were also comfortable chairs and a small sofa for the other guests. The velvet bal.u.s.trade in front of the box, eleven feet and six inches above the stage, had been decorated with patriotic colors, and the blue regimental flag of the Treasury Guard flew above a gilt-framed portrait of George Washington on the center pillar. The occupants of the box could not be seen by most of the audience.

The play, which starred Laura Keene, was a creaky farce about an American b.u.mpkin, Asa Trenchard, who goes to England to claim a fortune he has inherited from a n.o.ble relative. He is pursued by a fortune-hunting Englishwoman, Mrs. Mountchessington, who wants to marry him to her daughter, Augusta. The play had been a hit for five years, and the lines were familiar enough to allow the actors a little improvisation for special occasions like this one. So when the frail heroine asked for a seat protected from the draft, Lord Dundreary, instead of saying "Well, you're not the only one that wants to escape the draft," replied: "You are mistaken. The draft has already been stopped by order of the President!"

Though the draperies concealed the President so that he could only be seen when he leaned forward, the Lincolns appeared to enjoy the play. When the actors scored hits, Mary applauded, but her husband simply laughed heartily. A man seated in the orchestra observed that Mrs. Lincoln often called the President's attention to actions on the stage and "seemed to take great pleasure in witnessing his enjoyment." Seated so close to her husband that she was nestled against him, she whispered: "What will Miss Harris think of my hanging on to you so?" With a smile he replied: "She wont think any thing about it."

One of the most predictable crowd-pleasers in the play came during the second scene of the third act, when Mrs. Mountchessington, learning that Asa Trenchard has given away his inheritance, denounces him for not knowing how to behave and makes a haughty exit. Asa's lines read: "Don't know the manners of good society, eh? Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal-you sockdologizing old man-trap." The laughter and burst of applause almost covered the sound of a shot in the presidential box.

VII

John Wilkes Booth had been busy since the night of April 11. "Our cause being almost lost," he concluded, "something decisive and great must be done." Remembering that Jefferson Davis was still at large and that Johnston's army in North Carolina was still under arms, he devised a plan to give the Confederacy one last chance by decapitating the Union government at Washington. Both Lincoln and Andrew Johnson would be killed. Seward would also be murdered, since, as Secretary of State, he would have the responsibility for holding new elections in the North. In the demoralization and disorder that would surely follow, the South might still gain its independence.

Booth had trouble getting his fellow conspirators to go along with his plan. John Surratt, the ablest of his a.s.sociates, went off on a trip to Canada for his Confederate employers. Accusing Booth of mismanagement and fearing that "the G[overnmen]t suspicions something is going on," Arnold favored postponing action until someone could "go and see how it will be taken at R[ichmon]d." Later he decided to cut loose from Booth's scheme and took a job as a clerk at Old Point. O'Laughlin, too, was disillusioned; willing enough to take part in a kidnapping, he wanted no part of a murder. But Booth still had three devoted followers: Atzerodt, Herold, and Paine.

It was not until midday on April 14, when he learned that Lincoln would be attending Ford's Theatre, that Booth decided to implement his plan. At about eight o'clock he summoned Atzerodt to meet him and Paine at the Herndon House, where he gave them their marching orders. Atzerodt was told to murder Andrew Johnson, who was staying at the Kirkland House. "I won't do it!" the German said in terror. "I enlisted to abduct the President of the United States, not to kill." But under Booth's threats and curses he agreed to consider the a.s.signment. Paine willingly accepted the order to kill Seward. Calling Booth "Captain," he thought of himself as a soldier obeying the commands of a superior officer. Because Paine was not familiar with the streets of Washington, Booth directed Herold to show him the way to the house of the Secretary of State. The a.s.sa.s.sination of the President was left for Booth himself, who expected to have some a.s.sistance in making his getaway from Edman Spangler and other stagehands at Ford's Theatre. All three a.s.saults were to take place simultaneously, at 10:15 P.M.

In antic.i.p.ation of the slaughter, Booth prepared a letter for publication in the National Intelligencer, explaining and defending his motives. The friend to whom he entrusted the letter destroyed it and remembered only its closing words: "The world may censure me for what I am about to do, but I am sure that posterity will justify me." The communication probably contained the same ideas that Booth later jotted down in his diary, where he recorded that the country owed all its troubles to Lincoln, "and G.o.d simply made me the instrument of his punishment." He was a modern Brutus or William Tell, though his action would be seen as purer than that of either. They had private motives, but "I struck for my country and that alone. A country groaned beneath this tyranny and prayed for this end."

As Atzerodt and Paine fanned out to seek their targets, Booth, a celebrated actor, familiar to everybody who worked at Ford's Theatre, had no trouble in slipping upstairs during the performance of Our American Cousin. Moving quietly down the aisle behind the dress circle, he stood for a few moments near the President's box. A member of the audience, seeing him there, thought him "the handsomest man I had ever seen." John Parker, the Metropolitan policeman a.s.signed to protect the President, had left his post in the pa.s.sageway, and the box was guarded only by Charles Forbes, a White House footman. When Booth showed Forbes his calling card, he was admitted to the presidential box. Barring the door behind him, so as not to be disturbed, he noiselessly moved behind Lincoln, who was leaning forward, with his chin in his right hand and his arm on the bal.u.s.trade. At a distance of about two feet, the actor pointed his derringer at the back of the President's head on the left side and pulled the trigger. It was about 10:13 P.M.

When Major Rathbone tried to seize the intruder, Booth lunged at him with his razor-sharp hunting knife, which had a 7-inch blade. "The Knife," Clara Harris reported, "went from the elbow nearly to the shoulder, inside,-cutting an artery, nerves and veins-he bled so profusely as to make him very weak." Shoving his victim aside, Booth placed his hands on the bal.u.s.trade and vaulted toward the stage. It was an easy leap for the gymnastic actor, but the spur on his heel caught in the flags decorating the box and he fell heavily on one foot, breaking the bone just above the ankle. Waving his dagger, he shouted in a loud, melodramatic voice: "Sic semper tyrannis" ("Thus always to tyrants"-the motto of the state of Virginia). Some in the audience thought he added, "The South is avenged." Quickly he limped across the stage, with what one witness called "a motion ... like the hopping of a bull frog," and made his escape through the rear of the theater.

Up to this point the audience was not sure what had happened. Perhaps most thought the whole disturbance was part of the play. But as the blue-white smoke from the pistol drifted out of the presidential box, Mary Lincoln gave a heart-rending shriek and screamed, "They have shot the President! They have shot the President!"

The first doctor to reach the box, army surgeon Charles A. Leale, initially thought the President was dead. With his eyes closed and his head fallen forward on his breast, he was being held upright in his chair by Mrs. Lincoln, who was weeping bitterly. Detecting a slight pulse, the physician ordered the President to be stretched on the floor so that he could determine the extent of his injuries. Finding his major wound was at the back of his head, he removed the clot of blood that had acc.u.mulated there and relieved the pressure on his brain. Then, by giving artificial respiration, he was able to induce a feeble action of the heart, and irregular breathing followed.

As soon as it was clear that instant death would not occur, the President was moved from the crowded theater. Some wanted to take him to the White House, but Dr. Leale warned that he would die if jostled on the rough streets of Washington. They decided to carry him across Tenth Street to a house owned by William Petersen, a merchant-tailor. There he was taken to a small, narrow room at the rear of the first floor. Because Lincoln was so tall, his body could not fit on the bed unless his knees were elevated. Finding that the foot of the bedstead could not be removed or broken off, the doctors placed him diagonally across the mattress, resting his head and shoulders on extra pillows. Though he was covered by an army blanket and a colored wool coverlet, his extremities grew very cold, and the physicians ordered hot-water bottles.

Here Lincoln lay for the next nine hours. Dr. Leale and Dr. Charles S. Taft, who had also been in the audience for Our American Cousin, were constantly in attendance, and during the night, as Taft noted, "nearly all the leading men of the profession in the city tendered their services." When Dr. Robert King Stone, the Lincolns' family doctor, arrived at about eleven o'clock, he became the physician in charge, and he consulted with Dr. Joseph K. Barnes, the surgeon general of the United States. From the first, all of them agreed that there was no chance of recovery. The doctors agreed that the average man could not survive the injury Lincoln had received for more than two hours, but Dr. Stone noted that the President's "vital tenacity was very strong, and he would resist as long as any man could." He never regained consciousness.

Mary was with her husband through the long night. Frantic with grief, she sat at his bedside, calling on him to say one word to her, to take her with him. When Robert came in with Senator Sumner, he saw what desperate shape his mother was in and sent for Elizabeth Dixon-wife of Connecticut Senator James Dixon-who was perhaps Mary's closest friend in the capital. Mrs. Dixon persuaded her to retire to the front room of the Petersen house, where she rested as well as she could, returning every hour to her husband's side. On one of these visits she sobbed bitterly, "Oh, that my little Taddy might see his father before he died!" but the physicians wisely decided that this was not advisable. Once when Lincoln's breathing became very stertorous, Mary, who was approaching exhaustion, became frightened, leapt up with a piercing cry, and fell fainting on the floor. Coming in from the adjoining room, Stanton called out loudly, "Take that woman out and do not let her in again."

During the night, as crowds gathered in the street in front of the Petersen house, all the members of the cabinet except Seward came to see their fallen chief. Much of the night Secretary Welles sat by the head of the President's bed, listening to the slow, full respiration of the dying man. Vice President Johnson was summoned, but Sumner urged him not to stay long, knowing that Mary Lincoln detested him and might cause a scene. The Reverend Phineas D. Gurley, pastor of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, which the Lincolns frequently attended, came to give spiritual comfort.

Stanton promptly took charge. Making an adjacent room in the Petersen house his headquarters, he summoned a.s.sistant Secretary of War Dana to help him and began rapidly dictating one order after another designed to keep the government functioning during the crisis. Stanton immediately started an investigation of the a.s.sa.s.sination, taking testimony from witnesses, ordering all bridges and roads out of the capital closed, and directing the military to search for the murderers. By dawn he had a ma.s.sive manhunt under way. He soon learned that there had been not one but two a.s.saults. Though Atzerodt decided not to attack Andrew Johnson and spent the night wandering aimlessly about the city, Paine, following Booth's directions, had burst into Seward's house; he fiercely attacked the Secretary of State, who was still bedridden after his carriage accident, and left him bleeding copiously and barely alive. By morning Paine and Atzerodt were under arrest, and the other conspirators-including those who had only been involved in the kidnapping plot-were promptly seized. But Booth, who was accompanied by Herold, escaped. Not until April 26 did Stanton's men trace him to a farm in northern Virginia, where he was shot.

Long before that, Lincoln was dead. As the night of April 1415 wore on, his pulse became irregular and feeble, and his respiration was accompanied by a guttural sound. Several times it seemed that he had ceased breathing. Mary was allowed to return to her husband's side, and, as Mrs. Dixon reported, "she again seated herself by the President, kissing him and calling him every endearing name." As his breath grew fainter and fainter, she was led back into the front room. At twenty-two minutes past seven, on the morning of April 15, the struggle ended, and the physicians came in to inform her: "It is all over! The President is no more!"

In the small, crowded back room there was silence until Stanton asked Dr. Gurley to offer a prayer. Robert gave way to overpowering grief and sobbed aloud, leaning on Sumner for comfort. Standing at the foot of the bed, his face covered with tears, Stanton paid tribute to his fallen chief: with a slow and measured movement, his right arm fully extended as if in a salute, he raised his hat and placed it for an instant on his head and then in the same deliberate manner removed it. "Now," he said, "he belongs to the ages."

"THE RAILSPLITTER"

This 1860 life-sized oil painting, by an unknown artist, suggests the mythic qualities that helped elect Lincoln President. Forgotten here are Lincoln's highly successful law practice and his career in politics in order to stress, in a frontier setting, the homely virtues of physical strength and hard manual labor.

Chicago Historical Society

Sarah Bush (Johnston) Lincoln (1788-1869). Lincoln's stepmother was one of the most powerful influences in his life. In her old age, when this photograph was taken, she recalled: "Abe was a good boy... . His mind and mine, what little I had, seemed to run together ... in the same channel."

Meserve-Kunhardt Collection

Mary Lincoln, around 1846. This is the earliest daguerreotype of Mrs. Lincoln, made, as she said, "when we were young and so desperately in love."

The Library of Congress

Abraham Lincoln, around 1846. Made at the same time as the portrait of Mary Lincoln, this daguerreotype was probably the work of N. H. Shepherd, one of the first photographers in Springfield, Illinois.

The Library of Congress

John Todd Stuart