Read The Day Lincoln Was Shot Online
Authors: Jim Bishop
“You do not have to be afraid of me, Wilkes.”
“I will implicate you anyhow.”
“That is unnecessary.”
“Our party is sworn to secrecy, Sam, and if you betray us, you will be hunted down through life.”
“I will forget all that you have said.”
“I urge you to come in with us.”
“No.”
“Your work will be simple, Sam. You understand theaters. All you will have to do is open the back door of Ford's Theatre at a signal.”
“In Washington?”
“It is easy and you will succeed.”
“Wilkes, please. I have a family.”
“Your family will get good care. We have parties on the other side who will co-operate with us. There are between fifty and a hundred people in this.”
“Wilkes, I must say good night.” Chester went home.
The shreds of evidence, held together, say that John Wilkes Booth was lying. At best, there were never more than seven persons in his plot. In the main, they were simpleminded schemers, not one of whom rose above the rank of private in the Confederate Army. Eachâwith one exceptionâhad a greater personal loyalty to Booth than to the South. None had qualities of leadership. So far as parties on “the other side” are concerned, there were none. Booth wanted none. He wanted to do this thing alone, with the assistance of courageous men smaller in stature than he. At no time did he seek official sanction, or even unofficial sanction, from the South.
Booth was a loner.
Between January 1865, and April, the conspirator put about $4,000 of his money into the “capture.” The biggest part of this was spent for supporting his fellow conspirators; a little went for horses and feed, and some went for fleeing Washington when successive plots failed.
These plots were movements of opportunity. In retrospect, some of them have comic aspects. Throughout January, February and March, the element of coincidence was on the President's side and, as each plot failed, the conspirators felt that the failure indicated that the government was aware of the Booth band; this bred panic, and the group dispersed. At no time, with one exception, did the United States Government know about the conspiracy and, on that occasion, the administration gave it little attention.
The first attempt at “capture” was scheduled for the night of Wednesday, January 18. It had been announced that Mr. Lincoln and two friends would attend Ford's Theatre to see Edwin Forrest in
Jack Cade,
a play about the Kentish revolution.
A few days before, Booth stopped at the home of his sister Asia, in Philadelphia, to sign an important letter he had left in her keeping. It was to be released only if he was captured or killed. This was the letter to the history books. It is a rambling document, replete with the customary calls to God to bear witness, the breast beating, the indictment, heartbreak, mother and flag. The substance of it is as follows:
Right or wrong, God judge me, not man. For be my motive good or bad, of one thing I am sure, the lasting condemnation of the North. I love peace more than life. Have loved the Union beyond expression. For four years have I waited, hoped and prayed for the dark clouds to break and for a restoration of our former sunshine. All hope for peace is dead. My prayers have proved as idle as my hopes. God's will be done. I go to see and share the bitter end.
I have ever held the South were right. The very nomination of Abraham Lincoln, four years ago, plainly spoke war, war upon Southern rights and institutions. His election proved it. “Await an overt act.” Yes, till you are bound and plundered. What folly. The South was wise. Who thinks of argument or pastime when the finger of his enemy presses the trigger? In a foreign war, I too could say “Country right or wrong.” But in a struggle such as ours (where the brother tries to pierce the brother's heart) for God's sake
choose
the right! When a country like this spurns justice from her side, she forfeits the allegiance of every honest
freeman, and should leave him, untrammeled by any fealty soever, to act as his conscience may approve. . . .
The country was formed for the white, not the black man. And looking upon African slavery from the same standpoint held by the noble framers of our constitution, I, for one, have ever considered it one of the greatest blessings (both for themselves and us) that God ever bestowed upon a favored nation. Witness heretofore our wealth and our power; witness their elevation and enlightenment above their race elsewhere. I have lived among it most of my life, and have seen less harsh treatment from master to man than I have beheld in the north from Father to son. Yet, Heaven knows, no one would be willing to do more for the Negro race than I, could I but see the way to still better their condition.
But Lincoln's policy is only preparing a way for their total annihilation. The south are not, nor have they been, fighting for the continuation of slavery. The first battle of Bull Run did away with that idea. Their cause since the war have been as noble and greater far than those that urged their fathers on. Even should we allow that they were wrong at the beginning of this contest,
cruelty
and
injustice
have made the wrong become the right, and they stand now (before the wonder and admiration of the world) as a noble band of patriotic heroes. Hereafter, reading of their deeds, Thermopolae will be forgotten. . . .
The south can make no choice. It is either extermination or slavery for
themselves
(worse than death) to draw from. I know
my
choice. . . .
But there is no time for words. I write in haste. I know how foolish I shall be deemed for undertaking
such a step as this, where, on one side, I have many friends and everything to make me happy, where my profession
alone
has gained me an income of more than twenty thousand dollars a year, and where my great personal ambition in my profession has such a great field for labor. On the other hand, the south have never bestowed upon me one kind word; a place now where I have no friends, except beneath the sod; a place where I must either become a private soldier or a beggar. To give up all of the former for the latter, besides my mother and my sisters, whom I love so dearly (although they so widely differ with me in opinion) seems insane; but God is my judge. I love justice more than I do a country that disowns it, more than fame or wealth; more (Heaven pardon me if wrong) more than a happy home. . . .
My love (as things stand today) is for the south alone. Nor do I deem it a dishonor in attempting to make for her a prisoner of this man to whom she owes so much of misery. If success attends me, I go penniless to her side. They say that she has found that “last ditch” which the North has so long derided, and been endeavoring to force her in, forgetting they are our brothers, and that it is impolitic to goad on an enemy to madness. Should I reach her in safety and find it true, I will proudly beg permission to triumph or die in that same “ditch” by her side.
A confederate doing duty upon his own responsibility.
J. Wilkes Booth.
He signed it, assured himself of a place in the history books, and hurried back to Washington. He sent to Baltimore for two boyhood friends, Michael O'Laughlin and Sam
Arnold. Both were Confederate veterans, and both were hardened to the rigors of war, but they were shocked when their old friend told them the mission. Arnold was so frightened that he spent time trying to convince Booth that the scheme had to fail.
Neither of these recruits was bright. They were poor Baltimore boys who looked upon Wilkes as a rich and influential friend. The actor convinced them that they were part of a big secret band.
The rest of the groupâArnold and O'Laughlin had not met them yet, nor even heard their namesâconsisted of George A. Atzerodt, a carriage maker from Port Tobacco; David Herold, a young drug clerk who wearied of a matriarchal world; and John Surratt, Confederate courier, whose mother managed a boardinghouse.
Mr. Atzerodt is worth some special comment here, since he was later “assigned” to kill the Vice President. He was a German who worked by day with wood and wheelsâa small man with small sly eyes and a drooping mustache; a man with features as malleable as warm putty; a man who always looked dirty and was conscious of it. At night, he ferried Southerners back and forth across Pope's Creek and, if a Northerner wanted to get through the blockade, George would ferry him too. The kindest thing that was ever said about Mr. Atzerodt was that he was a man who would not resent an insult.
He was pitifully anxious to make a friend, and to this end he bought drinks for barflies and laughed at their jokes, but, the moment any of them challenged something that he had said, Mr. Atzerodt jammed his brown beaver hat on his head and left.
Booth had five men, in two groups. Each was in the plot to “capture” the commander in chief of the Union; none wanted to kill; two were in serious doubt about the propriety and feasibility of capture. Sam Arnold was afraid of any plot involving
Lincoln. John Surratt, who had risked his life for the Confederacy as a courier, started as a member of the band by entertaining the notion that the arch-conspirator was insane. However, Booth visited the H Street boardinghouse and charmed Surratt with his candor and absence of condescension, and convinced the courier that the very brazenness of the idea would help to effect complete surprise, plus the fact that “capture” was a legal act.
Still Booth needed an actor, a theater-wise person who could turn out all the lights in a theater on cue, and, having been turned down by Sam Chester, he tried to enlist the services of a small-parts actor in Washington named John Matthews. Mr. Matthews was conscious of his own smallness in the world of the American theater, and, although he worked the full season at Ford's Theatre, his habit was not to drink with actors at Taltavul's saloon because he might be expected to buy drinks in return. He drank in a small place a block away from the theater.
Booth tried to interest Matthews in the plot and the little actor recoiled. He turned it down at once and advised the star to forget it. “Matthews,” said Booth later, “is a coward and not fit to live.” The actor would not forget his contempt of Matthews, and would try to hurt him.
The conspiratorsâwith the exception of Arnold and O'Laughlinâmet infrequently at Mrs. Surratt's boarding-house. They whispered, consulted in upstairs rooms, wrestled with knives on a bed, bought pistols and became acquainted with their workings, and rode off into the country. The widow Surratt got to know them and once, in a moment of reflection, she asked her son John why these men were trooping into the house at odd hours and John said that they were all interested in a common oil speculation. Mrs. Surratt admired Booth, the courtly gentleman who attracted the eye of her seventeen-
year-old daughter; she was fond of young David Herold, who was full of tall tales of hunting in her own southern Maryland; she didn't like George Atzerodt, whom the boarders called “Port Tobacco.” Mrs. Surratt was, by all the rules of evidence, a pious zero with a penchant for falling on evil days. There is no corroborative evidence to show that she ever knew anything about a plot.
Mrs. Surratt had three children: Isaac, a Confederate soldier; John, a Confederate courier; and Anna. The boardinghouse kept Mrs. Surratt and Anna alive. Years before, she and her husband had had a farm and a tavern in southern Maryland and the government had made Mr. Surratt a postmaster and had called the crossroads Surrattsville. A few years ago, Mr. Surratt had died and his widow learned that the farm and tavern were difficult to administer. She had called John home from St. Charles College, near Ellicott's Mills and, for a while, the boy filled his father's shoes as a local postmaster. The appointment went to someone else, and John found that the rest of it had no appeal for him. He was a tall, blond, intelligent boy with cavernous eyes and a domed forehead. He was now twenty, and so he grew a wispy goatee.
Mrs. Surratt leased farm and tavern to Mr. John Lloyd, a drunkard with a poor memory. She took John and Anna off to Washington City and opened her impeccable little boarding-house on H Street. She placed advertisements in the
Star
and the
National Intelligencer
and she got boarders and set a good table.
Still, her troubles were economic and she needed every penny due her. She was in debt, for example, to Mr. Charles Calvert of southern Maryland for a few hundred dollars. In protracted correspondence with him, she held him off by saying that, many years ago, her husband had sold a piece of property to Mr. John Nothey and, if she could get him to pay her, she would be happy, in turn, to pay Mr. Calvert.
Her political horizon was small, and it is doubtful that she understood the issues between the states, but it is beyond argument that her sympathy was with the South and she was certain that the North was wrong in invading the South. She had owned a few slaves at one time, and at least one of them testified that she was harsh; two others testified that she was warm and solicitous. It is known that, at Surrattsville, she had fed passing Union soldiers and refused to accept money for it. Once she found some stray army horses and she had barned them until the proper authorities called for them. She refused to accept payment for feeding them.
Among her boarders now, all of whom had eaten early today, were Mr. and Mrs. John T. Holahan, and their daughter, fourteen. Mr. Holahan was a big man with big hands. His work was the cutting of tombstones. The Holahans occupied the front room on the third floor and the alcove too. The back room on that floor was used by John Surratt (when he was at home) and a former schoolmate, Louis J. Wiechman. Mr. Wiechman was big and soft and pungent, an overripe melon. He had studied for the priesthood at St. Charles and had failed. He had taught in school for a while, but that job too had sifted through his hands. Now he worked for the United States Government at the Office of the Commissary General of Prisoners. Some of his failures may have been attributable to Wiechman's personality, which was akin to that of a professional sneak. He felt drawn to eavesdropping and gossip and, at the same time, had the aura of a suffering saint who has been snubbed.