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The Crime & Capture of John Wilkes Booth · The Crime & Capture of John Wilkes Booth

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  One year ago, the writer of the letters which follow visited the battle field
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  of Waterloo, in looking over many relics of the combat preserved in the museum
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  there. He was particularly interested in the files of journals contemporary with the action.
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  These contain the Duke of Wellington's first dispatch announcing the victory, the reports
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  of the subordinate commanders, and the current gossip as to the episodes and hazards
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  of the day. The time will come when remarkable incidents of these our times
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  will be a staple of as great curiosity as the issue of Waterloo. It
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  is an incident without a precedent on this side of the globe, and never
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  to be repeated. Assassination has made its last effort to become indigenous here.
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  The public sentiment of loyalist and rebel has denounced it. The world has remarked
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  it with uplifted hands and words of execration. Therefore, as long as history
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  shall hold good, the murder of the President will be a theme for poesy,
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  romance and tragedy. We who live in this consecrated time keep the sacred
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  souvenirs of mister Lincoln's death in our possession, and the best of these are
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  the newsletters descriptive of his apotheosis and the fate of the conspirators who slew him.
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  I represented the World Newspaper at Washington during the whole of those exciting weeks,
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  and wrote their occurrences fresh from the mouths of the actors entered according to
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  Act of Congress in the year eighteen sixty five, by Dick and Fitzgerald in
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  the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District
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  of New York preferatory. It has seemed fitting to Messrs Dick and Fitzgerald to
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  reproduce the World Letters as a keepsake for the many who received them kindly.
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  The sketches appended were conscientiously written, and whatever embellishments they may seem to have
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  grew out of the stirring events, not out of my fancy. Subsequent investigation
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  has confirmed the veracity even of their speculations. I have arranged them, but
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  have not altered them. If they represent nothing else, they do carry with
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  them the fever and spirit of the time, but they do not assume to
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  be literal history. We live too close to the events related to decide positively
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  upon them as a brochure of the day. Nothing more. I give these
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  sketches of a correspondent to the public g a t end of introductory material.
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  Letter one the murder, Washington, April seventeen. Some very deliberate and extraordinary
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  movements were made by a handsome and extremely well dressed young man in the city
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  of Washington last Friday, at about half past eleven o'clock a m This person,
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  whose name is J. Wilkes Booth, by profecion an actor and recently
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  engaged in oil speculations, sauntered into Ford's Theater on Tenth between E and F
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  Streets and exchanged greetings with a man at the box office. In the conversation
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  which ensued, the ticket agent informed Booth that a box was taken from mister
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  Lincoln and General Grant, who were expected to visit the theater and contribute to
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  the benefit of Miss Laura Keene and satisfy the curiosity of a large audience.
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  Mister Booth went away with a jest and a lightly spoken good afternoon. Strolling
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  down to Pumphrey's stable on C Street in the rear of the National Hotel,
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  he engaged a saddle horse, a high, strong, fast beautiful bay Mare,
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  telling mister Pumphreys that he should call for her in the middle of the
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  afternoon. From here he went to the Kirkwood Hotel on the corner of Pennsylvania
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  Avenue in twelfth Street, where, calling for a card and a sheet of
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  note paper, he sat down and wrote upon the first as follows, for
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  mister Andrew Johnson, I don't wish to disturb you. Are you at home?
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  J? W. Booth. To this message, which was sent up
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  by the obliging clerk, mister Johnson responded that he was very busily engaged.
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  Mister Booth smiled, and, turning to his sheet of notepaper, wrote on
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  it the fact, if fact it is, that he had been disappointed in
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  not obtaining an examination of the Vice President's apartment and the knowledge of the Vice
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  President's probable whereabouts. The ensuing evening in no way affected his composure. The
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  note, the contents of which are unknown, was signed and sealed within a
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  few moments. Booth arose, bowed to an acquaintance and passed into the street.
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  His elegant person was seen on the avenue a few minutes, and was
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  withdrawn into the Metropolitan Hotel At four p m he again appeared at Pumphrey's livery
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  stable, mounted the Mayor he had engaged. Rode leisurely up F Street,
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  turned into an alley behind ninth and tenth Streets, and thence into an alley,
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  reloading to the rear of Ford's Theater, which fronts on Tenth Street between
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  E and F Streets. Here he alighted and deposited the Mayor in a small
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  stable off the alley, which she had hired some time before for the accommodation
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  of a saddle horse, which he had recently sold. Mister Booth soon afterward
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  retired from the stable, and is supposed to have refreshed himself at a neighboring
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  bar room. At eight o'clock the same evening, President Lincoln and Speaker Colfax
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  sat together in a private room at the White House, pleasantly conversing. General
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  Grant, with whom the President had engaged to attend Ford's Theater that evening,
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  had left with his wife or Burlington, New Jersey in the six o'clock train.
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  After this departure, mister Lincoln rather reluctantly determined to keep his part of
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  the engagement, rather than to disappoint his friends and the audience. Missus Lincoln,
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  entering the room and turning to mister Colfax said in a half laughing,
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  half serious way, Well, mister Lincoln, are you going to the theater
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  with me or not? I suppose I shall have to go, Colfax said.
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  The President and the Speaker took his leave, in company with Major Rathbone
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  of the Provos Marshal General's Office, who escorted Miss Harris, daughter of Senator
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  Harris of New York. Mister and Missus Lincoln reached for the theater twenty minutes
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  before nine o'clock. The house was filled in every part with a large and
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  brilliantly attired audience. As the presidential party ascended the stairs and passed behind the
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  dress circle to the entrance of the private box reserved for them, the whole
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  assembly, having in mind the recent Union victories, arose, cheered, waving
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  hats and handkerchiefs, and manifesting every other accustomed sign of enthusiasm. The President,
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  last to enter the box, turned before doing so and bowed a courteous
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  acknowledgment of his reception. At the moment of the President's arrival, mister Hawks,
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  one of the actors performing the well known part of Dundreary had exclaimed,
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  this reminds me of a story, As mister Lincoln says, the audience forced
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  him, after the interruption to tell the story over again. It evidently pleased
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  mister Lincoln, who turned laughingly to his wife and made a remark which was
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  not overheard. The box in which the President sat consisted of two boxes turned
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  into one, the middle partition being removed as on all occasions when a state
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  party visited the theater. The box was on a level with the dress circle,
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  about twelve feet above the stage. There were two entrances, the door
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  nearest to the wall having been closed and locked, the door nearest the balustrades
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  of the dress circle and at right angles with it being open and left open
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  on till the visitors had entered. The interior was carpeted, lined with crimson
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  paper, and first furnished with a sofa covered with crimson velvet, three arm
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  chairs similarly covered, and six cane bottom chairs. Festoons of flags hung before
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  the front of the box against a background of lace. President Lincoln took one
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  of the arm chairs and seated himself in the front of the box, in
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  the angle nearest the audience, where partially screened from observation, he had the
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  best view of what was transpiring on the stage. Missus Lincoln sat next to
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  him, and Miss Harris in the opposite angle nearest the stage. Major Rathbone
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  sat just behind Missus Lincoln and Miss Harris. These four were the only persons
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  in the box. The play proceeded. Although our American cousin without mister Southern,
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  has since that gentleman's departure from this country been justly esteemed a very dull
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  affair, the audience at Ford's, including Missus Lincoln, seemed to enjoy it
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  very much. The worthy wife of the President leaned forward with her hand upon
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  her husband's knee, watching every scene in the drama with amused attention, even
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  across the President's face. At intervals swept the smile, robbing it of its
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  habitual sadness. About the beginning of the second act, the mayor, standing
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  in the stable in the rear of the theater, was disturbed in the midst
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  of her meal by the entrance of the young man who had quitted her in
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  the afternoon. It is presumed that she was saddled and bridled with exquisite care,
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  having completed these preparations, mister Booth entered the theater by the stage door,
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  summoned one of the scene shifters. Mister John Spangler, emerged through the
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  same door with that individual, leaving the door open, and left the mare
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  in his hands to be held until he Booth should return. Booth, who
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  was even more fashionably and richly dressed than usual, walked thence around to the
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  front of the theater and went in, ascending to the dress circle. He
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  stood for a time, gazing around upon the audience and occasionally upon the stage,
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  in his usual graceful manner. He was subsequently observed by mister Ford,
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  the propriety of the theater, to be slowly elbowing his way through the crowd
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  that packed the rear of the dress circle, toward the right side, at
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  the extremity of which was the box where mister and Missus Lincoln and their companions
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  were seated. Mister Ford casually noticed this as a slightly extraordinary symptom of interest
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  on the part of an actor so familiar with the routine of the theater and
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  the play. The curtain had risen on the third act. Missus mount Kessington
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  and Asa Trenchard were exchanging vivacious stupidities when a young man so precisely resembling the
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  one described as J. Wilkes's booth that he is asserted to be the same,
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  appeared before the open door of the President's Box and prepared to enter.
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  The servant who attended mister Lincoln said politely, this is the President's box,
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  sir. No one is permitted to enter. I am a senator, responded
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  the person mister Lincoln has sent for me. The attendant gave way, and
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  the young man passed into the box. As he appeared at the door.
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  Taking a quick comprehensive glance at the interior, Major Rathbone arose, Are you
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  aware, sir? He said, courteously, upon whom you are intruding?
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  This is the President's box, and no one is admitted. The intruder answered
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  not a word, fastening his eyes upon mister Lincoln, who had half turned
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  his head to ascertain what caused the disturbance. He stepped quickly back without the
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  door. Without this door, there was an eye hole bored in it.
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  Presumably on the afternoon of the crime, while the theater was deserted by all
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  save a few mechanics, glancing through this orifice, John Milks booth A spied
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  in a moment the precise position of the President. He wore upon his wrinkling
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  face, the pleasant embryo of an honest smile, forgetting in the mimic scene,
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  the splendid successes of our arms for which he was responsible, and the
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  history he had filled so well. The cheerful interior was lost to J.
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  Wilkes Booth. He did not catch the spirit of the delighted audience, of
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  the flaming lamps, flinging illumination upon the domestic foreground and the gaily set stage.
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  He only cast one furtive glance upon the man he was to slay,
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  and, thrusting one hand in his bosom, another in his skirt pocket,
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  drew forth simultaneously his deadly weapons. His right palm grasped a derringer pistol,
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  his left a dirk. Then at astride, he passed the threshold again,
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  leveled his arm at the President, and bent the trigger. A keen,
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  quick report and a puff of white smoke, a close smell of powder,
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  and the rush of a dark, imperfectly outlined figure, and the President's head
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  dropped upon his shoulders. The ball was in his brain. The movements of
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  the assassin were from henceforth quick as the lightning. He dropped the pistol on
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  the floor, and, drawing a bowie knife, struck Major Rathbund, who
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  opposed him, ripping through his coat from the shoulder down and inflicting avere flesh
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  wound in his arm. He leaped then upon the velvet covered balustrade at the
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  front of the box between Missus Lincoln and miss Harris, and parting with both
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  hands the flags that drooped on either side, dropped to the stage beneath,
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  arising and turning full upon the audience. With the knife lifted in his right
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  hand above his head, he shouted, sick semper Tyrannis Virginia is avenged another
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  instant. He had fled across the stage and behind the scenes. Colonel J.
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  B. Stewart, the only person in the audience who seemed to comprehend
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  the deed he had committed, climbed from his seat near the orchestra to the
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  stage and followed close behind. The assassin was too fleet and too desperate.
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  The fury incarnate meeting mister Withers, the leader of the orchestra, just behind
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  the scenes, had stricken him aside with a blow that fortunately was not a
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  wound. Overturning Miss Jennie Gourlay, an actress who came next in his path,
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  he gained without further hindrance the back door previously leapt open at the rear
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  of the theater, rushed through it, leaped upon the horse held by mister
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  Spangler, and without doubtshafing that person a word of information, rode out through
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  the alley leading into f street, and thence rapidly away His horses hoofs might
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  almost have been heard amid the silence that for a few seconds dwelt in the
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  interior of the theater. Then missus Lincoln screamed, Miss Harris cried for water,
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  and the full, ghastly truth broke upon all. The President is murdered.
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  The scene that ensued was as tumultuous and terrible as one of Dante's pictures
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  of hell. Some women fainted, others uttered piercing shrieks and cries for vengeance,
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  and unmeaning shouts for help burst from the mouths of men. Miss Laura
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  Keene, the actress, proved herself in this awful time as equal to sustain
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  a part in real tragedy as to interpret that of the stage. Pausing one
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  moment before the footlights to entreat the audience to be calm, she and the
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  stairs in the rear of mister Lincoln's box entered it, took the dying President's
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  head in her lap, bathed it with the water she had brought, and
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  endeavored to force some of the liquid through the insensible lips. The locality of
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  the wound was at first supposed to be in the breast. It was not
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  until after the neck and shoulders had been bared and no mark discovered, that
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  the dress of Miss Keen, stained with blood, revealed where the ball had
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  penetrated. This moment gave the most impressive episode in the history of the continent.
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  The chief magistrate of thirty millions of people, beloved, honored, revered,
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  lay in the pent up closet of a playhouse, dabbling with his sacred
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  blood the robes of an actress. As soon as the confusion and crowd was
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  partially overcome, the form of the President was conveyed from the theater to the
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  residence of mister Peterson on the opposite side of Tenth Street. Here, upon
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  a bed in a little hastily prepared chamber. It was laid and attended by
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  Surgeon General Barnes and other physicians speedily summoned in the Meanwhile, the news spread
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  through the capital as if borne on tongues of flame. Senator Sumner, hearing
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  at his residence of the affair, took a carriage and drove it a gallop
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  to the White House when he heard where it had taken place, to find
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  Robert Lincoln and other members of the household, still unaware of it, both
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  drove to Ford's theater and were soon at the President's bedside. Secretary Stanton and
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  the other members of the cabinet were at hand. Almost as soon. A
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  vast crowd surging up PENNSYLVANIAVNA toward Willard's hotel cried, the President is shot.
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  President Lincoln is murdered. Another crowd, sweeping down the avenue, met the
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  first with the tidings. Secretary Seward has been assassinated in bed. Instantly,
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  a wild apprehension of an organized contiacy and of other murders took possession of the
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  people. The shout to arms was mingled with the expressions of sorrow and rage
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  that everywhere filled the air. Where is General Grant, or where is Secretary
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  Stanton? Where are the rest of the cabinet? Broke from thousands of lips?
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  A conflagration of fire is not half so terrible as was the conflagration of
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  passion that rode through the streets and houses of Washington on that awful night.
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  The attempt on the life of Secretary Seward was perhaps as daring, if not
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  so dramatic, as the assassination of the President. At nine twenty o'clock,
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  a man, tall, athletic and dressed in light colored clothes, alighted from
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  a horse in front of mister Seward's residence in Madison Place, where the Secretary
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  was lying, very feeble from his recent injuries. The house, a solid
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  three story brick building, was formerly the old Washington Club House. Leaving his
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  horse standing, the stranger rang at the door and informed the servant who admitted
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  him, that he desired to see mister Seward. The servant responded that mister
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  Seward was very ill, and that no visitors were admitted. But I am
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  a messenger from doctor Verdy, mister Seward's physician. I have a prescription which
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  I must deliver to him myself. The servant still demurring the stranger without further
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  Parley pushed him aside and ascended the stairs. Moving to the right, he
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  proceeded towards mister Seward's room and was about to enter it when mister Frederick Seward
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  appeared from an opposite doorway and demanded his business. He responded in the same
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  manner as to the servant below, but being met with a refusal, suddenly
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  closed the controversy by striking mister Seward a severe and perhaps mortal blow across the
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  forehead with the butt of a pistol. As the first victim fell, Major
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  Seward, another and younger son of the secretary emerged from his father's room.
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  Without a word. The man drew a knife and struck the Major several blows
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  with it, rushing into the chamber as he did so. Then, after
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  dealing the nurse a horrible wound across the bowels, he sprang to the bed
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  upon which the secretary lay, stabbing him once in the face and neck.
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  Mister Seward arose convulsively and fell from the bed to the floor, turning and
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  brandishing his knife anew. The assassin fled from the room, cleared the prostrate
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  form of Frederick Seward in the hall, descended the stairs in three leaps,
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  and was out of the door and upon his horse in an instant. It
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  is stated by a person who saw him mount that although he leaped upon his
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  horse with most unseemly haste, he trotted around the corner of the block with
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  circumspect deliberation, around both the house on Tenth Street and the residence of Secretary
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  Seward. As the fact of both tragedies became generally known, crowds soon gathered
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  so vast and tumultuous that military guards scarcely sufficed to keep them from the doors.
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  The room to which the President had been conveyed is on the first floor,
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  at the end of the hall. It is only fifteen feet square,
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  with a Brussels carpet papered with brown and hung with a lithograph of Rosa Barneur's
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  horse Fair, and engraved copy of Herring's village Blacksmith, and two smaller ones
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  of the stable and the barn yard from the same artist. A table and
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  bureau spread with crochet work. Eight chairs in the bed were all the furniture.
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  Upon this bed, a low walnut four poster lay the dying President.
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  The blood oozing from the frightful wound in his head and staining the pillow.
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  All that the medical skill of half a dozen accomplished surgeons could do had been
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  done to prolong a life, evidently ebbing from a mortal hurt. Secretary Stanton
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  just arrived from the bedside of mister Seward, asked Surgeon General Barnes, what
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  was mister Lincoln's condition. I fear, mister Stanton, that there is no
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  hope. Oh no, General, no no. And the man of all
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  others, apparently strange to tears, sank down aside the bed, the hot,
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  bitter evidences of an awful sorrow trickling through his fingers to the floor.
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  Senator Sumner sat on the opposite side of the bed, holding one of the
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  President's hands in his own, and sobbing with kindred grief. Secretary Wells stood
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  at the foot of the bed, his face hidden, his frame shaken with
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  emotion. General Halleck, Attorney General Speed, Postmaster General Denison M. B.
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  Field, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, Judge Otto, General Meggs,
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  and others visited the chamber at times, and then retired Missus Lincoln. But
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  there is no need to speak of her Missus. Senator Dixon soon arrived and
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  remained with her through the night. All through the night, while the horror
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  stricken crowds outside swept and gathered along the streets, while the military and police
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  were patrolling and weaving a cordon around the city, while men were arming and
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  asking each other what victim neck, while the telegraph was sending the news from
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  city to city over the continent, And while the two assassins were speeding unharmed
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  upon fleet horses far away. His chosen friends watched upon the death bed of
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  the highest of the nation. Occasionally Doctor Gurley, pastor of the church where
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  mister Lincoln habitually attended, knelt down in prayer. Occasionally Missus Lincoln and her
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  sons entered to find no hope and to go back to ceaseless weeping. Members
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  of the cabinet, senators, representatives, generals, and others took turns at
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  the bedside. Chief Justice Chase remained until a late hour and returned in the
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  morning. Secretary mc cullough remained a constant watcher until five a m. Not
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  a gleam of consciousness shone across the visage of the President up to his death.
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  A quiet, peaceful death at last, which came at twenty two minutes
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  past seven am. Around the bedside at this time were Secretary's Stanton Welles,
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  Usher, Attorney General Speed, Postmaster General Denison M. B. Field,
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  Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, Judge Otto, Assistant Secretary of the Interior,
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  General Halleck, General Miggs, Senator Sumner F. R. Andrews of New
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  York, General Todd of Dakota, John Hay, Private Secretary, Governor Oglesby
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  of Illinois, General Farnsworth, Missus and Miss Kenney, Miss Harris, Captain
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  Robert Lincoln, son of the President, and doctors E. W. Abbott,
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  R. K. Stone, C. D. Gatch, Neil Hall,
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  and Liberman Reverend doctor Gurley. After the event, knelt with all around
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  in prayer, and then entering the adjoining room where were gathered Missus Lincoln,
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  Captain Robert Lincoln, mister John Hay and others, prayed again. Soon after
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  nine o'clock, the remains were placed in a temporary coffin and conveyed to the
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  White House under a small escort. In Secretary Sewage Chamber, A similar,
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  although not so solemn, a scene prevailed between that chamber and the one occupied
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  by President Lincoln. Visitors alternated to and fro through the night. It had
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  been early ascertained that the wounds of the Secretary were not likely to prove mortal.
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  A wire instrument to relieve the pain which he suffered from the previous injuries,
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  prevented the knife of the assassin from striking too deep. Mister Frederick Sewage's
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  injuries were more serious. His forehead was broken in by the blow from the
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  pistol, and up to this hour he has remained perfectly unconscious. The operation
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  of tree panning the skull has been performed, but little hope is had of
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  his recovery. Major Seward will get well. Mister Hansell's condition is somewhat doubtful.
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  Secretary Seward, who cannot speak, was not informed of the assassination of
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  the President and the injury of his son until yesterday. He had been worrying
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  as to why mister Lincoln did not visit him. Why doesn't the President come
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  to see me? He asked with his pencil, where is Frederick? What
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  is the matter with him? Perceiving the nervous excitement which these doubts occasioned,
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  a consultation was had at which it was finally determined that it would be best
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  to let the Secretary know the worst. Secretary Stanton was chosen to tell him.
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  Sitting down beside mister Seward's bed yesterday afternoon. He therefore related to him
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  a full account of the whole affair. Mister Seward was so surprised and shocked
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  that he raised one hand involuntarily and groaned. Such is the condition of affairs
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  at this state of the terror. The pursuit of the assassins has commenced,
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  is full of wild and baseless rumors. Much that is said is stirring.
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  Little is reliable. I tell it to you as I get it. But
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  fancy is more prolific than truth. Be patient. Footnote. The facts above
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  had been collected by mister Jerome B. Stillion before my arrival in Washington.
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  The arrangement of them is my own end of Letter one, Letter two,
• 26:30
  The Obsequies in Washington, Washington, April nineteenth evening. The most significant and
• 26:37
  most creditable celebration ever held in Washington has just transpired. A good ruler has
• 26:44
  been followed from his home to the capital by a grand cortege worthy of the
• 26:48
  memory and of the nation's power. As description must do injustice to the extent
• 26:53
  of the display, so must criticism fail to sufficiently commend its perfect tastefulness.
• 27:00
  Rarely has a Republican assemblage been so orderly. The funeral of mister Lincoln is
• 27:04
  something to be remembered for a cycle. It caps all eulogy upon his life
• 27:10
  and services, and was, without exception, the most representative, spontaneous,
• 27:15
  and remarkable testimonial ever rendered to the remains of an American citizen. The night
• 27:22
  before the funeral showed the probable character of the cortege. At Willard's alone,
• 27:26
  four hundred applications by telegraph or beds were refused. As many as six thousand
• 27:33
  persons spent Tuesday night in the streets, in depots, and in outbuildings.
• 27:37
  The population of the city this morning was not far short of a hundred thousand,
• 27:42
  and of these as many as thirty thousand walked in possession with mister Lincoln's
• 27:48
  ashes. All orders of folks were at hand, the country adjacent set in
• 27:52
  hay wagons, donkey carts, dearborns. All who could slip away from the
• 27:57
  army came to town, and every attainable section of the Union forwarded mourners.
• 28:03
  At no time in his life had mister Lincoln so many to throng about him
• 28:07
  as in this hour, when he is powerless to do any one a service.
• 28:12
  For once in history office seekers were disinterested, and contractors and hangers on
• 28:18
  human These came for this time only to the capital of the Republic, without
• 28:25
  an axe to grind or curiosity to subserve. Respect and grief were all their
• 28:30
  motive. This day was shown that the great public heart beats unselfish and reverent,
• 28:37
  even after a dynasty of plunder and war. The arrangements for the funeral
• 28:42
  were made by mister Harrington, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, who was beset
• 28:48
  by applicants for tickets. The number of these were reduced to six hundred,
• 28:52
  the clergy getting sixty, and the press twenty. I was among the first
• 28:56
  to pass the White House guards and into the building. Its free stone columns
• 29:02
  were draped in black, and all the windows were funereal. The ancient reception
• 29:07
  room was half closed, and the famous East room, which is approached by
• 29:11
  a spacious hall, had been reserved for the obsequies. There are none present
• 29:17
  here but a few silent attendants of the late owner of the Republican Palace,
• 29:22
  deeply ensconced in the white satin stuffing of his coffin. The President lies like
• 29:26
  one asleep. The broad, high, beautiful room is like the varnished interior
• 29:32
  of a vault. The frescoed ceiling wears the national shield, some pointed vases
• 29:37
  filled with flowers and fruit, and three emblazonings of gilt pendant, from which
• 29:42
  are shrouded chandeliers. A purplish gray is the prevailing tint of the ceiling.
• 29:48
  The cornice is silver white, set off by a velvet crimson. The wall
• 29:53
  paper is gold and red, broken by eight lofty mirrors, which are chastely
• 29:59
  margin with black and faced with fleece. Their imperfect surfaces reflect the lofty catafalque,
• 30:06
  an open canopy of solemn alapaca, lined with tasteful satin of creamish lead,
• 30:11
  looped at the curving roof and dropping to the four corners in half transparent
• 30:17
  tapestry. Beneath the roof, the half light shines upon a stage of fresh
• 30:22
  and fragrant flowers, up bearing a long high coffin. White lace of pure
• 30:26
  silver pendent from the border throws a mild shimmer upon the solid silver tracery,
• 30:33
  hinges and emblazonings. A cross of lilies stands at the head, and anchor
• 30:37
  of roses at the foot. The lid is drawn back to show the face
• 30:41
  and bosom, and on the coffin top are heather, precious flowers, and
• 30:47
  sprigs of green. This catafalque, or, in plain words, this coffin,
• 30:51
  set upon a platform and canopede, has around it a sufficient space of
• 30:56
  Brussels carpet, And on three sides of this there are raised steps covered with
• 31:02
  black, on which the honored visitors are to stand. The fourth side is
• 31:07
  bare, save of a single row of chairs, some twenty in number,
• 31:11
  on which the reporters are to sit. The odor of the room is fresh
• 31:15
  and healthy. The shade is solemn without being oppressive. All is rich,
• 31:21
  simple and spacious, And in such sort as any king might wish to lie,
• 31:26
  approach and look at the dead man. Death has fastened into his frozen
• 31:33
  face all the character and idiosyncrasy of life. He has not changed one line
• 31:37
  of his grave, grotesque countenance, nor smoothed out a single feature. The
• 31:41
  hue is rather bloodless and leaden, but he was alway sallow. The dark
• 31:48
  eyebrows seem abruptly arched. The beard, which will grow no more, is
• 31:53
  shaved close save the tuft at the short, small chin. The mouth is
• 31:59
  shut, like that of one who has put the foot down firm, and
• 32:02
  so are the eyes, which look as calm as slumber. The collar is
• 32:07
  short and awkward. Turned over this stiff elastic cravat, and whatever energy or
• 32:14
  humor or tender gravity marked the living face is hardened into its pulseless outline.
• 32:21
  No corpse in the world is better prepared according to appearances. The white satin
• 32:25
  around it reflects sufficient light upon the face to show us that death is really
• 32:30
  there. But there are sweet roses and early magnolias, and the balmiest of
• 32:35
  lilies strewn about, as if the flowers had begun to bloom, even upon
• 32:38
  his coffin looking on uninterruptedly, for there is no pressure. And henceforth the
• 32:45
  place will be thronged with gazers who will take from the sight its suggestiveness and
• 32:51
  respect. Three years ago, when little Willie Lincoln died, doctors Brown and
• 32:55
  Alexander, the embalmers or injectors, prepared his body so handsomely that the President
• 33:01
  had it twice disinterred to look upon it. The same men, in the
• 33:06
  same way have made perpetual these beloved lineaments. There is now no blood in
• 33:12
  the body. It was drained by the jugular vein and sacredly preserved as through
• 33:17
  a cutting on the inside of the thigh. The empty blood vessels were charged
• 33:22
  with a chemical preparation, which soon hardened to the consistence of stone. The
• 33:28
  long and bony body is now hard and stiff, so that beyond its present
• 33:32
  position it cannot be moved any more than the arms or legs of a statue.
• 33:37
  It has undergone many changes. The scalp has been removed, the brain
• 33:42
  taken out, the chest opened, and the blood emptied. All that we
• 33:45
  see of Abraham Lincoln, so cunningly contemplated in this splendid coffin, is a
• 33:51
  mere shell, an effigy, a sculpture. He lies in sleep, But
• 33:55
  it is the sleep of marble. All that may his flesh, vital,
• 34:00
  sentient, and affectionate, is gone forever. The officers present are General's Hunter
• 34:07
  and Dire, and two staff captains. Hunter compact and dark and Reticent walks
• 34:13
  about the empty chamber in full uniform, his bright buttons and sash and sword,
• 34:17
  contrasting with his dark blue uniform gauntlets upon his hands, crape on his
• 34:22
  arm and blade, his corded hat in his hands, a paper collar just
• 34:28
  apparent above his velvet tips. And now and then he speaks to Captain Nesmith
• 34:32
  or Captain Dw's of General Harding's staff, rather as one who wishes company than
• 34:38
  one who has anything to say. His two silver stars upon his shoulders shine
• 34:45
  dimly in the draped apartment. He was one of the first in the war
• 34:50
  to urge the measures which mister Lincoln afterward adopted. The aides walked to and
• 34:54
  fro selected without reference to any association with the late president. Their clothes are
• 35:00
  rich, their swords wear mourning. They go in silence. Everything is funereal
• 35:07
  in the deeply draped mirrors. Strange mirages are seen, as in the coffin
• 35:12
  scene of Lucretia Borgia, where all the dusky perspectives bear vistas of gloomy palls.
• 35:20
  The upholsterers make timid noises of driving nails and spreading tapestry. But save
• 35:24
  ourselves and these few watchers and workers, only the dead is here. The
• 35:30
  White House, so ill appreciated in common times, has seemed to be capacious
• 35:36
  and elegant, no disgrace to the nation, even in the eyes of those
• 35:39
  foreign folk of rank who shall gather here. Directly. As we sit brooding,
• 35:46
  with the pall straight before us, the funeral guns are heard indistinctly booming
• 35:52
  from the far forts, and the tap of drums in the serried street without,
• 35:57
  where troops and citizens are forming for the ground procession. We see through
• 36:01
  the window in the beautiful spring day, that the grass is brightly green,
• 36:07
  and all the trees in blossom show us through their archways, the bronze and
• 36:10
  marble statues breaking the horizon. But there is one at an upper window,
• 36:16
  seeing all this through her tears, to whom the beautiful noon, with its
• 36:21
  wealth of zephyrs and sweets, can waft no gratulation. The father of her
• 36:27
  children, the confidante of her affection and ambition, has passed from life into
• 36:31
  immortality, and lies below, dumb, cold, murdered. The feeling of
• 36:39
  sympathy for Missus Lincoln is as widespread as the regret for the Chief Magistrate.
• 36:45
  Whatever indiscretions she may have committed in the abrupt transition from plainness to power are
• 36:51
  now forgiven, and forgotten. She and her sons are the property of the
• 36:55
  nation, associated with its truest glories and its worst breath. By and by
• 37:01
  the guests drop in hat in hand, wearing upon their sleeves waving crape,
• 37:07
  and some of them slip up to the coffin to carry away a last impression
• 37:12
  of the fading face. But the first accession of force is that of the
• 37:17
  clergy. Sixty in number. They are devout looking men, darkly attired,
• 37:22
  and have come from all the neighboring cities to represent every denomination. Five years
• 37:29
  ago these were wrangling over slavery as a theological question, and at the beginning
• 37:34
  of the war it was hard in many of their bodies to carry loyal resolutions.
• 37:38
  Today they are here such sincere mourners as Robert Pattison of the Methodist Church,
• 37:45
  who passed much of his life among slaves and masters. He and the
• 37:51
  rest have come to believe that the President was wise and right, and follow
• 37:55
  him to his grave as the apostles the turd on Calbury. All these retire
• 38:04
  to the south end of the room, facing the feet of the corps,
• 38:07
  and stand there silently to wait for the coming of others. Very soon this
• 38:12
  east room is filled with the representative intelligence of the entire nation. The governors
• 38:16
  of states stand on the dais, next to the head of the coffin,
• 38:21
  with the varied features of curtain Brow, Fenton, Stone, Ogglesby, and
• 38:27
  Ingraham. Behind them are the mayors and councilmen of many towns, paying their
• 38:31
  last respects to the representative of the source of all municipal freedom. To their
• 38:37
  left are the corporate officers of Washington, zealous to make this day's funeral honors
• 38:42
  atone for the shame of the assassination. With these are sprinkled many scarred and
• 38:47
  worthy soldiers who have borne the burden of the Grand War, and stand before
• 38:52
  this shape they loved in quiet civil reverence. Still further down the steps and
• 38:58
  closer to the catafalque, rest the familiar faces of many of our greatest generals.
• 39:02
  The manly features of Augur, whose blood I have seen trickling forth upon
• 39:07
  the field of battle. The open, almost beardless contour of Halleck, who
• 39:13
  has often talked of sieges and campaigns. With this homely gentleman who is going
• 39:16
  to the grave. There are more bright stars twinkling in contiguous shoulder bars,
• 39:22
  but Sitting in a chair upon the beflowered carpet is Ulysses Grant, who has
• 39:28
  lived a century in the last three weeks, and comes to day to add
• 39:30
  the luster of his iron face to this thrilling and saddened picture. He wears
• 39:37
  white gloves and sash, and is swarthy, nervous, and almost tearful.
• 39:42
  His feet crossed, his square receding head turning now here. Now there his
• 39:46
  treble constellation blazing upon the left shoulder only but hidden on the right. And
• 39:52
  I seem to read upon his compact features the indurate and obstinate will to fight
• 39:59
  on the line nine. He have selected the honor of the country through any
• 40:02
  peril, as if he had sworn it by the slain man's bier. His
• 40:07
  state fellow, patron and friend. Here also is General McCallum, who has
• 40:14
  seemed the rebellious South with military roads, to send victory along them and bring
• 40:19
  back the groaning and the scarred. These and the rest are grand historic figures,
• 40:24
  worthy of all artistic depiction. They have looked so often into the mortar's
• 40:29
  mouth that no bravo's blade can make them WinCE. Do you see the thin
• 40:34
  haired, conical head of the Viking Farragut close by General Grant, with many
• 40:38
  naval heroes close behind, storm beaten, and every inch Americans in thought and
• 40:44
  physiognomy? What think the foreign ambassadors of such men, in the light of
• 40:49
  their own overloaded bodies were meaningless? Orders, crosses and ribbons shine dimly in
• 40:54
  the funeral light. These legations number perhaps a hundred men of all civilized races.
• 41:00
  The Sardinian envoy jetty eyed, towering above the rest. But they are
• 41:07
  still and respectful, gathered thus by a slain ruler to see how worthy is
• 41:12
  the republic he has preserved. Whatever sympathy these have for our institutions, I
• 41:17
  think that in such audience they must have been impressed with the futility of any
• 41:22
  thought that either one citizen right or one territorial inch can ever be torn from
• 41:28
  the United States. Not to speak disparagingly of these noble guests, I was
• 41:34
  struck with the superior facial energy of our own public servants, who were generally
• 41:39
  larger and brighter faced, born of that aristocracy which took its patent from two
• 41:45
  Balcane and Abel the Goatherd, and graduated in Abraham Lincoln, the Haitian Minister,
• 41:52
  swarthy and fiery faced, is conspicuous among these, but nearer down and
• 41:58
  just opposite the catifort, so that it is perpendicular to the direction of vision
• 42:02
  stand the central powers of our government, its President and counselors. President Johnson
• 42:08
  is facing the middle of the coffin, upon the lowest step, his hands
• 42:13
  are crossed. Upon his breast is dark clothing just revealing his plated shirt,
• 42:17
  and upon his full plethoric shaven face, broad and severely compact. Two telling
• 42:23
  gray eyes rest under a thoughtful brow, whose turning hair is straight and smooth.
• 42:30
  Beside him are Vice President Hamlin, whom he succeeded, and ex Governor
• 42:36
  King, his most intimate friend, who lends to the ruling severity of the
• 42:40
  place. A half Falstaffian episode. The cabinet are behind, as if arranged
• 42:45
  for a daguerreotypist stanton short and quicksilvery in long go tee and glasses in stunted
• 42:52
  contrast the tall and snow tipped shape of mister Wells with the rest practical and
• 42:59
  attentive. And at their side is Secretary Chase, high, dignified and handsome,
• 43:04
  with folded arms, listening but undemonstrative, a half foot higher than any
• 43:09
  spectator, and dividing with Charles Sumner, who is near by the preference for
• 43:15
  manly beauty in age with mister Chase are other justices of the Supreme Court.
• 43:21
  And to their left, near the feet of the corpse are the reverend Senators,
• 43:24
  representing the oldest and the newest states, splendid faces, little worn with
• 43:30
  early and later toils, backed up by the high classical features of Colonel Forney
• 43:37
  their secretary. Beyond are the representatives and leading officials of the various departments,
• 43:43
  with a few odd folks like George Francis Train exquisite as ever, and for
• 43:49
  this time only, with nothing to say. Close by the corpse sit the
• 43:54
  relatives of the deceased, plain, honest, hardy people, typical as much
• 44:00
  much of the simplicity of our institutions as of mister Lincoln's self made eminence.
• 44:05
  No blood relatives of mister Lincoln were to be found. It is a singular
• 44:09
  evidence of the poverty of his origin, and therefore of his exceeding good report,
• 44:15
  that, accepting his immediate family, none answering to his name could be
• 44:20
  discovered. Missus Lincoln's relatives were present, however, in some force. Doctor
• 44:25
  Lyman Beecher Todd, General John B. S. Todd, C. M.
• 44:31
  Smith Esquire, and mister N. W. Edwards, the late President's
• 44:37
  brother in law. Plain self made people were here and were sincerely affected.
• 44:43
  Captain Robert Lincoln sat during the services with his face in his handkerchief, weeping
• 44:46
  quietly, and little tad his face red and heated, cried as if his
• 44:52
  heart would break. Missus Lincoln, weak worn and nervous, did not enter
• 44:59
  the East room north follow the remains. She was the Chief magistrates lady yesterday
• 45:05
  to day, a widow bearing only an immortal name. Among the neighbors of
• 45:10
  the late President who came from Afar to pay respect to his remains was one
• 45:15
  old gentleman who left Richmond on Sunday. I had been upon the boat with
• 45:20
  him and heard him in hot wrangle with some officers who advised the summary execution
• 45:23
  of all rebel leaders. This old man opposed. When the feeling against him
• 45:30
  became so intense that he was compelled to retire, he counseled mercy, good
• 45:35
  faith, and forgiveness. To day, the men who had called him a
• 45:38
  traitor saw him among the family, mourners bent with grief. All these are
• 45:45
  waiting in solemn lines, standing erect, with a space of several feet between
• 45:50
  them and the coffin. And there is no bustle, nor unseemly curiosity,
• 45:54
  not a whisper, not a footfall, only the collected nation looking with awed
• 46:00
  hearts upon eminent death. This scene is historic. I regret that I must
• 46:08
  tell you of it over a little wire, for it admits of all exemplification.
• 46:14
  In this high, spacious, elegant apartment, laughter and levy, social
• 46:17
  pleasantry and refined badinage had often held their session. Dancing and music had made
• 46:24
  those mirrors thrill, which now reflect appall, and which the most beautiful women
• 46:30
  of their day had mingled here with men of brilliant favor. Now only a
• 46:35
  very few brave enough to look upon death were wearing funeral weeds. The pleasant
• 46:42
  face of missus Kate Sprague looks out from these. But such scenes gain little
• 46:46
  additional power by beauty's presence. And this wonderful relief was carved at one blow
• 46:54
  by John Wilkes's booth. The religious services begin at noon. They were remarkable
• 47:01
  not only for their association with the national event, but for a tremendous political
• 47:07
  energy, which they had. While none of the prayers or speeches exhibited great
• 47:12
  literary carefulness or will obtain perpetuity on their own merits, they were full of
• 47:16
  feeling and expressed all the intense concern of the country. The procession surpassed in
• 47:24
  sentiment, populousness, and sincere good feeling anything of the kind we have had
• 47:29
  in America. It was several miles long, and in all its elements was
• 47:35
  full and tasteful. The scene on the avenue will be always remembered as the
• 47:38
  only occasion on which that great thoroughfare was a real adornment to the seat of
• 47:44
  government. In the tree tops, on the housetops, at all the windows,
• 47:49
  the silent and affected crowds clustered beneath half massed banners and waving crape to
• 47:54
  reverentially uncover as the dark vehicle, bearing its rich silver mounted often swept along.
• 48:01
  Mottoes of respect and homage were on many edifices, and singularly some of
• 48:07
  them were taken from the play of Richard the Third, which was the murderer's
• 48:12
  favorite part. The entire width of the avenue was swept from curb to curb
• 48:17
  by the deep lines. The chief excellence of this procession was its representative nature.
• 48:24
  All classes, localities, and trades were out as the troops, in
• 48:29
  broad, straight columns with reversed muskets, moved to solemn marches. All the
• 48:34
  guns on the fortifications on the surrounding hills discharged horse salutes, guns which the
• 48:39
  arbiter of war, whom they were to honor, could hear. No longer.
• 48:44
  Every business place was closed. Sabermen swept the street of footmen and horsemen.
• 48:50
  The carriages drove two abreast not less than five thousand officers of every rank
• 48:57
  marked abreast with the cortege. They were noble looking men, with intelligent faces,
• 49:01
  and represented the sinews of the land. And the music was not the
• 49:06
  least excellent feature of the mournful display. About thirty bands were in the line,
• 49:12
  and they played all varieties of solemn marches, so that there were continual
• 49:16
  and mingling strains of funeral music for more than three hours. Artillery consisting of
• 49:23
  heavy brass pieces, followed behind. In fact, all the citizen virtues and
• 49:30
  all the military enterprise of the country were evidenced, never again until Washington becomes,
• 49:36
  in fact, what it is in name the chief city of America.
• 49:39
  Shall we have a scene like this? Repeated, the grandest procession ever seen
• 49:44
  on this continent, spontaneously evoked to celebrate the foulest crime on record. If
• 49:51
  any feeling of gratulation could arise in so calamitous a time, it would be
• 49:55
  that so soon after this appalling calamity, the nation calmly and collectedly rallied about
• 50:00
  its succeeding rulers, and showed in the same moment its regret for the past
• 50:06
  and its resolution for the future. To me, the scene in the White
• 50:10
  House, the street, and the Capital today was the strongest evidence that war
• 50:15
  afforded of the stability of our institutions and the worthiness and the magnanimous power of
• 50:22
  our people. The cortege passed to the left side of the Capitol, and
• 50:27
  entering the Great Gates, passed the grand stairway opposite the splendid dome, where
• 50:31
  the coffin was disengaged and carried up the ascent. It was posted under the
• 50:37
  bright concave, now streaked with mournful trappings, and left in state, watched
• 50:42
  by guards of officers with drawn swords. This was a wonderful spectacle the man
• 50:47
  most beloved and honored in the ark of the Republic. The storied paintings representing
• 50:52
  errors in its history were draped in sable, through which they seemed to cast
• 50:58
  reverential glances upon the lament. The thrilling scenes depicted by trembule, the commemorative
• 51:05
  canvases of Leutza, the wilderness, vegetation of power, glared from their separate
• 51:09
  pedestals upon the central spot, where lay the fallen majesty of the country.
• 51:15
  Here the prayers and addresses of the noon were rehearsed, and the solemn burial
• 51:19
  service read. At night, the jets of gas concealed in the spring of
• 51:23
  the dome were lighted up, so that their bright reflection masses of burning light
• 51:29
  like marvelous halos upon the little box, where so much that we love and
• 51:32
  honor rested on its way to the grave. And so through the starry night,
• 51:38
  in the fame of the Great Union he had strengthened and recovered. The
• 51:44
  ashes of Abraham Lincoln, zealously guarded, are now reposing the sage the citizen,
• 51:52
  the patriot, the man has reached all the eminence that life can give.
• 51:55
  The worthy or the ambitious. The haunted fugureive who struck through our hearts
• 52:00
  to slay him, should stand beside his stately beer to see how powerless are
• 52:07
  bullets and blades to take the real life of any noble man. End of
• 52:14
  Letter two, Letter three. The Murderer, Washington, April twenty seventh,
• 52:22
  Part one. Justice is satisfied, though blinder vengeance may not be. While
• 52:29
  the illustrious murdered is on the way to the shrine, the stark corpse of
• 52:32
  his murderer lies in the shambles. The one died quietly like his life,
• 52:37
  the other died fighting like his crime. And now that over all of them,
• 52:42
  the darkness and the dew have descended, the populace, which may not
• 52:45
  be all satisfied, may perhaps be calmed. No triumphal mourning can add to
• 52:51
  the President's glory. No further execration can disturb the assassin's slumbers. They have
• 52:57
  gone for what they were, into history, into tradition, into the hereafter,
• 53:01
  both of men and spirits and what they were may be. In part
• 53:06
  concluded, mister Lincoln's career passes in extent gravity and eventful association the province of
• 53:14
  newspaper biography, but Booth is the hero of a single deed, and the
• 53:20
  delineation of him may begin and be exhausted in a single article. I have
• 53:24
  been at pains since the day of the President's obsequies to collect all valid information
• 53:30
  on the subject of his assassin, in anticipation of the latter's capture and death.
• 53:36
  Now that these have been consummated, I shall print the biography the elder
• 53:42
  Booth in every land was a sojourner, as all his fathers were of Hebrew
• 53:47
  descent, and by a line of actors, he united in himself that strong
• 53:52
  Jewish physiognomy, which, in its nobler phases makes all that is dark and
• 53:57
  beautiful, and the combined vagrancy of all men of genius and all men of
• 54:01
  the stage fitful, powerful, passionate. His life was a succession of vices
• 54:07
  and triumphs. He mastered the intricate characters of dramatic literature by intuition rather than
• 54:14
  by study, and produced them with a vigor and vividness which almost passed the
• 54:19
  depicting of real life. The stage on which he raved and fought became as
• 54:24
  historic as the actual decks of battleships, and his small and brawny figure comes
• 54:30
  down to us in those paroxysms of delirious art, like that of Harold or
• 54:36
  Richard or Prince Rupert. He drank to excess, was profligate but not generous,
• 54:42
  required but not reliable, and licentious to the bounds of cruelty. He
• 54:46
  threw off the wife of his bosom to fly from England with a flower girl,
• 54:52
  and settling in Baltimore, dwelt with his younger companion and brought up many
• 54:57
  children. While his first possessed went down to a drunken and broken hearted death,
• 55:02
  he himself, wandering westward, died on the way, errant and feverish
• 55:07
  even in the closing moments. His widow, too conscious of her predecessor's wrongs
• 55:13
  and often taunted with them, lived apart, frugal and discreet, and brought
• 55:17
  her six children up to honorable maturity. These were Junius Brutus, Edwin Forrest,
• 55:25
  though he drops the forest for professional considerations, John Wilkes, Joseph,
• 55:31
  and the girls. All of the boys are known to more or less of
• 55:37
  fame. None of them, in his art has reached the renown of the
• 55:39
  father, but one has sent his name as far as that of the great
• 55:43
  playwright to whom they were pupils. Wherever Shakespeare is quoted, John Wilkes Booth
• 55:49
  will be named, and infamously like that Hubert in King John, who would
• 55:54
  have murdered the gentle Prince Arthur. It may not be a digression here to
• 56:00
  ask what has become of the children of the weird genius I have sketched above.
• 56:04
  Missus Booth, against whom Calumny has had no word to say, now
• 56:08
  resides with her daughters in Nineteenth Street, New York. John s Clark dwells
• 56:15
  in princely style in Philadelphia, with the daughter whom he married. He is
• 56:19
  the business partner of Edwin Booth, and they are likely to become as powerful
• 56:23
  managers as they have been successful stars. Edwin Booth, who is said to
• 56:29
  have the most perfect physical head in America, and whom the ladies call the
• 56:32
  beau eyedeal of the melancholy Dane, dwells also on Nineteenth Street. He has
• 56:38
  acquired a fortune and is without doubt a frankly loyal gentleman. He could not
• 56:45
  well be otherwise from his membership in the Century Club, where literature and loyalty
• 56:50
  are never dissolved. Correct and pleasing without being powerful or brilliant. He has
• 56:55
  led a plain and appreciated career, and latterly to his own honor, has
• 57:00
  been awakening among dramatic authors some emulation by offering handsome compensations for original plays.
• 57:08
  Junius Brutus Booth, the oldest of them all, most resembles in feature his
• 57:14
  wild and wayward father. He is not as good an actor as was Wilkes,
• 57:19
  and kept in the West that border civilization of the drama. He now
• 57:23
  lies on a serious charge of complicity in Capitol Hill jail. Joseph Booth tried
• 57:30
  the stage as a utility actor and promptly failed. The best part he ever
• 57:36
  had to play was Orson in the Iron Chest, and his discomfiture was signal.
• 57:40
  Then he studied medicine, but grew discouraged, and is now in California
• 57:45
  in an office of some sort. A son of Booth by his first wife,
• 57:51
  became a first class lawyer in Boston. He never recognized the rest of
• 57:54
  the family. Wilkes Booth, the third son, was shot dead or on
• 58:00
  Wednesday for attempting to escape from the consequences of murder. Such are the people
• 58:05
  to whom one of the greatest actors of our time gave his name and lineaments,
• 58:09
  but I have anticipated the story. Although her family was large, it
• 58:15
  was not so hard sailing with missus Rosalie Booth, as may be inferred.
• 58:20
  Her husband's gains had been variably great, and they owned a farm of some
• 58:23
  value near Baltimore. The boys had plain but not sufficient schooling, though by
• 58:30
  the time John Wilkes grew up, Edwin and Junius were making some little money
• 58:34
  and helping the family. So Wilkes was sent to a better school than they,
• 58:38
  where he made some eventful acquaintances. One of these won his admiration as
• 58:45
  much in the playground as in subsequent life upon the field of battle. This
• 58:50
  was Fitzhugh Lee, son of the great rebel Chieftain. I have not heard
• 58:54
  that Lee ever had any friendship for young Wilkes, but his port and name
• 58:59
  were enough to excite a less ardent imagination. The son of a soldier already
• 59:04
  great and a descendant of Washington Wilkes. Booth had often spoken of the memory
• 59:08
  of the young man, envied his success, and perhaps boasted of more intimacy
• 59:14
  than he ever had. The exemplars of young Wilkes. It was soon seen
• 59:20
  were anything but literary. He hated school and pent up life, and loved
• 59:24
  the open air. He used to stroll off to fish, though that sort
• 59:30
  of amusement was too sedentary for his nature, but went on fowling jaunts with
• 59:35
  enthusiasm. In these latter he manifested that fine nerve and certain eye which was
• 59:39
  the talk of all his associates. But his greatest love was the stable.
• 59:45
  He learned to ride with his first pair of boots and hung around the grooms
• 59:49
  to beg permission to take the nags to water. He grew in later life
• 59:53
  to be both an indurated and graceful horseman. Towards his mother and sisters,
• 59:59
  he was affectioned without being obedient. Of all the sons, Wilkes was the
• 1:00:04
  most headstrong indoors and the most contented away from home. He had a fitful
• 1:00:08
  gentleness which won him forgiveness, and of one of his sisters he was particularly
• 1:00:14
  fond, but none had influence over him. He was seldom contentious, but
• 1:00:20
  obstinately bent, and what he willed he did in silence, seeming to discard
• 1:00:24
  sympathy or confidence. As a boy, he was never bright, except in
• 1:00:30
  a boy's sense that is, he could run and leap well, fight when
• 1:00:34
  challenged, and generally fell in with the sentiment of the crowd. He therefore
• 1:00:37
  made many companions, and in his early days all passed between Baltimore City and
• 1:00:44
  the adjacent farm. I have heard it said as the only evidence of Booth's
• 1:00:49
  ferocity in those early times, that he was always shooting cats and killed off
• 1:00:54
  almost the entire breed in his neighborhood. But on more than one occasion he
• 1:00:59
  ran away from both school and home, and once made the trip of the
• 1:01:04
  Chesapeake to the Oyster fisheries without advising any one of his family. While yet
• 1:01:09
  very young, Wilke's Booth became an habitue of the theater. His traditions and
• 1:01:15
  tastes were all in that direction. His blood was of the stage, like
• 1:01:20
  that of the Keynes, the Kembles, and the wallacks. He would not
• 1:01:23
  commence at the bottom of the ladder and climb from round to round, nor
• 1:01:28
  take part in more than a few thespian efforts. One night, however,
• 1:01:31
  a young actor who was to have a benefit and wished to fill the house,
• 1:01:36
  resolved, for the better purpose to give Wilkes a chance. He announced
• 1:01:39
  that a son of the Great Booth of tradition would enact the part of Richmond,
• 1:01:44
  and the announcement was enough before a crowded place. Booth played so badly
• 1:01:49
  that he was hissed. Still holding to his gossamer hopes in high conceit,
• 1:01:53
  Wilkes induced John S Clark, who was then addressing his sister, to obtain
• 1:01:59
  him a position in the company of the Arch Street Theater at Philadelphia for eight
• 1:02:05
  dollars a week. Wilkes Booth, at the age of twenty two, contracted
• 1:02:08
  with William Wheatley to play in any piece or part for which he might be
• 1:02:14
  cast, and to appear every day at rehearsal. He had to play the
• 1:02:17
  courier in Sheridan Knowles's Wife on his first night, with five or ten little
• 1:02:22
  speeches to make, but such was his nervousness that he blundered continually and quite
• 1:02:28
  balked the piece. Soon afterward, he undertook the part of one of the
• 1:02:32
  Venetian comrades in Hugo's Lucrecio Borgia, and was to have said in his turn,
• 1:02:38
  Madame I am Petruccio Pandolpho, instead of which he exclaimed Madame I am
• 1:02:45
  Pandolpho, Pet Pidolphio, Pet Pentuccio, Pet, damn it? What am
• 1:02:51
  I? The audience roared, and Booth, though full of chagrin, was
• 1:02:54
  compelled to laugh with them. The very next night, he was to play
• 1:02:59
  Dawson, an important part in Moore's tragedy The Gamester. He had bought a
• 1:03:04
  new dress to wear on that night and made abundant preparations to do himself honor.
• 1:03:08
  He therefore invited a lady whom he knew, to visit the theater and
• 1:03:13
  witness his triumph. But at the instance of his appearance on the stage,
• 1:03:17
  the audience, remembering Petruccio Pandolfo of the previous night, burst into laughter,
• 1:03:22
  hisses, and mock applause, so that he was struck dumb and stood rigid
• 1:03:28
  with nothing whatever to say. Mister John Dolman, to whose Stukeley has played,
• 1:03:32
  was compelled therefore to strike Dawson entirely out of the piece. These occurrences
• 1:03:39
  nettled Booth, who protested that he studied faithfully, but as want of confidence
• 1:03:45
  ruined him, mister Fredericks, the stage manager, made constant complaints of Booth,
• 1:03:50
  who, by the way, did not play under his full name,
• 1:03:52
  but as mister J. Wilkes, and he bore the general reputation of having
• 1:03:57
  no promise and being a careless fellow. He associated freely with such of the
• 1:04:01
  subordinate actors as he liked, but being through Clark then a rising favorite,
• 1:04:06
  of better connections might had he chosen, advanced himself socially, if not artistically.
• 1:04:14
  Clark was to have a benefit one evening and to enact, among other
• 1:04:16
  things, a mock Richard the third to which he allowed Wilkes Booth to play
• 1:04:20
  a real Richmond. On this occasion for the first time, Booth showed some
• 1:04:26
  energy and obtained some applause, but in general he was stumbling and worthless.
• 1:04:31
  I myself remember on three consecutive nights having him trip up and receive suppressed hisses.
• 1:04:38
  He lacked enterprise. Other young actors, instead of waiting to be given
• 1:04:42
  better parts, committed them to memory in the hope that their real interpreter might
• 1:04:46
  not come to hand. Among these I recalled John mc cullough, who afterwards
• 1:04:50
  became quite a celebrated actor. He was getting, if I correctly remember,
• 1:04:56
  only six dollars a week, while Booth obtained eight. At Wilkes Booth seemed
• 1:05:00
  too slow or indifferent to get on the weather side of such chances. He
• 1:05:04
  still held the part of third walking gentlemen, and the third is always the
• 1:05:09
  first to be walked off in case of strait, as was Wilkes Booth.
• 1:05:14
  He did not survive forty weeks engagement, nor make above three hundred dollars in
• 1:05:18
  all that time. The Kellers arrived, they cut down the company, and
• 1:05:24
  they dispensed with Wilkes Booth. He is remembered in Philadelphia by his failure,
• 1:05:29
  as in the world by his crime. About this time, a manager named
• 1:05:33
  Cuncle gave Booth a salary of twenty dollars a week to go to the Richmond
• 1:05:39
  Theater. There he played a high order of parts and played them better,
• 1:05:43
  winning applauses from the easy provincial cities and taking as everywhere the ladies by storm.
• 1:05:49
  I have never wondered why many actors were strongly predisposed towards the South.
• 1:05:55
  There their social status is nine times as big as with us. The hu
• 1:06:00
  hospitable, lounging, buzzing character of the Southerner is entirely consonant with the cosmopolitanism
• 1:06:05
  of the stage, and that easy hang up your hatitiveness, which is the
• 1:06:10
  rule and the demand in thespianship. We place actors outside of society and execute
• 1:06:16
  them because they are there. The South took them into affable fellowship and was
• 1:06:21
  not ruined by it, but beloved by the fraternity. Booth played two seasons
• 1:06:27
  in Richmond and left in some esteem. When the John Brown raid occurred,
• 1:06:32
  Booth left the Richmond theater for the scene of strife in a picked company with
• 1:06:36
  which he had affiliated for some time. From his connection with the militia.
• 1:06:42
  On this occasion, he was wont to trace his fealty to Virginia. He
• 1:06:45
  was a non commissioned officer and remained in charlest until after the execution, visiting
• 1:06:51
  the old pike man in jail, and his company was selected to form guard
• 1:06:56
  around the scaffold when John Brown went white haired to his lint. There may
• 1:07:00
  be in this a consolation for the canonizers of the first arm bearer between the
• 1:07:05
  sections, that one whose unit swelled the host to crush out that brave old
• 1:07:10
  life took from the scene inspiration enough to slay a merciful president. In his
• 1:07:15
  unsuspecting leisure, Booth never referred to John Brown's death in Bravado. Possibly at
• 1:07:23
  that Gallows began some such terrible purpose, as he afterward consummated. End of
• 1:07:30
  Letter three, Part one, Letter three The Murderer, Washington, April twenty
• 1:07:38
  seventh, Part two. It was close upon the beginning of the war when
• 1:07:43
  Booth resolved to transform himself from a stock actor to a star. As many
• 1:07:47
  will read this who do not understand such distinctions, let me preface it by
• 1:07:51
  explaining that a star is an actor who belongs to no one theater, but
• 1:07:57
  travels from each to all, playing a few weeks at a time, and
• 1:08:00
  sustained in his chief character by the regular or stock actors. A stock actor
• 1:08:06
  is a good actor and a poor fool. A star is an advertisement in
• 1:08:12
  tights who grows rich and corrupts the public taste. Booth was a star,
• 1:08:16
  and being so, had an agent. The agent is a trumpeter who goes
• 1:08:20
  on before writing the impartial notices which you see in the editorial columns of country
• 1:08:27
  papers, and counting noses at the theater doors. Booth's agent was one Matthew
• 1:08:31
  Canning, an exploded Philadelphia lawyer who took to managing by passing the bar and
• 1:08:39
  J. Wilkes no longer but our country's rising tragedian. J. Wilkes Booth
• 1:08:43
  opened in Montgomery, Alabama, in his father's consecrated part of Richard the Third.
• 1:08:48
  It was very different work, between receiving eight dollars a week and getting
• 1:08:53
  half the gross proceeds of every performance. Booth kept northward when his engagement was
• 1:08:59
  done, playing in many cities such parts as Romeo, the Corsican Brothers,
• 1:09:03
  and Raphael in the Marble Heart. In all of these he gained applause,
• 1:09:08
  and his journey eastward, ending in Eastern cities like Providence, Portland and Boston,
• 1:09:14
  was a long success, in part deserved. In Boston he received a
• 1:09:18
  special commendation for his enactment of Richard. I have looked over this play,
• 1:09:24
  his best and favorite one, to see how closely the career of the crooked
• 1:09:29
  back he so often delineated, resembled his own. How like that fearful night
• 1:09:33
  of Richard on Bosworth Field must have been Booth's sleep in the barn at Port
• 1:09:39
  Royal, tortured by ghosts of victims, all repeating. When I was mortal,
• 1:09:45
  my anointed body by thee was punched full of deadly holes. Think on
• 1:09:50
  the tower and me to spare and die, or this from some of Booth's
• 1:09:57
  female victims. Let me see heavy on thy soul to morrow. I that
• 1:10:02
  was wash'd to death with fulsome wine, Poor Clarence, by thy guile,
• 1:10:08
  betray'd to death to morrow in the battle, think on me, despair and
• 1:10:13
  die. These terrible conjurations must have recalled how aptly the scene has often rehearsed
• 1:10:19
  by Booth the sword in hand, where, leaping from his bed, he
• 1:10:24
  cries in horror, give me another horse, bind up my wounds, have
• 1:10:29
  mercy, YESU soft I did, but dream o coward conscience, How thou
• 1:10:35
  dost afflict me? The lights burn blue? It is now dead midnight,
• 1:10:41
  cold flareful drops stand on my trembling flesh. What do I fear myself?
• 1:10:48
  There is none else by? Is there a murderer here? No? Yes,
• 1:10:56
  I am, then fly? What from my self? My conscience half
• 1:11:01
  a thousand. Several tongues, and every tongue bears in a several tale,
• 1:11:06
  and every tale condemns me for a villain, perjury, perjury, and the
• 1:11:14
  highest degree murder, stern murder in the direst degree. All several sins,
• 1:11:21
  all used in each degree throng to the bar, crying all guilty, guilty.
• 1:11:32
  By these starring engagements, Booth made incredible sums. His cash book for
• 1:11:36
  one single season showed earnings deposited in bank of twenty two odd thousand dollars in
• 1:11:43
  New York. He did not get a hearing except at a benefit or two
• 1:11:46
  where he played parts not of his selection. In Philadelphia. His earlier failure
• 1:11:51
  predisposed the people to discard him, and they did. But he had made
• 1:11:56
  enough and resolved to invest his winnings. The oil fever had just begun.
• 1:12:01
  He hired an agent, sent him to the western districts, and gave him
• 1:12:05
  discretionary power. His investments all turned out profitable. Booth died, as far
• 1:12:13
  as understood, without debts. The day before the murder, he paid an
• 1:12:17
  old friend a hundred dollars, which he had borrowed two days previously. He
• 1:12:21
  banked at J. Cook's in Washington generally, but turned most of his funds
• 1:12:26
  into stock and other matters. He gave eighty dollars eight months ago for a
• 1:12:30
  part investing with others in a piece of western oil land. The certificate for
• 1:12:35
  this land he gave to his sister just before he died. His agent informed
• 1:12:40
  him that the share was worth fifteen thousand dollars. Booth kept his accounts latterly
• 1:12:45
  with great regularity, and was lavish as ever, but took note of all
• 1:12:50
  expenditures, however irregular. He was one of those men whom the possession of
• 1:12:55
  money seems to have energized his life so purposeless long before grew by good fortune
• 1:13:01
  to a strict computation with the world. Yet what availed so sudden reformation,
• 1:13:06
  and of what use was the gaining of wealth to throw one's life so soon
• 1:13:11
  away and leap from competence to hunted infamy. The beauty of this man,
• 1:13:16
  and his easy confidentiality, not familiar, but marked by a mild and even
• 1:13:21
  dignity, made many women impassioned of him. He was licentious as men,
• 1:13:28
  and particularly as actors go, but not a seducer, so far as I
• 1:13:32
  can learn. I have traced one case in Philadelphia where a young girl who
• 1:13:36
  had seen him on the stage became enamored of him. She sent him bouquets,
• 1:13:42
  notes, photographs, and all the accessories of an intrigue. Both to
• 1:13:46
  whom such things were common yielded to the girl's importunities at last, and gave
• 1:13:50
  her an interview. He was surprised to find that so bold a correspondent,
• 1:13:56
  was so young, so fresh, and so beautiful. He told her,
• 1:14:00
  therefore, in pity the consequences of pursuing him, that he entertained no affection
• 1:14:05
  for her, though a sufficient desire, and that he was a man of
• 1:14:10
  the world to whom all women grew fulsome in their turn. Go home,
• 1:14:14
  he said, and beware of actors. They are to be seen, not
• 1:14:18
  to be known. The girl, yet more infatuated, persisted. Booth,
• 1:14:24
  who had no real virtue except by scintillations, became what he had promised,
• 1:14:29
  and one more soul went to the isles of Cyprus. In Montgomery, if
• 1:14:34
  I do not mistake, Booth met the woman from whom he received a stab,
• 1:14:39
  which he carried all the rest of his days. She was an actress,
• 1:14:43
  and he visited her. They assumed a relation creditable only in La Boueim,
• 1:14:48
  and were as tender as love without esteem can ever be. But after
• 1:14:54
  a time Booth wearied of her and offered to say good bye. She refused.
• 1:14:58
  He treated her coldly, she pleaded. He passed her by. Then,
• 1:15:02
  with a jealous woman's frenzy, she drew a knife upon him and stabbed
• 1:15:05
  him in the neck, with the intent to kill him. Being muscular,
• 1:15:10
  he quickly disarmed her, though he afterwards suffered from the wound. Poignantly,
• 1:15:15
  does it not bring a blush to our faces that a good great man like
• 1:15:20
  he who has died our President, should have met his fate from one so
• 1:15:25
  inured to a life of ribaldry. Yet only such a one could have been
• 1:15:30
  found to murder Abraham Lincoln. The women persecuted both more than he followed them.
• 1:15:36
  He was waylaid by married women in every provincial town or city where he
• 1:15:41
  played. His face was so youthful, yet so manly, and his movements
• 1:15:45
  so graceful and excellent, that other than the coarse an errant placed themselves in
• 1:15:49
  his way. After his celebrated Boston engagement, women of all ages and degrees
• 1:15:56
  pressed in crowds before the Tremont House to see him depart. Their motives were
• 1:16:00
  various, but whether curiosity or worse, exhibiting plainly the deep influence which Booth
• 1:16:06
  had upon the sex, he could be anywhere easy and gentlemanly. And it
• 1:16:12
  is a matter of wonder that with the entry which he had to many well
• 1:16:15
  stopped homes. He did not make hospitality, mourn and friendship find in his
• 1:16:20
  visit shame and ruin. I have not space to go into the milliant catalog
• 1:16:26
  of boost intrigues, even if this journal permitted further elucidation of so banned a
• 1:16:30
  subject. Most of his adherents of this class were like Heine's Polish virgins,
• 1:16:36
  and he was very popular with those dramatic ladies few I hope and know in
• 1:16:42
  their profession to whom divorce courts are superfluous. His last permanent acquaintance was one
• 1:16:48
  Ella Turner of Richmond, who loved him with all the impetuosity of that love
• 1:16:54
  which does not think, and strove to die at the tidings of his crime
• 1:16:59
  and fight, happy that even such a woman did not die associated with John
• 1:17:03
  Wilkes Booth. Such devotion to any other murderer would have earned some poets tier.
• 1:17:11
  But the daisies will not grow a whole rod from his grave. Of
• 1:17:15
  what avail? May we ask on the impossible supposition that Booth's crime could have
• 1:17:19
  been considered heroic. Was it that such a record could have dared to die
• 1:17:24
  for fame? Victory? Would not have been ashamed of its champion, as
• 1:17:29
  England of Nelson and France of Mirabeau. I may add to this record that
• 1:17:32
  he had not been in Philadelphia a year on first setting out in life,
• 1:17:38
  before getting into a transaction of the kind specified for an affair at his boarding
• 1:17:43
  house. He was compelled to pay a considerable sum of money, and it
• 1:17:45
  happily occurred just as he was to quit the city. He had many quarrels
• 1:17:50
  and narrow escapes through his license. A husband in Syracuse, New York,
• 1:17:56
  once followed him all the way to Cleveland to avenge a domestic insult. Booth's
• 1:18:00
  paper, to whom it may concern, was not his only attempt at influential
• 1:18:05
  composition. He sometimes persuaded himself that he had literary ability, but his orthography
• 1:18:12
  and pronunciation were worse than his syntax. The paper deposited with J. S.
• 1:18:16
  Clark was useful as showing his power to entertain a deliberate purpose. It
• 1:18:20
  has one or two smart passages in it, as this our once bright red
• 1:18:27
  stripes look like bloody gashes on the face of heaven. In the passages following,
• 1:18:31
  there is common sense and lunacy. I know how foolish, I shall
• 1:18:38
  be deemed for undertaking such a step as this, Where on the one side,
• 1:18:42
  I have many friends and everything to make me happy, where my profession
• 1:18:45
  alone has gained me an income of more than twenty thousand dollars a year,
• 1:18:49
  and where my great personal ambition in my profession has such a great field for
• 1:18:55
  labor. On the other hand, the South have never bestowed upon me one
• 1:19:00
  kind word. A place now where I have no friends except beneath the sod,
• 1:19:04
  a place where I must either become a private soldier or a beggar,
• 1:19:10
  to give up all of the former for the latter. Besides my mother and
• 1:19:14
  sisters, whom I love so dearly, although they so widely differ with me
• 1:19:17
  in opinion, seems insane. But God is my judge. Now read the
• 1:19:25
  beginning of the manifesto, and see how prophetic were his words of his coming
• 1:19:29
  infamy. If he expected so much for capturing the president merely, what of
• 1:19:32
  our execration at slaying him right or wrong? God judge me, not man,
• 1:19:40
  For be my motive good or bad of one thing, I am sure
• 1:19:43
  the lasting condemnation of the North. I love peace more than life, have
• 1:19:48
  loved the Union beyond expression. For four years I have waited, hoped,
• 1:19:54
  and prayed for the dark clouds to break, and for a restoration of our
• 1:19:58
  former sunshine. To wait longer would be a crime. All hope for peace
• 1:20:03
  is dead. My prayers have prov'd as idle as my hopes God's will be
• 1:20:10
  done. I go to sea and share the bitter end. To wait longer
• 1:20:16
  would be a crime. Oh what was the crime not to wait? Had
• 1:20:21
  he only shared the bitter end, then in the common trench his memory might
• 1:20:26
  have been hidden. The end had come when he appeared to make a benignant
• 1:20:30
  victory, a quenchuless revenge. One more selection from his apostrophe will do it
• 1:20:35
  suggests the manner of his death. They say that the South has found that
• 1:20:42
  last ditch which the North hath so long derided. Should I reach her in
• 1:20:46
  safety and find it true, I will proudly beg permission to triumph or die
• 1:20:51
  in that same ditch by her side. The swamp near which he died may
• 1:20:58
  be call'd without unseen pon a truth not of Beaumont, the last ditch of
• 1:21:03
  the rebellion. None of the printed pictures that I have seen due justice to
• 1:21:10
  booth. Some of the carts to visitat get him very nearly. He had
• 1:21:14
  one of the finest vital heads I have ever seen. In fact, he
• 1:21:16
  was one of the best exponents of vital beauty I have ever met. By
• 1:21:21
  this I refer to physical beauty in the medician sense, health, shapeliness,
• 1:21:28
  power in beautiful poise, and seemingly more power in repose than in energy.
• 1:21:32
  His hands and feet were sizable, not small, and his legs were stout
• 1:21:38
  and muscular, but inclined a bow like his father's. From the waist up
• 1:21:42
  he was a perfect man, his chest being full and broad, his shoulders
• 1:21:45
  gently sloping, and his arms as white as alabaster but hard as marble.
• 1:21:51
  Over these, upon a neck which was its proper column, rose the cornice
• 1:21:57
  of a fine Doric face, spare at the jaws and not anywhere over ripe,
• 1:22:01
  but seemed with a nose of Roman model, the only relic of his
• 1:22:05
  half Jewish parentage, which gave decision to the thoughtfully stern sweep of two direct
• 1:22:12
  dark eyes, meaning to woman's snare and to man a search warrant, while
• 1:22:18
  the lofty, square forehead and square brows were crowned with a weight of curling
• 1:22:23
  jetty hair like a rich Corinthian capital. His profile was eagleish and afar.
• 1:22:30
  His countenance was haughty. He seemed throat, full of introspections, ambitious self
• 1:22:34
  examinings, eye strides into the future, as if it withheld him something to
• 1:22:41
  which he had a right. I have since wondered whether this moody demeanor did
• 1:22:45
  not come of a guilty spirit. But all the booths looked so. Wilkes
• 1:22:51
  spoke to me in Washington for the first time, three weeks before the murder.
• 1:22:56
  His address was winning as a girl's rising. In effect, not from
• 1:22:59
  what he said, but from how he said it. It was magnetic,
• 1:23:02
  and I can describe it therefore by its effects alone, I seemed when he
• 1:23:08
  had spoken to lean toward this man. His attitude spoke to me with as
• 1:23:13
  easy familiarity as I ever observed. As he drew near and conversed. The
• 1:23:18
  talk was on so trite things that it did not lie a second in the
• 1:23:23
  head. But when I left him, it was with the feeling that a
• 1:23:26
  most agreeable fellow had passed By the next time the name of Wilkes Booth recurred
• 1:23:31
  to me was like the pistol shot he had fired the right hand, I
• 1:23:35
  had shaken, murdered the father of our country. Booth was not graceful with
• 1:23:41
  his feet, although his ordinary walk was pleasant enough. But his arms were
• 1:23:45
  put to artistic uses, not the baser ones like boxing, but all sorts
• 1:23:49
  of fencing, manual practice, and the handling of weapons. In his dress,
• 1:23:55
  he was neat without being particular. Almost any clothes could fit him,
• 1:24:00
  but he had nothing of the exquisite about him. His neckties and all such
• 1:24:03
  matters were good without being gaudy. Nature had done much for him in this
• 1:24:09
  beautiful palace, and outlaw had builded his fire, and slept and plotted and
• 1:24:13
  dreamed. I have heard it said that Booth frequently cut his adversaries upon the
• 1:24:18
  stage in sheer wantonness or bloodthirstiness. This is a mistake, and is attributable
• 1:24:25
  to his father, the elder Booth, who had the madness of confounding himself
• 1:24:29
  with the character Wilkes. Was too good offenser to make ugly gashes. His
• 1:24:33
  pride was his skill, not his awkwardness. Once he was playing with John
• 1:24:39
  mc cullough in the last act of Richard, they were fighting desperately. Suddenly
• 1:24:44
  the cross piece on the hilt of mc cullough's sword flew off and cut the
• 1:24:46
  owner deeply in the forehead. Blood ran down mc cullough's face. Though they
• 1:24:50
  continued to struggle, and while ostensibly Booth was imitating a demon, he said
• 1:24:56
  in a half whisper, good God, John, did I hurt you?
• 1:25:00
  And when they went off the stage, Booth was white with fear that he
• 1:25:02
  had gashed his friend. As an actor, Booth was too energetic to be
• 1:25:09
  correct. His conception of Richard was vivid and original, one of the best
• 1:25:13
  that we have had, and he came nearer his father's rendering of the Last
• 1:25:16
  Act than anybody we have seen. His combat scene was terrific. The statement
• 1:25:21
  that his voice had failed has no valid foundation. It was as good when
• 1:25:26
  he challenged the cavalrymen to combat, as in the best of his Thespian successes.
• 1:25:31
  In all acting that required delicate characterization, refined conception, or carefulness,
• 1:25:38
  Booth was at sea, but in strong physical parts, requiring fair reading and
• 1:25:43
  an abundance of spring and tension. He was much finer than hearsay would have
• 1:25:46
  us believe. His Romeo was described a short time ago by the Washington Intelligencer
• 1:25:54
  as the most satisfactory of all renderings of that fine character. He played The
• 1:26:00
  Corsican Brothers three weeks on a run in Boston. He played Pescara at Ford's
• 1:26:04
  Theatre, his last mock part in this world on tomorrow Saturday night, six
• 1:26:11
  weeks ago. He was fond of learning and recited fugitive poems. His favorite
• 1:26:16
  piece was the Beautiful Snow, comparing it to a lost purity. He has
• 1:26:21
  been known by gentlemen in this city to recite this poem with fine effect and
• 1:26:26
  cry all the while. This was on the principle of guilty people sitting at
• 1:26:31
  a play. His pocket book was generally full of little selections picked up at
• 1:26:35
  random, and he had considerable delicacy of appreciation. On the morning of the
• 1:26:43
  murder Booth, breakfasted with Miss Carrie Bean, the daughter of a merchant and
• 1:26:47
  a very respectable young lady, at the National Hall. He arose from the
• 1:26:51
  table at say eleven o'clock during the breakfast. Those who watched him say that
• 1:26:57
  he was lively piquant and self possessed as ever in his life. That night,
• 1:27:02
  the horrible crime thrilled the land. A period of crippled flight succeeded living
• 1:27:10
  in swamps, upon trembling hospitality, upon hopes which sank as he leaned upon
• 1:27:14
  them. Booth passed the nights in perilous rout or broken sleep, and in
• 1:27:19
  the end went down like a bravo, but in the eyes of all who
• 1:27:23
  read his history, commanding no respect for his valor charity, for his motive,
• 1:27:30
  or sympathy for his sin. The closing scenes of these terrible days are
• 1:27:35
  reserved for a second paper. Much matter that should have gone into this is
• 1:27:40
  retained for the present end of letter three, Letter four. The Assassin's Death,
• 1:27:49
  Washington, April twenty eighth, eight p m. Part one. A
• 1:27:56
  hard and grizzly face overlooks me as I write. Its inconsiderable forehead is crowned
• 1:28:01
  with turning sandy hair, and the deep concave of its long, insatiate jaws
• 1:28:06
  is almost hidden by a dense red beard, which cannot still abate the terrible
• 1:28:11
  decision of the large mouth, so well sustained by searching eyes of spotted gray,
• 1:28:16
  which roll and rivet one. This is the face of Lafayette Baker,
• 1:28:21
  Colonel and chief of the Secret Service. He has played the most perilous parts
• 1:28:27
  of the war, and is the capturer of the late President's murderer. The
• 1:28:32
  story that I am to tell you, as he and his trusty dependence told
• 1:28:35
  it to me, will be aptly commenced here where the net was woven which
• 1:28:41
  took the dying life of Wilkes Booth. When the murder occurred, Colonel Baker
• 1:28:45
  was absent from Washington. He returned on the third morning, and was at
• 1:28:49
  once besought by Secretary Stanton to join the hue and cry against the escaped Booth.
• 1:28:56
  The sagacious detective found that nearly ten thousand cavalry and one fourth as many
• 1:29:00
  policemen had been meantime scouring without plan or compass, the whole territory of southern
• 1:29:06
  Maryland. They were treading on each other's heels and mixing up the things so
• 1:29:11
  confoundedly that the best place for the culprits to have gone would have been in
• 1:29:15
  the very midst of their pursuers. Baker at once possessed himself of the little
• 1:29:19
  the War Department had learned, and started immediately to take the usual detective measures,
• 1:29:25
  till then neglected of offering a reward and getting out photographs of the suspected
• 1:29:30
  ones. He then dispatched a few chosen detectives to certain vital points and awaited
• 1:29:35
  result. The first of these was the capture of Atzerot. Others, like
• 1:29:40
  the taking of doctor Mudd, simultaneously occurred, but the district suspected. Being
• 1:29:45
  remote from the railway routes and broken by no telegraph station, the Colonel,
• 1:29:50
  to place himself nearer the theater of events, ordered an operator with the necessary
• 1:29:56
  instrument to tap the wire running to point lookout Chapel's Point and send him prompt
• 1:30:01
  messages. The same steamer which took down the operator and two detectives, brought
• 1:30:06
  back one of the same detectives and a negro. This negro, taken to
• 1:30:11
  Colonel Baker's office, stated so positively that he had seen Booth and another man
• 1:30:15
  cross the Potomac in a fishing boat while he was looking down upon them from
• 1:30:19
  a bank, that the Colonel was at first skeptical, But when examined,
• 1:30:24
  the negro answered so readily and intelligently, recognizing the men from the photographs,
• 1:30:29
  that Baker knew at last that he had the true scent straightway. He sent
• 1:30:32
  to General Hancock for twenty five men, and while the order was going drew
• 1:30:36
  down his coast survey maps. With that quick detective intuition amounting almost to inspiration,
• 1:30:43
  he cast upon the probable route and destination of the refugees, as well
• 1:30:47
  as the point where he would soonest strike them. Booth he knew would not
• 1:30:53
  keep along the coast with frequent deep rivers to cross, nor indeed in any
• 1:30:57
  direction east of Richmond, where he was liable at any time to cross our
• 1:31:00
  lines of occupation. Nor being lame, could he ride on horseback so as
• 1:31:05
  to place himself very far westward of this point of debarkation in Virginia. But
• 1:31:11
  he would travel in a direct course from Bluff Point where he crossed to eastern
• 1:31:15
  Tennessee, and this would take him through Port Royal on the Rappahannock River in
• 1:31:19
  time to be intercepted there by the outgoing cavalrymen. When before twenty five men
• 1:31:26
  under one Lieutenant Doherty arrived at his office door, Baker placed the whole under
• 1:31:32
  control of his former lieutenant, Colonel E. J. Conger, and of
• 1:31:36
  his cousin, Lieutenant L. B. Baker, the first of Ohio,
• 1:31:41
  the last of New York, and bade them go with all dispatch to bell
• 1:31:45
  Plaine on the lower Potomac there to disembark and scour the country faithfully around Port
• 1:31:49
  Royal, but not to return unless they captured their men. Conger is a
• 1:31:57
  short, decided, indominable, courageous fellow, provincial in his manners, but
• 1:32:01
  fully understanding his business, and collected as a housewife on Sunday. Young Baker
• 1:32:08
  is large and fine looking, a soldier but no policeman, and he deferred
• 1:32:12
  to Conger very properly during most of the events Succeeding quitting Washington at two o'clock
• 1:32:18
  PM on Monday, the detectives and cavalrymen disembarked at bell Plain, on the
• 1:32:24
  border of Stafford County at ten o'clock in the darkness. Bell Plain is simply
• 1:32:29
  the nearest landing to Fredericksburg, seventy miles from Washington City and located upon Potomac
• 1:32:34
  Creek. It is a wharf and warehouse merely, and here the steamer John
• 1:32:41
  s Ide stopped and made fast while the party galloped off in the darkness.
• 1:32:45
  Conger and Baker kept ahead, riding up to farmhouses and questioning the inmates,
• 1:32:50
  pretending to be in search of the Maryland gentlemen belonging to the party, but
• 1:32:56
  nobody had seen the parties described, and after a futile run on the Fredericksburg
• 1:33:00
  Road, they turned shortly to the east and kept up their baffled inquiries all
• 1:33:04
  the way to Port Conway on the Rappahannock. On Tuesday morning, they presented
• 1:33:11
  themselves at the Port Royal Ferry and inquired of the ferryman, while he was
• 1:33:15
  taking them over in squads of seven at a time, if he had seen
• 1:33:19
  any two such men. Continuing their inquiries at Port Royal, they found one
• 1:33:25
  Rollins, a fisherman, who referred them to a Negro named Lucas as having
• 1:33:30
  driven two men a short distance toward Bowling Green in a wagon. It was
• 1:33:33
  found that these men answered to the description Booth having a crutch, as previously
• 1:33:39
  ascertained. The day before, Booth and Herold had applied at Port Conway for
• 1:33:45
  the general ferryboat, but the ferryman was then fishing and would not desist for
• 1:33:49
  the inconsiderable fare of only two persons. But to their supposed good fortune,
• 1:33:55
  a lot of Confederate cavalrymen just then came along, who threatened the ferryman with
• 1:34:00
  a shot in the head if he did not instantly bring across his craft and
• 1:34:03
  transport the entire party. These cavalrymen were of Moseby's disbanded command, returning from
• 1:34:11
  Fairfax Court House to their homes in Caroline County. Their captain was on his
• 1:34:15
  way to visit a sweetheart at Bowling Green, and he had so far taken
• 1:34:19
  Booth under his patronage that when the latter was haggling with Lucas for a team,
• 1:34:25
  he offered both Booth and Harold the use of his horse to ride and
• 1:34:29
  walk alternately. In this way, Lucas was providentially done out of the job,
• 1:34:33
  and Booth rode off toward Bowling Green behind the Confederate captain on one and
• 1:34:39
  the same horse. So much learned, the detectives, with Rollins for a
• 1:34:44
  guide, dashed off in the bright daylight of Tuesday, moving southwestward through the
• 1:34:47
  level plains of Caroline, seldom stopping to ask questions, save at a certain
• 1:34:53
  half way house, where a woman told them that the cavalry party of yesterday
• 1:34:57
  had returned minus one man. As this was far from circumstantial, the party
• 1:35:03
  rode along in the twilight and reached Bowling Green at eleven o'clock in the night.
• 1:35:09
  This is the court house town of Caroline County, a small and scattered
• 1:35:14
  place, having within it an ancient tavern, no longer used for other than
• 1:35:17
  lodging purposes. But here they hauled from his bed the captain aforesaid, and
• 1:35:23
  bade him dress himself. As soon as he comprehended the matter, he became
• 1:35:27
  pallid and eagerly narrated all the facts in his possession. Booth, to his
• 1:35:31
  knowledge, was then lying in the house of one garret, which they had
• 1:35:35
  passed, and Harold had departed the existing day with the intention of rejoining him,
• 1:35:43
  taking this captain along for a guide. The worn out horsemen retraced,
• 1:35:46
  though some of the men were so haggard and wasted with travel that they had
• 1:35:49
  to be kicked into intelligence before they could climb to their saddles. The objects
• 1:35:56
  of the chase thus at hand. The detectives, full of sanguine purpose,
• 1:36:00
  hurried the corte so well along that by two o'clock early morning, all halted
• 1:36:04
  at Garrett's Gate in the pale moonlight, three hundred yards from the main road
• 1:36:09
  to the left, a plain old farmhouse looked grayly through its environing locusts.
• 1:36:15
  It was worn and whitewashed, and two storied, and its half human windows
• 1:36:18
  glowered down upon the silent cavalrymen like watching owls, which stood as sentries over
• 1:36:26
  some horrible secret asleep within the front of this house looked up the road toward
• 1:36:30
  the rappahannock, but did not face it. And on that side a long
• 1:36:34
  virginia porch protruded, where in the summer among the honeysuckles, the humming bird
• 1:36:41
  flew like a visible odor. Nearest the main road, against the pallid gable,
• 1:36:46
  a single storied kitchen stood, and there were three other doors, one
• 1:36:51
  opening upon the porch, one in the kitchen gable, and one in the
• 1:36:56
  rear of the farm house. Dimly seen behind an old barn, high and
• 1:37:00
  weather beaten faced the roadside gate for the house itself lay to the left of
• 1:37:05
  its own lane, and nestling beneath the barn, a few long corn cribs
• 1:37:10
  lay with a cattle shed at hand. There was not a swell of the
• 1:37:14
  landscape anywhere in sight. A plain, dead level contained all the tenements and
• 1:37:18
  structures. A worm fence stretched along the road, broken by two battered gate
• 1:37:24
  posts, and between the road and the house the lane was crossed by a
• 1:37:28
  second fence and gate. The farm house lane passing the house front kept straight
• 1:37:33
  on to the barn, though a second carriage track ran up to the port.
• 1:37:38
  It was a homely and primitive scene, enough pastoral as any farm boy's
• 1:37:42
  birthplace, and had been the seat of many toils and endearments. Young wives
• 1:37:47
  had been brought to it, and around its heart the earliest cries of infants,
• 1:37:51
  gladdening mothers hearts had made the household jubilant till the stars came out,
• 1:37:57
  and were its only sentries, save the bright lights at its window panes as
• 1:38:01
  of the camp fire, and the suppressed choruses of the domestic bivouac within,
• 1:38:06
  where apple toasting and nut cracking and country games shortened the winter shadows. Yet
• 1:38:13
  in this house, so peaceful by moonlight, murder had washed its spotted hands
• 1:38:17
  and ministered to its satiated appetite. History present in every nook in the broad
• 1:38:24
  young world, had stopped to make a landmark of Garrett's farm. In the
• 1:38:30
  dead stillness, Baker dismounted and forced the outer gate. Conger kept close behind
• 1:38:34
  him, and the horsemen followed cautiously. They made no noise in the soft
• 1:38:39
  clay, nor broke the all foreboding silence anywhere till the second gate swung open
• 1:38:44
  gratingly. Yet even then, nor horse nor shrill response came back, save
• 1:38:49
  distant croaking, as of frogs or owls, or the whiz of some passing
• 1:38:54
  night hawk. So they surrounded the pleasant old homestead, each horseman carbine in
• 1:39:00
  poise, adjusted under the grove of locusts, so as to inclose the dwelling
• 1:39:04
  with a circle of fire. After a pause, Baker rode to the kitchen
• 1:39:09
  door on the side, and, dismounting, raped and hallowed lustily. An
• 1:39:14
  old man in drawers and night shirt hastily undrew the bolts and stood on the
• 1:39:18
  threshold, peering shiveringly into the darkness. Baker seized him by the throat at
• 1:39:24
  once and held a pistol to his ear. Who who is that calls me?
• 1:39:28
  Cried the old man. Where are the men who stay with you?
• 1:39:30
  Challenged Baker, If you prevaricate, you are a dead man. The old
• 1:39:35
  fellow, who proved to be the head of the family, was so overawed
• 1:39:40
  and paralyzed that he stammered and shook, and said not a word. Go
• 1:39:45
  light a candle, cried Baker, sternly, and be quick about it.
• 1:39:48
  The trembling old man obeyed, and in a moment the imperfect rays flared upon
• 1:39:53
  his whitening hairs and bluishly pallid face. Then the question was repeated, backed
• 1:39:59
  up by the glimmer ring pistol. Where are those men? The old man
• 1:40:02
  held to the wall, and his knees smote each other. They are gone,
• 1:40:06
  he said, We haven't got them in the house. I assure you
• 1:40:11
  that they are gone. Here. There were sounds and whisperings in the main
• 1:40:15
  building adjoining, and the lieutenant strode to the door. A ludicrous instant intervened.
• 1:40:19
  The old man's modesty outran his terror. Don't go in there, he
• 1:40:24
  said, feebly. There are women undressed in there. Damn the women,
• 1:40:28
  cried Baker, What if they are undressed? We shall go in if they
• 1:40:31
  haven't a rag Leaving the old man in mute astonishment, Baker bolted through the
• 1:40:36
  door and stood in an assemblage of bare arms and night robes. His loaded
• 1:40:41
  pistol disarmed modesty of its delicacy, and substituted therefore a seasonable terror. Here
• 1:40:46
  he repeated his summons, and the half light of the candle gave to his
• 1:40:50
  face a more than bandit ferocity. They all denied knowledge of the stranger's whereabouts.
• 1:40:59
  En of Letter four, Part one, Letter four The Assassin's Death,
• 1:41:05
  Washington, April twenty eighth, eight p m. Part two. In the
• 1:41:12
  interim conger had also entered, And while the household and its invaders were thus
• 1:41:15
  in weird tableaux, a young man appeared as if he had risen from the
• 1:41:20
  ground. The muzzles of everybody turned upon him in a second, But while
• 1:41:25
  he blanched, he did not lose loquacity. Father, He said, we
• 1:41:30
  had better tell the truth about the matter. Those men whom you seek,
• 1:41:33
  gentlemen, are in the barn. I know. They went there to sleep,
• 1:41:38
  leaving one soldier to guard the old man, and the soldier was very
• 1:41:42
  glad of the job, as it relieved him of personal hazard in the approaching
• 1:41:45
  combat. All the rest, with cocked pistols at the young man's head,
• 1:41:49
  followed on to the barn. It lay a hundred yards from the house.
• 1:41:53
  The front barn door facing the west gable, and was an old and spacious
• 1:41:57
  structure with floors only a trifle above the ground level. The troops dismounted were
• 1:42:02
  stationed at regular intervals around it, and ten yards distant. At every point.
• 1:42:08
  Four special guards placed to command the door, and all with weapons in
• 1:42:12
  supple preparation. While Baker and Conger went direct to the portal, it had
• 1:42:16
  a padlock upon it, and the key of this Baker secured at once.
• 1:42:21
  In the interval of silence that intued, the rustling of planks and straw was
• 1:42:25
  heard inside as a person's rising from sleep. At the same moment, Baker
• 1:42:30
  hailed to the persons in this barn, I have a proposal to make.
• 1:42:34
  We are about to send in to you the son of the man in whose
• 1:42:38
  custody you are found. Either surrender to him your arms and then give yourselves
• 1:42:43
  up, or we'll set fire to the place we mean to take you both,
• 1:42:47
  or to have a bonfire and a shooting match. No answer came to
• 1:42:51
  this of any kind. The lad John M. Garrett, who was in
• 1:42:57
  deadly fear, was here pushed through the door by a sudden opening of it,
• 1:43:00
  and immediately Lieutenant Baker locked the door. On the outside. The boy
• 1:43:04
  was heard to state his appeal in an undertone. Booth replied, damn you
• 1:43:11
  get out of here. You have betrayed me. At the same time,
• 1:43:15
  he placed his hand in his pocket as for a pistol. A remonstrance followed,
• 1:43:19
  but the boy slipped quickly over the reopened portal, reporting that his errand
• 1:43:25
  had failed and that he dared not enter again. All this time, the
• 1:43:30
  candle brought from the house to the barn was burning close beside the two detectives,
• 1:43:34
  rendering it easy for any one within to have shot them dead. This
• 1:43:39
  observed, The light was cautiously removed, and everybody took care to keep out
• 1:43:44
  of its reflection. By this time the crisis of the position was at hand.
• 1:43:48
  The cavalry exhibited very variable inclinations, some to run away, others to
• 1:43:55
  shoot booth without a summons, but all excited and fitfully silent. At the
• 1:44:00
  house near by, the female folks were seen collected in the doorway, and
• 1:44:04
  the necessities of the case provoked prompt conclusions. The boy was placed at a
• 1:44:10
  remote point, and the summons repeated by Baker. You must surrender inside there,
• 1:44:16
  give up your arms and appear. There is no chance for escape.
• 1:44:20
  We give you five minutes to make up your mind. A bold clarion reply
• 1:44:26
  came from within, so strong as to be heard at the house door.
• 1:44:30
  Who are you and what do you want with us? Baker again urged,
• 1:44:34
  we want you to deliver up your arms and become our prisoners. But who
• 1:44:40
  are you? Hallooed the same strong voice, Baker, That makes no difference.
• 1:44:45
  We know who you are and we want you. We have here fifty
• 1:44:49
  men armed with carbines and pistols. You cannot escape. There was a long
• 1:44:56
  pause, and then Booth said, Captain, this is a hard case.
• 1:45:00
  I swear perhaps I am being taken by my own friends. No reply from
• 1:45:06
  the detectives. Booth, Well, give us a little time to consider.
• 1:45:13
  Baker very well, take time here, ensued a long and eventful pause.
• 1:45:19
  What thronging memories it brought to Booth we can only guess. In this little
• 1:45:25
  interval he made the resolve to die, but he was cool and steady to
• 1:45:29
  the end. Baker, after a lapse, hailed for the last time,
• 1:45:33
  well we have waited long enough. Surrender your arms and come out, or
• 1:45:38
  will fire the barn. Booth answered thus, I am but a cripple,
• 1:45:44
  a one legged man. Withdraw your forces one hundred yards from the door,
• 1:45:47
  and I will come. Give me a chance for my life, Captain.
• 1:45:51
  I will never be taken alive, Baker. We did not come here to
• 1:45:57
  fight, but to capture you. I say again, a peer or the
• 1:46:00
  barn shall be fired. Then, with a long breath which could be heard
• 1:46:04
  outside, Booth cried in sudden calmness, still invisible, as were to him
• 1:46:10
  his enemies. Well, then, my brave boys, prepare a stretcher for
• 1:46:15
  me. There was a pause, repeated broken by low discussions within between Booth
• 1:46:20
  and his associate, the former saying as if in answer to some remonstrance or
• 1:46:26
  appeal, get away from me. You are a damned coward and mean to
• 1:46:29
  leave me in my distress. But go go. I don't want you to
• 1:46:32
  stay. I won't have you stay. Then he shouted aloud, there's a
• 1:46:39
  man inside who wants to surrender Baker. Let him come if he will bring
• 1:46:44
  his arms here. Harold, rattling at the door, said let me out,
• 1:46:48
  open the door. I want to surrender, Baker. Hand out your
• 1:46:53
  arms. Then, Harold, I have not got any. Baker. You
• 1:46:58
  are the man that carried the carbine yes to day. Bring it out.
• 1:47:00
  Harold, I haven't got any. This was said in a whining tone and
• 1:47:05
  with an almost visible shiver, Booth cried aloud at this hesitation. He hasn't
• 1:47:11
  got any arms. They are mine and I have kept them. Baker,
• 1:47:15
  well, he carried the carbine and must bring it out. Booth on the
• 1:47:19
  word and honor of a gentleman. He has no arms with him. They
• 1:47:24
  are mine and I have got them. At this time, Harold was quite
• 1:47:29
  up to the door, within whispering distance of Baker. The latter told him
• 1:47:32
  to put out his hands to be handcuffed, at the same time drawing open
• 1:47:35
  the door a little distance. Harold thrust forth his hands when Baker, seizing
• 1:47:41
  him, jerked him into the night, and straightway delivered him over to a
• 1:47:45
  deputation of cavalrymen. The fellow began to talk of his innocence and plead so
• 1:47:49
  noisily that Conger threatened to gag him unless he ceased. Then both made his
• 1:47:54
  last appeal in the same clear, unbroken voice, Captain, give me a
• 1:48:00
  chance. Draw off your men, and I will fight them singly. I
• 1:48:03
  could have killed you six times to night, but I believe you to be
• 1:48:08
  a brave man, and would not murder you. Give a lame man a
• 1:48:11
  show. It was too late for Parley all this time Booth's voice had sounded
• 1:48:16
  from the middle of the barn, ere he ceased speaking. Colonel Congres,
• 1:48:20
  slipping around to the rear, drew some loose straws through a crack and lit
• 1:48:25
  a match upon them. They were dry and blazed up in an instant,
• 1:48:29
  carrying a sheet of smoke and flame through the parted planks, and heaving in
• 1:48:32
  a twinkling a world of light and heat upon the magazine. Within the blaze
• 1:48:39
  lit up the black recesses of the great barn, till every wasped nest and
• 1:48:43
  cobweb in the roof was luminous, flinging streaks of red and violet across the
• 1:48:47
  tumbled farm gear in the corner, plows, harrows, hoes, rakes,
• 1:48:51
  sugar mills, and making every separate grain in the high bin adjacent gleam like
• 1:48:57
  a moat of precious gold. They tinged the beams, the upright columns,
• 1:49:01
  the barricades, where Clover and Timothy piled high, held toward the hot incendiary
• 1:49:06
  their separate straws for the funeral pile. They bathed the murderer's retreat in beautiful
• 1:49:13
  illumination, and while in brawled outline his figure stood revealed. They rose like
• 1:49:18
  an impenetrable wall to guard from sight the hated enemy, who lit them.
• 1:49:24
  Behind the blaze, with his eye to a crack, Congres saw wilkes booth
• 1:49:28
  standing upright upon a crutch. He likens him at this instance to his brother
• 1:49:32
  Edwin, whom he says he so much resembled that he half believed, for
• 1:49:36
  the moment the whole pursuit to have been a mistake. At the gleam of
• 1:49:41
  the fire, Wilkes dropped his crutch and carbine in both hands, crept up
• 1:49:45
  to the spot to a spy the incendiary and shoot him dead. His eyes
• 1:49:49
  were lustrous like fever, and swelled and rolled in terrible beauty, while his
• 1:49:55
  teeth were fixed, and he wore the expression of one in the calmness before
• 1:49:59
  frenzy in vain. He peered with vengeance in his look. The blaze that
• 1:50:03
  made him visible concealed his enemy. A second he turned, glaring at the
• 1:50:08
  fire, as if to leap upon it and extinguish it. But it had
• 1:50:12
  made such headway that this was a futile impulse, and he dismissed it as
• 1:50:16
  calmly as upon the battlefield. A veteran stands amidst the hail of ball and
• 1:50:20
  shell and plunging iron, both turned at a man's stride and pushed for the
• 1:50:26
  door. Carbine in poise, and the last resolve of death, which we
• 1:50:30
  named despair, set on his high, bloodless forehead. And so he dashed,
• 1:50:35
  intent to expire, not unaccompanied a disobedient sergeant, and an eye hole
• 1:50:42
  drew upon him the fatal bead. The barn was all glorious with conflagration,
• 1:50:46
  and in the beautiful ruin. This outlawed man strolled like all that we know
• 1:50:50
  of, wicked valor, stern in the face of death. A shock,
• 1:50:55
  a shout, a gathering up of his splendid figure, as if to overtip
• 1:50:59
  the step that your God gave him, and John Wilkes's booth fell headlong to
• 1:51:02
  the floor, lying there in a heap, a little life remaining. He
• 1:51:08
  has shot himself, cried Baker, unaware of the source of the report,
• 1:51:13
  and rushing in, he grasped his arms to guard against any faint or strategy.
• 1:51:17
  A moment convinced him that further struggle with the prone flesh was useless.
• 1:51:21
  Booth did not move, nor breathe, nor gasp. Conger and two sergeants
• 1:51:27
  now entered, and taking up the body, they bore it in haste from
• 1:51:30
  the advancing flame, and laid it without upon the grass, all fresh with
• 1:51:33
  heavenly dew. Water, cried Conger, bring water. When this was dashed
• 1:51:40
  into his face, he revived a moment and stirred his lips. Baker put
• 1:51:44
  his ear close down and heard him say, tell mother, and die for
• 1:51:49
  my country. They lifted him again, the firing croaching in hotness upon them,
• 1:51:56
  and placed him on the porch before the dwelling. A mattress was brought
• 1:52:00
  down, on which they placed him and propped his head, and gave him
• 1:52:03
  water and brandy. The women of the household joined meantime by another son,
• 1:52:09
  who had been found in one of the corn cribs, watching as he said,
• 1:52:13
  to see that Booth and Herold did not steal. The horses were nervous,
• 1:52:16
  but prompt to do the dying man all kindnesses, although waved sternly back
• 1:52:21
  by the detectives. They dipped a rag in brandy and water, and this
• 1:52:27
  being put between Booth's teeth, he sucked it greedily. When he was able
• 1:52:31
  to articulate again, he muttered to mister Baker the same words with an adenda,
• 1:52:36
  Tell mother, I died for my country. I thought I did for
• 1:52:42
  the best. Baker repeated this, saying at the same time, Booth,
• 1:52:46
  do I repeat it correctly? Booth nodded his head. By this time,
• 1:52:51
  the grayness of dawn was approaching. Moving figures inquisitively coming near were to be
• 1:52:57
  seen distinctly, and the cocks began to crow gutturily. Though the barn was
• 1:53:02
  a hulk of blaze and ashes, sending toward the zenith a spiral line of
• 1:53:06
  dense smoke. The women became importunate that the troops might be ordered to extinguish
• 1:53:13
  the fire which was spreading toward their precious corn cribs. Not even death could
• 1:53:17
  banish the call of interest. Soldiers were sent to put out the fire,
• 1:53:23
  and Booth, relieved of the bustle around him, drew near to death apace.
• 1:53:28
  Twice he was heard to say, kill me, kill me. His
• 1:53:32
  lips often moved, but could complete no appreciable sound. He made once a
• 1:53:38
  motion which the quickeye of Conger understood to mean that his throat pained him.
• 1:53:43
  Conger put his finger there when the dying man attempted to cough, but only
• 1:53:46
  caused the blood at his perforated neck to flow more lively. He bled very
• 1:53:51
  little, although shot quite through beneath and behind the ears, his collar being
• 1:53:57
  severed on both sides. The soldier had been, meantime despatched for a doctor,
• 1:54:03
  but the rout and return were quite six miles, and the sinner was
• 1:54:08
  sinking fast still. The women made efforts to get to see him, but
• 1:54:12
  were always rebuffed, and all the brandy they could find was demanded by the
• 1:54:15
  assassin, who motioned for strong drink every two minutes. He made frequent desires
• 1:54:21
  to be turned over, not by speech but by gesture, and was alternately
• 1:54:27
  placed upon his back belly and sighed. His tremendous vitality evidenced itself almost miraculously.
• 1:54:35
  Now and then his heart would cease to throb, and his pulses would
• 1:54:39
  be cold as a dead man's. Directly, life would begin anew, the
• 1:54:44
  face would flush up effulgently, the eyes open and brighten, and soon relapsing
• 1:54:49
  stillness reasserted, would again be dispossessed of the same magnificent triumph of man over
• 1:54:56
  mortality. Finally, the fussy little doctor arrived in time to be useless.
• 1:55:02
  He probed the wound to see if the ball were not in it, and
• 1:55:05
  shook his head sagely and talked learnedly. Just at his coming, Booth had
• 1:55:14
  asked to have his hands raised and shown him. They were so paralyzed that
• 1:55:17
  he did not know their location. When they were displayed, he muttered with
• 1:55:21
  a sad lethargy, useless, useless. These were the last words he ever
• 1:55:29
  uttered. As he began to die. The sun rose and threw beams into
• 1:55:33
  all the tree tops. It was of a man's height. When the struggle
• 1:55:38
  of death twitched and fingered in the fading Bravo's face. His jaw drew spasmodically
• 1:55:44
  and oblikely downward. His eyeballs rolled toward his feet and began to swell.
• 1:55:49
  Lividness like a horrible shadow fastened upon him. And with a sort of gurgle
• 1:55:55
  and sudden check, he stretched his feet and threw his head back and gave
• 1:56:00
  up the ghost. They sewed him up in a saddle blanket. This was
• 1:56:06
  his shroud, too, like a soldier's. Harold meantime had been tied to
• 1:56:12
  a tree, but was now released for the march. Colonel Conger pushed on
• 1:56:16
  immediately for Washington. The cortege was to follow. Booth's only arms were his
• 1:56:21
  carbine, knife and two revolvers. They found about him bills of exchange,
• 1:56:27
  Canadian money, and a diary. A venerable old negro living in the vicinity
• 1:56:33
  had the misfortune to possess a horse. This horse was a relic of former
• 1:56:39
  generations, and showed by his protruding ribs the general lameness of the land.
• 1:56:44
  He moved in an eccentric amble, and when put upon, his speed was
• 1:56:48
  generally run backward. To this old negro's horse was harnessed a very shaky and
• 1:56:54
  absurd wagon, which rattled like approaching dissolution, and each part of it ran
• 1:56:59
  without any connection or correspondence with any other part. It had no tail board,
• 1:57:05
  and its shafts were sharp as famine. And into this mimicry of a
• 1:57:10
  vehicle, the murderer was to be sent to the Potomac River. While the
• 1:57:14
  man he had murdered was moving in state across the Morning continent. The old
• 1:57:19
  negro geared up his wagon by means of a set of fossil harness, and
• 1:57:24
  when it was backed to Garrett's porch, they laid within it the discolored corpse.
• 1:57:30
  The corpse was tied with ropes round the legs and made fast to the
• 1:57:32
  wagon sides. Harold's legs were tied to stirrups, and he was placed in
• 1:57:38
  the center of four murderous looking cavalrymen. The two sons of Garrett were also
• 1:57:43
  taken along, despite the sobs and petitions of the old folks and women,
• 1:57:47
  But the rebel captain, who had given Booth a lift, got off amidst
• 1:57:50
  the Knight's agitations and was not rearrested. So moved the cavalcade of retribution,
• 1:57:59
  with death in its midst, along the road to Port Royal. When the
• 1:58:03
  wagon started, Booth wound till now scarcely dribbling, began to run anew.
• 1:58:10
  It fell through the crack of the wagon, dripping upon the axle and spotting
• 1:58:14
  the road with terrible wafers. It stained the planks and soaked the blankets,
• 1:58:20
  and the old negro, at a stoppage, dabbled his hands in it.
• 1:58:24
  By mistake, he drew back instantly with a shudder and stifled expative gore.
• 1:58:30
  Dattle never come off in de world. It's murderous blood. He wrung his
• 1:58:35
  hands and looked imploringly at the officers, and shuddered again. Gore, I
• 1:58:41
  wouldn't have dat on me for toos and taos and dollars. The progress of
• 1:58:46
  the team was slow, with frequent danger of shipwreck altogether, but toward noon
• 1:58:50
  the cortege filed through Port Royal, where the citizens came out to ask the
• 1:58:56
  matter and why a man's body covered with somber blankets was going by with so
• 1:59:00
  great escort. They were told that it was a wounded Confederate, and so
• 1:59:05
  held their tongs. The little Fairy, again in requisition, took them over
• 1:59:11
  by squads, and they pushed from Fort Conway to bell Plaine, which they
• 1:59:15
  reached in the middle of the afternoon. All the way the blood dribbled from
• 1:59:19
  the corpse in a slow, incessant sanguine exudation. The old Negro was niggardly
• 1:59:27
  dismissed with two paper dollars, the dead man untied and cast upon the vessel's
• 1:59:31
  dock. Steam gotten up in a little while, and the broad Potomac shores
• 1:59:36
  saw this skeleton ship flit by as the bloody sun through gashes and blots of
• 1:59:43
  unhealthy light along the silver surface all the way associate with the carcass went Harold,
• 1:59:50
  shuddering in so grim companionship and in the awakened fears of his own approaching
• 1:59:56
  ordeal, beyond which it loomed already the gossamer fabric of a scaffold. He
• 2:00:02
  tried to talk for his own exoneration, saying he had ridden as was his
• 2:00:06
  wont beyond the East branch, and returning found Booth wounded, who begged him
• 2:00:12
  to be his companion. Of his crime. He knew nothing so help him,
• 2:00:15
  God, et cetera. But nobody listened to him. All interest of
• 2:00:21
  crime, courage, and retribution centered in the dead flesh at his feet.
• 2:00:28
  At Washington high and low turned out to look on Booth. Only a few
• 2:00:31
  were permitted to see his corpse for purposes of recognition. It was fairly preserved,
• 2:00:38
  though on one side of the face distorted and looking blue like death,
• 2:00:43
  and wildly bandit like as if beaten by avenging winds. Yesterday, the Secretary
• 2:00:50
  of War, without instructions of any kind, committed to Colonel Lafier C.
• 2:00:56
  Baker of the Secret Service the stark corpse of j. Wie Iilks Booth.
• 2:01:00
  The Secret Service never fulfilled its volition. More secretively, what have you done
• 2:01:06
  with the body? Said I to Baker. That is known? He answered,
• 2:01:11
  to only one man living besides myself, it is gone. I will
• 2:01:15
  not tell you where. The only man who knows is sworn to silence.
• 2:01:20
  Never till the great trumpeter comes shall the grave of Booth be discovered. And
• 2:01:26
  this is true. Last night, the twenty seventh of April, a small
• 2:01:30
  row boat received the carcass of the murderer. Two men were in it.
• 2:01:35
  They carried the body off into the darkness, and out of that darkness it
• 2:01:40
  will never return in the darkness like his great crime. May it forever remain
• 2:01:45
  impalpable, invisible, mon descript, condemned to that worse than damnation annihilation.
• 2:01:56
  The river bottom may ooze about it, laden with great shot drowning manacles.
• 2:02:00
  The earth may have opened to give it that silence and forgiveness which man will
• 2:02:04
  never give its memory. The fishes may swim around it, or the daisies
• 2:02:10
  grow white above it, But we shall never know mysterious, incomprehensible, unattainable,
• 2:02:16
  like the dim times through which we live and think upon, as if
• 2:02:20
  we only dream them in perturbed fever. The assassin of a nation's head rest
• 2:02:26
  somewhere in the elements, and that is all. But if the indignant seas
• 2:02:30
  or the profaned turf shall ever vomit his corpse from their recesses, and it
• 2:02:35
  receives humane or Christian burial from some who do not recognize it, Let the
• 2:02:41
  last words those decaying lips ever uttered, be carved upon them with a dagger,
• 2:02:47
  to tell the history of a young and once promising life. Useless useless
• 2:03:00
  of Letter four. Letter five, A Solution of the Conspiracy. Part one.
• 2:03:08
  The annexed letter, which has been caviled at as much as copied,
• 2:03:13
  is a rationale of the conspiracy, combined from the government's own officers. When
• 2:03:17
  it was written, it was believed to be true. The evidence of the
• 2:03:20
  trial has confirmed much of it. I reprint it to show how men's ingenuities
• 2:03:26
  were at work to account for the conception and progress of the plot. Washington
• 2:03:31
  may second, Justice and fame are equally and simultaneously satisfied. The President is
• 2:03:39
  not yet in his sarcophagus, but all the conspirators against his life, with
• 2:03:43
  a minor exception or two, are in their prison sales, waiting for the
• 2:03:45
  Halter. The dark and bloody plot against a good ruler's life is now so
• 2:03:50
  fully unraveled that I may make it plain to you there is nothing to be
• 2:03:55
  gained by further waiting. The trials are proceeding, the evidence is mountain high.
• 2:04:00
  Within a week, the national scaffold will have done its work and be
• 2:04:03
  laid away forever. This prompt and necessary justice will signal the last public assassination
• 2:04:10
  in America. Borgio and Medici and Brinvilliers have left no descendants on this side
• 2:04:16
  of the world. The conspiracy, with both the greatest and the smallest of
• 2:04:21
  our cycle, narrowed in execution to a few. It was understood and connived
• 2:04:27
  at by a multitude. One man was its head and heart. Its accessories
• 2:04:31
  were so numerous that the trouble is not whom to suspect, but whom not
• 2:04:35
  accuse. Damning as the result may be to the character of our race,
• 2:04:41
  it must be admitted, in the light of facts, that Americans are as
• 2:04:44
  secretive and as skillful plotters as any people in the world. The Rye House
• 2:04:48
  plot never fully understood the many schemes of Mazzini, never fastened upon him sufficiently
• 2:04:56
  well for implication yield in extent darkness and intricacy to the Republican plot against the
• 2:05:02
  President's life and those of his counselors. The police operations proved that the late
• 2:05:08
  murder was not a spasmodic and fitful crime, but long premeditated and carried to
• 2:05:13
  consummation with as much cohesion and resolution as the murder of Alessandro de Medici or
• 2:05:18
  Henricatra. I have been accused of canonizing Booth, much as I denounce and
• 2:05:27
  deprecate his crime, holding him to be worthy of all execration, and so
• 2:05:30
  seeped in blood that the excuses of a century will fail to lift him out
• 2:05:34
  of the atmosphere of common felons. I still, at every new development,
• 2:05:40
  stand farther back, in surprise and terror, at the wonderful resources and extraordinary
• 2:05:45
  influence of one whom I had learned to consider a mere Thespian, full of
• 2:05:48
  sound, fury, and assertion. Strange and anomalous as the facts may seem,
• 2:05:57
  John Wilkes Booth was the sole projector of the plot against the President,
• 2:06:00
  which culminated in the taking of that good man's life. He had rolled under
• 2:06:04
  his tongue the sweet paragraphs of Shakespeare referring to Brutus as had his father,
• 2:06:10
  so well that the old man named one son Junius Brutus, and the other
• 2:06:15
  John Wilkes, after the wild English agitator, until it became his ambition,
• 2:06:19
  like the wicked Lorenzino de Medici, to stake his life upon one stroke for
• 2:06:24
  fame, the murder of a ruler obnoxious to the South. That Wilkes Booth
• 2:06:30
  was a Southern man from the first may be accounted for upon grounds of interest
• 2:06:33
  as well as of sympathy. It is insidious to find no higher incentive than
• 2:06:39
  appreciation. But on the stage, this is the first and last motive.
• 2:06:44
  And as Edwin Booth made his success in the North and remained steadfast, Wilkes
• 2:06:47
  Booth was most truly applauded in the South and became a rebel. A false
• 2:06:54
  emotion of gratitude, as well as an impulse of mingled waywardness and gratitude,
• 2:06:58
  set John Wilkes's face from the first toward the North, and he burned to
• 2:07:01
  make his name a part of history, cried into fame by the applauses of
• 2:07:06
  the South. He hung to this bloody suggestion with dogged inflexibility, maintaining only
• 2:07:13
  one axiom above all the rest, that whatever minor parts might be enacted,
• 2:07:17
  Casca, Cassius, or what not, he was to be the dramatic brutus,
• 2:07:23
  accepting the assassin's negativeness. In other words, the idea was to be
• 2:07:28
  his own, as well as the crowning blow. Booth shrank at first from
• 2:07:32
  murder until another and less dangerous resolution failed. This was no less than the
• 2:07:39
  capture of the President's body and its detention or transportation to the South. I
• 2:07:45
  do not rely on this assertion upon his sealed letter, where he avows it.
• 2:07:48
  There has been found, upon a street within the city limits, a
• 2:07:51
  house belonging to one Missus Greene, mined and furnished with underground apartments, manacles,
• 2:07:58
  and all the accessories to private imprisonment. Here the President and as many
• 2:08:03
  as could be gagged and conveyed away with him, were to be concealed in
• 2:08:07
  the event of failure to run them into the Confederacy. Owing to his failure
• 2:08:11
  to group around him as many men as he desired, Booth abandoned the project
• 2:08:16
  of kidnapping. But the house was discovered last week as represented ready to be
• 2:08:22
  blown up at a moment's notice. It was at this time that Booth devised
• 2:08:26
  his triumphant route through the South. The dramatic element seems to have been never
• 2:08:31
  lacking in his design, and with all his base purposes, he never failed
• 2:08:35
  to consider some subsequent notoriety to be enjoyed. He therefore shipped before the end
• 2:08:39
  of eighteen sixty four his theatrical wardrobe from Canada to Nassau. After the commission
• 2:08:46
  of his crime, he intended to reclaim it and star throughout the South,
• 2:08:50
  drawing money as much by his crime as his abilities. When Booth began on
• 2:08:56
  his own responsibility to hunt for accomplices, he found his theory at fault.
• 2:09:01
  The bold men he had dreamed of refused to join him in the rash attempt
• 2:09:05
  at kidnapping the president, and were too conscientious to meditate murder. All those
• 2:09:09
  who presented themselves were military men, unwilling to be subordinate to a civilian and
• 2:09:15
  a mere play actor. And the mortified Bravo found himself therefore compelled to sink
• 2:09:20
  to a petty rank in the plot, or to make use of base and
• 2:09:24
  despicable assistance. His vanity found it easier to compound with the second alternative than
• 2:09:30
  the first. Here began the first resolve, which in its mere animal estate
• 2:09:35
  we may name courage. Booth found that a tragedy in real life could no
• 2:09:39
  more be enacted without greasy faced and not need supernumeraries than upon the mimic stage.
• 2:09:46
  Your first citizen who swings a stave for marc antony and drinks hard porter
• 2:09:52
  behind the flies is very likely the Bravo of real life who murders between his
• 2:09:56
  cocktails at the nearest bar. Wilkes both had passed the ordeal of a garlicky
• 2:10:01
  green room, and did not shrink from the broader and rancor green room of
• 2:10:05
  real life. He assembled around him, one by one the cutthroats at whom
• 2:10:11
  his soul would have revolted, except that he had become, by resolve,
• 2:10:15
  a cutthroat in himself. About this time, certain gentlemen in Canada began to
• 2:10:20
  be unenviably known. I abstained from giving their names because unaware of how far
• 2:10:26
  they seconded this crime, if at all, But they seconded as infamous things
• 2:10:31
  such as cowardly raids from neutral territory into the States, bank robbings, lake
• 2:10:37
  pirating, city burning, counterfeiting, railways, sundering, and the importation of
• 2:10:41
  yellow fever into peaceful and unoffending communities. I make no charges against those whom
• 2:10:48
  I do not know, but simply say that the Confederate agents Jacob Thompson,
• 2:10:52
  Larry McDonald, Clement Clay, and some others had already accomplished enough villainy to
• 2:11:00
  make Wilkes Booth, on the first of the present year, believe that he
• 2:11:03
  had but to seek an interview with them. He visited the provinces once,
• 2:11:09
  certainly, and three times, it is believed, stopping in Montreal at Saint
• 2:11:13
  Lawrence Hall and banking four hundred and fifty five dollars ODD at the Ontario Bank.
• 2:11:20
  This was his own money. I have myself seen his bank book with
• 2:11:24
  the single entry of this amount. It was found in the room of Atzerot
• 2:11:28
  at Kirkwood's Hotel. From this visit, whatever encouragement Booth received, he continued
• 2:11:33
  in systematic correspondence with one or more of those agents down to the commission of
• 2:11:37
  his crime. I dare not say how far each of these agents was implicated.
• 2:11:43
  My personal conviction is that they were neither loth to the murder nor astonished
• 2:11:48
  when it had been done. They had money with discretion from the Confederacy,
• 2:11:54
  though acting at discretion and outside of responsibility, and always at every wild adventure,
• 2:11:58
  they instructed their dupes that each man took his life in his hand on
• 2:12:03
  every incursion into the North. So Beale took his raiding on the Great Lakes,
• 2:12:09
  So Kennedy took his on a midnight bonfire tramp into the metropolis. So
• 2:12:13
  took the Saint Alban's raiders their lives in their palms, dashing into a peaceful
• 2:12:18
  town. And if these agents entertained Wilkes Booth's suggested at all, they plainly
• 2:12:24
  told him that he carried his life in his dagger's edge, and would expect
• 2:12:28
  from them neither aid nor exculpation. Some one or all of these agents furnished
• 2:12:33
  Booth with a murderer, the fellow Wood or Payne, who stabbed mister Seward
• 2:12:39
  and was caught at Missus Surrat's house in Washington. He was one of three
• 2:12:43
  Kentucky brothers, all outlaws, and had himself, it is believed, accompanied
• 2:12:48
  one of his brothers, who is known to have been at Saint Alban's on
• 2:12:52
  the day of the bank delivery. This pain besides being positively identified as the
• 2:12:56
  assassin of the sewards, had no friends nor haunts in Washington. He was
• 2:13:01
  simply a dispatched murderer, and after the night of the crime, struck northward
• 2:13:07
  of the frontier instead of southward, in the company of Booth. The proof
• 2:13:11
  of this will follow in the course of the article. While I assert that
• 2:13:16
  the Canadian agents knew Booth and patted his back, calling him, like Macbeth,
• 2:13:20
  the Prince of cut Throats, I am equally certain that Booth's project was
• 2:13:24
  unknown in Richmond. No word nor written line, no clue of any sort
• 2:13:30
  has been found attaching Booth to the Confederate authorities. The most that can be
• 2:13:35
  urged to meet preposterous claims of this sort is that out of the rebellion grew
• 2:13:39
  the murder, which is like attributing the measles to the creation of man.
• 2:13:43
  But mac Donald and his party had money at discretion and under their control the
• 2:13:48
  Biolist fellows on the continent. Their personal influence over those errant ones amounted to
• 2:13:54
  omnipotence. Most of the latter were young and sanguine people, like Beale and
• 2:13:58
  Booth. Their plots were made up at Saint Catharines, Toronto and Montreal.
• 2:14:03
  And they have maintained since the war began, rebel mail routes between Canada and
• 2:14:09
  Richmond leading directly past Washington. If Booth received no positive instructions, he was,
• 2:14:16
  at any rated judged a man likely to be of use, and therefore
• 2:14:20
  introduced to the rebel agencies in and around Washington, doubtless by direct letter or
• 2:14:26
  verbal instruction. He received a password to the house of Missus Surat, half
• 2:14:31
  applauded, half rebuffed by the rebel agents in Canada. Booth's impression of his
• 2:14:37
  visit were just those which would whet him soonest for the tragedy. His vanity
• 2:14:41
  had been fed by the assurance that success depended upon himself alone, and that
• 2:14:46
  as he had the responsibility, he would absorb the fame. And the method
• 2:14:50
  of correspondence was of that dark and mysterious shape which powerfully operated upon his dramatic
• 2:14:56
  temperament. What could please an actor and the son of an actor better than
• 2:15:01
  to mingle as a principle in a real conspiracy, the aims of which were
• 2:15:05
  pseudo patriotic, and the end so astounding that at its coming the whole globe
• 2:15:11
  would reel. Booth reasoned that the ancient world would not feel more sensitively the
• 2:15:16
  death of Julius Caesar than the new and sudden taking off of Abraham Lincoln.
• 2:15:22
  And so he grew into the idea of murder. It became his business thought.
• 2:15:26
  It was his recreation and his study. He had not worked half so
• 2:15:31
  hard for histrionic successes, for his terrible graduation into an assassin. He had
• 2:15:37
  fought often on the boards and seen men die in well imitated horror, with
• 2:15:41
  flowing blood upon his keen sword's edge, and the strong stride of mimic victory
• 2:15:46
  with which he flourished his weapon. At the closing of the curtain, he
• 2:15:50
  embraced conspiracy like an old diplomatist, and found in the Woman and the Spots
• 2:15:54
  objects for emulation. South east of Washington stretches a tapering peninsula composed of four
• 2:16:03
  fertile counties, which, at the remote tip make point look Out, and
• 2:16:07
  do not contain any town within them of more than a few hundred inhabitants.
• 2:16:11
  Tobacco has ruined the land of these, and slavery has ruined the people.
• 2:16:18
  Yet in the beginning they were of that splendid stock of Calvert and Lord Baltimore,
• 2:16:22
  but retained today only the religion of the peaceful Founder. I mention it
• 2:16:28
  as an exceptional and remarkable fact that every conspirator in custody is, by education
• 2:16:33
  a Catholic. These are our most loyal citizens. Elsewhere, but on the
• 2:16:39
  western shore of Maryland it is a noxious and pestilential place for patriotism. The
• 2:16:45
  county immediately outside of the District of Columbia to the south is named Prince George's
• 2:16:50
  and the pleasantest village of this county, close to Washington, is called Surrattsville.
• 2:16:54
  This consists of a few cabins at a cross road surrounding a fine old
• 2:16:58
  hotel well. The master whereof giving the settlement his name, left the property
• 2:17:03
  to his wife, who for a long time carried it on with indifferent success,
• 2:17:09
  having a son and several daughters. She moved to Washington soon after the
• 2:17:13
  beginning of the war and led the tavern to a trusty friend, one John
• 2:17:18
  Lloyd. Sir. Ratsville has gained nothing in patronage or business from the war,
• 2:17:22
  except that it became at an early date a rebel post office. The
• 2:17:26
  Great Secret Mail from Matthias Creek, Virginia to Port Tobacco struck Surretsville and then
• 2:17:33
  headed off to the east to Washington, going meanderingly north of this post route.
• 2:17:37
  Missus Surrat was a manageress, and John Lloyd, when he rented her
• 2:17:43
  hotel, assumed the responsibility of looking out for the mail, as well the
• 2:17:46
  duty of making Missus Surrat at home when she chose to visit him. So,
• 2:17:52
  Sir Ratsville, only ten miles from Washington, has been throughout the war
• 2:17:56
  a sect of conspiracy. It was like a suburb of Richmond, reaching quite
• 2:18:00
  up to the rival capital. And though the few Unionists on the peninsula knew
• 2:18:05
  its reputation well enough, nothing of the sort came out until the murder.
• 2:18:09
  Treason never found a better agent than Missus Surat. She is a large,
• 2:18:15
  masculine, self possessed female mistress of her house, and as lithe a rebel,
• 2:18:20
  as Belle Boyd or Missus greenhow she is not the flippantry and menace of
• 2:18:24
  the first, nor the social power of the second. But the rebellion has
• 2:18:28
  found no fitter agent. At her country tavern and Washington home booth was made
• 2:18:35
  welcome, and there began the muttered murder against the nation and mankind. The
• 2:18:41
  acquaintance of Missus Surat in Lower Maryland undoubtedly suggested to Booth the route of escape,
• 2:18:46
  and made him known to his subsequent accomplices. Last fall he visited the
• 2:18:50
  entire region as far as Leonardstown in Saint Mary's County, professing to be in
• 2:18:54
  search of land, but really hunting up confederates upon whom he could depend.
• 2:19:00
  At this time he bought a map a fellow to which I have seen among
• 2:19:03
  Atzerot's effects, published at Buffalo for the rebel government, and marking at haphazard
• 2:19:09
  all the Maryland villages, but without tracing the high roads at all. The
• 2:19:13
  absence of these roads it will be seen hereafter very nearly misled Booth during his
• 2:19:18
  crippled flight. It could not but have struck Booth that this isolated part of
• 2:19:24
  Maryland, ignorant and rebel to the brim, without telegraph or railways or direct
• 2:19:30
  stage routes, belted with swamps and broken by dense timber, afforded extraordinary opportunities
• 2:19:35
  for shelter and escape. Only the Coast Survey had any adequate map of it.
• 2:19:41
  It was ultimately to all intents and treason might subsist in welcome upon it.
• 2:19:48
  Or a thousand years when Booth cast around him for assistance, He naturally
• 2:19:54
  selected those men whom he could control. The first that recommended himself was one
• 2:20:00
  Harold, a youth of inane and plastic character, carried away by the example
• 2:20:05
  of an actor, and full of execrable quotations, going to show that he
• 2:20:09
  was an imitator of the Master's spirit, both in text and admiration. This
• 2:20:13
  Harold was a gunner and therefore versed in arms. He had traversed the whole
• 2:20:18
  lower portion of Maryland, and was therefore a geographer as well as a tool.
• 2:20:24
  His friends lived at every farmhouse between Washington and Leonardsville, and he was
• 2:20:28
  respectably enough connected so as to make his association creditable as well as useful.
• 2:20:35
  Harold, whose picture I have seen, is a dull faced, shallow boy,
• 2:20:39
  smooth haired, and provincial. He has no money nor employment, except
• 2:20:43
  that he clerked for a druggist for a while, until he knew Wilkes Booth,
• 2:20:48
  who looked at him only once and bought his soul for a smile.
• 2:20:52
  Harold was infatuated by Booth as a woman by a soldier. He copied his
• 2:20:56
  gait and tone, adopted his opinions, and was unhappy out of his society.
• 2:21:01
  Booth gave him money mysteriously obtained, and together they made the acquaintance of
• 2:21:05
  young John Surat, son of the conspiratress. Young Surret does not appear to
• 2:21:13
  have been a puissant spirit in the scheme. Indeed, all design and influence
• 2:21:16
  therein was absorbed by Missus Surret and Booth. The latter was the head and
• 2:21:22
  heart of the plot. Missus Surat was his anchor, and the rest of
• 2:21:26
  the boys were disciples to Escariot and Jezebel. John Surrat, a youth of
• 2:21:31
  strong Southern physiognomy, beardless and lanky, knew of the murder and connived at
• 2:21:37
  it. Sam Arnold and one McLaughlin were to have been parties to it,
• 2:21:41
  but backed out. In the end. They all relied upon Missus Surat and
• 2:21:46
  took their cues from Wilkes Booth. The conspiracy had its own time and kept
• 2:21:52
  its own counsel. Murder, except among the principles, was seldom mentioned,
• 2:21:56
  except by genteel implication. But they all publicly agreed that mister Lincoln ought to
• 2:22:01
  be shot, and that the North was a race of fratricides. Much was
• 2:22:07
  said of Brutus and Booth repeated heroic passages to the delight of Harold, who
• 2:22:11
  learned them also, and wondered if he was not born to greatness. End
• 2:22:18
  of Letter five, Part one, Letter five A Solution of the Conspiracy Part
• 2:22:26
  two. In this growing darkness, where all were hearsed cold hearted murder,
• 2:22:31
  Wilkes Booth grew great of stature. He had found a purpose consonant with his
• 2:22:37
  evil nature and bad influence over weak men. So he grew moodier, more
• 2:22:41
  vigilant, more plausible. By mean and temperament. He was born to handle
• 2:22:46
  a stiletto. We have no face so markedly Italian it would stand for Caesar
• 2:22:52
  Borgia at any day in the year. All the rest were swayed or persuaded
• 2:22:56
  by Booth. His schemes were three in order. First, to kidnap the
• 2:23:03
  president and cabinet and run them south or blow them up. Second, kidnapping
• 2:23:09
  failed to murder the president and the rest and seek shelter in the Confederate capital.
• 2:23:13
  Third, the rebellion failed to be its avenger and throw the country into
• 2:23:18
  consternation, while he escaped by the unfrequented parts of Maryland. When this last
• 2:23:24
  resolution had been made, the plot was both contracted and extended. There were
• 2:23:30
  made two distinct circles of confidants, those aware of the meditated murder and those
• 2:23:35
  who might shrink from murder, though willing accessories for a lesser object. Two
• 2:23:39
  colleagues for blood were at once accepted Pain and Atserrot. The former I have
• 2:23:46
  sketched. He is believed to have visited Washington once before at Booth's citation for
• 2:23:52
  the murder was at first fixed for the day of inauguration. Atsrot was a
• 2:23:56
  fellow of German descent who had led a death spirit life at Port Tobacco,
• 2:24:01
  where he was a house painter. He had been a blockade runner across the
• 2:24:05
  Potomac and a mail carrier. When Booth and Missus Surrat broke the design to
• 2:24:09
  him with a suggestion that there was wealth in it. He embraced the offer
• 2:24:13
  at once and bought a dirk and pistol. Payne also came from the North
• 2:24:18
  to Washington, and, as fate would have it, the President was announced
• 2:24:22
  to appear at Ford's Theater in public. There, the resolve of Blood was
• 2:24:26
  reduced to a definite moment. On the night before the crime, Booth found
• 2:24:31
  on whom he could rely John Surrett was sent northward by his mother On Thursday.
• 2:24:37
  Sam Arnold and McLaughlin, each of whom was to kill a cabinet officer,
• 2:24:41
  grew Pigeon, livered and ran away. Harold, true to his partiality,
• 2:24:46
  lingered around Booth to the end. Atcerot went so far as to take
• 2:24:50
  his knife and pistol to Kirkwood's, where President Johnson was stopping, and hid
• 2:24:56
  them under the bed. But either his courage failed or a trifling accident deranged
• 2:25:01
  his plan. But Payne, a professional murderer, stood game and fought his
• 2:25:07
  way over prostrate figures to his sick victim's bed. There was great confusion and
• 2:25:13
  terror among the tacit and rash conspirators on Thursday night. They had looked upon
• 2:25:18
  the plot as of a melodrama, and found to their horror that John Wilkes
• 2:25:22
  Booth meant to do murder. Six weeks before the murder, young John Surrett
• 2:25:26
  had taken two splendid repeating carbines to Surretsville and told John Lloyd to secrete them.
• 2:25:33
  The latter made a hole in the wainscoting and suspended them from strings,
• 2:25:37
  so that they fell within the plastered wall of the room. Below. On
• 2:25:41
  the very afternoon of the murder, Missus Surat was driven to Surrattsville, and
• 2:25:46
  she told John Lloyd to have the carbines ready because they would be called for
• 2:25:50
  that night. Harold was made quartermaster and hired the horses. He and Atsurrot
• 2:25:56
  were mounted between eight o'clock and the time of the murder and rodding about the
• 2:26:00
  streets together. The whole party was prepared for a long ride, as their
• 2:26:05
  spurs and gauntlet show. It may have been their design to ride in company
• 2:26:09
  to the lower Potomac, and by their numbers exact subsistence and transportation. But
• 2:26:15
  all edifices of murder lack a corner stone. We only know that booth ate
• 2:26:20
  and talked well during the day, that he never seemed so deeply involved in
• 2:26:24
  oil, and that there is a hiatus between his supper here and his appearance
• 2:26:28
  at Ford's theater. Lloyd I may interpolate, ordered his wife a few days
• 2:26:35
  before the murder to go on a visit to Allan's Fresh. She says she
• 2:26:39
  does not know why she was so sent away, but swears that it is
• 2:26:43
  so. Harrold, three weeks before the murder, visited Port Tobacco and said
• 2:26:48
  that the next time the boys heard of him, he would be in Spain.
• 2:26:52
  He added that with Spain there was no extradition treaty. He said at
• 2:26:56
  Sir Ratsville that he meant to make a barrel of money, or his neck
• 2:27:00
  would stretch. Atsarot said that if he ever came to Port Tobacco again,
• 2:27:05
  he would be rich enough to buy the whole place. Wilkes Booth told a
• 2:27:09
  friend to go to Ford's on Friday night and see the best acting in the
• 2:27:13
  world. At Ford's Theater on Friday night, there were many standers in the
• 2:27:18
  neighborhood of the door and along the dress circle in the direction of the private
• 2:27:22
  box where the President sat. The play went on pleasantly, though mister Wilkes
• 2:27:28
  Booth, an observer of the audience, visited the stage and took note of
• 2:27:33
  the positions. His alleged associate, the stage carpenter, then received quiet orders
• 2:27:37
  to clear the passage by the wings from the prompter's post to the stage door.
• 2:27:43
  All this time mister Lincoln, in his family circle, unconscious of the
• 2:27:46
  death that crowded fast upon him, watched the pleasantry and smiled and felt heart
• 2:27:52
  full of gentleness. Suddenly there was a murmur near the audience door, as
• 2:27:56
  of a man speaking above his bound. He said nine o'clock and forty five
• 2:28:01
  minutes. These words were reiterated from mouth to mouth until they passed the theater
• 2:28:07
  door, and were heard upon the sidewalk. Directly a voice cried in the
• 2:28:11
  same slightly raised monotone nine o'clock and fifty minutes. This also passed from man
• 2:28:18
  to man until it touched the street like a shudder. Nine o'clock and fifty
• 2:28:22
  five minutes, said the same relentless voice. After the next interval, each
• 2:28:26
  of which narrowed to a lesser span the life of the good President. Ten
• 2:28:31
  o'clock here sounded and conspiring echo said in reverberation ten o'clock. So like a
• 2:28:39
  creeping thing. From lip to lip went ten o'clock and five minutes, an
• 2:28:45
  interval ten o'clock and ten minutes. At this instant Wilkes Booth appeared in the
• 2:28:52
  door of the theater, and the men who had repeated the time so faithfully
• 2:28:56
  and so ominously scattered at his coming, as at some warning fantum. Fifteen
• 2:29:01
  minutes afterwards, the telegraph wires were cut. All this is so dramatic that
• 2:29:07
  I fear to excite a laugh when I write it, but it is true
• 2:29:09
  and proven, and I do not say it, but report it. All
• 2:29:16
  evil deeds go wrong. While the click of the pistol taking the President's life
• 2:29:20
  went like a pang through the theater. Paine was spilling blood in mister Seward's
• 2:29:24
  house from threshold to sick chamber. But Booth's broken leg delayed him or made
• 2:29:28
  him lose his general calmness, and he and Harold left Pain to his fate.
• 2:29:33
  I have not adverted to the whole board with a gimlet in the entry
• 2:29:37
  door of mister Lincoln's box and cut out with a pen knife. The theory
• 2:29:41
  that the pistol ball of Booth passed through this hole is exploded, and the
• 2:29:45
  stage carpenter may have to answer for this little orifice with all his neck.
• 2:29:48
  For when Booth leaped from the box, he strode straight across the stage by
• 2:29:52
  the footlights, reaching the prompter's post, which is immediately behind that private box
• 2:29:58
  opposite mister Lincoln. From this box to the stage door in the rear,
• 2:30:01
  the passageway leads behind the ends of the scenes, and if generally either closed
• 2:30:07
  up by one or more withdrawn scenes or so narrow that only by doubling and
• 2:30:11
  turning sideways can one pass along. On this fearful night. However, the
• 2:30:16
  scenes were so adjusted to the murderer's design that he had a free aisle from
• 2:30:20
  the foot of the stage to the exit door. Within fifteen minutes after the
• 2:30:26
  murder, the wires were severed entirely around the city, excepting only a secret
• 2:30:30
  wire for government uses, which leads to Old Point. I am told by
• 2:30:33
  this wire the government reached the fortifications around Washington, first telegraphing all the way
• 2:30:39
  to Old Point, and then back to the outlying forts. This information comes
• 2:30:43
  to me from so many creditable channels that I must concede it. Payne,
• 2:30:48
  having as he thought, made an end of mister Seward, which would have
• 2:30:50
  been the case but for Robinson. The nurse mounted his horse and attempted to
• 2:30:54
  find Booth. But the town was in alarm, and he galloped at once
• 2:30:58
  for the open country, taking as he imagined, the proper road for the
• 2:31:03
  East Branch. He rode at a killing pace, and when near Fort Lincoln
• 2:31:07
  on the Baltimore Pike, his horse threw him headlong afoot, and bewildered,
• 2:31:11
  he resolved to return to the city, whose lights he could plainly see.
• 2:31:16
  But before doing so, he concealed himself some time and made some almost absurd
• 2:31:20
  efforts to disguise himself. Cutting a cross section from the woolen undershirt which covered
• 2:31:26
  his muscular arm, he made a rude cap of it and threw away his
• 2:31:30
  bloody coat. This has since been found in the woods, and blood has
• 2:31:33
  been found also on his bosom and sleeves. He also spattered himself plentifully with
• 2:31:39
  mud and clay, and taking an abandoned pick from the deserted entrenchments near by,
• 2:31:43
  he struck at once for Washington, by the providence which always attends murder.
• 2:31:50
  He reached Missus Surrat's door just as the officers of the government were arresting
• 2:31:54
  her. They seized Paine at once, who had an awkward lie to urge
• 2:31:58
  in his defense that he had come there to dig a trench. That night.
• 2:32:03
  He dug a trench deep and broad enough for both of them to lie
• 2:32:07
  in forever. They washed his hands and found them soft and womanish. His
• 2:32:11
  pockets contained tooth and nail brushes and a delicate pocket knife. All this apparel
• 2:32:16
  consorted ill with his assumed character he is, without doubt mister Seward's attempted murderer
• 2:32:24
  coarse and hard and calm. Missus Surrat shut up her house after the murder
• 2:32:28
  and waited with her daughters till the officers came. She was imperturbable and rebuked
• 2:32:33
  her girls for weeping, and would have gone to jail like a statue,
• 2:32:37
  but that in her extremity pain knocked at her door. He had come.
• 2:32:41
  He said to dig a ditch for Missus Surrat, whom he very well knew.
• 2:32:46
  But Missus Surratt protested she had never seen the man at all and had
• 2:32:50
  no ditch to clean. How fortunate, girls, She said, that these
• 2:32:54
  officers are here. This man might have murdered us. All her effrontery stamps
• 2:33:00
  as worthy of companionship with Booth. Payne has been identified by a lodger of
• 2:33:05
  Missus Surat's as having twice visited the house under the name of Wood. The
• 2:33:09
  girls will render valuable testimony in the trial. If John Surat were in custody,
• 2:33:13
  the links would be complete. Atsorat had a room almost directly over Vice
• 2:33:20
  President Johnson's. He had all the materials to do murder, but lost spirit
• 2:33:26
  or opportunity he ran away so hastily that all his arms and baggage were discovered.
• 2:33:31
  A tremendous bowie knife and a colt's cavalry revolver were found between the mattresses
• 2:33:35
  of his bed. Booth's coat was also found there, showing conspired flight in
• 2:33:41
  company, and in it three boxes of cartridges, a map of Maryland,
• 2:33:45
  gauntlet for riding, a spur, and a handkerchief marked with the name of
• 2:33:48
  Booth's mother, a mother's souvenir for a murderer's pocket. Atsorat fled alone and
• 2:33:56
  was found at the house of his uncle in Montgomery County. I do not
• 2:34:01
  know whether any instrument of murder has ever made me thrill as when I drew
• 2:34:05
  this terrible bowie knife from its chief. Major O'Byrne of New York was the
• 2:34:09
  instigator of Vasarrot's discovery and arrest. I come now to the ride out of
• 2:34:16
  the city by the chief assassin and his dupe. Harold met Booth immediately after
• 2:34:20
  the crime in the next street, and they rode at a gallop past the
• 2:34:24
  Patent office and over Capitol Hill. As they crossed the Eastern branch at Uniontown,
• 2:34:30
  Booth gave his proper name to the officer at the bridge. This,
• 2:34:33
  which would seem to have been foolish, was in reality very shrewd. The
• 2:34:37
  officers believed that one of Booth's accomplices had given this name in order to put
• 2:34:43
  them out of the real Booth track. So they made efforts elsewhere, and
• 2:34:46
  so Booth got a start. At midnight precisely, the two horsemen stopped at
• 2:34:50
  Surretzville, Booth remaining on his nag while Harold descended and knocked hastily at the
• 2:34:56
  door. Lloyd, the landlord, came down a once when Harold pushed past
• 2:35:01
  him into the bar and obtained a bottle of whiskey, some of which he
• 2:35:05
  gave to Booth immediately. While Booth was drinking, Harold went upstairs and brought
• 2:35:09
  down one of the carbines. Lloyd started to get the other, but Harold
• 2:35:13
  said, we don't want it. Booth has broken his leg and can't carry
• 2:35:16
  it. So the second carbine remained in the hall, where the officers afterward
• 2:35:22
  founded. As the two horsemen started to go off, Booth cried out to
• 2:35:26
  Lloyd, do you want to hear some news? I don't care much about
• 2:35:31
  it? Cried Lloyd, by his own account. We have murdered, said
• 2:35:35
  Booth, the President and Secretary of State. And with this horrible confession,
• 2:35:41
  Booth and Harold dashed away in the midnight across Prince George's County on Saturday.
• 2:35:48
  Before sunrise, Booth and Harold, who had ridden all night without stopping elsewhere,
• 2:35:52
  reached the house of doctor Mudd, three miles from Bryantown. They contracted
• 2:35:58
  with him for twenty five dollars in green backs to set the broken leg.
• 2:36:01
  Harold, who knew doctor Mudd, introduced Booth under another name and stated that
• 2:36:07
  he had fallen from his horse during the night. The doctor remarked of Booth
• 2:36:11
  that he draped the lower part of his face while the leg was being set.
• 2:36:13
  He was silent and in pain. Having no splints in the house,
• 2:36:18
  they split up an old fashioned wooden band box and prepared them. The doctor
• 2:36:24
  was assisted by an Englishman who at the same time began to hew out a
• 2:36:28
  pair of crutches. The inferior bone of the left leg was broken vertically across,
• 2:36:33
  and because vertically it did not yield when the crippled man walked upon it,
• 2:36:37
  the riding boot of Booth had to be cut from his foot within were
• 2:36:41
  the words J. Wilkes. The doctor says he did not notice these,
• 2:36:46
  but that visual defect may cost him his neck. The two men waited around
• 2:36:50
  the house all day, but toward evening they slipped their horses from the stable
• 2:36:54
  and rode away in the direction of Allan's Fresh. Below Bryantown run certain deep
• 2:37:00
  and slimy swamps. Along the belt of these, Booth and Harold picked up
• 2:37:05
  a Negro named Swan, who volunteered to show them the road for two dollars.
• 2:37:09
  They gave him five more to show them the route to Allan's Fresh,
• 2:37:13
  but really wished as their actions intimated to gain the house of one Sam Cox,
• 2:37:18
  a notorious rebel and probably well advised of the plot. They reached the
• 2:37:24
  house at midnight. It is a fine dwelling, one of the best in
• 2:37:26
  Maryland, and after halloing for some time, Cox came down to the door
• 2:37:31
  himself. As soon as he opened it and beheld who the strangers were,
• 2:37:35
  he instantly blew out a candle he held in his hand, and without a
• 2:37:37
  word, pulled them into the house, the Negro remaining in the yard.
• 2:37:43
  The Confederates remained in Coxe's house until four a m. During which time the
• 2:37:46
  Negro saw them drink and eat heartily. But when they reappeared, they spoke
• 2:37:52
  in a loud tone so that Swan could hear them against the hospitality of cox
• 2:37:56
  All. This was meant to influence the darky, but their motives were as
• 2:38:01
  apparent as their words. He conducted them three miles further on. When they
• 2:38:05
  told him that now they knew the way, and giving him five dollars more,
• 2:38:09
  making twelve in all, told him to go back. But when the
• 2:38:13
  Negro, in the dusk of the morning, looked after them as he receded,
• 2:38:16
  he saw that both horses heads were turned once more toward Coxes. And
• 2:38:22
  it was this man, doubtless who harbored the fugitives from Sunday to Thursday,
• 2:38:26
  aided possibly by such neighbors as the Wilsons and the Adamses. At the point
• 2:38:31
  where Booth crossed the Potonac, the shores are very shallow, and one must
• 2:38:35
  wade out some distance to where a boat will float. A white man came
• 2:38:39
  up here with a canoe on Friday and tied it by a stone anchor.
• 2:38:43
  Between seven and eight o'clock it disappeared, and in the afternoon some men at
• 2:38:48
  work in Virginia, saw Booth and herold Land tie the boat's roped to a
• 2:38:52
  stone and fling it ashore, and strike at once across a plowed field for
• 2:38:58
  King George court House. Many folks entertained them without doubt, but we positively
• 2:39:03
  hear of them next at Port Royal Ferry, and then at Garrett's farm.
• 2:39:09
  I closed this article with a list of all who were at Garrett's farm on
• 2:39:13
  the death of Booth. One E. J. Conger Detectives, two Lieutenant
• 2:39:20
  Baker, three surgeon from Port Royal four, four Garrett daughters, five Harold
• 2:39:26
  Booth's Accomplice Soldiers Company H. Sixteenth New York Volunteer Cavalry, Lieutenant ED P.
• 2:39:33
  Doherty, Commanding Corporals A. Newgarten, J. Wally, M.
• 2:39:37
  Hornsby Privates, J. Mellington, D. Darker, E. Parlays,
• 2:39:41
  W. Mutgart, Corporal's Zimmer Company, C. M. Taineck Privates,
• 2:39:48
  H. Pardman, J. Myers, W. Byrne F. Meekdank G.
• 2:39:54
  H. Jay Rayhan, J. Kelly, J. Samger Company,
• 2:39:58
  M. G. Zeichton, Steinberry L. Swech Company A. A.
• 2:40:05
  Sweech Company, H. F Diacts, Sergeant Wandell Corporals, Lennicke, Winnecke,
• 2:40:11
  Sergeant Corbett, Company L. Sergeant Corbett, who shot Booth, was
• 2:40:16
  the only man of the command belonging to the same company with Lieutenant Doherty Commandant.
• 2:40:24
  End of Letter five, Letter six. The detective's stories Washington may sewond
• 2:40:31
  p M. The police resources of the country have been fairly tested during the
• 2:40:37
  past two weeks. Under the circumstances, the shrewdness and energy of both municipal
• 2:40:41
  and national detectives have been proven good. The latter body has had a two
• 2:40:46
  partial share of the applause thus far. While the efforts of our New York
• 2:40:50
  and other officers have been overlooked in the crowning success of Doherty, Conger and
• 2:40:56
  Baker on the Virginia side of the water, we have forgotten the asvvigorous and
• 2:41:00
  better sustained pursuit on the Maryland side. Yet the Secretary of War has thanked
• 2:41:05
  all concerned, especially referring to many excellent leaders in the long hunt to Charles
• 2:41:11
  and Saint Mary's Counties. Here, the military and civil forces together amounted to
• 2:41:16
  quite a small army and constituted by far the largest police organization ever known on
• 2:41:22
  this side of the Atlantic. I think the adventures and expedients of these public
• 2:41:28
  servants worthy of a column. It would be out of all proportion to pass
• 2:41:31
  them by when we devote a dozen lines to every petty larceny and shoplifting.
• 2:41:37
  On the Friday night of the murder, the departments were absolutely paralyzed. The
• 2:41:43
  murderers had three good hours for escape. They had evaded the pursuit of lightning
• 2:41:46
  by snapping the telegraph wires, and rumor filled the town with so many reports
• 2:41:52
  that the first valuable hours, which should have been used to follow hard after
• 2:41:56
  them, were consumed in feverish efforts to know the real expens of the assassination.
• 2:42:01
  Immediately afterwards, however, or on Saturday morning, early the Provo and
• 2:42:07
  Special police force got on the scent, and military in squads were dispatched close
• 2:42:11
  upon their heels. Three grand pursuits were organized, one reaching up the north
• 2:42:18
  bank of the Potomac toward Chain Bridge, to prevent escape by that direction into
• 2:42:22
  Virginia, where Moseby it was suspected, weighted to hail the murderers. The
• 2:42:28
  second, starting from Richmond, Virginia northward, forming a broad advancing picket or
• 2:42:33
  skirmish line between the Blue Ridge and the broad Sea running streams. A third
• 2:42:37
  to scour the peninsula toward Point Lookout. The latter region became the only one
• 2:42:43
  well examined. The northern expedition failed, until advised from below, to capture
• 2:42:48
  ats Rot, and failed to capture Pain. Yet there were cogent probabilities that
• 2:42:54
  the assassin had taken this route, for Mosby would have given them the right
• 2:42:58
  hand of fellowship. When that guerrilla heard of Booth's feet and Captain Jett,
• 2:43:03
  he exclaimed, now by blank, I could take that man in my arms.
• 2:43:11
  Washington, as a precautionary measure, was doubly picketed. At once.
• 2:43:13
  The authorities in all northern towns advised of the personnel of the murderer, and
• 2:43:18
  requests made of the detective chiefs in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York to
• 2:43:24
  forward to Washington without delay their best decoys. A court of inquiry was organized
• 2:43:30
  on the moment, and early in the week succeeding rewards were offered an individual
• 2:43:35
  and not the government offered the first rewards. There were two men without whom
• 2:43:39
  the hunt would have gone astray many times. John s Young, chief of
• 2:43:45
  the New York Detective Force, A powerful and resolute man, whose great weight
• 2:43:50
  and strength are matched by boundless energy, and both subordinate to a head as
• 2:43:54
  clear as the keen and searching warrant of his eye. This man has been
• 2:43:58
  in familiar converse with every rebel agent in the Canadas, and is feared by
• 2:44:03
  them as they fear the fates of Beale and Kennedy. Without being a sensationist,
• 2:44:09
  he has probably rendered the cleverest services of the war to the general government.
• 2:44:15
  They sent for him immediately after the tragedy, and he stopped on the
• 2:44:18
  way for his old police companion, Marshall Murray. The latter's face and figure
• 2:44:22
  are familiar to all who know New York. He resembles an admiral on his
• 2:44:26
  quarter deck. He is a detective of fair and excellent repute, and has
• 2:44:31
  a somewhat novel pride in what he calls the most beautiful gallows in the United
• 2:44:37
  States. These officials were ordered to visit Colonel Ingraham's office and examine the little
• 2:44:43
  evidence on hand. They and their tried officers formed a junction on Sunday afternoon
• 2:44:48
  with the large detective force of Provo Marshal Major O'Byrne. The latter commands the
• 2:44:54
  District of Columbia Civil and Military Police. He is a New Yorker and has
• 2:44:58
  been shocked through the body in the field. The detective force of Young and
• 2:45:03
  Murray consisted of Officers Radford, kelso Elder and Hoey of New York, Deputy
• 2:45:09
  Marshall Newcombe, formerly of the World's City Staff, Officers Joseph Pearson, and
• 2:45:16
  West of Baltimore. Major O'Byrne's immediate aides were detectives John Lee, Lloyd Gavigan,
• 2:45:22
  Cottingham and Williams. A detachment of the Philadelphia Detective Police Force, Officers
• 2:45:28
  Taggart, George Smith, and Carlin, reporting to Colonel Baker, went in
• 2:45:33
  the direction of the North Pole. Everybody is on the q vive for them
• 2:45:39
  to the provo. Marshal of Baltimore mac Phail, who knew the tone and
• 2:45:43
  bearing of the country. Throughout, was joined the zealous co operation of Officer
• 2:45:48
  Lloyd of Major Burn's staff, who had a personal feeling against the secessionists of
• 2:45:52
  Lower Maryland. They had once driven him away from his loyalty and had reserved
• 2:45:58
  their hospitality for assassins. Lieutenant Commander Gushing I am informed also rendered important services
• 2:46:05
  to the government in connection with the police operations. Volunteer detectives, such as
• 2:46:11
  Ex Marshal Lewis and Angelis were plentiful. It is probable that in the pitch
• 2:46:16
  of the excitement, five hundred detective officers were in and around Washington City.
• 2:46:20
  At the same time, the secret police of Richmond abandoned their ordinary business and
• 2:46:26
  devoted themselves solely to this overshadowing offense. No citizen in these terrible days knows
• 2:46:31
  what eyes were upon him as he talked and walked, nor how his stature
• 2:46:35
  and guise were keenly scanned by folks who passed him absent faced, yet with
• 2:46:41
  his mental portrait carefully turned over the while some invisible hand clutched a revolver and
• 2:46:48
  held a life or death challenge upon his lips. The military forces were commanded
• 2:46:52
  by Colonel Wells of the twenty sixth Michigan Regiment, whose activity and zeal were
• 2:46:58
  amply sustained by Colonel and Denning of the eighth Illinois Cavalry, probably the finest
• 2:47:03
  body of horse in the service. The first party to take the South Maryland
• 2:47:07
  Road was dispatched by Major O'Byrne and commanded by Lieutenant Lovett of the Veteran Reserves.
• 2:47:13
  It consisted of twenty five cavalrymen with detectives Cottingham, Lloyd, and Gavigan.
• 2:47:20
  These latter, with the Lieutenant, kept well in advance. They made
• 2:47:24
  inquiries of a soothing and cautious character, but saw nothing suspicious until they arrived
• 2:47:28
  at Piscataway, where an unknown man some distance ahead observed them and took to
• 2:47:33
  the woods. This was on Sunday night, forty hours after the murder.
• 2:47:39
  Guided by Officer Lloyd, the little band dashed on, arriving at Bryantown on
• 2:47:43
  Tuesday. Here they arrested John Lloyd, of the hotel at Sir Ratsville,
• 2:47:48
  of whom they had previously inquired for the murderers, and he had said positively
• 2:47:54
  that he neither knew them nor had seen anybody whatever. On the night of
• 2:47:58
  the crime. He was returning in a wagon with his wife, whom he
• 2:48:01
  had ordered the day before to go on a visit to Allan's Fresh the monday
• 2:48:05
  afterward he started to bring her back. This woman, frightened at the arrest,
• 2:48:09
  acknowledged at once that in her husband's conduct there had been inexplicable mystery.
• 2:48:16
  He was taciturn and defiant as before, until confronted by some of his old
• 2:48:20
  union neighbors. The few Unionists of Prince George's and Charles County's, long persecuted
• 2:48:26
  and intimidated, now came forward and gave important testimony. Among these was one
• 2:48:33
  Roby, a very fat and very zealous old gentleman, whose professions were as
• 2:48:37
  ample as his perspiration. He told the officers of the secret meetings for conspiracy's
• 2:48:43
  sake at Lloyd's hotel. And although a very John Gilpin on horseback, rode
• 2:48:48
  here and there to his great loss of wind and repose, fastening fired coals
• 2:48:52
  upon the guilty or suspected, Lloyd was turned over to mister Cuttingham, who
• 2:48:58
  had a stable to jail at Ruby Town. That night his house was searched
• 2:49:03
  and booth carbine found hidden in the wall. Three days later Lloyd himself confessed,
• 2:49:09
  and his neck is quite nervous at this writing. This little party,
• 2:49:15
  under the untiring Lovett, examined all the farm houses below Washington, resorting to
• 2:49:20
  many shrewd expedients, and taking note of the great swamps to the east of
• 2:49:24
  Port Tobacco, They reached Newport at last and fastened tacit guilt upon many residents.
• 2:49:31
  Beyond Bryantown. They overhauled the residence of doctor Mudd and found Booth's boot.
• 2:49:37
  This was before Lloyd confessed, and was the first positive trace the officers
• 2:49:41
  had that they were really close upon the assassins. I do not recall anything
• 2:49:46
  more wild and startling than this vague and dangerous exploration of a dimly known,
• 2:49:50
  hostile and ignorant country. To these few detectives we owe much of the subsequent
• 2:49:56
  successful prosecution of the pursuit. They were the Hebrew Spies. By this time
• 2:50:03
  the country was filling up with soldiers, but previously A second memorable detective party
• 2:50:07
  went out under the personal command of Major o'burn. It consisted besides that officer
• 2:50:13
  of Lee d'angelia, Callahan, Hoey, Bostick, Hanover, Bevins and mc
• 2:50:22
  henry, and embarked at Washington on a steam tug for Chapel's Point. Here,
• 2:50:26
  a military station had long been established for the prevention of blockade and mail
• 2:50:31
  running across the Potomac. It was commanded by Lieutenant Laverty and garrisoned by sixty
• 2:50:37
  five men. On Tuesday night, Major o'burn's party reached this place, and
• 2:50:43
  soon afterwards a telegraph station was established here by an invaluable man to the expedition,
• 2:50:48
  Captain beckwith General Grant's chief cipher operator, who tapped the point look out
• 2:50:54
  wire and placed the War Department within a moment's reach of the theater of events.
• 2:50:58
  Major o'byrnan's parties started at once over the worst road in the world for
• 2:51:03
  Port Tobacco. If any place in the world is utterly given over to depravity,
• 2:51:09
  it is Port Tobacco. From this town by a sinuous creek, there
• 2:51:13
  is flatboat navigation to the Potomac and across that river to Mattox's Creek. Before
• 2:51:20
  the war, Port Tobacco was the seat of a tobacco aristocracy and a haunt
• 2:51:24
  of Negro traders. It passed very naturally into a rebel post for blockade runners
• 2:51:30
  and a rebel post office General. Gambling, corner, fighting and shooting matches
• 2:51:35
  were its lyceum. Education, violence, and ignorance had every suffrage in the
• 2:51:39
  town. Its people were smugglers to all intents, and there was neither Bible
• 2:51:45
  nor geography to the whole region adjacent. Assassination was never very unpopular at Port
• 2:51:52
  Tobacco, and when its victim was a Northern president, it became quite heroic.
• 2:51:58
  A month before the murder of Provo mar near by was slain in his
• 2:52:01
  bed chamber. For such a town and district, the detective police were the
• 2:52:05
  only effective missionaries. The hotel here is called the Brauner House. It has
• 2:52:11
  a bar in the nethermost cellar, and its patrons carousing in that imperfect light
• 2:52:16
  look like the denizens of some burglar's crib, talking robbery between their cups.
• 2:52:22
  Its dining room is dark and tumble down, and the cuisine bears traces of
• 2:52:26
  Kaffir origin. A barbecue is nothing to a dinner there. The Court House
• 2:52:31
  of Port Tobacco is the most superfluous house in the place except the church.
• 2:52:37
  It stands in the center of the town in a square, and the dwellings
• 2:52:39
  lie about it closely, as if to throttle justice. Five hundred people exist
• 2:52:46
  in Port Tobacco. Life there reminds me, in connection with the Slimy River
• 2:52:50
  and the adjacent swamps, of the Great reptile period of the world, when
• 2:52:54
  iguanadons and pterodactyls and plaosori hate each other. Into this abstract of Gomorrah.
• 2:53:03
  The few detectives went like angels who visited lot. They pretended to be inquiring
• 2:53:09
  for friends or to have business designs, and the first people they heard of
• 2:53:13
  were Herald and Atserot. The latter had visited Port Tobacco three weeks before the
• 2:53:18
  murder and intimated at that time his design of fleeing the country, but everybody
• 2:53:24
  denied having seen him subsequent to the crime. Atseat had been in town.
• 2:53:28
  Just prior to the crime. He had been living with a widow woman named
• 2:53:31
  Missus Wheeler, by whom he had several children, and she was immediately called
• 2:53:37
  upon by Major o'byrn. He did not tell her what Atsorot had done,
• 2:53:41
  but vaguely hinted that he had committed some terrible crime, and that since he
• 2:53:46
  had done her wrong, she could vindicate both their self and justice by telling
• 2:53:50
  his whereabouts. The woman admitted that Atserot had been her Bane, but she
• 2:53:56
  loved him and refused to betray him. His trunk was found in her garret,
• 2:54:01
  and in it the key to his paint shop in Port Tobacco. The
• 2:54:05
  latter was fruitlessly searched, but the probable whereabouts of Atsorrot in Montgomery County obtained
• 2:54:11
  and Major O'Byrne telegraphing there. Immediately, the desperate fellow was found and locked
• 2:54:16
  up. A man named Crangle, who had succeeded Atsorrot in Missus Wheeler's pliable
• 2:54:22
  affections, was arrested at once and put in jail. A number of disloyal
• 2:54:26
  people were indicated or spotted as in no wise angry at the president's taking off
• 2:54:31
  and for all, such a provo prison was established. A few miles from
• 2:54:37
  Port Tobacco Dwelt a solitary woman who, when questioned, said that for many
• 2:54:41
  nights she had heard after she had retired to bed, a man enter her
• 2:54:46
  cellar and lie there all night, departing before dawn. Major O'Byrne and the
• 2:54:52
  detectives ordered her to place a lamp in her window. The next night she
• 2:54:56
  heard him enter, and at dark they established a cordon of armed officers around
• 2:55:01
  the place. At midnight, punctually she exhibited the light. When the officers
• 2:55:05
  broke into the house and thoroughly searched it without result. Yet the woman positively
• 2:55:11
  asserted that she had heard the man enter. It was afterwards found that she
• 2:55:16
  was of diseased mind. By this time the military had come up in considerable
• 2:55:22
  numbers, and Major O'Byrne was enabled to confer with Major Waite of the eighth
• 2:55:28
  Illinois. The Major had pushed on Monday night till Leonardstown and pretty well overhauled
• 2:55:33
  that locality. It was at this time that preparations were made to hunt the
• 2:55:37
  swamps around Chapmantown. Beantown and Allen's fresh booth had been entirely lost since his
• 2:55:45
  departure from Mudd's house, and it was believed that he had either pushed on
• 2:55:48
  for the Potomac or taken to the swamps. The officers sagaciously determined to follow
• 2:55:54
  him to the one and to explore the other. The swamp's tributary to the
• 2:55:58
  various branches the Weiccomico River, of which the chief feeder is Allen's Creek,
• 2:56:03
  bear various names such as Jordan's Swamp, atchall swamp, and scrub swamp.
• 2:56:09
  They are dense growths of dogwood, gum and beech planted in sluices of water
• 2:56:15
  and bog, and their width ferries from a half mile to four miles,
• 2:56:18
  while their length is upwards of sixteen miles. Frequent deep ponds dot this wilderness
• 2:56:24
  place, with here and there a stretch of dry soil, But no human
• 2:56:28
  being in habits the malarious extent. Even a hunted murderer would shrink from hiding
• 2:56:33
  there. Serpents and slimy lizards are the only denizens. Sometimes the coon takes
• 2:56:39
  refuge in this desert from the hounds, and in the soil mud a thousand
• 2:56:45
  odorous muskrats delve with now and then a tremorous otter. But not even the
• 2:56:50
  hunted negro dares to fathom the treacherous clay, nor make himself a fellow of
• 2:56:54
  the slimy reptiles which reign absolute in this terrible sun qulitude. Here the soldiers
• 2:57:01
  prepared to seek for the President's assassin, and no search of the kind has
• 2:57:05
  ever been so thorough and patient. The Shawnee, in his strong hold of
• 2:57:11
  despair in the heart of Okefinoki, would scarcely have changed homes with Wilkes Booth
• 2:57:16
  and David Herald hiding in this inhuman country. The military forces deputed to pursue
• 2:57:22
  the fugitives, where seven hundred men of the eighth Illinois Cavalry, six hundred
• 2:57:26
  men of the twenty second Colored troops and one hundred men of the sixteenth New
• 2:57:31
  York. These swept the swamps by detachments, the mass of them dismounted with
• 2:57:37
  cavalry at the belts of clearing, interspersed with detectives at frequent intervals in the
• 2:57:41
  rear. They first formed a strong picket cordon entirely around the swamps, and
• 2:57:48
  then, drawn up in two orders of battle, advanced boldly into the bogs
• 2:57:52
  by two lines of march. One party swept the swamps longitudinally, the other
• 2:57:56
  pushed straight across their smallest diameter. A similar march has not been made during
• 2:58:01
  the war. The soldiers were only a few paces apart, and in steady
• 2:58:05
  order. They took the ground as it came, now plunging to their arm
• 2:58:09
  pits in foul sluices of gangrened water, now hopelessly submerged in slime, now
• 2:58:16
  attacked by regions of wood ticks, now tempting some unfaithful log or greenishly solid
• 2:58:22
  morass, and plunging to the tip of the skull in poisoned stagnation. The
• 2:58:26
  tree boughs rent their uniforms. They came out upon dry land, many of
• 2:58:31
  them without a rag of garments. Scratched and gashed and spent repugnant to themselves
• 2:58:37
  and disgusting to those who saw them. But not one trace of Booth or
• 2:58:41
  Herald was anywhere found. Wherever they might be, the swamps did not contain
• 2:58:48
  them. While all this was going on, a force started from Point Lookout
• 2:58:54
  and swept the narrow necks of Saint Mary's Quite up to Medley's Neck to complete
• 2:58:58
  the search and a part of the country. Colonel Wells and Major O'Byrne started
• 2:59:03
  with a force of cavalry and infantry for Chapel Point. They took the entire
• 2:59:07
  peninsula as before and marched in close skirmish line across it, but without finding
• 2:59:13
  anything of note. The matter of enclosing a house was by cavalry advances,
• 2:59:18
  which held up all the avenues till mounted detectives came up. Many strange and
• 2:59:24
  ludicrous adventures occurred on each of these expeditions. While the forces were going up
• 2:59:28
  Cobb's Neck, there was a counter force coming down from Allan's Fresh. Major
• 2:59:33
  O'Byrne started for Leonardstown with his detective force and played off Laverty as Booth and
• 2:59:41
  Hoey as Harold. These two advanced to farm houses and gave their assumed names,
• 2:59:46
  asking at the same time for assistance and shelter. They were generally avoided,
• 2:59:50
  except by one man named Claggert, who told them they might hide in
• 2:59:54
  the woods behind his house. When Claggert was arrested, however, he stated
• 3:00:00
  that he meant to hide them, only to give them up. While on
• 3:00:03
  this adventure, a man who had heard of the reward came very near shooting
• 3:00:07
  Labberty. The ruse now became hazardous, and the detectives resumed their real characters.
• 3:00:16
  I have not time to go into the detail of this long and excellent
• 3:00:18
  hunt. My letter of yesterday described how the detectives of mister Young and Marshall
• 3:00:24
  Murray examined the Negro Swan and traced Booth to the house of Sam Cox,
• 3:00:28
  the richest rebel in Charles County. There is a gap in the evidence between
• 3:00:33
  the arrival of Booth at this place and his crossing the Potomac above Swan Point
• 3:00:37
  in a stolen or purposely provided canoe. But as Coxe's house is only ten
• 3:00:43
  miles from the river, it is possible that he made the passage of the
• 3:00:46
  intermediate country undiscovered. One mills a rebel mail carrier was arrested, saw Booth
• 3:00:54
  and herald lurking along the river bank on Friday. He referred Major O'Byrne to
• 3:01:00
  the one Claggert, a rebel, as having seen them also, but Claggert
• 3:01:03
  held his tongue and went to jail. On Saturday night, Major o'byrn,
• 3:01:07
  thus assured, also crossed the Potomac with his detectives to Boone's farm, where
• 3:01:13
  the fugitives had landed. While collecting information. Here a gunboat swung up the
• 3:01:18
  stream and threatened to fire on the party. It was now night, and
• 3:01:22
  all the party warned to the ground. With long travel and want of sleep.
• 3:01:26
  Lieutenant Laverty's men went a short distance down the country and gave up,
• 3:01:30
  but Major O'Byrne, with a single man, pushed all night to King George's
• 3:01:33
  court house, and next day Sunday re embarked for Chapel's Point. Hence,
• 3:01:39
  he telegraphed his information and asked permission to pursue, promising to catch the assassins
• 3:01:45
  before they reached Port Royal. This the department refused. Colonel Baker's men were
• 3:01:50
  delegated to make the pursuit with the able Lieutenant Doherty and o'byrn, who was
• 3:01:54
  the most active and successful spirit in the case, returned to Washington and contented
• 3:02:01
  at Missus Surrat's Washington house, at the Pennsylvania Hotel, Washington, and at
• 3:02:07
  Suratsville. The Booth plot was almost entirely arranged. These three places will be
• 3:02:13
  relics of conspiracy forever. Harold said to Lieutenant Doherty, after the latter had
• 3:02:18
  dragged him from the farm. Who's that man in there? It can't be
• 3:02:22
  Booth? He told me his name was Lloyd. He further said that he
• 3:02:26
  had begged food for Booth from house to house while the latter hid in the
• 3:02:30
  woods. The Confederate Captain Willie Jett, who had given Booth a lift behind
• 3:02:35
  his saddle from Port Royal to Garrett's farm, was then courting a miss Goldman
• 3:02:39
  at Bowling Green. His traveling companions were Lieutenants Ruggles and Burbridge Payne. The
• 3:02:46
  assassin of the Sewage, was arrested by officers Sampson of the sub Treasury and
• 3:02:50
  Devaux, acting under General Alcott. The latter had besides officers marsh and Clancy,
• 3:02:56
  a stenographer. Reward for the capture of Booth will be distributed between very
• 3:03:03
  many men. The Negro Swan will get as much of it as he deserves.
• 3:03:07
  It amounts to about eighty thousand dollars, but the War Department may increase
• 3:03:11
  it at discretion. The entire rewards amount to a hundred and sixty odd thousand.
• 3:03:16
  Major o'burne should get a large part of it as well. This story,
• 3:03:22
  which I must close abruptly, deserves to be rewritten, with all its
• 3:03:26
  accessory endeavors. What I have said is in skeleton, merely and far from
• 3:03:31
  exhaustive. End of Letter six, Letter seven the Martyr Washington, May fourteenth.
• 3:03:41
  I am sitting in the President's office. He was here very lately,
• 3:03:46
  but he will not return to dispossess me of this high backed chair he filled
• 3:03:50
  so long, nor resume his daily work. At the table where I am
• 3:03:54
  writing, There are here only Major Hay and the friend who coompanies me.
• 3:04:01
  A bright faced boy runs in and out, darkly attired, so that his
• 3:04:05
  fob chain of gold is the only relief to his morning garb. This is
• 3:04:09
  little Tad, the pet of the White House. That great death with which
• 3:04:13
  the world rings has made upon him. Only the light impression which all things
• 3:04:18
  make upon childhood. He will live to be a man pointed out everywhere for
• 3:04:24
  his father's sake, and as folks look at him, the tableau of the
• 3:04:28
  murder will seem to encircle him. The room is long and high, and
• 3:04:35
  so thickly hung with maps that the color of the wall cannot be discerned.
• 3:04:39
  The President's table, at which I am seated, adjoins a window at the
• 3:04:43
  farthest corner, and to the left of my chair, as I recline in
• 3:04:46
  it, there is a large table before an empty grate, around which there
• 3:04:50
  are many chairs, where the cabinet used to assemble. The carpet is trodden
• 3:04:56
  thin, and the brilliance of its dyes is lost. The furniture is of
• 3:05:01
  the formal cabinet class, stately and semi comfortable. There are bookcases sprinkled with
• 3:05:07
  the sparse library of a country lawyer, but largely plethoric, Like the thin
• 3:05:11
  body which has departed in its coffin. They are taking away mister Lincoln's private
• 3:05:18
  effects, to deposit them wheresoever his family may abide, And the emptiness of
• 3:05:22
  the place on this sunny Sunday revives that feeling of desolation from which the land
• 3:05:28
  has scarce recovered. I rise from my seat and examine the maps. They
• 3:05:33
  are from the coast Survey and engineer departments, and exhibit all the contested grounds
• 3:05:39
  of the war. There are pencil lines upon them where some one has traced
• 3:05:43
  the rout of armies and planned the strategic circumferences of campaigns. Was it the
• 3:05:48
  dead president who so followed the march of empire and dotted the sites of shock
• 3:05:54
  and overthrow? Here is Manassas Country. Here the long reach of the Wayst.
• 3:06:00
  Shenandoah. Hear the wavy line of the James, and the sinuous peninsula.
• 3:06:05
  The wide campagna of the Gulf country sways in the Potomac breeze that filters
• 3:06:09
  in at the window, and the Mississippi climbs up the wall with blotches of
• 3:06:16
  blue and red to show where blood gushed at the bursting of deadly bombs.
• 3:06:20
  So in the half gloomy, half grand apartment roamed the tall and wrinkled figure
• 3:06:26
  whom the country had summoned from his plain home into mighty history, with the
• 3:06:31
  geography of the Republic drawn into a narrow compass, so that he might lay
• 3:06:35
  his great brown hand upon it. Everywhere and walking to and fro to and
• 3:06:41
  fro to measure the destinies of arms. He often stopped with his thoughtful eyes
• 3:06:46
  upon the carpet, to ask if his life were real, and if he
• 3:06:50
  were the arbiter of so tremendous issues, or whether it was not all a
• 3:06:56
  fever dream snatched from his sofa in the routine office of the Prairie State.
• 3:07:03
  There is but one picture on the marble mantle over the cold grate, John
• 3:07:07
  Bright, a photograph. I can well imagine how the mind of mister Lincoln
• 3:07:11
  often went afar to the face of Bright, who said so kindly things of
• 3:07:16
  him, when Europe was mocking his homely guise and provincial phraseology. To mister
• 3:07:22
  Lincoln, John Bright was the standard bearer of America and democracy in the old
• 3:07:26
  world. He thrilled over Bright's bold denunciations of peer and privilege, and stretched
• 3:07:33
  his long arm across the Atlantic to take that daring Quaker innovator by the hand.
• 3:07:39
  I see some books on the table. Perhaps they have lain there undisturbed
• 3:07:43
  since the reader's dimming eyes grew nerveless. A parliamentary manual, a Thessorus,
• 3:07:50
  and two books of humor Orpheus c. Kerr and Artemis Ward. These last
• 3:07:56
  were read by mister Lincoln in the pauses of his hard day's labor. Their
• 3:08:01
  tenure here bears out the popular verdict of his partiality for a good joke,
• 3:08:07
  And through the window from the seat of mister Lincoln icee across the grassy grounds
• 3:08:11
  of the Capital, the broken shaft of the Washington Monument, the Long Bridge,
• 3:08:16
  and the fort tipped heights of Arlington, reaching down to the shining river
• 3:08:20
  side these scenes he looked at often to catch some freshness of leaf and water,
• 3:08:26
  and often raised the sash to let the world rush in where only the
• 3:08:31
  nation abided. And hence, on that awful night he departed early to forget
• 3:08:35
  this room and its close applications in the abandon of the theater. I wonder
• 3:08:41
  if that were the least of Booth's crimes to slay this public service in the
• 3:08:46
  stolen hour of recreation he enjoyed, but seldom we worked his life out here
• 3:08:50
  and killed him when he asked a holiday. Outside of this room there is
• 3:08:54
  an office where his secretaries sat, a room more narrow but as long,
• 3:09:01
  and opposite this adjacent office, a second door directly behind mister Lincoln's chair leads
• 3:09:05
  to a private passage to his family quarters. This passage is his only monument
• 3:09:11
  in the building. He added nor subtracted nothing else. It tells a long
• 3:09:16
  story of duns and loiterers, contract hunters and seekers for commissions, garrulous parents
• 3:09:22
  on paltry errands, toadies without measure, and talkers without conscience. They pressed
• 3:09:28
  upon him through the great door opposite his window, and hat in hand came
• 3:09:33
  courtseying to his chair with an obsequious mister President. If he dared, though
• 3:09:41
  the Chief Magistrate and commander of the Army and Navy, to go out of
• 3:09:45
  the great door, these vampires leaped upon him with their Babylonian pleas and barred
• 3:09:50
  his walk to his heart's side. He could not insult them, since it
• 3:09:54
  was not in his nature, and perhaps many of them had really urgent errands.
• 3:10:00
  So he called up the carpenter and ordered a strategic route cut from his
• 3:10:03
  office to his hearth, and perhaps told of it after with much merriment.
• 3:10:09
  Here should be written the biography of his official life in the room where have
• 3:10:13
  concentrated all the wires of action, and where have preceded the resolves which vitalized
• 3:10:20
  in historic deeds. But only the great measures, however carried out, were
• 3:10:24
  conceived in this office. The little ones proceeded from other places. Here once
• 3:10:31
  came mister Stanton, saying, in his hard and positive way, mister Lincoln,
• 3:10:35
  I have found it expedient to disgrace and arrest General Stone. Stanton said
• 3:10:41
  mister Lincoln, with an emotion of pain. When you considered it necessary to
• 3:10:46
  imprison General Stone, I am glad you did not consult me about it.
• 3:10:52
  And for lack of such consultation, General Stone, I learned now lays a
• 3:10:56
  maniac in the asylum. The groundless pretext upon which he suffered the reputation of
• 3:11:01
  treason issued from the Department of War, not from this office. But as
• 3:11:07
  to his biography, it is to be written by Colonel Nicolay and Major Hay.
• 3:11:11
  They are to go to Paris together, one as attache of legation,
• 3:11:15
  the other as consul, and while there will undertake the labor. They are
• 3:11:18
  the only men who know his life well enough to exhaust it, having followed
• 3:11:22
  his official tasks as closely as they shared his social hours. Major Hay is
• 3:11:28
  a gentleman of literary force. Colonel Nicolay has a fine judgment of character and
• 3:11:33
  public measures. Together they should satisfy both curiosity and history. As I hear
• 3:11:41
  from my acquaintances here these episodes of the president's life. I recall many reminiscences
• 3:11:46
  of his ride from Springfield to Harrisburg, over much of which I passed.
• 3:11:52
  Then he left home and became an inhabitant of history. His face was solid
• 3:11:56
  and healthy, his step young, his speech and manner bold and kindly.
• 3:12:01
  I saw him at Trenton, stand in the legislature and say, in his
• 3:12:05
  conversational intonation, we may have to put the foot down firm. How should
• 3:12:11
  we have hung upon his accents? Then? Had we anticipated his virtues and
• 3:12:16
  his fate. Death is requisite to make opinion grave. We looked upon mister
• 3:12:22
  Lincoln then as an amusing sensation, and there was much guffaw as he was
• 3:12:26
  regarded by the populace. He had not passed out of partisan ownership. Little
• 3:12:33
  by little afterward he won esteem and often admiration, until the measure of his
• 3:12:37
  life was full, and the victories he had achieved made the world applaud him.
• 3:12:43
  Yet at this date the president was sadly changed. Four years of perplexity
• 3:12:48
  and devotion had wrinkled his face and stooped his shoulders, and the failing eyes
• 3:12:54
  that glared upon the play closed as his mission was completed and the world had
• 3:12:58
  been educated enough to comprehend him. The White House has been more of a
• 3:13:03
  Republican mansion under his control than for many administrations. Uncouth guests came to it
• 3:13:09
  often, typical of the simple Western civilization of which he was a graduate,
• 3:13:13
  and while no coarse altercation has ever ensued, the portal has swung wide for
• 3:13:20
  five years. A friend connected with a Washington newspaper told me that he had
• 3:13:26
  occasion to see mister Lincoln one evening and found that the latter had gone to
• 3:13:30
  bed, but he was told to sit down in the office, and directly
• 3:13:33
  the president entered. He wore only a night shirt and his long, lank
• 3:13:37
  hair suit. Limbs as he sat down inclined the guests to laughter. Mister
• 3:13:43
  Lincoln disposed of his request at once and manifested a desire to talk, so
• 3:13:48
  he reached for the cane, which my friend carried, and conversed in this
• 3:13:52
  manner. I always used a cane when I was a boy. It was
• 3:13:58
  a freak of mine. A favorite one was not a beech stick, and
• 3:14:01
  I carved the head myself. There is a mighty amount of character and sticks,
• 3:14:05
  don't you think so? You have seen these fishing poles that fit into
• 3:14:09
  a cane. Well, that was an old idea of mine. Dogwood clubs
• 3:14:13
  were favorite ones with the boys. I suppose they use em. Yet hickory
• 3:14:18
  is too heavy, and I should get it from a young sapling. Have
• 3:14:22
  you ever noticed how a stick in one's hand will change his appearance? Old
• 3:14:26
  women and witches wouldn't look so without sticks made Merylisa understands that in this way.
• 3:14:33
  My friend, who is a clerk in a newspaper office, heard the
• 3:14:37
  President talk for an hour. The undress of the man and the witness of
• 3:14:41
  his subject would be staples for merriment if we did not reflect that his greatness
• 3:14:46
  was of no conventional caste, that the playfulness of his nature and the simplicity
• 3:14:50
  of his illustration light in public business, but never arrested it. Another gentleman
• 3:14:58
  whom I know, visited the President in high dudgeon one night. He was
• 3:15:03
  a newspaper proprietor, and one of his editors had been arrested. Mister Lincoln.
• 3:15:07
  He said, I have been off electioneering for your re election, and
• 3:15:11
  in my absent you have had my editor arrested. I won't stand it,
• 3:15:16
  sir, I have fought better administrations than yours, why, John, said
• 3:15:24
  the President. I don't know much about it. I suppose your boys had
• 3:15:28
  been too enterprising. The fact is I don't interfere with the press much,
• 3:15:31
  but I suppose I am responsible. I want you to order that man's release
• 3:15:37
  to night, said the applicant. I shan't leave here till I get it.
• 3:15:41
  In quact, I am the man who should be arrested. Why don't
• 3:15:43
  you send me to Capitol Hill. The idea pleased the President exceedingly. He
• 3:15:48
  laughed the other into good humor. In fact, he said, I am
• 3:15:52
  under restraint here and glad of any pretext to release a journalist. So he
• 3:15:58
  wrote the order, and the writer got his liberty. It must not be
• 3:16:03
  inferred from this, however, that the President was a devotee to literature.
• 3:16:07
  He had no professional enthusiasm for it. The literary coterie of the White House
• 3:16:11
  got little flattery, but its members were treated as agreeable citizens, and not
• 3:16:16
  as the architects of anybody's fortune. Willis went there much for a while,
• 3:16:22
  but yielded to his old habit of gossiping about the hall paper and the teapots.
• 3:16:26
  Emerson went there once and was deferred to as if he were anything but
• 3:16:31
  a philosopher. Yet he so far grasped the character of his host as to
• 3:16:35
  indict that noble humanitarian eulogy upon him, delivered at Concord and printed in the
• 3:16:41
  world. It will not do to say definitely in this notice, how several
• 3:16:48
  occasional writers visited the White House, heard the President's views, and dissented to
• 3:16:52
  them, and afterward abused him. But these attained no remembrance nor tart reproach
• 3:16:58
  from that least retalit orlory of men. He harbored no malice, and is
• 3:17:03
  said to have often placed himself on the standpoint of Davis and Lee and accounted
• 3:17:07
  for their defection while he could not excuse it. He was a good reader
• 3:17:13
  and took all the leading New York dailies every day. His secretaries perused them
• 3:17:18
  and selected all the items which would interest the President. These were read to
• 3:17:22
  him and considered. He bought few new books, but seemed ever alive to
• 3:17:28
  works of comic value. The bane of humor in him was not boisterous in
• 3:17:31
  its manifestations, but touched the geniality of his nature, and he reproduced all
• 3:17:37
  that he absorbed to elucidate some new issue, to turn away argument by a
• 3:17:41
  lath As a jester. Mister Lincoln's tendency was caricatured by the Prince, but
• 3:17:48
  not exaggerated. He probably told as many stories as are attributed to him,
• 3:17:54
  Nor did he, as his averred, indulge in these jests. On solemn
• 3:17:58
  occasions. No man felt with such personal intensity the extent of the casualties of
• 3:18:05
  his time, and he often gravely reasoned whether he could be in any way
• 3:18:09
  responsible for the bloodshed and devastation over which it was his duty to preside.
• 3:18:15
  An acquaintance of mine, a private once went to him to plead for a
• 3:18:18
  man's life. He had never seen the man for whom he pleaded, and
• 3:18:22
  had no acquaintance with the man's family. Mister Lincoln was touched by his disinterestedness,
• 3:18:26
  and said to him, if I were anything but the President, I
• 3:18:31
  would be constantly working as you have done. Whenever a doubt of one's guilt
• 3:18:37
  lay on his mind. The man was spared by his direct interference. There
• 3:18:41
  was an entire absence in the President's character of the heroic element. He would
• 3:18:46
  do a great deed in deshabille as promptly as in full dress. He never
• 3:18:52
  aimed to be brilliant, unconsciously understanding that a great man's brilliancy is to be
• 3:18:58
  measured by the wholeness and sennthetic cast of his career, rather than by any
• 3:19:03
  fitful ebullitions. For that reason we look in vain through his messages for points.
• 3:19:09
  His point was not to turn a sentence or an epigram, but to
• 3:19:13
  win an effect, regardless of the route to it. He was commonplace in
• 3:19:18
  his talk, and Chesterfield would have had no patience with him. His dignity
• 3:19:22
  of character lay in his uprightness rather than in his formal manner. Members of
• 3:19:28
  his government often reviewed him plainly in his presence, yet he divined the true
• 3:19:33
  course while they only argued it out. His good feeling was not only personal
• 3:19:39
  but national. He had no prejudice against any race or potentate, and his
• 3:19:45
  democracy was of a practical rather than of a demonstrative nature. He was not
• 3:19:50
  Marah, but more not Paine and Jefferson, but Franklin. His domestic life
• 3:19:58
  was like a parlor of night time, lit by the equal grate of his
• 3:20:01
  genial and uniform kindness. Young Thaddy played with him upon the carpet. Robert
• 3:20:07
  came home from the war and talked to his father as to a schoolmate.
• 3:20:11
  He was to missus Lincoln as chivalrous on the last day of his life,
• 3:20:15
  as when he courted her. I have somewhere seen a picture of Enricat of
• 3:20:20
  France riding his babies on his back. That was the President, so dwelt
• 3:20:26
  the citizen who is gone, a model in character, if not in ceremony,
• 3:20:33
  for good men to come, who will take his place in the same
• 3:20:35
  White House and find their generation comparing them to the man thought worthy of assassination.
• 3:20:41
  I am glad to sit here in his chair, where he has bent
• 3:20:45
  so often, in the atmosphere of the household he purified, in the sight
• 3:20:50
  of the green grass and the blue river he hallowed by gazing upon in the
• 3:20:54
  very center of the nation, he preserved for the people. And closed the
• 3:20:58
  list of bloody deeds, of desperate fights, of swift expiations, of renowned
• 3:21:05
  obsequies of which I have written, by indicting at this table the goodness of
• 3:21:09
  his life and the eternity of his memory. End of letter seven, Letter
• 3:21:18
  eight. The Trial Washington, May twenty sixth, the most exciting trial of
• 3:21:26
  our times, has obtained a very meager commemoration in all but its literal features.
• 3:21:31
  The evidence adduced in the course of it has been too faithfully reported through
• 3:21:35
  its far fetched and monotonous irregularities. But nobody realizes extraordinary scene from which so
• 3:21:41
  many columns emanate, either by aid of the reporter's scanty descriptions or by the
• 3:21:46
  pure blind sketches of the artists. Now that the evidence is growing vapid and
• 3:21:52
  the obstinacy of the military commission has lost its course, zest we may find
• 3:21:58
  enough readers to worry, and a fuller sketch of the conspirator's prison. About
• 3:22:05
  a mile below Washington, where the high Potomac Bluffs meet the marshy border of
• 3:22:09
  the Eastern Branch, stands the United States Arsenal, a series of long,
• 3:22:13
  mathematically uninteresting brick buildings with a broad lawn behind them, open to the water,
• 3:22:20
  and level military plazas on which are piled pyramids of shell and ball,
• 3:22:26
  among acres of cannon and cannon carriages and caissons. A high wall, reaching
• 3:22:31
  circularly around these buildings, shows above it, as one looks from Washington,
• 3:22:37
  the barred windows of an older and more gloomy structure than the rest, which
• 3:22:41
  forms the city front of the group of which it is the principle. This
• 3:22:46
  is the Penitentiary, but long ago added to the Arsenal. It has been
• 3:22:50
  retransformed to a court room and jail, and in its third or uppermost story,
• 3:22:56
  the military Commission is sitting. The main road to the Arsenal is by
• 3:23:01
  a wide and vacant avenue, which abuts against a gate where automaton sentries walk.
• 3:23:07
  But the same gate can best be reached on foot by the shores of
• 3:23:11
  the Potomac, in the sight of the forts, the Shipping and Alexandria.
• 3:23:16
  The scene at the Arsenal in time of peace is commonplace enough, except that
• 3:23:20
  across the eastern branch, the towers of the Lunatic Asylum, perched upon a
• 3:23:24
  height, look down baronial ly. But this trial of murderers has made the
• 3:23:31
  spot a fair. A whole company of volunteers keeps the gate, through which
• 3:23:35
  are passing cabs, barouches, officers, ambulances, and a stream of folks
• 3:23:41
  on foot, while further along, almost a regiment crosses the drive, their
• 3:23:46
  huddles shelter tents extending entirely across the peninsula. These are playing cards on the
• 3:23:52
  ground and tossing quoits, and sleeping on their faces, while a gunboat watches
• 3:23:58
  the river front, and under a certain killer wall, a line of patrols
• 3:24:01
  ten yards apart go to and fro perpetually. It is ten o'clock and the
• 3:24:07
  court is soon to sit. Its members ride down in superb ambulances and bring
• 3:24:13
  their friends along to show them the majesty of justice. A perfect park of
• 3:24:18
  carriages stands by the door to the left, and from these dismount major general's
• 3:24:22
  wives in rustling silks, daughters of congressmen, attired like the lilies of the
• 3:24:28
  milliner, little girls who hope to be young ladies, and have come with
• 3:24:33
  pa to look at the assassins. Even brides are here in the fresh blush
• 3:24:37
  of their nuptials, and they consider the late spectacle of the review as good
• 3:24:43
  as lost if the court scene be not added to it. These tender creatures
• 3:24:48
  have a weakness for the ring of manacles, the sight of folks to be
• 3:24:52
  suspended in the air, the face of a woman confederate in blood. They
• 3:24:58
  chat with their polite guides, many of whom are gallant captains, and go
• 3:25:03
  one after another up the little flight of steps which leads to the room of
• 3:25:07
  the Officer of the day. He passes them if he pleases, up the
• 3:25:11
  crooked stairways, and when they have climbed three of these, they enter a
• 3:25:16
  sort of garret room oblong and plastered white, and about as large as an
• 3:25:20
  ordinary town house parlor. Four doors open into it that by which we have
• 3:25:26
  entered, two from the left, where the witnesses wait, and one at
• 3:25:30
  the end near the left far corner, which is the outlet from the cells.
• 3:25:35
  A railing close up to the stairway door gives a little space in the
• 3:25:39
  foreground for witnesses. Two tables transverse to this rail are for the commission and
• 3:25:45
  the press, the first named being to the right. Between these are a
• 3:25:50
  raised platform and pivot arm chair for the witness Below are the sworn phonographers and
• 3:25:56
  the council for the accused. And then another rail like that separating the crowd
• 3:26:01
  from the court, holds behind it the accused and their guards. These are
• 3:26:07
  they who are living not by years nor by weeks, but by breaths.
• 3:26:11
  They are motley enough for the most part, sitting along a long bench with
• 3:26:16
  their backs against the wall, ill shaved, haggard, anxious, and the
• 3:26:20
  dungeon door at their left opens now and then to show behind it a moving
• 3:26:24
  bayonet. There are women within the court, proper edging upon the reporters,
• 3:26:31
  introduced there by a fussy usher, and through four windows filters the imperfect daylight,
• 3:26:37
  making all things distinguishable yet shadowy. The coud oile of this small and
• 3:26:43
  crowded scene as lively as a popular funeral. There is the witness with raised
• 3:26:48
  hand pointing toward heaven and looking at Judge Holt, the gilt stars, bars
• 3:26:54
  and orange colored sashes of the commission, the women's brilliant silks and bonnet,
• 3:27:00
  the crowding spectators with their brains in their eyes, the blue coats of the
• 3:27:03
  guards, the working scribes, and last of all the line of culprits,
• 3:27:09
  whose suspected guilt has made them worthy of all illustration. Between the angle of
• 3:27:15
  the wall and the studded door, under the heavy bar of dressed stone which
• 3:27:18
  marks above the thickness of the jail, sits all alone a woman's figure clothed
• 3:27:26
  in solemn black. Her shadowy skirt hides her feet so that we cannot see
• 3:27:31
  whether they are riveted. Her sleeves of sable sweep down to her wrist,
• 3:27:35
  and dark gloves cover the plumpness of her hand, while a palmly fan nods
• 3:27:41
  to and fro to assist the obscurity of her veil of crape descending from her
• 3:27:46
  widow's bonnet. A solitary woman, beginning the line of coarse indicted men,
• 3:27:50
  shrinking beneath the scornful eyes of her sex, and the as bold survey of
• 3:27:56
  men more pitiful, may well excite, despite her guilt a moment of sympathy.
• 3:28:03
  Let men remember that she is the mother of a son who has fled
• 3:28:07
  to save his forfeit life by deserting her to shame and perhaps to death.
• 3:28:13
  Let women who will not mention her in mercy learn from her end in all
• 3:28:18
  succeeding wars, to make patriotism of their household duties, and not in sight
• 3:28:22
  to blood. Missus Serat is a graduate of that seminary which spits in soldier's
• 3:28:28
  faces, denounces brave generals upon the rostrum, and cries out for an interminable
• 3:28:35
  scaffold, when all the bells are ringing peace. How far her wicked love
• 3:28:41
  influenced her to participation in the murder rests in her own breast, and up
• 3:28:45
  to this time she has not differed from mothers at large to twist her own
• 3:28:50
  bowstring rather than build his gibbet. Beneath her shadowy bonnet over her fan tip,
• 3:28:56
  we see two large sad eyes rising and falling. And now and then,
• 3:29:01
  when the fan sways to and fro, the hair just turning gray with
• 3:29:05
  trouble, and the round face growing wan and seamed with terrible reflection, are
• 3:29:11
  seen a moment crouching low, as if she would wish to grovel upon the
• 3:29:16
  floor and bury her forehead in her hands. Yet sometimes across missus Surat's face
• 3:29:22
  a stealthiness creeps, a sort of furtive feline flashing of the eye, like
• 3:29:26
  that of one which means to leap sideways. At these times her face seems
• 3:29:31
  to grow hard and colorless, as if the tiger expression which Pradier caught upon
• 3:29:37
  the face of Brinvilliers and fastened into a mask had been repeated here. Not
• 3:29:43
  to grow mawkish. While we must be kind, let us not forget that
• 3:29:46
  this woman is an old plotter. If she did not devise the assassination,
• 3:29:52
  she was privy to it long she was an agent of contraband males, a
• 3:29:56
  bold, crafty, assured revel perhaps a spy. And in the event of
• 3:30:01
  her condemnation, let those who would plead for her spend half their pity upon
• 3:30:07
  that victim whose heart was like a woman's and whose hand was merciful as a
• 3:30:11
  mother's. Before the door sits an officer uncovered, who does not seem to
• 3:30:18
  labor under any particular fear, chiefly because the captives are ironed to immoveability,
• 3:30:24
  and he stares and smiles alternately, as if he were somewhat amiable and extremely
• 3:30:30
  bored. Next to the officer is a shabby looking boy whose seat is by
• 3:30:37
  the right jamb of the jail door. Of all boys just old enough to
• 3:30:41
  feel their oats, this boy is the most commonplace. His parents would be
• 3:30:45
  likely to have no sanguine hopes for his reaching the presidency. For his head
• 3:30:48
  indicates latent dementia, and a slice or two from it would recommend him,
• 3:30:54
  without examination, to the school for the feeble minded, better dressed and washed,
• 3:30:58
  and show he might make a tolerable adornment to a hotel door, or
• 3:31:03
  even reach the dignity of a bar keeper or an usher at a theater,
• 3:31:09
  But that this fellow should occupy a leaf in history and be confounded with a
• 3:31:13
  tragedy. Entering into the literature of the world reverses manifest destiny and leaves neither
• 3:31:20
  phrenology nor physiognomy a place to stand upon. Come up, gall spurt time
• 3:31:28
  and lavater and remark his sallow face attenuated by base excesses. Do you know
• 3:31:35
  any forehead so broad which means so little? The oyster could teach this man
• 3:31:41
  philosophy. His chin is sharp, his eyes are blank blue, His short
• 3:31:46
  black hair curls over his ears, and his beard is of a prickly black
• 3:31:50
  with a mustache, which does not help his general contemptibleness. A dirty grayish
• 3:31:56
  shirt without a linen collar is seen between the lplls of the greasy and dusty
• 3:32:01
  cloth coat, sloping at the shoulders, and under his worn brown trousers.
• 3:32:07
  The manacle of iron makes an ugly garter to his carpet slipper. This is
• 3:32:11
  David Harold, who shared the wild knight ride of booth and barely escaped that
• 3:32:16
  outlaw's death in the burning barn. He stoops to the rail of the dock
• 3:32:20
  now and then to chat with his attorney, and a sort of blank anxiety
• 3:32:24
  which he wears as his head turns here and there, shifts to a frolicking
• 3:32:28
  smile. But a woman of unusual attractions enters the court, and Harold is
• 3:32:33
  much more interested in her than in his acquittal. Great Caesar's dust, which
• 3:32:41
  stopped the mot hole, has in this playboy an inverse parallel. He was
• 3:32:46
  at best ostler to a murderer, and failed in that. His chief concern
• 3:32:50
  at present is to have somebody to talk to, and he thinks upon the
• 3:32:54
  whole that if an assassination is productive of so little fun, he will have
• 3:32:58
  nothing to do with another one. That Harold had slipped into history gives us
• 3:33:03
  as much surprise as that he has yet to suffer death gives us almost contempt
• 3:33:07
  for the scaffold. But if the scaffold must wait for only wise men to
• 3:33:13
  get upon it, it must rot. Your wise man does no murder in
• 3:33:18
  the first place, and if so in the second, he dodges the penalty.
• 3:33:22
  In this world, Harold idiocy is oftener punished than guilt that Booth should
• 3:33:30
  have used Harold is very naturally accounted for. Actors live only to be admired.
• 3:33:35
  Vanity rises to its climax in them. Booth preferred this sparrow to sing
• 3:33:39
  him peons, rather than live by an eagle and be screamed at. Now
• 3:33:43
  and then, on the right hand side of Harold sits a soldier in blue,
• 3:33:48
  who is evidently thinking about a game of quoits with his comrades in the
• 3:33:52
  jail yard. He wonders why lawyers are so very dry, and is surprised
• 3:33:58
  to find a trial for murder as tedious as a thanksgiving sermon. But on
• 3:34:03
  the soldier's other hand is a figure which makes the center and cynosure of this
• 3:34:09
  thrilling scene taller by a whole head than either his companions or the sentry's pain.
• 3:34:16
  The assassin sits erect and flings his barbarian eye to and fro, radiating
• 3:34:22
  the tremendous energy of his colossal physique. He is the only man worthy to
• 3:34:28
  have murdered mister Seward. When against the delicate organization, the fine, subtle,
• 3:34:33
  nervous mind of the Secretary of State, this giant knife in hand precipitated
• 3:34:37
  himself. Two forms of civilization met as distinctly as when the savage Gauls invaded
• 3:34:45
  the Roman Senate. Lawlessness and intelligence. The savage and the statesman, body
• 3:34:52
  and mind fought together upon mister Seward's bed. The mystery attending Paine's home and
• 3:34:58
  parentage still exist to make him more incomprehensible. Out of the vague dim ULTIMATEULYI,
• 3:35:05
  like those asiatic hordes which came from nowhere and shivered civilization, Pain suddenly
• 3:35:11
  appeared and fought his way to the sanctum sanctorum of law. I think his
• 3:35:16
  part in the assassination more remarkable than Booths. The latter's crime was shrewdly plotted,
• 3:35:22
  as by one measuring intelligence with the whole government. But Pain did not
• 3:35:28
  think. He only struck with this man's face before me. As I write,
• 3:35:33
  I am reminded of some Maori chief waging war from the lust of blood
• 3:35:37
  or the pride of local dominion. His complexion is bloodless, yet so healthy
• 3:35:43
  that a passing observer would afterwards speak of it as ruddy. His face is
• 3:35:48
  broad, with a character nose, sensual lips, and with very high cheek
• 3:35:52
  bones. The cranium is full and the brow speaking, while the head runs
• 3:35:56
  back to an abnormal apex at the tip of the cerebellum. His straight,
• 3:36:03
  lustreless black hair, duly parted, is at the summit, so disturbed that
• 3:36:07
  tufts of it rise up like red jackets or to cumbses. But the head
• 3:36:11
  is kept well up and rests upon a wonderfully broad throat, muscular as one's
• 3:36:16
  thigh, and without any trace as he sits of the protuberance called Adam's apple
• 3:36:22
  withal. The eye is the man Pain's power. It is dark and speechless,
• 3:36:28
  and rolls here and there, like that of a beast in a cage,
• 3:36:31
  which strives in vain to understand the language of its captors. It seems
• 3:36:35
  to say, if anything, that it has no sympathy with anybody approximate,
• 3:36:41
  and has submitted, like a lion, bound to the logic of conviction and
• 3:36:45
  of chains. Paine looks at none of his fellow prisoners. Assassins caught seldom
• 3:36:50
  care to recognize each other, For while there is faithfulness among thieves, there
• 3:36:56
  is none among murderers. His great white eye ball never roves to anybody's in
• 3:37:01
  the dock, nor theirs to his. He has confessed his crime, and
• 3:37:05
  they know it, so they have no mutual hope. They listen to the
• 3:37:09
  evidence because it concerns them. He looks at it only because it cannot save
• 3:37:15
  him. He is entirely beardless, yet in his boyish chin, more of
• 3:37:18
  a man physically than the rest combined. While I watch this man, I
• 3:37:24
  am constantly repeating to myself that Standza of Bryant's. Upon the market place.
• 3:37:31
  He stood, a man of giant frame amid the gathering multitude that shrank to
• 3:37:37
  hear his name, all proud of step and firm of limb, his dark
• 3:37:43
  eye on the ground, And suddenly they gazed on him as on a lion.
• 3:37:48
  Bound. His dress, which we scarcely notice in the grander contrast of
• 3:37:54
  his pose and stature, is an old shirt of woolen blue with a white
• 3:37:58
  nap at the button holes, and upon his knees of black cloth. He
• 3:38:01
  twirls, as if for relaxation, between his powerful manacles, a soiled white
• 3:38:07
  handkerchief. If from his mother we conjecture a gift to a bloodhound from his
• 3:38:11
  dam. His heavy handcuffs make his broad shoulders more narrow. Yet we can
• 3:38:18
  see by the outline of the sleeves, what girth the muscles has, and
• 3:38:22
  the hand at the end of his long and bony arm is wide and huge,
• 3:38:26
  as if he could wield a clay more as well as a dirk.
• 3:38:31
  He also wears carpet slippers, but his ankles are clogged with so heavy irons
• 3:38:37
  that two men must carry them when he enters or leaves the dock. For
• 3:38:41
  this man there can be no sentiment, no more than for a ball.
• 3:38:46
  The flesh on his face is hard, as if cast rather than generated.
• 3:38:50
  And while we see how he towers above the entire court, we watch him
• 3:38:54
  in wonder, as if he were some maniac denizen of his zone, where
• 3:38:58
  men without mines grow to the stature and power of fiends. The face of
• 3:39:05
  Pain is not of the traditional Southern peculiarities. He resembles rather a Pennsylvania mountaineer
• 3:39:11
  than a Kentucky rustic. Three weeks ago I gave in an account of the
• 3:39:16
  conspiracy, which many gainsaid, but which the trial has fully confirmed, a
• 3:39:22
  sketch of this man, to which I still addhere He was furnished to Booth
• 3:39:26
  and John Surat from Canada, sent upon special service, with his life in
• 3:39:31
  his hands, and effaced the murder he was to commit, like any prize
• 3:39:35
  fighter. I pity Beale, who died intelligently for a wretched essay against civilians,
• 3:39:41
  that his biography and fate must be matched by this savages. Next to
• 3:39:46
  pain and crouching under him like a frog under a rock, is an inconsiderable
• 3:39:50
  soldier who choose his cud and would cheerfully hang his protegee for the sake of
• 3:39:56
  being rid of him. My sympathies are entire enlisted for this soldier. He
• 3:40:01
  has neither the joy of being acquitted nor the excitement of being tried. He
• 3:40:07
  is quite a sizeable man by himself, but pain overhangs him, and the
• 3:40:11
  dulness of the trial quite stultifies him. The few points of law which are
• 3:40:16
  admitted here are not so evident to this soldier as the point of his bayonet.
• 3:40:20
  I see what ails him. He wants to swear. A beam running
• 3:40:26
  overhead divides the court lengthwise in half, and as the prisoners sit at the
• 3:40:31
  end of the court, the German Atsiot or Adzerota has a place just beneath
• 3:40:37
  the beam. This is very ominous for Atzerot. The filthiness of this man
• 3:40:41
  denies him sympathy. He is a disgusting little groveler of dry sandy hair.
• 3:40:48
  Oval head ears set so close to the chin that one would think his sense
• 3:40:52
  of hearing limited to his jaws, and a complexion so yellow that the uncropped
• 3:40:58
  brownness of his beard does not materially darken it. He wears a grayish coat,
• 3:41:03
  low grimy shirt, and the usual carpet slippers of threadbare red over his
• 3:41:09
  shifting and shiftless feet. His head is bent forward and seems to be anxiously
• 3:41:13
  trying to catch the tenor of the trial. Many persons outside of the court
• 3:41:18
  Atserat are equally puzzled from as much examination of this man as his insignificance permits.
• 3:41:26
  I should call him a gabby fellow, loud of resolution, ignoble of
• 3:41:31
  effort over his logger. No man would be braver. His face is familiar
• 3:41:37
  to me from a review of those detective cabinets usually called rogue's galleries, as
• 3:41:41
  a sneak, thief or bagman. I should convict him by his face.
• 3:41:46
  The same indictment would make me acquit him instantly of assassination. In this estimate,
• 3:41:52
  I rely upon evidence as well as of all appearance, Atsorats swaggered about
• 3:41:56
  Kirkwood's hotel asking for the Vice president's room pain or both would have done the
• 3:42:01
  murder silently. Nobody pities a dirty man. The same arts of dress and
• 3:42:09
  cleanliness which please ladies influence juries. Next to Atzerots, it's a soldier,
• 3:42:16
  a very jolly and smooth faced soldier, who, at one time hears a
• 3:42:20
  witness say something laughable. The soldier immediately grins to the farthest point of his
• 3:42:24
  scalp. But he is chagrined to find that the joke is too trivial to
• 3:42:28
  admit of a laugh of duration. Very few jokes before the present court do
• 3:42:35
  so. But this soldier, being of long charity and excellent patience, awaits
• 3:42:39
  the next joke like a veteran under orders, and reposes his chin upon the
• 3:42:43
  dock, as if aware that between jokes there was ample time for a nap.
• 3:42:50
  The next prisoner to the right is O'Laughlin. He is a small man,
• 3:42:54
  about twenty eight years of age, attired in a fine soiled coat,
• 3:43:00
  but without white linen upon either his bosom or neck, and handcuffs. Rests
• 3:43:05
  hugely upon his mediocrity. His mustache eyebrows and hair are regular and very black.
• 3:43:11
  He does not look unlike Booth, though he seems to have little bodily
• 3:43:16
  power, and he is very anxious, as if more earnest than any of
• 3:43:20
  the rest, to have a fair lease upon life. His countenance is not
• 3:43:24
  prepossessing, though he might be considered passively good looking. In a mixed company.
• 3:43:31
  Between O'Laughlin and the next prisoner, Spangler sits a soldier in ultramarine,
• 3:43:37
  a discontented soldier, a moody, dissatisfied, and arbitrary soldier. His definition
• 3:43:43
  of military justice is like the boy's answer at school to the familiar question about
• 3:43:48
  the Constitution of the United States, What rights do accuse persons enjoy? The
• 3:43:56
  boy rode out very carefully. This answer death by hanging. The boy would
• 3:44:01
  have been correct had the question applied to accused persons before a court martial.
• 3:44:07
  Spangler, the scene shifter and stage carpenter, has the face and bearing of
• 3:44:11
  a day laborer. His blue woolen shirt does not confuse him, as he
• 3:44:16
  is used to it. He has an oldish face, wrinkled by fearful anticipations,
• 3:44:22
  and his hair is thin. He is awkwardly built and watches the trial
• 3:44:26
  earnestly, as if striving to catch between the links of evidence vistas of a
• 3:44:30
  life insured. This man has a simple and pleading face, and there is
• 3:44:35
  something genial in his great, incoherent countenance. He is said to have cleared
• 3:44:39
  the stage for Booth's escape, but this is indifferently testified too. He had
• 3:44:45
  often been asked by Booth to take a drink at the nearest bar. Persons
• 3:44:50
  who drink assure me that the greatest mark of confidence which a great man can
• 3:44:54
  show a lesser one is to make that tender. This therefore explained booth power
• 3:45:00
  over Spangler. Spangler is the first scene shifter who may become a dramatist PERSONAI.
• 3:45:09
  A soldier sits between Spangler and doctor Mud. The soldier would like Spangler
• 3:45:13
  to get up and go away, so that he could have as much of
• 3:45:16
  the bench as he might sleep upon. This particular soldier, I may be
• 3:45:20
  qualified to say, would sleep upon his post. Doctor Mud has a new
• 3:45:26
  England and not a marilyn face. He compares to those on his left as
• 3:45:31
  hyperion to a squatter. His high oval head is bald, very far up,
• 3:45:37
  but not benevolently so, and it is covered with light red hair,
• 3:45:41
  so thin as to contrast indifferently with the denseness of his beard and goat tea.
• 3:45:46
  His nose would be insignificant but for its sharpness, and at the nostrils
• 3:45:52
  it is swelling and high spirited. The eyes impinge upon his brows, and
• 3:45:56
  they are shining and rather dark, while the brows and cells are so scantily
• 3:46:01
  clothed with hair that they seem quite naked. Mud is neatly dressed in a
• 3:46:07
  green grass duster and white bosom and collar. If he had no other advantages
• 3:46:11
  over his associates, these last would give it to him. He keeps his
• 3:46:16
  feet upon the rail before him in true Republican style, and rolls a morsel
• 3:46:20
  of tobacco under his tongue. The military commission works as if it were delegated
• 3:46:26
  not to try, but to convict, and Doctor Mud, if he be
• 3:46:31
  innocent, is in only less danger than if he were guilty. He has
• 3:46:35
  a sort of home bred intelligence in his face, and socially is as far
• 3:46:39
  above his fellows as Goliah of Gath above the rest of the Philistines. On
• 3:46:46
  the right of doctor Mudd sits a soldier who is striving to look through his
• 3:46:50
  legs at the judge advocate, as if taking a sort of secret aim at
• 3:46:54
  that person with the intent to fetch him down, because he makes the trial
• 3:46:58
  so very dry and the soldier so very thirsty. The last man who sits
• 3:47:05
  on the extreme right of the prisoners is mister Sam Arnold. He is perhaps
• 3:47:09
  the best looking of the prisoners, and the least implicated. He has a
• 3:47:15
  solid, pleasant face, has been a rebel soldier, foolishly committed himself to
• 3:47:20
  Booth with perhaps no intention to do a crime, recanted in pen ending,
• 3:47:24
  and was made a national character. Had he recanted by word of mouth,
• 3:47:28
  he might have saved himself unpleasant dreams. This shows everybody the absurdity of writing
• 3:47:35
  what they can so easily say. The best thing Arnold ever wrote was his
• 3:47:39
  letter to Booth refusing to engage in murder. Yet this recantation is more in
• 3:47:45
  evidence against him than than his original purpose. Arnold looks out of the window
• 3:47:50
  and feels easy. The reporters who are present are generally young fellows, practical
• 3:47:56
  and ardent, like Woods of Boston, Colburn of the World, and Major
• 3:48:01
  Poor, who has been the chronicler of such scenes for twenty years. Ben
• 3:48:05
  Pittman, one of the authors of phonetic writing, is among the official reporters
• 3:48:11
  and the murphys who could report the lightning if it could talk, or slashing
• 3:48:15
  down history as it passes in at their ears and runs out at their fingers
• 3:48:18
  ends. The counsel for the accused strike me as being commonplace lawyers, they
• 3:48:26
  either have no chance or no pluck to assert the dignity of their profession.
• 3:48:30
  Reverdy Johnson is not here. The first day disgusted him as he is a
• 3:48:35
  practitioner of law. Yet the best word of the trial has been his,
• 3:48:41
  I, gentlemen, am a member of that body of legislators which creates court
• 3:48:46
  martials and major generals. The Commission has collectively an imposing appearance. The face
• 3:48:54
  of Judge Holt is swarthy. He questions with slow utterance, holding the witness
• 3:48:58
  in cold measuring eye. Hunter, who sits at the opposite end of the
• 3:49:03
  table, shuts his eyes now and then either to sleep or think, or
• 3:49:09
  both. And the other generals take a note or two and watch for occasions
• 3:49:13
  to distinguish themselves. Excepting Judge Holt, the court has shown as little ability
• 3:49:18
  as could be expected from soldiers placed in unenviable publicity, and upon a duty
• 3:49:24
  for which they are disqualified both by education and acumen. Witnessed the lack of
• 3:49:31
  dignity and Hunter, who opened the court by a coarse allusion to Humbug's chivalry
• 3:49:37
  of lew Wallace, whose heat and intolerance were appropriately urged in the most exceptional
• 3:49:41
  English, of how whose tirade against the rebel General Johnson was feeble as it
• 3:49:48
  was ungenerous. This court was needed to show us at least the petty tyranny
• 3:49:54
  of martial lawn, the pettiness of martial jurists. The Council for the Defense
• 3:49:58
  of just enough the show to make the unfairness of the trial partake of hypocrisy,
• 3:50:03
  and the wideness of the subjects discussed makes one imagine that the object of
• 3:50:07
  the Commission is to write a cyclopedia, and not to hang or a quit
• 3:50:13
  six or eight miserable wretches. End of Letter eight, Letter nine, the
• 3:50:22
  Executions, Washington, Friday, July seven. The trial is over. Four
• 3:50:28
  of the conspirators have paid with their lives the penalty of the Great conspiracy.
• 3:50:33
  The rest go to jail, and, with one exception for the remainder of
• 3:50:35
  their lives, whatever our individual theories may be the great crime is ended,
• 3:50:41
  and this is the crowning scene. It was a long and dusty avenue along
• 3:50:48
  which rambled soldiers in bluishly white coats, cattle with their tongues out straying from
• 3:50:52
  the herd, and a few negroes making for their cabins, which dotted the
• 3:50:56
  fiery and vacant lots of the suburbs. At the foot of this avenue,
• 3:51:01
  where a lukewarm river holds between its dividing arms a dreary edifice of brick.
• 3:51:07
  The way was filled with collected cabs and elbowing people abutting against a circle of
• 3:51:13
  sentinels who kept the arsenal gate. The low, flat, dust white fields
• 3:51:18
  to the far left were also lined with patrols and soldiers lying on the ground
• 3:51:22
  in squads beside their stacked muskets. Within these, a second blue and monotonous
• 3:51:28
  line extended the drive from the arsenal gate to the Arsenal's high and steel spiked
• 3:51:33
  wall was beset by companies of exacting sabermen, and all the river bank to
• 3:51:39
  the right was edged with blue and bayonets. This exhibition of war was the
• 3:51:45
  prelude to a very ghastly but very popular episode an execution. Three men and
• 3:51:52
  a woman were to be led out in shackles and hung to a beam.
• 3:51:56
  They had conspired to take life. They had thrilled the world with the partial
• 3:52:00
  consummation of their plot. They were to reach the last eminence of assassins on
• 3:52:05
  this parched and oppressive noon by swinging in pinioned arms and muffled faces in the
• 3:52:11
  presence of a thousand people. The bayonets at the gate were lifted as I
• 3:52:16
  produced my pass. It was the last permission granted. In giving it away,
• 3:52:20
  the General seemed relieved, for he had been sorely troubled by applications.
• 3:52:26
  Everybody who had visited Washington to seek for an office sought to see this expiation.
• 3:52:31
  Also, the officer at the gate looked at my pass suspiciously. I
• 3:52:35
  don't believe that all these papers have been genuine, he said, Is an
• 3:52:41
  execution, then, so great a warning to evil doers that men will commit
• 3:52:45
  forgery. To see it, I entered the large grassy yard, surrounded by
• 3:52:50
  an exceedingly high wall. On the top of this wall, soldiers with muskets
• 3:52:54
  in their hands were thickly planted. The yard below was broken by irregular buildings
• 3:52:58
  of bread. I climbed by a flight of rickety outside stairs to the central
• 3:53:03
  building, where many officers were seated at the windows and looked awhile at the
• 3:53:09
  strange scene. On the grassy plaza. On the left, the long,
• 3:53:13
  barred, impregnable penitentiary rose. The shady spots beneath it were occupied by huddling
• 3:53:20
  spectators. Soldiers were filling their canteens at the pump. A face or two
• 3:53:26
  looked out from the barred jail. There were many umbrellas hoisted on the ground
• 3:53:30
  to shelter civilians. Beneath them. Squads of officers and citizens lay along the
• 3:53:35
  narrow shadow of the walls. The north side of the yard was enclosed on
• 3:53:39
  three sides by columns of soldiers drawn up in regular order, the side next
• 3:53:45
  to the penitentiary being short to admit of ingress to the prisoner's door, but
• 3:53:50
  the opposite column reached entirely up to the north wall. Within this enclosed area,
• 3:53:56
  a structure to be inhabited by neither the living nor the dead, was
• 3:54:00
  fast approaching completion. It stood gaunt, lofty, long saws and hammers made
• 3:54:07
  dolorous music on it. Men in their shirt sleeves were measuring it and directing
• 3:54:11
  its construction in a business way. Now and then some one would ascend its
• 3:54:16
  airy stare to test its firmness. Others crawled beneath to wedge its slim supports
• 3:54:22
  or carry away the falling debris. Toward this skeleton edifice, all looked with
• 3:54:26
  a strange nervousness. It was the thought and speculation of the gravest and the
• 3:54:33
  gayest. It was the gallows. A beam reached horizontally in the air twenty
• 3:54:39
  feet from the ground. Four awkward ropes at irregular intervals dangled from it,
• 3:54:43
  each noosed at the end. It was upheld by three props, one in
• 3:54:48
  the center and one at each end. These props came all the way to
• 3:54:52
  the ground, where they were mortised in heavy bars. Midway of them,
• 3:54:56
  a floor was laid twenty by twelve feet, held in it position on the
• 3:55:00
  farther side by shorter props, of which there were many, and reached by
• 3:55:05
  fifteen creaking steps railed on either side. But this floor had no supports on
• 3:55:11
  the side nearest the eye, except two temporary rods at the foot of which
• 3:55:16
  two inclined beams pointed menacingly held in poise by ropes from the gallows floor,
• 3:55:22
  and this floor was presently discovered to be a cheat, a trap, a
• 3:55:26
  pitfall. Two hinges only held it to its firmer half. These were to
• 3:55:33
  give way at the fatal moment and leave only the shallow and unreliable air for
• 3:55:37
  the bound and smothering to tread upon. The traps were two sustained by two
• 3:55:43
  different props. The nooses were on each side of the central support. Was
• 3:55:48
  this all not all close by the foot of the gallows. Four wooden boxes
• 3:55:54
  were piled upon each other at the edge of four newly excavated pits, the
• 3:55:58
  fresh earth of which was already dried in brittle in the burning noon. Here
• 3:56:05
  were to be interred the broken carcasses. When the gallows had let go its
• 3:56:09
  throttle. They were so placed, as the victims should emerge from the jail
• 3:56:13
  door, they would be seen near the stair, directly in the line of
• 3:56:18
  march, and not far from these, in silence and darkness beneath the prison,
• 3:56:24
  where they had lain so long and so forebodingly. The body of John
• 3:56:28
  Wilkes's booth, sealed up in the brick floor, had long been moldering.
• 3:56:35
  If the dead can hear, He had listened many a time to the rattle
• 3:56:39
  of their manacles upon the stairs, to the drowsy hum of the trial,
• 3:56:43
  and the buzz of the garrulous spectators, to the moaning or the gibing,
• 3:56:48
  or the preying in the bolted cells, where those whom kindred Fate had given
• 3:56:52
  a little lease upon life lay waiting for the terrible pronouncement. It was a
• 3:56:58
  long waiting, and the roof of a high house outside the walls was seen
• 3:57:03
  to be densely packed with people. Others kept arriving moment by moment. Soldiers
• 3:57:09
  were wondering when the swinging would begin, and officers arguing that the four folks
• 3:57:13
  deserved it, damned them. Gentlemen of experience were telling over the number of
• 3:57:18
  such expiations they had witnessed. Analytic people were comparing the various modes of shooting,
• 3:57:24
  garroting, and guillotining. Cigars were sending up spirals of soothing smoke.
• 3:57:31
  There was a good deal of covert fear that a reprieve might be granted.
• 3:57:37
  Inquiries were many and ingenuous for whisky, and one or two were so deeply
• 3:57:43
  expectant that they fell asleep. How much more those four dying, hoping,
• 3:57:50
  cringing, dreaming felons were drudged their little gasp of life. It was to
• 3:57:56
  be a scene, not a postponement or a prolongation. Who was to be
• 3:58:01
  the executioner? Why had not the renowned and artistic Isaacs been sent for from
• 3:58:07
  New York? Would they probably die game or grow weak need in the last
• 3:58:13
  extremity. Ah, the gallows workmen have completed the job. Now then we
• 3:58:18
  should have it. Still there was delay. The sun peeped into the new
• 3:58:24
  made graves and made blistering hot the gallows floor. The old pump made its
• 3:58:28
  familiar music to the cool plash of blessed water. The grass withered in the
• 3:58:35
  fervid heat. The bronzed faces of the soldiers ran lumps of sweat. The
• 3:58:39
  file upon the jail walls looked down into the wide yard yawningly. No wind
• 3:58:46
  fluttered. The two battle standards condemned to unfold their trophies upon this coming profanation
• 3:58:52
  not yet arrived. Why the extent of grace had almost been attained, the
• 3:58:58
  sentence gave them only till two o'clock. Why are they so dilatory in wishing
• 3:59:03
  to be hanged. Suddenly the wicket opens. The troops spring to their feet
• 3:59:09
  and stand at order. Arms. The flags go up. The low order
• 3:59:11
  passes from company to company. The spectators huddle a little nearer to the scaffold.
• 3:59:16
  All the writers for the press produced their pencils and note books. First
• 3:59:22
  came a woman pinioned, a middle aged woman dressed in black, bonneted and
• 3:59:26
  veiled, walking between two bareheaded priests. One of these held against his breast
• 3:59:33
  a crucifix of jet, and in the folds of his blue fringed sash,
• 3:59:37
  he carried an open breviary while both of them muttered the service for the dead.
• 3:59:43
  Four soldiers with musketed shoulder followed, and a captain led the way to
• 3:59:46
  the gallows. The second party escorted a small and shambling German, whose head
• 3:59:52
  had a long white cap upon it, rendering more filthy his dull complexion,
• 3:59:58
  and upon whose feet the chains banked as he slowly advanced, preceded by two
• 4:00:03
  officers, flanked by a Lutheran clergyman, and followed as his predecessor by an
• 4:00:07
  armed squad. The third preacher and party clustered about a shabby boy whose limbs
• 4:00:15
  tottered as he progressed. The fourth walked in the shadow of a straight,
• 4:00:20
  high stature, whose tawny hair and large blue eyes were suggestive rather of the
• 4:00:24
  barbarians striding in his conqueror's triumph than the assassin going to the gallows. All
• 4:00:31
  these captives, priests, guards and officers, nearly twenty in all, climbed
• 4:00:37
  slowly and solemnly the narrow steps, and upon four arm chairs stretching across the
• 4:00:43
  stage. In the rear of the traps, the condemned were seated, with
• 4:00:46
  their spiritual attendants behind them. The findings and warrants were immediately read to the
• 4:00:52
  prisoners by General Hartroft in a quiet and respectful tone, and aid holding an
• 4:00:58
  umbrella over him time, these having been already published, and being besides very
• 4:01:03
  uninteresting to anybody. But the prisoners were paid little heed to all the spectators
• 4:01:09
  interesting themselves in the prisoners. There was a fortuitous delicacy in this distribution.
• 4:01:16
  The woman being placed farthest from the social and physical dirtiness of atsorat and nearest
• 4:01:20
  the unblanched and manly physiognomy of pain, she was not so pale that the
• 4:01:26
  clearness of her complexion could not be seen, and the brightness of the sun
• 4:01:30
  made her veil quite transparent. Her eyes were seen to be of a soft
• 4:01:35
  gray. Her brown hair lay smoothly upon a full, square forehead. The
• 4:01:39
  contour of her face was calmly, but her teeth had the imperfectness of those
• 4:01:45
  of most southern women, being few and irregular. Until the lips were opened,
• 4:01:50
  she did not reveal them. Her figure was not quite full enough to
• 4:01:54
  be denominated booksam, yet had all the promise of venerable old age, had
• 4:01:58
  nature had been permitted its due course. She was of medium height and modest
• 4:02:05
  as what woman would not be under such searching survey. At first, she
• 4:02:09
  was very feeble, and leaned her head upon alternate sides of her arm chair
• 4:02:13
  in nervous spasms. But now and then, when a sort of wail just
• 4:02:18
  issued from her lips, the priest placed before her the crucifix to lull her
• 4:02:22
  fearful spirit. All the while the good fathers Wigot and Walter murmured their low,
• 4:02:30
  tender cadences. And now and then the woman's face lost its deadly fear
• 4:02:33
  and took a bold, cognizable survey of the spectators. She wore a robe
• 4:02:39
  of dark woolen, no collar, and common shoes of black listing. Her
• 4:02:43
  general expression was that of acute suffering, vanishing at times as if by the
• 4:02:48
  conjuration of her pride, and again returning in a paroxysm as she looked at
• 4:02:54
  the dreadful rope dangling before her. This woman to whom the priests had made
• 4:03:00
  their industrious moan, holding up the epigy of Christ when their own appeals became
• 4:03:05
  of no avail, perched there in the lofty air, counting her breaths,
• 4:03:11
  counting the winkfuls of light, counting the final wrestles of her breaking heart.
• 4:03:16
  Had been the bell of her section, and many good men had courted her
• 4:03:20
  hand. She had led a pleasant life, and children had been born to
• 4:03:24
  her who shared her mediocre ambition and the invincibility of her will. If the
• 4:03:30
  charge of her guilt were proven, she was the Lady Macbeth of the West.
• 4:03:35
  But women know nothing of consequences. She alone, of all her sex,
• 4:03:39
  stands now in this thrilled and ghastly perspective, and in immediate association with
• 4:03:45
  three creatures in whose company it is no fame to die. A little crying
• 4:03:50
  boy, a greasy, young, kemp sniveler, and a confessed desperado her
• 4:03:56
  base and fugitive son. To know the infamy of his cowardice and die of
• 4:04:01
  his shame, should have seen his mother writhing in her seat upon the throne,
• 4:04:07
  his wickedness established for her pain. The strangest criminal in our history was
• 4:04:15
  alone, dignified and self possessed. He wore a closely fitted knit shirt,
• 4:04:20
  a sailor's straw hat tied with a ribbon, and dark pantaloons, but no
• 4:04:24
  shoes. His collar, cut very low, showed the tremendous muscularity of his
• 4:04:30
  neck, and the breadth of his breast was more conspicuous by the manner in
• 4:04:33
  which the pinioned arms thrust it forward. His height, his vigor, his
• 4:04:37
  glare made him the strong central figure of this interelementary tableaux. He said no
• 4:04:43
  word. His eyes were red as with the penitential weeping of a courageous man,
• 4:04:48
  and the smooth hardness of his skin seemed like a polished muscle. He
• 4:04:54
  did not look abroad inquisitively, nor within intuitively. He had no accusation,
• 4:05:00
  no despair, no dreaminess. He was only looking at death as for one
• 4:05:05
  long expected and not a tremor nor a shock stirred his long, stately limbs
• 4:05:11
  withal. His blue eye was milder than when I saw him last, as
• 4:05:15
  if some bitterness, or stolidness or obstinate pride had been exorcised, perhaps by
• 4:05:20
  the candor of confession. Now and then he looked half pityingly at the woman,
• 4:05:28
  and only once moved his lips, as if in supplication. Few who
• 4:05:31
  looked at him forgetful of his crime, did not respect him. He seemed
• 4:05:37
  to feel that no man was more than his peer, and one of his
• 4:05:39
  last commands was a word of regret to mister Seward. I have no doubt
• 4:05:46
  that this man is entirely a member of our nervous race. I believe that
• 4:05:50
  a fiber of the Aboriginal runs through his tuft sinews. At times he looked
• 4:05:54
  entirely an Indian. His hair is tufted and will not lie smoothly. His
• 4:06:00
  cheek bones are large and high set. There is a tint in his complexion.
• 4:06:05
  Perhaps the seminole blood of his swampy state left a trace of its combative
• 4:06:09
  nature there. Payne was a preacher's son, and not the worst graduate of
• 4:06:16
  his class. His real name is Lewis Thornton Powell. He died without taking
• 4:06:22
  the hand of any living friend. Even the squalid Atserat was not so poor.
• 4:06:28
  I felt a pity for his physical, rather than his vital or spiritual
• 4:06:31
  peril. It seemed a profanation to break the iron column of his neck and
• 4:06:37
  give to the worm his belted chest. But I remember that he would have
• 4:06:43
  slain a sick old man. The third condemned, though whimpering, had far
• 4:06:48
  more grit than I anticipated. He was inquisitive and flippant faced, and looked
• 4:06:54
  at the noose flaunting before him, and the people gathered below, and the
• 4:06:58
  haggard face of Atsora as if entirely conscious and incapable of abstraction. Harold would
• 4:07:05
  have enjoyed this execution vastly. As a spectator. He was, I think,
• 4:07:09
  capable of a greater degree of depravity than any of his accomplices. Atsirot
• 4:07:13
  might have made a sneak thief, booth a forger, but Harold was not
• 4:07:18
  far from a professional pickpocket. He was keen eyed, insolent, idle,
• 4:07:22
  and by a small experience in Houston Street, would have been qualified for a
• 4:07:26
  first class Canuck. He had not liked the rest any political suggestion for the
• 4:07:31
  murder of the heads of the nation, And upon the gallows. In his
• 4:07:35
  dirty felt hat, soiled cloth, coat, like pantaloons and stockings, he
• 4:07:41
  seemed unworthy of his manacles. A very fussy Dutchman tied him up and fanned
• 4:07:46
  him, and he wept forgetfully, but did not make a halt or absurd
• 4:07:50
  spectacle atseat was my ideal of a man to be hung, A dilution of
• 4:07:56
  Wallack's rendering of the last hours of fage in the jew A sort of sick
• 4:08:01
  man, quite garrulous and smitten, with his head thrown forward mutter into the
• 4:08:05
  air, and a pallidness transparent through his dirt as he jabbered prayers and pleased
• 4:08:11
  confusedly, and looked in a complaining sort of way at the noose, as
• 4:08:15
  if not quite certain that it might not have designs upon him. He wore
• 4:08:20
  a grayish coat, black vest, light pantaloons and slippers, and a white
• 4:08:24
  affair on his head, perhaps a handkerchief. His spiritual adviser stood behind him,
• 4:08:31
  evidently disgusted with him. Atsarot lost his life through too much gabbin.
• 4:08:37
  He could have had serious designs upon nothing greater than a chicken, but talked
• 4:08:41
  assassination with the silent and absolute booth, until entrapped into conspiracy in the gallows.
• 4:08:48
  Much against his calculation. This man was visited by his mother and a
• 4:08:54
  poor ignorant woman with whom he cohabited. He was the picture of despair and
• 4:08:58
  died ridiculed, whistling up his courage. These were the dramatis personae, No
• 4:09:05
  more to be sketched, no more to be cross examined, no more to
• 4:09:09
  be shackled, soon to be cold in their coffins. They were altogether a
• 4:09:16
  motley and miserable set. Rabblis might have looked well swinging in chains. Charlotte
• 4:09:22
  Corday is said to have died like an actress. Beale hung not without dignity.
• 4:09:28
  But these people, aspiring to overturn a nation, bore the appearance of
• 4:09:33
  a troop of ignorant folks, expiating the bloodshed of a brawl. When General
• 4:09:39
  Hartromt finished reading, there was momentary law, broken only by the cadences of
• 4:09:43
  the priests, and the reverend. Mister Gillette addressed the spectators in a deep,
• 4:09:50
  impressive tone. The prisoner Lewis Thornton Powell otherwise pain requested him to thus
• 4:09:56
  publicly and sincerely return his thanks to Jennarl Hartroft, the other officers, the
• 4:10:01
  soldiers, and all persons who had charge of him and had attended him.
• 4:10:07
  Not one unkind word, look or gesture had been given to him by any
• 4:10:11
  one. Doctor Gillette then followed in a fervent prayer in behalf of the prisoner,
• 4:10:16
  during which Paine's eyes momentarily filled with tears, and he followed in the
• 4:10:22
  prayer with visible feeling. Reverend Doctor Olds followed, saying in behalf of the
• 4:10:28
  prisoner David E. Herald, that he tendered his forgiveness to all who had
• 4:10:33
  wronged him, and asked the forgiveness of all whom he had wronged. He
• 4:10:37
  gave his thanks to the officers and guards for kindnesses rendered him. He hoped
• 4:10:43
  that he had died in charity with all men and at peace with God.
• 4:10:48
  Doctor Olds concluded with a feeling prayer for the prisoner. Reverend Doctor Butler then
• 4:10:54
  made a similar return of thanks on behalf of George A. Atzerot for kindness
• 4:11:00
  received from his guards and attendants, and concluded with an earnest invocation in behalf
• 4:11:05
  of the criminal, saying that the blood of Jesus cleanses from all sin,
• 4:11:09
  and asking that God Almighty might have mercy upon this man. The solemnity of
• 4:11:16
  this portion of the scene may be imagined the several clergymen speaking in order the
• 4:11:20
  dying testament of their clients, and making the hot hours fresh with the soft
• 4:11:26
  harmonies of their benedictions. The two Holy Fathers, having received Missus Surrat's confession
• 4:11:33
  after the custom of their creed, observed silence. In this as in other
• 4:11:37
  respects, Missus Surrat's last hours were entirely modest and womanly. The stage was
• 4:11:45
  still filled with people. The crisis of the occasion had come. The chairs
• 4:11:50
  were all withdrawn, and the condemned stood upon their feet. The process of
• 4:11:54
  tying the limbs began. It was with a shudder, almost a blush,
• 4:12:00
  that I saw an officer gather the ropes tightly three times about the robes of
• 4:12:03
  Missus Surat and bind her ankles with cords. She half fainted and sank backward
• 4:12:09
  upon the attendants, her limbs, yielding to the extremity of her terror,
• 4:12:13
  but uttering no cry, only a kind of sick groaning, like one in
• 4:12:18
  the weakness of fever. When a wry medicine must be taken, Payne,
• 4:12:24
  with his feet firmly laced together, stood straight as one of the scaffold beams,
• 4:12:28
  and braced himself up so stoutly that this in part prevented the breaking of
• 4:12:33
  his neck. Harold stood well beneath the drop, still whimpering at the lips,
• 4:12:37
  but taut and short and boyish at surat in his groveling attitude. While
• 4:12:45
  they tied him, began to indulge in his old vice of gabbing. He
• 4:12:48
  evidently wished to make his finale more effective than his previous cowardly roll, and
• 4:12:54
  perhaps was strengthening his fortitude with a speech, as we sometimes do of dark
• 4:13:00
  nights. With a whistle. Gentlemen, he said, with a sort of
• 4:13:03
  choke and gasp, take where he evidently meant beware or take care, and
• 4:13:11
  confounded them again. When the white death cap was drawn over his face,
• 4:13:16
  he continued to cry out under it, once saying goodbye, gentleman's who is
• 4:13:20
  before me now? And again may we meet in the other world. Finally,
• 4:13:26
  he drifted away with low, half intelligible ebullitions as God helped me.
• 4:13:31
  Oh oh, and the like the rest said nothing except Missus Surrat, who
• 4:13:39
  asked to be supported that she might not fall. But Harold protested against the
• 4:13:43
  knot with which he was to be dislocated, it being as huge as one's
• 4:13:46
  double fist. In fact, all the mechanical preparations were clumsy and inartistic,
• 4:13:52
  and the final scenes of the execution therefore revolting in the extreme. When the
• 4:13:56
  death caps were all drawn over the faces of the prisoners, and they stood
• 4:14:01
  in line in the awful suspense between absolute life and immediate death, a man
• 4:14:05
  at the neck of each adjusting the cord. The knot beneath the ears of
• 4:14:09
  each protruded five or six inches, and the cord was so thick that it
• 4:14:13
  could not be made to press tightly against the flesh. So they stood while
• 4:14:20
  nearly a thousand faces from window, roof, wall, yard and house top
• 4:14:24
  gazed, the scaffold behind them, still densely packed, with the assistants and
• 4:14:28
  the four executioners beneath standing at their swinging beams. The priests continued to murmur
• 4:14:35
  prayers. The people were dumb, as if each witness stood alone, with
• 4:14:39
  none near by to talk to him. An instant this continued while an officer
• 4:14:46
  on the plot before motioned back the assistance, and then with a forward thrust
• 4:14:50
  of his hand signaled the executioners. The great beams were darted against the props
• 4:14:54
  simultaneously. The two traps fell with a slam. The four bodies dropped like
• 4:15:00
  a single thing outside the yet crowded remnant of the gallows floor, and swayed
• 4:15:05
  and turned to and fro here and there, forward and backward, and with
• 4:15:09
  many a helpless spasm, while the spectators took a little rush forward, and
• 4:15:13
  the ropes were taut as the struggling pulses of the dying Missus Serat's neck was
• 4:15:20
  broken. Immediately she scarcely drew one breath, Her short woman's figure, with
• 4:15:24
  the skirts looped closely about it, merely dangled by the vibration of her swift
• 4:15:28
  descent, and with the knot holding true under the ear. Her head leaned
• 4:15:33
  sideways, and her pinioned arms seemed content with their confinement. Paine died a
• 4:15:39
  horrible death. The knot slipped to the back of his neck and bent his
• 4:15:43
  head forward on his breast, so that he strangled as he drew his deep
• 4:15:48
  chest almost to his chin, and the knees contracted till they almost seemed to
• 4:15:52
  touch his abdomen. The veins in his great wrists were like whip cords,
• 4:15:58
  expanded to twice their natural diamonds chins, and the huge neck grew almost black
• 4:16:03
  with the dark blood that rushed in a flood to the circling rope. A
• 4:16:07
  long while he swayed and twisted and struggled, till at last Nature ceased her
• 4:16:12
  rebellion, and life went out unwillingly. Harold also passed through some struggles.
• 4:16:21
  It is doubtful that his neck was broken. The perspiration dripped from his feet,
• 4:16:25
  and he swung in the hot noon, just living enough to make death
• 4:16:29
  irritable. Atzerot died easily. Life did not care to fight for his possession.
• 4:16:36
  The two central figures lived long after the two upon the flanks. There
• 4:16:41
  they hung bundles of carcass and old clothes for in a row, and passed
• 4:16:47
  all conspiracy or ambition, the river rolling by without a sound, and men
• 4:16:52
  watching them with a shiver, while the heat of the day seemed suddenly abated,
• 4:16:57
  as if by the sudden opening of a tomb. The officers conversed in
• 4:17:03
  a half audible tone. The reporters put up their books. The assistants descended
• 4:17:08
  from the gallows, and the medical men drew near. No wind stirred the
• 4:17:14
  unbreathing bodies. They were stone dead. The bodies were allowed to hang about
• 4:17:19
  twenty minutes, when surgeon Otis U. S V and assistant surgeons Woodward and
• 4:17:25
  Porter U. S. A examined them and pronounced all dead. In about
• 4:17:30
  ten minutes more, a ladder was placed against the scaffold preparatory to cutting the
• 4:17:34
  bodies down. An over zealous soldier on the platform reached over and severed the
• 4:17:40
  cord, letting one body fall with a thump, when he was immediately ordered
• 4:17:44
  down and reprimanded. The body of Atsarat was placed in a strong white pine
• 4:17:48
  box, and the other bodies cut down in the following order Herald Powell and
• 4:17:55
  Missus Surat. The carcasses, thus recovered, were given over to a squad
• 4:18:00
  of soldiers and each placed in a pine box without uncovering the faces. The
• 4:18:03
  boxes were forthwith placed in the pits prepared for them, and directly all but
• 4:18:08
  the memory of their offense passed from the recording daylight. In the gloomy shadow
• 4:18:15
  of that arsenal lies all the motive and essay of a crime which might have
• 4:18:18
  changed the destinies of our race. It will be forever a place of suspicion
• 4:18:25
  and marvel, a haunted spot of the capital, and the terror of all
• 4:18:29
  who, to end of fancied evil, cut their way to right with a
• 4:18:33
  dagger. End of Letter nine. Extramural scenes, as everything connected with this
• 4:18:45
  expiation will be greedily read, I compile from gossip and report a statement of
• 4:18:48
  the last intramural hours of the prisoners. During the morning, a female friend
• 4:18:55
  of Atsorat from Port Tobacco had an interview with him, she leaving him about
• 4:19:00
  eleven o'clock. He made the following statement. He took a room at the
• 4:19:04
  Kirkwood House on Thursday in order to get a pass from Vice President Johnson to
• 4:19:10
  go to Richmond. Booth was to lease the Richmond Theater and the President was
• 4:19:15
  to be invited to attend it when visiting Richmond. And captured there, Harold
• 4:19:19
  brought the pistol and knife to the room about half past two o'clock on Friday.
• 4:19:23
  He Atsorrot said he would have nothing to do with the murder of Johnson.
• 4:19:27
  When Booth said that Harold had more courage than Atsrot, and he wanted
• 4:19:32
  Atserot to be with Harold to urge him to do it. There was a
• 4:19:36
  meeting at a restaurant about the middle of March, at which John Serat O'Loughlin,
• 4:19:41
  Booth, Arnold Payne, Harold and himself were present when a plan to
• 4:19:45
  capture the President was discussed. They had heard the President was to visit a
• 4:19:49
  camp, and they proposed to capture him coach and all drive through long old
• 4:19:55
  fields to t B, where the coach was to be left and fresh horses
• 4:19:59
  were to begun, and the party would proceed to the river to take a
• 4:20:02
  boat. Harold took a buggy to t B in anticipation that mister Lincoln would
• 4:20:07
  be captured and he was to go with the party to the river. Slavery
• 4:20:11
  had put him on the side of the South. He had heard it preached
• 4:20:15
  in church that the curse of God was upon the slaves, for they were
• 4:20:18
  turned black. He always hated the nigger and felt that they should be kept
• 4:20:25
  in ignorance. He had not received any money from Booth, although he had
• 4:20:29
  been promised that if they were successful, they should never want that they would
• 4:20:33
  be honored throughout the South, and that they could secure an exchange of prisoners
• 4:20:37
  and the recognition of the Confederacy. Harold slept well several hours, but most
• 4:20:44
  of the night he was sitting up, either engaged with his pastor, Reverend
• 4:20:48
  Mister Olds of Christ Church, or in prayer. His sisters were with him
• 4:20:52
  from an early hour this morning to twelve o'clock, they being present when he
• 4:20:57
  partook of the sacrament at the hands of doctor Olds. The parting was particularly
• 4:21:03
  affecting. Harold conversed freely with them and expressed himself prepared to die. Powell
• 4:21:11
  conversed with doctor Gillette and doctor Striker on religious topics during the morning, sitting
• 4:21:15
  erect as he did in the court room. From his conversation it appears that
• 4:21:19
  he was raised religiously and belonged to the Baptist Church until after the breaking out
• 4:21:25
  of the rebellion. He appeared to be sincerely repentant, and in his cell
• 4:21:30
  shed tears freely. He gave his advisers several commissions of a private character,
• 4:21:36
  and stated that he was willing to meet his God, asking all men to
• 4:21:40
  forgive and forgiving all who had done aught against him. Colonel Doster, his
• 4:21:45
  counsel also took leave of him during the morning, as well as with Atsorat.
• 4:21:52
  Missus. Surat's daughter was with her at an early hour. One of
• 4:21:56
  her male friends also had an interview with her and received directions concerning the disposition
• 4:22:02
  of her property. During the night and morning, she received the ministrations of
• 4:22:07
  Reverends. J. A. Walter and B. F. Wigett, and
• 4:22:10
  conversed freely with them, expressing, while protesting her innocence, her willingness to
• 4:22:15
  meet her God. Her counsel, Messrs Aiken and Clampett, took leave of
• 4:22:21
  her during the morning. A singular feature of this execution was the arrest of
• 4:22:26
  General Hancock this morning, who appeared in court to answer a writ of habeas
• 4:22:32
  corpus with a full staff. It is well to notice that this execution by
• 4:22:37
  military order has mopped therefore passed without civil protest. President Johnson extended to General
• 4:22:44
  Hancock the right conferred upon the President by Congress of setting aside the habeas corpus.
• 4:22:49
  As usual in such executions as this, there were many stirring outside episodes
• 4:22:55
  in much shrewd mixture of tragedy and business. Photographer took note of the scene
• 4:23:00
  in all its phases from a window of a portion of the jail. Six
• 4:23:06
  artists were present and thirty seven special correspondents who came to Washington only for this
• 4:23:11
  occasion. The passes to the execution were written, not printed, and accepting
• 4:23:18
  the bungling mechanism of the scaffold, the sorrowful event went off with more than
• 4:23:22
  usual good order. Everybody feels relieved to night because half of the crime is
• 4:23:29
  buried. On Monday, Mud, Arnold, o' laughlin and Spangler will go
• 4:23:34
  northward to prison. The three former for life, the last for six years.
• 4:23:41
  Applications for pardon were made yesterday and to day to President Johnson by Missus
• 4:23:47
  Samuel Mudd, who is quite woebegone and disappointed in behalf of her husband,
• 4:23:52
  by the sisters of Harold, and by miss Ann sur Rat. Harold's sisters,
• 4:23:57
  dressed in full mourning and heavily veiled, made their appearance at the White
• 4:24:02
  House for the purpose of interceding with the President in behalf of their brother.
• 4:24:07
  Failing to see the President, they addressed a note to Missus Johnson and expressed
• 4:24:11
  a hope that she would not turn a deaf ear to their pleadings. Missus
• 4:24:15
  Johnson being quite sick, it was deemed expedient by the ushers not to deliver
• 4:24:21
  the note, when as a last expedient, the ladies asked permission to forward
• 4:24:25
  a note to Missus Patterson, the President's daughter, which privilege was not granted,
• 4:24:30
  as Missus Patterson is also quite indisposed. To day, the poor girls
• 4:24:36
  went away with their last hope shattered. The misery of the pretty and heartbroken
• 4:24:41
  daughter of Missus Surrat is the talk of the city. The girl appears to
• 4:24:47
  have loved her mother with all the petulant passion of a child. She visited
• 4:24:51
  her constantly, and to day made so stirring an effort to obtain her life
• 4:24:56
  that her devotion takes half the disgrace from the mother. She got the priest
• 4:25:00
  to speak in her behalf. Early to day she knelt in the cell at
• 4:25:04
  her mother's feet and sobbed with now and then a pitiful scream, till the
• 4:25:08
  gloomy corridors rang. She endeavored to win from pain a statement that her mother
• 4:25:14
  was not accessory, and as a last resort, flung herself upon the steps
• 4:25:18
  of the White House and made that portal memorable by her filial tears. About
• 4:25:26
  half past eight o'clock this morning, Miss Surrat, accompanied by a female friend,
• 4:25:30
  again visited the White House for the purpose of obtaining an interview with the
• 4:25:33
  President, the latter having given orders that he would receive no one to day.
• 4:25:38
  The door keeper stopped Miss Surat at the foot of the steps leading up
• 4:25:42
  to the President's office and would not permit her to proceed further. She then
• 4:25:48
  asked permission to see General Muzzy, the President's military secretary, who promptly answered
• 4:25:53
  the summons and came downstairs where Miss Surrat was standing. As soon as the
• 4:25:59
  General made his appearance, Miss Surrat threw herself upon her knees before him,
• 4:26:03
  and, catching him by the coat, with loud sobs and streaming eyes,
• 4:26:07
  implored him to assist her in obtaining a hearing with the President. General Muzzy,
• 4:26:12
  in as tender a manner as possible, informed Miss Surrat that he could
• 4:26:17
  not comply with her request, as President Johnson's orders were imperative and he would
• 4:26:22
  receive no one. Upon General Muzzy returning to his office, Miss Surrat threw
• 4:26:27
  herself upon the stair steps, where she remained a considerable length of time,
• 4:26:33
  sobbing aloud in the greatest anguish, protesting her mother's innocence and imploring every one
• 4:26:38
  who came near her to intercede in her mother's behalf. While thus weeping,
• 4:26:44
  she declared her mother was too good and kind to be guilty of the enormous
• 4:26:47
  crime of which she was convicted, and asserted that if her mother was put
• 4:26:52
  to death, she wished to die also. She was finally allowed to sit
• 4:26:56
  in the east room, where she lay in wait for all who entered,
• 4:27:00
  hoping to make them efficacious in her behalf, all the while uttering her weary
• 4:27:04
  heart in a woman's touching cries. But at last, certain of disappointment,
• 4:27:11
  she drove again to the jail and lay in her mother's cell with the heavy
• 4:27:15
  face of one who brings ill news. The parting will consecrate those gloomy walls.
• 4:27:22
  The daughter saw the mother pinioned, and kissed her wet face as she
• 4:27:27
  went shuddering to the scaffold. The last words of missus Surratt, as she
• 4:27:33
  went out of the jail, were addressed to a gentleman whom she had known,
• 4:27:37
  good bye, take care of Annie. To night. There is crape
• 4:27:44
  on the door of the Surats, and the lonely lamp shines at a single
• 4:27:48
  window, where the sad orphan is thinking of her bereavement. The bodies of
• 4:27:52
  the dead have been applied for, but at present will not be given up.
• 4:28:00
  Judge Holt was petitioned all last night for the lives and liberties of the
• 4:28:03
  condemned, but he was inexorable. The soldiers who hung the condemned were appointed
• 4:28:11
  against their will. I forbear to give their names, as they do not
• 4:28:15
  wish the repute of executioners. They all belong to the fourteenth Veteran Reserve Infantry.
• 4:28:23
  Here endeth the story of this tragedy upon a tragedy. All are glad
• 4:28:29
  that it is done. I am glad particularly it has cost me. How
• 4:28:33
  many journeying to Washington, how many hot midnights in the telegraph office, how
• 4:28:38
  many gallops into wild places, and how much revolting familiarity with blood. The
• 4:28:47
  end has come. The slain, both good and evil, are in their
• 4:28:52
  graves, out of the reach of hangman and assassin. Only the correspondent never
• 4:28:57
  dies. He is the true path antheist, going out of nature for a
• 4:29:02
  week, but bursting forth afresh in a day, and so insinuating himself into
• 4:29:06
  the history of our era, that it is beginning to be hard to find
• 4:29:10
  out where the event ends and the writer begins. Next week Ford's Theater opens
• 4:29:15
  with the Octoroon. The gas will be pearly as ever, the scenes as
• 4:29:19
  rich. The blood stained footlights will flash as of old upon merry and mimicking
• 4:29:26
  faces. So the world has its tragic ebullitions, but its real career is
• 4:29:32
  comedy. Over the graves of the good and scaffolds of the evil sits the
• 4:29:37
  leering Momus, a cross whose face death sometimes brings sleep, but never a
• 4:29:42
  wrinkle. End of the life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth by
• 4:29:52
  George Alfred Townsend