Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination That Changed America Forever (25 page)

Read Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination That Changed America Forever Online

Authors: Bill O'Reilly,Martin Dugard

Tags: #United States, #Civil War Period (1850-1877), #History

SATURDAY, APRIL 15, 1865
MARYLAND COUNTRYSIDE
NOON
 
J
ohn Wilkes Booth is miserable. Flat on his back on a bed in the country home of Confederate sympathizer Samuel Mudd, Booth screams in pain as the thirty-one-year-old doctor cuts off his boot and gently presses his fingers into the grossly swollen ankle. As if shattering his fibula while leaping to the stage wasn’t bad enough, Booth’s horse threw him during his thirty-mile midnight ride through Maryland, hurling his body into a rock. Booth is sore, hungover, exhausted, and experiencing a new and nagging anxiety: that of the hunted.
After the assassination, Booth and David Herold rode hard all night, stopping only at a small tavern owned by Mary Surratt to pick up some Spencer rifles she’d hidden for them. Herold was glib, boasting to the Confederate proprietor that they’d killed the president. But he also had his wits about him, buying a bottle of whiskey so Booth could enjoy a nip or two to dull the pain. Then they rode on, ten more hard miles on tree-lined country roads, for Booth every mile more painful than the last. It was the actor’s leg that made them detour to Mudd’s house. Otherwise they would have reached the Potomac River by sunrise. With any luck, they might have stolen a boat and made the crossing into Virginia immediately.
Dr. Samuel Mudd
Still, they’re close. Very close. By choosing to take shelter at Mudd’s rather than stay on the main road south to the Potomac, they have veered off the fastest possible route. But Mudd’s five-hundred-acre estate is just north of Bryantown, south and east of Washington, and fully two-thirds of the way to the Potomac River.
Booth’s pants and jacket are now spattered with mud. His handsome face, so beloved by women everywhere, is unshaven and sallow. But more than anything else, John Wilkes Booth is helpless. Almost overnight he has become a shell of himself, as if assassinating Lincoln has robbed him of the fire in his belly, and the pain of his shattered leg has transformed him from daredevil to coward. He is now completely dependent upon David Herold to lead their escape into the South. At a time when Booth needs all his wiles and resources to complete the second half of the perfect assassination, he is too distraught and in too much agony to think straight.
Dr. Mudd says he’s going to splint the leg. Booth lies back and lets him, despite the knowledge that this means he will no longer be able to slip his foot into a stirrup. Now he must ride one-legged, half on and half off his horse—if he can ride at all.
 
 
Mudd finishes splinting the leg, then leaves Booth alone to get some rest. The actor is in an upstairs room, so if anyone comes looking, he won’t be found right away. He wraps a shawl around his neck and face to conceal his identity, and he has plans to shave his mustache. But otherwise, he does absolutely nothing to facilitate his escape. The pain is too great. It will take a miracle for Booth to travel even one mile farther.
He rolls over and closes his eyes, then falls into a deep sleep, sure that he is being hunted but completely unaware that more than a thousand men on horseback are within a few miles of his location—and that Lafayette Baker is now on the case.
SATURDAY-SUNDAY, APRIL 15-16, 1865
NEW YORK CITY
MORNING
 
L
afayette Baker is in his room at New York’s Astor House hotel when he hears that Lincoln has been shot. The disgraced spy, who was sent away from Washington for tapping Secretary Stanton’s telegraph lines, is not surprised. His first thought, as always, is of finding a way to spin this tragedy for his own personal gain. Baker loves glory and money. He understands in an instant that the man who finds Lincoln’s killer will know unparalleled wealth and fame. Baker longs to be that man.
It’s noon on Saturday when a telegram arrives from Stanton, summoning him to “come here immediately and find the murderer of our president.”
If Baker were an ordinary man and not prone to weaving elaborate myths about himself, that telegram would be a very straightforward call to battle. But Baker is so fond of half-truths and deception that it’s impossible to know if he is traveling to Washington as a sort of supersleuth, handpicked by Stanton to find Lincoln’s killers, or if he is traveling to Washington to find and kill Booth before the actor can detail Secretary Stanton’s role in the conspiracy. Whatever the case, at a time when Baker could have been anywhere in the world, Stanton knew
exactly where to find the fired spy so that he could be summoned to the capital.
Lafayette Baker takes the overnight train to Washington, arriving at dawn. The city is in chaos, and he will later describe the looks on people’s faces as “inexpressible, bewildering horror and grief.” Baker travels immediately to the War Department, where he meets with Stanton. “They have killed the president. You must go to work. My whole dependence is upon you,” the secretary tells him. The entire detective forces of New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Boston have traveled to Washington and are devoting their considerable professional talents to finding the killers. But Stanton has just given Baker carte blanche to move in and take over the entire investigation.
One of Baker’s specialties is playing the part of the double agent. Even though there is evidence that Baker and Booth are somehow connected to each other through the 178
1/2
Water Street, New York, address, Baker claims that he knows nothing about the case or about the suspects. His first act is to post a reward for $30,000 leading to the arrest and conviction of Lincoln’s killers. He also has photographs of John Surratt, David Herold, and John Wilkes Booth plastered all around town.
One of several reward posters for the capture of John Wilkes Booth
SATURDAY-SUNDAY, APRIL 15-16, 1865
MARYLAND COUNTRYSIDE
 
D
avid Herold needs a buggy. It’s the most obvious solution to John Wilkes Booth’s plight. With a buggy they can travel quickly and in relative comfort. He asks Dr. Mudd to loan them his, but the doctor is reluctant; secretly harboring fugitives is one thing, but allowing the two most wanted men in America to ride through southern Maryland in his personal carriage would surely implicate Mudd and his wife in the conspiracy. Their hanging—for that is surely the fate awaiting any Lincoln conspirator—would leave their four young children orphans.
Instead, Mudd suggests that they ride into Bryantown to pick up some supplies and check on the latest news. With Booth still passed out upstairs, Herold agrees to the journey. But as they draw closer and closer to the small town, something in Herold’s gut tells him not to take the risk. A stranger like him will be too easily remembered by such a tight-knit community. He is riding Booth’s bay now, because it’s too spirited for the actor to control with his broken leg. Herold lets Mudd go on without him, then wheels the mare back to the doctor’s home.
Good thing. The United States cavalry now has Bryantown surrounded. They’re not only questioning all its citizens, they’re not letting anyone leave, either.
This is the sort of savvy, intuitive thinking that separates David Herold from the other members of Booth’s conspiracy. Atzerodt is dim. Powell is a thug. And Booth is emotional. But the twenty-two-year-old Herold, recruited to the conspiracy for his knowledge of Washington’s backstreets, is intelligent and resourceful. He was educated at Georgetown College, the finest such institution in the city. He is also an avid hunter, which gives him a full complement of the outdoor skills that Booth now requires to escape, the additional ability to improvise in dangerous situations, and an instinctive sixth sense about tracking—or, in this case, being tracked.
But now Herold is just as exhausted as Booth. He didn’t endure the same extreme adrenaline spike last night, if only because he didn’t kill anyone. But he experienced a definite and sustained rush as he galloped over the Navy Yard Bridge, then along the dangerous darkened roads of Maryland. He’s had time to think and to plan, and he knows that constant forward movement is the key to their survival. Otherwise, Herold has no doubt that the cavalry will be on their trail in no time.
 
 
Clearly, they cannot stay at Dr. Mudd’s any longer. Just before dusk, Herold rouses Booth and helps him down the stairs and up into the saddle. Herold guides them south through the countryside, aiming for the Zekiah Swamp, with its quicksand bogs and dense stands of oldgrowth hardwoods. The few trails that exist are almost impossible to see in the dark, and the pair are soon lost and frustrated. They turn back toward Mudd’s farm but remain out of sight, plotting their next move.
The next twelve hours bring an enduring awareness that they are neither safe nor welcome anywhere.
Easter Sunday dawns hard and bleak. Herold and Booth are camped in a stand of pines a quarter mile off the main road. A cold front is racing across Maryland, and they shiver in the damp swampy air, just a few short miles from the final obstacle to their escape into Virginia, the Potomac River. Booth isn’t wearing a boot on his injured leg, and his foot and ankle are in pain and quite cold from walking on swampy ground in the thin shoes he took from Mudd. Yet Herold doesn’t dare
make a fire. Beside him, Booth is curled up in the fetal position, head resting on one hand. Each man clutches his revolver as a stiff wind bends the towering pines. The last sympathizer they visited, the wealthy owner of forty slaves in this still-lawless region, promised to send a man to ferry them across to safety. The rescue signal will be a soft whistle, a pause, and then another soft whistle.
So now they wait. Hour after brutally cold hour, they wonder who will deliver them from this hell. Booth says little, except to cry out in pain or mutter something about not being taken alive. He still has some fight in him. Now and then they hear the jangle of bridles from the nearby road. And all the while, a gnawing little voice in Herold’s gut tells him that they have been betrayed—that the whistle, when it comes, will be their only warning before United States cavalry confirm their position and ride in with guns blazing.
Late Sunday afternoon they hear the first whistle. Then a second. Confederate sympathizer Thomas Jones calls out to them in a low voice, announcing that he is walking into their camp.
MONDAY, APRIL 17, 1865
MARYLAND SWAMPS
 
T
here is nothing dashing or heroic about the man who has come to save the lives of Booth and Herold. Thomas Jones is a broken man, a forty-four-year-old smuggler who has done time in prison, outlived his wife, and lost his home. He now earns his living by transporting everyone from secret agents to diplomats across the Potomac River to the South. On average, he makes the crossing three times a night. He is so skilled that northern newspapers secretly enlisted his help to get their product into the South during the war. A favorite technique employed by the silver-haired and low-key Jones is to begin his first crossing just before dusk, when the angle of the sun makes it impossible for sentries on the opposite shore to see small craft on the water. It is a brazen and brilliant tactic. Clearly, if any man can get Booth and Herold to safety, it’s Thomas Jones.
On his first visit to the campsite he merely wanted to get a look at the men he would be helping, to see if they were mentally and physically capable of enduring what might be a very long wait until it is safe to cross.
His second visit comes one day later. It’s also the second day in the pine forest for Booth and Herold. They once again hear the whistle from the trees. Booth is even worse today, the pain in his leg so severe that he doesn’t do much more than whimper. Herold stands,
carbine pointed toward the sound of approaching footsteps, until Jones finally appears in their thicket, his pockets overflowing with ham, butter, bread, and a flask of coffee. In his hands he holds the one thing Booth wants to see more than any other: newspapers.
Cavalry are combing the countryside, he cautions the killers, and he reminds them to be patient. It might take several days before things die down. No matter how cold it gets, no matter how extreme the conditions, they must be prepared to hunker down in the woods until the coast is clear. As soon as it is, he’ll let them know.
Booth argues that their lives are in danger and that they can’t stay here any longer. But the thunder of hoofbeats from the nearby road stops him short—it’s Union cavalry and far too close for comfort.
“You see, my friend,” Jones whispers. “You must wait.” He tells them to kill the horses, lest their whinnying give the killers away.
Prior to the assassination, Booth would have continued to argue and then done as he pleased. But now he quietly gives in. “I leave it all with you,” he says to Jones.
Jones departs quickly. His visits are uplifting to Booth and Herold, a welcome break from the monotony of sitting still for hours and hours out in the open. They don’t even dare build a shelter, for fear the noise will attract unwelcome attention. Jones doesn’t just bring food and newspapers; he also offers hope, his cool confidence suggesting that all will be well, just so long as they are patient.
 
 
With a sigh, Booth turns his attention to the newspapers. He reads about the extent of the search. But his melancholy soon turns to rage as he learns that his monumental actions are not being applauded. Far from it. He is being labeled a scoundrel and a coward for shooting Lincoln in the back. Washington newspapers assail him as the war’s ultimate villain and note that any “kindly feeling” toward the South or its sympathizers has disappeared, thanks to his actions. Booth’s achievement is described in the Richmond papers as “the most deplorable calamity, which has ever befallen the people of the United States.” And finally, the nation’s most staunchly anti-Lincoln paper, the
National Intelligencer
, is now crying out that Lincoln was a true American hero. The very newspaper that the actor had once hoped would print the
letter explaining his actions is instead portraying him as an abomination.
Booth, overcome with despair, sets the papers aside. As is his new habit, he regales Herold with a monologue on the killings—regrets, desires, and misunderstandings. Then he takes out his diary and begins keeping a journal of their time in the wilderness. In it, he writes his reflections on killing Lincoln, just to make sure that his point of view is properly recorded for posterity. “I struck boldly and not as the papers say. I walked with a firm step through a thousand of his friends, was stopped, but pushed on,” Booth writes. “I can never repent it, though we hated to kill. Our country owed all her troubles to him, and God simply made men the instrument of his punishment.”
Booth writes and rants and writes some more. Then he sleeps. Then he awakens and writes some more. There’s nothing else to do with his time. So it is with the world’s two most wanted men, bored to tears in a Maryland swamp.

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