Authors: Doris Kearns Goodwin
As the carriage neared the White House, Lincoln saw that a group of old friends, including Illinois governor Richard Oglesby, were just leaving. “Come back, boys, come back,” he told them, relishing the relaxing company of friends. They remained for some time, Governor Oglesby recalled. “Lincoln got to reading some humorous book; I think it was by ‘John Phoenix.’ They kept sending for him to come to dinner. He promised each time to go, but would continue reading the book. Finally he got a sort of peremptory order that he must come to dinner at once.”
The early dinner was necessary, for the Lincolns had plans to see Laura Keene in
Our American Cousin
at Ford’s Theatre that evening. After supper, the president met with Noah Brooks, Massachusetts congressman George Ashmun, and Speaker Colfax, who was soon to depart for California. “How I would rejoice to make that trip!” Lincoln told Colfax, “but public duties chain me down here, and I can only envy you its pleasures.” The president invited Colfax to join him at the theater that night, but Colfax had too many commitments.
To Noah Brooks, Lincoln had never seemed “more hopeful and buoyant concerning the condition of the country…. He was full of fun and anecdotes, feeling especially jubilant at the prospect before us.” His parting words, Brooks recalled, focused on the country’s economic future. “Grant thinks that we can reduce the cost of the army establishment at least a half million a day, which, with the reduction of expenditures of the Navy, will soon bring down our national debt to something like decent proportions, and bring our national paper up to a par, or nearly so with gold.”
Speaker Colfax was among several people who declined the Lincolns’ invitation to the theater that evening. The morning edition of the
National Republican
had announced that the Grants would join the Lincolns in the president’s box that night, but Julia Grant had her heart set on visiting their children in New Jersey, so Grant asked to be excused. The Stantons also declined. Stanton, like Chase, considered the theater a foolish diversion and, more important, a dangerous one. He had fought a losing battle for months to keep the president from such public places, and he felt that his presence would only sanction an unnecessary hazard. Earlier that day, “unwilling to encourage the theater project,” Stanton had refused to let his chief telegrapher, Thomas Eckert, accept Lincoln’s invitation, even though the president had teasingly requested him for his uncommon strength—he had been known to “break a poker over his arm” and could serve as a bodyguard.
It was after eight when the Lincolns entered their carriage to drive to the theater. “I suppose it’s time to go,” Lincoln told Colfax, “though I would rather stay.” While nothing had provided greater diversion during the bitter nights of his presidency than the theater, Lincoln required no escape on this happy night. Still, he had made a commitment. “It has been advertised that we will be there,” he told his bodyguard, Crook, who had the night off, “and I cannot disappoint the people.” Clara Harris—the daughter of Mary’s friend Senator Ira Harris—and her fiancé, Major Henry Rathbone, joined the Lincolns in their carriage.
A
S THE
L
INCOLNS RODE
to Ford’s Theatre on 10th Street, John Wilkes Booth and three conspirators were a block away at the Herndon House. Booth had devised a plan that called for the simultaneous assassinations of President Lincoln, Secretary of State Seward, and Vice President Johnson. Having learned that morning of Lincoln’s plan to attend the theater, he had decided that this night would provide their best opportunity. The powerfully built Lewis Powell, accompanied by David Herold, was assigned to kill Seward at his Lafayette Square home. Meanwhile, the carriage maker George Atzerodt was to shoot the vice president in his suite at the Kirkwood Hotel. Booth, whose familiarity with the stagehands would ensure access, would assassinate the president.
Just as Brutus had been honored for slaying the tyrant Julius Caesar, Booth believed he would be exalted for killing an even “greater tyrant.” Assassinating Lincoln would not be enough. “Booth knew,” his biographer observes, “that in the end, the Brutus conspiracy was foiled by Marc Antony, whose famous oration made outlaws of the assassins and a martyr of Caesar.” William Henry Seward, Lincoln’s Mark Antony, must not live. Finally, to throw the entire North into disarray, the vice president must die as well. The triple assassinations were set for 10:15 p.m.
S
TILL BEDRIDDEN
, Seward had enjoyed his best day since his nearly fatal carriage accident nine days earlier. Fanny Seward noted in her diary that he had slept well the previous night and had taken “solid food for the first time.” In the afternoon, he had “listened with a look of pleasure to the narrative of the events of the Cabinet meeting,” which Fred, as assistant secretary, had attended in his father’s stead. Later in the afternoon, he had listened to Fanny’s reading of “Enoch Arden” and remarked on how much he enjoyed it.
The three-story house was full of people. The entire family, except Will and Jenny, were there—Frances, Augustus, Fred, Anna, and Fanny. In addition to the half-dozen household servants and the State Department messenger rooming on the third floor, two soldiers had been assigned by Stanton to stay with Seward. In the early evening, Edwin Stanton had stopped by to check on his friend and colleague. He stayed for a while, chatting with other visitors until martial music in the air reminded him that War Department employees had planned on serenading him that night at his home six blocks away.
After all the guests left, “the quiet arrangements for the night” began. To ensure that Seward was never left alone, the family members had taken turns sitting by his bed. That night Fanny was scheduled to stay with him until 11 p.m., when her brother Gus would relieve her. George Robinson, one of the soldiers whom Stanton had detailed to the household, was standing by. Shortly after 10 p.m., Fanny noticed that her father was falling asleep. She closed the pages of the
Legends of Charlemagne,
turned down the gas lamps, and took a seat on the opposite side of the bed.
Fred Seward later wrote that “there seemed nothing unusual in the occurrence, when a tall, well dressed, but unknown man presented himself” at the door. Powell told the servant who answered the bell that he had some medicine for Mr. Seward and had been instructed by his physician to deliver it in person. “I told him he could not go up,” the servant later testified, “that if he would give me the medicine, I would tell Mr. Seward how to take it.” Powell was so insistent that the boy stepped aside. When he reached the landing, Fred Seward stopped him. “My father is asleep; give me the medicine and the directions; I will take them to him.” Powell argued that he must deliver it in person, but Fred refused.
At this point, Fred recalled, the intruder “stood apparently irresolute.” He began to head down the stairs, then “suddenly turning again, he sprang up and forward, having drawn a Navy revolver, which he levelled, with a muttered oath, at my head, and pulled the trigger.” This was the last memory Fred would have of that night. The pistol misfired, but Powell brought it down so savagely that Fred’s skull was crushed in two places, exposing his brain and rendering him unconscious.
Hearing the disturbance, Private Robinson ran to the door from Seward’s bedside. The moment the door was opened, Powell rushed inside, brandishing his now broken pistol in one hand and a large knife in the other. He slashed Robinson in the forehead with his knife, knocking him “partially down,” and headed toward Seward. Fanny ran beside Powell, begging him not to kill her father. When Seward heard the word “kill,” he awakened, affording him “one glimpse of the assassin’s face bending over” before the large bowie knife plunged into his neck and face, severing his cheek so badly that “the flap hung loose on his neck.” Oddly, he would later recall that his only impressions were what a fine-looking man Powell was and “what handsome cloth that overcoat is made of.”
Fanny’s screams brought her brother Gus into the room as Powell advanced again upon Seward, who had been knocked to the floor by the force of the blows. Gus and the injured Robinson managed to pull Powell away, but not before he struck Robinson again and slashed Gus on the forehead and the right hand. When Gus ran for his pistol, Powell bolted down the stairs, stabbing Emerick Hansell, the young State Department messenger, in the back before he bolted out the door and fled through the city streets.
The clamor had roused the entire household. Anna sent the servant to fetch Dr. Verdi, while Private Robinson, though bleeding from his head and shoulders, lifted Seward onto the bed and instructed Fanny about “staunching the blood with clothes & water.” Still fearing that another assassin might be hiding in the house, Frances and Anna checked the attic while Fanny searched the rooms on the parlor floor.
Dr. Verdi would never forget his first sight of Seward that night. “He looked like an exsanguinated corpse. In approaching him my feet went deep in blood. Blood was streaming from an extensive gash in his swollen cheek; the cheek was now laid open.” So “frightful” was the wound and “so great was the loss of blood” that Verdi assumed the jugular vein must have been cut. Miraculously, it was not. Further examination revealed that the knife had been deflected by the metal contraption holding Seward’s broken jaw in place. In bizarre fashion, the carriage accident had saved his life.
“I had hardly sponged his face from the bloody stains and replaced the flap,” Verdi recalled, “when Mrs. Seward, with an intense look, called me to her. ‘Come and see Frederick,’ said she.” Not understanding, he followed Frances to the next room, where he “found Frederick bleeding profusely from the head.” Fred’s appearance was so “ghastly” and his wounds so large that Verdi feared he would not live, but with the application of “cold water pledgets,” he was able to stanch the bleeding temporarily.
Once Fred was stabilized, Frances drew Dr. Verdi into another room on the same floor. “For Heaven’s sake, Mrs. Seward,” asked the befuddled doctor, “what does all this mean?” Verdi found Gus lying on the bed with stab wounds on his hand and forehead, but assured Frances that he would recover. Frances barely had time to absorb these words of comfort before entreating Dr. Verdi to see Private Robinson. “I ceased wondering,” Verdi recalled, “my mind became as if paralyzed; mechanically I followed her and examined Mr. Robinson. He had four or five cuts on his shoulders.”
“Any more?” Verdi asked, though not imagining the carnage could go on. “Yes,” Frances answered, “one more.” She led him to Mr. Hansell, “piteously groaning on the bed.” Stripping off the young man’s clothes, Verdi “found a deep gash just above the small of the back, near the spine.”
“And all this,” Verdi thought, “the work of one man—yes, of one man!”
I
N PREPARING FOR
the attack on the vice president, George Atzerodt had taken a room at the Kirkwood Hotel, where Johnson was staying. At 10:15, he was supposed to ring the bell of Suite 68, enter the room by force, find his target, and murder him. When first informed that the original plan to kidnap the president had shifted to a triple assassination, he had balked. “I won’t do it,” he had insisted. “I enlisted to abduct the President of the United States, not to kill.” He had eventually agreed to help, but fifteen minutes before the appointed moment, seated at the bar of the Kirkwood House, he changed his mind, left the hotel, and never returned.
J
OHN
W
ILKES
B
OOTH
had left little to chance in his plot to kill the president. Though already well acquainted with the layout of Ford’s Theatre, Booth had attended a dress rehearsal the day before to better rehearse his scheme for shooting Lincoln in the state box and then escaping into the alley beside the theater. That morning he had again visited the theater to collect his mail, chatting amiably in the front lobby with the theater owner’s brother, Harry Ford. Booth had already taken his place inside the theater when the Lincolns arrived.
The play had started as the presidential party entered the flag-draped box in the dress circle. The notes of “Hail to the Chief” brought the audience to their feet, applauding wildly and craning to see the president. Lincoln responded “with a smile and bow” before taking his seat in a comfortable armchair at the center of the box, with Mary by his side. Clara Harris was seated at the opposite end of the box, while Henry Rathbone occupied a small sofa on her left. Observing the president and first lady, one theatergoer noticed that she “rested her hand on his knee much of the time, and often called his attention to some humorous situation on the stage.” Mary herself later recalled that as she snuggled ever closer to her husband, she had whispered, “What will Miss Harris think of my hanging on to you so?” He had looked at her and smiled. “She wont think any thing about it.”
During the performance, the White House footman delivered a message to the president. At about twelve minutes after ten, the impeccably dressed John Wilkes Booth presented his calling card to the footman and gained admittance to the box. Once inside, he raised his pistol, pointed it at the back of the president’s head, and fired.
As Lincoln slumped forward, Henry Rathbone attempted to grab the intruder. Booth pulled out his knife, slashed Rathbone in the chest, and managed to leap from the box onto the stage fifteen feet below. “As he jumped,” one eyewitness recalled, “one of the spurs on his riding-boots caught in the folds of the flag draped over the front, and caused him to fall partly on his hands and knees as he struck the stage.” Another onlooker observed that “he was suffering great pain,” but, “making a desperate effort, he struggled up.” Raising “his shining dagger in the air, which reflected the light as though it had been a diamond,” he shouted the now historic words of the Virginia state motto—“Sic semper tyrannis” (Thus always to tyrants)—and ran from the stage.