Manhunt (21 page)
Authors: James L. Swanson
Suspecting that the president's entire cabinet had been marked for death, and hearing that a would-be assassin had been scared off from Stanton's home,
Chronicle
reporters had rushed to all of their homes to discover whether they had been attacked, too:
It, therefore, is evident, that the aim of the plotters was to paralyze the country by at once striking down the head, the heart, and the arm of the country.
We went in search of the Vice-President, and found he was safe in his apartments at the Kirkwood. We called at Chief Justice Chase's and learned there, that he too was safe. Secretaries Stanton, Welles, and Usher, and ⦠the other members of the Cabinet, were with the President ⦠and we are gratified to be able to announce that all the members of the Cabinet, save Mr. Seward, are unharmed.
This man Booth has played more than once at Ford's theatre, and is, of course, acquainted with its exits and entrances, and the facility with which he escaped behind the scenes is well understoodâ¦. [Booth] has long been a man of intemperate habits and subject to temporary fits of great excitement. His capture is certain, but if he is true to his nature he will commit suicide, and thus appropriately end his career.
Over the next few days, newspapers in Washington, Baltimore, New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago published reams of unsubstantiated gossip. They tantalized readers by claiming that particular arrests were only daysâeven hoursâaway; readers assumed that high-level leaders of the Confederacy, including President Jefferson Davis, who was still at large, would be named as conspirators. One Washington paper boasted that more than one hundred criminals would face trial, and another wrote that certainly twenty-one and perhaps even twenty-three would hang. The public devoured every word and clamored for more.
The news reached Elmira, New York, on the morning of April 15. John Cass, proprietor of a clothing store on the corner of Walter and Baldwin streets, took his morning paper, the
Elmira Advertiser
, at home, and by 7:30 A.M. he had read that the president had been assassinated but was still alive. He walked to the telegraph office opposite his store but there was no additional news. Then it came, a little after 9:00 A.M.; the president was dead. Cass crossed the street, and told his clerks to close for the day. Then he noticed a man crossing the street, making a beeline for Cass's store. The man, dressed in a fashionable jacket that bespoke foreign tailoring, stepped inside. Cass thought he looked Canadian. The stranger asked for white shirts of a particular style and manufacturer. Cass, having none in stock, tried to interest the customer in other shirts. The man demurred, Cass recalled: “He examined them, but said he would rather have those of the make which he had been accustomed to wearing.”
Cass said he had just received some “very bad news.”
“What?” the customer asked.
“Of the death of Abraham Lincoln,” Cass said.
With that, John Surratt walked out of the store.
T
HE BACK BEDROOM OF THE
P
ETERSEN HOUSE WAS EMPTY FOR
the first time in twelve hours. Stanton left the room unguarded. Unlike Ford's Theatre, the house where Lincoln died was not a crime scene. No one collected the bloody sheets, pillowcases, pillows, and towels as evidence of the great crime. Soon one of the boarders, a photographer named Julius Ulke, set up his camera in the corner of the room, facing the bed. The bloodied linens, bathed in morning light, were still wet. Ulke's haunting photograph of the death chamber, lost for nearly a century, preserved a scene that words cannot adequately describe.
William Clark returned to the Petersen house and found his room in shambles. That night he climbed into Lincoln's deathbed and fell asleep under the same coverlet that warmed the body of the dying president.
Four days later, the day of Lincoln's funeral, he wrote a letter to his sister, Ida F. Clark, in Boston:
Morning, April 15, 1865. Lincoln's deathbed shortly after his body was taken home to the White House.
Since the death of our President hundreds daily call at the house to gain admission to my room
.
I was engaged nearly all of Sunday with one of Frank Leslie's Special Artists aiding him viz making a correct drawing of the last moments of Mr. Lincoln, as I knew the position of every one present he succeeded in executing a fine sketch, which will appear in their paper the last of this week. He intends, from this same drawing to have some fine large steel engravings executed. He also took a sketch of nearly every article in my room which will appear in their paper. He wished
to mention the names of all in particularly of yourself, Clara and Nannie, but I told him he must not do that, as they were members of my family and I did not want them to be made so public. He also urged me to give him my picture or at least allow him to take my sketch, but I could not see that either
.
Everybody has a great desire to obtain some memento from my room so that whoever comes in has to be closely watched for fear they will steal something.
I have a lock of his hair which I have had neatly framed, also a piece of linen with a portion of his brain, the pillow case upon which he lay when he died and nearly all his wearing apparel but the latter I intend to send to Robt Lincoln as soon as the funeral is over, as I consider him the one most justly entitled to them
The same matrass is on my bed, and the same coverlit covers me nightly that covered him while dying.
Enclosed you will find a piece of lace that Mrs. Lincoln wore on her head during the evening and was dropped by her while entering my room to see her dying husband. It is worth keeping for its historical value
.
William Petersen, the previous night merely the anonymous owner of one of several hundred equally anonymous boardinghouses scattered throughout the nation's capital, had become, by early morning, proprietor of the famous “house where Lincoln died.” That unwelcome honorâand the rabid attention of newspaper reporters and curiosity seekersâdispleased him. In particular Petersen resented the implication that the president had died dishonorably, not at the Executive Mansion, but in a shabby boardinghouse. Lincoln would not have complained. Eighteen years ago he began his Washington career in another boardinghouse not much different from the one where it ended. Elected to Congress in 1846, Lincoln came to Washington for the first time in 1847 and moved into Mrs. Sprigg's boardinghouse across the street from the Capitol
not far from First and East Capitol streets. There was no shame in it then. Lincoln would have felt no shame in dying in one now.
L
ITTLE MORE THAN AN HOUR BEFORE
L
INCOLN DIED
, G
EORGE
Atzerodt arose from his humble quarters at the Pennsylvania House and left the hotel. A servant just back from fetching a carriage to take a woman to the 6:15 A.M. train ran into him outside:
“What brings you out so early this morning?”
“Well,” Atzerodt replied, “I have got business.”
When Atzerodt walked past Creaser's house on F Street, between Eighth and Ninth streets, opposite the Patent Office, and along Booth's escape route just two blocks from Ford's Theatre, he tossed his knife under a wood carriage step, into the gutter. A few minutes later, an eagle-eyed woman looking out a third-story window in the building next to Creaser's shoe store saw it there and sent a black woman to get it. But the woman did not want the knife in her house so a passerby, William Clendenin, volunteered to take the clue, still in its sheath, to Almarin C. Richards, the chief of police.
The night before, the authorities had done little to pursue Booth during the first hour after the assassination. At Ford's Theatre the immediate concern was the condition of the president, not the whereabouts of Booth. But by early morning, Stanton had summoned the iron will for which he was renowned and planned the manhunt. The governmentâVice President Johnson and the cabinetâhad survived the night; no more assassinations had occurred; and no invading army stormed the capital. Stanton coordinatedâor at least tried toâthe efforts of the local police force, detectives, and the army.
From New York City came another offer of help, twelve hours after Stanton had asked its chief of police to send his finest detectives to Washington. On April 15, at 1:40 P.M., Stanton received a telegram from Detective H. S. Olcott, proposing to join the manhunt: “If Lieutenant-Colonel Morgan or I or any of my employees can serve you and the
country in any way, no matter what, or anywhere, we are ready.” John Wilkes Booth was still at large. He had escaped the first, frantic night of the manhunt. Now it might not be so easy to capture him quickly. Stanton reached for Olcott's helping hand, telegraphing a prompt reply: “I desire your services. Come to Washington at once, and bring your force of detectives with you.” Olcott hurried to move that night: “I leave at midnight with such of my men as live in town. The rest will follow forthwith.”
That afternoon Stanton also summoned Lieutenant Colonel Lafayette C. Baker, head of the self-styled “National Detective Police,” and one of his favorites.
WAR DEPARTMENT
Washington City, April 15,1865â3:20 P.M.
Col. L C. BAKER,
New York:
Come here immediately and see if you can find the murderers of the President.
EDWINM. STANTON,
Secretary of War.
Stanton vowed to apprehend Booth and all those who conspired with him to commit what became known as “the great crime.” Southern leaders feared that Stanton might accuse them of complicity in the murder. One of them, Governor F. H. Pierpont of Virginia, sent a message to the War Department pleading that his state was blameless, and condemning Booth for shouting “Sic semper tyrannis” at Ford's Theatre: “Loyal Virginia sends her tribute of mourning for the fall of the Nation's President by the hands of a dastardly agent of treason, who dared to repeat the motto of our State at the moment of the perpetration of his accursed crime.”
Soldiers, policemen, and private detectives fanned out over Washington,
Maryland, and Virginia in pursuit of the actor and his accomplices. On assassination night John H. Surratt was named as one of Booth's possible accomplices and was the first suspect in the Seward knife attack. But when soldiers had searched for him at his mother's boardinghouse a few hours after Lincoln was shot, he was not there. Stanton declared the search and capture of John Wilkes Booth to be the nation's top priority. Booth and his conspirators had to be caught before they disappeared into the Deep South, where they would find succor in the heart of the stricken Confederacy. On the morning of April 15, the nation held its collective breath and with one voice asked, “Will Booth be taken?”
I
T WAS A DANGEROUS TIME TO BE A FRIEND OF
J
OHN
Wilkes Booth. On the night of the fourteenth, when the actors huddled backstage at Ford's Theatre a few minutes after Lincoln was shot, John Matthews feared the worst. “There were shouts of âburn' and âhang' and âlynch'” coming from the audience, he recalled, and then Matthews made a discovery that put him in fear for his life.
When taking off my coat the letter which Booth had given me dropped out of the pocket. I had forgotten about it. I said “Great God! There is the letter that John gave me in the afternoon.” It was in an envelope, sealed and stamped for the post office. I opened it, and glanced hastily over the letter. I saw it was a statement of what he was going to do. I read it very hurriedly. It was written in a sort of patriotic strain, and was to this effect; That he had for a long time devoted his money, his time, and his energies to the accomplishment of an end; that a short time ago he had been worth so much moneyâtwenty or thirty thousand dollars, I thinkâall of which he had spent furthering this enterprise; but that he had been baffled. It then went on: “The moment has come at
last when my plans must be changed. The world may censure me for what I am about to do; but I am sure posterity will justify me.” Signed. “Men who love their country more than gold or life: J. W. Booth, Payne, Atzerodt, and Herold.”
In the crowded dressing rooms, surrounded by excited actors running amok, Matthews read Booth's letter. No one paid attention to the piece of paper he clutched in his hands. He read it a second time and then asked himself, “What shall I do with this letter?” The audience in the theatre had not stopped shouting. Matthews considered handing the letter over to the authorities. The roar of the mob persuaded him otherwise. “If this paper is found on me,” Matthews reasoned, “I will be compromisedâno doubt lynched on the spot.” Even if he survived the night, he knew that the letter's brush would tar him forever: “I will be associated with the letter, and suspicions will grow out of it that can never be explained away, and I will be ruined.” He knew what he had to do to protect himself: “I burned it up.”
