Lincoln (103 page)

A regiment of cavalry swept down the avenue, stopping all traffic. But David no longer even noticed the Yankee troops. Like all true Washingtonians, he knew he was living in a city that had been occupied by the enemy and there was nothing to be done about it except mind his own business, which was to kidnap President Lincoln and hold him for a ransom of one hundred thousand captured Confederate soldiers.

Just before the election, the entire Surratt family had moved into the H Street house. Mrs. Surratt had rented the place at Surrattsville for five hundred dollars a year to a man called Lloyd. Since John was no longer postmaster, there was no reason for them to stay in the country when they could live in the city, where he might find proper work, and Mrs. Surratt could make money by turning 541 into a boardinghouse. John had been reluctant to give up his night-rides. But Mrs. Surratt had convinced him that their future was in the city, not at a country crossroads in Maryland. Of them all, Annie was best pleased.

David entered the front parlor—the back parlor where old Mr. Surratt had died now contained the very lively Mrs. Surratt, who greeted David warmly but hurriedly. “Annie’s out, giving lessons …”

“Is John—?”

“Here I am.” John entered the parlor in his shirt-sleeves. He had finally grown a small chin-beard in imitation of Jefferson Davis. “I’m the handyman,” he complained.

“You find any work?”

John sighed. “Labor, yes. Proper work, no. There’s an opening at the Adams Express Company. I’ve applied.” He threw himself on the sofa. “I wish I were back home, where I could be useful.”

“There’s a lot you can do here,” said David, significantly. But nothing that he ever said could be made to
sound
significant, the way that Wilkes could do with a simple drop in his voice. In any case, since no one took David E. Herold seriously, nothing that he said was ever listened to with any respect or attention, except by Wilkes, late at night when they made their plans. Booth’s blond girl had come to Thompson’s the day after the election. “He’s at the National,” she whispered. Then she fled; presumably back to Ohio Avenue, where her sister kept a fancy house. From Sal,
David had learned that Ella Turner was in love with Booth, who paid a certain amount to her sister to keep her relatively pure for him. It was Ella’s dream that he would one day marry her.

David had found Booth shattered by the election. “What is the point to killing the tyrant now, when he will be succeeded by yet another tyrant in the loathsome form of the traitor Johnson?” In the back room of Scipione Grillo’s restaurant, Booth would often sound as if he was acting in a tragical play. David always found such moments entirely thrilling, particularly when he was included in the drama.

“We had our last chance on August 13, when you were to pass him the fatal cup, and I memorialized the deed with a diamond, cutting into the glass of a window in a hovel at Meadville where I was stopping, jubilant at the thought of this glorious tyrannicide which, alas, failed.” David had apologized, at length. There had indeed been a plan for him to try, once again, to poison the President, and for once, the exact day that the poison would be taken was known in advance.

The President had not slept in a week. Late in the afternoon of August 12, the President’s doctor had asked Thompson for a sleeping potion to be delivered the next morning—to be tried out that night. This was the moment, Sullivan declared. David agreed; with Booth behind him—at Meadville; with the whole Confederate government at Richmond, presumably behind Booth; with history back of them all …

But David had lost his nerve. On the morning of the 13th, plain laudanum had gone over to the Mansion; and that night Old Abe had enjoyed a sound night’s sleep. Nevertheless, David was hailed by Sullivan as a brave if unlucky soldier whose gun had misfired a second time.

For the moment, the President was safe from murder. The Tennessee turncoat Andrew Johnson was considered even more dangerous than Lincoln. But the Confederacy was now reeling from the effects of Grant’s grinding-down strategy. There were almost no men left to fight.

Enter John Wilkes Booth, at the eleventh hour.

Enter a couple named Holohan into the front parlor. “Where is your mother, Johnny?” asked the lady.

“She’s upstairs, fixing your rooms, Mrs. Holohan. She said for you to go on up.” The couple vanished up the stairs. “Boarders,” said John sadly. “We also have a girlfriend of Annie’s staying here. And a chap I was at the seminary with sleeps with me. Thirty-five dollars a month, room and board. That’s all. Why don’t you join us? Three to a bed.”

David shook his head. “I’m living at home now. Like they say, I was just now fired. So I don’t know how I’ll live, except doing odd jobs at the theaters.”

“That makes two of us with nothing to live for.”

“Don’t speak so soon.” David then proceeded to tell John about a friend of his—he was careful to mention no names—who had a plan to save the Confederacy. At first, John was skeptical. “This whole city’s nothing but a garrison. So how are you going to kidnap the chief of the whole thing in the middle of his army and navy? I could see shooting him. That wouldn’t be hard. But to kidnap him …” John shook his head.

“You tell my friend that. He’s well connected. He’s rich. All he needs is somebody who knows the Maryland roads. That’s when I thought of you. I wanted you to meet him last month but he had to go to Mount-royal.”

“Where?” John showed a sudden interest.

“It’s a place up in Canada somewhere. Anyway, when he was in Mount-royal …”

“Montreal.” John corrected him. He got up. “That’s where our secret service keeps its eye on the Yanks. Where’s this friend of yours stopping?”

In the lobby of the National Hotel, Wilkes Booth sat on a horsehair sofa next to Bessie Hale, who was weeping quietly into a handkerchief. Booth appeared to be soothing her. Then, while she was blowing her nose, David caught his eye. Booth made a gesture for him and John to wait by the windows. As they crossed to the large palm tree where Booth and David had plotted before, Booth led Miss Hale to the main stairs. Slowly, she ascended. Quickly, Booth crossed the crowded lobby to the palm tree. Cleverly, David introduced John Surratt to Booth, without ever mentioning Booth’s name.

They pulled three chairs close together in front of one of the windows that looked onto crowded Sixth Street. Propriety obliged Booth to explain Miss Hale’s presence in the lobby of his hotel. “Her father was not re-elected to the Senate, so they have given up their house and moved in here. Poor girl. She cannot bear the thought of returning to Rochester, New Hampshire. I was consoling her.” He turned to John. “You, sir, are a Surratt of Surrattsville?”

“That’s right. Only now we are all of nearby H Street.”

“You have served our country well,” said Booth. “I have heard you spoken of in many interesting places. I am looking for a farm to buy.”

“I know them all, in that area, anyway.”

“I should like to be on a road—out of the way but good enough—to Richmond.”

“I know all the roads, sir, that lead to Richmond.”

Booth fixed his dark, honey-colored eyes on Surratt; then he seemed to
come to a conclusion. “Let us go to my room and partake of the house specialty, milk-punch and cigars.”

ON THE
morning of December 6, 1864, William Sprague entered the long, half-empty bar of the National Hotel. He was eager not for milk-punch but for gin. He was less eager for his meeting with a man who had identified himself in an unsigned note as “a friend of Harris Hoyt, with urgent news.”

Sprague seated himself in the darkest corner of the bar and ordered gin; then he glanced at the day’s business of the Senate. The Attorney-General, Mr. Bates, had resigned at the end of November. Lincoln had then appointed James Speed of Kentucky to take his place. Since James Speed was the brother of Joshua, a Springfield crony of the President, the Senate Judiciary Committee decided that it might have a salutary effect on the newly reelected President if he were obliged to wait a few days while they did their best to find out just who Mr. Speed was. Also, the Radicals were not happy that such an important post had gone to a man from a border-state which had voted for McClellan. Sprague was taking no part in this game. Sprague was not interested in attorneys-general. Sprague was interested in cotton.

A swarthy Southerner, dressed like a Baptist minister on circuit, sat himself down beside Sprague. “Senator, I’m pleased to meet you at last. Mr. Hoyt speaks so highly of you. As does Mr. Prescott. As does Mr. Reynolds. As does your cousin Byron.”

“That’s natural,” said Sprague, “that Byron should.”

The Southerner ordered straight rum. He sat in almost sacerdotal silence until the rum had gone, in one single swallow, from glass to stomach. Then he said, “You know that the
Sybil
was caught by the navy, two weeks ago.”

“Yes,” said Sprague, “I know.” The
Sybil
was a British ship, en route from Matamoros to New York. The ship’s hold was full of cotton for Sprague and his colleagues. As always, there were no records of any kind aboard the ship to show where the cotton was destined other than the Custom’s House at New York, presided over by the amiable Hiram Barney. In the past, once a shipment had arrived, Byron or Reynolds or Prescott would pay a call on Barney; and the cotton would be released. But, lately, there had been problems. In response to accusations of improper bonding and bribery, a congressional committee was now holding hearings into Custom’s House affairs. Since the war was apt to be over long before the hearings ended, Sprague was not much concerned. Besides,
the Custom’s House was a Republican spoil; and the Congress was securely Republican, as was the President. There was no cause for alarm. He ordered his second gin.

“Then I suppose you also know that our friend Mr. Charles L. Prescott has been arrested by the military authorities at New York.”

Sprague gasped. The pince-nez fell from his nose onto the table; a lens cracked. “You broke your glasses,” said the messenger of ill tidings.

“How …?” was the only word that Sprague could get out.

“We don’t know. Maybe the army traced the cargo through the ship’s London owner. Or, maybe somebody at the Custom’s House tipped them off. Anyway, I was able to get to Prescott. He’s scared to death. He thinks Hoyt double-crossed him. He’s fixing to give a complete confession today.”

“Complete?” Sprague’s nearsighted eyes squinted as if his life depended on making out the shape of the approaching danger.

“He will tell the commanding general of the Department of the East the whole story.”

“Dix.”

“What was that, Senator?”

“General John A. Dix. I know him. I don’t run the firm. Byron does. I’m a senator. I’m not in business. Haven’t been since ’sixty-one. I was the first volunteer of the war. I don’t know anything about cotton. Don’t care.”

“You may not care, Senator, but others care—for their own hides. Prescott’s naming you.”

“Can’t.” Sprague was now panicky. He put on the cracked pince-nez. “I’ll go to Dix. Where’s Hoyt?”

“New York City, I think.”

“Find him,” said Sprague, throwing coins on the table. “I don’t know a thing. What was done in Texas was to help the Union people there. That’s all.” Sprague shook the messenger’s hand; and left.

There was a crowd in front of Sixth and E. Two policemen came toward Sprague, who nearly bolted. But the two men both saluted, and smiled; and one said, “Congratulations, Senator.”

Sprague entered the first parlor. Kate, who had not been speaking to him lately, threw her arms about him. “The next best thing!” she exclaimed. “For now, anyway.”

“What?”

“Father’s chief justice. The President sent the message to the Senate this morning.” Suddenly, she smelled the gin on his breath. “Why weren’t you at the Senate?”

“I had a business meeting.” Sprague approached his radiant father-in-law. “Congratulations, sir.”

“My dear boy!” Carried away, Chase actually embraced Sprague. Sumner and Wade applauded. Kate joined them. She teased Sumner. “You are responsible for this, for putting Father on the shelf. But we shall have the last word.”

“Now, Kate,” said Chase, “if you can’t get cream, you settle for milk.”

“He’s worth more to us on the bench for a lifetime,” said Wade, “than in the White House for four years, where all you do is think of the next election like someone I cannot name …”

“Who has seen the light, however,” said Sumner. “He is also no fool. Lincoln realizes that the two great issues that you will have to deal with are the Constitutional abolition of slavery, which is now at hand, and a defense of our wartime monetary policies, which you invented.”

“In a somewhat
ad hoc
fashion,” said Chase, beginning to wonder whether or not he, as chief justice, could annul what he, as secretary of the treasury, had done. In any case, this was a time of perfect joy for him. Kate might think that he had been put on the shelf, but there was no law that said a chief justice could not become the president. Four years was not a long time. Once he had made all of his positions plain on the Olympian bench, he could, if he chose, step down into the battlefield; and seize the ultimate prize.

On Friday morning, the Senate unanimously confirmed Chase as chief justice. In the afternoon, Chase and his family went up to the Capitol for the swearing-in ceremony. Chase wore a new judge’s robe of black silk, a present from Sprague but chosen by Kate. Just before they got to the Supreme Court chamber, where all of fashionable Washington was gathered, they were stopped in the rotunda by Mr. Forney. Beneath the newly painted white-and-lilac dome, Forney said, “I’m afraid, Mr. Chase, we still don’t have an attorney-general, and without him to sign the letters patent, you can’t be sworn in. Not until the Judiciary Committee passes on Mr. Speed can you take your oath.”

“When will that be?” asked Kate.

“Tomorrow, I should think. Yes, definitely tomorrow, by noon.”

“Ah, well,” said Chase, catching a glimpse of his reflection in the glass that covered a large painting of Pocahontas. The black robe was certainly majestic in its effect. Chief Justice of the United States, he whispered to himself; then he hummed, off-key, a hymn to that aged rock which had so miraculously cleft for him.