Lincoln (112 page)

“When it’s all over,” said Lincoln, “I want to go west. I want to see California and the Pacific Ocean.”

“Well,
I
want to go to Europe. I must see Paris …”

“Certainly, a lot of Paris has already come your way, Molly. Fact, Paris clings to your person from shoes to hats.”

“Oh, Father! I buy so little now. Keckley makes everything, anyway. Where will we live?”

“Springfield. Where else? I’ll practice some law with Herndon …”

“If you do, I will divorce you.” Mary was indignant. “Father, how could you live in Springfield now? Much less practise law with Billy.”

“What else am I to do? I’ll be sixty-one years old. I’ll have to do something to make a living. So that means the law …”

“In Chicago then.” Mary had already envisaged a fine new house on the lake-front, where palaces were now beginning to rise.

“If we can afford it. Well, today I refuse to be worried about anything.” Although gaunt, Lincoln’s face was like that of a man who had just been let out of prison. “I have not been so happy in many years.”

“Don’t say that!” Mary was suddenly alarmed. She had heard him say these exact words once before; with ominous result.

“Why not? It is true.”

“Because … the last time you said those same words was just before Eddie died.”

Lincoln looked at her a moment; then he looked at the Capitol on its hill to their left. “I feel so personally—complete,” he said, “now that the new lid is on. And I also feel so relieved that Congress has left town, and the place is empty.”

After dinner that evening, Mary went to change her clothes for the theater while Lincoln sat in the upstairs oval parlor and gossiped with the new governor and the new senator from Illinois; he also treated them to a reading from Petroleum V. Nasby. Then Noah Brooks announced the Speaker of the House, Mr. Colfax, a man who never ceased smiling no matter what the occasion. “Sir, I must know”— he smiled radiantly, teeth yellow as maize—“if you intend to call a special session of the Congress in order to consider Mr. Stanton’s proposals for reconstruction.”

If Lincoln was taken aback by the reference to Stanton’s supposedly private memorandum, he made no sign. “No, I shall not call a special session. After the superhuman labors of the last session, I believe Congress deserves its rest.”

Colfax beamed his disappointment. “In that case, I shall make my long-deferred trip to the west.”

Lincoln spoke with some interest of Colfax’s proposed tour of the mountain states. Then Lincoln was reminded that when Senator Sumner was recently in Richmond, he had purloined the gavel of the speaker of the Confederate Congress. “Sumner is threatening to give it to Stanton. But I want you to have it, as proper custodian for this particular spoil of war.”

Colfax’s delight was hyenaish. “I should like nothing better.”

“Well, you tell Sumner I said you’re to have it.”

Mary swept into the room; splendidly turned out for the theater. She was unanimously complimented.

“I think,” said Brooks, looking at his watch, “that it is time to go.”

“All in all,” said Lincoln, collecting Mary’s arm, “I would rather not go. But as the widow said to the preacher …”

“Oh, Father, not that one!” Bickering amiably, they proceeded downstairs to the waiting carriage, which contained the daughter of Senator Harris of New York and her fiancé, Major Rathbone, the best company that Hay could find at such short notice.

As Lincoln got into the carriage, he said to Crook, “Good-bye.” Then an old friend from Chicago appeared in the driveway, waving his hat. “I’m sorry, Isaac, we’re going to the theater. Come see me tomorrow morning.”
Accompanied by one officer from the Metropolitan Police, the carriage pulled out into the avenue.

A long row of carriages blocked the entire east side of Tenth Street, except for the main entrance to the brightly illuminated theater where Mr. Ford’s young brother was waiting. The play had already begun.

As young Mr. Ford led the presidential party up the stairs to the dress circle, where a box had been prepared for them at stage-left, the sharp-eyed actors onstage recognized the President and they began to interpolate lines of dialogue. A heavy play on the word “draught” was being made, which allowed the irrepressible Laura Keene to look up at the Presidential box and exclaim, “The draft has been suspended!” Then she shook her head vigorously until her much-admired ringlets threatened to detach themselves from her cap.

Thus cued, the audience began to cheer the President and General Grant. But it was only the President who showed himself, for a moment, in the box. Then Lincoln sat back in a large rocking chair; and a curtain screened him from the audience.

At ten o’clock, mounted and armed, Booth, Herold and Payne were in the street. At a gesture from Booth, David and Payne set out for Seward’s house, while Booth rode up the back alley to Ford’s Theater, where a stagehand helped him tie up his bay mare. Booth then walked around to the front of the theater, and entered the lobby. He waved at the doorkeeper. “I hope you don’t want me to buy a ticket?”

The man said, no; and continued to count ticket receipts, while several cronies stared at Booth until the doorkeeper introduced them to the youngest star, who asked for a chew of tobacco. Then, as Booth made his way up the stairs to the dress circle, he saw that there was an empty chair to the presidential box. The policeman was not at his post. This was an unexpected bit of good luck.

In the half-light from the proscenium arch, Booth opened the door and stepped inside the vestibule to the box. The President was only a few feet in front of him, silhouetted by calcium light. To the President’s right sat Mrs. Lincoln and to their right a young couple occupied a sofa.

As the audience laughed, Booth removed from his right-hand pocket a brass derringer; and from his left-hand pocket a long, highly sharpened dagger.

Mary had been resting her elbow, casually, on Lincoln’s forearm; but then, aware that this was a most unladylike thing to do, she sat up straight and whispered into Lincoln’s ear, “What will Miss Harris think of my lolling up against you like this?”

Lincoln murmured, “Why, Mother, she won’t think anything about it.”

At that moment, from a distance of five feet, Booth fired a single shot into the back of the President’s head. Without a sound, Lincoln leaned back in the chair; and his head slumped to the left until it was stopped by the wooden partition. Mary turned not to Booth but to her husband, while in the wings, an actor stared, wide-eyed, at the box. He had seen everything.

Major Rathbone threw himself upon Booth, who promptly drove his dagger straight at the young man’s heart. But Rathbone’s arm deflected the blade. Miss Harris shrieked, as Booth shoved past her and jumped onto the railing of the box. Then, with the sort of athletic gesture that had so delighted his admirers in this same theater, he leapt the twelve feet from box to stage. But, as on several other occasions when Booth’s effects proved to be more athletic and improvised than dramatic and calculated, he had not taken into account the silken bunting that decorated the front of the box. The spur of one boot got entangled in the silk, causing him to fall, off-balance, to the stage, where a bone in his ankle snapped.

Rathbone shouted from the box, “Stop that man!” Booth shouted something unintelligible at the audience; and hurried off stage.

In the box, Mary now stood, screaming. Miss Harris tried to comfort her. Laura Keene herself came; and she held the unconscious President’s head in her lap until a doctor arrived to examine the wound. The bullet had gone into the back of Lincoln’s head above the left ear and then downward and to the right, stopping just below the right eye.

At the White House, Hay and Robert Lincoln were sitting comfortably in the upstairs parlor, drinking whiskey, when the new doorkeeper, Tom Pendel, broke in on them. “The President’s been shot!”

As Hay hurried after Robert to the waiting carriage, he had a dreamlike sense that he had already lived through this moment before. Pendel was hysterical. “Mr. Seward’s been murdered, too. The whole Cabinet’s been murdered!”

“Who?” asked the stunned Robert as they drove through the crowd that had begun to fill up Tenth Street. “Who has done this?”

“Rebels?” Hay could not think.

In the small bedroom of a cabbage-scented boardinghouse, the Ancient lay at an angle on a bed that was, needless to say, too short for him. This is the last time, Hay thought inanely, that he will be so inconvenienced.

Lincoln lay on his back, breathing heavily, as a doctor tried with cotton to staunch the ooze of blood from the shattered skull. Lincoln’s right eye was swollen shut; and the skin of the right cheek was turning black. Hay noted that the long bare arms on the coverlet were surprisingly muscular.
Lately, he had tended to think of the Ancient as mere skin and bone. In the next room, he could hear the sobbing of Mrs. Lincoln. In the bedroom itself, he could hear, as well as witness, the sobbing of Senator Sumner, posed like a widow at the head of the bed. Where was his bodyguard? wondered Hay, who had never despised Sumner more than now. In a corner sat Welles, old and frowzy beneath his wig.

Members of the Cabinet came and went. Only Stanton remained; in total charge. When Robert asked, “Is there any hope at all?” Stanton had answered for the doctor, “There is none. He will simply sink. The brain is destroyed. The wound is mortal.” Then Stanton turned to an aide. “Telegraph the news to General Grant in Philadelphia. He is to return immediately. But with a full complement of guards.” To another, he said, “Go to the Chief Justice. Tell him what has happened. We will need him to swear in the new president.”

An official from the State Department arrived to report: “A man broke into the Old Club House. The servant says he sounded like a dyed-in-the-wool rebel. He went upstairs and stabbed Mr. Seward, but that iron contraption on his jaw saved him. He’s not hurt at all. But Fred Seward’s head is broken; he is unconscious.”

“I was with both of them less than an hour ago,” said Stanton, bemused. “The man escaped?”

“Yes, sir.”

Mary Lincoln entered the room. “Oh, Robert!” she cried. “What is to happen to us?” She looked down at her husband. “Father, speak to us! You can’t die like this, not now. It is unthinkable. Robert, fetch Taddie! He’ll speak to Taddie. He won’t let himself die if Taddie’s here.”

Robert looked at Stanton, who shook his head. Then Mary gave a great shriek and threw herself on Lincoln’s body. “Don’t leave us!”

“Get that woman out of here,” said Stanton, suddenly brutal to a lady whom he had for so long done his best to charm. He need never charm her again, thought Hay. “Don’t let her back in.”

Sumner and the man from the State Department led Mary out of the room, just as the Vice-President made his awkward entrance.

“Sir,” said Stanton, suddenly deferential. “I wish you to remain under constant guard—the soldiers that I just assigned to you are at the Kirkwood House—until we know who the enemy is. I am sure that they meant to kill you, too.”

“He … will die?” Johnson stared with wonder at the figure on the bed.

“Yes, sir. I have already made the necessary preparations. Mr. Chase has been notified. When the time arrives, he will come to your hotel, and administer the oath of office.”

“We have been struck,” said Johnson, with no great emphasis or—for him—grandiloquent flourish, “a mighty blow.”

“Yes, sir. But
he
is lucky. He will belong to the ages, while we are obliged to live on in the wreckage.”

As night became morning, Stanton sat next to Robert, beside the bed. Stanton’s right hand, in which he still held his hat, supported his left elbow.

Shortly after seven o’clock Abraham Lincoln took a deep breath; exhaled it slowly; and died. Like an automaton, Stanton raised his right arm high in the air; then, precisely, he set his hat squarely on his head and then, as precisely, he removed it. He got to his feet. “The Cabinet will now meet,” he said, “to discuss the notification and the swearing-in of President Johnson, and the orderly continuance of this government.”

Mary was led into the room. Moaning softly, she lay across the still body; then, finally, of her own accord, she stood up, dry-eyed from so much weeping, and said, to no one in particular, “Oh, my God! And I have given my husband to die.” Robert led her from the room.

Hay stared at the Ancient, who seemed to be smiling, as the doctor tied a cloth under the chin to keep the mouth from falling ajar. He looked exactly as if his own death had just reminded him of a story. But then Hay realized that never again would the Ancient be reminded of a story. He had become what others would be reminded of.

DAVID HEROLD
had waited outside Seward’s house as long as he dared. From the screams, it sounded as if Payne was killing everyone in the house. Finally, David could bear it no longer. He mounted his horse and rode into Pennsylvania Avenue, where, as luck would have it, a man from the stables shouted, “You’re late! You’ve had that horse too long. Turn him in.”

David’s response was to spur the horse into Fourteenth Street until he came to F Street, where he turned east. He had only one thought now. He must find Wilkes.

At the Navy Yard bridge, a sentry stopped David, and asked him his name. David answered, “Smith.” When asked his business, he said that he lived on the other side of Anacostia Creek at White Plains. The sentry let him pass; but told him that, henceforth, the bridge would be shut to everyone at nine o’clock. David thanked him; and rode on. Finally, on the Bryantown Road, David caught up with Wilkes, who had been riding hard; and all alone.

“Success?” asked Booth.

“Yes,” said David.

“I, too,” said Booth. That was all that they said to each other until they got to Surrattsville. Here David dismounted; and went into what had been the Surratt tavern but was now John Lloyd’s. As prearranged, Lloyd brought them a pair of carbines and a bottle of whiskey. David gave Wilkes the whiskey, which he drank, still seated on the horse. Wilkes refused the carbines. “I have broken my ankle,” he said, coolly.