Manhunt (2 page)

On April 3, 1865, Richmond, Virginia, capital city of the Confederate States of America, fell to Union forces. It was only a matter of time now before the war would finally be over. The rebellion had been crushed, and the North held a jubilee. Children ran through the streets
waving little paper flags that read “Richmond Has Fallen,” “We Celebrate the Fall of Richmond,” or “Victory Will Lead to Peace: The Right Stripe.” Across the country, people built bonfires, organized parades, fired guns, shot cannons, and sang patriotic songs. Four days later, John Wilkes Booth was drinking with a friend, the actor Samuel Knapp Chester, at the House of Lords saloon, on Houston Street in New York City. Booth struck the bar table with his fist and regretted a lost opportunity. “What an excellent chance I had, if I wished, to kill the President on Inauguration day! I was on the stand, as close to him nearly as I am to you.”

William M. Smith's historic photograph of Lincoln's second inaugural.

I
N RESPONSE TO A THRONG OF SERENADERS WHO MARCHED
onto the White House grounds and begged him to address them, Abraham Lincoln appeared at a second-floor window below the North Portico on April 10 to greet this crowd of citizens celebrating General Grant's victory at Appomattox the previous day. Lincoln did not have a prepared text, and he was unwilling to speak on a subject of any consequence, including his postwar policy for the South. He resorted to his favorite oratorical device to distract and disarm an audience—humor.

“I see that you have a band of music with you…. I have always thought ‘Dixie' one of the best tunes I have ever heard. Our adversaries over the way attempted to appropriate it, but I insisted yesterday we fairly captured it. I presented this question to the Attorney General, and he gave it as his legal opinion that it is our lawful prize. I now request the band to favor me with its performance.”

C
RUSHED BY THE FALL OF
R
ICHMOND, AND BY THE FIRE THAT
consumed much of the rebel capital, John Wilkes Booth had left New York City on April 8 and returned to Washington. The news there was worse. On April 9, Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia surrendered
to Grant at Appomattox. The cause was lost. Booth wandered the streets in despair until he encountered Henry B. Phillips, who invited him to walk to Birch's saloon and share a drink. Inconsolable, Booth accepted.

“Yes, anything to drive away the blues.” Lee's surrender, Booth says, “was enough to give anyone the blues.”

O
N THE NIGHT OF
A
PRIL 11, A TORCHLIGHT PARADE OF A FEW
thousand citizens, with bands and banners, assembled on the semicircular driveway in front of the Executive Mansion. Journalist Noah Brooks, a favorite of Lincoln's, was with the president and watched the throng from a window below the North Portico: “After repeated calls, loud and enthusiastic, the president appeared at the window, which was a signal for a great outburst. There was something terrible in the enthusiasm with which the beloved Chief Magistrate was received.” Elizabeth Keckley, Mary Lincoln's black dressmaker and confidante, felt the mood too. “Close to the house the faces were plainly discernible, but they faded into mere ghostly outlines on the outskirts of the assembly; and what added to the weird, spectral beauty of the scene, was the confused hum of voices that rose above the sea of forms, sounding like the subdued, sullen roar of an ocean storm.”

This time Lincoln was ready. He had written a long text, short on exultation and designed to prepare the people for reconstruction. When someone in the crowd shouted that he couldn't see the President—“A light! A light!”—Tad Lincoln volunteered to illuminate his father: “Let me hold the light, Papa!” Lincoln dropped each page of his manuscript to the floor when he finished reading it, and Tad scooped them up.

“We meet this evening, not in sorrow, but in gladness of heart. The evacuation of Petersburg and Richmond, and the surrender of the principal insurgent army, give hope of a righteous and speedy peace whose joyous expression can not be restrained. In the midst of this, however, He from Whom all blessings flow, must not be forgotten … no part of the honor … is mine. To General Grant, his skilful officers, and brave
men, all belongs.” Lincoln then discussed the newly organized state government of Louisiana: “It is also unsatisfactory to some that the elective franchise is not given to the colored man. I would myself prefer that it were now conferred on the very intelligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers.”

As Lincoln spoke, Elizabeth Keckley, standing a few steps from him, observed that the lamplight made him “stand out boldly in the darkness.” She feared he was the perfect target. “What an easy matter would it be to kill the President, as he stands there! He could be shot down from the crowd,” she whispered, “and no one would be able to tell who fired the shot.”

In that crowd, standing amidst the throng below Lincoln's window, was John Wilkes Booth. He turned to his companion, David Herold, and denounced the speech.

“That means nigger citizenship,” he said, “now, by God, I'll put him through.”

As Booth left the White House grounds and walked toward Lafayette Square, he spoke to another companion, Lewis Powell: “That is the last speech he will ever give.”

O
N THE EVENING OF
A
PRIL 13, THE CITY CELEBRATED THE END
of the war with a grand illumination. Public buildings and private homes glowed from candles, torches, gaslights, and fireworks. It was the most beautiful night in the history of the capital. The next
Evening Star
newspaper reported the wondrous display:

John Wilkes Booth had seen all of this—the grand illumination, the crowds delirious with joy, the taunting insults to the fallen Confederacy and her leaders. He returned to his room at the National Hotel after midnight. He could not sleep. He reached for pen and paper and wrote a melancholy letter to his mother, Mary Ann Holmes Booth. It was early in the morning of April 14.

Dearest Mother
:

I know you expect a letter from me, and am sure you will hardly forgive me. But indeed I have nothing to write about. Everything is dull; that is, has been till last night. (The illumination.)

Everything was bright and splendid. More so in my eyes if it had been a display in a nobler cause. But so goes the world. Might makes right. I only drop you these few lines to let you know I am well, and to say I have not heard from you. Excuse brevity; am in haste. Had one from Rose. With best love to you all, I am your affectionate son ever
,

John

J
OHN
W
ILKES
B
OOTH AWOKE
G
OOD
F
RIDAY MORNING
, A
PRIL
14, 1865, hungover and depressed. The Confederacy was dead. His cause was lost and his dreams of glory over. He did not know that this day, after enduring more than a week of bad news and bitter disappointments, he would enjoy a stunning reversal of fortune. No, all he knew this morning when he crawled out of bed in room 228 at the National Hotel, one of Washington's finest and naturally his favorite, was that he could not stand another day of Union victory celebrations.

Booth assumed that April 14 would unfold as the latest in a blur of eleven bad days that began on April 3 when Richmond, the Confederacy's citadel, fell to the Union. The very next day the tyrant, Abraham Lincoln, visited his captive prize and had the audacity to sit behind the desk occupied by the first and last president of the Confederate States of America, Jefferson Davis. Then, on April 9, at Appomattox Court House, Robert E. Lee and his glorious Army of Northern Virginia surrendered. Two days later Lincoln made a speech proposing to give blacks the right to vote, and last night, April 13, all of Washington celebrated with a grand illumination of the city. And today, in Charleston harbor, the Union planned to stage a gala celebration to mark the retaking of Fort Sumter, where the war began four years ago. These past eleven days had been the worst of Booth's young life.

He was the son of the legendary actor and tragedian Junius Brutus Booth, and brother to Edwin Booth, one of the finest actors of his generation. Twenty-six years old, impossibly vain, preening, emotionally flamboyant, possessed of raw talent and splendid élan, and a star member of this celebrated theatrical family—the Barrymores of their day—John Wilkes Booth's day began in the dining room of the National, where he was seen eating breakfast with Miss Carrie Bean. Nothing unusual about that—Booth, a voluptuous connoisseur of young women, never had trouble finding female company. Around noon he walked over to Ford's Theatre on Tenth Street between E and F, a block above Pennsylvania Avenue, to pick up his mail. Accepting correspondence on behalf of itinerant actors was a customary privilege Ford's offered to friends of the house. Earlier that morning Henry Clay Ford, one of the three brothers who ran the theatre, ate breakfast and then walked to the big marble post office at Seventh and F and picked up the mail. There was a letter for Booth.

That morning another letter arrived at the theatre. There had been no time to mail it, so its sender, Mary Lincoln, used the president's messenger to bypass the post office and hand-deliver it. The Fords did not even have to read the note to know the good news it contained. The mere arrival of the White House messenger told them that the president was coming tonight! It was a coup against their chief rival, Grover's Theatre, which was offering a more exciting entertainment:
Aladdin! Or
His Wonderful Lamp
. Master Tad Lincoln and chaperone would represent the family there. The letter, once opened, announced even greater news. Yes, the president and Mrs. Lincoln would attend this evening's performance of Tom Taylor's popular if tired comedy
Our American Cousin
. But the big news was that General Ulysses S. Grant was coming with them. The Lincolns' timing delighted the Fords. Good Friday was traditionally a slow night, and news that not only the president—after four years a familiar sight to Washingtonians—but also General Grant, a rare visitor to town and fresh from his victory at Appomattox, would attend, was sure to spur ticket sales. This would please Laura Keene, who was making her one thousandth performance in the play; tonight's show was a customary “benefit,” awarding her a rich share of the proceeds. The Lincolns had given the Fords the courtesy of notification early enough in the day for the brothers to promote their appearance and to decorate and join together the two boxes—seven and eight—that, by removal of a simple partition, formed the president's box.