Manhunt (29 page)

In Grass Valley, California, a minister wrote a letter to a friend back east describing the violence that followed the arrival of the news: “When the news came of the assassination of Lincoln the excitement was tremendous! Several men were shot right down dead by the Copperheads! And others were killed by Republicans in self defense! I loaded my double guns, with four small balls to each barrel and kept it in my study ready for any emergency. I thought I would pray God have mercy on our Country, but I would have a little lead for the Rebels!”

In Illinois, a U.S. Marine wrote a letter to his mother in Lockport, New York, describing the danger to those who spoke against Lincoln.

Booth's escape incensed, but also thrilled, the nation. Photographs of him became so popular that soon the government banned their sale. Impossible to enforce, Stanton had the order rescinded. Ads appeared in
Harper's Weekly
,
Frank Leslie's
, and other newspapers that shamelessly offered Booth photos for sale—alongside mourning ribbons, badges, and photos of the martyred president. In Boston, a lithography
company commissioned an artist to create a handsome bust portrait of the assassin that it sold in two sizes—small carte-de-visite form for the family album, and as a large print suitable for framing. Other printers rushed out less flattering products—fantasy prints of Satan whispering in Booth's ear moments before he shot Lincoln, and of Booth riding furiously through a swamp infested with alligators and monsters. A carte-de-visite reproduced an allegorical painting titled
The Assassin's Vision
, depicting Booth fleeing Washington, the great dome visible in the distant background, and multiple images of Lincoln's ghost sprouting in the trees above him. A Boston publisher released a piece of sheet music—“The Assassin's Vision Ballad/Words and music by J. W. Turner”—to accompany the eerie artwork. It was the first song written about John Wilkes Booth and the manhunt.

“The Assassin's Vision.” Lincoln's ghost haunts the fleeing Booth.

Edwin Stanton needed help. By the third day it had become obvious that he could not devote his time and brainpower exclusively to the manhunt. He had a lot on his mind. The president's murder was not only a national tragedy, but also a deep personal loss to the secretary. Ever since the wild carriage ride on the night of the fourteenth, and his first sight of his friend in the deathbed, Stanton had used his iron will to suppress his powerful emotions. He had almost broken down at the Petersen house after Lincoln died, but his brain was able to rule his heart. There were other concerns. He had a war to win. Just because Lee had surrendered did not mean that the Civil War was over. Strong Confederate armies remained in the field in North Carolina, Texas, and elsewhere, and their generals had not followed Lee's example. Jefferson
Davis was still at large, the subject of another sensational manhunt. And like the search for Booth, the manhunt for Davis had failed. Soon the conflict might degenerate into a brutal, guerrilla war that might take years to win. And without Lincoln at his side, Stanton had to go on alone. The new president was not ready to assume the role of commander in chief.

There was more. Stanton had to organize Lincoln's majestic funeral and then send the body on an unprecedented national tour, on the way home to Springfield. He had to help plan the reconstruction of the South, manage the entire Union army, conduct the everyday but still vitally essential business of the War Department, decide what to do with Booth's captured conspirators, and organize a military tribunal to try them. He had to investigate the crime, determine the nature and extent of Booth's conspiracy, and send pursuers after the assassin and the rest of his gang. It was more than one mind, even Stanton's brilliant and well-disciplined one, could handle. He had to delegate authority to a small circle of trusted subordinates.

W
HEN
J
OHN
W
ILKES
B
OOTH PLANNED THE ASSASSINATION
and his escape he did not prepare for an extended campout under the stars. No, he had focused entirely on the need for speed and movement, not on cowering in the forest like a wounded animal, fearful that every passing sound meant that his hunters were about to grab him. Booth fled Ford's Theatre like a pony express rider, traveling light for speed, unburdened by heavy equipment. Of course, an express rider carried the news: Booth fled from it. He disdained many of the ordinary accoutrements that a cavalryman took with him in the field: pistol belt, cartridge boxes, cap box, ample ammunition, carbine shoulder sling, field glasses, canteen, tin cup, eating utensils, rubberized gum blanket, wool blanket, saddlebags, provisions, and more. Booth had sacrificed necessities to achieve the sprinting speed his horse needed to get from Ford's Theatre to the Eleventh Street Bridge.

This strategy worked superbly and ensured his quick escape from downtown Washington. But it left him ill prepared for the next, unanticipated phase of his journey: outdoor living in open country, the consequence of his broken leg and the dangerous, delaying detour to Dr. Mudd's. Booth fled Ford's Theatre wearing the equivalent of a modern-day business suit. The fabric of his black wool frock coat and trousers was coarser, sturdier, thicker, and a little warmer, but his fine suit remained unsuitable for camping out in the pine thicket. And Booth packed no change of clothing, so his garments soon became soiled. It was one of the first things Thomas Jones noticed about him. Indeed, with each passing day Booth and Herold became less presentable to strangers, ruining a key element of Booth's trademark, winning style—his elegant, beautifully dressed appearance. They could not bathe, change clothes, or even wash the clothes on their backs, and they looked rougher—and smelled worse—every day. They looked like the fugitives they were. Beyond aesthetics, however, their vagabond, ruffian appearance jeopardized the friendly reception they expected to receive at proper Virginia households across the river.

Although Maryland's mid-April spring climate that year was not cold, the nights were chilly and damp, especially for men with no overcoats. The weather wore on the assassins, sapping warmth from their shivering bodies. And the ground was uncomfortable. They had no proper bedding, just a blanket for each man, supplied by either Dr. Mudd or Captain Cox. At least Herold could stand up, walk about, and stretch his legs to relieve his cramped muscles. But Booth's body ached and atrophied as he lay on the ground, shifting positions occasionally to ease his pain. As far as Thomas Jones could tell from his daily visits, Booth never rose from the ground during the time in the thicket.

On the morning of Tuesday, April 18, Jones paid his third call on the fugitives. This visit was briefer and less was said because Jones was in mortal danger. He risked his life every time he ventured into the thicket. Federal cavalrymen and U.S. detectives spread out along the nearby riverbanks and searched day and night for Booth. If soldiers caught Jones
with the president's murderer, they might shoot him on the spot or hang him from a pine tree. Soldiers had visited Huckleberry Farm several times, and even searched his home once. Now, Jones handed over the food and more newspapers quickly, then departed. Booth's curiosity about the country's reaction was insatiable, and he beseeched Jones to bring all the papers he could. Jones remembered the scene vividly: “He never tired of the newspapers. And there—surrounded by the sighing pines, he read the world's condemnation of his deed and the price that was offered for his life.”

What he read stunned him. Whatever papers Booth held in his hands—the
Daily Morning Chronicle
,
Evening Star
, or
National Intelligencer
from Washington; the
Sun
from Baltimore; the
Inquirer
from Philadelphia; or the
Herald
,
Tribune
, or
Times
from New York City—they all reviled him for his loathsome act. Even worse, Booth witnessed the first draft of history transform Abraham Lincoln from a controversial and often unpopular war leader into America's secular saint. Newspapers everywhere condemned the assassin in the most unsparing, unforgiving, vicious language imaginable. The accounts of the Seward attack sent Booth reeling. Had Powell gone insane? The indiscriminate viciousness of his coassassin's assault shocked and revolted Booth. Yes, Seward had to go, and the early, erroneous news accounts reporting the secretary of state's death delighted the actor. But the sons, the nurse, the messenger? At least Powell didn't murder the girl. “Booth then,” Herold recalled, “made the remark that he was very sorry for the sons, but he only wished to God that Seward was killed.”

Booth wasn't the only one of his coconspirators stunned by news accounts of the attempted murder of Seward. John Surratt, still in Elmira a few days after the assassination, bought, on April 17, several of the New York papers. What he read terrified him. The stories identified him as Seward's assailant. “I could scarcely believe my senses. I gazed upon my name, the letters of which seemed to sometimes grow as large as mountains and then dwindle away to nothing.” It was time, Surratt concluded, to flee the country.

Booth searched the papers frantically for the article he wrote—his self-justification for killing the president—for publication in the
Intelligencer
. On the afternoon of the assassination, he had presented it to his actor friend John Matthews in a sealed, addressed envelope for delivery the next day. Incredibly, not one newspaper published or even mentioned his manuscript. So he wrote another one.

Booth drew from his pocket a small datebook for the previous year, 1864. Although obsolete, the book, bound in worn, black covers, contained a number of unused pages. Booth thumbed through it until he reached a blank page, which he annotated “Ti Amo/April 13–14 Friday the Ides.” Then, in a cramped, hurried hand, unlike his usual expansive style, he began his manifesto.

“Until today nothing was ever THOUGHT of sacrificing to our country's wrongs. For six months we had worked to capture. But our cause being almost lost, something decisive & great must be done. But its failure was owing to others, who did not strike for their country with a heart. I struck boldly and not as the papers say. I walked with a firm step through a thousand of his friends, was stopped, but pushed on. A Col. was at his side. I shouted Sic semper BEFORE I fired. In jumping broke my leg. I passed all his pickets, rode sixty miles that night, with the bone of my leg tearing the flesh at every jump. I can never repent it, though we hated to kill; Our country owed all her troubles to him, and God simply made me the instrument of his punishment. The country is not what it WAS. This forced Union is not what I have loved. I care not what becomes of me. I have no desire to out-live my country. This night (before the deed), I wrote a long article and left it for one of the Editors of the National Intelligencer, in which I fully set forth our reasons for our proceedings. He or the Govmt …”