Manhunt (8 page)

Booth clambered to center stage, turned to the audience, and rose erect to his full height. His splendid chest had always made him appear taller than he was. Every second was precious to his escape, but he had rehearsed this part too well to forsake it now. He knew that this was his
last performance on the American stage, and for this he would be remembered for eternity. He must not blow his lines. All eyes were upon him. He stood motionless, paused momentarily for dramatic effect, and thrust his bloody dagger triumphantly into the air. The gas footlights danced on the shiny blade now speckled with red and exaggerated his wild countenance. “Sic semper tyrannis,” he thundered. It was the state motto of Virginia—“Thus always to tyrants.” Then Booth shouted, “The South is avenged.”

The great crime. A fanciful print published shortly after the assassination.

D
R
. C
HARLES
L
EALE HAD WITNESSED THE LEAP
: “I S
AW A MAN
with dark hair and bright black eyes, leap from the box to the stage below … and [he] raised his shining dagger in the air, which reflected the light as though it had been a diamond.”

Harry Hawk, the only actor onstage when Booth made the leap, could not understand what was happening. Hawk, more than anyone else in the theatre, was in the best position to hear the shot, see the smoky cloud, and observe a familiar-looking figure climb onto the balustrade. Why, if he didn't know better, he would swear that the man who landed hard on the stage, gathered himself, and was now approaching him rapidly with an unsheathed dagger looked an awful lot like John Wilkes Booth. Hawk had known Booth for a year and wasn't likely to make a false identification. Hawk lingered indecisively, standing directly in Booth's escape path. When Booth was nearly upon him, Hawk fled: “[H]e was rushing towards me with a dagger and I turned and run.” As Booth moved across the stage heading for the wings, James Ferguson, sitting just a few feet away, heard him exult to himself—“I have done it!”

Booth fled into the wings off stage right, slashing his dagger wildly at anyone—actor, orchestra conductor, or employee—who got in his way. William Withers said he felt Booth's hot breath as the assassin pushed past him and struck at him with the knife. The conductor did
not try to stop him. No one in the cast did. Booth had taken all the actors backstage by surprise and rushed past them.

Then a voice cried out from the president's box. “Stop that man!” From the time Booth shot Lincoln, wounded Rathbone, fought his way out of the box, leapt to the stage, claimed center stage, uttered his cry of vengeance, and vanished into the wings, no one in the audience had done a thing. It was just as Booth had planned. Some in the audience gasped with fright and delight—they still thought it was part of the play. Others, including the actors near the stage and in the wings, were too shocked to obstruct or pursue Booth.

“Will no one stop that man?” an anguished Rathbone again pleaded to the crowd below. Clara Harris echoed his cry.

“He has shot the President!”

L
ESS THAN A MILE AWAY, ON
M
ADISON
P
LACE, NEAR THE
W
HITE
House on the east side of Lafayette Park, all was quiet at the home of Secretary of State William H. Seward. Bedridden since a terrible carriage accident on April 5, Seward drifted in and out of consciousness. Nine days before, when out riding with his daughter, Frances “Fanny” Adeline Seward; his son Frederick; and a family friend, the coachman, Henry Key, dismounted to fix a stubborn door that wouldn't stay shut. The horses bolted, running madly through the city with the unmanned reins swinging wildly in the air. The secretary of state sprang from the moving carriage to try for the reins or horses, but he caught his shoe on the way out, tore off the heel, and was spun facedown into the street. The fall almost killed him, but he survived with a concussion, his jaw broken in two places, right arm broken between the shoulder and elbow, and deep bruises too numerous to count. Fanny rushed to his crumpled body, fearing he was dead.

That night Seward's disfigured face swelled so badly that his own children could barely recognize him, and the blood pouring through
his nose almost suffocated him. Seward's personal physician, Dr. T. S. Verdi; Dr. Basil Norris, an army medical officer; and Surgeon General Joseph K. Barnes attended him and cautioned the family to keep their patient under constant watch.

On April 9, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton visited Seward three times. The diplomat liked Lincoln's fierce, iron-willed war leader.

“God bless you Stanton—I can never tell you half …”

Stanton hushed him: “Don't try to speak.”

Early that evening Abraham Lincoln rushed to Seward's big brick mansion, known as the “Clubhouse” among Washington insiders. The accident worried Lincoln. Carriage accidents were not trifling affairs in wartime Washington and could prove deadly. Mary Lincoln had nearly been killed when her carriage broke down and flung her headlong into the street. She hit her head hard on the ground and was lucky to survive. The sight of Seward, alive if not well, relieved Lincoln tremendously. They were great rivals once, when in 1860 the emerging rail-splitter from the west challenged Seward, the odds-on favorite for the Republican nomination, and later, when Seward tried to usurp him early in his presidency. But they made peace, and Seward evolved into a trusted adviser and confidant. Just back from Grant's headquarters at City Point, Virginia, the president reclined on the foot of Seward's bed and regaled him with the news—his remarkable visit to Richmond, and how he had gone to a military hospital and shook the hands of thousands of wounded soldiers. Then the president confided the best news of all. According to Grant, Lee's surrender was imminent. After chatting quietly with Seward for nearly an hour, Abraham Lincoln departed. They never saw each other again. Lincoln's prophecy proved true when a little later, Secretary Stanton visited the Clubhouse so he could tell Seward the news in person. Lee had surrendered. The war was over.

Now, on the fourteenth, Fanny watched over her father and listened to the sights and sounds of the never-ending celebrations in the streets. A torchlight procession marched to the White House. A band played “Rally Round the Flag.” Fanny was a tall, slender, brown-haired girl precociously
conversant in literature and politics, and, at twenty, her father's prize. With her mother Frances often away at their Auburn, New York, homestead, Fanny grew up in a world of political receptions, dinners, and historical personages and events. An avid and talented writer with an eye for detail, her secret diary that she began at age fourteen brimmed with subtle observations and trenchant character sketches of her encounters with the political, military, and diplomatic elites.

Around 10:00 P.M. she put down her book,
Legends of Charlemagne
, turned down the gaslights, and, along with Sergeant George Robinson, a wounded veteran now serving as an army nurse, kept watch over her recovering father.

Outside in the shadows, Lewis Powell and David Herold were keeping the Clubhouse under surveillance. The street was quiet. They saw no guards at the front door, or anywhere on Madison Place. Two hours ago, when they'd met with Booth at the Herndon House, their leader assured them that they would find their target at home. The newspapers reported the carriage accident days ago, and the extent of Seward's serious injuries, and noted that he was recuperating at home, bedridden. That made Seward, of all of Lincoln's cabinet officers, Booth's most attractive target tonight. The others might prove difficult to track, and could be anywhere—dinner parties, entertainments, or traveling. Seward, alone, helplessly anchored to his bed, was sure to be home at 10:00 this evening. The actor issued simple instructions: invade the house, locate the secretary of state's bedroom, and kill the defenseless victim with pistol fire and, if required, the knife. This was a difficult mission even for a man like Powell, a battle-hardened and extremely strong ex-Confederate soldier. Powell had three problems. First, how could he get inside Seward's house? He couldn't just walk in unannounced. By 10:00 P.M. the front door would certainly be locked. He would have to ring the bell. When—if—someone answered, he could not just shoot or slash his way through the threshold. That might attract the attention of passersby or rouse the occupants from their beds to defend themselves.

Cunning deception, not brute force, was the key. Booth concocted, probably with David Herold's help, a brilliant plan. He told Powell to impersonate a messenger delivering important medicine from Seward's physician, Dr. Verdi. To add the final touch of verisimilitude to the ruse, Powell would actually carry a small package wrapped in butcher's paper and tied with string. Herold, the former pharmacist's assistant experienced in making similar deliveries, probably tutored Booth and Powell in the appearance of such packages and then wrapped an empty box to mimic an authentic delivery from Dr. Verdi.

But then what? Once inside it was Powell's job to track down Secretary Seward in the sprawling, three-story mansion. Booth did not provide him with a floor plan. He could rule out the first floor. But Seward might lie in one of a number of upper rooms. Powell faced a third challenge: he did not know how many occupants—family members, State Department messengers, nurses, doctors, servants, maids, and guards—were on the premises. Certainly several, but perhaps up to a dozen. A more cautious man might have told Booth he was mad. But Powell, a slavishly loyal one who called his hero “captain,” agreed. Anything for his master. David Herold also complied, as long as he did not have to bloody his hands by killing somebody and could wait for Powell outside, holding their horses.

From the shadows, Powell and Herold had watched Dr. Verdi leave around 9:30 P.M. After him had come Dr. Norris, who visited briefly and departed around 10:00 P.M.—just in time, according to Booth's preset timetable. The house was quiet now. They watched the gaslights go dim in several rooms, a signal that the occupants were settling in for the night. A short while later Powell handed his horse to Herold and strode across the street to the secretary of state's front door. He rang the bell. Herold's dull, hooded eyes warily scanned up and down the block as he stood watch, safeguarding their mounts.

Upstairs, on the third floor, Fanny Seward was watching over her sleeping father, and did not hear the bell. She did not know that outside a man waited to, like Macbeth, murder sleep.

Down on the first floor, William Bell, a nineteen-year-old black servant, hurried to answer the door. Late-night callers were not unusual at the Seward home. At moments of crisis State Department messengers bearing telegraph dispatches might arrive at any hour of the day or night. And ever since the carriage accident, members of the cabinet, military officers, and three different doctors called frequently. There was no reason at all why William Bell should not open that door.

Before him stood a tall, attractive, solidly built man, well dressed in fine leather boots, black pants, a straw-colored duster, and a felt-brimmed hat; he was holding a small package in his hands. The masquerade worked. Nothing about Powell's conventional appearance raised Bell's suspicions. Bell greeted Powell and asked politely, as Seward had trained him, how he could help the visitor. Powell explained his mission: he was a messenger with medicine from Dr. Verdi. That sounded satisfactory to Bell. Dr. Verdi had left his patient within the hour and lived only two blocks from the Sewards. Obviously, Bell reasoned, the doctor must have prescribed some medicine but did not have it with him in his well-worn doctor's bag. When Verdi got home he probably summoned a messenger to deliver the healing product. Up to this moment Powell did nothing to call undue attention to himself. He even pronounced Dr. Verdi's name correctly, with the proper Italian accent. Powell stepped into the hall and closed the door behind him. Bell reached out to accept the delivery. No, Powell said, he could not give it to a servant. The doctor said he had to deliver it personally to the secretary of state and instruct him how to take the medicine. Bell countered that he was qualified to receive deliveries on Seward's behalf. Powell was adamant. “I must go up.” He must see the secretary personally—those were his instructions. For five minutes, the assassin and the servant bickered about whether Powell would leave the medicine with Bell. “I must go up,” he repeated like a mantra. “I must go up.”

Powell, growing impatient, inched relentlessly toward the staircase, backing Bell up to the landing. Bell was in grave danger now. Powell's patience was almost out, and he knew how to deal with a recalcitrant,
disobedient Negro like this, just as he had in Baltimore a few months back, when, as a houseguest of the mysterious and attractive rebel Branson sisters, he struck and nearly stomped to death a black female servant who sassed him. He didn't have a knife or pistol then. Now Powell turned away from Bell and lifted a foot to the first stair, then another to the second. Bell chattered on, but Powell kept pounding up the staircase slowly, his boots striking the stairs with dull, methodical thuds that echoed like a ticking case clock to the floors above. If Bell interfered now, he would face Powell's knife. Luckily for him, he did not attempt to block Powell's path. Instead, he ascended the stairs with him. The assassin warned Bell that if he didn't allow him to deliver this medicine, he would report him to his master and get him in big trouble. Cowed, Bell, like a schoolmarm, warned Powell not to tread so heavily on the stairs. He might wake Mr. Seward.