The Day Lincoln Was Shot (14 page)

In a low voice (according to Lloyd) she told him to have the guns ready. “They will be needed soon,” she said. Wiechman tried to listen, but said later that her voice was so low that he could not understand the words.

“I heard that the house is going to be searched,” Lloyd said. “I do not like this, Mrs. Surratt.” (This too is Lloyd's version of the conversation, and it was first quoted
after
his imprisonment.)

They chatted for a moment. “John has gone away,” she said. “He will not be back for a while.” Lloyd said that he had heard gossip that the government was about to arrest John for going to Richmond while it was still under siege.

The widow laughed. “Anyone in these days who can get to Richmond and back in six days must be smart indeed.” The inference was that the government would have a hard time trying to prove that it could be done. She waved to the other buggy and shouted greetings to Mrs. Offutt, and resumed her journey.

They arrived at the tavern around noon and Mrs. Surratt became excited and shrill when she learned from the bartender that Mr. Nothey was not in the neighborhood.

“Please send someone,” she said, “to fetch Mr. Nothey.”

She and Wiechman drove to Bryantown for dinner. When they got back, Nothey was waiting in the front parlor. There was a private conference with the widow, and, late in the afternoon, Wiechman drove her home.

It seems impossible, almost a century later, to pin down the truth about this trip. Within a few days, most of these parties would be under arrest and those in charge of questioning them would be free with threats of death unless they “cooperated.” Wiechman, a self-admitted coward, would strain himself to build up a case against the widow who befriended him; Lloyd, an alcoholic, would be told that he would hang with Mrs. Surratt unless his memory improved. It was his testimony which would send her to the gallows, although, within two years, he would recant and admit that he did not know whether she said “guns” or “things.”

The next day, Wednesday, April 12, it was John Deery who noticed a change in Booth's attitude. Mr. Deery owned a saloon on E Street where it melts into Pennsylvania Avenue. It was directly over Grover's Theatre and it attracted the theater crowd plus devotees of cue and chalk because Mr. Deery was national billiards champion.

On this day, John Wilkes Booth stopped in before noon, asked for a bottle of brandy and water, and Deery remarked to
himself that he did not remember the actor ever having done so much drinking as in the past few days. Also, Booth had never been so uncommunicative.

Deery polished glasses and tried to engage his old friend in conversation. Had Mr. Booth noticed, he asked, that the city council had been goaded into ordering a grand illumination of its own? All of the victory celebrations had been undertaken by the Federal Government and now the people had demanded that Mayor Wallach do something on a city level, and the council had decreed that tomorrow night— Thursday—would be their big night.

John Wilkes Booth looked up from the bar. He was dark and melancholy. Yes, he said, he had noticed. He wondered if he could have a little more water. Deery gave it to him. That closed the conversation.

Thursday the 13th was a picture-postcard day. The sun was yellow and billions of buds laced the trees in outrageous chartreuse. Tulip beds along the Mall began to display colored chalices. Forsythia showed graceful yellow everywhere and spun the buds on the breeze. The black earth cracked, and robins, fighting for space in an elm, cared not who lived in the White House. It was a clean good day, a day on which a warm breeze from the south warmed the cold stone of the Washington Monument and congealed the mud in the roads.

It was a nothing day to Booth until he learned that General and Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant were in Washington City. The news electrified him. The hero of heroes was in town and, Booth knew, the least that the Lincolns could do would be to invite him to stay at the White House and stage a state ball or a theater party for him. The heart of the arch-conspirator must have bounded with joy, because this news was custom-made for an assassin. Somehow, somewhere, there would have to be a public appearance of the President and the Man Who Won the War. Booth asked nothing more than to learn when, and where.

Gossip was common that the Lincolns avoided state receptions because Congress had complained about White House expenses, and Mrs. Lincoln had huffily changed to the inexpensive theater party.

Booth reasoned that, if there was going to be a theater party, it would be held at Ford's or at Grover's. These drew most of the presidential patronage. The actor looked over the bills for the week, and counted on Grover's Theatre because they were opening with
Aladdin, or the Wonderful Lamp,
a new and dramatic vehicle, whereas Ford's had scheduled the old Laura Keene comedy,
Our American Cousin.
This play, he recollected, had not been well received even when it was new.

Booth walked up the Avenue to Grover's Theatre and, when he got inside, the theater was in cool darkness except the stage, where overhead lamps were lit. Onstage, Mr. C. Dwight Hess, manager, sat marking cue lines on a script with the prompter. In most circumstances, Booth had enormous respect for the theatrical proprieties and would not intrude on a script reading, but, on this occasion, he got up onstage and drew a chair.

The actor asked if Hess planned to join the city illumination tonight. The manager marked a place on the script with his finger, looked up, and said yes, to a degree, but that tomorrow night would be the big one as far as Grover's was concerned.

“Tomorrow?” said Booth.

“Yes. It is the fourth anniversary of the fall of Fort Sumter and tomorrow they're going to raise the flag over the fort again.”

“Are you going to invite the President?” said Booth.

“Yes,” said Hess. He shook his head. “That reminds me. I must send an invitation.” (It was sent within the hour and was addressed to Mrs. Lincoln.)

Booth left and went upstairs to Deery's place. This time he was friendly and conversational. He said that he had seen Hess and that Grover's was going to stage a special celebration tomorrow in honor of Fort Sumter. Would Deery reserve the front right-hand box for Booth?

Deery chuckled. Why would one of the country's leading actors need a tavernkeeper to get box seats for him?

Because, said Booth, if I ask for it at the box office, Hess will feel impelled to extend the courtesy of the house, and I want to pay for this.

Oh, said Deery, in that case I can get them for you. He didn't blame Booth for not wanting to miss the show because, as he understood it, Hess planned to have a display of fireworks out front before curtain time, plus a Grand Oriental Spectacle, and a reading of Major French's new poem, “The Flag of Sumter.” This, in addition to a performance of
Aladdin,
would make it a great evening.

The night before April 14 was cool and starry. John Wilkes Booth was on a rented horse, riding around town contacting Lewis Paine, David Herold and George Atzerodt. These were all that was left of the band. The carriage maker, weakest of the group, was at Pennsylvania House, a four-and-five-men-to-a-room hotel on C Street near Sixth. Wilkes ordered him to take a room at Kirkwood House, on the Avenue, and to spy on Vice President Andrew Johnson, who had a two-room suite in the first corridor behind the lobby. To each of his three men, Booth said that the time for action was at hand, and that this time there would be no failure because he planned to eliminate the President entirely.

Atzerodt was the only one who showed shock. Paine's reaction was casual. Herold was thrilled to be a part of such a shattering event.

By 8
P.M.
the temporary gas jets in the windows of City Hall were blazing, and crowds were attracted to the big candlelit sign before the YMCA:

GOD, GRANT, OUR COUNTRY, PEACE

At midnight, Secretary of War Stanton was recopying his draft for peace and, a little more than a mile to the east, Booth sat in Room 228 at the National Hotel, also with pen in hand, and wrote a final note to his mother:

Booth sealed it and prepared for the last good night's rest he would have.

* * *

Mr. Lincoln folded the newspapers and put them to one side for further search, if time permitted. He signed two documents. Then he nodded to the soldier, now standing inside the double door, to admit the first visitor.

Watching him, on this final morning, a person with prescience and a sense of history would have recalled a lot of things that Lincoln had said which would make it look as though the President had known this day was coming.

“I do not consider that I have ever accomplished anything without God,” he had said, “and if it is His will that I must die by the hand of an assassin, I must be resigned. I must do my duty as I see it, and leave the rest to God.”

In an aside to Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of
Uncle Tom's Cabin,
he had said: “Whichever way the war ends, I have the impression that I shall not last long after it is over.”

No one who heard him could doubt that he was philosophical about being killed, when he said: “If I am killed, I can die but once; but to live in constant dread of it is to die over and over again.” To reinforce this point, one of the pigeonholes in his desk had a bulky envelope. It was labeled “Assassination” and it contained eighty threats on his life.

Nor did he worry about whether he was held in high esteem or low when he died. “I'll do the very best I know how,” he had said, “the very best I can, and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right will make no difference.”

They had called him, among many other things, a nigger lover and, in a merciful fatherly way, he was. And he was the man to write: “As I would not be a
slave,
so I would not be a
master
.” But once, long ago, in the dancing heat of an Illinois summer, he had brought the same thought home to the heart: “When I see strong hands sowing, reaping and threshing wheat into bread, I cannot refrain from wishing and believing that those hands, some day, in God's good time, shall own the mouth they feed.”

He had had his say on many subjects, and once, when a Christian minister had written that it was not right for the President of the United States to attend a theater when the nation was drenched in blood, Mr. Lincoln had written:

“Some think I do wrong to go to the opera and the theater, but it rests me. I love to be alone and yet to be with other people. I want to get this burden off; to change the current of my thoughts. A hearty laugh relieves me, and I seem better able after it to bear my cross.”

The previous June, in Philadelphia, he had noted that many of the nation's newspapers were demanding Peace Now. And he had said, at a public gathering:

“War, at its best, is terrible, and this war of ours, in its magnitude and in its duration, is one of the most terrible. It has deranged business. . . . It has destroyed property, and ruined homes; it has produced a national debt and taxation unprecedented. . . . It has carried mourning to almost every home, until it can almost be said that the ‘heavens are hung in black.'. . . We accepted this war for an object, a worthy object, and the war will end when the object is attained. Under God, I hope it never will end until that time. . . .”

The pale-eyed Speaker of the House, Schuyler Colfax, came in. He was a good-looking, brown-bearded man who was partial to long black coats and sleeves which exposed only his
fingertips. He had the overly cordial manner and perpetual smile of the salesman. And what Mr. Colfax had to sell was always the same: himself.

They shook hands and Colfax sat. Lincoln liked him, not so much because no President can afford the enmity of the House Speaker, but rather because the President understood Mr. Colfax and appreciated him for what he was. Seven years before, Colfax had favored Douglas over Lincoln, but that had been forgotten. As a legislative leader, the man had worked fairly easily in harness with the executive and, even though the President knew that this man favored promotion over principles, and money over morals, he still looked upon him as a friendly rascal.

No notes were kept of this morning's discussion, but it is probable that they talked about Mr. Colfax's ambition to become a member of the Lincoln Cabinet. The President was not unstained in this situation. He had nourished the ambition in the Speaker's breast, and the conversation had reached the ways and means stage.

Everyone knew that Stanton had tried to quit as Secretary of War—a theatrical gesture, perhaps—and that Lincoln had thrown his arms around his favorite strong man and had begged him to stay on. But Stanton wanted to be appointed to the Supreme Court and, if the vacancy arose, there is no doubt that Lincoln would have presented his name to the Congress. This would leave the War Department open, and in a postwar period of demobilization and peace there would be no safer place to put Mr. Schuyler Colfax.

Another matter discussed was a growing congressional worry that Mr. Lincoln was about to undertake the reconstruction of the South without consulting the legislative branch of the government. Colfax tried to exact a presidential promise that postwar policy would not be laid down without calling a special session of Congress, but the best he could get
from Mr. Lincoln was “I have no intention, at the moment,” of calling a special session, but “if I change my mind, I will give the due sixty days notice.”