The Day Lincoln Was Shot (15 page)

As Speaker, Mr. Colfax was expected to protect the rights of Congress in this matter, but, as a Cabinet member persona-elect, he had to defend the position of the Chief Executive, who wanted to make a lenient peace with the South, with no outside help other than what he could expect from the Messrs. Seward, Welles and Stanton, and then only such help as he had to suffer.

This viewpoint was not a secret. Everybody knew that Mr. Lincoln wanted to go it alone and few, even among his friends, felt any sympathy for his viewpoint. Even those of his own party who agreed with him that a soft peace would be the most permanent peace felt obligated to speak up solemnly and admit that Congress was “entitled” to a voice in the matter.

Among the outspoken and bitter, Congressman George Julian said that Lincoln's views on reconstruction were “as distasteful as possible to radical Republicans.” Wendell Phillips, still coining phrases, referred to Lincoln as a “first-rate second-rate man.” Others, who had heard Lincoln promise the vote to the intelligent Negro and the Negro who had fought, murmured sadly: “Only those?”

When Colfax left, his step was springy and he beamed a greeting to those waiting outside the presidential office, so it could very well be that he felt he had lost the fight for Congress, but had a leg up on a Cabinet post for himself.

The next visitor was Congressman Cornelius Cole of California. What his business was is not known, but he remained overly long and the President wanted to close his morning appointment list before eleven because he had called a Cabinet meeting for that time. Two more men waited outside.

Upstairs, William H. Crook, the President's day guard, had relieved the night man in the corridor outside the Lincoln
bedroom. He was a forthright, observant young man who had a honed sense of duty. On the 8
A.M.—
4
P.M.
shift, he was seldom more than a few paces away from the man whose life he guarded. Now, he took the night guard's hall chair and stuck it in a closet, and then turned off the gaslights in the hall.

He came downstairs, observing that the vultures had left, and checked the position of the military guards at the front gate, the front door of the Executive Mansion, and the door leading to the Executive Office.

The night guard, Alfonso Dunn, was standing on the front portico laughing at some of the victory celebrants who were reeling and roaring outside the White House fence. Crook joined him, half amused, and wrote later:

“Everybody is celebrating. The kind of celebration depends on the kind of person. It is merely a question of whether the intoxication is mental or physical. A stream of callers comes to congratulate the President, to tell how loyal they have been, and how they have always been sure that he would be victorious. The city is disorderly with men who are celebrating too hilariously.” Later: “Those about the President lost somewhat of the feeling, usually present, that his life was not safe. It did not seem possible, now that the war was over . . . after President Lincoln had offered himself a target for Southern bullets in the streets of Richmond and had come out unscathed, there could be any danger.”

John Wilkes Booth returned from the barbershop, smooth of skin and powdered. As he walked through the lobby of the National Hotel, the transients nudged each other and pointed him out. Sometimes people confused him with his brother Edwin, but this did not happen as often as it did in the early days. Wilkes was famous now; a star in his own right.

As he passed the desk, the clerk looked perfunctorily for the Booth mail. There was none. The actor's mail was usually
delivered “c/o Ford's Opera House, 10th Street, Washington City, D.C.” The Ford brothers could be trusted to hold all mail for him, no matter how long.

No one, not even the careful Mr. William H. Crook, would call Booth a suspicious person. Anyone who might have pointed an accusing finger at the noted actor on this particular morning would have been branded hysterical or insane. Everyone, it seemed, knew John Wilkes Booth and everyone, it seemed, admired him. He was the recipient of sunny smiles from strangers and, in his presence, demure ladies became bold. His name on the street billboards and fences was enough to guarantee a respectably full house, and Mr. Hess, the manager at Grover's Theatre, on E Street between Thirteenth and Fourteenth, would have given a great deal to get him away from the Fords.

Perhaps one person might have worried about Booth had he seen him this morning. His name was Oram, and years before he and Wilkes, as boys will, lay supinely in the grass at Bel Air and dreamed about the future.

“What I want,” said Booth then, “is not to be so fine an actor as my father, but rather to be a name in history.” He wanted, most of all, to be remembered. “I will make my name remembered by succeeding generations,” he said, and the two had chewed long blades of seed grass and had watched the fat white dumplings of clouds float across a clearing between hummocks, and had spat green.

Another schoolmate joined them and he heard the story and he asked how it could be done. Wilkes had thought about the question and he had answered solemnly:

“I'll tell you what I mean. You have read about the Seven Wonders of the World? Well, we will take the Statue of Rhodes for an example. Suppose that statue was now standing and I should, by some means, overthrow it.” The boys nodded. “My name would descend to posterity and never be forgotten, for
it would be in all the histories of the times, and be read thousands of years after we are dead, and no matter how smart and good men we may be, we would never get our names in so many histories.”

His friend Oram thought about it. Then he said: “Suppose the falling statue took you down with it? What good would all your glory do you?” And Wilkes propped himself on an elbow in the grass and smiled forgivingly. “I should die,” he said, “with the satisfaction of knowing that I had done something never before accomplished by any other man, and something no other man would probably ever do.”

There was no Oram around this morning. No one to feel other than envy at sight of Booth. As he walked back upstairs to his room, Michael O'Laughlin and his party of celebrants were coming down Pennsylvania Avenue. They had had breakfast, and some drinks, and hands and heads were steadier now. In fact, some of the gaiety of last night had been restored. The food at Welch's had been good, and the drinks, tasting stronger than yesterday, had recolored the city and made it a memorable sight.

There were four of them. Navy Ensign Henderson and Bernard J. Early were trying to agree on a mutual flat note with which to start a song. Mike O'Laughlin and Edward Murphy, leading the party, were silent. O'Laughlin was promising himself that he would not get drunk the second consecutive day, but he couldn't force himself to believe himself because he knew what a liar he was.

They were passing the National when Bernie Early said that, if nobody minded too much, he would pause and use the men's room. Nobody minded at all. Murphy, in fact, wondered if the hotel had a bar, and if not why not. They walked inside and O'Laughlin said that he had a friend in this hotel—John Wilkes Booth—and he would stop by and say hello to him in his room. Henderson and Murphy, while waiting, had
cartes
de visite
made and, after forty-five minutes, sent two of them up by a hotel messenger to see if they could hurry Mike out of his friend's room. The cards came back with no answer, so the three went off to Lichau House, where men could sober up on pickled pigs' feet and big cold schooners of beer. Mike rejoined them there. He said that he had been trying to get some money that Booth owed him.

Over on the other side of town—the north side—Anna Ward had been to the post office early. She was young and unpretty and overly modest and nearsighted. She admired John Surratt very much. What hurt Anna's chances with John was that she already had the blessing of the boy's mother. This, as many girls have learned, can slow a romance to a walk. Still, John seemed to display fondness for her more when he was away from home than when he was in the boardinghouse. As today, for instance. She had two letters from him, both postmarked “Montreal, Canada East.” Inside, in addition to the warm missives to her, were two enclosures for his mother.

Anna hurried as fast as she could to get to the boarding-house on H Street to share her happiness with the widow Surratt. She had another letter for Mrs. Surratt postmarked Maryland, but Anna had no interest in it.

The two women, both nearsighted, read the letters aloud and hugged themselves over the news that John was well. He did not say what he was doing in Canada, but it was pretty well known that the Confederate States of America had shipped much money through Montreal to and from Europe, and it was tacitly understood that John Surratt had run the blockade for the Rebels between Richmond and Montreal, with documents concealed in a hollowed heel of a boot and between the floorboards of a rig. He had been stopped and searched several times by roving Union patrols in southern Maryland, but no one had ever found anything incriminating.

Now, the two women felt that the war was over, and that John would soon be home.

Mrs. Surratt read the Maryland letter by herself. It was from Charles Calvert, and he noted that he had tried, by every honorable means, to collect the money due him, and had failed. His lawyers had sought a judgment for the full amount in Maryland District Court. He would not have done this, Mr. Calvert said, except that he had met John Nothey, who had owed the Surratts $479 for thirteen years, and Mr. Nothey had said that he had tried to arrange a settlement of the debt, but that Mrs. Surratt did not seem interested in coming to terms. The little widow showed flashing indignation and said that, somehow, she would have to get to Surrattsville today. Mr. Wiechman usually drove her when John wasn't home, but the boarder was working and there was no man around to help. Still, she was determined to have a showdown with Mr. Nothey that day.

At the War Department office, immediately west of the White House, General Ulysses Simpson Grant was finishing his war's-end work. He stood, short and squat, tunic open, cigar in mouth, eyes squinting against the sight of the papers on the desk, and he approved the recommendations which would now go to Stanton.

The Secretary of War had been kind, in a curt, formal manner, to the hero of the Civil War. He had assigned a special office to him, saw to it that help was available, and had insisted that the general bring Mrs. Grant to the Stanton home. The secretary did not permit the general to forget that Stanton was boss but, other than that, he was somewhat pleased to find that the general was genuinely modest, did not want any honors, dreaded public appearances, asked for no voice in matters of policy, and wanted to visit his children in Burlington, New Jersey.

The secretary was surprised to find that, in Grant, there was nothing to guard against. He had asked the general, when he had come in from the front, to sketch a plan for cutting the size of the United States Army to something approaching a peacetime level, and to mark off which contracts for munitions and supplies could be canceled at once.

Grant had worked two days on the problem, often walking across the hall to the secretary's office for advice, going to the telegraph office to send dispatches, and digging into contract records. Now he had shown which divisions could be cut to what size (the Union Army would still have to patrol much of the South); and he had canceled contracts for items like shovels, ambulances, bayonets, cannonballs, food, uniforms, shoes. He found time to write two telegrams to General Meade, at Burke's Station, Virginia, granting permission to two Confederate messengers to return to Danville.

When the work was done, he went into Stanton's office and sat with the secretary. Mr. Stanton, fearful as always that President Lincoln would stumble, had sat up late last night working on his draft of proposals for peace in the South. He was still working on it. Grant told Stanton today, as he had on Thursday, of Mr. Lincoln's wish that the Grants accompany them to the theater tonight, but that neither one felt like attending. He did not tell something that Stanton may not have known at all: that Julia Dent Grant did not want to attend the theater tonight in the company of Mrs. Lincoln. In any case, the general said, he wanted to see his two children.

Stanton's silken whiskers hung over his papers and his head swung from side to side as he studied, first one draft of his peace proposals, then the other. He talked in short bursts and what he said was that he and Mrs. Stanton always turned down presidential invitations to the theater; they were, in fact, turning another one down this morning. His advice was not to feel bad; if the Grants did not go, the Lincolns would find
someone else. The Cabinet members, he said, had all turned down such invitations and the Lincolns did not seem to be offended.

Grant felt better. He said that he was never much of a man for public appearances anyway, and he turned to his cipher operator, Samuel Beckwith, as though for confirmation. Mr. Stanton said that his advice to the general would be to wait until the Cabinet meeting at eleven, and then tell the President that he must decline. He added that Washington City was seething with intrigue, that, in some ways, it was as “Secesh” as Richmond, and that he had repeatedly asked Lincoln not to expose himself, either in theaters or at public gatherings.

The general and his cipher operator left the secretary's office and Grant sent a messenger to Mrs. Grant, at the Willard, to make arrangements to leave tonight for Burlington.

Lincoln did not know this.

A convalescent sun came out, weak and pale, and young buds and rooftops glistened in the cool air. Ships which had been anchored downstream, loaded with prisoners, began to hoist anchor and sail and move upward against the southwesterly breeze.

In Charleston at this time of day, men stood proud and men stood sullen as they watched the Stars and Stripes lift jerkily up the halyard at Fort Sumter where, four years ago, it had come down. On the mainland, the Federal artillery belched fire and rattled the windows of the homes and the churches of Charleston.