The Day Lincoln Was Shot (24 page)

All this he told the night man, and then, when the President appeared at the office door for a moment, Crook said: “Good night, Mr. President.” The President looked at him and said: “Good-by, Crook.” On the way home, William H. Crook thought about it. The President had always said “Good night, Crook.”

The night guard assumed his post outside the office. As a man, John F. Parker was somewhat less than average. He was thirty-four, sandy-haired, married, father of three small children. His outstanding virtue was that he had none. He was born in Frederick County, Virginia, had served three months with the Union forces in 1861, and lived with his family in
small quarters at 750 L Street. He had been accepted as a policeman on the Washington metropolitan force early in 1861.

On October 14 of his first year, Parker went on trial before a police board for using profane language to a grocer. The superior who suspended Parker filed an additional charge of using vile and insolent language to a superior officer. Parker was found guilty reprimanded and transferred. Later, he was charged with insulting a woman who had asked for police protection. In succession, Parker was further charged with abusing a superior officer, and with being found sleeping on a streetcar.

In April 1863, he was charged with being found drunk and disorderly in a house of prostitution, where he had appeared as a customer. The house was operated by Miss Annie Wilson and, at the trial, Miss Wilson and her coworkers appeared as character witnesses for the policeman. One girl told the police board that Parker had been staying at the house for five weeks and had not been seen drunk or disorderly in all that time. It was testified that he had been sleeping with Miss Ada Green.

When the hearings were finished, the police board found that Parker was “at a house of ill fame with no other excuse than that he was sent for by the keeper” and, in addition, found that there was “no evidence that there was any robbery there or disturbance of the peace or quiet of the neighborhood.” He was acquitted.

Two weeks later, a roundsman brought Parker up on charges of not patrolling his post. He had been found sleeping on a Third Street car. Parker's defense was that he and a police partner were investigating the squawking of ducks on the streetcar and, in the midst of his investigation, he had fallen asleep. The charges were dismissed.

Ninety days later, a woman citizen charged Parker with using insulting language to her because she had protested
to him against disorderly Negroes in her neighborhood. The charge was dismissed.

This is the man who drew the 4
P.M.
to midnight shift as personal guard to the President on April 14, 1865. There was nothing sinister in the assignment. Since late in the previous winter, the Washington metropolitan police force had been furnishing men to the White House for this purpose. Out of a force of fifty men, four had been picked for this duty; two others had been selected as substitutes on days off. Of the forty patrolmen who might have pulled White House duty, many of the older men did not want it and, by seniority, managed to evade it. Of the younger ones, a few aspired to this assignment because it was known that the President, or Mrs. Lincoln, would keep such men from being drafted for army duty.

Three of the guards (Crook, Alexander and Parker) had asked for such letters to the draft board. It can be assumed that no police superior, including Major A. C. Richards, superintendent of the force, acquainted the Lincolns with the past records of the guards. Both the President and his wife took for granted that the character and courage of the men sent to them were beyond question.

Over on K Street, Mr. Stanton finished his dinner and said that he felt tired. Mrs. Stanton suggested that he lie down, but he said that he wanted to read the evening newspapers. He compromised by fixing pillows on a couch downstairs, and read as Mrs. Stanton sewed. Other Cabinet members were spending a quiet evening at home: Speed, Usher, Welles.

Downtown, boys ran through the streets passing out specially struck handbills.

The name of General Grant, it will be noted, had been eliminated from the handbill. It is probable that the actor Matthews, returning from the Avenue, informed the Fords that Grant had been seen on his way out of town, and therefore could not be expected at the performance. Maddox, now acting as stage manager, went up to the President's Box to make a last-minute inspection, and he found everything as it should be.

Booth too was busy. He finished eating and went to his room and loaded his pistol. It was a brass derringer, a single-shot firearm with a short barrel. It would fire once, and could not be fired again without reloading. The derringer could almost be hidden in a lady's hand. It fired a good-sized lead ball, almost a half inch in circumference.

The actor loaded it carefully, and placed a percussion cap under the hammer. The derringer was ready. He patted the sheathed knife stuck in the waistband of his trousers, and assured himself that it was there. Booth had a disgust of knives, and for the type of wounds they inflicted. He kept the blade as insurance.

From his trunk he pulled a false beard, a dark mustache, a wig, an oversized plaid muffler, and a makeup pencil. When all of the accouterments of assassination had been inspected and counted, he dropped on the bed, being careful to keep his boots and spurs hanging off the edge. It is hardly possible that, with the small amount of time left for inactivity, he slept at all. Booth was sobering a little, and he probably watched the shadows on the hotel ceiling, and listened to the chatter of the merrymakers on the street below.

No one knows, or ever will know, when it first occurred to him to utter a phrase after the murder. He was not a Latin scholar, and beyond what little Latin the study of English etymology would give him, he knew none at all. He decided to use as his bid for immortality the phrase “Sic Semper Tyrannis.” This was the motto of the State of Virginia: “Thus always to tyrants.”

At 7:45, he got off the bed, packed his impedimenta, and, at the last moment, decided to take two big revolvers. The others might need them; he would not. Downstairs, it was said by some, he walked across the lobby, elegant and poised as always, and nodded to the desk clerk.

“Are you going to Ford's Theatre this evening?” Booth said.

“I hadn't thought of it,” the clerk said.

“Ah,” said Booth wagging a finger, “you should. You will see some fine rare acting.”

He went out into the darkness and got his impatient mare. The night clouds were low enough to be seen in the reflected glare of lights from the city. There was a fine mist in the street
and, in it, the lighted dome of the Capitol looked to Booth like an apparition viewed through a frosted window. Still, the streets were crowded and a parade of government employees was making up and musicians were sounding their instruments. The gaiety, in fact, seemed enhanced by the hour, and the same revelers who, for days past, had vowed that they could not celebrate any more, were out again tonight drinking toasts to Lincoln, Grant, Stanton, Meade, McClellan, Sheridan, Ord, Sherman, Hooker, Farragut, Porter, and, when they got to thinking of Lee, they knew they were good and drunk.

Vice President Johnson was lying on his bed, clothed. He heard a knock on the door. He got up, adjusted his galluses, and opened it. The visitor was ex-Governor Leonard J. Farwell of Wisconsin. He said he was tired of sitting around the hotel. He needed someone to talk to and he wanted to stop in for a minute or two. Johnson turned up the table lamp and the two men, both lonely, talked peace and politics and Farwell said that he had a ticket to go to Ford's Theatre tonight. It had been announced, he said, that Lincoln and Grant would be there.

The Vice President did not rise to any faintly implied invitation to come along. He told the governor that he was tired—very tired—and he was going to get to bed early.

At Mrs. Surratt's house, John Holahan awakened from a nap and looked at his watch. He reminded Mrs. Holahan that, tonight, the employees of the arsenal were putting on a torchlight procession from the Capitol to the White House and that it would be a good idea to go down on the Avenue and watch it. Mrs. Holahan was not interested. She could think of things that had to be done right here in the house without getting dressed to stand out on a wet night watching parades.

Holahan washed his face in a basin, put his coat on, and left. He walked down Sixth Street to the Avenue, then over
to Seventh, and stood in front of Seldner's Clothing Store and waited for the parade. The big Irishman was moved by the ruddy flames of the torchbearers and the music and the grinning faces and, when the parade had passed, he decided that he might as well go to Ford's Theatre and see Lincoln and Grant.

He got as far as Eighth Street and D when he remembered that this was Good Friday. Holahan was Catholic. He decided to go home. Had he gone to the theater, he stood an excellent chance of purchasing one of the few remaining seats in the theater, the first seat in Row D of the dress circle—a few short steps from the little white door. Had he been seated there, he would have seen anyone passing by en route to the President's Box and, had he recognized an idol, Holahan would have engaged him in conversation beyond doubt. What would have happened no one knows, but Holahan was a big man, and a strong one.

In the White House, the President worked. Speaker Colfax was in the office and he was explaining to Lincoln that he had scheduled a summer trip to the Rocky Mountains and California but he wanted to cancel it at once if the President decided to call a special session of Congress. Lincoln shook his head. He had not decided to call a special session, and he did not expect to call one. Let the Speaker go on with his trip. In fact, right now the President would write out a few remarks about the important part the people of the West Coast would play in the coming peace with their gold and silver mines.

Colfax, after a pause, said that many people had been worried about the President exposing himself to violence in Richmond. Lincoln said: “Why, if anyone else had been President and gone to Richmond, I would have been alarmed too; but I was not scared about myself a bit.”

The two got to talking about the theater party tonight and Lincoln said that General and Mrs. Grant had intended to accompany them, but that Grant had been in a hurry to see his
children and had taken the night train to Philadelphia. Would the Speaker like to join the party?

Mr. Colfax declined, with thanks.

Out in the front corridor, John F. Parker walked up to the big front doors and chatted with his friend Tom Pendel. Mr. Pendel had been one of the four original presidential guards, but had been advanced to the post of White House doorman. Parker had filled the vacancy.

“John,” said Pendel, “are you prepared?”

Parker looked confused. Prepared for what? Alfonso Dunn, the second doorman, spoke up: “Oh Tommy, there is no danger.”

“Dunn,” said Pendel, “you don't know what might happen.” He had always been a careful policeman and he knew that Parker wasn't. “Parker,” he said, “now you start down to the theater and be ready when he reaches there.” He held one of the doors open. Parker, half amused, half blank, walked out into the night. “And you see him safe inside,” said Pendel.

An usher brought word to Mr. Lincoln that former Congressman George Ashmun was waiting outside. The Congressman did not have an appointment, but what he had to see the President about would take but a minute or two. The President studied his timepiece. It was 7:50.

“All right,” he said. “Show him in.” He turned to Colfax smiling, and asked the Speaker to please wait outside for a moment. The hour was late, but the President could hardly refuse Mr. Ashmun “a minute or two” because Ashmun had presided over the 1860 convention which had nominated Lincoln. In Congress, he had been fairly loyal to Lincoln policies.

Now Ashmun sat and said that a client of his from his native Massachusetts had a sizable cotton claim against the government and Ashmun wondered if Mr. Lincoln would appoint a commission to examine into the merits of the case. The President listened with unconcealed irritation.

“I have done with commissions,” he said angrily. “I believe they are contrivances to cheat the government out of every pound of cotton they can lay their hands on.”

The ex-Congressman gasped. “I hope,” he said, “that the President means no personal imputation.”

Lincoln began to feel bad. “You did not understand me, Ashmun. I did not mean what you inferred. I take it all back.”

Ashmun was mollified.

It was 8:05 when Mrs. Lincoln, in pretty bonnet with tiny pink flowers, and low-necked white dress, stood in the office doorway pulling on gloves and said:

“Would you have us be late?”

The President fumbled for his watch, and remembered that he had asked Colfax to wait outside. He asked Ashmun if he would mind coming back again in the morning, when he would have plenty of time. Lincoln had momentarily offended a friend and now he wanted to lean over backward to swallow the honest words he had uttered.

Ashmun said that he would have time in the morning. The President took a card from his vest pocket and wrote on it in a large, shaky hand:

He got up, excused himself, got his silk hat, brushed his hair with his hand, and, with Congressman Ashmun, joined Colfax, Mrs. Lincoln and Noah Brooks on the front porch. In a last-minute afterthought, he told Colfax that Senator Sumner had a gavel which the Confederate Congress had used and which Sumner wanted to present to Mr. Stanton. “I insisted then that he must turn it over to you,” Lincoln said. “You tell him for me to hand it over.”