The Day Lincoln Was Shot (28 page)

“Oh, Doctor! Is he dead? Can he recover? Will you take charge of him? Oh, my dear husband! My dear husband!”

“I will do what I can,” the doctor said, and motioned to the men who crowded into the box behind him to remove her. She was taken to the broad sofa in Box 8, and Miss Harris sat beside her, patting Mrs. Lincoln's hand.

At first, Leale thought that the President was dead. He pushed the shoulders back in the rocker so that the trunk no longer had a tendency to fall forward. Then he stood in front of the President and studied him from head to foot. With the attitude of one who knows that he will be obeyed, he said to the gawking men: “Get a lamp. Lock that door back there and admit no one except doctors. Someone hold matches until the lamp gets here.”

These things were done, as Dr. Leale knew that they would be. He was the first person to bring order around the dying President. The eyes of the patient were closed. There was no sound of breathing. There was no sign of a wound. Men held matches and looked open-mouthed as Leale placed the palm of his hand under the whiskered chin of the President, lifted it, and then permitted it to drop.

In the crowd peering in from the corridor, he saw a few soldiers. “Come here,” he said to them. “Get him out of the chair and put him on the floor.” Half afraid, they did as he told them to. The body was relaxed. They placed it on the floor and stepped away. Leale was going to look for the wound. He was
sure that it was a stab wound because, as he was passing the theater on his way back to the army hospital, he heard a man yell something about the President and a man with a knife. Further, he had seen that Major Rathbone sustained a knife wound.

Dr. Leale crouched behind Lincoln's head and lifted it. His hands came away wet. He placed the head back on the floor and men in a circle held matches at waist level as the doctor unbuttoned the black coat, the vest, unfastened the gold watch chain, and, while trying to unbutton the collar, he became impatient and asked for a pocket knife. William F. Rent had a sharp one, and Doctor Leale took it and slit the shirt and collar down the front.

He tore the undershirt between his hands and the chest was laid bare. He saw no wound. The doctor bent low, and put his ear to the chest. Then he lifted the eyelid and saw evidence of a brain injury. He separated his fingers and ran them through the patient's hair. At the back, he found matted blood and his fingers loosened a clot and the patient responded with shallow breathing and a weak pulse.

Onstage, men lifted another doctor into the box. This one was Dr. Charles Taft. He was senior to Leale, but he placed himself at Leale's disposal at once as an assistant. Leale lifted the body into a slumped sitting position and asked Dr. Taft to hold him. In the saffron flicker of the matches, he found what he was looking for. His fingers probed the edges of the wound and he pulled the matted black hair away from it. It was not a knife wound. The President had been shot behind the left ear and, if the probe of a pinky meant anything, the lead ball moved diagonally forward and slightly upward through the brain toward the right eye. Dr. Leale felt around the eye to see if the ball had emerged. It had not. It was in the brain.

Gently, he lowered the great head to the floor. He knew that Lincoln had to die. Leale acquainted Dr. Taft with his
findings, and his feeling. He straddled the hips and started artificial respiration. His business was to prolong life—not to try to read the future—and so he raised the long arms up high and lowered them to the floor—up and back—forward and down—up and back—forward and down. For a moment, he paused. Rudely, he pushed the mouth open and got two fingers inside and pushed the tongue down to free the larynx of secretions.

Dr. Albert F. A. King was admitted to the box. Leale asked each doctor to take an arm and manipulate it while he pressed upward on the belly to stimulate the heart action.

A few soldiers started to clear the box of people. From onstage, questions flew up to the box. Mostly, they were unanswered. “How is he?” “What happened?” “Was he stabbed?” “Who did it?” “Is he breathing?” “Did anyone see who did it?”

For the first time, someone uttered the name of John Wilkes Booth. The name moved from the stage down into the orchestra, was shouted across the dress circle and out of the half-empty theater into the lobby and cascaded into Tenth Street. “Booth!” “Booth did it!” “An actor named Booth!” “The management must have been in on the plot!” “Burn the damn theater!” “Burn it now!” “Yes, burn it!” “Burn!”

Grief spirals to insanity.

Dr. Leale sat astride the President's hips and leaned down and pressed until these strangers met, thorax to thorax. Leale turned his head and pressed his mouth against the President's lips, and breathed for him in a kiss of desperation. Then he listened to the heart again and, when he sat up, he noticed that the breathing was stronger. It sounded like a snore.

“His wound is mortal,” he said to the other doctors. “It is impossible for him to recover.”

One of the soldiers began to get sick. Two others removed their uniform caps. A lamp arrived. Dr. Leale saw a hand in front of him with brandy. He dripped a small amount between
the bluish lips. Leale watched the Adam's apple. It bobbed. The liquid had been swallowed and was now retained.

He paused in his labors to wipe his face with a kerchief. “Can he be removed to somewhere nearby?” Leale said.

“Wouldn't it be possible to carry him to the White House?” Dr. King said.

“No,” Dr. Leale said. “His wound is mortal. It is impossible for him to recover.”

On the couch, Mrs. Lincoln sat quietly, rocking slightly. Miss Laura Keene had come into the box and was now sitting with her and with Miss Harris. All three heard Dr. Leale's words, but only Mrs. Lincoln seemed not to comprehend. She sat between them, rocking a little and looking across the theater at the other boxes.

Miss Keene came over, and asked the doctor if she could hold the President's head for a moment. He looked at her coldly, and nodded. She sat on the floor and placed his head on her lap.

“If it is attempted,” said Leale, still thinking about the White House, “he will be dead before we reach there.”

Dr. Taft asked an officer to run out and find a place nearby—a suitable place—for President Lincoln. He called four soldiers to carry the body—at first it was decided to try seating the body in the rocker and carrying it that way—but Leale said that there were too many narrow turns and besides, it would not hurt him to be carried as long as the open wound was downward.

Four men from Thompson's Battery C, Pennsylvania Light Artillery, drew the assignment. Two formed a sling under the upper trunk; the other two held the thin thighs. Dr. King held the left shoulder. Dr. Leale followed behind and held the head in cupped hands. Miss Keene sat, oblivious to the dark stain on her dress, watching. At the last moment, Leale decided that headfirst would be better and he walked
backward with Lincoln's head in his hands, his own head twisted to see ahead.

“Guards!” he yelled. “Guards! Clear the passage!”

From somewhere, a group of troopers came to life and preceded the dismal party, shoving the curious to one side. “Clear out!” they yelled at one and all. “Clear out!”

At the head of the stairs, Leale shouted orders as the party began the slow descent. Ahead, they could hear the cries of the crowd in Tenth Street. Downstairs in the lobby, a big man looked at the great placid face, and he blessed himself. Tenth Street was massed with humanity as far as the eye could see.

A short paunchy captain of infantry impressed more soldiers to duty and ordered them double-ranked to precede the body. He drew his sword and said: “Surgeon, give me your commands and I will see that they are obeyed.” Leale looked at the houses across the street, private homes and boardinghouses, and asked the captain to get them across.

For the first time, the crowd saw the shaggy head and the big swinging feet. A roar of rage went up. Someone in the crowd yelled “God almighty! Get him to the White House!” Leale shook his head no. “He would die on the way,” Leale said. Men in the crowd began to weep openly. The little party pressed through, inch by inch, the faces of the mob forming a canopy of frightened eyes over the body. The crowd pressed in ahead, and closed in behind.

The paunchy captain swung his sword and roared: “Out of the way, you sons of bitches!”

The night, now, was clear. The mist gone. The wind cool and gusty. The moon threw the shadow of Ford's Theatre across the street.

Every few steps, Leale stopped the party and pulled a clot loose. The procession seemed to be interminable. When they got across the street, the steady roar of the crowd made it impossible to hear or to be heard. Leale wanted to go into the
nearest house, but a soldier on the stoop made motions that no one was home and made a helpless pantomime with a key. At the next house toward F Street, Leale saw a man with a lighted candle standing in the doorway, motioning. This was the William Petersen house at 453 Tenth Street. Mr. Petersen was a tailor.

Lincoln was carried up the steps and into the house. Part of the crowd followed. The man with the candle motioned for the doctors to follow him. They moved down a narrow hall. To the right was a stairway going up to the second floor. To the left was a parlor, with coal grate and black horsehair furniture. Behind it, also on the left, was a sitting room. Under the stairway was a small bedroom.

Here, the President was placed on a bed. A soldier on leave, who had rented the room, picked up his gear and left. He was Private William T. Clark of the 13th Massachusetts Infantry. The room measured fifteen feet by nine feet. The wallpaper was oatmeal in character. A thin reddish rug covered part of the floor. There were a plain maple bureau near the foot of the bed, three straight-backed chairs, a washstand with white crock bowl, a wood stove. On the wall were framed prints of “The Village Blacksmith” and Rosa Bonheur's “The Horse Fair.” The bed was set against the wall under the stairway.

It was too small for the President. Leale ordered it pulled away from the wall. He also asked that the foot-board be taken off, but it was found that, if that was done, the bed would collapse. The body was placed diagonally on the bed, the head close to the wall, the legs hanging off the other end. Extra pillows were found and Lincoln's head was propped so that his chin was on his chest. Leale then ordered an officer to open a bedroom window—there were two, facing a little courtyard—and to clear everybody out and to post a guard on the front stoop.

At the back end of the room, Leale held his first formal conference with the other doctors. As they talked in whispers,
the man who had held the candle went through the house lighting all the gas fixtures. The house was narrow and deep, and behind this bedroom was another and behind that a family sitting room which spread across the width of the house.

Leale, in the presence of the other doctors, began a thorough examination. As he began to remove the President's clothing, he looked up and saw Mrs. Lincoln standing in the doorway with Miss Keene and Miss Harris. He looked irritated and asked them to please wait in the front room. The patient was undressed and the doctors searched all of the areas of the body, but they found no other wound.

The feet were cold to the touch up to the ankles. The body was placed between sheets and a comforter was placed over the top. A soldier in the doorway was requisitioned as an orderly and the doctors sent him for hot water and for heated blankets. They sent another soldier for large mustard plasters. These were applied to the front of the body, covering the entire area from shoulders to ankles.

Occasionally, the President sighed. His pulse was forty-four and light; breathing was stertorous; the pupil of the left eye was contracted; the right was dilated—both were proved insensitive to light. Leale called a couple of more soldiers from the hallway, and sent them to summon Robert Lincoln, Surgeon General Barnes, Dr. Robert K. Stone, President Lincoln's physician, and Lincoln's pastor, Dr. Phineas D. Gurley.

The death watch began.

At ten minutes past ten, Lewis Paine and David Herold rode into Madison Place, across the street from the White House. They stopped in front of The Old Clubhouse. Three doors away, a sentry lounged in front of General Augur's personal quarters. Two gas lamps lost a battle with darkness. Paine dismounted, handed the reins to Herold. He repeated the name of the doctor “Verdi, Verdi” as though it was difficult to
remember. He ordered Herold to wait for him and not to move from in front of the door.

He removed a bottle from his jacket pocket. David Herold, sitting his horse and holding the awkward blind one, watched Lewis Paine walk up to the front door and rap hard with the knocker. Through the chased glass panels light could be seen.

No one answered. Paine rapped again and waited. A shadow grew on the glass and the door opened: A young Negro in a white coat stood inside. This was William Bell.

“I have medicine from Doctor Verdi.”

William reached for it. Paine pulled his hand away.

“It has to be delivered personally.”

“Sir,” said the boy, “I can't let you go upstairs. I have strict orders—”

The rare temper began to crumble. “You're talking to a white man,” Paine said. “This medicine is for your master and, by God, I'm going to give it to him.”

“But, sir . . .”

“Out of my way, nigger. I'm going up.” Paine pushed his way into the big reception hall, and started up the stairs, William a step or two behind, pleading softly. Paine walked heavily. William Bell asked him to please walk easily.

“I'm sorry that I talked rough to you,” Bell said.

“Oh,” said Paine, at the top of the first flight, “that's all right.”

On the top floor, Frederick Seward, Assistant Secretary of State, heard the commotion and the tramp of heavy boots. He had been in bed with his wife, and now he had put on a dressing robe and hurried out.