The Day Lincoln Was Shot (29 page)

He saw Lewis Paine coming up toward him, and saw Bell directly behind him. Seward, angry, whispered a demand to know what the commotion was all about. Paine, stopping two steps below the top, whispered back that he had a prescription from Dr. Verdi and that this fresh nigger tried to stop him.

Seward held out his hand. He would see that the prescription was delivered. Paine shook his head. The doctor had told him twice to make certain that this medicine got into no other hands than those of the Secretary of State. If he was permitted to hand the bottle to Secretary Seward, he would leave at once. The young official didn't know whether to throw the messenger and his medicine out, or to reason with him. In his mind, Seward figured that this man was one of those dull mentalities who know no better than to obey orders literally.

“My father may be sleeping,” he said. “I will see.”

He went up to the front of the hall to a door on the left side. Until then, Paine had no idea where the Secretary of State might be. Now he knew. In a moment, Seward was back.

“You can't go in,” he said. “He's sleeping. Give it to me.”

“I was ordered to give it to the secretary.”

“You cannot see Mr. Seward. I will take the responsibility of refusing to let you see him. Go back and tell the doctor that I refused to let you see him if you think you cannot trust me with the medicine. I am Mr. Seward and I am in charge here.” The voice began to rise in tone. “He will not blame you if you tell him I refused to let you see him.”

Paine hesitated. Then he said: “Very well, sir. I will go.”

He turned and faced down the stairs. He pulled his pistol, whirled, and fired at the middle of Frederick Seward. The hammer clicked. There was no explosion. Paine jumped to the top step and, before Seward could lift his hand, the rare temper brought the butt of the gun smashing down on Seward's head. He fell and Paine bent over him, smashing again and again at head and neck.

Bell, halfway up the stairs, turned and ran down, screaming “Murder! Murder!” He ran down the second flight of stairs, still screaming the litanous word and out into the street. “Murder! Murder! Murder!” David Herold watched him. Quickly, the assassin's escort dismounted, tied Paine's horse to a tree,
remounted, and galloped off. As he turned into Pennsylvania Avenue at Fifteenth, Booth was at the other end of the Avenue, turning into Capitol South.

Upstairs, Paine found that he had broken his pistol. He threw it at the unconscious man and drew a knife. He hurried to the front bedroom. When he pushed against the door, he found that someone was leaning against it. Paine moved back a step and crashed his weight against the panel. The door flew open and Paine fell, inside. The room was in darkness except for a slice of light from the hall.

The assassin got up, saw a moving figure, and slashed at it. He heard a man scream in pain. His duty was to kill the Secretary of State and he had no time for others, so he jumped on the bed and, when he felt the helpless figure beneath him, he struck with his knife again and again. He heard small moans and he lifted the knife once more, as high as he could. Someone jerked his arm from behind and he turned and found that, in the darkness, he was battling two men.

They were trying to pull him off the bed. No words were spoken. The Secretary of State, still conscious, had the presence of mind, when his assailant was removed, to roll off the bed onto the floor against the wall, even though he knew that he was falling on the broken arm. Paine hacked at the restraining arms around him. The three fell into tables and chairs and, when he felt himself free, Lewis Paine got up and ran out into the hall, yelling, “I'm mad! I'm mad!”

There he saw a young lady, in nightdress, screaming. At the same time, he saw another man coming toward him. This man was well dressed and seemed confused by all the noise. He walked toward Paine blindly. The assassin permitted him to come close, then raised his knife and plunged it into the stranger's chest up to the hilt. Mr. Hansell, State Department messenger, fell without uttering a word.

Paine hurried downstairs and out into the street. He looked
for Herold, and found that he had been deserted. He untied his horse, mounted, and, mopping his face, turned north toward H Street. He walked the horse and William Bell, seeing him, followed behind, cupping his hands and yelling “Murder!” Soldiers came running from Augur's sentry box. They passed the assassin, passed the Negro boy, who was pointing at Paine, and ran up the steps of The Old Clubhouse.

Bell was stubborn. He kept behind Paine until the assassin turned, annoyed, and spurred his shaggy-shanked horse into a trot. The boy still followed, for a block and a half. Then he stopped and hurried back to Mr. Seward's house.

The Seward home looked unreal. Hansell, barely conscious, was bleeding profusely and gagging on his blood. At the top landing, Frederick Seward lay curled on his side, in a coma. On the rug beside him was a broken pistol and a black felt hat—Paine's. A male nurse, Sergeant Robinson, was badly hurt and bleeding. Augustus Seward was injured, but not bleeding. Miss Fanny Seward, who had been smashed and knocked down when Paine had first entered the sick room, was unconscious on the floor. She was one of the “men” he thought he had been battling.

When William Bell got back to the house, Major Augustus Seward was standing in the doorway with a huge pistol in his hand. People came running from all over Lafayette Square. Little Bell tried to tell his story, and point to which way the man had gone, but no one had time to listen to him.

Paine outdistanced the shouts of murder and soon he found that he was in a maze of streets, all of them dark and lonely. He remembered that “Cap” had said to turn right, so he turned right. He trotted his horse and he walked his horse. After a half hour, houses became infrequent and he saw dark fields. In the moonlight, he saw some soldiers coming toward him, so he got off the horse and hid in a field. He was in the East Capitol section, but he didn't know it. He was also about
a half mile from the Navy Yard Bridge, but he didn't know that either.

The streets of downtown Washington were alive with running people who shouted to darkened houses that assassins were at large and that the Secretary of State had been murdered in his bed. This wave of hysteria, as John Wilkes Booth figured, met an opposite wave which roared that the President had been killed in cold blood in Ford's Theatre.

The news reached different people in different ways. Major Eckert was standing before a mirror in his room, shaving, when a friend burst in and said that Seward had just been killed. Mr. Stanton was undressing for bed, having been serenaded by the arsenal band, when a soldier banged on the broken pull bell and then rapped on the door. Stanton heard the news about Lincoln and Seward, went back upstairs, and told Mrs. Stanton that it was humbug. He was getting into bed when more people came with the same wild news. He dressed and someone got him a hack and he hurried to Seward's home. Robert Lincoln had just arrived home, and was sitting with members of his father's staff, when the tragic news came. Surgeon General Barnes was homeward bound in his carriage and was passing Willard's Hotel when a cavalryman rode up, looked in, and advised the doctor to go to Ford's Theatre at once—the President had been shot.

Barnes ordered the driver to take him to his office at top speed. He wanted to get his instruments. He was packing them in a bag when a wild-eyed soldier burst in and said that Secretary of State Seward had been stabbed and to please hurry. The Surgeon General said that he had heard about the alarm, but that the man must have been confused because he had said it was the President, and the place was Ford's Theatre. Barnes went off to Seward's home. There he was dressing the wounds of Frederick Seward when a Negro hack driver pleaded his way up the stairs and begged Barnes to
come at once to Tenth Street, the President of the United States was dying.

Robert Lincoln and John Hay raced to Tenth Street in a carriage. The President's oldest son did not believe the news. When the driver tried to turn off G Street into Tenth—a block and a half from the theater—a mass of humanity blocked the road and Robert Lincoln put his head in his hands and moaned. When soldiers tried to turn the carriage away Lincoln, in anguish, said:

“It's my father! My father! I'm Robert Lincoln!”

With help, he got through on foot. When he saw his mother, in the parlor of Petersen House, he burst into tears.

In the Seward home, Nurse Robinson and Miss Fanny Seward had turned the gas up and Robinson had found the secretary on the floor between bed and wall. His eyes were open, staring into pools of his own blood.

Miss Fanny said: “Is my father dead?”

Robinson felt for a pulse and found none.

“He has no pulse,” he said.

Miss Fanny threw up the front window and screamed “Murder! Murder!” Robinson tore the nightshirt open and listened for a heartbeat. He heard one, and it sounded strong. The Secretary of State whispered: “I am not dead. Send for a surgeon. Send for the police. Close the house.”

The nurse lifted Mr. Seward and said: “Do not talk. It makes your bleeding worse.” The patient was put back on the bed. Robinson got the twisted bedclothes off the floor and wrapped them around the secretary. Then he looked at the face on the pillow. With a cloth, he wiped the red mask off and saw two pulsing wounds, one on each cheek. The right cheek was slashed from ear to lip and hung in a flap over the lower jaw. From the side, Robinson could see the inside of Mr. Seward's mouth. The leather-covered iron brace around neck and jaw had saved the man's life.

Vice President Andrew Johnson heard a pounding on a door. He was half asleep, half awake. He heard it and yet he didn't hear it. It continued for some time. He got up, fumbling for the lamp beside his bed. Outside, former Governor Leonard J. Farwell said: “Governor Johnson, if you are in this room, I must see you.” Johnson got the door open as Farwell was trying to peer over the transom.

The Vice President invited him in.

“Someone,” Farwell whispered, “has shot and murdered the President.”

Johnson, lighting the living-room lamp, swung around. He did not believe the news. Then he saw Farwell's wild, agonized expression and he ran to the man and they threw their arms around each other as though, without support, each would collapse. Farwell opened the door and peered both ways down the corridor. He rang for servants and asked for guards. One man was put inside the door and told to admit no one.

Someone knocked and Farwell, frightened to frenzy, refused to permit the door to be opened until he recognized the voice of a Congressman. The Congressman said that there were five hundred people in the lobby. Johnson emerged from his bedroom shoving his shirttails into his trousers.

“Governor,” he said, “go back to the theater and find out how the President is.”

In a little while, Farwell was back with Major James Rowan O'Beirne, Provost Marshal of the District of Columbia. There were a lot of people in Johnson's two rooms and the men were in such a state of excitement that they were ready to believe any idiocy. Farwell assured everyone that the President was dying; that Seward was dead, and that it was part of a gigantic plot to kill Johnson and all Cabinet ministers.

O'Beirne said that it was his opinion that Johnson should remain in his rooms with his friends. The Vice President bridled and insisted that his place was at the side of the President and that's where he was going. The Provost Marshal was opposed, but said that if Johnson had to do it, to wait until O'Beirne returned for him, when the excitement in the streets had died a little.

The stone had been dropped into the still pool. Now the wave began to ripple outward, evenly for the most part, and it spread to all parts of the city. Ella Turner, the prostitute who had loved Booth, heard of the deed and the name of the assassin. She went to her room, placed a photo of John Wilkes Booth under her pillow, and pressed her head into a rag soaked with chloroform.
*

The news jumped from house to house, from street to street. In nightclothes, citizens gathered on the sidewalks, talking, and other citizens threw up the windows and demanded to know what the noise was for. In time, the wave reached reporter L. A. Gobright of the Associated Press. He was closing his office for the night—had the key in the door—when he heard the first wild rumor and, without waiting to check it, wired his New York office:

Fifteen minutes later, all commercial telegraph lines out of Washington were dead and no further news got out of the city until 1
A.M.

In the home of Senator Conness, colleague Charles Sumner was chatting when a young man burst in and said, all in one breath: “Mr. Lincoln is assassinated Mr. Seward was murdered in his bed there's murder in the streets.”

Sumner's reaction was: “Young man, be moderate in your
statements. What has happened? Tell us.” And when he heard it again, he did not believe it and he put on his cape and walked the short distance to the White House and said to the sentry: “Has Mr. Lincoln returned?”

“No, sir. We have heard nothing from him.” Sumner went home.

The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Salmon P. Chase, heard the news at home and believed that it was mistaken. When he heard the same news from another source, Mr. Chase decided that he could not be of service to Lincoln, and stayed home and went to bed.

The Navy Secretary, Mr. Welles, was sleeping when Mrs. Welles awakened him with the news that Mr. Seward was dead. He dressed, hurried over to The Old Clubhouse. Stanton arrived at almost the same moment. They saw Frederick unconscious with two fractures of the skull; they saw blood and hysteria and anguish.

On the way downstairs, Welles admitted to the Secretary of War that he had not believed the news about Seward, but now he had seen it with his own eyes. He had heard that the President had been shot, but he did not believe that either.