The Day Lincoln Was Shot (35 page)

“Auntie,” said Clarvoe, “is John Surratt in this house?”

The woman was badly frightened. She shook from cheek to heel. “Do you mean Mrs. Surratt's son?” she said.

“I do,” Clarvoe snapped. “I didn't know she had a husband.”

“I have not seen him for two weeks.”

Clarvoe and Skippon went back upstairs and searched
that floor from front to back. They questioned the boarders in the parlor. They left. They took no prisoners.

Mr. Stanton would know about all of this in about an hour, but, at the moment, in Petersen House, he had lost his temper. Mrs. Lincoln had made one more trip to the deathbed. She was supported by Miss Harris and Miss Keene and she had leaned across the bed so that her cheek rested on her husband's. At that precise moment, the President expelled an explosive breath, and, as her ear was close to his mouth, the noise terrified her and she screamed and fell into a dead faint.

Stanton heard the commotion, the cries of the other ladies, and he came into the bedroom pointing a finger at the unconscious Mrs. Lincoln.

“Take that woman out,” he said loudly, “and do not let her in again.”

When the room had been cleared, Dr. Barnes ordered the patient to be turned toward the wall. The doctor sat on the bed and, with cotton soaked in alcohol, combed the black matted hair away from the round wound. Then, using a silver probe, he tried to locate and remove the bullet. The probe moved inward two inches, and met an obstruction.

Barnes asked his assistant for a long Nélaton probe. It had a tiny white porcelain bulb on the end. This, when inserted, passed the two-inch mark and continued onward diagonally across the brain. At a depth of four inches, it ran into an obstruction. Barnes turned the probe slowly so that segments of whatever the obstruction was would be found on the porcelain bulb. If it was a bullet, traces of lead would be found. He withdrew it. There was no indication of lead. The other doctors studied the probe and agreed that he had probably contacted a piece of loose bone which had been blown from the back of the skull by the impetus of the bullet. The Nélaton probe was tried again, without result. The Surgeon General, after a
consultation, agreed that no further effort would be made to find the bullet.

Andrew Johnson felt that he had waited long enough to visit President Lincoln. Later, many would say that the Vice President did not want to go to Petersen House. Whether or not this was so, he received the Stanton message to be prepared to take the oath of office and at once insisted that he was going to Petersen House. Governor Farwell opposed it. He said that the future of the Republic was bound up with Johnson now, and that the Vice President should remain where he was. Major James O'Beirne was present, and he too opposed the visit.

Johnson said he would go anyway. At that, O'Beirne said he would summon a guard of soldiers. The Vice President refused. He wanted no guard, no carriage—he would walk. So Farwell and O'Beirne flanked the next President and walked him up Twelfth Street and across E to Tenth. Johnson said little. He had pulled his hat down hard over his eyes, raised his coat collar, and jammed his hands into his coat pockets.

Tenth Street was almost deserted. Cavalry horses were tied four and five to a picket post up and down the street and they looked dejected in the cool dampness of morning. A small group of civilians stood around Petersen House and two soldiers patrolled the front of the house.

The Vice President was shown into the bedroom. He stood with his hat in his hand, his hair mussed, looking down. He stood for a little while, never taking his eyes from the figure on the bed, not saying anything, not showing any emotion. Then he took Robert's hand and whispered a few words. He stopped in the back parlor and said something to Stanton, who looked up at him and nodded curtly. He went back through the hall, through the bedroom with the flickering jet, and into the front room. He took Mrs. Lincoln's hand in his and she looked up at him, whimpering.

Johnson walked back to Kirkwood House.

In New York and in Philadelphia and Chicago and Detroit and St. Louis and Boston, the morning newspapers were being made up. They knew. Now the editors were going to press with the biggest, saddest story of the age. Mourning rules were dropped into place by printers and many editors headed the story with the single big word
“IMPORTANT!”
This was followed by as many as fifteen and eighteen diminishing headlines which told, in brief, the facets of the story.

Radical Republican newspapers ripped out editorials which condemned Lincoln's “soft” peace toward the South, and in their place went brand-new editorials which mourned the loss of a great man. Cartoons which slandered Lincoln's features were tossed on the composing-room floor. Anti-Lincoln letters from irate readers were killed, the type distributed.

Mainly, the story ran down the left-hand column of page 1 and jumped from there to another page. Smaller sidebar stories, telling of the effect of the assassination on the national welfare, were run beside the main story. So were stories about Mr. Seward's assassination, and there were a few stories about Johnson and Stanton.

The editors were also exasperated. They told their readers about the greatest crime of the nineteenth century, but in the story there was no criminal. They jammed the reopened wires to Washington with questions. A few who had stories which mentioned Booth removed the name from the copy because it seemed libelous. On the wires, the editors asked for confirmation, by a high official, of Booth as the assassin. Associated Press members were confused because they were asked, at one time in the night, to “kill” the story.

The editor of the
National Intelligencer,
who did not know that Booth had tried to give him a news beat and a confession in a letter, sat down at 2
A.M.
to write an editorial in longhand. He gave his lead a lot of thought and then he wrote: “Rumors are so thick and contradictory that we rely entirely upon our reporters to advise the public of the details and result of this night of horrors. . . . We forbear to give the name of one of the supposed murderers, about whom great suspicion gathers. . . . At the Police Headquarters it is understood that Mr. Hawk, of Laura Keene's troupe, has been held to bail to testify to the identity of the suspected assassin of the President, whom he is said to have recognized as a person well known to him.”

The Washington
Chronicle,
by comparison, stated the case for confusion as well as any newspaper: “We then ascertained that the police were on the track of the President's assassin, and found that a variety of evidences, all pointing one way, would in all probability justify the arrest of a character well known throughout the cities of the United States. Evidence taken amid such excitement would, perhaps, not justify us in naming the suspected man, nor could it aid in his apprehension.”

Almost alone among the big daily newspapers, the New York
Tribune
named names: “Laura Keene and the leader of the orchestra declare that they recognized him [the assassin] as J. Wilkes Booth, the actor.”

Over on C Street, John Greenawalt had just retired at Pennsylvania House. He owned the hotel and the houseboys seldom disturbed him because, when he was sleepy, he was irritable. However, he had just become comfortable when a boy knocked, came in, and said: “There is a man came in with Atzerodt, and he wants to pay for a room.”

The houseboy was wrong. Atzerodt had not come in with anyone. He was in the lobby, dozing on a settee. He wanted a place to sleep, but he had no money. When a paying customer had come in, the houseboy used the event to say a good word for George.

Greenawalt got up, donned a robe, and went downstairs. He took some money from the paying customer and told the houseboy to show him to a room where some other men had left a vacant bed. Atzerodt sat up and asked if he could have his old room, number 51. It was occupied, Mr. Greenawalt said, but he was welcome to accompany the stranger and find a bunk in the same room.

The stranger registered as Sam Thomas. He gave five dollars and received change. Atzerodt tried to follow him up the stairs, but Mr. Greenawalt stopped him. “Atzerodt,” he said, “you have not registered.”

“Do you want my name?”

“Certainly.”

The conspirator signed his name and went to the room. He had finally found a place to sleep.

Now the nation slept. Tenth Street was deserted. Washington City was quiet. So were Ashtabula and Asbury Park. The few who were acquainted with the tragedy slept as soundly as the many who had yet to hear of it. Night trains roared through the countryside with wide-awake engineers, and milk wagons clanked to stores east and west and north and south, and policemen in fawn helmets yawned at street corners, but still the nation slept.

Even young Anna Surratt and Honora Fitzpatrick had long since exhausted the giggles in remembering the fierce detective who had pulled back the bedclothes a little. They too slept. Atzerodt slept. Major Rathbone slept. So did little Tad Lincoln, who had been in bed at the White House since 8
P.M.

This hour was the quiet one.

In Petersen House, Stanton decided that a second news bulletin should go at once to General Dix in New York. He still bustled at his work. Corporal Tanner yawned and pretended to be thinking, with eyes closed, of his notes. Justice Cartter sat, with crossed legs, staring out a back window which, by daylight, gave little view, and at night none. Stanton wanted to send this notice to Dix so that he could rectify an early mistake and name the assassin.

He sent this to Bates, at the War Department Telegraph Office at once. Little time was wasted on any of Stanton's messages. Troopers at the curb in front of Petersen House were given the dispatches, and rode at top speed down to E Street, across E to the south White House grounds, and up Seventeenth to the department. Here, young soldiers waited at the curb to take messages upstairs to Bates and, at the same time, to give messages to the troopers for Stanton.

It was an efficient system. The message above was sent over the wires at 3:20
A.M.
By 4
A.M.
it had been read to the New York press. The dispatch itself is significant only because it shows that Stanton was beginning to change his mind. He had begun with the notion that Washington was seething with assassins and arsonists; that a reign of terror had
overtaken the city and death was to overtake many people before dawn.

Now, almost five hours later, he had a suspicion that the Federal Government was fighting one man. “Every exertion has been made to prevent the escape of the
murderer. His
horse has been found. . . .” If the new thesis was correct, then Stanton, with all the majesty and power of the United States Government behind him, was a damned fool. He had been outwitted, was being outwitted, and might continue to be outwitted by a lone actor. Because of this, and for no other reason, the Secretary of War would, in the days ahead, insist that this was all part of a huge conspiracy, inspired and approved by the defunct Confederate States Government. He could not admit, even to himself, that he was not battling Davis and Benjamin and Seddon and Stephens. It was big, or Stanton was ridiculous.

Speed wanted to leave the premises for a while, and he brought to Stanton the letter which would notify Johnson that the President had died. Stanton placed it on Corporal Tanner's table, and the young man read it:

Sir:

Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, was shot by an assassin last evening at Ford's Theatre, in this city and died at the hour of—.

About the same time at which the President was shot an assassin entered the sick chamber of the Hon. William H. Seward, Secretary of State, and stabbed him in several places—in the throat, neck, and face—severely if not mortally wounding him. Other members of the Secretary's family were dangerously wounded by the assassin while making his escape.

By the death of President Lincoln the office of President has devolved under the constitution upon you. The emergency of the government demands that you should immediately qualify according to the requirements of the constitution, and enter upon the duties of President of the United States. If you will please make known your pleasure such arrangements as you deem proper will be made.

Your obedient servants,

Hugh McCulloch, Secretary of the Treasury

Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War

Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy

W. Dennison, Postmaster-General

J. P. Usher, Secretary of the Interior

James Speed, Attorney General

To Hon. Andrew Johnson,

Vice President of the United States.

At police headquarters, Major Richards wrote an order of small importance to any but drinkers: