The Day Lincoln Was Shot (36 page)

General Augur received a report of the raid on Surratt House before he could organize his forces, and the news about the Surratt family was forwarded to Stanton with the news about the stableman who serviced Booth's horse, the
letter from Sam Arnold to Booth, and other late data including Atzerodt's peculiar behavior at Kirkwood House. For the first time, a tavern in southern Maryland, at Surrattsville, came into focus.

Stanton and Cartter went over each report with care, and the more the two men listened and read, the more it became apparent that they were battling two or three men—or at most, a half dozen—all of whom had an affinity for southern Maryland or for Baltimore. The best news of all was the letter from Sam Arnold to Booth, because that established, beyond argument, that there was a plot; it established that such a plot had existed for weeks; it established that Arnold thought that Booth should not move until he first heard from “R d——.”

At once, the Secretary of War began to work on a new dispatch for General Dix.

The steeple at Beantown was black against the night sky when John Wilkes Booth slowed his horse and Herold pulled the mare up. They were close to the home of Dr. Samuel Mudd, and whatever their plan was to be it had to be agreed upon now.

There is no record of the conversation between these two, but certain reasonable assumptions can be made from what happened. Booth did not regard Mudd as a friend. He put on the disguise of an old man.

Mudd was forty, tall, thin, had a bald forehead, blue eyes and brick-colored hair and whiskers. He was intelligent and independent. Until the Emancipation Proclamation, he had owned eleven slaves. Once, when a slave refused an order, Mudd drew a pistol and shot the man in the leg.

He owned a five-hundred-acre farm, and worked it. As was the case with his father and his brother, he liked property and he wanted more. He was a churchgoer and so was Mrs. Mudd. The doctor was influential in the neighborhood of Bryantown, and was a conservative Southerner in his politics.

Booth and Herold walked the sweat off their horses and talked about Mudd. The actor wanted to have the leg treated, and be gone. If it had to be bound, or splinted, all right. But Booth did not trust Mudd and, even though Booth was miles ahead of the news he had created, he knew that, if the doctor recognized him, sooner or later the Mudds would learn that Booth had killed Lincoln, and in that event the doctor had the type of character which would impel him to go to the
authorities with the news. If Federal patrols were to come this way, looking for Booth, they would be here shortly after daylight—7 or 8
A.M.
With luck, they might not reach this neighborhood until 10. But, once here, the story of the assassination and the search for Booth would be common gossip within an hour.

Booth, right now, was ten miles off his escape route. He was eighteen miles southeast of Surrattsville, when he should have been eighteen miles dead south. And, to get back to La Plata and down to Port Tobacco would now require the use of cross-country farm roads because there were no main roads. So, if Mudd could fix the leg so that riding would be bearable, they might get out of his house at 5
A.M.
There would be some daylight then because sunrise would be 5:20.

The riding would be slow, but, if they made Port Tobacco by 7:30, they might still be ahead of the Federals, and if Atzerodt was waiting, as he should be, they would be moving out into Pope's Creek by 8
A.M.
If Atzerodt wasn't waiting, they would have to hire a boat to take them across to Mathias Point. Of one thing Booth was certain: when they reached Virginia territory, and the great heroic news was known, every loyal Southerner would give them shelter and do them honor. John Wilkes Booth never doubted this, nor could he afford to, because once the civilian prop was removed from his future the actor was dancing on air. Herold, nodding to the superior wisdom of his worldly friend, believed with him. It did not occur to either of them that any Southerner could or would greet them with contempt.

They swung off the road and up before Dr. Mudd's house. They agreed that Davey Herold would do most of the talking. The boy dismounted, and gravel crunched underfoot. Somewhere, a hound dog bayed and, in other places, dogs took up the cry. Herold knocked. Dr. Mudd, in bed, heard it and resolved that whoever it was could knock twice more if the matter was important. Herold obliged. The doctor came
downstairs in nightshirt, holding a candle, and, from behind the locked front door, inquired who was knocking.

“Two strangers riding to Washington.”

Mudd opened the door and, in the pale light, saw a young man. His horse was tied to a tree out front and the young man was holding the reins of another horse on which a silent man sat. The young man said that he and his friend were riding to Washington and his friend had taken a bad fall. His leg was hurt.

The doctor handed the candle to Herold, and went out and helped the other man off the horse. When he learned that the left leg was injured, he got on that side of the man and got under his arm and helped him up the stone step into the parlor. Herold followed with the candle.

“You sit there,” said Mudd, helping the man to a sofa, “and I'll get more light.”

Mrs. Mudd was at the head of the stairs and she asked what the trouble was. “A man hurt his leg,” said the doctor. “It may be broken.” Mudd lit two lamps and then crouched in front of the horseman. He did not try to pull the boot off. He just pressed both sides of the foot and ankle until he felt a mass and saw the patient jump.

“I don't think you will get to Washington tonight,” he said. He looked at the old man wincing in pain. Then he looked at the boy watching. “I would suggest,” the doctor said, “that you come upstairs with me and let me have a look at that leg.”

Only the eyes and cheekbones of the injured man were showing. He nodded slowly, and Herold picked up one of the kerosene lamps and Mudd picked up the other. Between them, they assisted the silent man up the stairs. Mudd sensed that this man's pain was acute, but that he was trying not to make an outcry.

In the guest room were two beds. Mudd helped the patient to fall on the near one. The doctor stood near the bed, looking
now at the patient's face, and the man kept the muffler up on his chin, although the house was warm. The doctor asked a few questions about the injury, and the patient groaned and closed his eyes. The young fellow stood in the doorway.

Dr. Mudd stooped and tried to pull the boot off. It wouldn't come off. The silent man raised his head off the pillow.

“Please make haste,” he said. “I want to get home and have this attended to by my regular physician.”

The doctor noticed that, when the patient moaned, his left hand went to the small of his back. Mudd excused himself and went downstairs and got some heavy pasteboard and some paste. He wet the insides of the pasteboards and glued them together until he had several very firm splints.

When he got back upstairs, he took surgical scissors and made a vertical incision in the boot directly over the instep, and cut straight up. When he reached the top, he peeled the leather back and, tugging gently, removed the boot, then the sock. A lump of purpled flesh showed about two inches above the foot. After probing and manipulating, Doctor Mudd found a simple fracture of the tibia, and no fractures of adjoining bones.

At 4:45
A.M.
Mudd had finished his examination and had applied the splint. The patient then complained of a pain in his back and said it caused him to have trouble with his breathing. He was sure, the silent one said, that he could not be moved right now. This seemed to startle the young man in the doorway, but he said nothing.

“You can stay here,” the doctor said. Mudd had good powers of observation. His mental notes were: Man five feet ten inches high, pretty well made. I suppose he would weigh 150 to 160 pounds. His hair was black and worn long and seemed to curl. He had a pretty full forehead and his skin was fair. To me he seemed to be accustomed to an indoor, rather than an outdoor life.

Mudd went downstairs and awakened his colored man, Frank Washington, and asked him to take both horses to the stable and to make sure that they had hay and water. The doctor decided that, as long as he was fully awake, he would have breakfast and he invited the young man to join him. The young man, he found, was talkative. He was short and dark, to the doctor's eyes, and appeared never to have had a reason to shave.

He told the doctor that his name was Henston and that the injured man was Mr. Tyser. He prattled on, telling the doctor that he knew him, although they had not met before, and that he was well acquainted in this part of Maryland. Mudd found him to be guileless and superficial.

After breakfast, the doctor was about to go out into the fields when the young man asked if he could borrow a razor. The doctor, normally an apprehensive and suspicious man, had been at ease until now. He asked what the blade was to be used for, since he had noticed that the boy had no beard. Herold said that his friend upstairs would like to shave.

“It will make him feel better.”

The doctor gave him a razor. Mudd's suspicions were aroused because upstairs when the shawl had slipped a little bit, he had seen part of a full graying beard and a coal-black mustache. It did not seem reasonable that a man in pain, in a stranger's house, should suddenly decide to remove a well-nourished beard or mustache. Dr. Mudd went out into the fields to direct the day's work.

Stanton finished his third press bulletin to General Dix, and because it supported his “huge conspiracy” feelings, he was pleased with it. It was sent by Bates at 4:44
A.M.:

Major General Dix:

The President continues insensible and is sinking. Secretary Seward remains without change. Frederick
Seward's skull is fractured in two places, besides a severe cut upon the head. The attendant is still alive but hopeless. Major Seward's wounds are not dangerous.

It is now ascertained with reasonable certainty that two assassins were engaged in the horrible crime, Wilkes Booth being the one that shot the President, the other a companion of his whose name is not known, but whose description is so clear that he can hardly escape. It appears from a letter found in Booth's trunk that the murder was planned before the 4th of March, but fell through then because the accomplice backed out until “Richmond could be heard from.”

Booth and his accomplice were at the livery stable at 6 this evening, and left there with their horses about 10 o'clock, or shortly before that hour. It would seem that they had for several days been seeking their chance, but for some unknown reason it was not carried into effect until last night. One of them has evidently made his way to Baltimore, the other has not yet been traced.

Edwin M. Stanton Secretary of War

This was, in a manner of speaking, a defensive press release. When Stanton wrote, “It appears from a letter found in Booth's trunk that the murder was planned before the 4th of March,” he lied. There is nothing in Sam Arnold's letter that bears on inauguration day. The letter itself was mailed on March 27. The only possible way that the Secretary of War could have been reminded of a period prior to March 4 was if Augur had told him
now
that Booth and Surratt and Atzerodt had been named in a presidential kidnap plot prior to March
4 (by Wiechman and Captain Gleason) and that the department had done nothing about it.

Mr. Stanton had Arnold's letter before him when he wrote the dispatch to Dix, and he quoted Sam as writing to Booth that the accomplice backed out until “Richmond could be heard from.” What Arnold wrote was “I would prefer your first query: ‘Go and see how it will be taken in R——d . . .'” The misquotation must have been deliberate because there is an enormous difference between going to ascertain how Richmond will react to a scheme, as opposed to holding a plot in abeyance until “Richmond can be heard from.”

He was wrong in other, lesser matters, but these were errors of judgment. Stanton now believed that Booth and Arnold were the culprits and, because Arnold's letter was dated from Hookstown, Balto. Co., he alerted the Baltimore Department to locate Samuel Arnold and arrest him in the Seward assassination. Mr. Arnold was working as a clerk at one of the War Department's bastions: Fortress Monroe, in Virginia.

At the same time, Stanton was convinced that Booth had escaped from Washington City, and, in the light of the reports he had on activities at the Surratt boardinghouse, he called for maps and called a conference of ranking officers.

It was late and almost ludicrous to be examining the bars of the municipal cage now, but it was done. Military reports from the north, from the west and from the south showed that no one resembling Booth had been seen on any of these roads. All of the city exits were examined and the only one uncovered, unwatched, unpatrolled, was the peninsula called southern Maryland.

One of the officers reminded the Secretary of War that the blind horse had been found in East Capitol, almost on the route to the Navy Yard Bridge and southern Maryland. If, the military minds reasoned, Booth went that way, then he would be bottled up in the area unless he could get back to Virginia. His best chance to get back on Old Dominion soil would be in the region of Piscataway, Maryland, or below Indian Head. Stanton asked for a picture of Booth and someone got one from the files at Ford's Theatre. It was a picture of Edwin Booth.

Another troop of cavalry was ordered out and was told to patrol the area of Piscataway, Maryland, and if clues were turned up to signal the War Department by telegraph. It was commanded by Lieutenant David D. Dana, the younger brother of the Assistant Secretary of War. He was requested to cover the road north out of Piscataway, south to Accokeek, and northeast to Surrattsville.
*
Piscataway was a good junction of roads for such a search. If Booth was not in this area, and had not been seen, then he was probably headed for Annapolis or Upper Marlboro. Either that or—Stanton placed little credence in this—he was sleeping somewhere right here in Washington City.