The Day Lincoln Was Shot (37 page)

A dark stain spread around the President's head and the Surgeon General announced that Lincoln had sustained a fresh hemorrhage. The doctors lifted his head and a new pillow and case were placed on the bed. The hair around the wound was cleaned and cotton batting was pressed against it. After that, the President's breathing appeared to be more regular.

Gray light began to swell against the bedroom windows. In the room, the gaslight seemed to pale. Dr. Barnes sat at the head of the bed, trying to take a pulse from the carotid artery. Halfway to the feet of the patient, Dr. Leale sat, still holding Lincoln's hand, now and then checking the pulse in the flaccid wrist, sometimes getting a count, sometimes getting nothing. On the wall side of the bed, Dr. Stone sat, as helpless as the others.

The faces in the room had changed during the long night. Two, besides the doctors, remained constant. One was Robert Lincoln, still standing behind the head of the bed, looking down. The other was Secretary of the Navy Welles, fat and solemn, sitting with a hand on one knee, staring at this man who was, in effect, almost the last soldier to die in the war.

Death was roosting in the room now. Everyone present knew it. In the early hours, the President looked relaxed and, in spite of the medical prognosis, one would expect him to awaken any moment. Now, with the bullet lodged directly behind it, the right eye was swollen and purpled. The lips were cyanotic. The heart throbbed, skittered, and seemed to stop. The legs were as cold as the marble tabletops. Breathing
stopped for long periods, and after a few seconds one or two of the doctors would pull out watches to note the exact time of death. Suddenly, the lungs would burst with air, the heart would dance with life, and the President would groan through half-opened lips, as though, in a dream, he was walking down the White House stairs asking: “Who is dead?”

Mrs. Lincoln sat quietly. Laura Keene and Clara Harris were too spent for conversation. In the silence, they sat looking at the wall, or watching the inexorable growth of light in the room. As in a distance, they could hear the deep voices of the doctors in the bedroom and, now and then, the thin pitch of Mr. Stanton asking for something. In sound, the thud of boots and the clank of spurs never seemed to stop. For days, it seemed, soldiers had been walking through the hall outside this room. For the rest of her life, Mrs. Lincoln would dread the sight and sound of them.

An officer of General Augur's staff awakened the general agent of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad at his hotel. This was Mr. George S. Koontz, and he did not know the news. When he heard it, he dressed quickly, asking again and again to make sure that this was not a mistake or, worse, a joke.

The captain accompanied Mr. Koontz to the terminal and said that the government wanted the B & O to stop all trains leaving Washington. All road exits from the city had been sealed, and Stanton wanted to prevent the assassins from leaving town by train.

At the depot, they found the waiting room and the train platforms swarming with soldiers and detectives. The first northbound train scheduled was the 6:15. Koontz issued orders that no train was to leave the station. When the cars had been made up, and backed into the siding, passengers climbed aboard and then detectives went aboard and studied every person in every car. The soldiers examined all luggage
and all mail bags. They questioned the engineer, the fireman, the conductor and the brakemen. It was then decided, although the scheduled time had not arrived, that this train could depart at once.

The bewildered passengers stared out of the windows as the train eased out of the depot, picked up speed, and got as far as Relay House, a short distance on the road to Baltimore, where it was stopped by General Tyler. He explained to the train crew that Relay House was in his domain, and that if the army in Washington permitted trains to leave the city, that was their business. His business was to stop them at Relay House, and there the trains would remain.

The general, who got his star by obeying orders implicitly, also stopped all southbound trains out of Baltimore so that, in a short while, he had several trains standing on the tracks. Some passengers begged him to permit two sick children to continue their journey home, but the general said no.

Thus, if any of the conspirators had elected to take the morning train out of Washington, he would have been stopped at Relay House—provided, of course, that he could get through the tight military net at Washington depot—and later, when traffic was cleared through to Baltimore, such a conspirator would not have been able to make any train connections to New York or to Canada, as some were to charge that John Surratt did.

It was another gray and misty day and Robert Nelson, Negro, was walking across Lafayette Square on his way to work. He was crossing the street in front of Mr. Seward's home when he saw a knife. He picked it up and turned it over in his hand. A soldier, now patrolling in front of The Old Clubhouse, watched him and came out in the street and asked what he had picked up. Nelson showed him the knife. The soldier took it.

Lewis Paine had dropped it.

Twenty minutes later, a half mile to the east, William Clendin was walking down F Street toward Eighth when he saw a Negro woman run out of a doorway, step into the gutter, and pick something up. As he approached, he asked her what it was. In silence, she handed him a knife and a sheath.

A woman leaned out of an upstairs window and told Clendin that she had raised the shade and had noticed something in the road and had sent her maid down for it. Clendin held it aloft and told her that it was a knife and sheath. The lady said she would not permit it in the house and slammed the window.

Clendin turned it over to the police. Atzerodt had thrown it away.

C Street glistened with mist. The Pennsylvania House looked a little bit more dismal than usual as George Atzerodt came out, looked up and down, then crossed to the other side and started up Sixth Street. He was sleepy, and dirty, and penniless. He had a hangover. He was sick, soul and bone. The morning air was chill. He dug his hands into his trouser pockets and walked up toward the Mall.

“Mr. Atzerodt. What brings you out so early?”

The carriage maker jumped. He looked up. A colored boy from the hotel was coming back after seeing a lady guest off on the morning train.

Atzerodt's grin was forlorn. “Well,” he said, “I have got business.”

Mr. Atzerodt had business all right. He wanted to hide. In bed he had thought of many places, and now he had made up his mind to hide in the little town where he had first started in America. He knew that this was not a good place in which to hide, but he reasoned that, no matter where he hid, no matter how far away, the news would reach that place and they would come and get him. The world dealt harshly with cowards. A judge would not believe that he, George Atzerodt, could not kill anyone. So he had to hide. And, not having any money with which to ride, this conspirator was going to walk.

He would walk westward, through Washington City, through Georgetown, until he got to his little town. There, the people liked George Atzerodt. They were not like the people of Port Tobacco. They knew him as a harmless buffoon, a
beaming, perspiring drunkard. He would hide there, listening and laughing and maybe drinking until some men came and asked him if he was George Atzerodt.

When he got to the Mall, he turned on Constitution Avenue and he walked and walked and walked, the furtive piggish eyes dancing, the dampness on his round hat. This was a stupid conspirator. He was doing what no other conspirator would—walk through the enemy lines the day after the high crime. It wasn't brazenness. Nor courage. The man had no other place to go.

In Surratt House Louis Wiechman had breakfast with Mr. Holahan. Wiechman was talkative and Wiechman was righteous. The police would have raided the place a long time ago if they had listened to him. He had suspected what was going on and if Booth plotted this dangerous thing, and John was foolish enough to get into it, then John deserved whatever he got out of it. Thank God that he, Louis Wiechman, had not become part of it; had, in fact, gone on record as reporting his suspicions months ago.

Now, today, he was going to do his duty as any self-respecting citizen should. He was going down to police headquarters right after breakfast and he was going to offer his services to the police. He would help them to track down his dearest friend, John Surratt, no matter whether the trail led across the Eastern Branch to Surrattsville or up north to Canada.

Holahan pushed his plate away. He had little to say. He might have reminded Louis that he had heard more secessionist talk from him than from the others. He didn't.

Mr. Holahan stood and said that he had some things to do. Wiechman finished the breakfast Mrs. Surratt had prepared for him and then walked off to the police station. He had an excellent memory and he could quote old dialogue as though
it had been uttered yesterday. He would talk and talk and talk until the police tired of listening.

He was a hanging witness.

A few streets away, James Ferguson was finishing breakfast when Mr. Gifford, chief carpenter at Ford's Theatre, walked in looking irritated.

“You made a hell of a statement last night,” he said. “How could you see the flash of the pistol when the ball was shot through the door?”

Ferguson was puzzled. The stage carpenter said that the authorities had discovered that Booth had fired the fatal shot through the door of Box 7, and he had seen the hole to prove it.

“Mr. Gifford,” said Ferguson fervently, “that pistol never exploded in any place but the box. I saw the flash.”

“Oh hell!” said Gifford walking out. “The ball was shot through the door. How could you see it?”

Old Gideon Welles had sat with his President as long as he could. He needed a stretching of aging limbs, a breath of air. He got his coat and, when he put it on, fluffed his white whiskers outside the lapels, jammed a broad-brimmed felt hat over his long brown curls, and walked outside.

The chatting sentries on the walk snapped to attention. Mr. Welles walked slowly around the block, noting that small groups of people huddled against the buildings in the drizzle. They were waiting for news. Final news.

They recognized the old Secretary of the Navy and some looked at him expectantly, but he said nothing. Sometimes, a person would ask timidly: “Is there no hope?”

Once or twice, he said “No,” and kept walking. Once he said, “The President can live but a short time.” He was affected by the colored people, who stared at him, unable to ask the question except with their eyes. He noted that there were more of them standing this death watch than white. On
some faces, he saw the varnished furrow of old tears. To one group, without being asked, he was so moved that he said it would be better now if the President did not live.

Mr. Welles finished his tour and walked up the small steps at Petersen House and went back into the bedroom. Outside, two sentries made a game of trying to remember the names of all the important people who had come to this house this night. They remembered thirty. There were 46: Hugh McCulloch, Edwin M. Stanton, Gideon Welles, John P. Usher, William E. Dennison, James Speed, Andrew Johnson, William T. Otto, Robert King Stone, Joseph K. Barnes, Thomas T. Eckert, John B. S. Todd, Schuyler Colfax, Robert T. Lincoln, Charles Sumner, Maunsell B. Field, Leonard J. Farwell, Isaac N. Arnold, C. H. Liebermann, Charles H. Crane, John F. Farnsworth, John Hay, Gilman Marston, David K. Cartter, J. C. Hall, Charles S. Taft, Christopher C. Augur, Charles A. Leale, Henry R. Rathbone, Almon F. Rockwell, Louis H. Pelouze, E. L. Dixon, Thomas M. Vincent, Clara H. Harris, Constance Kinney, Richard J. Oglesby, Edward H. Rollins, Montgomery C. Meigs, Mary C. Kinney, Isham N. Haymes, Benjamin B. French, Phineas D. Gurley, George V. Rutherford, Lyman B. Todd, Henry Halleck, Laura Keene.

Now a new sound could be heard. Newsboys, carrying the morning papers, were shouting the bulletins up and down Tenth Street and the soldiers out front were buying the papers. The story, running down the left side of page 1, looked like this:

At one of the police precincts, the man nobody missed showed up. John F. Parker, unseen since ten o'clock last night, walked into the station with his contribution to justice. He had a prostitute by the arm and he told the sergeant of her crimes. She was Lizzie Williams. The sergeant looked her over. She was scared and drunk. He shrugged and refused to book her. She was ordered to get out of town.

Parker did not offer to tell the sergeant where he had been all night, and the sergeant did not ask. The policeman did not ask the condition of the President, nor did he offer to file a report about the assassination. The sergeant advised him to go home and to get some sleep. Parker left. He remained a
policeman in good standing for three more years. He was not tried and no charges were filed against him.

Corporal Tanner had finished his work for Secretary Stanton and he stood, picked up his notebooks, crushed his hat under his arm and, in leaving, passed through the bedroom where the President was. His uniform was rumpled and baggy and he tiptoed to the bed, standing between Generals Halleck and Meigs. He looked at the face that would be no more, and he studied the two doctors who sat on the bed.

Nobody looked at Corporal Tanner; no one spoke to him. He watched Stanton, at the foot of the bed, pressing a fist into a palm. Robert Lincoln, dry-eyed, stood behind the bed. The corporal put his uniform cap on, saluted, and walked out.