A Night of Horrors: A Historical Thriller about the 24 Hours of Lincoln's Assassination (33 page)

Time crept on imperceptibly, the only evidence being the dull clicking of the clock in Stanton’s makeshift office. Lincoln’s breathing was more labored than it had ever been. Each breath clearly sapped his strength. Each exhalation drained away more of his energy. The sounds rose and fell from his chest with less and less regularity. Then, the next breath wasn’t taken. All eyes turned to look down. Still no breath. Dr. Barnes, sitting at Lincoln’s side, removed his watch, ready to pronounce the time of death. Then, Abraham Lincoln began to suck another breath into his tired lungs and those in the room released a collective exhale. But slowly, his breathing became shallower. The clocks of the city chimed out seven o’clock in the morning. His breathing became shallower still. Then, again, his breathing stopped and everyone became quiet. Robert Lincoln looked down at his father and his chin quivered as he began to cry. Dr. Barnes took his watch from his pocket again, but just as he did, Lincoln took another breath. There were some murmurs in the room as the tension mounted and the deathwatch intensified.

Lincoln’s breathing was now barely perceptible. The blankets did not rise and fall. His lips weren’t moving. His face was still and serene. There was one more loud intake and then a slow easy exhalation as the final living breath left the body of Abraham Lincoln. The room was utterly still. More than 20 people who had pushed themselves into the small room realized that Abraham Lincoln was dead. Most were clustered behind the headboard. Robert Lincoln was right behind the head of his father and quietly buried his face onto the shoulder of Senator Charles Sumner. Both men had tears streaming down their face. But still no one spoke and no one moved. Dr. Barnes had his finger on the President’s radial pulse. He looked at his watch. A minute or so after Lincoln’s last breath, the surgeon general nodded and removed his hand from the President’s wrist. Dr. Barnes then gently laid the President’s arms across his chest and quietly said, “He is gone. He died at twenty-two minutes after seven o’clock.”

Time fell short of seconds and words fell short of breath. They all realized that Abraham Lincoln, friend, father, and leader was no more.

Edwin Stanton took a slight step towards the bed. He had carried his hat from the other room and now lifted it straight up, slowly placed his hat on his head, and then removed it again. It was the best salute that he could make to his friend and leader. There were tears on some, but all stood mutely transfixed by the moment. Though they had sat through the hours of the night and the morning awaiting and expecting this outcome, it came as a shock nonetheless at the doctor’s pronouncement. They watched quietly as Dr. Barnes placed two fifty-cent pieces on Lincoln’s eyes. The rain fell gently outside and the breeze fluttered the curtains.

“Doctor, will you say anything?” Edwin Stanton broke the silence, speaking to Reverend Dr. Gurley, the pastor of the church that the Lincoln family attended.

“I will speak to God,” Gurley replied.

“Then do so just now,” Stanton said softly. Gurley knelt on the floor and several others in the room joined him.

“Our Father and our God, as we are gathered at the bedside of our fallen leader we pray for our nation and for each other. Remind us, Father, of the cause for which this man fought and for which he died. Remind us, Father, that this nation that Thou brought forth is worth the fighting for and worth the dying for. Do not allow the wicked intent of the murderer of Abraham Lincoln to succeed. Do not allow the cause of democracy and liberty to be defeated, our Father and our God. We pray that Thou will fight for the cause of our imperiled country. We pray, dear God, that the peoples of the North and South will become the one and united people of the United States. The single hope of a nation at war is peace. Father God, please secure that peace. And in securing the peace, we hope and we pray and we ask, Almighty God, that this nation will become more than ever united in the devotion and cause of our beloved country. But above all else, we pray that Thy will be done. Amen.”

Stanton stood behind the Reverend with tears streaming down his face and into his beard. His nose was running into his mustache. But he did not wipe his face. He simply stood looking through his blurred vision at his Old Chief, who lay dead on the bed before him.

“Now he belongs to the ages,” he pronounced. Several in the room nodded their heads in agreement and many more dissolved into tears.

Robert Lincoln collected himself and took a deep breath. He needed to tell his mother the news. As he walked into her room, he saw that she was sitting upright for the first time. She was calmer than she’d been at any point in the night.

“Mother,” he said gently and she turned and looked up at his tear-stained face. Her eyes widened already knowing what he was about to say.

“He is gone, Mother. Father has died,” he said and put his hand on her shoulder. She collapsed against Mrs. Dixon and wailed and shrieked at the top of her voice.

“Why did you not tell me he was dying? Why did you not tell me?” Her wails filled the entire house and announced the death of the President of the United States to those who were in the rooms above, who were just waking. When she had finally spent her initial grief at the final news, Robert took her to Lincoln’s bedside. She fell on his body and wailed again. They allowed her to grieve without interruption. After a time, she calmed herself and sat back. Robert helped her to her feet.

“Come, Mother. We must go back to the Executive Mansion to tell poor Taddy the sad news. Let’s go.” He helped her down the hallway. He put her cape around her shoulders and Mary Lincoln, still dressed in her elegant gown for the theater, stumbled her way to the front door. Robert opened the door and as Mary stepped out onto the small stoop, she looked out over the crowd of people standing silently in the street. The faces turned up in expectation and hope at the sight of the First Lady. She looked at Ford’s Theater across the street.

“I wish that building had never been built,” she said to her son. “I wish we’d never gone out last night. Oh, Robby, why did they kill him and not me? Why did they not kill me?” Robert practically carried her down the steps and helped her into the carriage. The driver slowly worked his way through the crowd. Their faces were wet with tears and the rain. Watching the weeping First Lady drive away in her carriage had answered their question.

Abraham Lincoln had died.

This long night had finally come to an end.

Afterword

Within three hours of Abraham Lincoln’s last breath, Chief Justice of the United States, Salmon Chase, swore Andrew Johnson in as the seventeenth President of the United States of America. Stanton’s and Speed’s plan to achieve an orderly succession worked brilliantly. When the news of Lincoln’s passing broke in the newspapers, it was accompanied by the announcement that Andrew Johnson was the new president. The days, weeks, months, and even years that followed the death of Abraham Lincoln were just as eventful, though not as compressed, as the day of his death and worthy of a novel or two of their own.

The Conspirators

Lewis Powell
roamed the city for a day, but eventually returned to Washington City with his pickaxe. Not knowing where else to go, he found his way to 591 H Street and Mrs. Surratt’s boardinghouse. He knocked on the door on the evening of April eighteenth, just four days after his attack on the Sewards. His timing couldn’t have been worse. When he knocked on the door, Major Henry Smith of the War Department was interviewing Mrs. Surratt. Within minutes Powell was apprehended and was placed under arrest and held on the
USS Montauk
, the very same ironclad that Abraham and Mary Lincoln had toured on the last carriage ride they would take together.

George Atzerodt
would spend the next day in another drunken stupor, but he eventually made his way out of Washington City and north to Germantown, Maryland. There he stayed with family. Never one to hold his tongue, Atzerodt made several suspicious comments about the assassination at a meal. A friend, who became concerned, reported these to an officer and Atzerodt was arrested at four o’clock in the morning on April twentieth, just six days after the assassination. Atzerodt was also held on the monitor
Montauk.
Atzerodt and Powell were both tried, convicted, and hanged for their part in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the attacks on the Sewards.

Mary Surratt
would avoid arrest for more than a week, but eventually Edwin Stanton became convinced that she had supported John Wilkes Booth and provided the “nest that hatched the conspiracy.” Though many, including Lewis Powell, claimed that she was never a formal part of the conspiracy, she was found guilty and became the first woman in United States history to be executed for her crimes.

David Herold
hid with John Wilkes Booth in the woods of southern Maryland and then in northern Virginia for 12 long days. When the United States Army finally caught up to them, Herold surrendered and was taken to the monitor
Mantauk
to join the other prisoners
.
He, too, was tried, convicted, and hanged with Atzerodt, Powell, and Surratt on a hot July seventh, just three months after the attacks.

John Wilkes Booth
evaded capture for a dozen days. Stanton played cat and mouse with the assassin, engrossing the nation with each twist and turn of the chase. Booth finally found some newspapers and read with horror of the reaction of the nation to his deed. Both North and South were mortified and called him a common criminal. He was dejected, but moved south anyway in an attempt to flee the enclosing net. He was finally chased down on the Garrett farm just north of Bowling Green, Virginia. Rather than surrender with Herold, he stood in the barn that was being burned down around him. He was fatally wounded by a bullet to the neck that severed his spine and paralyzed him. Where Lincoln clung to life for nine long hours, Booth expired in less than fifty minutes. He whispered, “Tell my mother I die for my country,” as he died.

The Leaders

Andrew Johnson
went on to serve a full term as President of the United States, but faced a hostile Congress who failed to impeach him by just one vote. Johnson, after vowing to maintain and implement Lincoln’s plans for reconstruction, soon turned to his Democratic friends and attempted to implement a policy that would have allowed many of the former leaders of the Confederacy to assume roles in the reinstated southern states.

Edwin Stanton
served as Johnson’s Secretary of War, but he did so out of the stubborn belief that he could work to undermine Johnson from the inside of his administration. Their hatred for each other came to a head when Johnson finally tried to remove Stanton from his position and the Secretary, in response, literally boarded himself into his office in the War Department. Stanton eventually resigned his position as War Secretary and helped to elect Ulysses Grant as the eighteenth president of the United States. He was nominated, by Grant, to the United States Supreme Court, but fell ill just several days after the Senate confirmed the nomination and died in the early hours of Christmas Day, 1869, at the age of fifty-four.

Gideon Welles
served as the Navy Secretary for Andrew Johnson often siding with the embattled president over Edwin Stanton, his long-time colleague and nemesis. Welles’ meticulous diary would eventually be published shedding important light on the inner workings of two administrations in crisis. It is also an important source for key passages of this novel.

William and Frederick Seward
both recovered from their wounds. William went on to serve as the Secretary of State for Andrew Johnson. During his tenure, he orchestrated the purchase of the Alaska Territory from Russia. He would live the rest of his days with a large scar on his left cheek as a constant reminder of the vicious attack he survived on April 14
^th
, 1865. Frederick continued as Assistant Secretary of State in Andrew Johnson’s administration and then served in the same position for Rutherford B. Hayes.

Major Henry Rathbone
survived his wounds from Booth’s attack on April fourteenth. He and
Clara Harris
married and Rathbone went on to become the United States consul to Hanover, Germany. As time went on Rathbone began to show signs of mental instability and on the night of December 23, 1883, Rathbone stabbed his wife to death and then stabbed himself in a failed attempt at suicide. He spent the rest of his life in an asylum for the criminally insane.

Mary Lincoln
was never the same after the death of her beloved husband. She embarrassed herself by attempting to publicly sell her gowns in an effort to make money to repay the many debts she had created while her husband was in office. Due to her obsessive spending habits and increasingly erratic behavior, Robert would eventually have her committed to an insane asylum.

Tad Lincoln
tried to comfort his mother as best he could in the months after his father’s death. He finally started formal schooling after the family returned to Chicago, but his life was cut tragically short when he died at the age of 18, most likely from tuberculosis.

Robert Lincoln
resigned from the army and, once he had moved to Chicago with his mother, he went on to practice law as his father had wished. He would lead a distinguished life, serving as Secretary of War and Minister to Great Britain before becoming the President of the Pullman Company.

Abraham Lincoln’s
body would be transported around the country in an unprecedented funeral train that traveled more than 1,600 miles and retraced the route that Lincoln took for his first inauguration. Booth was still at large when he was buried in his hometown of Springfield, Illinois. The nation’s outpouring of grief in sermons, songs, poetry, and speeches quickly transformed the simple lawyer from Illinois into a man of the ages, as Edwin Stanton had prophesied at his death.