Assassin (4 page)

My older brothers, June and Edwin, were in California when Father died, and my mother told them not to worry about coming home. My younger brother, Joseph, was allowed to stay in school. We rented out our Baltimore home. Mother, Rosalie, Asia, and I moved back to the farm, and for a few years I tried to farm.

In some ways those years on the farm were good. Rosalie always stayed inside with Mother, but Asia and I passed many happy hours in the fields and woods. I loved riding my pony Cola through the countryside. Always, though, I was restless, longing for something I could not name. I remember going to Asia one day as she lay reading on a blanket spread beneath a large oak tree.

I leaned down to take her book from her. “Let us be happy,” I said. “Life is too short to be spent moping.”

Asia sat up and crossed her arms. “John Wilkes Booth,” she said to me. “I am happy. It is you who needs to heed his own advice. What is it that troubles you so?”

I thought then, when I was young and struggling to make a life as a farmer, that it was the stage for which I longed. I believed that I would find contentment in the applause of adoring fans. I have not done so.

In the fall of 1860, I was in Montgomery, Alabama, playing to fans who loved me. I remember the parties
most. I was the guest of honor in many a fine home. We were at dinner during one of those parties when the hostess turned to me and said. “We have just bought a fine new racehorse, Mr. Booth, paid dearly for him, I can tell you.”

She was a pretty woman dressed in a gown of black and white, her fair hair piled high on her head. Her blue eyes danced as she spoke. “You enjoy racing, I assume,” I said.

“Oh my, yes, Forrest and I both do, but we shall enjoy it more with this wonderful horse.”

Her husband, Forrest, at the other end of the table, entered the conversation. “Tell Mr. Booth what you want to name the horse, my dear.”

The lady laughed. She bent her head in pretended embarrassment. Then glancing up at me, her gaze coquettish, she said, “I’d like to name him John Wilkes if you’ve no objection. He is a handsome animal and fine. I am sure the mares adore him.”

I laughed. “I would be honored, my lady,” I said, and I lifted my glass for a toast. “To John Wilkes, may he race always to the front.”

After the meal, I walked about the plantation with my host and hostess. The late afternoon sun was still warm. We toured the barn to see the horses, and we walked along beside the fields that lay beyond the barn.

“What a lovely scene,” I said, gesturing toward the fields where the slaves bent over cotton. They sang as
they worked, and their voices carried to our ears. I remember thinking that it was a picture in danger of disappearing.

Only a few weeks after that party, Abraham Lincoln was elected president of the United States. In a four-way race, he won only 39 percent of the popular vote, but was elected by a wide electoral majority. I was backstage when a fellow actor showed me the
Montgomery Advertiser
. Staring down at the headlines that announced the election, I felt tears roll down my cheeks.

The newspaper recommended that Alabama secede, and all about me voices echoed the sentiment. When I left Alabama shortly after the election, I knew I would not again come to the dear state as part of the Union.

I went from Alabama to a theater in Philadelphia. Although I played to appreciative fans, I did not find the people there as warm as the people of the South. My sister Asia had married a man we had known from childhood, John Clarke Sleeper. He was beginning to do well on the stage as a sort of low comedy actor, and he reversed his middle and last names, thinking it would not be good to be known as a Sleeper.

Asia looked beautiful on her wedding day, and I tried to be glad for her, but I had never really cared for the groom. I did love Asia’s babies. She had two by the time I visited her in her Philadelphia home. She sat on a love seat, smiling, as I rolled with the babies on the floor. How I loved those sweet boys, loved to kiss their soft sweet
skin and feel their small hands clutching at my cheek. Asia was with child again, and I remember looking up at her and saying, “You might want to name the next child after your younger brother.”

“You think I should name the next child Joseph, do you?” Asia laughed, but she knew that I meant myself. Even then, though, I doubted her husband would agree to have his son named for me.

John Clarke had a small mind. Therefore I should not have been surprised to learn that he was a Lincoln supporter. On that first visit to their home after the election, I simply avoided discussing politics with the man. A few weeks later the peace was impossible to keep.

I was at dinner with Asia and John when a neighbor came breathlessly into the dining room shouting, “South Carolina has seceded. The Union has been destroyed.”

“It was bound to happen,” said John. “Others will follow, and they won’t go peacefully.” He shook his thick head. “The fools will push us to war now.”

Without even planning my actions, I sprang to my feet and put my hands around his neck, wanting with all my heart to squeeze.

“Wilkes,” Asia yelled, and she jumped to push at my body.

I came to myself, dropped my hands, and muttered an apology. Asia glared at me, and I could not bear to have her angry with me. “I am truly sorry, old man,” I said to the idiot Clarke. “I suffered a moment of near insanity, I
suppose. . . .” I looked down at the plate full of food in front of me. “Ever since fighting to capture old John Brown, I’ve been a bit unstable on the subject of the South.”

Asia smiled at me sweetly and put her hand across the table to pat mine. “You should never have gotten involved in a battle, Wilkes,” she said. “Your spirit is too fine, too fragile, for such things.” She turned then to look at her husband. “We won’t let political arguments divide us from family, will we, John?”

Clarke made a halfhearted attempt to agree with her, but I knew that day that the lines were drawn. The man who had never really been my friend was now my enemy.

Shortly after South Carolina left the Union, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, and Georgia followed. I waited almost with my breath held for Virginia to make her move. I believed that my home state of Maryland would do whatever Virginia did.

HER STORY

November 6, 1860, was a sad day for Steven and me, and, I think I can say, for the employees at the White House. On that day Mr. Abraham Lincoln was elected president. Our beloved Mr. Buchanan had not even run for reelection, but still we felt somehow that Lincoln would be pushing our president out. Soon there would be strangers living on the second floor, not friendly Mr. Buchanan and his sweet niece Miss Lane.

Oh, we had heard a plenty about the new president and his family, heard that he was ugly, uneducated, inexperienced, and downright vulgar in manner. We had also heard that Mrs. Lincoln was a sour woman, given to bad tempers and fits of depression. Talk was that most Northerners only voted for him because he was
an abolitionist and would do away with slavery. It was a known fact that because there was no Republican Party in the South, he did not get a single vote in eleven slave states.

“Imagine that,” I said to Steven. “We are to have a president that not one person in eleven of these United States of America voted for.”

It was a few days before the inauguration, and we were seated on a bench in the back garden of the White House. Steven broke a twig he had been holding in his hand and shrugged. “Oh, well,” he said. “We aren’t even united now, not with seven states seceded. More of those hotheads are bound to go.”

I wished I had not brought it up. Generally, I agreed with Steven’s ideas about politics. It was natural that I should. I spent my afternoons with him in the most political home in America, and Steven was always ready to explain his ideas to me. Still, I could not but feel a certain discomfort when people spoke disparagingly of the South. I had only lived in Washington City for two years. Was I not, I wondered, being disloyal to my father, and even to my mother’s memory, to listen to the South being criticized?

Steven knew me well by this time, and so observant was he of my every expression that I could never hide a feeling from him. “Oh, don’t be glum, Bella. I know you can’t take all love for the South out of you.” He laughed and pulled at one of my braids. “Likely, I wouldn’t much
want you for a friend if you could forget your home so easy.”

Even though we knew we wouldn’t like the Lincolns much, we were still excited when Inaugural Day, March 4, came. My grandmother and Steven’s mother were busy in the White House that day, but he and I planned to take in the ceremony.

We stationed ourselves early along Pennsylvania Avenue to see the two presidents ride by. The crowd was already thick, but we found an empty spot and waited. The March air was sharp. I had dressed warmly in heavy stockings, a long wool skirt, and a thick shawl over my blouse.

A lady who stood beside us complained to her husband of being cold. “Why you want to see him is beyond me,” she complained. “They say he is downright homely.”

“I mean to see the man,” said her husband, and he took off his coat and put it over his wife’s shoulders. “We come all the way here to see him. He’s got a terrible job ahead of him, and I want to see his face, homely or no.”

There were armed soldiers all along the street, and even more uniformed men with rifles perched in the high windows of buildings. I felt uneasy seeing all the guns and said so.

“How do you suppose Lincoln feels?” Steven said. “There have been all kinds of threats to kill him, you know. There are seven states out of the union already.”

Finally, not long before noon, we caught sight of them
coming, first soldiers on horseback and then the carriage, open so everyone could see. They sat side by side. We had always thought of Mr. Buchanan as tall, but Lincoln towered over him. Steven pulled a piece of paper and a pencil from his trouser pocket.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I want to write down things, some of what he says and all,” he told me.

“Why?”

“So I can study on it tonight, of course.” Steven was too kind to add, “Don’t you ever want things to think about at night?” I knew, though, that my mind, so simple compared to his, must seem a mystery to him.

“How tall do you suppose he is?” Steven asked.

I shrugged. “Real tall.”

Steven scribbled, “How tall?” on his paper and stuck it back in his pocket. “If we want to hear anything, we’d better hurry,” he said then, and we began to move quickly down the street. After a few minutes Steven decided we should run. I knew my grandmother would say it was not ladylike to run on a public street, but run we did, along the edge of the street, through puddles, through crowds of people, and through groups of soldiers.

I almost collided with a pig being chased by a boy, and Steven did run right into a small man who sold hot cider from a pushcart. The man tottered backward, but Steven grabbed him. “Excuse me, sir,” he said.

Nothing was broken or spilled, but the man shouted,
“Ruffian!” and I looked back to see him shake his fist in our direction.

We could see the Capitol a long way before we got there. It sat on a hill, a huge white building that seemed to rise almost up into the clouds. Workmen’s scaffolds stood all about it because they were replacing the old dome with a much higher one made of cast iron. We caught sight of the rough seats that had been set up by placing lumber on barrels, but they were filled. Crowds of people stood behind the seating area.

We stopped at the back of the crowd, but Steven was not satisfied. “We won’t hear a thing from back here,” he said. “We are going to have to work at getting up front.” He took my hand and pulled me after him. More than once, I saw him use his shoulder to force people to move far enough apart for us to slide between them. One man removed his tall hat and swatted at us with it, but we pushed on, reaching the front just before the new president was sworn into office from his place on top of the Capitol steps. We stood at the end of the third row of seats.

“The other fellow is Chief Justice Taney,” Steven whispered.

“Who is he?” I asked.

Steven frowned. “You know, from the Supreme Court.” He had his paper and pencil ready.

I did not know what the Supreme Court was, but I could tell from the frown that Steven did not want any more questions. Mr. Taney gave the oath to the new president.
Both men held up their right hands. “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, “ Mr. Lincoln repeated. We were close, near enough to see the deep lines in his face. His bones were big and seemed to stick out almost through his skin. His eyes were sad, very sad, and kind. He was not ugly, not really, I decided.

He talked about how he did not intend to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it already existed. That, it seemed to me, was friendly toward the South. I thought those words should make the people in the South feel better, but he went on to say that the Constitution did not give states the right to secede from the Union, and that he would protect property and places belonging to the federal government.

I knew there had been trouble in some of the states that had seceded over who the forts and arsenals belonged to, the state or the Union. Toward the end he said there would be no conflict unless the seceded states started it.

When it was over, Steven wrote, “I like Mr. Lincoln,” on his paper. He showed me the sentence, and I nodded my agreement.

We took our time walking back down Pennsylvania Avenue to the spot where we would take different directions. Grandmother had told me to stay away from the White House for a few days at least. Steven was to stay out
of sight in the quarters he shared with his mother. “We’ll have to see how things turn out around here,” Steven’s mother had warned. “You younguns are good to stay out of the way and all, but still, we’d better wait and see.”