Manhunt (15 page)

Her piercing cry echoed upstairs to her husband, who scoffed at the tale. “Humbug,” he shouted down, “I left him only an hour ago.”

When a dubious Stanton came downstairs, he found not only the excited messenger but several other highly agitated men. Alarmed by the insistence and vividness of their accounts, he decided to investigate the rumor personally. Within a few minutes, he was racing in a carriage to the Seward home. It could not be true, Stanton tried to convince himself. In four years of Civil War, countless incredible—and false—rumors swept in and out of Washington as predictably as the tide and the phases of the moon. But assassination? Impossible. Yes, Stanton had scolded the president regularly for his inattention to his own safety. But perhaps he was an alarmist. After all, as William Seward himself had written in 1862, political murder was alien to our customs: “Assassination is not an American practice or habit, and one so vicious and desperate cannot be engrafted into our political system. This conviction of mine has steadily gained strength since the civil war began. Every day's experience confirms it.”

Stanton's ride took only a few minutes, and the first sign was not good—people filled the street and crowded around Seward's front door. An hour ago, when Stanton left the Seward home, the street was deserted. What were all these people doing here? As soon as the carriage halted, an army sergeant named Koerth babbled that he had just come from Ford's Theatre and had terrible news: the president had been assassinated. Stanton had arrived moments before the secretary of the navy, Gideon Welles, reached Seward's house.

Welles had retired to bed around 10:30 P.M. and was just falling asleep when his wife, Mary Jane, said someone was at their front door. The secretary heard a man's voice yelling for his son, John, whose second-floor bedroom was at the front of the house. Welles got out of bed, raised a window, poked his head through the opening, and peered down at the man standing at his door. It was James Smith, his Navy Department messenger. Smith looked up at his boss and shouted the news:
President Lincoln has been shot, and Secretary Seward and his son, Frederick, have been assassinated.

Secretary of War Edwin McMasters Stanton.

Welles told him his story was “very incoherent and improbable.” To Welles, Smith looked “much alarmed and excited.” Where, asked the navy secretary, “was the president shot?” At Ford's Theatre, Smith replied, adding that the Sewards had been attacked at home. “Damn the Rebels,” Welles cursed, “this is their work.” He dressed immediately and walked with Smith to Seward's house.

Stanton, just behind Welles, charged upstairs to Seward's bedroom. It was true. A scene of mayhem replaced the domestic tranquility Stan-ton had seen little more than an hour ago. “The bed,” Welles saw, “was saturated with blood.” Several doctors hovered over the bloody secretary of state, working feverishly to save his life. Then the rest of the nightmare came into focus: Fanny Seward, wandering like a pale ghost, her dress dripping with blood; Augustus Seward stabbed and his brother unconscious from a crushed skull; Sergeant Robinson with multiple stab wounds; and the messenger Hansell sliced through the back.

Recovering from their initial shock, Stanton and Welles realized that there was nothing they could do now for the victims at the Seward slaughter pen; it was in the hands of the doctors, and God. They turned their thoughts to the president: “As we descended the stairs, I asked Stanton what he had heard in regard to the President that was reliable. He said the President was shot at Ford's Theatre, that he had seen a man who was present and witnessed the occurrence.” Welles proposed that they go immediately to the White House. But, Stanton said, Lincoln wasn't there. He was still at Ford's. “Then let us go immediately there,” Welles said. Stanton agreed, but first he gave orders to rush military guards to the home of every member of the cabinet and to Vice President Johnson's hotel. On their way out of Seward's house, Stanton and Welles ran into Montgomery Meigs, quartermaster general of the United States Army, who warned them that the trip to Ford's could be dangerous. Meigs begged Stanton not to go down to Tenth Street. What if assassins had marked the president and every officer in his cabinet for
death that night? Stanton had no entourage or army escort to protect him, but still he ignored Meigs and called for a carriage to transport him and Welles to the theatre at once. They would ride alone—if they left now, they could make it in less than five minutes. The quartermaster general insisted on joining them, as did Judge David Cartter of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, who had rushed to Seward's as soon as he heard the news.

O
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ENTH
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TREET
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EALE ORDERED
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INCOLN'S BEARERS
and the officer spearheading the procession to head straight for the man with the candle. They carried the president up the curved staircase. In this elevated position, for the first time since he was carried into the street, the near lifeless body of Abraham Lincoln became visible to the entire crowd. Awestruck, the people watched as their president disappeared into the Petersen house. Except for a handful of doctors, government officials, and family friends who would, in the hours to come, be granted access to the closely guarded house, that glimpse of the president, ascending the stairs of the Petersen house, was the last time Americans saw Abraham Lincoln alive.

As Stanton and Welles were leaving the Seward house, a lone man on horseback raced up and tried to stop the carriage. It was Major Thomas Eckert, one of Stanton's most trusted aides, head of the War Department's telegraph office, and a favorite of Abraham Lincoln, who marveled at the major's physical strength. Eckert implored Stanton to turn around and not approach the theatre. “At this moment,” Welles recalled, “Major Eckert rode up on horseback and protested vehemently against Stanton's going to Tenth Street.” Eckert had just come from there. The mob in the streets had already grown to thousands, and by the minute it was swelling in size—and danger—as news spread and citizens from all over the city converged on the site. Stanton and Welles defied him—nothing would stop them from attending the president. Meigs, in a concession to Eckert, ordered two soldiers to accompany the
carriage. Eckert spurred his horse around, got in front of their carriage, and escorted it in the direction of Tenth Street. If he couldn't stop them, at least he could try to protect them. Ford's stood five blocks east and two blocks south of the Seward place.

As the carriage clipped along, it passed the indistinct shapes of men running haywire in all directions, some away from Ford's and others right to it. At first, there were not enough people in the street to stop Stanton's progress, but the closer the carriage got to Ford's, the thicker the crowds became. Welles described the scene: “The streets were full of people. Not only the sidewalk but the carriage-way was occupied, all … hurrying towards Tenth Street.” As the carriage came down F Street and neared Tenth, Major Eckert, in the lead, was the first to see it, right ahead: a roaring, unruly, frenzied, and angry mob of thousands of people teeming at the corner of Tenth and F. Eckert spurred his horse forward.

a
LMOST THIRTEEN MILES OUT OF
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ASHINGTON
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OOTH AND
Herold had the road to themselves. An inconsequential encounter with two men and a broken-down wagon proved harmless and hardly slowed their escape. They rode quietly as they closed on their destination: Surrattsville, Maryland, not a real town of any size and little more than a crossroads outpost, named after the family that owned the tavern there. Before they could continue south, where they would seek medical treatment for Booth's injured leg, they had business at that tavern.

The dark outline of a building appeared vaguely on the horizon. Surratt's place was hard to spot at night—the two-story, frame structure was unpainted, and the dull wood boards, unlike a pigmented surface, reflected no light. Built in 1852, the tavern had served three functions in its heyday: saloon, inn, and post office. It was not a high example of the carpenter's art: the structure was plain, boxy, and finished roughly. Indeed, the doorframe was even crooked. The original owner, John Surratt Sr., sold whiskey by the finger, rented out rooms by
the night, and served as U.S. postmaster. When John died in 1862, his widow, Mary Surratt, inherited the place and stayed on with her children. One son, John Jr., won the appointment of postmaster, replacing his father.

The government issued him an impressive, oversize commission, measuring fifteen by eleven inches, engraved with a handsome patriotic eagle and the boldly printed legend: “Post Office Department/Montgomery Blair Postmaster General of the United States of America.” The document continued in the flowery language typical of executive branch appointments in that day: “To all who shall see these Presents, Greeting … on the 1st day of September 1862, John H. Surratt was appointed Postmaster at Surratt's in the County of Prince George, State of Maryland; and whereas he did, on the 8th day of September 1862 … [take] the oath of office … know ye, that confiding in the integrity, ability and punctuality of the said John H. Surratt, I do commission him as a Postmaster.” Surratt's commission was signed by Montgomery Blair on September 10, 1862.

Eventually, the government caught on to the questionable status of Surratt's loyalty and integrity and revoked his commission. In 1864, Mary moved her family to her Washington, D.C., boardinghouse and rented the tavern to a man named John Lloyd.

The tavern operated in the usual fashion of a nineteenth-century roadside establishment. The premises were divided into private and public spaces. Paying customers entered, not through the front door and center hall, but through a side door that led directly into the bar and post office. The room smelled like wax candles, oil lamps, tobacco, burning stove wood, whiskey, soiled clothes, and boot leather. Drink and meal prices were posted on a wall or chalked on a board. Nighttime callers were not unusual. During the war, the Surratts and Lloyd grew accustomed to them.

Booth and Herold rode their horses to the side entrance. The night was still, and, inside, the tavern was quiet and dark. They had to make this quick. Herold dismounted and strode to the door while Booth
remained in the saddle. They had no time to tarry, and it would hurt Booth too much to dismount and put weight on his foot. The stirrup was painful enough; dismounting and then mounting the horse again would be excruciating. Herold's pounding fist finally awakened the hard-drinking Lloyd. He climbed out of bed, went downstairs, and opened the side door. He recognized David Herold, a friend of John Surratt. Herold, impatient, hissed at him: “Lloyd, for God's sake, make haste and get those things.”

Davey did not have to be more specific. Lloyd knew what they wanted. After Mary Surratt's afternoon visit, he took the “shooting irons” from their hiding place so they would be ready for the callers. Lloyd left Herold in the bar with a bottle of whiskey and went into the house. Herold poured himself a glass. Lloyd returned in a moment, bearing a small package wrapped in twine—the field glasses—and a loaded Spencer repeating carbine. Herold seized the weapon and carried the bottle outside to Booth. While sitting on his horse the actor swallowed several big gulps to steady his nerves and dull the pain. Lloyd offered the second Spencer to Booth but he declined it. With his broken leg, he didn't want to carry any more. He needed his hands to hold on to the saddle. His pistols would have to do. He would pick them up at his next stop.

Herold retrieved the bottle from Booth and brought it back to Lloyd. “I owe you a couple of dollars,” he said. “Here.” Herold handed him a one-dollar note that, Lloyd calculated, “just about paid for the bottle of liquor that [they] had just pretty nearly drank.” As Herold and his master prepared to ride off, Booth could not resist the temptation any longer. The boastful, impulsive thespian had to tell someone or he would burst.