Manhunt (24 page)

Good Friday 1865 was America's darkest day since the unexpected death of George Washington on December 14, 1799, sixty-six years earlier, a moment that elderly Washingtonians recalled from their youth. The Sunday following Lincoln's death was Easter, and it would be forever known as “Black Easter” to those who lived through it. The Sunday
Morning Chronicle
summed up the mood of the nation when it said the murder transformed “a season of rejoicing to mourning,” and there arose “a wail throughout the land.” Across the land ministers stayed up late Saturday night and by candle, lamp, or gaslight scratched out the final phrases of fresh sermons they began composing as soon as they heard, on the morning of the fifteenth, the terrible news.

In the early hours of Black Easter, Booth and Herold sought their salvation, not in a church, but at the door of a faithful Confederate. If Cox turned them away, Christ's dying words on Good Friday's cross, “it
is finished,” would describe their fate. The assassins were still too far north. Booth's broken leg bone and the unplanned medical detour to Dr. Mudd's farm cost them not only fifteen precious hours but took them to the east, out of their way, so that their escape timetable was now almost a day behind schedule.

Booth and Herold approached the Cox house. They decided to use the same strategy they used at the Surrattsville tavern: Booth would hang back in the shadows while Herold did the talking, but with Captain Cox they would not immediately blurt out their secret. If necessary, they were willing to beg for their lives. Cox was their last hope in Maryland, and there was no turning back if he refused them. David Herold dismounted, walked up the front piazza of the finely built, expansive farmhouse, and sounded the knocker. Booth remained on his horse under the cover of a shaggy ailanthus tree in the yard. Cox poked his head out from a second-story window and asked, “Who's there?” Herold refused to give his name, unsure if he could trust the captain. He disclosed only that he accompanied a man who needed help. Cox spotted Booth lurking under the tree's shadow, hiding from the moonlight. Herold asked if they could come in.

Suspicious but intrigued enough to come downstairs, Cox opened the door and appraised the worn-out, crazy-eyed man standing before him. The callow-looking stranger seemed more like a boy than a man. The wily farmer's eyes scanned the vicinity. Perhaps Herold was an outlaw and his plea was a trick to let other desperadoes rush the house. Uneasy, and sensing that the stranger held back his real story, Cox began shutting the door. Desperate, Booth dismounted with some difficulty and hobbled up the porch to the door. In great pain, he pleaded with Cox for aid. According to the captain's son, “it was there by a brilliant moon that Cox saw the initials ‘J.W.B.' tattooed on his arm.” And it was there that the honey-tongued thespian, as he did with Sergeant Cobb at the Navy Yard Bridge, again used his seductive art to win over a man to his cause. Cox swung open the door and invited the fugitives into his home. To the nation, Black Easter dawned as
a day of great mourning; to John Wilkes Booth, it began as a day of salvation.

What Booth said to Cox on the front porch of Rich Hill around 1:00 A.M. on April 16—as well as the conversations and plans that followed during the next few hours that the actor and Herold spent in the house—remain a mystery. Naturally, Cox and his son later denied that the assassin and his scout ever set foot in their home. When Oswell Swann swore that he saw Booth and Herold go inside, a faithful Cox slave, Mary Swann, called him a liar and backed up her captain. But given Booth's state of mind, the precariousness of his position, and the extraordinary thing that the captain and his son were about to do to help their guests, there is little doubt that Booth unburdened himself and confessed all to his hosts. The assassin of the president of the United States was in their midst, injured, desperate, and on the run from a frenzied manhunt. Father and son beheld the murderer, then decided to save him. Cox told Booth that there was only one man, a person of very special skills, who could get them across the Potomac into Virginia.

In the morning, after sunrise, they would summon him. But for now it was much too dangerous for Booth and Herold to remain at Rich Hill. Instead, Cox explained, he would hide them in a nearly impenetrable, heavily wooded pine thicket some distance from his house. No one would search for them there, Cox assured them, and it was extremely unlikely that any of the locals would stumble upon them. They were not to build a fire. Then, in the morning, someone would come for them. That person would signal them with a peculiar whistle as he approached. They were to beware anyone who failed to make that sound. After wolfing down the food that Cox offered, Booth and Herold mounted up for the ride to the pine thicket. Cox ordered his overseer, Franklin Robey, to take them there.

Oswell Swann still waited for them outside, perhaps hoping for an additional fee to guide the strangers to another destination. When Booth and Herold emerged from the house, Davey walked straight to his horse, neglecting the actor's disability. Booth, standing beside his
horse, impatient and helpless, chided him in an annoyed voice: “Don't you know I can't get on?” Davey came back and helped his master into the saddle. Booth paid Swann $12 for his services, and then, to throw suspicion off their hosts, he and Herold complained conspicuously about Cox's lack of hospitality. “I thought Cox was a man of Southern feeling,” murmured Booth. If Swann took the bait, he went home believing that Cox had rebuffed his unwanted midnight callers. Just to be sure, David Herold threatened him: “Don't you say anything—if you tell that you saw anybody you will not live long.” If their luck held, they would cross the river to Virginia sometime after nightfall on April 16, between sixteen and twenty-four hours from now. If, that is, they could survive just one more day in Maryland.

B
OOTH AND
H
EROLD ENTERED THE PINES, DISMOUNTED
, and tied off their horses. The animals had served them well, but they were hungry and thirsty and unused to spending the night outdoors and in the open. These were city stable horses that rented by the hour or the day, not expedition horses suited for days in the field. Exhausted, the two men unrolled their blankets on the damp earth, lay down, and gazed up at the immense black sky decorated by countless points of twinkling light. It would be morning in a few hours. If Captain Cox's word was true, it was safe to doze off until then.

The rising sun and chirping birds woke Booth and Herold early in the morning. Now they could do nothing but wait. Back at Rich Hill, Samuel Cox had to find out whether his man would actually help Booth and Herold. Cox instructed his eighteen-year-old son, Samuel Jr., to ride over to “Huckleberry” Farm, about four miles to the southeast, and bring the owner, Thomas A. Jones, to Rich Hill right away. Cox warned the boy to be cautious and told him that if anyone, especially soldiers, stopped and questioned him on the way and asked where he was going, he should tell the truth about his destination. But if asked why he was going there, then the youth must not disclose the reason. Instead, he
should lie and say that he was heading to Huckleberry to ask Jones for some seed corn. It was planting season, and no one would suspect such an innocent request from one farmer to another.

Around 8:00 A.M., Samuel Cox Jr. arrived at Huckleberry, just as Confederate agent and river boatman Thomas A. Jones finished his breakfast. The secret service veteran spent his entire life trailblazing through the fields, thickets, and forests of rural Maryland and navigating its streams, marshes, and rivers. During the war he had ferried hundreds of men, and the occasional female spy like the beautiful Sarah Slater, across the Potomac River between Maryland and Virginia. On some nights Jones organized not one but two trips across the Potomac in a small rowboat. In addition, he transported the Confederate mail between the two states and sent south fresh Union newspapers that provided intelligence to Richmond and were scrutinized by the highest leaders of the Confederacy. Jones was an indispensable, mysterious, and laconic secret agent fighting the shadow war along the watery borders between Union and rebel territory. The Union army had never caught him in action—he was a river ghost to the boys in blue. “Not one letter or paper was ever lost,” he boasted. And his mastery of the river was so complete that he was even able to calculate the most propitious time, almost down to the minute, to begin a trip across. “I had noticed that a little before sunset, the reflection of the high bluffs near Pope's Creek extended out into the Potomac till it nearly met the shadows cast by the Virginia woods, and therefore, at that time of evening it was very difficult to observe as small an object floating in the river as a rowboat.”

Jones's service to the Confederacy had cost him dearly. Suspected of disloyal activity, federal forces arrested and jailed him for months at the Old Capitol prison in Washington. Then his beloved wife died. He had to sell his other farm at Pope's Creek, and when he went to Richmond at the beginning of April 1865 to collect the money owed to him by the Confederate government, he discovered that the army had evacuated the city and Jones went unpaid. He lost $2,300 due for three years' service, and, even worse, upon the collapse of the Confederacy, he lost the
$3,000 he had invested in Confederate bonds at the beginning of the war. All of this meant that Thomas Jones needed as much money as he could lay his hands on.

The Cox boy dutifully mentioned the seed corn, but once he saw that Jones was alone, he whispered the true nature of his mission. His father wanted to see Jones at once. “Some strangers were at our house last night,” the boy said. Jones's eyes lit up—could he mean the heroes who assassinated President Lincoln? The report electrified Jones. The day before, on the evening of Saturday, April 15, around the time that Booth and Herold left the sanctuary of Dr. Mudd's and undertook the next leg of their escape, Jones happened to be visiting his former farm at Pope's Creek. Two Union soldiers rode up and asked what appeared to be an innocent question. Who owned that little boat down in the creek? For Jones the war ended when Richmond fell on April 3 and the Army of Northern Virginia surrendered on the ninth. There would be no more secret river crossings, no more thrilling escapes from Union army and navy pursuers, no more mysterious signal lights flashed across the water from one state to another. The war was over, and Jones saw no need for any prolonged cunning. He told the soldiers that the boat was his.

His response prompted a strange but vaguely worded warning from one of the soldiers. “You had better keep an eye to it. There are suspicious characters somewhere in the neighborhood who will be wanting to cross the river, and if you don't look sharp you will lose your boat.”

Since when did Union soldiers care whether a Southern farmer in disloyal territory lost his rowboat? There was more to this.

“Indeed,” replied Jones. “I will look after it. I would not like to lose it, as it is my fishing boat and the shad are beginning to run.”

The soldiers whispered to each other, then seemed to nod in agreement. The one who asked about the boat turned to Jones. “Have you heard the news, friend?”

No, he had not, replied Jones.

“Then I will tell you. Our President was assassinated at 10 o'clock last night.”

Jones uttered an ambiguous exclamation. “Is it possible!”

Yes, the soldier answered, “and the men who did it came this way.”

Now, a day later, Jones felt it in his bones: Captain Cox wanted to see him about
something connected to the assassination.

Jones saddled up and accompanied young Cox to Rich Hill. Although he had questions, Jones spoke little during the ride. His wartime experiences taught him to never talk about dangerous subjects except when absolutely necessary. Once they got to Rich Hill, Captain Cox could do the talking; Jones would do the listening. Until then, the riders trotted northeast quietly, their silence broken only by harmless remarks about the weather or the condition of the roads. When Jones arrived at Rich Hill at about 9:00 A.M., he saw Captain Cox waiting outside at the front gate. Jones dismounted, and Cox led him to an open place where no one could hide and eavesdrop on their conversation. An experienced secret agent, Jones sensed that Cox wanted to tell him something important. But his experience also counseled him to let his friend tell him in his own way, at his own pace. They spoke in pleasantries for several minutes, until Cox could avoid the subject no more. “Tom, I had visitors about four o'clock this morning.”

Normally Jones possessed the talent to remain stone silent and let another man talk, but now he could not restrain himself. He blurted out, “Who were they, and what did they want?”

“They want to get across the river,” Cox explained. He paused, then spoke in a whisper. “Have you heard that Lincoln was killed Friday night?”

Yes, Jones replied, telling Cox about his encounter with the two soldiers.

For a full minute Cox did not speak. Then he broke the silence: “Tom, we must get those men who were here this morning across the river.”

Jones's intuition was right—not only did Cox want to see him about the assassination, the killers were here! With that, Cox opened the floodgates and told Jones everything about the late-night visit from Booth and Herold. “Tom, you must get him across.”

Jones was no coward—four years of loyal, dangerous service to the Confederacy had proved that. But the war was over. Jones mulled the situation over: “I knew that to assist in any way the assassin of Mr. Lincoln would be to put my life in jeopardy. I knew that the whole of southern Maryland would soon be—nay, was even then—swarming with soldiers and bloodhounds on the trail, eager to avenge the murder of their beloved president and reap their reward. I hesitated for a moment as I weighed these matters.”

Cox implored him a third time: “Tom, can't you put these men across?”