Manhunt (50 page)

In Washington, the steamer
John S. Ide
rendezvoused off the U.S. Navy Yard with an ironclad gunboat—the
Montauk
—the same vessel that Abraham and Mary Lincoln visited during their carriage ride on the afternoon of the assassination. Stanton took immediate steps to confirm the identity of the man killed at Garrett's farm. At first glance, Booth was barely recognizable. He had shaved off his moustache, and his injury, the psychological stress of the manhunt, and twelve hard days of living mostly outdoors had taken their toll, reported Townsend, on his hitherto magnificent appearance. “It was fairly preserved, though on one side the face distorted, and looking blue-like death, and wildly bandit-like, as if bearen by avenging angels.” The War Department wanted to quash the birth of any Booth survival myths. Edwin Stanton had already scrutinized all of the personal effects collected at Garrett's farm: the photos of the girlfriends; the pocket compass that pointed Booth south to imagined safety; the leather-bound pocket calendar. As Stanton turned the pages, he made a startling discovery—Booth had used the calendar as an impromptu diary, and in it he recorded his motive for killing Lincoln, and the turmoil of the manhunt. Only one man, Stanton knew, could have authored these fevered words: Abraham Lincoln's assassin. Stanton announced the news to the nation:

News of the arrival of Booth's body spread quickly through the capital, and hundreds of spectators rushed to the river for a glimpse of the dead assassin. “At Washington,” George Alfred Townsend reported, “high and low turned out to look on Booth. Only a few were permitted to see his corpse for purposes of recognition.” A
Chicago Tribune
correspondent confirmed, with palpable disappointment, that “it seems that the authorities are not inclined to give the wretched carcass the honor of meeting the public gaze.”

News of Booth's death traveled across the nation by telegraph, and newspapers everywhere rushed to print with excited stories filled with the details of the manhunt's climax at Garrett's farm. As soon as the news reached Philadelphia, T. J. Hemphill of the Walnut Theatre knew what had to be done. When he called at Asia Booth Clarke's home, she received him at once. Asia knew from the very sight of him what must have happened. “The old man stood steadying himself by the center table; he did not raise his eyes, his face was very pale and working nervously. The attitude and pallor told the news he had been deputed to convey.” Asia spoke first.

“Is it over?”

“Yes, madam.”

“Taken?” “Yes.”

“Dead?” “Yes, madam.”

Asia, pregnant with twins, collapsed onto a sofa. If one of her new babies was a boy, she had planned to name him John. “My heart beat like strong machinery, powerful and loud it seemed. I lay down with
my face to the wall, thanking God solemnly, and heard the old man's sobs choking him, heard him go out, and close the street door after him.”

On the
Montauk
, several men who knew Booth in life, including his doctor and dentist, were summoned aboard the ironclad to witness him in death. It was all very official. The War Department even issued an elaborate receipt to the notary who witnessed the testimony. During a careful autopsy, surgeons noted a distinctive old scar on his neck and the tattoo—“JWB”—that Booth had marked on his hand when he was a boy. The cause of death was easy to prove: gunshot via a single bullet through the neck. As proof the surgeons excised the vertebrae it had passed through and also removed part of Booth's thorax and pickled the bone and tissue in a neatly labeled glass specimen jar. Booth's vertebrae repose today in a little-known medical museum, one attraction among thousands in a hideous collection devoted to documenting the wounds of the American Civil War. The surgeon general's handwritten autopsy report was clinical and brief, but betrayed the emotion of the hour. In his letter to Edwin Stanton, Dr. Barnes assured the secretary of war that John Wilkes Booth had suffered:

Stanton had decided that a written record of the autopsy was insufficient. He summoned the celebrated photographer Alexander Gardner, Mathew Brady's rival and a favorite of President Lincoln's, to photograph Booth's corpse as it lay naked, stretched out on a board on the deck of the ironclad. Stanton also allowed Gardner to photograph the conspirators imprisoned on the ironclads
Montauk
and
Saugus
. Gardner took multiple images of Arnold, O'Laughlen, Spangler, Atzerodt, and Herold, each wearing an unusual type of handcuff called “Lilley irons,” joined by a solid bar that prevented the prisoners from bringing their hands together. They would see Gardner again soon, when he took their final portraits. Gardner took special interest in Lewis Powell, picturing him in a number of poses that he soon reproduced as cartes-de-visite for public sale. But, on Stanton's orders, there would be no public viewing of the autopsy images.
Harper's Weekly
based a single, discreet woodcut on one of the horrific images, but the original glass plates and paper prints of Stanton's trophy photographs vanished 140 years ago, almost as soon as they were taken, and have never been seen again.

The prominent sculptor Clark Mills, who had recently fashioned a plaster life mask of Lincoln in March 1865, sought permission to make a death mask of his assassin. He wanted to come aboard the
Montauk
, slather Booth's face with wet plaster and, once it dried, pry the mask from the assassin's countenance. Mills went too far for the secretary of war. According to a newspaper account, “Mr. Stanton, not deeming him over loyal, replied: ‘You had better take care of your own head.' “Death masks, Stanton perhaps reasoned, were best suited for honoring great men, not their murderers.

Stanton certainly hoped that, like the autopsy photographs, Booth's body would vanish. Scoop-seeking reporters lusted to unearth the last great episode of the twelve-day manhunt, the disposal of the assassin's remains.

“What,” Townsend probed Lafayette C. Baker, “have you done with the body?”

Colonel Baker uttered a typically portentous, self-dramatizing reply: “That is known to only one man living besides myself. It is gone. I will not tell you where. The only man who knows is sworn to silence. Never till the great trumpet comes shall the grave of Booth be discovered.”

“And,” Townsend confidentially advised his readers, “this is true.”

In the days following the close of the manhunt, all the major American newspapers damned John Wilkes Booth with parting epithets. The most vivid among them was penned by George Alfred Townsend:

But Lafayette Baker had lied to Townsend. The second manhunt for John Wilkes Booth—the one for his corpse—had only begun. To prevent Booth's grave from becoming a shrine, and his body a holy relic of the Lost Cause, sailors from the
Montauk
, accompanied by the Bakers, had pretended to row his body out to deep water and bury it at sea, so weighted down that it could never rise. The press swallowed the bait, and one newspaper,
Frank Leslie's Illustrated News
, even published a front-page woodcut illustrating the faux, watery burial. What really happened was far less dramatic. Lafayette Baker, Luther Baker, and two sailors from the
Montauk
took Booth's body from the gunboat and laid it on the floor of a rowboat. The sailors shoved off from the ironclad's low-riding deck, and rowed away from the Navy Yard, down the Potomac's eastern branch. Booth was on the river again, seven days after Thomas Jones led him to its banks. The sailors made for an army post at Greenleaf's Point called the Old Arsenal, or the Old Penitentiary, a complex of substantial brick buildings and a courtyard surrounded by a high brick wall. They pulled in to a little wood wharf attached to the arsenal. Lafayette Baker stepped onto the wharf and, leaving his cousin in charge of the corpse, walked to the fort to find Major Benton, the ordnance officer Stanton had chosen to put Booth in the grave. Benton and Baker returned to the wharf, looked at the body, and, Luther Baker recalled, “talked the matter over.” Benton knew just the place to bury him.

Benton ordered some of his men to carry Booth's body into the fort. They dropped it in a rectangular, wood musket crate, and screwed down the lid. Somebody wrote Booth's name on top. Then they buried the assassin in a secret, unmarked grave at the Old Arsenal penitentiary, the site chosen by Edwin Stanton as the unconsecrated burial ground for John Wilkes Booth, and for several of his conspirators who would soon
join him in the grave. Stanton kept the only key. “I gave directions that he should be interred in that place, and that the place should be kept under lock and key,” Stanton said. He wanted to be sure that “the body might not be made the subject of glorification by disloyal persons and those sympathizing with the rebellion,” or “… the instrument of rejoicing at the sacrifice of Mr. Lincoln.” Stanton wanted to keep the worshipers and relic hunters at bay: “The only object was to place his body where it could not be made an improper use of until the excitement had passed away.” Booth had escaped once before on assassination night, but he would not escape Stanton again.

Booth's death did not end the manhunt for those who had come in contact with the assassin during his escape. If they thought Boston Corbett had saved them, they were wrong. Stanton wasn't finished with them. His April 20 proclamation had made that clear: “All persons harboring or secreting the said persons … or aiding or assisting their concealment or escape, will be treated as accomplices in the murder of the President … and shall be subject to … the punishment of DEATH.” Stanton sent more patrols into Maryland and Virginia to track down everyone who he knew, or suspected, had seen or helped Booth during his twelve days on the run. Thomas Jones, Captain Cox, the Garrett sons, and many more were seized and taken to the Old Capitol prison. Then, curiously, within weeks, Stanton freed them all. He decided to put only eight defendants on trial—Mary Surratt, Lewis Powell, David Herold, George Atzerodt, Samuel Arnold, Michael O'Laughlen, Edman Spangler, and Samuel Mudd. Not one person who helped Booth and Herold in Maryland or Virginia, aside from Dr. Mudd, was punished for aiding Lincoln's assassin. They returned to their homes and families and, for years to come, whispered secret tales of their deeds during the great manhunt.

Several days after Booth's burial, Luther Baker, in a coda to the manhunt, journeyed again to Garrett's farm. It was after sunset. The charred remnants of the cedar posts, boards, and planks that had burned so brightly on the early morning of April 26 had cooled. Baker walked
amidst the ruins: “Just before dark I went out to where the barn was burned, thinking I might find some remains … I poked around in the ashes and found some melted lead (it seemed he had some cartridges with him) and pieces of the blanket Herold had.”

Another hunt—the one for the reward money—began before Booth's body cooled in the grave. With Booth dead, and his chief accomplices under arrest, awaiting trial for the murder of the president and the attempted assassination of William Seward, it was time to cash in. Hundreds of manhunters rushed to claim a portion of the $100,000 reward. Tipsters with the slightest—or no—connection to the events of April 14 to 26, 1865, angled for their rewards. Among the rival detectives, army officers, enlisted men, policemen, and citizens, the competition was brutal. Applicants exaggerated their roles, downplayed their rivals, and concocted fabulous lies to enhance their stake. In a long affidavit supporting his claim, Lafayette Baker boasted that he was the first to distribute photos of Booth, Herold, and Surratt. Lieutenant Doherty asked soldiers under his command to write affidavits to support his version of the events at Garrett's farm.