Manhunt (65 page)

Mara Mills suggested that I do something useful with the Lincoln library that's been curing on my shelves for years—like write a book.

James Nash, a careful reader of the literature of the war of the rebellion, brought important issues to my attention. Thanks also to James for a macabre summer night in downtown Washington, D.C., when we went to Mary Surratt's boardinghouse to watch, on the 140th anniversary of her hanging, a play about her trial and execution.

I am indebted to Joan Chaconas and Laurie Verge for encouragement, generosity, and friendship. Their research and writing, and their role in preserving Mary Surratt's country house, have materially advanced the scholarship of the Lincoln assassination. Sandra Walia at the Surratt Society's James O. Hall Research Library unlocked the treasure trove of files held there. I was aghast when, years ago, I learned of a group called the Surratt Society. I had assumed, incorrectly, that it was a club of amateur assassination apologists. On the contrary, its staff and members are passionate scholars in pursuit of objective history.

At William H. Seward's magnificent home in Auburn, New York, executive director Peter Wisbey provided haunting photographs and valuable information about Fanny and her father.

David Lovett, an extraordinary historian and bibliographer of the Lincoln and Kennedy assassinations, provided virtually unobtainable books and pamphlets that were essential to my research.

Karen Needles of Documents on Wheels uncovered the hitherto unpublished reward check issued to Booth's killer, Boston Corbett. Karen is an indefatigable researcher who has made numerous contributions to the Lincoln field by ferreting out many exciting and little-known documents at the National Archives, the Library of Congress, and elsewhere.

I thank my friends at the Heritage Foundation, Edwin Meese III, Todd Gaziano, and Paul Rosenzweig, for giving me a home during much of the time I wrote the book. And thanks also to Molly Stark for helping with the manuscript and for solving never-ending computer mysteries.

Thanks to Carol Cohen and Elizabeth Kreul-Starr for typing drafts of the manuscript.

Theodore L. Jones and George A. Didden III handed me the keys to a beautiful but haunted nineteenth-century townhouse big enough to hold a few thousand books, documents, and Civil War newspapers.

I must thank Harold Holzer, vice president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and co-chairman of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, for expert insights and his hospitality in New York City, and Frank Williams, Chief Justice of Rhode Island and also a member of the Bicentennial Commission, for sharing his great knowledge and wonderful Lincoln library.

Valuable advice on how to think about and tell this story came from Douglas H. Ginsburg, Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and from Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

Thanks also to the friends who have indulged me by joining my annual nighttime tours of downtown Washington on the anniversary of Lincoln's assassination.

Special thanks to a Southern friend who, after insisting on anonymity, disclosed her family's secret custom: ever since April 15, 1866—the first anniversary of the murder—they have held their annual cotillion on that day to celebrate the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and to honor their Brutus. Their ritual provided a remarkable immediacy about how some Southerners reacted to the events of April 1865—and how some still remember them.

Henry Ferris is a patient and discerning editor who improved the manuscript in countless ways with a fine dramatic sensibility and an unerring instinct
for suggesting key scenes that advanced the narrative. I am convinced that the fact he is a Booth descendant influenced the course of this book.

I also thank Michael Morrison at HarperCollins and Lisa Gallagher at William Morrow for their strong support of the book and the personal interest they took in me.

Richard Abate, my literary agent at International Creative Management, gave me his enthusiasm, insights, and friendship. Richard read several drafts of the manuscript, made himself an expert on the subject, and even came down to Washington to explore the assassination sites with me. He made this a better book. Thanks also to my other representatives at ICM, Ron Bernstein and Kate Lee.

My own hunt for John Wilkes Booth began when my grandmother, Elizabeth, a veteran of Chicago's legendary and now extinct tabloid newspaper scene, gave a ten-year-old boy the unusual gift of a framed engraving of Booth's Deringer pistol, along with an April 15, 1865,
Chicago Tribune
clipping, thus triggering the obsession that led to this book. This is in memory of her.

My sister Denise's animated spirit and taste for bizarre historical tales encouraged me from the start. From an early age, she aided and abetted my literary pursuits.

Finally, I thank my parents, Dianne and Lennart Swanson. Without their love and generous support over many years, I never could have written
Manhunt
, or anything else.

James L. Swanson
Washington, D.C.
October 10, 2005

J
AMES L
. S
WANSON
, an attorney and Lincoln scholar, has held a number of government and think-tank posts in Washington, D.C. He has written about history, the presidency, the Constitution, popular culture, books, the arts, and other subjects for a variety of publications, including the
Wall Street Journal
, the
Los Angeles Times, American Heritage
, and
Smithsonian
magazine. He has lectured widely at the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, the Newberry Library, and other scholarly institutions, and at literary, historical, and arts clubs across the nation. He is the coauthor
of Lincoln's Assassins: Their Trial and Execution
, and he serves on the advisory committee of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission.

Born on Lincoln's birthday, Swanson has studied and collected books, documents, photographs, art, and artifacts from Abraham Lincoln's life—and death—since he was ten years old.

March 4, 1865
. Abraham Lincoln delivers second inaugural address. John Wilkes Booth, standing nearby, says he had an “excellent chance” to kill him.

April 14
. Around noon Booth learns that Lincoln is coming to Ford's Theatre that night. He has eight hours to prepare his plan.

April 14
. At 10:15 P.M., Booth shoots the president, leaps to the stage, and escapes on a waiting horse.

April 14
. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton orders the manhunt to begin.

April 15
. About 4:00 A.M., Booth seeks treatment for a broken leg at Dr. Samuel Mudd's. Cavalry patrol heads south toward Mudd farm.

April 15
. President Lincoln dies at 7:22 A.M. Booth leaves Dr. Mudd's that evening. Stanton summons more troops and detectives to join the hunt.

April 16
. Confederate operative Thomas Jones hides Booth in a remote pine thicket for five days, frustrating the manhunters.

April 17
. Booth's coconspirator, Lewis Powell, and other associates are arrested.

April 19
. Tens of thousands watch procession to U.S. Capitol, where President Lincoln lies in state. Wild rumors and stories of false sightings of Booth spread.

April 20
. After hiding Booth in Maryland for five days, Jones puts him in a rowboat on the Potomac River, bound for Virginia. More than a thousand manhunters are still searching in Maryland. In the dark, Booth rows the wrong way and ends up in Maryland.

April 20–24
. Booth lands in the northern neck of Virginia, and Confederate agents and sympathizers guide him to Port Conway, Virginia.

April 24
. Booth befriends three Confederate soldiers who help him cross to Port Royal, and then guide him to the Garrett farm.

April 24
. Union troops in Washington receive a report of a Booth sighting. They board a U.S. Navy tug and steam south, disembarking in Virginia.

April 25
. The Sixteenth New York Cavalry rides right past Booth's hideout at the Garrett farm. Realizing their error, they turn around and surround the Garrett farm after midnight that night.

April 26
. When Booth refuses to surrender, troops set the barn on fire, and Boston Corbett shoots the assassin. Booth dies a few hours later, at sunrise.

 

When did you first become interested in Abraham Lincoln and his assassination
?

Probably the day I was born. I suppose I owe my interest to my parents for picking Lincoln's birthday, February 12, as my birthday. When I was a child, as far back as I can remember, I received Lincoln books, trinkets, medals, and souvenirs as gifts.

I became interested in the assassination when I was ten years old, when my grandmother, a veteran of the old, long-vanished Chicago tabloid newspaper scene, gave me a wonderful engraving of John Wilkes Booth's Deringer pistol. Framed with this engraving was a clipping from the
Chicago Tribune
dated April 15, 1865, the day Lincoln died. Unfortunately the clipping was incomplete, so when I was a child, I could read part of the story, but it came to an abrupt end. I remember vividly one night when I read that clipping over and over and thought, “I want to read the rest of the story” And it took a couple of decades, but one of the most thrilling things I did as part of the research for
Manhunt
was to acquire an entire run of rare, original issues of the
Chicago Tribune
—about one hundred newspapers—from the end of the Civil War through the death of Lincoln and the trial of the conspirators.

My grandmother's gift triggered my obsession with the Lincoln assassination. Later, as I got older and learned more about Lincoln, I began collecting at a more advanced level—books from the Civil War, newspapers, posters announcing the death of Lincoln, original photographs, and more. I remember when in high school, instead of buying a used car, I purchased one of the rare original reward posters offering a $100,000.00 reward for the Lincoln assassins. Once I got to college, I studied the assassination of Lincoln and Lincoln's era ever more seriously. I was a student of John Hope Franklin at the University of Chicago and took his wonderful courses on the Civil War era and on the history of the American South. That's really how my interest began, grew, and continues to this day.

Having a lifetime of interest in Lincoln and the assassination, how did you approach the research specifically for
Manhunt
?

Manhunt
was the result of a lifetime of study, plus two years of intensive research and writing. I had built up a reference library of several thousand books over the years, covering Abraham Lincoln, the presidency, the Civil War, and nineteenth-century American history. Much of what I needed for
Manhunt
had been sitting on my shelves for years, and I just needed to open these books and read them again. I also consulted my extensive collection of Civil War newspapers, and many rolls of microfilmed documents from the National Archives. Having so many sources in my home library allowed me to work deep into the night—my favorite time for research and writing. Public libraries
close at night. My library was open twenty-four hours a day.

I thought I knew the story of Lincoln's assassination, and of the hunt and capture of John Wilkes Booth, very well when I started, but one of the surprises, and it turns out to have been one of the pleasures of doing the book, was to find out how much I didn't know and how much new there was to learn.

Is there anything that surprised you, or something you learned that was new or unexpected
?

One of the best things was to meet the cast of characters, especially many hitherto obscure ones. I knew their names, but I didn't really know how vital each of them was to the story. One of the favorite characters I met was Asia Booth Clarke, John Wilkes Booth's wonderful, loyal, eloquent sister. She was a fascinating counterpoint to her brother. She knew that John Wilkes Booth had done wrong in murdering the president, and she knew that he was wrong to try to continue the Civil War, revive the Confederacy, and perpetuate slavery. And yet, because of her love for her brother and her loyalty to him, she fought a one-woman campaign to preserve his memory, and to—if not justify—explain and seek forgiveness for him. It was fascinating to read her once-secret memoir about her brother. I'd never read it before, and I knew I had to study it as part of the research for
Manhunt
. It was astonishing to read her stories about their
childhood together and her brother's dreams and fantasies.