Part 1147

"From the very beginning of his Presidency, Mr. Lincoln had been constantly subject to the threats of his enemies and the warnings of his friends. … Although he freely discussed with the officials about him the possibilities of danger, he always considered them remote, as is the habit of men constitutionally brave, and positively refused to torment himself with precautions for his own safety. He would sum the matter up by saying that both friends and strangers must have daily access to him in all manner of ways and places; his life was therefore in reach of anyone, sane or mad, who was ready to murder and be hanged for it; that he could not possibly guard against all danger unless he were to shut himself up in an iron box, in which condition he could scarcely perform the duties of a President; by the hand of a murderer he could die only once; to go continually in fear would be to die over and over. He therefore went in and out before the people, always unarmed, generally unattended. … Four years of threats and boastings, of alarms that were unfounded, and of plots that came to nothing thus passed away; but precisely at the time when the triumph of the nation over the long insurrection seemed assured, and a feeling of peace and security was diffused over the country, one of the conspiracies, not seemingly more important than the many abortive ones, ripened in the sudden heat of hatred and despair. A little band of malignant secessionists, consisting of John Wilkes Booth, an actor, of a family of famous players, Lewis Powell, alias Payne, a disbanded rebel soldier from Florida, George Atzerodt, formerly a coach maker, but more recently a spy and blockade runner of the Potomac, David E. Herold, a young druggist's clerk, Samuel Arnold and Michael O'Laughlin, Maryland secessionists and Confederate soldiers, and John H. Surratt, had their ordinary rendezvous at the house of Mrs. Mary E. Surratt, the widowed mother of the last named, formerly a woman of some property in Maryland, but reduced by reverses to keeping a small boarding-house in Washington. Booth was the leader of the little coterie. He was a young man of twenty-six. … He was a fanatical secessionist; had assisted at the capture and execution of John Brown, and had imbibed at Richmond and other Southern cities where he had played, a furious spirit of partisanship against Lincoln and the Union party. After the reelection of Mr. Lincoln, which rang the knell of the insurrection, Booth, like many of the secessionists North and South, was stung to the quick by disappointment. He visited Canada, consorted with the rebel emissaries there, and at last—whether or not at their instigation cannot certainly be said—conceived a scheme to capture the President and take him to Richmond. He spent a great part of the autumn and winter inducing a small number of loose fish of secession sympathies to join him in this fantastic enterprise. … There are indications in the evidence given on the trial of the conspirators that they suffered some great disappointment in their schemes in the latter part of March, and a letter from Arnold to Booth, dated March 27, showed that some of them had grown timid of the consequences of their contemplated enterprise and were ready to give it up. He advised Booth, before going further, 'to go and see how it will be taken in R---d.' But timid as they might be by nature, the whole group was so completely under the ascendency of Booth that they did not dare disobey him when in his presence; and after the surrender of Lee, in an access of malice and rage which was akin to madness, he called them together and assigned each his part in the new crime, the purpose of which had arisen suddenly in his mind out of the ruins of the abandoned abduction scheme. {3556} This plan was as brief and simple as it was horrible. Powell, alias Payne, the stalwart, brutal, simple-minded boy from Florida, was to murder Seward; Atzerodt, the comic villain of the drama, was assigned to remove Andrew Johnson; Booth reserved for himself the most difficult and most conspicuous role of the tragedy; it was Herold's duty to attend him as a page and aid in his escape. Minor parts were assigned to stage carpenters and other hangers-on, who probably did not understand what it all meant. Herold, Atzerodt, and Surratt had previously deposited at a tavern at Surrattsville, Maryland, owned by Mrs. Surratt, but kept by a man named Lloyd, a quantity of ropes, carbines, ammunition, and whisky, which were to be used in the abduction scheme. On the 11th of April Mrs. Surratt, being at the tavern, told Lloyd to have the shooting irons in readiness, and on Friday, the 14th, again visited the place and told him they would probably be called for that night. The preparations for the final blow were made with feverish haste; it was only about noon of the 14th that Booth learned the President was to go to Ford's Theater that night. It has always been a matter of surprise in Europe that he should have been at a place of amusement on Good Friday; but the day was not kept sacred in America, except by the members of certain churches. It was not, throughout the country, a day of religious observance. The President was fond of the theater; it was one of his few means of recreation. It was natural enough that, on this day of profound national thanksgiving, he should take advantage of a few hours' relaxation to see a comedy. Besides, the town was thronged with soldiers and officers, all eager to see him; it was represented to him that appearing occasionally in public would gratify many people whom he could not otherwise meet. … From the moment Booth ascertained the President's intention to attend the theater in the evening his every action was alert and energetic. He and his confederates, Herold, Surratt and Atzerodt, were seen on horseback in every part of the city. He had a hurried conference with Mrs. Surratt before she started for Lloyd's tavern. … Booth was perfectly at home in Ford's Theater, where he was greatly liked by all the employees, without other reason than the sufficient one of his youth and good looks. Either by himself or with the aid of his friends he arranged his whole plan of attack and escape during the afternoon. He counted upon address and audacity to gain access to the small passage behind the President's box; once there, he guarded against interference by an arrangement of a wooden bar to be fastened by a simple mortice in the angle of the wall and the door by which he entered, so that the door could not be opened from without. He even provided for the contingency of not gaining entrance to the box by boring a hole in its door, through which he might either observe the occupants or take aim and shoot. He hired at a livery stable a small, fleet horse, which he showed with pride during the day to barkeepers and loafers among his friends. The moon rose that night at ten o'clock A few minutes before that hour he called one of the underlings of the theater to the back door and left him there holding his horse. He then went to a saloon near by, took a drink of brandy, and, entering the theater, passed rapidly through the crowd in rear of the dress circle and made his way to the passage leading to the President's box. He showed a card to a servant in attendance and was allowed to pass in. He entered noiselessly, and, turning, fastened the door with the bar he had previously made ready, without disturbing any of the occupants of the box, between whom and himself there yet remained the slight partition and the door through which he had bored the hole. … Holding a pistol in one hand and a knife in the other, he opened the box door, put the pistol to the President's head, and fired; dropping the weapon, he took the knife in his right hand, and when Major Rathbone sprang to seize him he struck savagely at him. Major Rathbone received the blow on his left arm, suffering a wide and deep wound. Booth, rushing forward, then placed his left hand on the railing of the box and vaulted lightly over to the stage. It was a high leap, but nothing to such a trained athlete. … He would have got safely away but for his spur catching in the folds of the Union flag with which the front of the box was draped. He fell on the stage, the torn flag trailing on his spur, but instantly rose as if he had received no hurt, though in fact the fall had broken his leg; he turned to the audience, brandishing his dripping knife, and shouting the State motto of Virginia, 'Sic Semper Tyrannis,' and fled rapidly across the stage and out of sight. Major Rathbone had shouted, 'Stop him!' The cry went out, 'He has shot the President.' From the audience, at first stupid with surprise, and afterwards wild with excitement and horror, two or three men jumped upon the stage in pursuit of the flying assassin; but he ran through the familiar passages, leaped upon his horse, which was in waiting in the alley behind, rewarded with a kick and a curse the call-boy who had held him, and rode rapidly away in the light of the just risen moon. The President scarcely moved; his head drooped forward slightly, his eyes closed. … It was afterward ascertained that a large derringer bullet had entered the back of the head on the left side, and, passing through the brain, had lodged just behind the left eye. By direction of Rathbone and Crawford, the President was carried to a house across the street and laid upon a bed in a small room at the rear of the hall, on the ground floor. … The President had been shot a few minutes past ten. The wound would have brought instant death to most men, but his vital tenacity was extraordinary. … At twenty-two minutes after seven he died. Stanton broke the silence by saying, 'Now he belongs to the ages.'" At the same hour in which the President was murdered, an attempt was made by one of Booth's fellow conspirators to kill the Secretary of State. Mr. Seward had been thrown from his carriage a few days before and was prostrated by the serious injuries received. Pretending to bring a prescription from his physician, the assassin, Payne, made his way into the sick-room of the Secretary and stabbed him three times, but not fatally, in the neck and cheek. Two sons, Frederick and Augustus Seward, were seriously wounded in defending their father, and a soldier-nurse who was present struggled bravely with the assassin, though weaponless, and was stabbed repeatedly. {3557} Payne escaped for the time, but was caught a few days later. Booth made his way to Port Tobacco, and thence across the Potomac, into Virginia, assisted and concealed by numerous sympathizers. He eluded his pursuers until the 25th of April, when he was hunted down by a party of soldiers, while sleeping in a barn, below Fredericksburg, and, refusing to surrender, was shot. "The surviving conspirators, with the exception of John H. Surratt, were tried by a military commission sitting in Washington in the months of May and June. … Mrs. Surratt, Payne, Herold, and Atzerodt were hanged on the 7th of July; Mudd, Arnold, and O'Laughlin were imprisoned for life at the Tortugas, though the term was afterwards shortened; and Spangler, the scene shifter at the theater, was sentenced to six years in jail. John H. Surratt escaped to Canada," and thence to England. "He wandered over Europe, enlisted in the Papal Zouaves, deserted and fled to Egypt, where he was detected and brought back to Washington in 1867. His trial lasted two months and ended in a disagreement of the jury."

_J. G. Nicolay and J. Hay, Abraham Lincoln, volume 10. chapters 14-15._

ALSO IN: _H. J. Raymond, Life and Public Services of Abraham Lincoln, chapter 21._

_J. G. Holland, Life of Lincoln, chapter 30._

_B. P. Poore, Reminiscences, volume 2, chapter 15._

_B. Pittman, Report of the Trial of the Conspirators. Trial of John H. Surratt._

_T. M. Harris, Assassination of Lincoln: a History._

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1865 (April 15th). Succession of Andrew Johnson, Vice President, to the Presidency.

"On the day after the assassination, Mr. Johnson, having been apprised of the event, took the oath of office, at his rooms, in the presence of the Cabinet, and of several members of Congress, and was thus quietly inducted into the high position so summarily vacated by the martyred President. In the few remarks made on the occasion, as to 'an indication of any policy which may be pursued,' he said it 'must be left for development as the administration progresses'; and his own past course in connection with the Rebellion 'must be regarded as a guaranty for the future.' To several delegations which waited upon him he was, however, more explicit. … 'I know it is easy, gentlemen [he said to a delegation from New Hampshire], for any one who is so disposed to acquire a reputation for clemency and mercy. But the public good imperatively requires a just discrimination in the exercise of these qualities. … The American people must be taught to know and understand that treason is a crime. … It must not be regarded as a mere difference of political opinion. It must not be excused as an unsuccessful rebellion, to be overlooked and forgiven.' … It is not surprising, therefore, with utterances like these, in such seeming harmony with his antecedents as a Southern Unionist,—antecedents which had secured his nomination and election to the Vice-Presidency,—that many were disposed to regard his advancement to the Presidency at that particular juncture as but another evidence of Providential favor, if not of Divine interposition, by which the nation was to be saved from what many feared might prove Mr. Lincoln's ill-timed leniency and misplaced confidence. … Such gratulations, however, were of short continuance. Whatever the cause or design, the new President soon revealed the change that had taken place and the purpose to adopt and pursue a policy the exact reverse of what, with such prompt and unequivocal words, he had indicated."

_H. Wilson, Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, volume 3, chapter 43._

"Johnson was inaugurated at 11 o'clock on the morning of the 15th, and was at once surrounded by radical and conservative politicians, who were alike anxious about the situation. I spent most of the afternoon in a political caucus, held for the purpose of considering the necessity for a new Cabinet and a line of policy less conciliatory than that of Mr. Lincoln; and while everybody was shocked at his murder, the feeling was nearly universal that the accession of Johnson to the Presidency would prove a godsend to the country. Aside from Mr. Lincoln's known policy of tenderness to the Rebels, which now so jarred upon the feelings of the hour, his well-known views on the subject of reconstruction were as distasteful as possible to radical Republicans. … On the following day, in pursuance of a previous engagement, the Committee on the Conduct of the War met the President at his quarters in the Treasury Department. He received us with decided cordiality, and Mr. Wade said to him: 'Johnson we have faith in you. By the gods, there will be no trouble now in running the government!'"

_G. W. Julian, Political Recollections, chapter 11._

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1865 (April 26th). General Johnston's surrender.

On the 11th of April, at Smithfield, North Carolina, General Sherman had news of the surrender of Lee. Entering Raleigh on the 13th, he received, next day, a communication from the Confederate General Johnston proposing a truce "to permit the civil authorities to enter into the needful arrangements to terminate the existing war." In reply he invited a conference with Johnston, which occurred on the 17th—the day on which news of the assassination of President Lincoln was received. "Sherman said frankly that he could not recognize the Confederate civil authority as having any existence, and could neither receive nor transmit to Washington any proposition coming from them. He expressed his ardent desire for an end to devastation, and offered Johnston the same terms offered by Grant to Lee. Johnston replied that he would not be justified in such a capitulation, but suggested that they might arrange the terms of a permanent peace. The suggestion pleased General Sherman; the prospect of ending the war without the shedding of another drop of blood was so tempting to him that he did not sufficiently consider the limits of his authority in the matter." The result was that, on the 18th, Sherman and Johnston signed a memorandum of agreement which provided for the disbanding of all the Confederate armies, the recognition of the State governments of the several States lately forming the rebel Confederacy, the complete restoration of their old status in the Union, and complete amnesty to all concerned in the rebellion. This was forwarded to Washington, and, of course, it was disapproved, but with an unnecessary publication of sharp censure of General Sherman, and with expressions that seemed to imply distrust of the loyalty of his motives. General Grant was ordered to proceed to General Sherman's headquarters and to direct further operations. {3558} He executed this mission with great delicacy, and his presence with Sherman was hardly known. The latter held a second conference with Johnston on the 26th, and there General Johnston made the surrender of his army on the same terms that had been granted to Lee.

_J. G. Nicolay and J. Hay, Abraham Lincoln, volume 10, chapter 12._

ALSO IN: _W. T. Sherman, Memoirs, chapter 23 (volume 2)._

_J. W. Draper, History of the American Civil War, chapter 92 (volume 3)._

_J. E. Johnston, Narrative of Military Operations, chapter 12._

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1865 (April-May). The end of the Rebellion. Fall of Mobile. Stoneman's Raid. Wilson's Raid. Capture of Jefferson Davis. The final surrenders.