Previously: Just before shooting Lincoln, Booth thinks of the events leading to this moment.
Lafayette Baker pulled on the reins of the carriage, bringing it to a halt on the dark banks of the Potomac River. He picked a spot about three miles downstream from the District of Columbia. No one rode passed there that time of night. Very secluded. With a bored sigh, he jumped down from the driver’s seat and went around to the passenger side.
First he picked up the plump body of the woman he had just shot between the eyes. Secretary of War Stanton had selected her from the Old Capitol Prison to impersonate Mary Todd Lincoln. Now the war was over she was no longer needed and was actually an encumbrance. Baker walked with a stealthy pace to the edge of the water, threw the body in, watched as the tide caught it and carried it toward the middle of the wide river where it eventually sank.
Next he grabbed the other corpse under the arms. He was a large man, and Baker would have to drag him. Stanton had saved this man from the gallows at Old Capitol Prison because he looked like President Lincoln. For two and a half years he pretended to be the president, said and did everything Stanton had ordered. For his obedience he too had been shot between the eyes. Baker rolled the body into the water and kicked it hard to make sure it entered the current. Soon, it disappeared into the depths.
Baker had no sympathy for them. They had sold their souls for a chance to live and deserved to die. They were cowards. Life had defeated the man and woman years ago, and they just got around to leaving now.
Drizzle began falling as Baker got back in the carriage and returned it to the Executive Mansion. It did not bother him. The personal guard of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, Baker had become inured to inconvenience, pain and guilt. When Stanton had ordered him to intimidate, kidnap and murder, he obeyed because that was what he was supposed to do without question, as long as he was paid.
Baker was on his way back to kill another person who knew too much about Stanton and his plot. That knowledge was a death sentence. This is what his life had become. He pulled the mud-bespeckled horse-drawn carriage into the trail that led to the basement door of the Executive Mansion. The young man he was going to shoot in the head did not know he was coming.
After tying the reins to a hitching post, he went to the door, one hand resting on his revolver holster. Before he could touch the handle, the door opened and an odd-looking little old man bumped into him. The man wore a tall stovepipe hat and an over-sized black overcoat, which dragged on the ground. He had scared blue eyes, gray stubble on his trembling chin, and his hands shook nonstop.
“Who the hell are you?” Baker bellowed, causing the old man to hunch over.
“I’m the president, aren’t I?”
Stanton had told him that a demented janitor was in the Executive Mansion basement. Baker remembered the night he arrived to remove the body of a Negro servant. From one of the rooms he heard a voice calling out, “Stop hurting people!” That must have been this fool standing in front of him now.
“Get out of here,” Baker snapped, impatient to finish the job without further distractions.
“Yes, sir.” The old man scurried out the door into the rainy night.
Baker would be glad when Stanton’s mad scheme was over. He did not think much of it when Stanton explained it to him in September of 1862. It was madness, and Baker found himself in the thick of it.
Stanton doubted the ability of Abraham Lincoln to conduct a war. Union troops suffered a series of devastating defeats during the summer, and Stanton could not allow the pattern of events to continue. He knew he could do a better job than that bumbling idiot of a president, Lincoln.
Stanton’s plan was an elaborate one. He would find a man and woman in the Old Capitol prison who resembled the Lincolns. Under threat, they would agree to impersonate the presidential couple. Then Stanton would abduct the real Lincolns, marching them downstairs to the White House basement where they would stay for the duration under the watchful eye of an armed guard. The duplicate Lincoln would carry out Stanton’s strategies and win the war by the end of the year. At that time, Stanton would release Lincoln who would thank him for saving the Union.
The plan did not work out that way. The years passed with no resolution. Now it was over, and President Lincoln had to die. Everyone thought Mrs. Lincoln was crazy anyway so no one would believe her ravings about her two and a half-year captivity in the basement. The imposters were at the bottom of the Potomac River, and now the private who had guarded for the Lincolns during their captivity was about to die.
Private Adam Christy had never impressed Baker anyway. The private was a thin red-haired boy who could not control himself. In 1864, Christy had lost control of his senses because of over-drinking and tried to rape the Negro cook in the basement. The colored butler tried to intervene and save the girl, but in his drunken rage, Christy killed him. Baker came in the middle of the night to clean up the private’s mess. Christy represented weakness, and Baker hated weakness.
Earlier in the week, Stanton ordered Christy to find someone to kill the president. At first, the private refused, saying he had already done enough to ruin the life of a man who had done him no wrong. Stanton threatened him with prosecution in the butler’s death Christy relented. When the private arrived under the Aqueduct Bridge at midnight with an odd collection of assassins—an actor, a drunk and two simpletons–Christy confirmed Baker’s suspicions of his incompetence.
“Is this it?” Baker remembered asking Christy about the group. He looked at the dark-haired, good-looking one, and recognized him as John Wilkes Booth, the popular actor. He seemed to be the leader. “Now. Tell me something that convinces me you’re smarter than you look.”
“Sir,” Booth had said, pulling himself up to his full stature, “you are no gentleman, and not welcome to our noble endeavor.”
“This noble endeavor is murder,” Baker had replied. “True gentlemen don’t kill, so get that idea right out of your head.” After puffing on his cigar he had added, “So what are your plans?”
Booth planned to shoot the president at Ford’s Theater. The drunk would kill Johnson at the Kirkwood Hotel, and the simpletons would stab Seward to death at his house. Baker remembered Christy just stood there, staring across the darkness of the Potomac.
“And who will kill Stanton?” Booth had asked.
“I’ll kill Stanton.” Baker lied.