Lifting his small brass derringer, its sheen catching light from the flickering oil lamps in Ford’s Theater, John Wilkes Booth smiled confidently as he looked down the narrow sight groove at the coarse, unruly black hair of Abraham Lincoln, convinced his actions would avenge the devastation wrought upon his country.
In addition, Booth considered the South to be his motherland even though he was born in Maryland and traveled the northern states as well as southern states performing to packed theaters. On October 16. 1859, John Brown and his band attacked Harper’s Ferry on Oct. 16, 1859. Federal troops immediately captured him and took him to Charlestown, Md., for trial that took place in November. The judge sentenced Brown to hang on December 2. Two weeks before the execution, Booth heard rumors while he was performing at Marshall Theater in Richmond that abolitionists planned to rescue Brown. Booth bought a Union uniform from some solder friends, joined the Richmond Grays and Company F, and got on the train to keep the abolitionists from freeing Brown. The raid never occurred, but Booth and his comrades in arms stood guard at the gallows during the execution. Brown’s demeanor impressed Booth that he wrote in a letter to his sister Asia Brown “was a brave old man.” After war was declared he decided against going South to wear a real uniform in a real army because he feared his face would be scarred in battle. Conflicts of conscience last only a few years at most, but a marred face would ruin his career on stage forever, and Booth could not risk that.
In the last year of the war, when he realized the cause was in jeopardy, Booth began to concoct a way he could save his adopted nation. He decided to kidnap Abraham Lincoln and hold him for ransom, demanding the release of thousands of rebel troops held in northern prisons. Booth gathered a group of old friends and new followers. They waited for Lincoln on the road to the Soldiers Home north of the Capital. After a few hours, they realized the president was not going to show up.
Before Booth could devise another scheme, the Chief Justice swore Lincoln into a second term as President on March 4 in the Senate chamber. Lincoln then walked out to the platform built on the Capitol steps to deliver his inaugural address. Booth and his comrades stood on the steps only a few feet from the President when he stated citizenship was coming for former slaves.
“That’s nigger suffrage,” Booth muttered that night as he shared a whiskey at the bar next to Ford’s Theater with his friends. “He has signed his own death warrant.”
His indignation only grew only the next few weeks as the Confederate forces continued to suffer one setback after another until the Gray army evacuated Richmond on April 3, and the Blue army marched in the next day. Booth toured several cities in the North, including Boston and New York, visiting his brother Edwin and several friends, dropping obscure hints that they might never see him again. On April 9, he returned to Washington City and gathered around him his old conspirators, the ones who took part in his failed attempts to kidnap the President.
His chance to avenge the South and stop the encroachment of colored people into proper society accidentally fell into place only one week before this night. Booth was visiting Mary Surratt at the boarding house. Her son John had been with Booth the night they planned to kidnap Lincoln. Surratt had not shown proper outraged by Lincoln’s inaugural address, Booth thought. Besides, he had seen this behavior before in his childhood friends Michael O’Laughlen and Samuel Arnold. They seemed interested in the kidnapping plot at first but lost interest when they considered the risks of actually killing the president. Mrs. Surratt, on the other hand, had the proper outrage and gumption to follow through on any plot to help the Old South. That was why he visited her boarding house that day. It was a viper’s nest of discontented southern sympathizers.
Once inside Mrs. Surratt’s boarding house, he saw a young man in a Union uniform standing in the parlor. Booth noticed by how much they looked alike, almost the same age, the same lithe physique but different hair color. This young man had bright red hair. Moreover, his face was severely pocked. Booth decided the private was not as handsome as he was. Booth started an innocent conversation with the soldier.
The young man’s name was Adam Christy and said he worked at the Executive Mansion but demurred to elaborate on his duties. The exchange was provocative but subtle. Booth sensed great distress in Christy. He was innately kind, Booth could tell, but he had a great hidden dark passion. Booth felt Christy could help him get close to President Lincoln.
He was right. The next day Christy returned to Mrs. Surratt’s boardinghouse and told Booth he knew someone who could help him kill the president. Bring your cohorts to the Aqueduct Bridge at midnight, Christy said, and you will learn how to avenge your dead Confederacy.
At midnight, Booth arrived with his men. As he suspected, John Surratt had no stomach for assassination and fled to Canada. Those remaining loyal were John Atzerodt, Lewis Payne and David Herold. Booth felt reassured when he saw Christy, with whom he was beginning to feel like a big brother. His brow furrowed as he noticed how nervous Christy was. Booth finally decided the private was scared of the man who was waiting for them, a short, bull of a man, puffing on a cigar and patting his foot impatiently in the ripples of the Potomac River hitting the shore.
Shadows hid the man’s face. He instantly took control of the conversation, telling them to forget the Confederacy. The Confederacy was dead. Get revenge, the man said. He ridiculed Atzerodt’s German accent and the trace of alcohol on his breath. He scoffed at the lack of intelligence in Payne and Herold.
“You, sir, are no gentleman,” Booth said haughtily.
The short man snorted in derision, dismissing Booth’s Southern sensibilities. He began assigning assassination subjects. Atzerodt would kill Vice President Andrew Johnson at his Kirkwood Hotel room. Payne and Herold would kill Secretary of State William Seward at his home. Seward was near death anyway after a recent carriage accident had left him bedridden. Finally, Booth would kill President Lincoln at Ford’s Theater during a performance of Our American Cousin. All this would take place on Good Friday.
“And what are you going to do?” Booth demanded.
“I’m going to kill Secretary of War Edwin Stanton,” the man replied.
“And why do you want to kill him?”
“I have my reasons to hate him.”
Booth sensed something wrong as they stood under Aqueduct Bridge at midnight. Adam Christy seemed too nervous. The mysterious man was too gruff and too secretive. During all his years on stage, Booth had developed his instincts, and his instincts told him to walk away. His intense hatred of Lincoln and the president’s advocacy of Negro suffrage made Booth ignore his gut feelings and agree to the assassination plot.
On Good Friday afternoon he went to his boardinghouse where he gathered what little he would need for his escape. He carefully loaded his derringer, sheathed his knife and hid it in his pocket, and placed an old appointment book in his saddlebags. Booth pulled out his wallet and lingered as he gazed at the photographs of young ladies, including several actresses and his fiancée Lucy Howe, the daughter of a northern abolitionist senator. Sighing, he realized he might never see any of them again, but his loyalty to the South overrode all other emotions.
He walked to the livery stable where he threw his saddlebags over his mount and rode to the alleyway behind Ford’s Theater. He gave the attendant a few coins to hold the horse until he came out. Looking at his pocket watch, he saw that the play had just begun. He had an hour to waste until the proper moment. Booth sauntered to the bar next to the theater where he ordered a glass of whiskey and sat nursing it.
When a man sat on the stool next to him and ordered ale, Booth glanced at him and sized him up. “A terrible last couple of weeks, wouldn’t you say?” he mumbled.
“What?”
“Horrible events the last couple of weeks,” Booth repeated.
The man grunted.
“Unless you’re a Yankee.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“Neither would I.” He raised his glass in a toast man. When the man clinked his glass, Booth smiled. “What did you think of that speech?”
“What speech?”
“You know, by that man in the Executive Mansion.”
“Oh. Not much.”
“Nigger voting rights. Can’t stand that.”
“Me neither.”
“Why, if I pushed a nigger out of my way on the sidewalk and if he pushed back I couldn’t shoot him.”
The man grunted. “That man in the Executive Mansion is my boss.”
“What?” Booth sat up.
“He’s my boss. I’m his guard. Like he needs one. A lot of people talk about killin’ him but nobody ever tries. So I just sit back and drink.”
Booth smiled slightly. “That’s good to know.” He looked at the clock over the bar. “I’ve got to go.”
As he stood, the man said, “You look familiar.”
“I’m John Wilkes Booth, the actor.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard of you.”
“Tomorrow I shall be the most famous man in the world.”
Booth entered the theater at the back of the house and noticed that all seats were filled. He walked up the stairs and circled the upper floor toward the president box. Sure enough, the chair outside the door was empty. He knew the guard was busy drinking ale at the bar. First, he bent over to peek through the hole he had dug out earlier in the day. Only four people were in the room, the president, his wife and the couple on a sofa against the far wall.
Carefully he opened the door and stepped inside. Booth held his breath, hoping no one heard him. The young couple chuckled softly. Mrs. Lincoln leaned over to whisper something in her husband. How he loathed the man, Booth thought.
Booth breathed in deeply as he stood in the shadows of the presidential box overlooking the stage. When he thought of Negroes’ having the right to vote his heart raced and his temple throbbed with rage. He had to compose himself, be in cool control of his emotions to complete his task. He looked down on the stage to see Laura Keene and Harry Hawk began their conversation in the comedy Our American Cousin.
He knew the play by heart. He knew when the audience the audience would giggle, he knew when it would sigh, and he knew when it would erupt in laughter and applause. One of those moments was coming soon, and, when it did, Booth was ready to pull the trigger and put a bullet into Abraham Lincoln’s skull.
Laughter from the audience sharpened Booth’s senses. He knew the big punch line was coming soon. He looked around the box and noticed a young Army officer and a rather homely girl sat on a sofa against the far wall. Booth smirked at him. He knew the soldier would be no threat after he fired the shot. He patted his coat pocket, which held his knife. If the soldier tried to stop him, Booth would viciously slash him. Nothing was going to spoil his dramatic exit, a leap to the stage and dash to the back door.
Breathing in deeply Booth smelled the scent of the oil lamps, sweat and, he sniffed again, yes, yes, he could detect the greasepaint worn by the actors on the stage below him. He heard the audience reaction that stirred him emotionally. He craved the attention he received while he performed in the theater. That was his biggest regret that night. He would no longer be able to be an actor, at least for a while. Booth was sure the South would greet him with open arms for killing its great enemy. There in the great capitals of the soon-to-be revived Confederacy he would once again tread the boards.
He took aim and waited for the fateful line by Harry Hawk to Laura Keene, which would cause the audience to erupt in laughter.
“I guess I told you, you sockdologizing old mantrap!” Harry Hawk shouted as Laura Keene exited the stage.
Booth pulled the trigger, and the bullet entered behind Lincoln’s left ear. The president slumped over. Mrs. Lincoln looked over at her husband and then looked up at Booth with curiosity. He watched her eyes widen as she realized what had happened. She screamed hysterically.
The officer lunged from the sofa, grabbing for the gun. Booth took a couple of steps backwards quickly which threw the man off balance. In that split second, Booth pulled the knife from his pocket. The officer pulled back his free arm to try to strike Booth across the face, but as his arm came down it hit the blade of the knife.
“Aahh!” The officer stopped and began to bend over in pain.
Booth brought the butt of the gun down with full force on the back of the man’s head. The officer fell against Booth’s chest and slid down. The homely girl whimpered and ran to the man, crumbling by his side. Booth strode passed them and between the president and his wife, who was still screaming uncontrollably, with her hands to her chubby cheeks.
“The president has been shot!” Mrs. Lincoln screamed.
Booth stepped to the top of the railing of the box over the stage with all due confidence. He had made similar leaps many times as his entrance in a play. This leap would be even more spectacular. Just as he began to jump, Booth felt a tug on his foot. The officer had grabbed at his trouser leg. Booth’s head jerked back to see the man in a crawl. I thought I had taken care of him, Booth thought as he furrowed his brow. The man’s eyes were wide with hatred, shock and desperation. My God, Booth gasped, this man is crazy. The distraction caused him to fall to the boards. Even though Booth felt a painful crack in his leg, he exhilarated in the moment.
“Sic semper tyrannus!”
As he turned to limp off the stage, Booth heard the shouts from the audience. Again he smelled the gas lamps, the sweat and the greasepaint. God, he thought to himself, he was going to miss all this. For, since he began acting, the noise of the theater sounded like life.