The Day Lincoln Was Shot (13 page)

On that day, President Lincoln had no appointment after 1
P.M.
He planned to be at the matinee, and none of the patients at Soldiers' Home needed the relaxation more than he. He was ready to leave when Governor Oliver P. Morton, an imposing-looking man with arched brows and full black beard, walked in and said that he had just learned that one of his own regiments—the 140th Indiana—was coming down Pennsylvania Avenue and wanted to present a captured Rebel banner to him, and would Mr. Lincoln come along. The President reluctantly agreed.

So, at 2
P.M.,
while Booth and his band waited on Seventh Street road, the President was standing on the front steps of Booth's hotel, the National, telling an array of soldiers at parade rest that the war would soon be over and that they could then return to their families with the fervent thanks of the whole country.

On the morning of Saturday, March 25, two things of small moment happened. John Wilkes Booth returned to Washington and took a room at the National Hotel. John Surratt and a Mrs. Slater rented a buggy and drove off from the H Street
boarding house. The widow Surratt said later that “John has gone to Richmond with Mrs. Slater to get a clerkship.”

A notice appeared in the Washington
Star
on Monday, March 27, saying that the President and his family had reserved boxes at Ford's Theatre for the Wednesday night performance of the Italian opera
Ernani.
Booth saw the notice and wired O'Laughlin to come to Washington on Wednesday with or without Sam Arnold.

WE SELL THAT DAY SURE. DO NOT FAIL.

Neither showed up. Arnold had just learned that Wilkes Booth had stopped off in Baltimore last week, and had not even tried to find him. So Sam wrote a letter about it.

Booth wrote no reply. Arnold was out of the conspiracy, and he needed money. A second letter was delivered at the same time. This was from John Wilkes Booth's mother.

The words “since you leave me to grief” cause one to ask “What grief?” Wilkes planned no known venture which could cause a mother to write about grief. The ensuing thoughts: “I am no Roman mother. I love my dear ones before country . . .” almost sound as though Mrs. Booth knew, or suspected, the plot. If she did, who in the family could have told her? Only Asia Booth Clarke, now pregnant in Philadelphia, could have known. It was with her that Wilkes left a letter to be made public in case of capture or death; the letter blamed Lincoln for all the woes of the South, and closed with “A Confederate doing duty on his own.”

The end of March and the early days of April were dull for the conspirators. Lewis Paine—”The Reverend Mr. Wood”— was no longer welcome at the H Street boardinghouse and he checked into Herndon House at the corner of Ninth and F Streets. Mrs. Martha Murray, wife of the owner, gave him a big corner room on the third floor. She asked him if he would
also take his meals at Herndon House and he said yes. Dinner, she said, was served at 4
P.M.
promptly.

The conspiracy was almost dead. Not quite, but close to it. Surratt had quit and had gone south, not for the clerkship he told his mother about, but to contact Mr. Judah Benjamin and to get a job sneaking Confederate dispatches to Canada. Sam Arnold was out of it too. He was getting a job in a grocery store outside Fortress Monroe, Virginia. Mike O'Laughlin was finished with plotting, although he was trying to achieve the delicate balance of not answering Booth's summons while keeping his friendship.

What was left after successive failures was Booth, Paine, Atzerodt and Herold. A brilliant actor, a stupid killer, a drunkard and a boy. That was the conspiracy, two weeks before the big day. Worse, Booth found himself out of funds. He took a train to New York, to borrow from his family and his friends. He saw Sam Chester and asked for the fifty he owed. He would not be asking it, Wilkes said, except that he was out of money and had to sell his horses. The ghost of the spurned plot was brought out, and Booth volunteered the information that, on inauguration day, he was as close to Lincoln “as I am to you.” He could have shot the President, and now regretted that he had not.

These setbacks, poignant as they may have been to the conspirator, should have been as nothing compared to the one awful fact that there was no longer a Confederacy. It was, at this moment, in its death throes. In a trice, Mr. Booth had no cause, no country, no one to bring Lincoln to. In a day or two, the President would be in the place where Booth tried so desperately to bring him—Richmond.

Except that he would be there as a conqueror.

At 9
P.M.
on Monday, April 3, John T. Holahan, tombstone carver and boarder at the Surratt House, was in bed. He wasn't close to sleep when he heard a soft rap on the bedroom
door. He got up, pulled trousers over his nightshirt, went to the door and said: “Who is it?”

It was John Surratt. He had just come home on the Leonardtown stage from Richmond. He had left three days before, with an assignment which would take him to Montreal, Canada. He had been assured by Confederate authorities that, no matter what he heard in the North to the contrary, Richmond would not fall and the South would not surrender. He believed this.

“What is it?” said Mr. Holahan.

“John,” said Surratt. “I would like to have some money.”

Holahan opened the door and came outside.

“How much do you want?”

“Fifty dollars.”

“You can have it. Wait here.”

Holahan went inside and got the money. He counted it out.

“Now, is that enough, John?”

Surratt studied the money in his hand and said: “I would like to have ten dollars more, making sixty in all.”

Holahan went back into the room and got ten more. When he gave it to the landlady's son, Surratt said: “Take these,” and gave Holahan two twenty-dollar gold pieces.

“I don't want them,” Holahan said. “You can keep them. You are good enough to me for that amount of money.”

“No,” said John. “I want you to have them.” Holahan took the forty dollars in gold for the sixty in paper.

That night, Surratt left for Canada. Train travel was slow and tedious; connections were poor. Whatever the specifics of his mission were has never been proved. It has been surmised that (1) his work had something to do with warning the Confederate group in Canada to flee (if so, this would be a sealed message and he would have no personal knowledge of it); (2) his mission had something to do with trying to free Confederate prisoners held in northern New York State.

At almost the same time that Surratt left Washington City, the clerk of the Aquidneck Hotel in New York City was presenting the register to an imposing young man and a pretty girl.

“J. W. Booth & Lady” the young man wrote. “Boston.”

The couple was assigned to room number 3. Less than a month before, Booth had sat at dawn on a hotel bed with another girl, and had written on the back of an envelope:

Underneath, with whatever sad tenderness a dawn may be tinged, Eva had scrawled:

The morning of Tuesday, April 11, was rainy. The nation of towns and villages was still celebrating, still drinking and snapping its galluses over the surrender of General Robert E. Lee. On this night, the official celebration of the surrender would take place in Washington, but Mrs. Mary Surratt had no heart for it.

“Mr. Wiechman,” she said, “won't you go around to the National Hotel and tell Mr. Booth that I sent you for his horse and buggy, and desire to know whether I can have it?”

At the National, Wiechman parroted the message and Booth shook his head.

“I have sold the horse and buggy,” he said. Then he reached into his pocket. “But here are ten dollars. Go you and hire one.”

Wiechman recalled that John Surratt had boasted that he owned the horses. “I thought they were John's horses,” he said.

“No,” said Booth. “They were my horses.”

Wiechman accepted the money and walked in the rain up Seventh Street to Howard's Stable. He rented a high narrow buggy, with an oiled-cloth top, and a black horse. At 9:30
A.M.
he chirruped to the horse and he and Mrs. Surratt started off for Surrattsville. It was a brisk drive—ten miles to Surrattsville, and ten home—and Mrs. Surratt always referred to it as “going down to the country.”

This, to the widow, was just one more trip in an effort to reconcile her financial troubles. She was going to try to collect $479 and thirteen years of interest from a Mr. John Nothey. Long before, he had purchased seventy-five acres of farmland behind the tavern from her late husband. She had tried, by patience, by tact, by mail, to collect this money because one of her creditors was threatening suit. Now she was off to see Mr. Nothey and she hoped to come to some agreement with him before returning to Washington City tonight. In addition, she carried a small message from Booth to John Lloyd to have the “things” ready or the “guns” ready (the testimony varies) to be picked up.

It is this incidental message which makes Mrs. Surratt's trip so important because, three months from this day, she was going to be the first woman hanged in the United States and she would be hanged largely on the spirit and context of the message to Lloyd. The government would declare that this message proved that she was part of the John Wilkes Booth conspiracy—an active party to it. And she would go to her death denying that she was part of it; denying that anyone, including her son, told her about the conspiracy, and denying, in the presence of a priest, that she had been told to tell Lloyd anything about “guns.” She was told solely to advise him
to have the “things” ready. She was told, she said, that Lloyd would know what things.

The road began to dry on the Maryland shore. The skies were clearing and fresh as the buggy reached the rise of a hill. There was little conversation. The widow was angry with Mr. Nothey and she promised herself that she would squeeze him for every penny that was due.

At 11
A.M.
the buggy was passing a crossroads called Uniontown when Mrs. Surratt noticed a rig passing in the other direction.

“Mr. Lloyd!” she yelled. “Oh, Mr. Lloyd!”

Wiechman pulled to a stop and, about a dozen yards behind them, John Lloyd pulled to the opposite side of the road. In his buggy sat Mrs. Emma Offutt, his sister-in-law, and her child. Lloyd got out of his buggy and walked across to Mrs. Surratt. The tavern tenant was sober and his hair was slicked. He smiled like a man who isn't sure that he won't regret it. He said he was going into town to make purchases and the widow said that she was going to the tavern to see Mr. Nothey. Lloyd said that he had seen Nothey around the tavern a few days ago, but wasn't sure that he was around today.