The Day Lincoln Was Shot (18 page)

At stage right (left from the orchestra) was a small enclosure called the Green Room. Actors who were imminently due onstage came downstairs from their dressing rooms and sat here before cue time. To the rear of the Green Room was a door, leading to the back alley. On the far side of the alley were the backyards of houses which faced Ninth Street, and also up toward F Street a few Negro shanties with earthen floors and heavy curtains instead of front doors. At night, these were candle lit.

Booth walked around the back of the dress circle, toward the right, and down the steps of the side aisle to the little white door leading to the State Box corridor. He went inside and turned left through the door of Box 7—the rear box—and sat watching the rehearsal onstage.

He was acquainted with almost every line of
Our American Cousin.
In the box, with no gas lights on, he was cloaked in daytime gloom and he sat watching, thinking—who knows? One thing seems certain. He timed his plans for tonight now. He looked from the ledge of the box to the stage, and he knew that he had made bigger leaps in
Macbeth.
He could not plan to run back through the dress circle because, the moment the act was accomplished, it could be expected that the people
in the theater would be in bedlam. Besides, he would have to stab the guard outside the little white door in case of challenge. It was better to stick to the original idea, to jump to the stage, run across toward the Green Room, and out the back door. If he had a horse there, waiting, escape should be fairly easy. That too, had been planned for a long time.

For a while, he sat watching the actors run through their lines lightly and with little feeling. They were in the second scene of the third act, the part where the English mother, Mrs. Mountchessington, in trying to marry her daughter off to Asa Trenchard, the rich American, first learns that he is not rich.

“I am aware, Mr. Trenchard,” she says, outraged, “that you are not used to the manners of good society, and that alone will excuse the impertinence of which you have been guilty.” She flounces offstage, leaving Asa Trenchard (Mr. Harry Hawk) alone on the boards. He watches her go, then grunts. “Don't know the manners of good society, eh?” he says. “Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal—you sockdologizing old man trap!”

This bit always drew one of the biggest laughs of the play. Booth watched and did not laugh. He was fascinated. At this point, the stage would not be cluttered with actors. Harry Hawk would be alone. Mrs. Muzzy, who played the haughty English mother, would be on her way to her dressing room. Laura Keene would be in the wings, waiting for a cue. Mr. Gifford and his two stagehands would be backstage storing the flats from the previous scene.

Harry Hawk was still talking: “Well now, when I think of what I've thrown away in hard cash . . .”

John Wilkes Booth was not listening. He was thinking. And what he was thinking of—if one can hazard a guess— was that if the curtain rose at 8
P.M.
(and it usually did) then this particular scene should be on in about two hours or a little bit more; 10:15 perhaps.

The actor had seen enough of the rehearsal. He looked at the partition between the boxes, as yet unremoved, and he walked out into the little corridor, examining the doors, and left the theater.

There was a lot to be done, and precious little time in which to do it. Tonight, he would pull down the Colossus of Rhodes.

* * *

At noon Washington City was quiet. The sun was obscured and the view was heavy with haze. Many of the government employees had taken advantage of Stanton's order, and similar orders in other departments, and had gone home. No church bells sounded. Few pedestrians were on the streets. It was twelve o'clock on Good Friday and this was the hour that Christ had been nailed to the cross.

It was an unnatural quiet, an uneasy quiet. The men at the long produce market on the south side of the Avenue worked at empty stalls, gutting shad, shucking oysters, butchers turned slabs of beef over in brine barrels, and all of them looked up and down the street and wondered what had become of the people.

The people were in church, or at home. They knelt, or they dozed. Even the bars were held erect by the very few and the very strong. Some honeymooners stopped at Gardner's studio to pose—he sitting, she standing—for a lifetime memento. At the foot of Fourteenth Street, the daily thunder of army wagons could be heard on the loose planking of Long Bridge, coming home from war.

James R. Ford, in a buggy, was returning from the Treasury Department, laden with flags for decorating the President's Box. He was walking his horse along E Street, and was turning off onto Tenth when he saw Booth. Ford pulled the horse up, and they chatted. It was a dull day, Ford admitted, but, with Grant and Lincoln present, the house was sure to be a sellout. Booth asked him if he had got all the flags he wanted
and Ford said no, that he had asked Jones for a thirty-six-foot American flag that the Treasury used on special occasions, but that Captain Jones had told him that the flag had been on loan for the illumination and wasn't back. Ford wanted it to drape down the upper floors of the front of the theater.

The two men parted, Booth saying that he would try to attend if he could, but not promising. James got back to Ford's and, after getting his bunting indoors, asked an actor to write a special notice for the Washington
Star
and the
National Republican
announcing the presence of Grant and Lincoln as honored guests tonight. The actor said that it would have to wait; he was busy writing the regular advertisements.

James wrote the announcements himself, and then he worried about the propriety of it. Until it was on paper, it had seemed all right to capitalize on the presence of two great men. Now, as he read it back, it seemed cheap. He called young Harry and asked for an opinion. They read it aloud together and it seemed all right. They agreed that such an announcement could harm no one, and, at the same time, it was bound to draw the patronage of transients.

A colored boy delivered both by hand.

Wilkes Booth walked up to G Street, and across G to Seventh, and stepped into Howard's Stable. The stableman knew him, and Booth asked that his big one-eyed roan be delivered to the little stable behind Ford's Theatre and tethered there. He paid the feed bill for the horse, and left. Then he took the long walk down across the Mall to Pumphrey's Stable, and asked for a sorrel which he had been renting for six weeks past. The stableman said that the sorrel was out and Mr. Booth could not have him. Instead, he said, he had a fine, fast roan mare for hire, a little nervous perhaps, but a good fast riding horse.

The stableman brought her out and turned her around inside the door. Booth studied the animal. She was young, about
fourteen hands high, and she had croup chafes on her quarters. Her mane and tail were black. She had one white sock and a star on her forehead. Booth liked her skittish bearing.

“Have her saddled at four o'clock,” he said. “I'll be back.”

George Atzerodt, new resident at Kirkwood House, Twelfth Street at the Avenue, was in and out of the hotel in the manner of a baggy-pants comic who knows that if he does something ridiculous three times it will induce laughter. On the hotel register, he had scrawled his right name: “G. A. Atzerodt” and, although he had not been in his room on the second floor since early morning, David Herold had been in it to leave clothes and weapons.

Atzerodt spent most of his time drinking at the bar and trying to be disarming. He asked so many questions of the bartender and the few customers that he excited suspicion. Where exactly, he wanted to know, is the Vice President's room? Does he have a guard? Could any citizen knock on the door and have a chat with him? A man in his position doesn't carry firearms, does he? How about the nigger who stands behind him when he eats—where does he go when Johnson goes back to his quarters? Does the Vice President stay home at night or does he go out? Would you say that he was a brave man or a coward? Ever see any soldiers around him?

The men at the bar studied Atzerodt, and the stupid face squeezed into a smile, and they relaxed. The glances around the bar were a shrug—this man was a drunken outlander.

Booth went back to the National Hotel to dress. He wanted calf boots and new spurs and a black suit with tight trousers, for riding. He wanted a good black hat too, and his wallet with the pictures of his girls, and the diary which had been bare of words. He wanted a small pocket compass, his gold timepiece, a small brass derringer, a gimlet and a long sheathed knife which could be stuck inside the trousers along the left side.

There would be no more failures; he knew that. Lincoln would die tonight, or Booth would. Or perhaps both. The last possibility did not frighten him. The actor was aware that the chances were that he would not get away, rather than that he would. Pulling the huge statue down with him was the important thing. The only thing.

If he worried, it was over his fellow conspirators. No one knew better than he that these men—his band of irregulars— were ciphers; nothings; buffoon assassins. A sniveling alcoholic, a giggling boy, and a brainless automaton. Atzerodt would be assigned to kill Vice President Johnson and Wilkes would be surprised if George approached the man at all. However, Johnson was the least important of the men he wanted to kill—a white trash tailor—and that's why Atzerodt was assigned to him.
*
Seward was more important, and Paine would really kill the man if . . . if . . . if Paine could find him.

In the past several weeks, Booth had tried to make Washington City comprehensible to Lewis Paine, but the ex-soldier became more confused. He could not understand uptown from downtown, north from south, or right from left. Like a hound dog, he would have to be taken to the bush the bird nested in, and pointed. Davey Herold would do that. So, in substance, he had to use two men to get one sick man killed, and a third man to get nothing done. Only he, John Wilkes Booth, had the courage, the intelligence, and the patriotism to walk in “among a thousand of his friends” and slay the Despot Himself.

The plan called for meeting afterward on the road to Surrattsville. And this too, the actor must have known, was a dream. Each of them would bungle and fail, and each would
bring sudden death on himself. In cool assessment, Booth was pretty sure that he would not be on the road to Surrattsville tonight. Getting into the State Box was a formidable problem; getting out of the theater and away was going to be almost impossible.

For a while, he toyed with the idea of taking Paine with him to Ford's Theatre. Paine could be assigned to kill General Grant while Booth was dispatching President Lincoln. But the actor dropped the plan quickly. It would be infinitely more difficult to get two persons into that box tonight than one; and it would be more than twice as hard to get two people out of that theater, than one. Besides, if Paine assassinated Grant, and Booth failed to kill Lincoln, the actor would be a fool in history. His theatrical sense warned him not to share billing with anyone. He would do it himself—Lincoln with the gun; Grant with the knife.

Mrs. Surratt and Miss Honora Fitzpatrick left the boardinghouse and walked over to St. Patrick's Church, on Tenth Street between E and F, to pray during a part of the Three Hours Agony. The church was dim and cool. The Crucifix was covered with purple cloth; so were the statues of the Blessed Mother and Saint Joseph. And the Stations of the Cross which lined the walls of the church. Communicants knelt in pews and their lips moved in sibilant whispers. Their eyes blinked toward the now empty repository of the Holy Eucharist.

Others, seeking salvation, knelt in the Baptist Church, in New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, in the Methodist churches, the Episcopal. In Georgia, by the clock, He was dying; in Rome He was already dead; in California He was not yet on the cross.

Young Mr. Harry Ford stopped next door at Ferguson's Restaurant for lunch. He saw big, ham-handed James P. Ferguson behind the cigar counter and he said: “Your favorite, General Grant, is going to be in the theater tonight. If you want to see him, you had better go get a seat.”

Ferguson thanked him, asked a question or two, took off his white apron and ran next door to get a seat. In fact, he wanted two. There was a little girl who lived next door to him, and she showered a shy adoration on big Jim, and now, with her mother's permission, Ferguson would take her with him.

This man was sensitive to history and to historical personages. He had seen Mr. Lincoln many times, but he would still run out of his restaurant to watch him pass by in a carriage. However, he had never seen the Little Giant and tonight would be his opportunity. Mr. Maddox was in the box office and he tried to sell Ferguson two good seats downstairs, but the restaurateur told him that he wasn't going to see
Our American Cousin;
in fact, he wouldn't care if he never saw it. What he wanted to know was, will the President use the usual boxes—7 and
8?
Maddox said he would. Then, said Ferguson, I want two front-row seats on the left-hand side of the dress circle, because that's the only place in the house with a view into the Presidential Box.

He got them.

In President Lincoln's office, the Cabinet meeting continued. It had passed its second hour, and the President was pleased to note that, except for minor differences of opinion
his Cabinet seemed to be agreed that, if the South were helped to get on its economic feet, the effect would be to enhance the welfare of the North. No one, including Lincoln, desired to spoon-feed the South and, by the same token, no one wanted to heap additional punishment on the defeated states. Stanton was for a sterner peace than the President, but the difference between the men was not beyond bridging.

In and out of Congress and the newspapers there were varying shades of public opinion about this matter, ranging all the way from those who desired to re-embrace the South and start anew, to the bitterness of Senator Ben Wade, who hoped that the Negroes of the South would be goaded to insurrection, feeling that, “if they could contrive to slay one half of their oppressors, the other half would hold them in the highest respect and no doubt treat them with justice.”