Assassination of Abraham Lincoln

• 1. Introduction

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  The assassination of Abraham Lincoln began not with a gunshot but with a letter. On the morning of the 14th of April 1865, John Wilkes Booth visited Ford's Theatre to collect his mail and learned that the president and General Ulysses S. Grant would attend that evening's performance of Our American Cousin. By 10:15 that night, Lincoln was slumped in his rocking chair with a bullet in his skull, and the United States was without the leader who had steered it through four years of civil war. What drove a celebrated actor to this act? How did a plot that began as a kidnapping scheme become a coordinated attempt to decapitate the federal government? And what happened in the frantic days that followed, as the largest manhunt in American history closed in on the conspirators?

• 2. A Conspiracy Takes Shape

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  John Wilkes Booth was born in Maryland into a family of prominent stage actors and had become a famous actor and national celebrity by the time of the assassination. He was also an outspoken Confederate sympathizer; in late 1860 he was initiated into the pro-Confederate Knights of the Golden Circle in Baltimore.

  Booth's original scheme was not murder but kidnapping. He conceived a plan to abduct Lincoln and use him as leverage to force the Union into resuming prisoner exchanges with the South. The exchanges had stalled after President Lincoln issued General Order 252 on the 30th of July 1863, halting the practice until all Northern soldiers would be exchanged without regard for skin color. Booth recruited Samuel Arnold, George Atzerodt, David Herold, Michael O'Laughlen, Lewis Powell, and John Surratt to assist him. Surratt's mother, Mary Surratt, moved from her tavern in Surrattsville, Maryland to a house in Washington where Booth became a frequent visitor.

  The kidnapping plan fell apart on March 17 when Lincoln skipped the play Booth had counted on. As the Confederacy crumbled around him, Booth abandoned abduction. Richmond, the Confederate capital, fell on April 3. General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to General Grant on April 9 at Appomattox Court House. Still Booth refused to accept defeat. On April 11 he attended Lincoln's last public speech, in which Lincoln promoted voting rights for emancipated slaves. Enraged, Booth turned to Powell and demanded he shoot Lincoln on the spot. Powell refused for fear of the crowd, but Booth told David Herold, "By God, I'll put him through."

  The final plan was sweeping in ambition: Booth would kill Lincoln at the theater; Lewis Powell and Herold would kill Secretary of State William H. Seward at his home; George Atzerodt would kill Vice President Andrew Johnson at the Kirkwood Hotel. The three strikes were to happen simultaneously, shortly after ten o'clock, on the theory that eliminating all three men at once would throw the federal government into chaos and somehow revive the Confederate cause.

• 3. The Shot at Ford's Theatre

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  At Ford's Theatre on the night of April 14, nearly everything that might have stopped Booth had already unraveled. General Grant and his wife Julia had declined the Lincolns' invitation because Mary Lincoln and Julia Grant were not on good terms. Lincoln's personal bodyguard, Ward Hill Lamon, was away in Richmond. The officer assigned to guard the Presidential Box, John Frederick Parker, left at intermission for a nearby tavern along with Lincoln's valet and coachman. The theater's full house numbered about 1,700 people.

  Lincoln sat in a rocking chair from the Ford family's personal furnishings. He had reluctantly agreed to attend after newspapers had already announced his presence, telling Speaker of the House Schuyler Colfax, "I suppose it's time to go though I would rather stay." Mary Lincoln, who had almost stayed home with a headache, often called her husband's attention to the action onstage and "seemed to take great pleasure in witnessing his enjoyment."

  Booth entered Ford's Theatre for the last time at about 10:10 pm through the front entrance. He showed his calling card to Lincoln's valet Charles Forbes and was admitted to the corridor leading to the Presidential Box. Inside the corridor, he wedged a stick against the door to bar it, then moved to a second door where he had bored a peephole earlier in the day. He timed his shot to coincide with a laugh line from actor Harry Hawk: "Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal; you sockdologizing old man-trap!" Lincoln was laughing when Booth opened the door and shot him from behind with a single-shot Philadelphia Deringer pistol.

  The bullet entered Lincoln's skull behind his left ear, passed through his brain, and came to rest near the front of the skull after fracturing both orbital plates. Major Henry Rathbone, who had accepted the Lincolns' invitation along with his fiancee Clara Harris, turned to see Booth standing in gunsmoke less than four feet behind Lincoln. Booth shouted a word Rathbone thought sounded like "Freedom!"

  Rathbone grabbed Booth, who dropped the pistol and drew a dagger, stabbing Rathbone in the left forearm. Booth then leapt toward the stage, a twelve-foot drop, but his riding spur caught on the Treasury flag decorating the box and he landed awkwardly on his left foot, breaking his left fibula. Many in the audience initially assumed the commotion was part of the play. Booth crossed the stage holding his bloody knife, shouted something that most witnesses recalled as "Sic semper tyrannis!" - the Virginia state motto meaning "Thus always to tyrants" - and fled through the back door, stabbing orchestra leader William Withers Jr. on the way out.

• 4. The Night Lincoln Died

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  Charles Leale, a young Union army surgeon, pushed through the crowd to reach the Presidential Box. He found Lincoln seated with his head leaning to the right as Mary held him and sobbed; Lincoln was in a deeply comatose condition with intermittent breathing. After searching for a stab wound, Leale located the gunshot wound behind the left ear. He found the bullet too deep to remove but discovered that dislodging blood clots improved Lincoln's breathing. He pronounced the wound mortal.

  Leale and two other doctors decided Lincoln could not safely survive a carriage ride to the White House. Soldiers carried Lincoln through the rainy street and into the home of tailor William Petersen, where the exceptionally tall Lincoln was laid diagonally on a small bed to fit. Surgeon General Joseph K. Barnes arrived along with Lincoln's personal physician Robert K. Stone. All agreed Lincoln could not survive. Throughout the night, physicians removed blood clots to relieve pressure on the brain. Leale held the comatose president's hand with a firm grip "to let him know that he was in touch with humanity and had a friend."

  Lincoln's older son Robert Todd Lincoln arrived at about 11 pm. Twelve-year-old Tad Lincoln, who had been watching a performance of Aladdin at Grover's Theater when he learned of his father's assassination, was kept away from the Petersen House. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton arrived and, after insisting the sobbing Mary Lincoln leave the sick room, essentially ran the United States government from the house for the rest of the night, simultaneously directing the hunt for Booth and the conspirators.

  Lincoln died at 7:22 am on April 15. Mary Lincoln was not present at the moment of death. According to Lincoln's secretary John Hay, at the moment of his death, "a look of unspeakable peace came upon his worn features." Vice President Andrew Johnson was sworn in as the 17th president by Chief Justice Salmon Chase sometime between 10 and 11 am that same morning.

• 5. The Other Attacks

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  At 10:10 pm, while Booth made his way to the Presidential Box, Lewis Powell knocked on the door of Secretary of State William H. Seward's home on Lafayette Square. Seward was already confined to bed, recovering from carriage injuries sustained on April 5. Powell told the maître d', William Bell, that he had medicine from Seward's physician and needed to show Seward how to take it. He bluffed his way upstairs to the third-floor bedroom, where Seward's son Frederick, the Assistant Secretary of State, blocked his path and said his father was asleep.

  Seward's daughter Fanny then emerged from the bedroom and unknowingly told Powell where Seward lay. Powell drew his 1858 Whitney revolver and aimed at Frederick's forehead, but the gun misfired. He bludgeoned Frederick unconscious with the weapon instead. Forcing his way into Seward's room, Powell stabbed at Seward's face and neck, slicing open his cheek. A splint fitted to Seward's broken jaw, often mistakenly described as a neck brace, prevented the blade from penetrating his jugular vein. Seward eventually recovered, though with serious scars on his face. Powell also stabbed Seward's son Augustus and a soldier named Sergeant George F. Robinson before running downstairs, where he stabbed State Department messenger Emerick Hansell in the back. David Herold, who had been assigned to guide Powell, had already fled after hearing screams from the house. Powell ran outside shouting, "I'm mad! I'm mad!"

  George Atzerodt's assignment to kill Vice President Johnson at the Kirkwood Hotel never materialized. On April 14, Atzerodt had rented the room directly above Johnson's. At the appointed time of 10:15 pm, however, he went to the hotel bar, asked the bartender about Johnson's character, became drunk, and eventually wandered off through Washington's streets, tossing his knife away at some point. He ended up at the Pennsylvania House Hotel by 2 am and went to sleep. Earlier in the day, Booth had left a note at the Kirkwood House for Johnson reading, "Don't wish to disturb you. Are you at home? J. Wilkes Booth." Whether Booth intended to locate Johnson or to implicate the vice president in the conspiracy has never been resolved.

• 6. The Manhunt

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  Within half an hour of fleeing Ford's Theatre, Booth had crossed the Navy Yard Bridge into Maryland, talking his way past a Union sentry who was supposed to turn back civilians crossing after 9 pm. Herold crossed the same bridge less than an hour later. The two rendezvoused, retrieved weapons and supplies from Surrattsville, and rode to the home of Samuel A. Mudd, a local doctor who splinted Booth's broken leg and later made him a pair of crutches.

  Secretary of War Edwin Stanton directed the hunt, calling it the largest manhunt in American history at the time and deploying thousands of federal troops. Stanton authorized a reward for Booth and $25,000 each for Herold and John Surratt. After leaving Mudd's home, Booth and Herold hid in Zekiah Swamp for five days with the help of Confederate sympathizer Thomas Jones before crossing the Potomac River. On the afternoon of April 24 they arrived at the tobacco farm of Richard H. Garrett in King George County, Virginia, where Booth posed as a wounded Confederate soldier.

  On April 26, soldiers from the 16th New York Cavalry surrounded Garrett's barn. Herold surrendered, but Booth refused, shouting, "I will not be taken alive!" The soldiers set fire to the barn. Sergeant Boston Corbett crept to the rear and shot Booth in the back of the head, in almost exactly the spot where Booth had shot Lincoln. Booth was dragged onto the barn's porch steps. He asked a soldier to lift his hands before his face and whispered his last words gazing at them: "Useless... useless." He died three hours later. Corbett was initially arrested for disobeying Stanton's order to take Booth alive if possible but was later released and was widely regarded as a hero.

  The other conspirators were captured by the end of April except for John Surratt, who fled to Quebec, sailed to Liverpool, and eventually joined the Pontifical Zouaves in the Papal States. A friend from his school days recognized him there in early 1866 and alerted the U.S. government. Surratt escaped Papal custody under suspicious circumstances and was finally captured by a United States agent in Egypt in November 1866.

• 7. Trial and Execution

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  Scores of people were arrested in the weeks after the assassination, including theater owner John T. Ford, Booth's brother Junius (who had been in Cincinnati at the time), and James Pumphrey, from whom Booth had hired his horse. All were eventually released except the eight defendants tried before a military tribunal ordered by President Johnson.

  The prosecution was led by U.S. Army Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt, assisted by Congressman John A. Bingham and Major Henry Lawrence Burnett. The seven-week trial heard the testimony of 366 witnesses. The use of a military tribunal drew criticism from former Attorney General Edward Bates and Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, who believed a civil court should have presided. Attorney General James Speed countered that martial law was in force in Washington at the time and that the defendants had acted as enemy combatants. In 1866, in Ex parte Milligan, the United States Supreme Court would ban the use of military tribunals in places where civil courts were operational.

  All defendants were found guilty on June 30. Mary Surratt, Lewis Powell, David Herold, and George Atzerodt were sentenced to death by hanging. Samuel Mudd, Samuel Arnold, and Michael O'Laughlen received life sentences. Edmund Spangler received six years. After sentencing Mary Surratt to hang, five members of the tribunal signed a clemency recommendation, but Johnson did not stop the execution; he later claimed he never saw the letter.

  Mary Surratt, Powell, Herold, and Atzerodt were hanged at the Old Arsenal Penitentiary on July 7. Mary Surratt was the first woman executed by the United States government. O'Laughlen died in prison in 1867. Mudd, Arnold, and Spangler were pardoned in February 1869 by Johnson. Spangler, who died in 1875, always insisted his only connection to the plot was that Booth asked him to hold his horse.

  John Surratt stood trial in a civil court in Washington in 1867. The jury could not reach a verdict. He was released and never retried.

• 8. Mourning and Memory

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  On April 15, the day Lincoln died, numerous foreign governments issued proclamations and declared periods of mourning. Lincoln was praised from pulpits across the country on Easter Sunday, which fell the very next day.

  On April 18, mourners lined up seven deep for a mile to view Lincoln in his walnut casket in the East Room of the White House. Hundreds of thousands watched the funeral procession on April 19. A funeral train then carried Lincoln's remains through seven states, following a 1,700-mile route through New York to Springfield, Illinois, where crowds lined the tracks offering bands, bonfires, and hymn-singing.

  The international response was remarkable in scope. British Foreign Secretary Lord Russell called Lincoln's death a "sad calamity." China's Prince Gong described himself as "inexpressibly shocked and startled." The government of Liberia called Lincoln "not only the ruler of his own people, but a father to millions of a race stricken and oppressed." Ecuadorian president Gabriel García Moreno said he never thought the country of Washington "would be humiliated by such a black and horrible crime." Secretary of State Seward later gathered these tributes in a volume entitled Tributes of the Nations to Abraham Lincoln.

  Ulysses S. Grant called Lincoln "incontestably the greatest man I ever knew." Poet Walt Whitman composed four poems to eulogize Lincoln, including "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" and "O Captain! My Captain!" Frederick Douglass, the African-American orator, called the assassination an "unspeakable calamity." Even Southern-born Elizabeth Blair observed that those with Southern sympathies had lost a friend more willing and more powerful to protect them than any they could hope to find again.

  Lincoln was the first American president killed by assassination. His death transformed him into a national martyr and cast a long shadow over the Reconstruction era that followed, a period shaped in no small part by the absence of the man who had guided the country through its bloodiest conflict.