Lincoln, the unknown Read online

  A few minutes later Davy Herold, one of Booth's confederates, hurried across the Anacostia bridge with a similar explanation, joined Booth at their rendezvous, and the two of them raced on through the shadows of lower Maryland, dreaming of the wild acclaim that was sure to be theirs in Dixie.

  At midnight they halted in front of a friendly tavern in Sur-rattville; watered their panting horses; called for the field-glasses, guns, and ammunition that had been left there that afternoon by Mrs. Surratt; drank a dollar's worth of whisky; then, boasting that they had shot Lincoln, spurred on into the darkness.

  Originally they had planned to ride from here straight for the Potomac, expecting to reach the river early the next morning and row across at once to Virginia. That sounded easy, and they might have done it and never have been captured at all, except for one thing. They could not foresee Booth's broken leg.

  But, despite the pain, Booth galloped on that night with Spartan fortitude—galloped on, although the broken, jagged bone was, as he recorded in his diary, "tearing the flesh at every jump" of his horse. Finally when he could endure the punishment no longer, he and Herold swung their horses off to the left, and shortly before daybreak on Saturday morning reined up in front of the house of a country physician named Mudd— Dr. Samuel A. Mudd—who lived twenty miles southeast of Washington.

  Booth was so weak and he was suffering so intensely that he couldn't dismount alone. He had to be lifted out of his saddle and carried groaning to an unstairs bedroom. There were no telegraph lines or railways in this isolated region; so none of the natives had yet learned of the assassination. Hence, the doctor suspected nothing. How had Booth come to break his leg? That was simple as Booth explained it—his horse had fallen on him. Dr. Mudd did for Booth what he would have done for any other suffering man; he cut away the boot from the left leg, set the fractured bone, tied it up with pasteboard splints made

  from a hat-box, fashioned a rude crutch for the cripple, and gave him a shoe to travel with.

  Booth slept all that day at Dr. Mudd's house, but as twilight drew on he edged out of the bed painfully. Refusing to eat anything, he shaved off his handsome mustache, threw a long gray shawl around his shoulders so that the end of it would cover the telltale initials tattooed upon his right hand, disguised himself with a set of false whiskers, and paid the doctor twenty-five dollars in greenbacks. Then once more he and Herold mounted their horses and headed for the river of their hopes.

  But directly across their path lay the great Zekiah Swamp, a huge bog matted with brush and dogwood, oozy with mud and slimy with stagnant pools—the home of lizards and snakes. In the darkness the two riders missed their way and for hours wandered about, lost.

  Late in the night they were rescued by a negro, Oswald Swarm. The pain in Booth's leg was so excruciating now that he couldn't sit astride his horse; so he gave Swarm seven dollars to haul him the rest of the night in his wagon, and as dawn was breaking on Easter Sunday the driver halted his white mules before "Rich Hill," the home of a wealthy, well-known Confederate, Captain Cox.

  Thus ended the first lap of Booth's futile race for life.

  Booth told Captain Cox who he was and what he had done; and, to prove his identity, he showed his initials tattooed in India ink on his hand.

  He implored Captain Cox, in the name of his mother, not to betray him, pleading that he was sick and crippled and suffering, and declaring that he had done what he thought was best for the South.

  Booth was in such a condition now that he couldn't travel any farther, either on horseback or by wagon; so Captain Cox hid the two fugitives in a thicket of pines near his house. The place was more than a thicket, it was a veritable jungle densely undergrown with laurel and holly; and there, for the next six days and five nights, the fugitives waited for Booth's wounded leg to improve enough to permit them to continue their flight.

  Captain Cox had a foster-brother, Thomas A. Jones. Jones was a slave-owner, and for years he had been an active agent of the Confederate Government, ferrying fugitives and contraband mail across the Potomac. Captain Cox urged Jones to look after Herold and Booth; so every morning he brought them food

  in a basket. Knowing that each wood-path was being searched and that spies were everywhere, he called his hogs as he carried the basket and pretended to be feeding his live stock.

  Booth, hungry as he was for food, was hungrier still for information. He kept begging Jones to tell him the news, to let him know how the nation was applauding his act.

  Jones brought him newspapers, and Booth devoured them eagerly, searching in vain, however, for the burst of acclaim he had coveted so passionately. He found in them only disillusion and heartbreak.

  For more than thirty hours he had been racing toward Virginia, braving the tortures of the flesh. But, violent as they had been, they were easy to endure compared with the mental anguish that he suffered now. The fury of the North—that was nothing, he had expected that. But when the Virginia papers showed that the South— his South —had turned upon him, condemning and disowning him, he was frantic with disappointment and despair. He, who had dreamed of being honored as a second Brutus and glorified as a modern William Tell, now found himself denounced as a coward, a fool, a hireling, a cutthroat.

  These attacks stung him like the sting of an adder. They were bitter as death.

  But did he blame himself? No. Far from it. He blamed everybody else—everybody except himself and God. He had been merely an instrument in the hands of the Almighty. That was his defense. He had been divinely appointed to shoot Abraham Lincoln, and his only mistake had been in serving a people "too degenerate" to appreciate him. That was the phrase he set down in his diary—"too degenerate."

  "If the world knew my heart," he wrote, "that one blow would have made me great, though I did not desire greatness. ... I have too great a soul to die like a criminal."

  Lying there, shivering under a horse-blanket, on the damp ground near Zekiah Swamp, he poured out his aching heart in tragic bombast:

  Wet, cold and starving, with every man's hand against me, I am here in despair, and why? For doing what Brutus was honored for—for what made Tell a hero. I have stricken down a greater tyrant than they ever knew, and I am looked upon as a common cut-throat; yet my action was purer than either of theirs. ... I hoped for no gain.

  ... I think I have done well, I do not repent the blow I struck.

  As Booth lay there writing, three thousand detectives and ten thousand cavalrymen were scouring every nook and corner of southern Maryland, searching houses, exploring caves, ransacking buildings, and fine-tooth-combing even the slimy bogs of Zekiah Swamp, determined to hunt Booth down and bring him in, dead or alive, and claim the various rewards—approximating a hundred thousand dollars, offered for his capture. Sometimes he could hear the cavalry who were hunting him, galloping by on a public road only two hundred yards away.

  At times he could hear their horses neighing and whinnying and calling to one another. Suppose his and Herold's horses should answer them. That would probably mean capture. So that night Herold led their horses down into Zekiah Swamp and shot them.

  Two days later buzzards appeared! Specks in the sky at first, they winged closer and closer, finally wheeling and soaring and soaring and wheeling directly above the dead animals. Booth was frightened. The buzzards might attract the attention of the pursuers, who would almost certainly recognize the body of his bay mare.

  Besides, he had decided that he must somehow get to another doctor.

  So the next night, Friday, April 21—one week after the assassination—he was lifted from the ground and put astride a horse belonging to Thomas A. Jones, and once more he and Herold set out for the Potomac.

  The night was ideal for their purposes: dense with a misty fog, and so dark that the men literally had to feel for one another in the inky blackness.

  Jones, faithful dog that he was, piloted them from their hiding-place to the river, stealing through open fields, over a public highway, an
d across a farm. Realizing that soldiers and Secret Service men were swarming everywhere, Jones would steal ahead fifty yards at a time, stop, listen, and give a low whistle. Then Booth and Herold would advance to him.

  In that way, slowly, startled by the slightest noise, they traveled for hours, reaching at last the steep and crooked path that led from the bluff down to the river. A stiff wind had been blowing that day; and, through the darkness, they could hear

  the mournful sound of the water pounding on the sand below.

  For almost a week the Union soldiers had been riding up and down the Potomac, destroying every boat on the Maryland shore. But Jones had outwitted them: he had had his colored man, Henry Rowland, using the boat to fish for shad every day, and had had it hidden in Dent's meadow every night.

  So when the fugitives reached the water's edge this evening everything was in readiness. Booth whispered his thanks to Jones, paid him seventeen dollars for his boat and a bottle of whisky, climbed in, and headed for a spot on the Virginia shore five miles away.

  All through the foggy, ink-black night Herold pulled at the oars while Booth sat in the stern, trying to navigate with compass and candle.

  But they hadn't gone far when they struck a flood-tide which is very strong at this point, owing to the narrowness of the channel. It swept them up the river for miles, and they lost their bearings in the fog. After dodging the Federal gunboats that were patrolling the Potomac, they found themselves, at dawn, ten miles up the river, but not one foot nearer to the Virginia shore than they had been the night before.

  So they hid all that day in the swamps of Nanjemoy Cove; and the next night, wet and hungry, they pulled across the river; and Booth exclaimed: "I am safe at last, thank God, in glorious old Virginia."

  Hurrying to the home of Dr. Richard Stewart, who was an agent for the Confederate Government and the richest man in King George County, Virginia, Booth expected to be welcomed as the saviour of the South. But the doctor had already been arrested several times for aiding the Confederacy, and, now that the war was over, he wasn't going to risk his neck by helping the man who had killed Lincoln. He was too shrewd for that. So he wouldn't let Booth even enter his house. He did give the fugitives a little food, grudgingly, but he made them eat it in the barn, and then sent them to sleep that night with a family of negroes.

  And even the negroes didn't want Booth. He had to frighten them into letting him stay with them.

  And this in Virginia!

  In Virginia, mind you, where he had confidently expected the very hills to reverberate with the lusty cheers that would greet the mere mention of his name.

  The end was drawing near now. It came three days later. Booth had not gotten far. He had ferried across the Rappahannock at Port Royal, in the company of three Confederate cavalrymen returning from the war, had ridden one of their horses three miles farther South, and, with their help, had then palmed himseif off on a farmer, saying that his name was Boyd and that he had been wounded in Lee's army near Richmond.

  And so for the next two days, Booth stayed at the Garrett farm-house, sunning himself on the lawn, suffering from his wound, consulting an old map, studying a route to the Rio Grande, and making notes of the road to Mexico.

  The first evening he was there, while he sat at the supper table, Garrett's young daughter began babbling about the news of the assassination, which she had just heard through a neighbor. She talked on and on, wondering who had done it and how much the assassin had been paid for it.

  "In my opinion," Booth suddenly remarked, "he wasn't paid a cent, but did it for the sake of notoriety."

  The next afternoon, April 25, Booth and Herold were stretched out under the locust trees in the Garrett yard, when suddenly Major Ruggles, one of the Confederate cavalrymen who had helped them across the Rappahannock, dashed up and shouted: "The Yanks are crossing the river. Take care of yourself."

  They scurried away to the woods, but when darkness fell they stole back to the house.

  To Garrett, that looked suspicious. He wanted to get rid of his mysterious "guests" at once. Was it because he suspected that they might have shot Lincoln? No, he never even thought of that. He imagined they were horse-thieves. When they said at the supper table that they wanted to buy two horses, his suspicions grew, and when bedtime came, and the fugitives, thinking of their safety, refused to go upstairs and insisted on sleeping under the porch or in the barn—then all doubt was removed.

  Garrett was positive now that they were horse-thieves. So he put them in an old tobacco warehouse that was being used then for storing hay and furniture—put them in and locked them in with a padlock. And finally, as a double precaution, the old farmer sent his two sons, William and Henry, tiptoeing out in the darkness with blankets, to spend the night in an adjoining corn-crib, where they could watch and see that no horses were whisked away during the night.

  The Garrett family went to bed, that memorable evening, half expecting a little excitement.

  And they got it before morning.

  For two days and nights, a troop of Union soldiers had been hot on the trail of Booth and Herold, picking up clue after clue, talking to an old negro who had seen them crossing the Potomac, and finding Rollins, the colored ferryman who had poled them across the Rappahannock in a scow. This ferryman told them that the Confederate soldier who had given Booth a lift on his horse as they rode away from the river was Captain Willie Jett, and that the captain had a sweetheart who lived in Bowling Green, twelve miles away. Perhaps he had gone there.

  That sounded likely enough, so the troopers climbed quickly into their saddles and spurred on in the moonlight toward Bowling Green. Arriving there at midnight, they thundered into the house, found Captain Jett, jerked him out of his bed, thrust a revolver against his ribs, and demanded:

  "Where is Booth? Damn your soul, where did you hide him? Tell us or we'll blow your heart out."

  Jett saddled his pony, and led the Northern men back to the Garrett farm.

  The night was black, the moon having gone down, and there were no stars. For nine miles the dust rose in choking clouds under the galloping feet of the horses. Soldiers rode one on each side of Jett, with the reins of his horse tied to their saddles, so that he couldn't escape in the dark.

  At half-past three in the morning the troopers arrived in front of the worn old whitewashed Garrett house.

  Quickly, quietly, they surrounded the house and trained their guns on every door and window. Their leader banged on the porch with his pistol butt, demanding admittance.

  Presently Richard Garrett, candle in hand, unbolted the door, while the dogs barked furiously, and the wind whipped the tail of his night-shirt against his trembling legs.

  Quickly Lieutenant Baker grabbed him by the throat, thrusting a pistol to his head and demanding that he hand over Booth.

  The old man, tongue-tied with terror, swore that the strangers were not in the house, that they had gone to the woods.

  That was a lie, and it sounded like it; so the troopers jerked him out of the doorway, dangled a rope in his face, and threatened to string him up at once to a locust tree in the yard.

  At that instant one of the Garrett boys who had been sleeping

  in the corn-crib ran up to the house and told the truth. With a rush the troopers encircled the tobacco barn.

  There was a lot of talk before the shooting started. For fifteen or twenty minutes the Northern officers argued with Booth, urging him to surrender. He shouted back that he was a cripple, and asked them to "give a lame man a show," offering to come out and fight the entire squad one by one, if they would withdraw a hundred yards.

  Herold lost his courage and wanted to surrender. Booth was disgusted.

  "You damned coward," he shouted, "get out of here. I don't want you to stay."

  And out Herold went, his arms in front of him, ready to be handcuffed, while he pleaded for mercy, declaring from time to time that he liked Mr. Lincoln's jokes, and swearing that he had had no part in the asa
ssination.

  Colonel Conger tied him to a tree and threatened to gag him unless he ceased his silly whimpering.

  But Booth would not surrender. He felt that he was acting for posterity. He shouted to his pursuers that the word "surrender" was not in his vocabulary, and he warned them to prepare a stretcher for him as they put "one more stain on the glorious old banner."

  Colonel Conger resolved to smoke him out, and ordered one of the Garrett boys to pile dry brush against the barn. Booth saw the boy doing it, and cursed him and threatened to put a bullet through him if he didn't stop. He did stop, but Colonel Conger slipped around to a corner of the barn in the rear, pulled a wisp of hay through a crack, and lighted it with a match.

  The barn had originally been built for tobacco, with spacings four inches wide left to let in the air. Through these spacings the troopers saw Booth pick up a table to fight the mounting fire—an actor in the limelight for the last time, a tragedian playing the closing scene of his farewell performance.

  Strict orders had been given to take Booth alive. The Government didn't want him shot. It wanted to have a big trial and then hang him.

  And possibly he might have been taken alive had it not been for a half-cracked sergeant—"Boston" Corbett, a religious fanatic.

  Every one had been warned repeatedly not to shoot without

  orders. Corbett afterward declared that he had had orders— orders direct from God Almighty.

  Through the wide cracks of the burning barn, "Boston" saw Booth throw away his crutch, drop his carbine, raise his revolver, and spring for the door.

  "Boston" was positive that he would shoot his way out and make a last, desperate dash for liberty, firing as he ran.

  So, to prevent any futile bloodshed, Corbett stepped forward, rested his pistol across his arm, took aim through a crack, prayed for Booth's soul, and pulled the trigger.