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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes
+Booth, by George Alfred Townsend
+
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+Title: The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth
+
+Author: George Alfred Townsend
+
+Release Date: October, 2004 [EBook #6628]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on January 5, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOHN WILKES BOOTH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Kathy H., David Moynihan, Charles Franks
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE LIFE, CRIME, AND CAPTURE
+
+OF
+
+JOHN WILKES BOOTH,
+
+WITH A FULL SKETCH OF THE
+
+Conspiracy of which he was the Leader,
+
+AND THE
+
+PURSUIT, TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF HIS ACCOMPLICES.
+
+
+BY GEORGE ALFRED TOWNSEND,
+
+A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: THE LIFE, CRIME, AND CAPTURE OF John Wilkes Booth AND THE
+PURSUIT, TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF HIS ACCOMPLICES.]
+
+
+
+
+EXPLANATORY.
+
+One year ago the writer of the letters which follow, visited the Battle
+Field of Waterloo. In looking over many relics of the combat preserved
+in the Museum there, he was particularly interested in the files of
+journals contemporary with the action. These contained the Duke of
+Wellington's first despatch announcing the victory, the reports of the
+subordinate commanders, and the current gossip as to the episodes and
+hazards of the day.
+
+The time will come when remarkable incidents of these our times will be
+a staple of as great curiosity as the issue of Waterloo. It is an
+incident without a precedent on this side of the globe, and never to be
+repeated.
+
+Assassination has made its last effort to become indigenous here. The
+public sentiment of Loyalist and Rebel has denounced it: the world has
+remarked it with uplifted hands and words of execration. Therefore, as
+long as history shall hold good, the murder of the President will be a
+theme for poesy, romance and tragedy. We who live in this consecrated
+time keep the sacred souvenirs of Mr. Lincoln's death in our possession;
+and the best of these are the news letters descriptive of his
+apotheosis, and the fate of the conspirators who slew him.
+
+I represented the _World_ newspaper at Washington during the whole of
+those exciting weeks, and wrote their occurrences fresh from the mouths
+of the actors. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865,
+
+By DICK & FITZGERALD,
+
+In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the
+Southern District of New York.
+
+
+
+
+PREFATORY.
+
+It has seemed fitting to Messrs. DICK & FITZGERALD to reproduce the
+_World_ letters, as a keepsake for the many who received them kindly.
+The Sketches appended were conscientiously written, and whatever
+embellishments they may seem to have grew out of the stirring
+events,--not out of my fancy.
+
+Subsequent investigation has confirmed the veracity even of their
+speculations. I have arranged them, but have not altered them; if they
+represent nothing else, they do carry with them the fever and spirit of
+the time. But they do not assume to be literal history: We live too
+close to the events related to decide positively upon them. As a
+brochure of the day,--nothing more,--I give these Sketches of a
+Correspondent to the public.
+
+G. A. T.
+
+
+
+
+THE LIFE, CRIME, AND CAPTURE
+
+OF
+
+JOHN WILKES BOOTH.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER I.
+
+THE MURDER.
+
+
+Washington, April 17.
+
+Some very deliberate and extraordinary movements were made by a handsome
+and extremely well-dressed young man in the city of Washington last
+Friday. At about half-past eleven o'clock A. M., this person, whose name
+is J. Wilkes Booth, by profession an actor, and recently engaged in oil
+speculations, sauntered into Ford's Theater, on Tenth, between E and F
+streets, and exchanged greetings with the man at the box-office. In the
+conversation which ensued, the ticket agent informed Booth that a box
+was taken for Mr. Lincoln and General Grant, who were expected to visit
+the theater, and contribute to the benefit of Miss Laura Keene, and
+satisfy the curiosity of a large audience. Mr. Booth went away with a
+jest, and a lightly-spoken "Good afternoon." Strolling down to
+Pumphreys' stable, on C street, in the rear of the National Hotel, he
+engaged a saddle horse, a high-strung, fast, beautiful bay mare, telling
+Mr. Pumphreys that he should call for her in the middle of the
+afternoon.
+
+From here he went to the Kirkwood Hotel, on the corner of Pennsylvania
+avenue and Twelfth street, where, calling for a card and a sheet of
+notepaper, he sat down and wrote upon the first as follows:
+
+_For Mr. Andrew Johnson_:--
+
+I don't wish to disturb you; are you at home?
+
+J. W. Booth.
+
+To this message, which was sent up by the obliging clerk, Mr. Johnson
+responded that he was very busily engaged. Mr. Booth smiled, and turning
+to his sheet of note-paper, wrote on it. The fact, if fact it is, that
+he had been disappointed in not obtaining an examination of the
+Vice-President's apartment and a knowledge of the Vice-President's
+probable whereabouts the ensuing evening, in no way affected his
+composure. The note, the contents of which are unknown, was signed and
+sealed within a few moments. Booth arose, bowed to an acquaintance, and
+passed into the street. His elegant person was seen on the avenue a few
+minutes, and was withdrawn into the Metropolitan Hotel.
+
+At 4 P. M., he again appeared at Pumphreys' livery stable, mounted the
+mare he had engaged, rode leisurely up F street, turned into an alley
+between Ninth And Tenth streets, and thence into an alley reloading to
+the rear of Ford's Theater, which fronts on Tenth street, between E and
+F streets. Here he alighted and deposited the mare in a small stable off
+the alley, which he had hired sometime before for the accommodation of a
+saddle-horse which he had recently sold. Mr. Booth soon afterward
+retired from the stable, and is supposed to have refreshed himself at a
+neighboring bar-room.
+
+At 8 o'clock the same evening, President Lincoln and Speaker Colfax sat
+together in a private room at the White House, pleasantly conversing.
+General Grant, with whom the President had engaged to attend Ford's
+Theater that evening, had left with his wife for Burlington, New-Jersey,
+in the 6 o'clock train. After this departure Mr. Lincoln rather
+reluctantly determined to keep his part of the engagement, rather than
+to disappoint his friends and the audience. Mrs. Lincoln, entering the
+room and turning to Mr. Colfax, said, in a half laughing, half serious
+way, "Well, Mr. Lincoln, are you going to the theater with me or not?"
+"I suppose I shall have to go, Colfax," said the President, and the
+Speaker took his leave in company with Major Rathbone, of the
+Provost-Marshal General's office, who escorted Miss Harris, daughter of
+Senator Harris, of New York. Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln reached Ford's Theater
+at twenty minutes before 9 o'clock.
+
+The house was filled in every part with a large and brilliantly attired
+audience. As the presidential party ascended the stairs, and passed
+behind the dress circle to the entrance of the private box reserved for
+them, the whole assemblage, having in mind the recent Union victories,
+arose, cheered, waving hats and handkerchiefs, and manifesting every
+other accustomed sign of enthusiasm. The President, last to enter the
+box, turned before doing so, and bowed a courteous acknowledgment of his
+reception--At the moment of the President's arrival, Mr. Hawks, one of
+the actors, performing the well-known part of Dundreary, had exclaimed:
+"This reminds me of a story, as Mr. Lincoln says." The audience forced
+him, after the interruption, to tell the story over again. It evidently
+pleased Mr. Lincoln, who turned laughingly to his wife and made a remark
+which was not overheard.
+
+[Illustration: Scene of the Assassination.
+
+_X_ President's Position. _A_ The course of the Assassin after the
+Murder. _BB_ Movable partition not in use on the night of the
+Assassination. _D_ Door through which the Assassin looked in taking aim.
+_C_ Closed door through which pistol ball was fired.]
+
+
+The box in which the President sat consisted of two boxes turned into
+one, the middle partition being removed, as on all occasions when a
+state party visited the theater. The box was on a level with the dress
+circle; about twelve feet above the stage. There were two entrances--the
+door nearest to the wall having been closed and locked; the door nearest
+the balustrades of the dress circle, and at right angles with it, being
+open and left open, after the visitors had entered. The interior was
+carpeted, lined with crimson paper, and furnished with a sofa covered
+with crimson velvet, three arm chairs similarly covered, and six
+cane-bottomed chairs. Festoons of flags hung before the front of the box
+against a background of lace.
+
+President Lincoln took one of the arm-chairs and seated himself in the
+front of the box, in the angle nearest the audience, where, partially
+screened from observation, he had the best view of what was transpiring
+on the stage. Mrs. Lincoln sat next to him, and Miss Harris in the
+opposite angle nearest the stage. Major Rathbone sat just behind Mrs.
+Lincoln and Miss Harris. These four were the only persons in the box.
+
+The play proceeded, although "Our American Cousin," without Mr. Sothern,
+has, since that gentleman's departure from this country, been justly
+esteemed a very dull affair. The audience at Ford's, including Mrs.
+Lincoln, seemed to enjoy it very much. The worthy wife of the President
+leaned forward, her hand upon her husband's knee, watching every scene
+in the drama with amused attention. Even across the President's face at
+intervals swept a smile, robbing it of its habitual sadness.
+
+About the beginning of the second act, the mare, standing in the stable
+in the rear of the theater, was disturbed in the midst of her meal by
+the entrance of the young man who had quitted her in the afternoon. It
+is presumed that she was saddled and bridled with exquisite care.
+
+Having completed these preparations, Mr. Booth entered the theater by
+the stage door; summoned one of the scene shifters, Mr. John Spangler,
+emerged through the same door with that individual, leaving the door
+open, and left the mare in his hands to be held until he (Booth) should
+return. Booth who was even more fashionably and richly dressed than
+usual, walked thence around to the front of the theater, and went in.
+Ascending to the dress circle, he stood for a little time gazing around
+upon the audience and occasionally upon the stage in his usual graceful
+manner. He was subsequently observed by Mr. Ford, the proprietor of the
+theater, to be slowly elbowing his way through the crowd that packed the
+rear of the dress circle toward the right side, at the extremity of
+which was the box where Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln and their companions were
+seated. Mr. Ford casually noticed this as a slightly extraordinary
+symptom of interest on the part of an actor so familiar with the routine
+of the theater and the play.
+
+The curtain had arisen on the third act, _Mrs. Mountchessington_ and
+_Asa Trenchard_ were exchanging vivacious stupidities, when a young man,
+so precisely resembling the one described as J. Wilkes Booth that be is
+asserted to be the same, appeared before the open door of the
+President's box, and prepared to enter.
+
+The servant who attended Mr. Lincoln said politely, "this is the
+President's box, sir, no one is permitted to enter." "I am a senator,"
+responded the person, "Mr. Lincoln has sent for me." The attendant gave
+way, and the young man passed into the box.
+
+As he appeared at the door, taking a quick, comprehensive glance at the
+interior, Major Rathbone arose. "Are you aware, sir," he said,
+courteously, "upon whom you are intruding? This is the President's box,
+and no one is admitted." The intruder answered not a word. Fastening his
+eyes upon Mr. Lincoln, who had half turned his head to ascertain what
+caused the disturbance, he stepped quickly back without the door.
+
+Without this door there was an eyehole, bored it is presumed on the
+afternoon of the crime, while the theater was deserted by all save a few
+mechanics. Glancing through this orifice, John Wilkes Booth espied in a
+moment the precise position of the President; he wore upon his wrinkling
+face the pleasant embryo of an honest smile, forgetting in the mimic
+scene the splendid successes of our arms for which he was responsible,
+and the history he had filled so well.
+
+The cheerful interior was lost to J. Wilkes Booth. He did not catch the
+spirit of the delighted audience, of the flaming lamps flinging
+illumination upon the domestic foreground and the gaily set stage. He
+only cast one furtive glance upon the man he was to slay, and thrusting
+one hand in his bosom, another in his skirt pocket, drew forth
+simultaneously his deadly weapons. His right palm grasped a Derringer
+pistol, his left a dirk.
+
+Then, at a stride, he passed the threshold again, levelled his arm at
+the President and bent the trigger.
+
+A keen quick report and a puff of white smoke,--a close smell of powder
+and the rush of a dark, imperfectly outlined figure,--and the
+President's head dropped upon his shoulders: the ball was in his brain.
+
+[Illustration: Map. The Theatre and its Surroundings.
+
+_A_ Public School. _B_ Herndon House. _C_ Only vacant lot communicating
+with the Alley. _D_ Only alley outlet to F street. _E_ Bank. _X_
+Restaurant. _G_ Newspaper Office. _H_ Model House. _I_ House to which
+the President was taken. _K_ Alley through which the Murderer escaped.]
+
+The movements of the assassin were from henceforth quick as the
+lightning, he dropped his pistol on the floor, and drawing a
+bowie-knife, struck Major Rathbone, who opposed him, ripping through his
+coat from the shoulder down, and inflicting a severe flesh wound in his
+arm. He leaped then upon the velvet covered balustrade at the front of
+the box, between Mrs. Lincoln and Miss Harris, and, parting with both
+hands the flags that drooped on either side, dropped to the stage
+beneath. Arising and turning full upon the audience, with the knife
+lifted in his right hand above his head, he shouted "_Sic, semper
+tyrannis_--Virginia is avenged!" Another instant he had fled across the
+stage and behind the scenes. Colonel J. B. Stewart, the only person in
+the audience who seemed to comprehend the deed he had committed, climbed
+from his seat near the orchestra to the stage, and followed close
+behind. The assassin was too fleet and too desperate, that fury
+incarnate, meeting Mr. Withers, the leader of the orchestra, just behind
+the scenes, had stricken him aside with a blow that fortunately was not
+a wound; overturning Miss Jenny Gourlay, an actress, who came next in
+his path, he gained, without further hindrance, the back door previously
+left open at the rear of the theater; rushed through it; leaped upon the
+horse held by Mr. Spangler, and without vouchsafing that person a word
+of information, rode out through the alley leading into F street, and
+thence rapidly away. His horse's hoofs might almost have been heard amid
+the silence that for a few seconds dwelt in the interior of the theater.
+
+[Illustration: _A_ Miss Laura Keene's Position. _D_ Movable partition
+wall not in place on Friday. _P_ Position of the President. _X_ Flats.
+_B_ Dark Passage-way--Position of Sentry. _E_ Exit, or Stage Door. _MM_
+Entrance to Box. _CCC_ Entrance to Dress Circle, _H_ Position of Booth's
+Horse.]
+
+Then Mrs. Lincoln screamed, Miss Harris cried for water, and the full
+ghastly truth broke upon all--"The President is murdered!" The scene
+that ensued was as tumultuous and terrible as one of Dante's pictures of
+hell. Some women fainted, others uttered piercing shrieks, and cries for
+vengeance and unmeaning shouts for help burst from the mouths of men.
+Miss Laura Keene, the actress, proved herself in this awful time as
+equal to sustain a part in real tragedy as to interpret that of the
+stage. Pausing one moment before the footlights to entreat the audience
+to be calm, she ascended the stairs in the rear of Mr. Lincoln's box,
+entered it, took the dying President's head in her lap, bathed it with
+the water she had brought, and endeavoured to force some of the liquid
+through the insensible lips. The locality of the wound was at first
+supposed to be in the breast. It was not until after the neck and
+shoulders had been bared and no mark discovered, that the dress of Miss
+Keene, stained with blood, revealed where the ball had penetrated.
+
+This moment gave the most impressive episode in the history of the
+Continent.
+
+The Chief Magistrate of thirty, millions of people--beloved, honored,
+revered,--lay in the pent up closet of a play-house, dabbling with his
+sacred blood the robes of an actress.
+
+As soon as the confusion and crowd was partially overcome, the form of
+the President was conveyed from the theater to the residence of Mr.
+Peterson, on the opposite side of Tenth street. Here upon a bed, in a
+little hastily prepared chamber, it was laid and attended by
+Surgeon-General Barnes and other physicians, speedily summoned.
+
+In the meanwhile the news spread through the capital, as if borne on
+tongues of flame. Senator Sumner, hearing at his residence, of the
+affair took a carriage and drove at a gallop to the White House, when he
+heard where it had taken place, to find Robert Lincoln and other members
+of the household still unaware of it. Both drove to Ford's Theater, and
+were soon at the President's bedside. Secretary Stanton and the other
+members of the cabinet were at hand almost as soon. A vast crowd,
+surging up Pennsylvania avenue toward Willard's Hotel, cried, "The
+President is shot!" "President Lincoln is murdered." Another crowd
+sweeping down the avenue met the first with the tidings, "Secretary
+Seward has been assassinated in bed." Instantly a wild apprehension of
+an organized conspiracy and of other murders took possession of the
+people. The shout "to arms!" was mingled with the expressions of sorrow
+and rage that everywhere filled the air. "Where is General Grant?" or
+"where is Secretary Stanton!" "Where are the rest of the cabinet?" broke
+from thousands of lips. A conflagration of fire is not half so terrible
+as was the conflagration of passion that rolled through the streets and
+houses of Washington on that awful night.
+
+The attempt on the life of Secretary Seward was perhaps as daring, if
+not so dramatic, as the assassination of the President. At 9:20 o'clock
+a man, tall, athletic, and dressed in light coloured clothes, alighted
+from a horse in front of Mr. Seward's residence in Madison place, where
+the secretary was lying, very feeble from his recent injuries. The
+house, a solid three-story brick building, was formerly the old
+Washington Club-house. Leaving his horse standing, the stranger rang at
+the door, and informed the servant who admitted him that he desired to
+see Mr. Seward. The servant responded that Mr. Seward was very ill, and
+that no visitors were admitted. "But I am a messenger from Dr. Verdi,
+Mr. Seward's physician; I have a prescription which I must deliver to
+him myself." The servant still demurring, the stranger, without further
+parley, pushed him aside and ascended the stairs. Moving to the right,
+he proceeded towards Mr. Seward's room, and was about to enter it, when
+Mr. Frederick Seward appeared from an opposite doorway and demanded his
+business. He responded in the same manner as to the servant below, but
+being met with a refusal, suddenly closed the controversy by striking
+Mr. Seward a severe and perhaps mortal blow across the forehead with the
+butt of a pistol. As the first victim fell, Major Seward, another and
+younger son of the secretary, emerged from his father's room. Without a
+word the man drew a knife and struck the major several blows with it,
+rushing into the chamber as he did so; then, after dealing the nurse a
+horrible wound across the bowels, he sprang to the bed upon which the
+secretary lay, stabbing him once in the face and neck. Mr. Seward arose
+convulsively and fell from the bed to the floor. Turning and brandishing
+his knife anew, the assassin fled from the room, cleared the prostrate
+form of Frederick Seward in the hall, descended the stairs in three
+leaps, and was out of the door and upon his horse in an instant. It is
+stated by a person who saw him mount that, although he leaped upon his
+horse with most unseemly haste, he trotted away around the corner of the
+block with circumspect deliberation.
+
+Around both the house on Tenth street and the residence of Secretary
+Seward, as the fact of both tragedies became generally known, crowds
+soon gathered so vast and tumultuous that military guards scarcely
+sufficed to keep them from the doors.
+
+The room to which the President had been conveyed is on the first floor,
+at the end of the hall. It is only fifteen feet square, with a Brussels
+carpet, papered with brown, and hung with a lithograph of Rosa Bonheur's
+"Horse Fair," an engraved copy of Herring's "Village Blacksmith," and
+two smaller ones, of "The Stable" and "The Barn Yard," from the same
+artist. A table and bureau, spread with crotchet work, eight chairs and
+the bed, were all the furniture. Upon this bed, a low walnut
+four-poster, lay the dying President; the blood oozing from the
+frightful wound in his head and staining the pillow. All that the
+medical skill of half a dozen accomplished surgeons could do had been
+done to prolong a life evidently ebbing from a mortal hurt.
+
+Secretary Stanton, just arrived from the bedside of Mr. Seward, asked
+Surgeon-General Barnes what was Mr. Lincoln's condition. "I fear, Mr.
+Stanton, that there is no hope." "O, no, general; no, no;" and the man,
+of all others, apparently strange to tears, sank down beside the bed,
+the hot, bitter evidences of an awful sorrow trickling through his
+fingers to the floor. Senator Sumner sat on the opposite side of the
+bed, holding one of the President's hands in his own, and sobbing with
+kindred grief. Secretary Welles stood at the foot of the bed, his face
+hidden, his frame shaken with emotion. General Halleck, Attorney-General
+Speed, Postmaster-General Dennison, M. B. Field, Assistant Secretary of
+the Treasury, Judge Otto, General Meigs, and others, visited the chamber
+at times, and then retired. Mrs. Lincoln--but there is no need to speak
+of her. Mrs. Senator Dixon soon arrived, and remained with her through
+the night. All through the night, while the horror-stricken crowds
+outside swept and gathered along the streets, while the military and
+police were patrolling and weaving a cordon around the city; while men
+were arming and asking each other, "What victim next?" while the
+telegraph was sending the news from city to city over the continent, and
+while the two assassins were speeding unharmed upon fleet horses far
+away--his chosen friends watched about the death-bed of the highest of
+the nation. Occasionally Dr. Gurley, pastor of the church where Mr.
+Lincoln habitually attended, knelt down in prayer. Occasionally Mrs.
+Lincoln and her sons, entered, to find no hope and to go back to
+ceaseless weeping. Members of the cabinet, senators, representatives,
+generals, and others, took turns at the bedside. Chief-Justice Chase
+remained until a late hour, and returned in the morning. Secretary
+McCulloch remained a constant watcher until 5 A. M. Not a gleam of
+consciousness shone across the visage of the President up to his
+death--a quiet, peaceful death at last--which came at twenty-two minutes
+past seven A. M. Around the bedside at this time were Secretaries
+Stanton, Welles, Usher, Attorney-General Speed, Postmaster-General
+Dennison, M. B. Field, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, Judge Otto,
+Assistant Secretary of the Interior, General Halleck, General Meigs,
+Senator Sumner, F. R. Andrews, of New-York, General Todd, of Dacotah,
+John Hay, private secretary, Governor Oglesby, of Illinois, General
+Farnsworth, Mrs. and Miss Kenny, Miss Harris, Captain Robert Lincoln,
+son of the President, and Drs. E. W. Abbott, R. K. Stone, C. D. Gatch,
+Neal Hall, and Leiberman. Rev. Dr. Gurley, after the event, knelt with
+all around in prayer, and then, entering the adjoining room where were
+gathered Mrs. Lincoln, Captain Robert Lincoln, Mr. John Hay, and others,
+prayed again. Soon after 9 o'clock the remains were placed in a
+temporary coffin and conveyed to the White House under a small escort.
+
+In Secretary Seward's chamber, a similar although not so solemn a scene
+prevailed; between that chamber and the one occupied by President
+Lincoln, visitors alternated to and fro through the night. It had been
+early ascertained that the wounds of the secretary were not likely to
+prove mortal. A wire instrument, to relieve the pain which he suffered
+from previous injuries, prevented the knife of the assassin from
+striking too deep. Mr. Frederick Seward's injuries were more serious.
+His forehead was broken in by the blow from, the pistol, and up to this
+hour he has remained perfectly unconscious. The operation of trepanning
+the skull has been performed, but little hope is had of his recovery.
+Major Seward will get well. Mr. Hansell's condition is somewhat
+doubtful.
+
+Secretary Seward, who cannot speak, was not informed of the
+assassination of the President, and the injury of his son, until
+yesterday. He had been worrying as to why Mr. Lincoln did not visit him.
+"Why does'nt the President come to see me?" he asked with his pencil.
+"Where is Frederick--what is the matter with him?" Perceiving the
+nervous excitement which these doubts occasioned, a consultation was
+had, at which it was finally determined that it would be best to let the
+secretary know the worst. Secretary Stanton was chosen to tell him.
+Sitting down beside Mr. Seward's bed, yesterday afternoon, he therefore
+related to him a full account of the whole affair. Mr. Seward was so
+surprised and shocked that he raised one hand involuntarily, and
+groaned. Such is the condition of affairs at this stage of the terror.
+The pursuit of the assassins has commenced; the town is full of wild and
+baseless rumors; much that is said is stirring, little is reliable. I
+tell it to you as I get it, but fancy is more prolific than truth: be
+patient! [Footnote: The facts above had been collected by Mr. Jerome B.
+Stillion, before my arrival in Washington: the arrangement of them is my
+own.]
+
+
+
+
+LETTER II.
+
+THE OBSEQUIES IN WASHINGTON.
+
+
+Washington, April 19, (Evening).
+
+The most significant and most creditable celebration ever held in
+Washington has just transpired. A good ruler has been followed from his
+home to the Capitol by a grand cortege, worthy of the memory and of the
+nation's power. As description must do injustice to the extent of the
+display, so must criticism fail to sufficiently commend its perfect
+tastefulness, Rarely has a Republican assemblage been so orderly. The
+funeral of Mr. Lincoln is something to be remembered for a _cycle_. It
+caps all eulogy upon his life and services, and was, without exception,
+the most representative, spontaneous, and remarkable testimonial ever
+rendered to the remains of an American citizen.
+
+The night before the funeral showed the probable character of the
+cortege. At Willard's alone four hundred applications by telegraph for
+beds were refused. As many as six thousand persons spent Tuesday night
+in the streets, in depots and in outbuildings. The population of the
+city this morning was not far short of a hundred thousand, and of these
+as many at thirty thousand walked in procession with Mr. Lincoln's
+ashes.
+
+All orders of folks were at hand. The country adjacent sent in
+hay-wagons, donkey-carts, dearborns. All who could slip away from the
+army came to town, and every attainable section of the Union forwarded
+mourners. At no time in his life had Mr. Lincoln so many to throng about
+him as in this hour, when he is powerless to do any one a service. For
+once in history, office-seekers were disinterested, and contractors and
+hangers-on human. These came, for this time only, to the capital of the
+republic without an axe to grind or a curiosity to subserve; respect and
+grief were all their motive. This day was shown that the great public
+heart beats unselfish and reverent, even after a dynasty of plunder and
+war.
+
+The arrangements for the funeral were made by Mr. Harrington,
+Assistant-Secretary of the Treasury, who was beset by applicants for
+tickets. The number of these were reduced to six hundred, the clergy
+getting sixty and the press twenty. I was among the first to pass the
+White House guards and enter the building.
+
+Its freestone columns were draped in black, and all the windows were
+funereal. The ancient reception-room was half closed, and the famous
+East room, which is approached by a spacious hall, had been reserved for
+the obsequies. There are none present here but a few silent attendants
+of the late owner of the republican palace. Deeply ensconced in the
+white satin stuffing of his coffin, the President lies like one asleep.
+The broad, high, beautiful room is like the varnished interior of a
+vault. The frescoed ceiling wears the national shield, some pointed
+vases filled with flowers and fruit, and three emblazonings of gilt
+pendant from which are shrouded chandeliers. A purplish gray is the
+prevailing tint of the ceiling. The cornice is silver white, set off by
+a velvet crimson. The wall paper is gold and red, broken by eight lofty
+mirrors, which are chastely margined with black and faced with fleece.
+
+Their imperfect surfaces reflect the lofty catafalque, an open canopy of
+solemn alapaca, lined with tasteful satin of creamish lead, looped at
+the curving roof and dropping to the four corners in half transparent
+tapestry. Beneath the roof, the half light shines upon a stage of fresh
+and fragrant flowers, up-bearing a long, high coffin. White lace of pure
+silver pendant from the border throws a mild shimmer upon the solid
+silver tracery hinges and emblazonings. A cross of lilies stands at the
+head, an anchor of roses at the foot. The lid is drawn back to show the
+face and bosom, and on the coffin top are heather, precious flowers, and
+sprigs of green. This catafalque, or in plain words, this coffin set
+upon a platform and canopied, has around it a sufficient space of
+Brussels carpet, and on three sides of this there are raised steps
+covered with black, on which the honored visitors are to stand.
+
+The fourth side is bare, save of a single row of chairs some twenty in
+number, on which the reporters are to sit. The odor of the room is fresh
+and healthy; the shade is solemn, without being oppressive. All is rich,
+simple, and spacious, and in such sort as any king might wish to lie.
+Approach and look at the dead man.
+
+Death has fastened into his frozen face all the character and
+idiosyncrasy of life. He has not changed one line of his grave,
+grotesque countenance, nor smoothed out a single feature. The hue is
+rather bloodless and leaden; but he was alway sallow. The dark eyebrows
+seem abruptly arched; the beard, which will grow no more, is shaved
+close, save the tuft at the short small chin. The mouth is shut, like
+that of one who had put the foot down firm, and so are the eyes, which
+look as calm as slumber. The collar is short and awkward, turned over
+the stiff elastic cravat, and whatever energy or humor or tender gravity
+marked the living face is hardened into its pulseless outline. No corpse
+in the world is better prepared according to appearances. The white
+satin around it reflects sufficient light upon the face to show us that
+death is really there; but there are sweet roses and early magnolias,
+and the balmiest of lilies strewn around, as if the flowers had begun to
+bloom even upon his coffin. Looking on uninterruptedly! for there is no
+pressure, and henceforward the place will be thronged with gazers who
+will take from the sight its suggestiveness and respect. Three years
+ago, when little Willie Lincoln died, Doctors Brown and Alexander, the
+embalmers or injectors, prepared his body so handsomely that the
+President had it twice disinterred to look upon it. The same men, in the
+same way, have made perpetual these beloved lineaments. There is now no
+blood in the body; it was drained by the jugular vein and sacredly
+preserved, and through a cutting on the inside of the thigh the empty
+blood vessels were charged with a chemical preparation which soon
+hardened to the consistence of stone. The long and bony body is now hard
+and stiff, so that beyond its present position it cannot be moved any
+more than the arms or legs of a statue. It has undergone many changes.
+The scalp has been removed, the brain taken out, the chest opened and
+the blood emptied. All that we see of Abraham Lincoln, so cunningly
+contemplated in this splendid coffin, is a mere shell, an effigy, a
+sculpture. He lies in sleep, but it is the sleep of marble. All that
+made this flesh vital, sentient, and affectionate is gone forever.
+
+The officers present are Generals Hunter and Dyer and two staff
+captains. Hunter, compact and dark and reticent, walks about the empty
+chamber in full uniform, his bright buttons and sash and sword
+contrasting with his dark blue uniform, gauntlets upon his hands, crape
+on his arm and blade, his corded hat in his hands, a paper collar just
+apparent above his velvet tips, and now and then he speaks to Captain
+Nesmith or Captain Dewes, of General Harding's staff, rather as one who
+wishes company than one who has anything to say. His two silver stars
+upon his shoulder shine dimly in the draped apartment. He was one of the
+first in the war to urge the measures which Mr. Lincoln afterward
+adopted. The aids walk to and fro, selected without reference to any
+association with the late President. Their clothes are rich, their
+swords wear mourning, they go in silence, everything is funereal. In the
+deeply-draped mirrors strange mirages are seen, as in the coffin scene
+of "Lucretia Borgia," where all the dusky perspectives bear vistas of
+gloomy palls. The upholsterers make timid noises of driving nails and
+spreading tapestry; but save ourselves and these few watchers and
+workers, only the dead is here. The White House, so ill-appreciated in
+common times, is seen to be capacious and elegant--no disgrace to the
+nation even in the eyes of those foreign folk of rank who shall gather
+here directly.
+
+As we sit brooding, with the pall straight before us, the funeral guns
+are heard indistinctly booming from the far forts, with the tap of drums
+in the serried street without, where troops and citizens are forming for
+the grand procession. We see through the window in the beautiful spring
+day that the grass is brightly green; and all the trees in blossom, show
+us through their archways the bronze and marble statues breaking the
+horizon. But there is one at an upper window, seeing all this through
+her tears, to whom the beautiful noon, with its wealth of zephyrs and
+sweets, can waft no gratulation. The father of her children, the
+confidant of her affection and ambition, has passed from life into
+immortality, and lies below, dumb, cold murdered. The feeling of
+sympathy for Mrs. Lincoln is as wide-spread as the regret for the chief
+magistrate. Whatever indiscretions she may have committed in the abrupt
+transition from plainness to power are now forgiven and forgotten. She
+and her sons are the property of the nation associated with its truest
+glories and its worst bereavement. By and by the guests drop in, hat in
+hand, wearing upon their sleeves waving crape; and some of them slip up
+to the coffin to carry away a last impression of the fading face.
+
+But the first accession of force is that of the clergy, sixty in number.
+They are devout looking men, darkly attired, and have come from all the
+neighboring cities to represent every denomination. Five years ago these
+were wrangling over slavery as a theological question, and at the
+beginning of the war it was hard, in many of their bodies, to carry
+loyal resolutions, To-day there are here such sincere mourners as Robert
+Pattison, of the Methodist church, who passed much of his life among
+slaves and masters. He and the rest have come to believe that the
+President was wise and right, and follow him to his grave, as the
+apostles the interred on calvary. All these retire to the south end of
+the room, facing the feet of the corpse, and stand there silently to
+wait for the coming of others. Very soon this East room is filled with
+the representative intelligence of the entire nation. The governors of
+states stand on the dais next to the head of the coffin, with the varied
+features of Curtin, Brough, Fenton, Stone, Oglesby and Ingraham. Behind
+them are the mayors and councilmen of many towns paying their last
+respects to the representative of the source of all municipal freedom.
+To their left are the corporate officers of Washington, zealous to make
+this day's funeral honors atone for the shame of the assassination. With
+these are sprinkled many scarred and worthy soldiers who have borne the
+burden of the grand war, and stand before this shape they loved in quiet
+civil reverence.
+
+Still further down the steps and closer to the catafalque rest the
+familiar faces of many of our greatest generals--the manly features of
+Augur, whose blood I have seen trickling forth upon the field of battle;
+the open almost, beardless contour of Halleck, who has often talked of
+sieges and campaigns with this homely gentleman who is going to the
+grave. There are many more bright stars twinkling in contiguous shoulder
+bars, but sitting in a chair upon the beflowered carpet is Ulysses
+Grant, who has lived a century in the last three weeks and comes to-day
+to add the luster of his iron face to this thrilling and saddened
+picture. He wears white gloves and sash, and is swarthy, nervous, and
+almost tearful, his feet crossed, his square receding head turning now
+here now there, his treble constellation blazing upon the left shoulder
+only, but hidden on the right, and I seem to read upon his compact
+features the indurate and obstinate will to fight, on the line he has
+selected, the honor of the country through any peril, as if he had sworn
+it by the slain man's bier--his state-fellow, patron, and friend. Here
+also is General McCallum, who has seamed the rebellious South with
+military roads to send victory along them, and bring back the groaning
+and the scarred. These and the rest are grand historic figures, worthy
+of all artistic depiction. They have looked so often into the mortar's
+mouth, that no bravo's blade can make them wince. Do you see the
+thin-haired, conical head of the viking Farragut, close by General
+Grant, with many naval heroes close behind, storm-beaten, and every inch
+Americans in thought and physiognomy?
+
+What think the foreign ambassadors of such men, in the light of their
+own overloaded bodies, where meaningless orders, crosses, and ribbons
+shine dimly in the funeral light? These legations number, perhaps, a
+hundred men, of all civilized races,--the Sardinian envoy, jetty-eyed,
+towering above the rest. But they are still and respectful, gathered
+thus by a slain ruler, to see how worthy is the republic he has
+preserved. Whatever sympathy these have for our institutions, I think
+that in such audience they must have been impressed with the futility of
+any thought that either one citizen right or one territorial inch can
+ever be torn from the United States. Not to speak disparagingly of these
+noble guests, I was struck with the superior facial energy of our own
+public servants, who were generally larger, and brighter-faced, born of
+that aristocracy which took its patent from Tubal Cain, and Abel the
+goatherd, and graduated in Abraham Lincoln. The Haytien minister,
+swarthy and fiery-faced, is conspicuous among these.
+
+But nearer down, and just opposite the catafalque so that it is
+perpendicular to the direction of vision, stand the central powers of
+our government, its President and counsellors. President Johnson is
+facing the middle of the coffin upon the lowest step; his hands are
+crossed upon his breast, his dark clothing just revealing his plaited
+shirt, and upon his full, plethoric, shaven face, broad and severely
+compact, two telling gray eyes rest under a thoughtful brow, whose
+turning hair is straight and smooth. Beside him are Vice-President
+Hamlin, whom he succeeded, and ex-Governor King, his most intimate
+friend, who lends to the ruling severity of the place a half Falstaffian
+episode. The cabinet are behind, as if arranged for a daguerreotypist,
+Stanton, short and quicksilvery, in long goatee and glasses, in stunted
+contrast to the tall and snow-tipped shape of Mr. Welles with the rest,
+practical and attentive, and at their side is Secretary Chase, high,
+dignified, and handsome, with folded arms, listening, but
+undemonstrative, a half-foot higher than any spectator, and dividing
+with Charles Sumner, who is near by, the preference for manly beauty in
+age. With Mr. Chase are other justices of the Supreme Court and to their
+left, near the feet of the corpse, are the reverend senators,
+representing the oldest and the newest states--splendid faces, a little
+worn with early and later toils, backed up by the high, classical
+features of Colonel Forney, their secretary. Beyond are the
+representatives and leading officials of the various departments, with a
+few odd folks like George Francis Train, exquisite as ever, and, for
+this time only, with nothing to say.
+
+Close by the corpse sit the relatives of the deceased, plain, honest,
+hardy people, typical as much of the simplicity of our institutions as
+of Mr. Lincoln's self-made eminence. No blood relatives of Mr. Lincoln
+were to be found. It is a singular evidence of the poverty of his
+origin, and therefore of his exceeding good report, that, excepting his
+immediate family, none answering to his name could be discovered. Mrs.
+Lincoln's relatives were present, however, in some force. Dr. Lyman
+Beecher Todd, General John B. S. Todd, C. M. Smith, Esq., and Mr. N. W.
+Edwards, the late President's brother-in-law, plain, self-made people
+were here and were sincerely affected. Captain Robert Lincoln sat during
+the services with his face in his handkerchief weeping quietly, and
+little Tad his face red and heated, cried as if his heart would break.
+Mrs. Lincoln, weak, worn, and nervous, did not enter the East room nor
+follow the remains. She was the chief magistrate's lady yesterday;
+to-day a widow bearing only an immortal name. Among the neighbors of the
+late President, who came from afar to pay respect to his remains, was
+one old gentleman who left Richmond on Sunday. I had been upon the boat
+with him and heard him in hot wrangle with some officers who advised the
+summary execution of all rebel leaders. This the old man opposed, when
+the feeling against him became so intense that he was compelled to
+retire. He counselled mercy, good faith, and forgiveness. To-day, the
+men who had called him a traitor, saw him among the family mourners,
+bent with grief. All these are waiting in solemn lines, standing erect,
+with a space of several feet between them and the coffin, and there is
+no bustle nor unseemly curiosity, not a whisper, not a footfall--only
+the collected nation looking with awed hearts upon eminent death.
+
+This scene is historic. I regret that I must tell you of it over a
+little wire, for it admits of all exemplification. In this high,
+spacious, elegant apartment, laughter and levee, social pleasantry and
+refined badinage, had often held their session. Dancing and music had
+made those mirrors thrill which now reflect a pall, and where the most
+beautiful women of their day had mingled here with men of brilliant
+favor, now only a very few, brave enough to look upon death, were
+wearing funeral weeds. The pleasant face of Mrs. Kate Sprague looks out
+from these; but such scenes gain little additional power by beauty's
+presence. And this wonderful relief was carved at one blow by John
+Wilkes Booth.
+
+The religious services began at noon. They were remarkable not only for
+their association with the national event, but for a tremendous
+political energy which they had. While none of the prayers or speeches
+exhibited great literary carefulness, or will obtain perpetuity on their
+own merits, they were full of feeling and expressed all the intense
+concern of the country.
+
+The procession surpassed in sentiment, populousness, and sincere good
+feeling, anything of the kind we have had in America. It was several
+miles long, and in all its elements was full and tasteful. The scene on
+the avenue will be alway remembered as the only occasion on which that
+great thoroughfare was a real adornment to the seat of government. In
+the tree tops, on the house tops, at all the windows, the silent and
+affected crowds clustered beneath half-mast banners and waving crape, to
+reverentially uncover as the dark vehicle, bearing its rich
+silver-mounted coffin, swept along; mottoes of respect and homage were
+on many edifices, and singularly some of them were taken from the play
+of Richard III., which was the murderer's favorite part The entire width
+of the avenue was swept, from curb to curb, by the deep lines.
+
+The chief excellence of this procession was its representative nature.
+All classes, localities and trades were out. As the troops in broad,
+straight columns, with reversed muskets, moved to solemn marches, all
+the guns on the fortifications on the surrounding hills discharged
+hoarse salutes--guns which the arbiter of war whom they were to honor
+could hear no longer. Every business place was closed. Sabermen swept
+the street of footmen and horsemen. The carriages drove two abreast.
+
+Not less than five thousand officers, of every rank, marched abreast
+with the cortege. They were noble looking men with intelligent faces,
+and represented the sinews of the land, and the music was not the least
+excellent feature of the mournful display. About thirty bands were in
+the line, and these played all varieties of solemn marches, so that
+there were continual and mingling strains of funeral music for more than
+three hours. Artillery, consisting of heavy brass pieces, followed
+behind. In fact, all the citizen virtues and all the military enterprise
+of the country were evidenced. Never again, until Washington becomes in
+fact what it is in name, the chief city of America, shall we have a
+scene like this repeated--the grandest procession ever seen on this
+continent, spontaneously evoked to celebrate the foulest crime on
+record. If any feeling of gratulation could arise in so calamitous a
+time, it would be, that so soon after this appalling calamity the nation
+calmly and collectedly rallied about its succeeding rulers, and showed
+in the same moment its regret for the past and its resolution for the
+future. To me, the scene in the White House, the street, and the capitol
+to-day, was the strongest evidence the war afforded of the stability of
+our institutions, and the worthiness and magnanimous power of our
+people.
+
+The cortege passed to the left side of the Capitol, and entering the
+great gates, passed to the grand stairway, opposite the splendid dome,
+where the coffin was disengaged and carried up the ascent. It was posted
+under the bright concave, now streaked with mournful trappings, and left
+in state, watched by guards of officers with drawn swords. This was a
+wonderful spectacle, the man most beloved and honored in the ark of the
+republic. The storied paintings representing eras in its history were
+draped in sable, through which they seemed to cast reverential glances
+upon the lamented bier. The thrilling scenes depicted by Trumbull, the
+commemorative canvases of Leutze, the wilderness vegetation of Powell,
+glared from their separate pedestals upon the central spot where lay the
+fallen majesty of the country. Here the prayers and addresses of the
+noon were rehearsed and the solemn burial service read. At night the
+jets of gas concealed in the spring of the dome were lighted up, so that
+their bright reflection masses of burning light, like marvelous haloes,
+upon the little box where so much that we love and honor rested on its
+way to the grave. And so through the starry night, in the fane of the
+great Union he had strengthened and recovered, the ashes of Abraham
+Lincoln, zealously guarded, are now reposing. The sage, the citizen, the
+patriot, the man, has reached all the eminence that life can give the
+worthy or the ambitious. The hunted fugitive who struck through our
+hearts to slay him, should stand beside his stately bier to see how
+powerless are bullets and blades to take the real life of any noble man!
+
+
+
+
+LETTER III.
+
+THE MURDERER.
+
+
+Washington, April 27th.
+
+Justice is satisfied, though blinder vengeance may not be. While the
+illustrious murdered is on the way to the shrine, the stark corpse of
+his murderer lies in the shambles. The one died quietly, like his life;
+the other died fighting, like his crime. And now that over all of them
+the darkness and the dew have descended, the populace, which may not be
+all satisfied, may perhaps be calmed. No triumphal mourning can add to
+the President's glory; no further execration can disturb the assassin's
+slumbers. They have gone for what they were into history, into
+tradition, into the hereafter both of men and spirits; and what they
+were may be in part concluded. Mr. Lincoln's career passes, in extent,
+gravity, and eventful association, the province of newspaper biography;
+but Booth is the hero of a single deed, and the delineation of him may
+begin and be exhausted in a single article. I have been at pains, since
+the day of the President's obsequies, to collect all valid information
+on the subject of his assassin, in anticipation of the latter's capture
+and death. Now that these have been consummated, I shall print this
+biography.
+
+The elder Booth in every land was a sojourner, as all his fathers were.
+Of Hebrew descent, and by a line of actors, he united in himself that
+strong Jewish physiognomy which, in its nobler phases, makes all that is
+dark and beautiful, and the combined vagrancy of all men of genius and
+all men of the stage. Fitful, powerful, passionate, his life was a
+succession of vices and triumphs. He mastered the intricate characters
+of dramatic literature by intuition, rather than by study, and produced
+them with a vigor and vividness which almost passed the depicting of
+real life. The stage on which he raved and fought became as historic as
+the actual decks of battle ships, and his small and brawny figure comes
+down to us in those paroxysms of delirious art, like that of _Harold, or
+Richard, or Prince Rupert_. He drank to excess, was profligate but not
+generous, required but not reliable, and licentious to the bounds of
+cruelty. He threw off the wife of his bosom to fly from England with a
+flower-girl, and, settling in Baltimore, dwelt with his younger
+companion, and brought up many children, while his first-possessed went
+down to a drunken and broken-hearted death. He himself, wandering
+westward, died on the way, errant and feverish, even in the closing
+moments. His widow, too conscious of her predecessor's wrongs, and often
+taunted with them, lived apart, frugal and discreet, and brought her six
+children up to honorable maturity. These were Junius Brutus, Edwin
+Forrest (though he drops the Forrest for professional considerations),
+John Wilkes, Joseph, and the girls. All of the boys are known to more or
+less of fame; none of them in his art has reached the renown of the
+father; but one has sent his name as far as that of the great playwright
+to whom they were pupils; wherever Shakspeare is quoted, John Wilkes
+Booth will be named, and infamously, like that Hubert in "King John,"
+who would have murdered the gentle Prince Arthur.
+
+It may not be a digression here to ask what has become of the children
+of the weird genius I have sketched above. Mrs. Booth, against whom
+calumny has had no word to say, now resides with her daughters in
+Nineteenth street, New-York. John S. Clarke dwells in princely style in
+Philadelphia, with the daughter whom he married; he is the business
+partner of Edwin Booth, and they are likely to become as powerful
+managers as they have been successful "stars." Edwin Booth, who is said
+to have the most perfect physical head in America, and whom the ladies
+call the beau ideal of the melancholy Dane, dwells also on Nineteenth
+street. He has acquired a fortune, and is, without doubt, a frankly
+loyal gentleman. He could not well be otherwise from his membership in
+the Century Club where literature and loyalty, are never dissolved.
+Correct and pleasing without being powerful or brilliant, he has led a
+plain and appreciated career, and latterly, to his honor, has been
+awakening among dramatic authors some emulation by offering handsome
+compensations for original plays. Junius Brutus Booth, the oldest of
+them all, most resembles in feature his wild and wayward father; he is
+not as good an actor as was Wilkes, and kept in the West, that border
+civilization of the drama; he now lies, on a serious charge of
+complicity, in Capitol Hill jail. Joseph Booth tried the stage as an
+utility actor and promptly failed. The best part he ever had to play was
+_Orson_ in the "Iron Chest," and his discomfiture was signal; then he
+studied medicine but grew discouraged, and is now in California in an
+office of some sort. A son of Booth by his first wife became a first
+class lawyer in Boston. He never recognized the rest of the family.
+Wilkes Booth, the third son, was shot dead on Wednesday for attempting
+to escape from the consequences of murder. Such are the people to whom
+one of the greatest actors of our time gave his name and lineaments. But
+I have anticipated the story:
+
+Although her family was large, it was not so hard sailing with Mrs.
+Rosalie Booth as may be inferred. Her husband's gains had been variably
+great, and they owned a farm of some value near Baltimore. The boys had
+plain but not sufficient schooling, though by the time John Wilkes grew
+up Edwin and Junius were making some little money and helping the
+family. So Wilkes was sent to a better school than they, where he made
+some eventful acquaintances. One of these won his admiration as much in
+the playground as in subsequent life upon the field of battle; this was
+Fitzhugh Lee, son of the great rebel chieftain. I have not heard that
+Lee ever had any friendship for young Wilkes, but his port and name were
+enough to excite a less ardent imagination--the son of a soldier already
+great, and a descendant of Washington. Wilkes Booth has often spoken of
+the memory of the young man, envied his success, and, perhaps, boasted
+of more intimacy than he ever had. The exemplars of young Wilkes, it was
+soon seen, were anything but literary. He hated school and pent-up life,
+and loved the open air. He used to stroll off to fish, though that sort
+of amusement was too sedentary for his nature, but went on fowling
+jaunts with enthusiasm. In these latter he manifested that fine nerve,
+and certain eye, which was the talk of all his associates; but his
+greatest love was the stable; He learned to ride with his first pair of
+boots, and hung around the grooms to beg permission to take the nags to
+water. He grew in later life to be both an indurated and a graceful
+horseman. Toward his mother and sisters he was affectionate without
+being obedient. Of all the sons, Wilkes was the most headstrong
+in-doors, and the most contented away from home. He had a fitful
+gentleness which won him forgiveness, and of one of his sisters he was
+particularly fond, but none had influence over him. He was seldom
+contentious, but obstinately bent, and what he willed, to did in
+silence, seeming to discard sympathy or confidence. As a boy he was
+never bright, except in a boy's sense; that is, he could run and leap
+well, fight when challenged, and generally fell in with the sentiment of
+the crowd. He therefore made many companions, and his early days all
+passed between Baltimore city and the adjacent farm.
+
+I have heard it said as the only evidence of Booth's ferocity in those
+early times that he was always shooting cats, and killed off almost the
+entire breed in his neighbourhood. But on more than one occasion he ran
+away from both school and home, and once made the trip of the Chesapeake
+to the oyster fisheries without advising anybody of his family.
+
+While yet very young, Wilkes Booth became an habitue at the theater. His
+traditions and tastes were all in that direction. His blood was of the
+stage, like that of the Keans, the Kembles, and the Wallacks. He would
+not commence at the bottom of the ladder and climb from round to round,
+nor take part in more than a few Thespian efforts. One night, however, a
+young actor, who was to have a benefit and wished to fill the house,
+resolved for the better purpose to give Wilkes a chance. He announced
+that a son of the great Booth of tradition, would enact the part of
+Richmond, and the announcement was enough. Before a crowded place, Booth
+played so badly that he was hissed. Still holding to his gossamer hopes
+and high conceit, Wilkes induced John S. Clarke, who was then addressing
+his sister, to obtain him a position in the company of the Arch Street
+Theater at Philadelphia.
+
+For eight dollars a week, Wilkes Booth, at the age of twenty-two,
+contracted with William Wheatley to play in any piece or part for which
+he might be cast, and to appear every day at rehearsal. He had to play
+the _Courier_ in Sheridan Knowles's "Wife" on his first night, with five
+or ten little speeches to make; but such was his nervousness that he
+blundered continually, and quite balked the piece. Soon afterward he
+undertook the part of one of the Venetian comrades in Hugo's "Lucretia
+Borgia," and was to have said in his turn--
+
+"Madame, I am Petruchio Pandolfo;" instead of which he exclaimed:
+
+"Madame, I am Pondolfio Pet--, Pedolfio Pat--, Pantuchio Ped--; damn it?
+what am I?"
+
+The audience roared, and Booth, though full of chagrin, was compelled to
+laugh with them.
+
+The very next night he was to play _Dawson_, an important part in
+Moore's tragedy of "The Gamester." He had bought a new dress to wear on
+this night, and made abundant preparation to do himself honor. He
+therefore invited a lady whom he knew to visit the theater, and witness
+his triumph. But at the instant of his appearance on the stage, the
+audience, remembering the Petruchio Pandolfo of the previous night,
+burst into laughter, hisses, and mock applause, so that he was struck
+dumb, and stood rigid, with nothing whatever to say. Mr. John Dolman, to
+whose _Stukely_ has played, was compelled, therefore, to strike _Dawson_
+entirely out of the piece.
+
+These occurrences nettled Booth, who protested that he studied
+faithfully but that his want of confidence ruined him. Mr. Fredericks
+the stage manager made constant complaints of Booth, who by the way, did
+not play under his full name, but as Mr. J. Wilkes--and he bore the
+general reputation of having no promise, and being a careless fellow. He
+associated freely with such of the subordinate actors as he liked; but
+being, through Clarke, then a rising favourite, of better connections,
+might, had he chosen, advanced himself socially, if not artistically.
+Clarke was to have a benefit one evening, and to enact, among other
+things, a mock _Richard III_., to which he allowed Wilkes Booth to play
+a real _Richmond_. On this occasion, for the first time, Booth showed
+some energy, and obtain some applause. But, in general, he was stumbling
+and worthless I myself remember, on three consecutive nights, hearing
+him trip up and receive suppressed hisses. He lacked enterprise; other
+young actors, instead of waiting to be given better parts, committed
+them to memory, in the hope that their real interpreter might not come
+to hand. Among these I recall John McCullough, who afterwards became
+quite a celebrated actor. He was getting, if I correctly remember, only
+six dollars a week, while Booth obtained eight. Yet Wilkes Booth seemed
+too slow or indifferent to get on the weather side of such chances. He
+still held the part of third walking gentleman, and the third is always
+the first to be walked off in case of strait, as was Wilkes Booth. He
+did not survive forty weeks engagement, nor make above three hundred
+dollars in all that time. The Kellers arrived; they cut down the
+company, and they dispensed with Wilkes Booth. He is remembered in
+Philadelphia by his failure as in the world by his crime.
+
+About this time a manager named Kunkle gave Booth a salary of twenty
+dollars a week to go to the Richmond Theater. There he played a higher
+order of parts, and played them better, Winning applauses from the easy
+provincial cities, and taking, as everywhere the ladies by storm. I have
+never wondered why many actors were strongly predisposed toward the
+South. There, their social status is nine times as big as with us. The
+hospitable, lounging, buzzing character of the southerner is entirely
+consonant with the cosmopolitanism of the stage, and that easy
+"hang-up-your-hatativeness," which is the rule and the demand in
+Thespianship. We place actors outside of society, and execrate them
+because they are there. The South took them into affable fellowship, and
+was not ruined by it, but beloved by the fraternity. Booth played two
+seasons in Richmond, and left in some esteem.
+
+When the John Brown raid occured, Booth left the Richmond Theater for
+the scene of strife in a picked company with which he had affiliated for
+some time. From his connection with the militia on this occasion he was
+wont to trace his fealty to Virginia. He was a non-commissioned officer,
+and remained at Charleston till after the execution, visiting the old
+pike man in jail, and his company was selected to form guard around the
+scaffold when John Brown went, white-haired, to his account. There may
+be in this a consolation for the canonizers of the first arm-bearer
+between the sections, that one whose unit swelled the host to crush out
+that brave old life, took from the scene inspiration enough to slay a
+merciful President in his unsuspecting leisure. Booth never referred to
+John Brown's death in bravado; possibly at that gallows began some such
+terrible purpose as he afterward consummated.
+
+It was close upon the beginning of the war when Booth resolved to
+transform himself from a stock actor to a "star." As many will read this
+who do not understand such distinctions, let me preface it by explaining
+that a "star" is an actor who belongs to no one theater, but travels
+from each to all, playing a few weeks at a time, and sustained in his
+chief character by the regular or stock actors. A stock actor is a good
+actor, and a poor fool. A star is an advertisement in tights, who grows
+rich and corrupts the public taste. Booth was a star, and being so, had
+an agent. The agent is a trumpeter who goes on before, writing the
+impartial notices which you see in the editorial columns of country
+papers and counting noses at the theater doors. Booth's agent was one
+Matthew Canning, an exploded Philadelphia lawyer, who took to managing
+by passing the bar, and J. Wilkes no longer, but our country's rising
+tragedian. J. Wilkes Booth, opened in Montgomery, Alabama, in his
+father's consecrated part of _Richard III_. It was very different work
+between receiving eight dollars a week and getting half the gross
+proceeds of every performance. Booth kept northward when his engagement
+was done, playing in many cities such parts as _Romeo_, the _Corsican
+Brothers_, and _Raphael_ in the "_Marble Heart_;" in all of these he
+gained applause, and his journey eastward, ending in eastern cities like
+Providence, Portland, and Boston was a long success, in part deserved.
+In Boston he received especial commendation for his enactment of
+_Richard_.
+
+I have looked over this play, his best and favorite one, to see how
+closely the career of the crookback he so often delineated resembled his
+own.
+
+How like that fearful night of _Richard_ on Bosworth field must have
+been Booth's sleep in the barn at Port Royal, tortured by ghosts of
+victims all repeating.
+
+    "When I was mortal my anointed body
+    By thee was punched full of deadly holes:
+    Think on the Tower and me! Despair and die!"
+
+Or this, from some of Booth's female victims:
+
+    "Let me sit heavy on thy soul to-morrow!
+    I that was washed to death with fulsome wine;
+    Poor Clarence, by thy guile betrayed to death:
+    To-morrow in the battle think on me; despair and die!"
+
+These terrible conjurations must have recalled how aptly the scene as
+often rehearsed by Booth, sword in hand, where, leaping from his bed, he
+cries in horror:
+
+    "Give me another horse! bind up my wounds!
+    Have mercy, Jesu! Soft! I did but dream.
+    Oh! coward conscience how thou dost afflict me!
+    The lights burn blue. It is now dead midnight!
+    Cold, flareful drops stand on my trembling flesh.
+    What do I fear? Myself! there is none else by:
+    Is there a murderer here? No!--Yes!--I am!
+    Then fly,--what from myself?
+
+              *       *       *       *       *
+
+    My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,
+    And every tongue brings in a several tale.
+    And every tale condemns me for a villain!
+    Perjury, perjury in the highest degree:
+    Murder, stern murder in the direst degree:
+    All several sins, all used in each degree.
+    Throng to the bar, crying all, _Guilty! guilty!_"
+
+By these starring engagments, Booth made incredible sums. His cashbook,
+for one single season, showed earnings deposited in bank of twenty-two
+odd thousand dollars. In New York he did not get a hearing, except at a
+benefit or two: where he played parts not of his selection. In
+Philadelphia his earlier failure predisposed the people to discard him,
+and they did. But he had made enough, and resolved to invest his
+winnings, The oil fever had just begun; he hired an agent, sent him to
+the western districts and gave him discretionary power; his investments
+all turned out profitable.
+
+Booth died, as far as understood without debts. The day before the
+murder he paid an old friend a hundred dollars which he had borrowed two
+days previously. He banked at Jay Cook's in Washington, generally; but
+turned most of his funds into stock and other matters. He gave eighty
+dollars eight month's ago for a part investing with others in a piece of
+western oil land. The certificate for this land he gave to his sister.
+Just before he died his agent informed him that the share was worth
+fifteen thousand dollars. Booth kept his accounts latterly with great
+regularity, and was lavish as ever, but took note of all expenditures,
+however irregular. He was one of those men whom the possession of money
+seems to have energized; his life, so purposeless long before, grew by
+good fortune to a strict computation with the world. Yet what availed so
+sudden reformation, and of what use was the gaining of wealth, to throw
+one's life so soon away, and leap from competence to hunted infamy.
+
+The beauty of this man and his easy confidentiality, not familiar, but
+marked by a mild and even dignity, made many women impassioned of him.
+He was licentious as men, and particularly as actors go, but not a
+seducer, so far as I can learn. I have traced one case in Philadelphia
+where a young girl who had seen him on the stage became enamored of him.
+
+She sent him bouquets, notes, photographs and all the accessories of an
+intrigue. Booth, to whom such things were common, yielded to the girl's
+importunities at last and gave her an interview. He was surprised to
+find that so bold a correspondent was so young, so fresh, and so
+beautiful. He told her therefore, in pity, the consequences of pursuing
+him; that he entertained no affection for her, though a sufficient
+desire, and that he was a man of the world to whom all women grew
+fulsome in their turn.
+
+"Go home," he said, "and beware of actors. They are to be seen, not to
+be known."
+
+The girl, yet more infatuated, persisted. Booth, who had no real virtue
+except by scintillations, became what he had promised, and one more soul
+went to the isles of Cyprus.
+
+In Montgomery, if I do not mistake, Booth met the woman from whom he
+received a stab which he carried all the rest of his days. She was an
+actress, and he visited her. They assumed a relation creditable only in
+_La Boheme_, and were as tender as love without esteem can ever be. But,
+after a time, Booth wearied of her and offered to say "good by." She
+refused--he treated her coldly; she pleaded--he passed her by.
+
+Then, with a jealous woman's frenzy, she drew a knife upon him and
+stabbed him in the neck, with the intent to kill him. Being muscular, he
+quickly disarmed her, though he afterward suffered from the wound
+poignantly.
+
+Does it not bring a blush to our faces that a good, great man, like he
+who has died--our President--should have met his fate from one so inured
+to a life of ribaldry? Yet, only such an one could have been found to
+murder Abraham Lincoln.
+
+The women persecuted Booth more than he followed them. He was waylaid by
+married women in every provincial town or city where he played. His face
+was so youthful, yet so manly, and his movements so graceful and
+excellent, that other than the coarse and errant placed themselves in
+his way. After his celebrated Boston engagement, women of all ages and
+degrees pressed in crowds before the Tremont House to see him depart.
+Their motives were various, but whether curiosity or worse, exhibiting
+plainly the deep influence which Booth had upon the sex. He could be
+anywhere easy and gentlemanly, and it is a matter of wonder that with
+the entry which he had to many well-stocked homes, he did not make
+hospitality mourn and friendship find in his visit shame and ruin. I
+have not space to go into the millionth catalogue of Booth's intrigues,
+even if this journal permitted further elucidation of so banned a
+subject. Most of his adherents of this class were, like Heine's Polish
+virgins, and he was very popular with those dramatic ladies--few, I hope
+and know, in their profession--to whom divorce courts are superfluous.
+His last permanent acquaintance was one Ella Turner, of Richmond, who
+loved him with all the impetuosity of that love which does not think,
+and strove to die at the tidings of his crime and fight. Happy that even
+such a woman did not die associated with John Wilkes Booth. Such
+devotion to any other murderer would have earned some poet's tear. But
+the daisies will not grow a whole rod from _his_ grave.
+
+Of what avail, may we ask, on the impossible supposition that Booth's
+crime could have been considered heroic, was it that such a record
+should have dared to die for fame? Victory would have been ashamed of
+its champion, as England of Nelson, and France of Mirabeau.
+
+I may add to this record that he had not been in Philadelphia a year, on
+first setting out in life, before getting into a transaction of the kind
+specified. For an affair at his boarding-house he was compelled to pay a
+considerable sum of money, and it happily occurred just as he was to
+quit the city. He had many quarrels and narrow escapes through his
+license, a husband in Syracuse, N. Y., once followed him all the way to
+Cleveland to avenge a domestic insult.
+
+Booth's paper "To Whom it may Concern" was not his only attempt at
+influential composition. He sometimes persuaded himself that he had
+literary ability; but his orthography and pronunciation were worse than
+his syntax. The paper deposited with J. S. Clarke was useful as showing
+his power to entertain a deliberate purpose. It has one or two smart
+passages in it--as this:
+
+"Our once bright red stripes look like _bloody gashes_ on the face of
+heaven."
+
+In the passages following there is common sense and lunacy:
+
+"I know how foolish I shall be deemed for undertaking such a step as
+this, where, on the one side, I have many friends and everything to make
+me happy, where my profession _alone_, has gained me an income of _more
+than_ twenty thousand dollars a year, and where my _great personal
+ambition_ in my profession has such a great field for labor. On the
+other hand, the South have never bestowed upon me one kind word; a place
+now where I have no friends, except beneath the sod; a place where I
+must either become a private soldier or a beggar. To give up all of the
+_former_ for the _latter_, besides my mother and sisters, whom I love so
+dearly (although they so widely differ with me in opinion) seems insane;
+but God is my judge."
+
+Now, read the beginning of the manifesto, and see how prophetic were his
+words of his coming infamy. If he expected so much for capturing the
+President merely, what of our execration at slaying him?
+
+"Right or wrong, God judge me, not man. For be my motive good or bad, of
+one thing I am sure, _the lasting condemnation_ of the North.
+
+"I love peace more than life. Have loved the Union beyond expression.
+For four years have I waited, hoped and prayed for the dark clouds to
+break, and for a restoration of our former sunshine. _To wait longer
+would be a crime_. All hope for peace is dead. My prayers have proved as
+idle as my hopes. God's will be done. _I go to see and share the bitter
+end_."
+
+To wait longer would be a crime. Oh! what was the crime _not_ to wait!
+Had he only shared the bitter end, then, in the common trench, his
+memory might have been hidden. The end had come when he appeared to make
+of benignant victory a quenchless revenge. One more selection from his
+apostrophe will do. It suggests the manner of his death:
+
+"They say that the South has found _that_ 'last ditch' which the North
+have so long derided. Should I reach her in safety, and find it true, I
+will proudly beg permission to triumph or die in that same 'ditch' by
+her side." The swamp near which he died may be called, without unseemly
+pun--a truth, not a _bon mot_--the last ditch of the rebellion.
+
+None of the printed pictures that I have seen do justice to Booth. Some
+of the _cartes de visite_ get him very nearly. He had one of the finest
+vital heads I have ever seen. In fact, he was one of the best exponents
+of vital beauty I have ever met. By this I refer to physical beauty in
+the Medician sense--health, shapeliness, power in beautiful poise, and
+seemingly more powerful in repose than in energy. His hands and feet
+were sizable, not small, and his legs were stout and muscular, but
+inclined to bow like his father's. From the waist up he was a perfect
+man; his chest being full and broad, his shoulders gently sloping, and
+his arms as white as alabaster, but hard as marble. Over these, upon a
+neck which was its proper column, rose the cornice of a fine Doric face,
+spare at the jaws and not anywhere over-ripe, but seamed with a nose of
+Roman model, the only relic of his half-Jewish parentage, which gave
+decision to the thoughtfully stern sweep of two direct, dark eyes,
+meaning to woman snare, and to man a search warrant, while the lofty
+square forehead and square brows were crowned with a weight of curling
+jetty hair, like a rich Corinthian capital. His profile was eagleish,
+and afar his countenance was haughty. He seemed throat full of
+introspections, ambitious self-examinings, eye-strides into the future,
+as if it withheld him something to which he had a right. I have since
+wondered whether this moody demeanor did not come of a guilty spirit,
+but all the Booths look so.
+
+Wilkes spoke to me in Washington for the first time three weeks before
+the murder. His address was winning as a girl's, rising in effect not
+from what he said, but from how he said it. It was magnetic, and I can
+describe it therefore by its effects alone. I seemed, when he had
+spoken, to lean toward this man. His attitude spoke to me; with as easy
+familiarity as I ever observed he drew rear and conversed. The talk was
+on so trite things that it did not lie a second in the head, but when I
+left him it was with the feeling that a most agreeable fellow had passed
+by.
+
+The next time the name of Wilkes Booth recurred to me was like the
+pistol shot he had fired. The right hand I had shaken murdered the
+father of the country.
+
+Booth was not graceful with his feet, although his ordinary walk was
+pleasant enough. But his arms were put to artistic uses; not the baser
+ones like boxing, but all sorts of fencing, manual practice, and the
+handling of weapons.
+
+In his dress, he was neat without being particular. Almost any clothes
+could fit him; but he had nothing of the exquisite about him; his
+neckties and all such matters were good without being gaudy. Nature had
+done much for him. In this beautiful palace an outlaw had builded his
+fire, and slept, and plotted, and dreamed.
+
+I have heard it said that Booth frequently cut his adversaries upon the
+stage in sheer wantonness or bloodthirstiness. This is a mistake, and is
+attributable to his father, the elder Booth, who had the madness of
+confounding himself with the character. Wilkes was too good a fencer to
+make ugly gashes; his pride was his skill, not his awkwardness. Once
+
+he was playing with John McCullough in the last act of "Richard." They
+were fighting desperately. Suddenly the cross-piece on the hilt of
+McCullough's sword flew off and cut the owner deeply in the forehead.
+Blood ran down McCullough's face, though they continued to struggle, and
+while, ostensibly, Booth was imitating a demon, he said in a half
+whisper:
+
+"Good God, John, did I hurt you?"
+
+And when they went off the stage, Booth was white with fear that he had
+gashed his friend.
+
+As an actor, Booth was too energetic to be correct; his conception of
+Richard was vivid and original, one of the best that we have had, and he
+came nearer his father's rendering of the last act than any body we have
+had. His combat scene was terrific. The statement that his voice had
+failed has no valid foundation; it was as good when he challenged the
+cavalry-men to combat as in the best of his Thespian successes. In all
+acting that required delicate characterization, refined conception or
+carefulness, Booth was at sea. But in strong physical parts, requiring
+fair reading and an abundance of spring and tension, he was much finer
+than hearsay would have us believe.
+
+His _Romeo_ was described a short time ago by the Washington
+_Intelligencer_ as the most satisfactory of all renderings of that fine
+character. He played the _Corsican Brothers_ three weeks on a run in
+Boston. He played _Pescara_ at Ford's Theater--his last mock part in
+this world--on to-morrow (Saturday) night, six weeks ago.
+
+He was fond of learning and reciting fugitive poems. His favorite piece
+was "The Beautiful Snow" comparing it to a lost purity. He has been
+known by gentlemen in this city to recite this poem with fine effect,
+and cry all the while. This was on the principle of "guilty people
+sitting at a play." His pocket-book was generally full of little
+selections picked up at random, and he had considerable delicacy of
+appreciation.
+
+On the morning of the murder, Booth breakfasted with Miss Carrie Bean,
+the daughter of a merchant, and a very respectable young lady, at the
+National Hall. He arose from the table at, say eleven o'clock. During
+the breakfast, those who watched him say that he was lively, piquant and
+self-possessed as ever in his life.
+
+That night the horrible crime thrilled the land. A period of crippled
+flight succeeded. Living in swamps, upon trembling hospitality, upon
+hopes which sank as he leaned upon them. Booth passed the nights in
+perilous route or broken sleep, and in the end went down like a bravo,
+but in the eyes of all who read his history, commanding no respect for
+his valor, charity for his motive, or sympathy for his sin.
+
+The closing scenes of these terrible days are reserved for a second
+paper. Much matter that should have gone into this is retained for the
+present.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER IV.
+
+THE ASSASSIN'S DEATH.
+
+
+Washington, April 28--8 P. M.
+
+A hard and grizzly face overlooks me as I write. Its inconsiderable
+forehead is crowned with turning sandy hair, and the deep concave of its
+long insatiate jaws is almost hidden by a dense red beard, which can not
+still abate the terrible decision of the large mouth, so well sustained
+by searching eyes of spotted gray, which roll and rivet one. This is the
+face of Lafayette Baker, colonel and chief of the secret service. He has
+played the most perilous parts of the war, and is the capturer of the
+late President's murderer. The story that I am to tell you, as he and
+his trusty dependents told it to me, will be aptly commenced here, where
+the net was woven which took the dying life of Wilkes Booth.
+
+When the murder occured, Colonel Baker was absent from Washington, He
+returned on the third morning, and was at once besought by Secretary
+Stanton to join the hue and cry against the escaped Booth. The sagacious
+detective found that nearly ten thousand cavalry, and one-fourth as many
+policemen, had been meantime scouring, without plan or compass, the
+whole territory of Southern Maryland. They were treading on each other's
+heels, and mixing up the thing so confoundedly, that the best place for
+the culprits to have gone would have been in the very midst of their
+pursuers. Baker at once possessed himself of the little the War
+Department had learned, and started immediately to take the usual
+detective measures, till then neglected, of offering a reward and
+getting out photographs of the suspected ones. He then dispatched a few
+chosen detectives to certain vital points, and awaited results.
+
+The first of these was the capture of Atzeroth. Others, like the taking
+of Dr. Mudge, simultaneously occured. But the district supected being
+remote from the railway routes, and broken by no telegraph station, the
+colonel, to place himself nearer the theater of events, ordered an
+operator, with the necessary instrument, to tap the wire running to
+Point Lookout, near Chappells Point, and send him prompt messages.
+
+The same steamer which took down the operator and two detectives.
+brought back one of the same detectives and a negro. This negro, taken
+to Colonel Baker's office, stated so positively that he had seen Booth
+and another man cross the Potomac in a fishing boat, while he was
+looking down upon them from a bank, that the colonel, was at first
+skeptical; but when examined the negro answered so readily and
+intelligently, recognizing the men from the photographs, that Baker knew
+at last that he had the true scent.
+
+Straightway he sent to General Hancock for twenty-five men, and while
+the order was going, drew down his coast survey-maps. With that quick
+detective intuition amounting almost to inspiration, he cast upon the
+probable route and destination of the refugees, as well as the point
+where he would soonest strike them. Booth, he knew, would not keep along
+the coast, with frequent deep rivers to cross, nor, indeed, in any
+direction east of Richmond, where he was liable at any time to cross our
+lines of occupation; nor, being lame, could he ride on; horseback, so as
+to place himself very far westward of his point of debarkation in
+Virginia. But he would travel in a direct course from Bluff point, where
+he crossed to Eastern Tennessee, and this would take him through Port
+Royal on the Rappahannock river, in time to be intercepted there by the
+outgoing cavalry men.
+
+When, therefore, twenty-five men, under one Lieutenant Dougherty,
+arrived at his office door, Baker placed the whole under control of his
+former lieutenant-colonel, E. J. Conger, and of his cousin, Lieutenant
+L. B. Baker--the first of Ohio, the last of New-York--and bade them go
+with all dispatch to Belle Plain on the Lower Potomac, there to
+disembark, and scour the country faithfully around Port Royal, but not
+to return unless they captured their men.
+
+Conger is a short, decided, indomitable, courageous fellow, provincial
+in his manners, but fully understanding his business, and collected as a
+housewife on Sunday.
+
+Young Baker is large and fine-looking--a soldier, but no policeman--and
+he deferred to Conger, very properly, during most of the events
+succeeding.
+
+Quitting Washington at 2 o'clock P. M. on Monday, the detectives and
+cavalrymen disembarked at Belle Plain, on the border of Stafford county,
+at 10 o'clock, in the darkness. Belle Plain is simply the nearest
+landing to Fredericksburg, seventy miles from Washington city, and
+located upon Potomac creek. It is a wharf and warehouse merely, and here
+the steamer John S. Ide stopped and made fast, while the party galloped
+off in the darkness. Conger and Baker kept ahead, riding up to
+farm-houses and questioning the inmates, pretending to be in search of
+the Maryland gentlemen belonging to the party. But nobody had seen the
+parties described, and, after a futile ride on the Fredericksburg road,
+they turned shortly to the east, and kept up their baffled inquiries all
+the way to Port Conway, on the Rappahannock.
+
+On Tuesday morning they presented themselves at the Port Royal ferry,
+and inquired of the ferry-man, while he was taking them over in squads
+of seven at a time, if he had seen any two such men. Continuing their
+inquiries at Port Royal, they found one Rollins a fisherman, who
+referred them to a negro named Lucas, as having driven two men a short
+distance toward Bowling Green in a wagon. It was found that these men
+answered to the description, Booth having a crutch as previously
+ascertained.
+
+The day before Booth and Harold had applied at Port Conway for the
+general ferry-boat, but the ferryman was then fishing and would not
+desist for the inconsiderable fare of only two persons, but to their
+supposed good fortune a lot of confederate cavalrymen just then came
+along, who threatened the ferryman with a shot in the head if he did not
+instantly bring across his craft and transport the entire party. These
+cavalrymen were of Moseby's disbanded command, returning from Fairfax
+Court House to their homes in Caroline county. Their captain was on his
+way to visit a sweetheart at Bowling Green, and he had so far taken
+Booth under his patronage, that when the latter was haggling with Lucas
+for a team, he offered both Booth and Harold the use of his horse, to
+ride and walk alternately.
+
+In this way Lucas was providentially done out of the job, and Booth rode
+off toward Bowling Green behind the confederate captain on one and the
+same horse.
+
+So much learned, the detectives, with Rollins for a guide, dashed off in
+the bright daylight of Tuesday, moving southwestward through the level
+plains of Caroline, seldom stopping to ask questions, save at a certain
+halfway house, where a woman told them that the cavalry party of
+yesterday had returned minus one man. As this was far from
+circumstantial, the party rode along in the twilight, and reached
+Bowling Green at eleven o'clock in the night.
+
+This is the court-house town of Caroline county--a small and scattered
+place, having within it an Ancient tavern, no longer used for other than
+lodging purposes; but here they hauled from his bed the captain
+aforesaid, and bade him dress himself. As soon as he comprehended the
+matter he became pallid and eagerly narrated all the facts in his
+possession. Booth, to his knowledge, was then lying at the house of one
+Garrett, which they had passed, and Harold had departed the existing day
+with the intention of rejoining him.
+
+Taking this captain along for a guide, the worn out horsemen retraced,
+though some of the men were so haggard and wasted with travel that they
+had to be kicked into intelligence before they could climb to their
+saddles. The objects of the chase thus at hand, the detectives, full of
+sanguine purpose; hurried the cortege so well along that by 2 o'clock
+early morning, all halted at Garrett's gate. In the pale moonlight three
+hundred yards from the main road, to the left, a plain old farmhouse
+looked grayly through its environing locusts. It was worn and
+whitewashed, and two-storied, and its half-human windows glowered down
+upon the silent cavalrymen like watching owls, which stood as sentries
+over some horrible secret asleep within. The front of this house looked
+up the road toward the Rappahannock, but did not face it, and on that
+side a long Virginia porch protruded, where, in the summer, among the
+honeysuckles, the humming bird flew like a visible odor. Nearest the
+main road, against the pallid gable, a single-storied kitchen stood, and
+there were three other doors, one opening upon the porch, one in the
+kitchen gable, and one in the rear of the farmhouse.
+
+Dimly seen behind, an old barn, high and weather-beaten, faced the
+roadside gate, for the house itself lay to the left of its own lane; and
+nestling beneath the barn, a few long corn-cribs lay with a cattle shed
+at hand. There was not a swell of the landscape anywhere in sight. A
+plain dead level contained all the tenements and structures. A worm
+fence stretched along the road broken by two battered gate posts, and
+between the road and the house, the lane was crossed by a second fence
+and gate. The farm-house lane, passing the house front, kept straight on
+to the barn, though a second carriage track ran up to the porch.
+
+[Illustration: Plan of Garrett's House.
+
+_A_ Door through which the dying man was brought. _B_ Corner at which
+the barn was fired. _C_ Spot in the barn on which Booth stood. _D_ Point
+where Corbett fired. _E_ Porch where Booth died. _G_ Door at which
+Lieutenant Baker knocked. _H_ Shed. _I_ Kitchen.]
+
+It was a homely and primitive scene enough, pastoral as any farm boy's
+birth-place, and had been the seat of many toils and endearments. Young
+wives had been brought to it, and around its hearth the earliest cries
+of infants, gladdening mothers' hearts, had made the household jubilant
+till the stars came out, and were its only sentries, save the bright
+lights at its window-panes as of a camp-fire, and the suppressed
+chorusses of the domestic bivouac within, where apple toasting and nut
+cracking and country games shortened the winter shadows. Yet in this
+house, so peaceful by moonlight, murder had washed its spotted hands,
+and ministered to its satiated appetite. History--present in every nook
+in the broad young world--had stopped, to make a landmark of Garrett's
+farm.
+
+In the dead stillness, Baker dismounted and forced the outer gate;
+Conger kept close behind him, and the horsemen followed cautiously. They
+made no noise in the soft clay, nor broke the all-foreboding silence
+anywhere, till the second gate swung open gratingly, yet even then nor
+hoarse nor shrill response came back, save distant croaking, as of frogs
+or owls, or the whizz of some passing night-hawk. So they surrounded the
+pleasant old homestead, each horseman, carbine in poise, adjusted under
+the grove of locusts, so as to inclose the dwelling with a circle of
+fire. After a pause, Baker rode to the kitchen door on the side, and
+dismounting, rapped and halloed lustily. An old man, in drawers and
+night-shirt, hastily undrew the bolts, and stood on the threshold,
+peering shiveringly into the darkness.
+
+Baker seized him by the throat at once, and held a pistol to his ear.
+"Who--who is it that calls me?" cried the old man. "Where are the men
+who stay with you?" challenged Baker. "If you prevaricate you are a dead
+man!" The old fellow, who proved to be the head of the family, was so
+overawed and paralysed that he stammered, and shook, and said not a
+word. "Go light a candle," cried Baker, sternly, "and be quick about
+it." The trembling old man obeyed, and in a moment the imperfect rays
+flared upon his whitening hairs and bluishly pallid face. Then the
+question was repeated, backed up by the glimmering pistol, "where are
+those men?" The old man held to the wall, and his knees smote each
+other. "They are gone," he said. "We hav'n't got them in the house, I
+assure you that they are gone." Here there were sounds and whisperings
+in the main building adjoining, and the lieutenant strode to the door. A
+ludicrous instant intervened, the old man's modesty outran his terror.
+"Don't go in there," he said, feebly; "there are women undressed in
+there." "Damn the women," cried Baker; "what if they are undressed? We
+shall go in if they haven't a rag." Leaving the old man in mute
+astonishment, Baker bolted through the door, and stood in an assemblage
+of bare arms and night robes. His loaded pistol disarmed modesty of its
+delicacy and substituted therefor a seasonable terror. Here he repeated
+his summons, and the half light of the candle gave to his face a more
+than bandit ferocity. They all denied knowledge of the strangers'
+whereabouts.
+
+In the interim Conger had also entered, and while the household and its
+invaders were thus in weird tableaux, a young man appeared, as if he had
+risen from the ground. The muzzles of everybody turned upon him in a
+second; but, while he blanched, he did not lose loquacity. "Father," he
+said, "we had better tell the truth about the matter. Those men whom you
+seek, gentlemen, are in the barn, I know. They went there to sleep."
+Leaving one soldier to guard the old man--and the soldier was very glad
+of the job, as it relieved him of personal hazard in the approaching
+combat--all the rest, with cocked pistols at the young man's head,
+followed on to the barn. It lay a hundred yards from the house, the
+front barndoor facing the west gable, and was an old and spacious
+structure, with floors only a trifle above the ground level.
+
+The troops dismounted, were stationed at regular intervals around it,
+and ten yards distant at every point, four special guards placed to
+command the door and all with weapons in supple preparation, while Baker
+and Conger went direct to the portal. It had a padlock upon it, and the
+key of this Baker secured at once. In the interval of silence that
+ensued, the rustling of planks and straw was heard inside, as of persons
+rising from sleep.
+
+At the same moment Baker hailed:
+
+"To the persons in this barn. I have a proposal to make; we are about to
+send in to you the son of the man in whose custody you are found. Either
+surrender to him your arms and then give yourselves up, or we'll set
+fire to the place. We mean to take you both, or to have a bonfire and a
+shooting match."
+
+No answer came to this of any kind. The lad, John M. Garrett, who was in
+deadly fear, was here pushed through the door by a sudden opening of it,
+and immediately Lieutenant Baker locked the door on the outside. The boy
+was heard to state his appeal in under tone. Booth replied:
+
+"Damn you. Get out of here. You have betrayed me."
+
+At the same time he placed his hand in his pocket as for a pistol. A
+remonstrance followed, but the boy slipped quickly over the reopened
+portal, reporting that his errand had failed, and that he dared not
+enter again. All this time the candle brought from the house to the barn
+was burning close beside the two detectives, rendering it easy for any
+one within to have shot them dead. This observed, the light was
+cautiously removed, and everybody took care to keep out of its
+reflection. By this time the crisis of the position was at hand, the
+cavalry exhibited very variable inclinations, some to run away, others
+to shoot Booth without a summons, but all excited and fitfully silent.
+At the house near by the female folks were seen collected in the
+doorway, and the necessities of the case provoked prompt conclusions.
+The boy was placed at a remote point, and the summons repeated by Baker:
+
+"You must surrender inside there. Give up your arms and appear. There is
+no chance for escape. We give you five minutes to make up your mind."
+
+A bold, clarion reply came from within, so strong as to be heard at the
+house door:
+
+"Who are you, and what do you want with us?"
+
+Baker again urged: "We want you to deliver up your arms and become our
+prisoners."
+
+"But who are you?" hallooed the same strong voice.
+
+Baker.--"That makes no difference. We know who you are, and we want you.
+We have here fifty men, armed with carbines and pistols. You cannot
+escape."
+
+There was a long pause, and then Booth said:
+
+"Captain, this is a hard case, I swear. Perhaps I am being taken by my
+own friends." No reply from the detectives.
+
+Booth--"Well, give us a little time to consider."
+
+[Illustration: Garrett's House, Where Booth Died--Sketched by W. N.
+Walton, for "Harper's Weekly" for May 30th, 1865]
+
+Baker--"Very well. Take time."
+
+Here ensued a long and eventful pause. What thronging memories it
+brought to Booth, we can only guess. In this little interval he made the
+resolve to die. But he was cool and steady to the end. Baker, after a
+lapse, hailed for the last time.
+
+"Well, we have waited long enough; surrender your arms and come out, or
+we'll fire the barn."
+
+Booth answered thus: "I am but a cripple, a one-legged man. Withdraw
+your forces one hundred yard from the door, and I will come. Give me a
+chance for my life, captain. I will never be taken alive."
+
+Baker--"We did not come here to fight, but to capture you. I say again,
+appear, or the barn shall be fired."
+
+Then with a long breath, which could be heard outside, Booth cried in
+sudden calmness, still invisible, as were to him his enemies:
+
+"Well, then, my brave boys, prepare a stretcher for me."
+
+There was a pause repeated, broken by low discussions within between
+Booth and his associate, the former saying, as if in answer to some
+remonstrance or appeal, "Get away from me. You are a damned coward, and
+mean to leave me in my distress; but go, go. I don't want you to stay. I
+won't have _you_ stay." Then he shouted aloud:
+
+"There's a man inside who wants to surrender."
+
+Baker--"Let him come, if he will bring his arms."
+
+Here Harold, rattling at the door, said: "Let me out; open the door; I
+want to surrender."
+
+Baker--"Hand out your arms, then."
+
+Harold--"I have not got any."
+
+Baker--"You are the man that carried the carbine yesterday; bring it
+out."
+
+Harold--"I haven't got any."
+
+This was said in a whining tone, and with an almost visible shiver.
+Booth cried aloud, at this hesitation: "He hasn't got any arms; they are
+mine, and I have kept them."
+
+Baker--"Well, he carried the carbine, and must bring it out."
+
+Booth--"On the word and honor of a gentleman, he has no arms with him.
+They are mine, and I have got them."
+
+At this time Harold was quite up to the door, within whispering distance
+of Baker. The latter told him to put out his hands to be handcuffed, at
+the same time drawing open the door a little distance. Harold thrust
+forth his hands, when Baker, seizing him, jerked him into the night, and
+straightway delivered him over to a deputation of cavalrymen. The fellow
+began to talk of his innocence and plead so noisily that Conger
+threatened to gag him unless he ceased. Then Booth made his last appeal,
+in the same clear unbroken voice:
+
+"Captain, give me a chance. Draw off your men and I will fight them
+singly. I could have killed you six times to-night, but I believe you to
+be a brave man, and would not murder you. Give a lame man a show."
+
+It was too late for parley. All this time Booth's voice had sounded from
+the middle of the barn.
+
+Ere he ceased speaking, Colonel Conger, slipping around to the rear,
+drew some loose straws through a crack, and lit a match upon them. They
+were dry and blazed up in an instant, carrying a sheet of smoke and
+flame through the parted planks, and heaving in a twinkling a world of
+light and heat upon the magazine within. The blaze lit up the black
+recesses of the great barn till every wasp's nest and cobweb in the roof
+was luminous, flinging streaks of red and violet across the tumbled farm
+gear in the corner, plows, harrows, hoes, rakes, sugar mills, and making
+every separate grain in the high bin adjacent, gleam like a mote of
+precious gold. They tinged the beams, the upright columns, the
+barricades, where clover and timothy, piled high, held toward the hot
+incendiary their separate straws for the funeral pile. They bathed the
+murderer's retreat in beautiful illumination, and while in bold outline
+his figure stood revealed, they rose like an impenetrable wall to guard
+from sight the hated enemy who lit them. Behind the blaze, with his eye
+to a crack, Conger saw Wilkes Booth standing upright upon a crutch. He
+likens him at this instant to his brother Edwin, whom he says he so much
+resembled that he half believed, for the moment the whole pursuit to
+have been a mistake. At the gleam of the fire Wilkes dropped his crutch,
+and, carbine in both hands, crept up to the spot to espy the incendiary
+and shoot him dead. His eyes were lustrous like fever, and swelled and
+rolled in terrible beauty, while his teeth were fixed, and he wore the
+expression of one in the calmness before frenzy. In vain he peered with
+vengeance in his look; the blaze that made him visible concealed his
+enemy. A second he turned glaring at the fire, as if to leap upon it and
+extinguish it, but it had made such headway that this was a futile
+impulse and he dismissed it. As calmly as upon the battlefield a veteran
+stands amidst the hail of ball and shell, and plunging iron, Booth
+turned at a man's stride, and pushed for the door, carbine in poise, and
+the last resolve of death, which we name despair, set on his high,
+bloodless forehead.
+
+As so he dashed, intent to expire not unaccompanied, a disobedient
+sergeant at an eye-hole drew upon him the fatal bead. The barn was all
+glorious with conflagration and in the beautiful ruin this outlawed man
+strode like all that, we know of wicked valor, stern in the face of
+death. A shock, a shout, a gathering up of his splendid figure as if to
+overtip the stature God gave him, and John Wilkes Booth fell headlong to
+the floor, lying there in a heap, a little life remaining.
+
+"He has shot himself!" cried Baker, unaware of the source of the report,
+and rushing in, he grasped his arms to guard against any feint or
+strategy. A moment convinced him that further struggle with the prone
+flesh was useless. Booth did not move, nor breathe, nor gasp. Conger and
+two sergeants now entered, and taking up the body, they bore it in haste
+from the advancing flame, and laid it without upon the grass, all fresh
+with heavenly dew.
+
+"Water," cried Conger, "bring water."
+
+When this was dashed into his face, he revived a moment and stirred his
+lips. Baker put his ear close down, and heard him say:
+
+"Tell mother--and die--for my country."
+
+They lifted him again, the fire encroaching in hotness upon them and
+placed him on the porch before the dwelling.
+
+A mattrass was brought down, on which they placed him and propped his
+head, and gave him water and brandy. The women of the household, joined
+meantime by another son, who had been found in one of the corn cribs,
+watching as he said, to see that Booth and Harold did not steal the
+horses, were nervous, but prompt to do the dying man all kindnesses,
+although waived sternly back by the detectives. They dipped a rag in
+brandy and water, and this being put between Booth's teeth he sucked it
+greedily. When he was able to articulate again, he muttered to Mr. Baker
+the same words, with an addenda. "Tell mother I died for my country. I
+thought I did for the best." Baker repeated this, saying at the same
+time "Booth, do I repeat it correctly." Booth nodded his head. By this
+time the grayness of dawn was approaching; moving figures inquisitively
+coming near were to be seen distinctly, and the cocks began to crow
+gutturally, though the barn was a hulk of blaze and ashes, sending
+toward the zenith a spiral line of dense smoke. The women became
+importunate that the troops might be ordered to extinguish the fire,
+which was spreading toward their precious corn-cribs. Not even death
+could banish the call of interest. Soldiers were sent to put out the
+fire, and Booth, relieved of the bustle around him, drew near to death
+apace. Twice he was heard to say, "kill me, kill me." His lips often
+moved but could complete no appreciable sound. He made once a motion
+which the quick eye of Conger understood to mean that his throat pained
+him. Conger put his finger there, when the dying man attempted to cough,
+but only caused the blood at his perforated neck to flow more, lively.
+He bled very little, although shot quite through, beneath and behind the
+ears, his collar being severed on both sides.
+
+A soldier had been meanwhile despatched for a doctor, but the route and
+return were quite six miles, and the sinner was sinking fast. Still the
+women made efforts to get to see him, but were always rebuffed, and all
+the brandy they could find was demanded by the assassin, who motioned
+for strong drink every two minutes. He made frequent desires to be
+turned over, not by speech, but by gesture, and was alternately placed
+upon his back, belly and side. His tremendous vitality evidenced itself
+almost miraculously. Now and then, his heart would cease to throb, and
+his pulses would be as cold as a dead man's. Directly life would begin
+anew, the face would flush up effulgently, the eyes open and brighten,
+and soon relapsing, stillness re-asserted, would again be dispossessed
+by the same magnificent triumph of man over mortality. Finally the fussy
+little doctor arrived, in time to be useless. He probed the wound to see
+if the ball were not in it, and shook his head sagely, and talked
+learnedly.
+
+Just at his coming Booth had asked to have his hands raised and shown
+him. They were so paralyzed that he did not know their location. When
+they were displayed he muttered, with a sad lethargy, "Useless,
+useless." These were the last words he ever uttered. As he began to die
+the sun rose and threw beams into all the tree-tops. It was of a man's
+height when the struggle of death twitched and fingered in the fading
+bravo's face. His jaw drew spasmodically and obliquely downward; his
+eyeballs rolled to-ward his feet, and began to swell; lividness, like a
+horrible shadow, fastened upon him, and, with a sort of gurgle and
+sudden check, he stretched his feet and threw his head back and gave up
+the ghost.
+
+They sewed him up in a saddle blanket. This was his shroud; too like a
+soldier's. Harold, meantime, had been tied to a tree, but was now
+released for the march. Colonel Conger pushed on immediately for
+Washington; the cortege was to follow. Booth's only arms were his
+carbine knife, and two revolvers. They found about him bills of
+exchange, Canada money, and a diary. A venerable old negro living in the
+vicinity had the misfortune to possess a horse. This horse was a relic
+of former generations, and showed by his protruding ribs the general
+leanness of the land. He moved in an eccentric amble, and when put upon
+his speed was generally run backward. To this old negro's horse was
+harnessed a very shaky and absurd wagon, which rattled like approaching
+dissolution, and each part of it ran without any connection or
+correspondence with any other part. It had no tail-board, and its shafts
+were sharp as famine; and into this mimicry of a vehicle the murderer
+was to be sent to the Potomac river, while the man he had murdered was
+moving in state across the mourning continent. The old negro geared up
+his wagon by means of a set of fossil harness, and when it was backed to
+Garrett's porch, they laid within it the discolored corpse. The corpse
+was tied with ropes around the legs and made fast to the wagon sides.
+Harold's legs were tied to stirrups, and he was placed in the centre of
+four murderous looking cavalrymen. The two sons of Garrett were also
+taken along, despite the sobs and petitions of the old folks and women,
+but the rebel captain who had given Booth a lift, got off amidst the
+night's agitations, and was not rearrested. So moved the cavalcade of
+retribution, with death in its midst, along the road to Port Royal. When
+the wagon started, Booth's wound till now scarcely dribbling, began to
+run anew. It fell through the crack of the wagon, dripping upon the
+axle, and spotting the road with terrible wafers. It stained the planks,
+and soaked the blankets; and the old negro, at a stoppage, dabbled his
+hands in it by mistake; he drew back instantly, with a shudder and
+stifled expletive, "Gor-r-r, dat'll never come off in de world; it's
+murderer's blood." He wrung his hands, and looked imploringly at the
+officers, and shuddered again: "Gor-r-r, I wouldn't have dat on me fur
+tousand, tousand dollars." The progress of the team was slow, with
+frequent danger of shipwreck altogether, but toward noon the cortege
+filed through Port Royal, where the citizens came out to ask the matter,
+and why a man's body, covered with sombre blankets, was going by with so
+great escort. They were told that it was a wounded confederate, and so
+held their tongues. The little ferry, again in requisition, took them
+over by squads, and they pushed from Port Conway to Bell Plain, which
+they reached in the middle of the afternoon. All the way the blood
+dribbled from the corpse in a slow, incessant, sanguine exudation. The
+old negro was niggardly dismissed with two paper dollars. The dead man
+untied and cast upon the vessel's dock, steam gotten up in a little
+while, and the broad Potomac shores saw this skeleton ship flit by, as
+the bloody sun threw gashes and blots of unhealthy light along the
+silver surface.
+
+All the way associate with the carcass, went Harold, shuddering in so
+grim companionship, and in the awakened fears of his own approaching.
+ordeal, beyond which it loomed already, the gossamer fabric of a
+scaffold. He tried to talk for his own exoneration, saying he had
+ridden, as was his wont, beyond the East Branch, and returning, found
+Booth wounded, who begged him to be his companion. Of his crime he knew
+nothing, so help him God, &c. But nobody listened to him. All interest
+of crime, courage, and retribution centered in the dead flesh at his
+feet. At Washington, high and low turned out to look on Booth. Only a
+few were permitted to see his corpse for purposes of recognition. It was
+fairly preserved, though on one side of the face distorted, and looking
+blue like death, and wildly bandit-like, as if beaten by avenging winds.
+
+Yesterday the Secretary of War, without instructions of any kind,
+committed to Colonel Lafayette C. Baker, of the secret service, the
+stark corpse of J. Wilkes Booth. The secret service never fulfilled its
+volition more secretively. "What have you done with the body?" said I to
+Baker. "That is known" he answered, "to only one man living besides
+myself. It is gone. I will not tell you where. The only man who knows is
+sworn to silence. Never till the great trumpeter comes shall the grave
+of Booth be discovered." And this is true. Last night, the 27th of
+April, a small row boat received the carcass of the murderer; two men
+were in it they carried the body off into the darkness, and out of that
+darkness it will never return. In the darkness, like his great crime,
+may it remain forever, impalpable, invisible, nondescript, condemned to
+that worse than damnation,--annihilation. The river-bottom may ooze
+about it laden with great shot and drowning manacles. The earth may have
+opened to give it that silence and forgiveness which man will never give
+its memory. The fishes may swim around it, or the daisies grow white
+above it; but we shall never know. Mysterious, incomprehensible,
+unattainable, like the dim times through which we live and think upon as
+if we only dreamed them in perturbed fever, the assassin of a nation's
+head rests somewhere in the elements, and that is all; but if the
+indignant seas or the profaned turf shall ever vomit his corpse from
+their recesses, and it receive humane or Christian burial from some who
+do not recognize it, let the last words those decaying lips ever uttered
+be carved above them with a dagger, to tell the history of a young and
+once promising life--useless! useless!
+
+
+
+
+LETTER V.
+
+A SOLUTION OF THE CONSPIRACY.
+
+[The annexed Letter, which has been cavilled at, as much as copied, is a
+rationale of the Conspiracy, combined from the Government's own
+officers. When it was written it was believed to be true: the evidence
+at the trial has confirmed much of it: I reprint it to show how men's
+ingenuities were at work to account for the conception and progress of
+the Plot.]
+
+
+Washington, May 2.
+
+Justice and fame are equally and simultaneously satisfied. The President
+is not yet in his sarcophagus, but all the conspirators against his
+life, with a minor exception or two, are in their prison cells waiting
+for the halter.
+
+The dark and bloody plot against a good ruler's life is now so fully
+unraveled that I may make it plain to you. There is nothing to be gained
+by further waiting; the trials are proceeding; the evidence is mountain
+high. Within a week the national scaffold will have done its work, and
+be laid away forever. This prompt and necessary justice will signal the
+last public assassination in America. Borgia, and Medici, and
+Brinvilliers, have left no descendants on this side of the world.
+
+The conspiracy was both the greatest and the smallest of our cycle.
+Narrowed in execution to a few, it was understood and connived at by a
+multitude. One man was its head and heart; its accessories were so
+numerous that the trouble is not whom to suspect, but whom not accuse.
+Damning as the result must be to the character of our race, it must be
+admitted, in the light of facts, that Americans are as secretive and as
+skillful plotters as any people in the world. The Rye House plot, never
+fully understood; the many schemes of Mazzini, never fastened upon him
+sufficiently well for implication, yield in extent, darkness and
+intricacy, to the republican plot against the President's life and those
+of his counselors. The police operations prove that the late murder as
+not a spasmodic and fitful crime, but long premeditated, and carried to
+consummation with as much cohesion and resolution as the murder of
+Allessandro de Medici or Henri Quatre.
+
+I have been accused of cannonizing Booth. Much as I denounce and
+deprecate his crime--holding him to be worthy of all execration, and so
+seeped in blood that the excuses of a century will fail to lift him out
+of the atmosphere of common felons--I still, at every new developement,
+stand farther back in surprise and terror at the wonderful resources and
+extraordinary influence of one whom I had learned to consider a mere
+Thespian, full of sound, fury, and assertion.
+
+Strange and anomalous as the facts may seem, John Wilkes Booth was the
+sole projector of the plot against the President which culminated in the
+taking of that good man's life. He had rolled under his tongue the sweet
+paragraphs of Shakspeare refering to Brutus, as had his father so well,
+that the old man named one son Junius Brutus, and the other John Wilkes,
+after the wild English agitator, until it became his ambition, like the
+wicked Lorenzino de Medici, to stake his life upon one stroke for fame,
+the murder of a ruler obnoxious to the South.
+
+That Wilkes Booth was a southern man from the first may be accounted for
+upon grounds, of interest as well as of sympathy. It is insidious to
+find no higher incentive than appreciation, but on the stage this is the
+first and last motive; and as Edwin Booth made his success in the North
+and remained steadfast, Wilkes Booth was most truly applauded in the
+South, and became rebel. A false emotion of gratitude, as well as an
+impulse of mingled waywardness and gratitude, set John Wilkes's face
+from the first toward the North, and he burned to make his name a part
+of history, cried into fame by the applauses of the South.
+
+He hung to his bloody suggestion with dogged inflexibility, maintaining
+only one axiom above all the rest--that whatever minor parts might be
+enacted--Casca, Cassius, or what not--he was to be the dramatic Brutus,
+excepting that assassin's negativeness. In other words, the idea was to
+be his own, as well us the crowning blow.
+
+Booth shrank at first from murder, until another and less dangerous
+resolution failed. This was no less than the capture of the President's
+body, and its detention or transportation to the South. I do not rely on
+this assertion upon his sealed letter, where he avows it; there has been
+found upon a street within the city limits, a house belonging to one
+Mrs. Greene; mined and furnished with underground apartments, manacles
+and all the accessories to private imprisonment. Here the President, and
+as many as could be gagged and conveyed away with him, were to be
+concealed in the event of failure to run them into the confederacy.
+Owing to his failure to group around him as many men as he desired,
+Booth abandoned the project of kidnapping; but the house was discovered
+last week, as represented, ready to be blown up at a moment's notice.
+
+It was at this time that Booth devised his triumphant route through the
+South. The dramatic element seems to have been never lacking in his
+design, and with all his base purposes he never failed to consider some
+subsequent notoriety to be enjoyed. He therefore shipped, before the end
+of 1864, his theatrical wardrobe from Canada to Nassau. After the
+commission of his crime he intended to reclaim it, and "star" through
+the South, drawing money as much by his crime as his abilities.
+
+When Booth began "on his own responsibility," to hunt for accomplices,
+he found his theory at fault. The bold men he had dreamed of refused to
+join him in the rash attempt at kidnapping the President, and were too
+conscientious to meditate murder. All those who presented themselves
+were military men, unwilling to be subordinate to a civilian, and a mere
+play-actor, and the mortified bravo found himself therefore compelled to
+sink to a petty rank in the plot, or to make use of base and despicable
+assistants. His vanity found it easier to compound with the second
+alternative than the first.
+
+Here began the first resolve, which, in its mere animal estate, we may
+name courage. Booth found that a tragedy in real life could no more be
+enacted without greasy-faced and knock-kneed supernumeraries than upon
+the mimic stage. Your "First Citizen," who swings a stave for Marc
+Antony, and drinks hard porter behind the flies is very like the bravo
+of real life, who murders between his cocktails at the nearest bar.
+Wilkes Booth had passed the ordeal of a garlicky green-room, and did not
+shrink from the broader and ranker green-room of real life. He assembled
+around him, one by one, the cut-throats at whom his soul would have
+revolted, except that he had become, by resolve, a cut-throat in
+himself.
+
+About this time certain gentlemen in Canada began to be unenviably
+known. I abstain from giving their names, because unaware of how far
+they seconded this crime, if at all. But they seconded as infamous
+things, such as cowardly raids from neutral territory into the states,
+bank robbings, lake pirating, city burning, counterfeiting, railway
+sundering, and the importation of yellow fever into peaceful and
+unoffending communities. I make no charges against those whom I do not
+know, but simply say that the confederate agents, Jacob Tompson, Larry
+McDonald, Clement Clay, and some others, had already accomplished enough
+villainy to make Wilkes Booth, on the first of the present year, believe
+that he had but to seek an interview with them.
+
+He visited the provinces once certainly, and three times it is believed,
+stopping in Montreal at St. Lawrence Hall, and banking four hundred and
+fifty-five dollars odd at the Ontario bank. This was his own money. I
+have myself seen his bank-book with the single entry of this amount. It
+was found in the room of Atzerott, at Kirkwood's Hotel. From this visit,
+whatever encouragement Booth received, he continued in systematic
+correspondence with one or more of those agents down to the commission
+of his crime. I dare not say how far each of these agents was
+implicated. My personal conviction is that they were neither loth to the
+murder nor astonished when it had been done. They had money with
+discretion from the confederacy, though acting at discretion and outside
+of responsibility, and always, at every wild adventure, they instructed
+their dupes that each man took his life in his hand on every incursion
+into the north. So Beale took his, raiding on the great lakes. So
+Kennedy took his, on a midnight bonfire-tramp into the metropolis. So
+took the St. Albans raiders their lives in their palms, dashing into a
+peaceful town. And if these agents entertained Wilkes Booth's suggestion
+at all they plainly told him that he carried his life in his dagger's
+edge, and could expect from them neither aid nor exculpation.
+
+Some one or all of these agents furnished Booth with a murderer. The
+fellow Wood or Payne, who stabbed Mr. Seward and was caught at Mrs.
+Surratt's house in Washington. He was one of three Kentucky brothers,
+all outlaws, and had himself, it is believed, accompanied one of his
+brothers, who is known to have been at St. Albans on the day of the
+bank-delivery. This Payne, besides being positively identified as the
+assassin of the Sewards, had no friends nor haunts in Washington. He was
+simply a dispatched murderer, and after the night of the crime, struck
+northward of the frontier, instead of southward in the company of Booth.
+The proof, of this will follow in the course of the article.
+
+While I assert that the Canadian agents knew Booth and patted his back,
+calling him, like Macbeth, the "prince of cut-throats," I am equally
+certain that Booth's project was unknown in Richmond. No word, nor
+written line, no clue of any sort has been found attaching Booth to the
+confederate authorities. The most that can be urged to meet preposterous
+claims of this sort is, that out of the rebellion grew the murder; which
+is like attributing the measles to the creation of man. But McDonald and
+his party had money at discretion, and under their control the vilest
+fellows on the continent. Their personal influence over those errant
+ones amounted to omnipotence. Most of the latter were young and sanguine
+people, like Beale and Booth; their plots were made up at St.
+Catharine's, Toronto, and Montreal, and they have maintained since the
+war began, rebel mail routes between Canada and Richmond, leading
+directly passed Washington.
+
+If Booth received no positive instructions, he was at any rate adjudged
+a man likely to be of use, and therefore introduced to the rebel
+agencies in and around Washington. Doubtless by direct letter, or verbal
+instruction, he received a password to the house of Mrs. Surratt.
+
+Half applauded, half rebuffed by the rebel agents in Canada, Booth's
+impressions of his visit were just those which would whet him soonest
+for the tragedy. His vanity had been fed by the assurance that success
+depended upon himself alone, and that as he had the responsibility he
+would absorb the fame; and the method of correspondence was of that
+dark and mysterious shape which powerfully operated upon his dramatic
+temperament.
+
+What could please an actor, and the son of an actor, better than to
+mingle as a principal in a real conspiracy, the aims of which were
+pseudo-patriotic, and the end so astounding that at its coming the whole
+globe would reel. Booth reasoned that the ancient world would not feel
+more sensitively the death of Julius Cæsar than the new the sudden
+taking off of Abraham Lincoln.
+
+And so he grew into the idea of murder. It became his business thought.
+It was his recreation and his study. He had not worked half so hard for
+histrionic success as for his terrible graduation into an assassin. He
+had fought often on the boards, and seen men die in well-imitated
+horror, with flowing blood upon his keen sword's edge, and the strong
+stride of mimic victory with which he flourished his weapon at the
+closing of the curtain. He embraced conspiracy like an old diplomatist,
+and found in the woman and the spot subjects for emulation.
+
+Southeast of Washington stretches a tapering peninsula, composed of four
+fertile counties, which at the remote tip make Point Lookout, and do not
+contain any town within them of more than a few hundred inhabitants.
+Tobacco has ruined the land of these, and slavery has ruined the people.
+Yet in the beginning they were of that splendid stock of Calvert and
+Lord Baltimore, but retain to-day only the religion of the peaceful
+founder. I mention it is an exceptional and remarkable fact, that every
+conspirator in custody is by education a Catholic. These are our most
+loyal citizens elsewhere, but the western shore of Maryland is a noxious
+and pestilential place for patriotism. The county immediately outside of
+the District of Columbia, to the south, is named Prince Gorgia's and the
+pleasantest village of this county, close to Washington, is called
+Surrattsville. This consists of a few cabins at a cross-road,
+surrounding a fine old hotel, the master whereof, giving the settlement
+his name, left the property to his wife, who for a long time carried it
+on with indifferent success. Having a son and several daughters, she
+moved to Washington soon after the beginning of the war and let the
+tavern to a trusty friend--one John Lloyd. Surrattsville has gained
+nothing in patronage or business from the war, except that it became at
+an early date, a rebel postoffice. The great secret mail from Matthias
+Creek, Virginia, to Port Tobacco, struck Surrattsville, and thence
+headed off to the east to Washington, going meanderingly north. Of this
+poet route Mrs. Surratt was a manageress; and John Lloyd, when he rented
+her hotel, assumed the responsibility of looking out for the mail, as
+well the duty of making Mrs. Surratt at home when she chose to visit
+him.
+
+So Surrattsville only ten miles from Washington, has been throughout the
+war a sect of conspiracy. It was like a suburb of Richmond, reaching
+quite up to the rival capital; and though the few Unionists on the
+peninsula knew its reputation well enough, nothing of the sort came out
+until the murder.
+
+Treason never found a better agent than Mrs. Surratt. She is a large,
+masculine, self-possessed female, mistress of her house, and as lithe a
+rebel as Belle Boyd or Mrs. Greenhough. She has not the flippantry and
+menace of the first, nor the social power of the second; but the
+rebellion has found no fitter agent.
+
+At her country tavern and Washington home Booth was made welcome, and
+there began the muttered murder against the nation and mankind.
+
+The acquaintance of Mrs. Surratt in Lower Maryland undoubtedly suggested
+to Booth the route of escape, and made him known to his subsequent
+accomplices. Last fall he visited the entire region, as far as
+Leonardstown, in St. Mary's county, professing to be in search of land
+but really hunting up confederates upon whom he could depend. At this
+time he bought a map, a fellow to which I have seen among Atzerott's
+effects, published at Buffalo for the rebel government, and marking at
+hap-hazard all the Maryland villages, but without tracing the highroads
+at all. The absence of these roads, it will be seen hereafter, very
+nearly misled Booth during his crippled flight.
+
+It could not but have struck Booth that this isolated part of Maryland
+ignorant and rebel to the brim, without telegraph or railways, or direct
+stage routes, belted with swamps and broken by dense timber, afforded
+extraordinary opportunities for shelter and escape. Only the coast
+survey had any adequate map of it; it was _ultima thule_ to all intents,
+and treason might subsist in welcome upon it for a thousand years.
+
+When Booth cast around him for assistance, he naturally selected those
+men whom he could control. The first that recommended himself was one
+Harold, a youth of inane and plastic character, carried away by the
+example of an actor, and full of execrable quotations, going to show
+that he was an imitator of the master spirit both in text and
+admiration. This Harold was a gunner, and therefore versed in arms; he
+had traversed the whole lower portion of Maryland, and was therefore a
+geographer as well as a tool. His friends lived at every farmhouse
+between Washington and Leonardsville, and he was respectably enough
+connected, so as to make his association creditable as well as useful.
+
+Harold, whose picture I have seen, is a dull-faced, shallow boy,
+smooth-haired, and provincial; he had no money nor employment, except
+that he clerked for a druggist a while, until he knew Wilkes Booth, who
+looked at him only once, and bought his soul for a smile. Harold was
+infatuated by Booth as a woman by a soldier. He copied his gait and
+tone, adopted his opinions, and was unhappy out of his society. Booth
+gave him money, mysteriously obtained, and together they made the
+acquaintance of young John Surratt, son of the conspiratress.
+
+Young Surratt does not appear to have been a puissant spirit in the
+scheme; indeed, all design and influence therein was absorbed by Mrs.
+Surratt and Booth. The latter was the head and heart of the plot; Mrs.
+Surratt was his anchor, and the rest of the boys were disciples to
+Iscariot and Jezebel. John Surratt, a youth of strong Southern
+physiognomy, beardless and lanky, knew of the murder and connived at it.
+"Sam" Arnold and one McLaughlin were to have been parties to it, but
+backed out in the end. They all relied upon Mrs. Surratt, and took their
+"cues" from Wilkes Booth.
+
+The conspiracy had its own time and kept its own counsel. Murder except
+among the principals, was seldom mentioned except by genteel
+implication. But they all publicly agreed that Mr. Lincoln ought to be
+shot, and that the North was a race of fratricides. Much was said of
+Brutus, and Booth repeated heroic passages to the delight of Harold, who
+learned them also, and wondered if he was not born to greatness.
+
+In this growing darkness, where all rehearsed cold-hearted murder,
+Wilkes Booth grew great of stature. He had found a purpose consonant
+with his evil nature and bad influence over weak men; so he grew
+moodier, more vigilant, more plausible. By mien and temperament he was
+born to handle a stiletto. We have no face so markedly Italian; it would
+stand for Caesar Borgia any day in the year. All the rest were swayed or
+persuaded by Booth; his schemes were three in order:
+
+1st. To kidnap the President and Cabinet, and run them South or blow
+them up.
+
+2d. Kidnapping failed, to murder the President and the rest and seek
+shelter in the confederate capital.
+
+3d. The rebellion failed, to be its avenger, and throw the country into
+consternation, while he escaped by the unfrequented parts of Maryland.
+
+When this last resolution had been made, the plot was both contracted
+and extended. There were made two distinct circles of confidants--those
+aware of the meditated murder, and those who might shrink from murder,
+though willing accessories for a lesser object. Two colleagues for blood
+were at once accepted--Payne and Atzerott.
+
+The former I have sketched; he is believed to have visited Washington
+once before, at Booth's citation; for the murder was at first fixed for
+the day of inauguration. Atzerott was a fellow of German descent, who
+had led a desperate life at Port Tobacco, where he was a house-painter.
+He had been a blockade-runner across the Potomac, and a mail-carrier.
+When Booth and Mrs. Surratt broke the design to him, with a suggestion
+that there was wealth in it, he embraced the offer at once, and bought a
+dirk and pistol. Payne also came from the North to Washington, and, as
+fate would have it, the President was announced to appear at Ford's
+theater in public. There the resolve of blood was reduced to a definite
+moment.
+
+On the night before the crime Booth found on whom he could rely. John
+Surratt was sent northward by his mother on Thursday. Sam Arnold and
+McLaughlin, each of whom was to kill a cabinet officer, grew
+pigeon-livered and ran away. Harold true to his partiality, lingered
+around Booth to the end; Atzerott went so far as to take his knife and
+pistol to Kirkwood's, where President Johnson was stopping, and hid them
+under the bed. But either his courage failed, or a trifling accident
+deranged his plan. But Payne, a professional murderer, stood "game," and
+fought his way over prostrate figures to his sick victim's bed. There
+was great confusion and terror among the tacit and rash conspirators on
+Thursday night. They had looked upon the plot as of a melodrama, and
+found to their horror that John Wilkes Booth meant to do murder.
+
+Six weeks before the murder, young John Surratt had taken two splendid
+repeating carbines to Surrattville and told John Lloyd to secret them.
+
+The latter made a hole in the wainscotting and suspended them from
+strings, so that they fell within the plastered wall of the room below.
+On the very afternoon of the murder, Mrs. Surratt was driven to
+Surrattsville, and she told John Lloyd to have the carbines ready
+because they would be called for that night. Harold was made
+quartermaster, and hired the horses. He and Atzerott were mounted
+between 8 o'clock and the time of the murder, and riding about the
+streets together.
+
+The whole party was prepared for a long ride, as their spurs and
+gauntlets show. It may have been their design to ride in company to the
+Lower Potomac, and by their numbers exact subsistence and
+transportation; but all edifices of murder lack a corner stone. We only
+know that Booth ate and talked well during the day; that he never seemed
+so deeply involved in 'oil,' and that there is a hiatus between his
+supper here and his appearance at Ford's theater.
+
+Lloyd, I may interpolate, ordered his wife a few days before the murder
+to go on a visit to Allen's Fresh. She says she does not know why she
+was so sent away, but swears that it is so. Harold, three weeks before
+the murder, visited Port Tobacco, and said that the next time the boys
+heard of him he would be in Spain; he added that with Spain there was no
+extradition treaty. He said at Surrattsville that he meant to make a
+barrel of money, or his neck would stretch.
+
+Atzerott said that if he ever came to Port Tobacco again he would be
+rich enough to buy the whole place.
+
+Wilkes Booth told a friend to go to Ford's on Friday night and see the
+best acting in the world.
+
+At Ford's theater, on Friday night, there were many standers in the
+neighborhood of the door, and along the dress circle in the direction of
+the private box where the President sat.
+
+The play went on pleasantly, though Mr. Wilkes Booth an observer of the
+audience, visited the stage and took note of the positions. His alleged
+associate, the stage carpenter, then received quiet orders to clear the
+passage by the wings from the prompter's post to the stage door. All
+this time, Mr. Lincoln, in his family circle, unconscious of the death
+that crowded fast upon him, watched the pleasantry and smiled and felt
+heartful of gentleness.
+
+Suddenly there was a murmur near the audience door, as of a man speaking
+above his bound. He said:
+
+"Nine o'clock and forty-five minutes!"
+
+These words were reiterated from mouth to mouth until they passed the
+theater door, and were heard upon the sidewalk.
+
+Directly a voice cried, in the same slightly-raised monotone:
+
+"Nine o'clock and fifty minutes!"
+
+This also passed from man to man, until it touched the street like a
+shudder.
+
+"Nine o'clock and fifty-five minutes!" said the same relentless voice,
+after the next interval, each of which narrowed to a lesser span the
+life of the good President.
+
+Ten o'clock here sounded, and conspiring echo said in reverberation:
+
+"Ten o'clock!"
+
+So like a creeping thing, from lip to lip, went:
+
+"Ten o'clock and five minutes."
+
+(An interval.)
+
+"Ten o'clock and ten minutes!"
+
+At this instant Wilkes Booth appeared in the door of the theater, and
+the men who had repeated the time so faithfully and so ominously
+scattered at his coming, as at some warning phantom. Fifteen minutes
+afterwards the telegraph wires were cut.
+
+All this is so dramatic that I fear to excite a laugh when I write it.
+But it is true and proven, and I do not say it but report it.
+
+All evil deeds go wrong. While the click of the pistol, taking the
+President's life, went like a pang through the theater, Payne was
+spilling blood in Mr. Seward's house from threshold to sick chamber. But
+Booth's broken leg delayed him or made him lose his general calmness and
+he and Harold left Payne no to his fate.
+
+I have not adverted to the hole bored with a gimlet in the entry door of
+Mr. Lincoln's box, and cut out with a penknife. The theory that the
+pistol-ball of Booth passed through this hole is exploded. And the stage
+carpenter may have to answer for this little orifice with all his neck.
+For when Booth leaped from the box he strode straight across the stage
+by the footlights, reaching the prompter's post, which is immediately
+behind that private box opposite Mr. Lincoln. From this box to the stage
+door in the rear, the passage-way leads behind the ends of the scenes,
+and if generally either closest up by one or more withdrawn scenes, or
+so narrow that only by doubling and turning sidewise can one pass along.
+On this fearful night, however, the scenes were so adjusted to the
+murderer's design that he had a free aisle from the foot of the stage to
+the exit door.
+
+Within fifteen minutes after the murder the wires were severed entirely
+around the city, excepting only a secret wire for government uses, which
+leads to Old Point. I am told that by this wire the government reached
+the fortifications around Washington, first telegraphing all the way to
+Old Point, and then back to the outlying forts. This information comes
+to me from so many creditable channels that I must concede it.
+
+Payne, having, as he thought, made an end of Mr. Seward--which would
+have been the case but for Robinson, the nurse--mounted his horse, and
+attempted to find. Booth. But the town was in alarm, and he galloped at
+once for the open country, taking as he imagined, the proper road for
+the East Branch. He rode at a killing pace, and when near Fort Lincoln,
+on the Baltimore pike, his horse threw him headlong. Afoot and
+bewildered, he resolved to return to the city, whose lights he could
+plainly see; but before doing so ho concealed himself some time, and
+made some almost absurd efforts to disguise himself. Cutting a cross
+section from the woolen undershirt which covered his muscular arm, he
+made a rude cap of it, and threw away his bloody coat. This has since
+been found in the woods, and blood has been found also on his bosom and
+sleeves. He also spattered himself plentifully with mud and clay, and,
+taking an abandoned pick from the deserted intrenchments near by, he
+struck at once for Washington.
+
+By the providence which always attends murder, he reached Mrs. Surratt's
+door just as the officers of the government were arresting her. They
+seized Payne at once, who had an awkward lie to urge in his
+defense--that he had come there to dig a trench. That night he dug a
+trench deep and broad enough for both of them to lie in forever. They
+washed his hands, and found them soft and womanish; his pockets
+contained tooth and nail brushes and a delicate pocket knife. All this
+apparel consorted ill with his assumed character. He is, without doubt,
+Mr. Seward's attempted murderer.
+
+Coarse, and hard, and calm, Mrs. Surratt shut up her house after the
+murder, and waited with her daughters till the officers came. She was
+imperturbable, and rebuked her girls for weeping, and would have gone to
+jail like a statue, but that in her extremity, Payne knocked at her
+door. He had come, he said, to dig a ditch for Mrs. Surratt, whom he
+very well knew. But Mrs. Surratt protested that she had ever seen the
+man at all, and had no ditch to clean.
+
+"How fortunate, girls," she said, "that these officers are here; this
+man might have murdered us all."
+
+Her effrontery stamps her as worthy of companionship with Booth. Payne
+has been identified by a lodger of Mrs. Surratt's, as having twice
+visited the house under the name of Wood. The girls will render valuable
+testimony in the trial. If John Surratt were in custody the links would
+be complete.
+
+Atzerott had a room almost directly over Vice-President Johnson's. He
+had all the materials to do murder, but lost spirit or opportunity. He
+ran away so hastily that all his arms and baggage were discovered; a
+tremendous bowie-knife and a Colt's cavalry revolver were found between
+the mattresses of his bed. Booth's coat was also found there, showing
+conspired flight in company, and in it three boxes of cartridges, a map
+of Maryland, gauntlet for riding, a spur and a handkerchief marked with
+the name of Booth's mother--a mother's souvenir for a murderer's pocket!
+
+Atzerott fled alone, and was found at the house of his uncle in
+Montgomery county. I do not know that any instrument of murder has ever
+made me thrill as when I drew this terrible bowie-knife from its sheath.
+Major O'Bierne, of New-York, was the instigator of Atzerott's discovery
+and arrest.
+
+I come now to the ride out of the city by the chief assassin and his
+dupe. Harold met Booth immediately after the crime in the next street,
+and they rode at a gallop past the Patent Office and over Capitol Hill.
+
+As they crossed the Eastern branch at Uniontown, Booth gave his proper
+name to the officer at the bridge. This, which would seem to have been
+foolish, was, in reality, very shrewd. The officers believed that one of
+Booth's accomplices had given this name in order to put them out of the
+real Booth's track. So they made efforts elsewhere, and so Booth got a
+start. At midnight, precisely, the two horsemen stopped at
+Surrattsville, Booth remaining on his nag while Harold descended and
+knocked lustily at the door. Lloyd, the landlord, came down at once,
+when Harold pushed past him into the bar, and obtained a bottle of
+whiskey, some of which he gave to Booth immediately. While Booth was
+drinking, Harold went up stairs and brought down one of the carbines.
+Lloyd started to get the other, but Harold said:
+
+"We don't want it; Booth has broken his leg and can't carry it."
+
+So the second carbine remained in the hall, where the officers afterward
+found it.
+
+As the two horsemen started to go off, Booth cried out to Lloyd:
+
+"Do you want to hear some news?"
+
+"I don't care much about it," cried Lloyd, by his own account.
+
+"We have murdered," said Booth, "the President and Secretary of State!"
+
+And with this horrible confession, Booth and Harold dashed away in the
+midnight, across Prince George's county.
+
+On Saturday, before sunrise, Booth and Harold, who had ridden all night
+without stopping elsewhere, reached the house of Dr. Mudd, three miles
+from Bryantown. They contracted with him for twenty-five dollars in
+greenbacks to set the broken leg. Harold, who knew Dr. Mudd, introduced
+Booth under another name, and stated that he had fallen from his horse
+during the night. The doctor remarked of Booth that he draped the lower
+part of his face while the leg was being set; he was silent, and in
+pain. Having no splits in the house, they split up an old-fashioned
+wooden band-box and prepared them. The doctor was assisted by an
+Englishman, who at the same time began to hew out a pair of crutches.
+The inferior bone of the left leg was broken vertically across, and
+because vertically it did not yield when the crippled man walked upon
+it.
+
+The riding boot of Booth had to be cut from his foot; within were the
+words "J. Wilkes." The doctor says he did not notice these, but that
+visual defect may cost him his neck. The two men waited around the house
+all day, but toward evening they slipped their horses from the stable
+and rode away in the direction of Allen's Fresh.
+
+Below Bryantown run certain deep and slimy swamps, along the belt of
+these Booth and Harold picked up a negro named Swan, who volunteered to
+show them the road for two dollars; they gave him five more to show them
+the route to Allen's Fresh, but really wished, as their actions
+intimated, to gain the house of one Sam. Coxe, a notorious rebel, and
+probably well advised of the plot. They reached the house at midnight.
+It is a fine dwelling, one of the best in Maryland. And after hallooing
+for some time, Coxe came down to the door himself. As soon as he opened
+it and beheld who the strangers were, he instantly blew out a candle he
+held in his hand, and without a word pulled them into the house, the
+negro remaining in the yard. The confederates remained in Coxe's house
+till 4 A. M., during which time, the negro saw them drink and eat
+heartily; but when they reappeared they spoke in a loud tone, so that
+Swan could hear them, against the hospitality of Coxe. All this was
+meant to influence the darkey; but their motives were as apparent as
+their words. He conducted them three miles further on, when they told
+him that now they knew the way, and giving him five dollars more--making
+twelve in all--told him to go back.
+
+But when the negro, in the dusk of the morning, looked after them as he
+receded, he saw that both horses' heads were turned once more toward
+Coxe's, and it was this man, doubtless, who harbored the fugitives from
+Sunday to Thursday, aided, possibly, by such neighbors as the Wilsons
+and Adamses.
+
+At the point where Booth crossed the Potomac the shores are very
+shallow, and one must wade out some distance to where a boat will float.
+A white man came up here with a canoe on Friday, and tied it by a stone
+anchor. Between seven and eight o'clock it disappeared, and in the
+afternoon some men at work in Virginia, saw Booth and Harold land, tie
+the boat's rope to a stone, and fling it ashore, and strike at once
+across a ploughed field for King George Court House. Many folks
+entertained them without doubt, but we positively hear of them next at
+Port Royal Ferry, and then at Garrett's farm.
+
+I close this article with a list of all who were at Garrett's farm on
+the death of Booth.
+
+    1. E. J. Conger, \ Detectives.
+    2. Lieut. Baker, /
+    3. Surgeon from Port Royal,
+    4. Four Garrett daughters.
+    5. Harold, Booth's accomplice,
+
+_Soldiers_.--Company H, Sixteenth New-York Volunteer Cavalry, Lieutenant
+Ed. P. Doherty commanding: Corporals A. Neugarten, J. Waly, M. Hornsby:
+Privates J. Mellington, D. Darker, E. Parelays, W. Mockgart;
+Corporals--Zimmer (Co. C), M. Taenaek; Privates H. Pardman, J. Meiyers,
+W. Burnn, F. Meekdank, G. Haich, J. Raien, J. Kelly, J. Samger (Co. M),
+G. Zeichton,--Steinbury, L. Sweech (Co. A), A. Sweech (Co. H), F.
+Diacts; Sergeant Wandell; Corporals Lannekey, Winacky; Sergeant Corbett
+(Co. L).
+
+Sergeant Corbett, who shot Booth, was the only man of the command
+belonging to the same company with Lieutenant Doherty, Commandant.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER VI.
+
+THE DETECTIVES' STORIES.
+
+
+Washington, May 2--P. M.
+
+The police resources of the country have been fairly tested during the
+past two weeks. Under the circumstances, the shrewdness and energy of
+both municipal and national detectives have been proven good. The latter
+body has had a too partial share of the applause thus far, while the
+great efforts of our New-York and other officers have been overlooked.
+In the crowning success of Doherty, Conger, and Baker on the Virginia
+side of the water we have forgotten the as vigorous and better sustained
+pursuit on the Maryland side.
+
+Yet the Secretary of War has thanked all concerned, especially referring
+to many excellent leaders in the long hunt through Charles and St.
+Mary's counties. Here the military and civil forces together amounted to
+quite a small army, and constituted by far the largest police
+organization ever known on this side of the Atlantic.
+
+I think the adventures and expedients of these public servants worthy of
+a column. It would be out of all proportion to pass them by when we
+devote a dozen lines to every petty larceny and shoplifting.
+
+On the Friday night of the murder the departments were absolutely
+paralyzed. The murderers had three good hours for escape; they had
+evaded the pursuit of lightning by snapping the telegraph wires, and
+rumor filled the town with so many reports that the first valuable
+hours, which should have been used to follow hard after them, were
+consumed in feverish efforts to know the real extent of the
+assassination.
+
+Immediately afterwards, however, or on Saturday morning early, the
+provost and special police force got on the scent, and military in
+squads were dispatched close upon their heels.
+
+Three grand pursuits wore organized: one reaching up the north bank of
+the Potomac toward Chain bridge, to prevent escape by that direction
+into Virginia, where Mosby, it was suspected, waited to hail the
+murderers;
+
+A second starting from Richmond, Va., northward, forming a broad
+advancing picket or skirmish line between the Blue Ridge and the broad
+sea-running streams;
+
+A third to scour the peninsula towards Point Lookout.
+
+The latter region became the only one well examined; the northern
+expedition failed until advised from below to capture Atzerott, and
+failed, to capture Payne. Yet there were cogent probabilities that the
+assassin had taken this route; far Mosby would have given them the right
+hand of fellowship.
+
+When that guerrilla heard of Booth's feat, said Captain Jett, he
+exclaimed:
+
+"Now, by----! I could take that man in my arms."
+
+Washington, as a precautionary measure, was doubly picketed at once; the
+authorities in all northern towns advised of the personnel of the
+murderer, and requests made of the detective chiefs in Baltimore,
+Philadelphia, and New-York, to forward to Washington without delay their
+best decoys.
+
+A court of inquiry was organized on the moment, and early in the week
+succeeding rewards were offered. An individual, and not the government,
+offered the first rewards.
+
+There were two men without whom the hunt would have gone astray many
+times.
+
+John S. Young, chief of the New-York detective force, a powerful and
+resolute man, whose great weight and strength are matched by boundless
+energy, and both subordinate to a head as clear as the keen and
+searching warrant of his eye. This man has been in familiar converse
+with every rebel agent in the Canadas, and is feared by them as they
+fear the fates of Beall and Kennedy. Without being a sensationist, he
+has probably rendered the cleverest services of the war to the general
+government. They sent for him immediately after the tragedy, and he
+stopped on the way for his old police companion, Marshal Murray. The
+latter's face and figure are familiar to all who know New-York; he
+resembles an admiral on his quarter-deck; he is a detective of fair and
+excellent repute, and has a somewhat novel pride in what he calls "the
+most beautiful gallows in the United States."
+
+These officials were ordered to visit Colonel Ingraham's office and
+examine the little evidence on hand. They and their tried officers
+formed a junction on Sunday afternoon with the large detective force of
+Provost-Marshal Major O'Bierne. The latter commands the District of
+Columbia civil and military police. He is a New-Yorker and has been shot
+through the body in the field.
+
+The detective force of Young and Murray consisted of Officers Radford,
+Kelso, Elder, and Hoey, of New-York; Deputy-Marshal Newcome, formerly of
+THE WORLD'S city staff; Officers Joseph Pierson and West, of Baltimore.
+
+Major O'Bierne's immediate aids were Detectives John Lee, Lloyd,
+Gavigan, Coddingham, and Williams.
+
+A detachment of the Philadelphia detective police, force--Officers
+Taggert, George Smith, and Carlin, reporting to Colonel Baker--went in
+the direction of the North Pole; everybody is on the _que vive_ for
+them.
+
+To the provost-marshal of Baltimore, MacPhail, who knew the tone and
+bearing of the country throughout, was joined the zealous co-operation
+of Officer Lloyd, of Major O'Bierne's staff, who had a personal feeling
+against the secessionists of lower Maryland; they had once driven him
+away for his loyalty, and had reserved their hospitality for assassins.
+
+Lieutenant Commander Gushing, I am informed, also rendered important
+services to the government in connection with the police operations.
+Volunteer detectives, such as Ex-Marshal Lewis and Angelis, were
+plentiful; it is probable that in the pitch of the excitement five
+hundred detective officers were in and around Washington city. At the
+same time the secret police of Richmond abandoned their ordinary
+business, and devoted themselves solely to this overshadowing offense.
+
+No citizen, in these terrible days, knows what eyes were upon him as he
+talked and walked, nor how his stature and guise were keenly scanned by
+folks who passed him absent-faced, yet with his mental portrait
+carefully turned over, the while some invisible hand clutched a
+revolver, and held a life or death challenge upon his lips.
+
+The military forces were commanded by Colonel Welles, of the Twenty
+sixth Michigan regiment, whose activity and zeal were amply sustained by
+Colonel Clendenning, of the Eighth Illinois cavalry, probably the finest
+body of horse in the service.
+
+The first party to take the South Maryland road was dispatched by Major
+O'Bierne, and commanded by Lieutenant Lovett, of the Veteran Reserves.
+It consisted of twenty-five cavalry men, with detectives Cottingham,
+Lloyd, and Gavigan; these latter, with the lieutenant, kept well in
+advance. They made inquiries of a soothing and cautious character, but
+saw nothing suspicious until they arrived at Piscataway, where an
+unknown man, some distance ahead, observed them, and took to the woods.
+This was on Sunday night, forty hours after the murder.
+
+Guided by Officer Lloyd, the little band dashed on, arriving at
+Bryantown on Tuesday. Here they arrested John Lloyd, of the hotel at
+Surrattsville, of whom they had previously inquired for the murderers,
+and he had said positively that he neither knew them nor had seen
+anybody whatever on the night of the crime. He was returning in a wagon,
+with his wife, whom he had ordered, the day before, to go on a visit to
+Allen's Fresh, The Monday afterward he started to bring her back. This
+woman, frightened at the arrest, acknowledged at once that in her
+husband's conduct there was some inexplicable mystery. He was taciturn
+and defiant as before, until confronted by some of his old Union
+neighbors.
+
+The few Unionists of Prince George's and Charles counties, long
+persecuted and intimidated, now came forward and gave important
+testimony.
+
+Among these was one Roby, a very fat and very zealous old gentleman,
+whose professions were as ample as his perspiration. He told the
+officers of the secret meetings for conspiracy's, sake at Lloyd's Hotel,
+and although a very John Gilpin on horseback, rode here and there to his
+great loss of wind and repose, fastening fire-coals upon the guilty or
+suspected.
+
+Lloyd was turned over to Mr. Cottingham, who had established a jail at
+Robytown; that night his house was searched, and Booth's carbine found
+hidden in the wall. Three days afterward, Lloyd himself confessed--and
+his neck is quite nervous at this writing.
+
+This little party, under the untiring Lovett, examined all the
+farm-houses below Washington resorting to many shrewd expedients, and
+taking note of the great swamps to the east of Port Tobacco; they
+reached Newport at last and fastened tacit guilt upon many residents.
+
+Beyond Bryantown they overhauled the residence of Doctor Mudd and found
+Booth's boot. This was before Lloyd confessed, and was the first
+positive trace the officers had that they were really close upon the
+assassins.
+
+I do not recall anything more wild and startling than this vague and
+dangerous exploration of a dimly known, hostile, and ignorant country.
+To these few detectives we owe much of the subsequent successful
+prosecution of the pursuit. They were the Hebrew spies.
+
+By this time the country was filling up with soldiers, but previously a
+second memorable detective party went out under the personal command of
+Major O'Bierne. It consisted, besides that officer, of Lee, D'Angellia,
+Callahan, Hoey, Bostwick, Hanover, Bevins, and McHenry, and embarked at
+Washington on a steam-tug for Chappell's Point. Here a military station
+had long been established for the prevention of blockade and
+mail-running across the Potomao. It was commanded by Lieutenant Laverty,
+and garrisoned by sixty-five men. On Tuesday night, Major O'Bierne's
+party reached this place, and soon afterwards, a telegraph station was
+established here by an invaluable man to the expedition, Captain
+Beckwith, General Grant's chief cypher operator, who tapped the Point
+Lookout wire, and placed the War Department within a moment's reach of
+the theater of events.
+
+Major O'Bierne's party started at once over the worst road in the world
+for Port Tobacco.
+
+If any place in the world is utterly given over to depravity, it is Port
+Tobacco. From this town, by a sinuous creek, there is flat boat
+navigation to the Potomac, and across that river to Mattox's creek.
+Before the war Port Tobacco was the seat of a tobacco aristocracy and a
+haunt of negro traders. It passed very naturally into a rebel post for
+blockade-runners and a rebel post-office general. Gambling, corner
+fighting, and shooting matches were its lyceum education. Violence and
+ignorance had every suffrage in the town. Its people were smugglers, to
+all intents, and there was neither Bible nor geography to the whole
+region adjacent. Assassination was never very unpopular at Port Tobacco,
+and when its victim was a northern president it became quite heroic. A
+month before the murder a provost-marshal near by was slain in his
+bed-chamber. For such a town and district the detective police were the
+only effective missionaries. The hotel here is called the Brawner House;
+it has a bar in the nethermost cellar, and its patrons, carousing in
+that imperfect light, look like the denizens of some burglar's crib,
+talking robbery between their cups; its dining-room is dark and
+tumble-down, and the _cuisine_ bears traces of Caffir origin; a barbecue
+is nothing to a dinner there. The Court House of Port Tobacco is the
+most superflous house in the place, except the church. It stands in the
+center of the town in a square, and the dwellings lie about it closely,
+as if to throttle justice. Five hundred people exist in Port Tobacco;
+life there reminds me, in connection with the slimy river and the
+adjacent swamps, of the great reptile period of the world, when
+iguanadons and pterodactyls and pleosauri ate each other.
+
+Into this abstract of Gomorrah the few detectives went like angels who
+visited Lot. They pretended to be enquiring for friends, or to have
+business designs, and the first people they heard of were Harold and
+Atzerott. The latter had visited Port Tobacco three weeks before the
+murder, and intimated at that time his design of fleeing the country.
+But everybody denied having seen him subsequent to the crime.
+
+Atzerott had been in town just prior to the crime. He had been living
+with a widow woman named Mrs. Wheeler, by whom he had several children,
+and she was immediately called upon by Major O'Bierne. He did not tell
+her what Atzerott had done, but vaguely hinted that he had committed
+some terrible crime, and that since he had done her wrong, she could
+vindicate both herself and justice by telling his whereabouts. The woman
+admitted that Atzerott had been her bane, but she loved him, and refused
+to betray him.
+
+His trunk was found in her garret, and in it the key to his paint shop
+in Port Tobacco. The latter was fruitlessly searched, but the probable
+whereabouts of Atzerott in Mongomery county obtained, and Major O'Bierne
+telegraphing there immediately, the desperate fellow was found and
+locked up. A man named Crangle who had succeeded Atzerott in Mrs.
+Wheeler's pliable affections, was arrested at once and put in jail. A
+number of disloyal people were indicated or "spotted" as in no wise
+angry at the President's taking off, and for all such a provost prison
+was established.
+
+[Illustration: Maryland.]
+
+A few miles from Port Tobacco dwelt a solitary woman, who, when
+questioned, said that for many nights she had heard, after she had
+retired to bed, a man enter her cellar and lie there all night,
+departing before dawn. Major O'Bierne and the detectives ordered her to
+place a lamp in her window the next night she heard him enter, and at
+dark they established a cordon of armed officers around the place. At
+midnight punctually she exhibited the light, when the officers broke
+into the house and thoroughly searched it, without result. Yet the woman
+positively asserted that she had heard the man enter.
+
+It was afterward found that she was of diseased mind.
+
+By this time the military had come up in considerable numbers, and Major
+O'Bierne was enabled to confer with Major Wait, of the Eighth Illinois.
+
+The major had pushed on Monday night to Leonardstown, and pretty well
+overhauled that locality.
+
+It was at this time that preparations were made to hunt the swamps
+around Chapmantown, Beantown, and Allen's Fresh. Booth had been entirely
+lost since his departure from Mudd's house, and it was believed that he
+had either pushed on for the Potomac or taken to the swamps. The
+officers sagaciously determined to follow him to the one and to explore
+the other.
+
+The swamps tributary to the various branches of the Wicomico river, of
+which the chief feeder is Allen's creek, bear various names, such as
+Jordan's swamp, Atchall's swamp, and Scrub swamp. There are dense
+growths of dogwood, gum, and beech, planted in sluices of water and bog;
+and their width varies from a half mile to four miles, while their
+length is upwards of sixteen miles. Frequent deep ponds dot this
+wilderness place, with here and there a stretch of dry soil, but no
+human being inhabits the malarious extent; even a hunted murderer would
+shrink from hiding there. Serpents and slimy lizards are the only
+denizens; sometimes the coon takes refuge in this desert from the
+hounds, and in the soil mud a thousand odorous muskrats delve, with now
+and then a tremorous otter. But not even the hunted negro dares to
+fathom the treacherous clay, nor make himself a fellow of the slimy
+reptiles which reign absolute in this terrible solitude. Here the
+soldiers prepared to seek for the President's assassin, and no search of
+the kind has ever been so thorough and patient. The Shawnee, in his
+strong hold of despair in the heart of Okeefeuokee, would scarcely have
+changed homes with Wilkes Booth and David Harold, hiding in this inhuman
+country.
+
+The military forces deputed to pursue the fugitives were seven hundred
+men of the Eighth Illinois cavalry, six hundred men of the Twenty-second
+Colored troops, and one hundred men of the Sixteenth New York. These
+swept the swamps by detachments, the mass of them dismounted, with
+cavalry at the belts of clearing, interspersed with detectives at
+frequent intervals in the rear. They first formed a strong picket cordon
+entirely around the swamps, and then, drawn up in two orders of battle,
+advanced boldly into the bogs by two lines of march. One party swept the
+swamps longitudinally, the other pushed straight across their smallest
+diameter.
+
+A similar march has not been made during the war; the soldiers were only
+a few paces apart, and in steady order they took the ground as it came,
+now plunging to their arm-pits in foul sluices of gangrened water, now
+hopelessly submerged in slime, now attacked by Regions of wood ticks,
+now tempting some unfaithful log or greenishly solid morass, and
+plunging to the tip of the skull in poison stagnation; the tree boughs
+rent their uniforms; they came out upon dry land, many of them without a
+rag of garment scratched, and gashed, and spent, repugnant to
+themselves, and disgusting to those who saw them; but not one trace of
+Booth or Harold was any where found. Wherever they might be, the swamps
+did not contain them.
+
+While all this was going on, a force started from Point Lookout, and
+swept the narrow necks of Saint Mary's quite up to Medley's Neck. To
+complete the search in this part of the country, Colonel Wells and Major
+O'Bierne started with a force of cavalry and infantry for Chappel Point;
+they took the entire peninsula as before, and marched in close skirmish
+line across it, but without finding anything of note. The matter of
+inclosing a house was by cavalry advances, which held all the avenues
+till mounted detectives came up. Many strange and ludicrous adventures
+occured on each of these expeditions. While the forces were going up
+Cobb's neck, there was a counter force coming down from Allen's Fresh.
+
+Major O'Bierne started for Leonardstown with his detective force, and
+played off Laverty as Booth, and Hoey as Harold. These two advanced to
+farm-houses and gave their assumed names, asking at the same time for
+assistance and shelter. They were generally avoided, except by one man
+named Claggert, who told them they might hide in the woods behind his
+house. When Claggert was arrested, however he stated that he meant to
+hide them only to give them up. While on this adventure, a man who had
+heard of the reward came very near shooting Laverty. The ruse now became
+hazardous and the detectives resumed their real characters.
+
+I have not time to go into the detail of this long and excellent hunt.
+My letter of yesterday described how the detectives of Mr. Young and
+Marshal Murray examined the negro Swan, and traced Booth to the house of
+Sam Coxe, the richest rebel in Charles county. There is a gap in the
+evidence between the arrival of Booth at this place and his crossing the
+Potomac above Swan Point, in a stolen or purposely-provided canoe. But
+as Coxe's house is only ten miles from the river, it is possible that he
+made the passage of the intermediate country undiscovered.
+
+One Mills, a rebel mail-carrier, also arrested, saw Booth and Harold
+lurking along the river bank on Friday; he referred Major O'Bierne to
+one Claggert, a rebel, as having seen them also; but Claggert held his
+tongue, and went to jail. On Saturday night, Major O'Bierne, thus
+assured, also crossed the Potomac with his detectives to Boon's farm,
+where the fugitives had landed. While collecting information here a
+gunboat swung up the stream, and threatened to fire on the party.
+
+It was now night, and all the party worn to the ground with long travel
+and want of sleep. Lieutenant Laverty's men went a short distance down
+the country and gave up, but Major O'Bierne, with a single man, pushed
+all night to King George's court-house, and next day, Sunday,
+re-embarked for Chappell's Point. Hence he telegraphed his information,
+and asked permission to pursue, promising to catch the assassins before
+they reached Port Royal.
+
+This the department refused. Colonel Baker's men were delegated to make
+the pursuit with the able Lieutenant Doherty, and. O'Bierne, who was the
+most active and successful spirit in the chase, returned to Washington,
+cheerful and contented.
+
+At Mrs. Burratt's Washington house, at the Pennsylvania Hotel,
+Washington, and at Surrattsville, the Booth plot was almost entirely
+arranged. These three places will be relics of conspiracy forever.
+
+Harold said to Lieutenant Doherty, after the latter had dragged him from
+the barn.
+
+"Who's that man in there? It can't be Booth; he told me his name was
+Loyd."
+
+He further said that he had begged food for Booth from house to house
+while the latter hid in the woods.
+
+The confederate captain, Willie Jett, who had given Booth a lift behind
+his saddle from Port Royal to Garrett's farm, was then courting a Miss
+Goldmann at Bowling Green; his traveling companions were Lieutenants
+Ruggles and Burbridge.
+
+Payne, the assassin of the Sewards, was arrested by Officers, Sampson,
+of the sub-treasury, and Devoe, acting under General Alcott. The latter
+had besides, Officers Marsh and Clancy (a stenographer).
+
+The reward for the capture of Booth will be distributed between very
+many men. The negro, Swan, will get as much of it, as he deserves. It
+amounts to about eighty thousand dollars, but the War Department may
+increase it at discretion. The entire rewards amount to a hundred and
+sixty odd thousand. Major O'Bierne should get a large part of it as
+well.
+
+This story which I must close abruptly, deserves to be re-written, with
+all its accessory endeavours. What I have said is in skeleton merely,
+and far from exhaustive.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER VII.
+
+THE MARTYR.
+
+
+Washington, May 14.
+
+I am sitting in the President's office. He was here very lately, but he
+will not return to dispossess me of this high-backed chair he filled so
+long, nor resume his daily work at the table where I am writing.
+
+There are here only Major Hay and the friend who accompanies me. A
+bright-faced boy runs in and out, darkly attired, so that his fob-chain
+of gold is the only relief to his mourning garb. This is little Tad.,
+the pet of the White House. That great death, with which the world
+rings, has made upon him only the light impression which all things make
+upon childhood. He will live to be a man pointed out everywhere, for his
+father's sake; and as folks look at him, the tableau of the murder will
+seem to encircle him.
+
+The room is long and high, and so thickly hung with maps that the color
+of the wall cannot be discerned. The President's table at which I am
+seated, adjoins a window at the farthest corner; and to the left of my
+chair as I recline in it, there is a large table before an empty grate,
+around which there are many chairs, where the cabinet used to assemble.
+The carpet is trodden thin, and the brilliance of its dyes is lost. The
+furniture is of the formal cabinet class, stately and semi-comfortable;
+there are book cases sprinkled with the sparse library of a country
+lawyer, but lately plethoric, like the thin body which has departed in
+its coffin. They are taking away Mr. Lincoln's private effects, to
+deposit them wheresoever his family may abide, and the emptiness of the
+place, on this sunny Sunday, revives that feeling of desolation from
+which the land has scarce recovered. I rise from my seat and examine the
+maps; they are from the coast survey and engineer departments, and
+exhibit all the contested grounds of the war: there are pencil lines
+upon them where some one has traced the route of armies, and planned the
+strategic circumferences of campaigns. Was it the dead President who so
+followed the march of empire, and dotted the sites of shock and
+overthrow?
+
+Here is the Manassas country--here the long reach of the wasted
+Shenandoah; here the wavy line of the James and the sinuous peninsula.
+The wide campagna of the gulf country sways in the Potomac breeze that
+filters in at the window, and the Mississippi climbs up the wall, with
+blotches of blue and red to show where blood gushed at the bursting of
+deadly bombs. So, in the half-gloomy, half-grand apartment, roamed the
+tall and wrinkled figure whom the country had summoned from his plain
+home into mighty history, with the geography of the republic drawn into
+a narrow compass so that he might lay his great brown hand upon it
+everywhere. And walking to and fro, to and fro, to measure the destinies
+of arms, he often stopped, with his thoughtful eyes upon the carpet, to
+ask if his life were real and if he were the arbiter of so tremendous
+issues, or whether it was not all a fever-dream, snatched from his sofa
+in the routine office of the Prairie state.
+
+There is but one picture on the marble mantel over the cold grate--John
+Bright, a photograph.
+
+I can well imagine how the mind of Mr. Lincoln often went afar to the
+face of Bright, who said so kindly things of him when Europe was mocking
+his homely guise and provincial phraseology. To Mr. Lincoln, John Bright
+was the standard-bearer of America and democracy in the old world. He
+thrilled over Bright's bold denunciations of peer and "Privilege," and
+stretched his long arm across the Atlantic to take that daring Quaker
+innovator by the hand.
+
+I see some books on the table; perhaps they have lain there undisturbed
+since the reader's dimming eyes grew nerveless. A parliamentary manual,
+a Thesaurus, and two books of humor, "Orpheus C. Kerr," and "Artemus
+Ward." These last were read by Mr. Lincoln in the pauses of his hard
+day's labor. Their tenure here bears out the popular verdict of his
+partiality for a good joke; and, through the window, from the seat of
+Mr. Lincoln, I see across the grassy grounds of the capitol, the broken
+shaft of the Washington Monument, the long bridge and the fort-tipped
+Heights of Arlington, reaching down to the shining river side. These
+scenes he looked at often to catch some freshness of leaf and water, and
+often raised the sash to let the world rush in where only the nation
+abided, and hence on that awful night, he departed early, to forget this
+room and its close applications in the _abandon_ of the theater.
+
+I wonder if that were the least of Booth's crimes--to slay this public
+servant in the stolen hour of recreation he enjoyed but seldom. We
+worked his life out here, and killed him when he asked a holiday.
+
+Outside of this room there is an office, where his secretaries sat--a
+room more narrow but as long--and opposite this adjacent office, a
+second door, directly behind Mr. Lincoln's chair leads by a private
+passage to his family quarters. This passage is his only monument in the
+building; he added nor subtracted nothing else; it tells a long story of
+duns and loiterers, contract-hunters and seekers for commissions,
+garrulous parents on paltry errands, toadies without measure and talkers
+without conscience. They pressed upon him through the great door
+opposite his window, and hat in hand, come courtsying to his chair, with
+an obsequious "Mr. President!"
+
+If he dared, though the chief magistrate and commander of the army and
+navy, to go out of the great door, these vampires leaped upon him with
+their Babylonian pleas, and barred his walk to his hearthside. He could
+not insult them since it was not in his nature, and perhaps many of them
+had really urgent errands. So he called up the carpenter and ordered a
+strategic route cut from his office to his hearth, and perhaps told of
+it after with much merriment.
+
+Here should be written the biography of his official life--in the room
+where have concentrated all the wires of action, and where have
+proceeded the resolves which vitalized in historic deeds. But only the
+great measures, however carried out, were conceived in this office. The
+little ones proceeded from other places..
+
+Here once came Mr. Stanton, saying in his hard and positive way:
+
+"Mr. Lincoln, I have found it expedient to disgrace and arrest General
+Stone."
+
+"Stanton," said Mr. Lincoln, with an emotion of pain, "when you
+considered it necessary to imprison General Stone, I am glad you did not
+consult me about it."
+
+And for lack of such consultation, General Stone, I learn, now lies a
+maniac in the asylum. The groundless pretext, upon which he suffered the
+reputation of treason, issued from the Department of War--not from this
+office.
+
+But as to his biography, it is to be written by Colonel Nicolay and
+Major Hay. They are to go to Paris together, one as attache of legation,
+the other as consul, and while there, will undertake the labor. They are
+the only men who know his life well enough to exhaust it, having
+followed his official tasks as closely as they shared his social hours.
+
+Major Hay is a gentleman of literary force. Colonel Nicolay has a fine
+judgment of character and public measures. Together they should satisfy
+both curiosity and history.
+
+As I hear from my acquaintances here these episodes of the President's
+life, I recall many reminiscences of his ride from Springfield to
+Harrisburg, over much of which I passed. Then he left home and became an
+inhabitant of history. His face was solid and healthy, his step young,
+his speech and manner bold and kindly. I saw him at Trenton stand in the
+Legislature, and say, in his conversational intonation:
+
+"We may have to put the foot down firm."
+
+How should we have hung upon his accents then had we anticipated his
+virtues and his fate.
+
+Death is requisite to make opinion grave. We looked upon Mr. Lincoln
+then as an amusing sensation, and there was much guffaw as he was
+regarded by the populace; he had not passed out of partisan ownership.
+Little by little, afterward, he won esteem, and often admiration, until
+the measure of his life was full, and the victories he had achieved made
+the world applaud him. Yet, at this date, the President was sadly
+changed. Four years of perplexity and devotion had wrinkled his face,
+and stooped his shoulders, and the failing eyes that glared upon the
+play closed as his mission was completed, and the world had been
+educated enough to comprehend him.
+
+The White House has been more of a Republican mansion under his control
+than for many administrations. Uncouth guests came to it often, typical
+of the simple western civilization of which he was a graduate, and while
+no coarse altercation has ever ensued, the portal has swung wide for
+five years.
+
+A friend, connected with a Washington newspaper, told me that he had
+occasion to see Mr. Lincoln one evening, and found that the latter had
+gone to bed. But he was told to sit down in the office, and directly the
+President entered. He wore only a night shirt, and his long, lank
+hirsute limbs, as he sat down, inclined the guest to laughter. Mr.
+Lincoln disposed of his request at once, and manifested a desire to
+talk. So he reached for the cane which my friend carried and conversed
+in this manner:
+
+"I always used a cane when I was a boy. It was a freak of mine. My
+favorite one was a knotted beech stick, and I carved the head myself.
+There's a mighty amount of character in sticks. Don't you think so? You
+have seen these fishing poles that fit into a cane? Well, that was an
+old idea of mine. Dogwood clubs were favorite ones with the boys. I
+'spose they use'em yet. Hickory is too heavy, unless you get it from a
+young sapling. Have you ever noticed how a stick in one's hand will
+change his appearance? Old women and witches would'nt look so without
+sticks. Meg Merrilies understands that."
+
+In this way my friend, who is a clerk, in a newspaper office, heard the
+President talk for an hour. The undress of the man and the witness of
+his subject would be staples for merriment if we did not reflect that
+his greatness was of no conventional cast, that the playfulness of his
+nature and the simplicity of his illustration lightened public business
+but never arrested it.
+
+Another gentleman, whom I know, visited the President in high dudgeon
+one night. He was a newspaper proprietor and one of his editors had been
+arrested.
+
+"Mr. Lincoln," he said, "I have been off electioneering for your
+re-election, and in my absence you have had my editor arrested. I won't
+stand it, sir. I have fought better administrations than yours."
+
+"Why, John," said the President, "I don't know much about it. I suppose
+your boys have been too enterprizing. The fact is, I don't interfere
+with the press much, but I suppose I am responsible."
+
+"I want you to order the man's release to-night," said the applicant. "I
+shan't leave here till I get it. In fact, I am the man who should be
+arrested. Why don't you send me to Capitol Hill?"
+
+This idea pleased the President exceedingly. He laughed the other into
+good humor.
+
+"In fact," he said, "I am under restraint here, and glad of any pretext
+to release a journalist."
+
+So he wrote the order, and the writer got his liberty.
+
+It must not be inferred from this, however, that the President was a
+devotee to literature. He had no professional enthusiasm for it. The
+literary coterie of the White House got little flattery but its members
+were treated as agreeable citizens and not as the architects of any
+body's fortune.
+
+Willis went there much for awhile, but yielded to his old habit of
+gossiping about the hall paper and the teapots. Emerson went there once,
+and was deferred to us if he were anything but a philosopher. Yet he so
+far grasped the character of his host as to indite that noble
+humanitarian eulogy upon him, delivered at Concord, and printed in the
+WORLD. It will not do to say definitely In this notice how several
+occasional writers visited the White House, heard the President's views
+and assented to them and afterward abused him. But these attained no
+remembrance nor tart reproach from that least retaliatory of men. He
+harbored no malice, and is said to have often placed himself on the
+stand-point of Davis and Lee, and accounted for their defection while he
+could not excuse it.
+
+He was a good reader, and took all the leading NEW YORK dailies every
+day. His secretaries perused them and selected all the items which would
+interest the President; these were read to him and considered. He bought
+few new books, but seemed ever alive to works of comic value; the vein
+of humor in him was not boisterous in its manifestations, but touched
+the geniality of his nature, and he reproduced all that he absorbed, to
+elucidate some new issue, or turn away argument by a laugh.
+
+As a jester, Mr. Lincoln's tendency was caricatured by the prints, but
+not exaggerated. He probably told as many stories as are attributed to
+him. Nor did he, as is averred, indulge in these jests on solemn
+occasions. No man felt with such personal intensity the extent of the
+casualties of his time, and he often gravely reasoned whether he could
+be in any way responsible for the bloodshed and devastation over which
+it was his duty to preside.
+
+An acquaintance of mine--a private--once went to him to plead for a
+man's life. He had never seen the man for whom he pleaded, and had no
+acquaintance with the man's family. Mr. Lincoln was touched by his
+disinterestedness, and said to him:
+
+"If I were anything but the President, I would be constantly working as
+you have done."
+
+Whenever a doubt of one's guilt lay on his mind, the man was spared by
+his direct interference..
+
+There was an entire absence in the President's character of the heroic
+element. He would do a great deed in _deshabille_ as promptly as in full
+dress. He never aimed to be brilliant, unconsciously understanding that
+a great man's brilliancy is to be measured by the "wholeness" and
+synthetic cast of his career rather than by any fitful ebullitions. For
+that reason we look in vain through his messages for "points." His point
+was not to turn a sentence or an epigram, but to win an effect,
+regardless of the route to it.
+
+He was commonplace in his talk, and Chesterfield would have had no
+patience with him; his dignity of character lay in his uprightness
+rather than in his formal manner. Members of his government often
+reviewed him plainly in his presence. Yet he divined the true course,
+while they only argued it out.
+
+His good feeling was not only personal, but national. He had no
+prejudice against any race or potentate. And his democracy was of a
+practical, rather than of a demonstrative, nature. He was not Marat, but
+Moreau--not Paine and Jefferson; but Franklin.
+
+His domestic life was like a parlor of night-time, lit by the equal
+grate of his genial and uniform kindness. Young Thaddy played with him
+upon the carpet; Robert came home from the war and talked to his father
+as to a school-mate, he was to Mrs. Lincoln as chivalrous on the last
+day of his life as when he courted her. I have somewhere seen a picture
+of Henry IV. of France, riding his babies on his back: that was the
+President.
+
+So dwelt the citizen who is gone--a model in character if not in
+ceremony, for good men to come who will take his place in the same White
+House, and find their generation comparing them to the man thought
+worthy of assassination. I am glad to sit here in his chair, where he
+has bent so often,--in the atmosphere of the household he purified, in
+the sight of the green grass and the blue river he hallowed by gazing
+upon, in the very centre of the nation he preserved for the people, and
+close the list of bloody deeds, of desperate fights of swift expiations,
+of renowned obsequies of which I have written, by inditing at his table
+the goodness of his life and the eternity of his memory.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER VIII.
+
+THE TRIAL.
+
+
+Washington, May 26.
+
+The most exciting trial of our times has obtained a very meager
+commemoration in all but its literal features. The evidence adduced in
+the course of it, has been too faithfully reported, through its
+far-fetched and monotonous irregularities, but nobody realizes the
+extraordinary scene from which so many columns emanate, either by aid of
+the reporters' scanty descriptions, or by the purblind sketches of the
+artists.
+
+Now that the evidence is growing vapid, and the obstinacy of the
+military commission has lost its coarse zest, we may find enough readers
+to warrant a fuller sketch of the conspirators' prison.
+
+About a mile below Washington, where the high Potomac Bluffs meet the
+marshy border of the Eastern branch, stands the United States arsenal, a
+series of long, mathematically uninteresting brick buildings, with a
+broad lawn behind them, open to the water, and level military plazas, on
+which are piled pyramids of shell and ball, among acres of cannon and
+cannon-carriages, and caissons. A high wall, reaching circularly around
+these buildings, shows above it, as one looks from Washington, the
+barred windows of an older and more gloomy structure than the rest,
+which forms the city front of the group of which it is the principal.
+This was a penitentiary, but, long ago added to the arsenal, it has been
+re-transformed to a court-room and jail, and in its third, or uppermost
+story, the Military Commission is sitting.
+
+The main road to the arsenal is by a wide and vacant avenue, which abuts
+against a gate where automaton sentries walk, but the same gate can best
+be reached on foot by the shores of the Potomac, in the sight, of the
+forts, the shipping, and Alexandria.
+
+The scene at the arsenal in time of peace is common-place enough, except
+that across the Eastern Branch the towers of the lunatic asylum, perched
+upon a height, look down baronially; but this trial of murderers has
+made the spot a fair.
+
+A whole company of volunteers keeps the gate, through which are passing
+cabs, barouches, officers' ambulances, and a stream of folks on foot;
+while farther along almost a regiment crosses the drive, their huddled
+shelter tents extending entirely across the peninsula. These are playing
+cards on the ground, and tossing quoits, and sleeping on their faces,
+while a gunboat watches the river front, and under a circular wall a
+line of patrols, ten yards apart, go to and fro perpetually.
+
+It is 10 o'clock, and the court is soon to sit. Its members ride down in
+superb ambulances and bring their friends along to show them the majesty
+of justice. A perfect park of carriages stands by the door to the left,
+and from these dismount major-generals' wives, in rustling silks;
+daughters of congressmen, attired like the lilies of the milliner;
+little girls who hope to be young ladies and have come with "Pa," to
+look at the assassins; even brides are here, in the fresh blush of their
+nuptials, and they consider the late spectacle of the review as good as
+lost, if the court-scene be not added to it. These tender creatures have
+a weakness for the ring of manacles, the sight of folks to be suspended
+in the air, the face of a woman confederate in blood.
+
+They chat with their polite guides, many of whom are gallant captains,
+and go one after another up the little flight of steps which leads to
+the room of the officer of the day.
+
+He passes them, if he pleases, up the crooked stairways, and when they
+have climbed three of these, they enter a sort of garret-room, oblong,
+and plastered white, and about as large as an ordinary town-house
+parlor.
+
+Four doors open into it--that by which we have entered, two from the
+left, where the witnesses wait, and one at the end, near the left far
+corner, which is the outlet from the cells.
+
+A railing, close up to the stairway door, gives a little space in the
+foreground for witnesses; two tables, transverse to this rail, are for
+the commission and the press, the first-named being to the right;
+between these are a raised platform and pivot arm-chair for the witness;
+below are the sworn phonographers and the counsel for the accused, and
+then another rail like that separating the crowd from the court, holds
+behind it the accused and their guards.
+
+These are they who are living not by years nor by weeks, but by breaths.
+They are motley enough, for the most part, sitting upon a long bench
+with their backs against the wall,--ill-shaved, haggard, anxious, and
+the dungeon door at their left opens now and then to show behind it a
+moving bayonet. There are women within the court proper, edging upon the
+reporters, introduced there by a fussy usher, and through four windows
+filters the imperfect daylight, making all things distinguishable, yet
+shadowy. The _coup d'oeil_ of this small and crowded scene is lively as
+a popular funeral.
+
+There is the witness with raised hand, pointing toward heaven, and
+looking at Judge Holt. The gilt stars, bars, and orange-colored sashes
+of the commission; the women's brilliant silks and bonnets; the crowding
+spectators, with their brains in their eyes; the blue coats of the
+guards; the working scribes; and last of all the line of culprits, whose
+suspected guilt has made them worthy of all illustration.
+
+Between the angle of the wall and the studded door, under the heavy bar
+of dressed stone which marks above the thickness of the gaol, sits all
+alone a woman's figure, clothed in solemn black. Her shadowy skirt hides
+her feet, so that we cannot see whether they are riveted; her sleeves of
+sable sweep down to her wrist, and dark gloves cover the plumpness of
+her hand, while a palm-leaf fan nods to and fro to assist the obscurity
+of her vail of crape, descending from her widow's bonnet.
+
+
+A solitary woman, beginning the line of coarse indicted men, shrinking
+beneath the scornful eyes of her sex, and the as bold survey of men more
+pitiful, may well excite, despite her guilt, a moment of sympathy.
+
+Let men remember that she is the mother of a son who has fled to save
+his forfeit life by deserting her to shame, and perhaps, to death. Let
+women, who will not mention her in mercy, learn from her end, in all
+succeeding wars, to make patriotism of their household duties and not
+incite to blood.
+
+Mrs. Surratt is a graduate of that seminary which spits in soldiers
+faces, denounces brave generals upon the rostrum, and cries out for an
+interminable scaffold when all the bells are ringing peace.
+
+How far her wicked love influenced her to participation in the murder
+rests in her own breast, and up to this time she has not differed from
+mothers at large--to twist her own bow-string rather than build his
+gibbet.
+
+Beneath her shadowy bonnet, over her fan-tip, we see two large, sad
+eyes, rising and falling, and now and then when the fan sways to and
+fro, the hair just turning gray with trouble, and the round face growing
+wan and seamed with terrible reflection, are seen a moment crouching
+low, as if she would wish to grovel upon the floor and bury her forehead
+in her hands.
+
+Yet, sometimes, across Mrs. Surratt's face a stealthiness creeps--a sort
+of furtive, feline flashing of the eye, like that of one which means to
+leap sideways. At these times her face seems to grow hard and colorless,
+as if that tiger expression which Pradier caught upon the face of
+Brinvilliers and fastened into a masque, had been repeated here. Not to
+grow mawkish while we must be kind, let us not forget that this woman is
+an old plotter. If she did not devise the assassination, she was privy
+to it long. She was an agent of contraband mails--a bold, crafty,
+assured rebel--perhaps a spy--and in the event of her condemnation, let
+those who would plead for her spend half their pity upon that victim
+whose heart was like a woman's, and whose hand was merciful as a
+mother's.
+
+Before the door sits an officer, uncovered, who does not seem to labor
+under any particular fear, chiefly because the captives are ironed to
+immovability, and he stares and smiles alternately, as if he were
+somewhat amiable and extremely bored.
+
+Next to the officer is a shabby-looking boy, whose seat is by the right
+jamb of the jail door. Of all boys just old enough to feel their oats,
+this boy is the most commonplace. His parents would be likely to have no
+sanguine hopes of his reaching the presidency; for his head indicates
+latent dementia, and a slice or two from it would recommend him, without
+exanimation, to the school for the feeble-minded. Better dressed, and
+washed, and shaved, he might make a tolerable adornment to a hotel door,
+or even reach the dignity of a bar-keeper or an usher at a theatre. But
+that this fellow should occupy a leaf in history and be confounded with
+a tragedy entering into the literature of the world, reverses manifest
+destiny, and leaves neither phrenology nor physiognomy a place to stand
+upon.
+
+Come up! Gall, Spurzheim, and Lavater, and remark his sallow face,
+attenuated by base excesses! Do you know any forehead so broad which
+means so little? the oyster could teach this man philosophy! His chin is
+sharp, his eyes are blank blue, his short black hair curls over his
+ears, and his beard is of a prickly black, with a moustache which does
+not help his general contemptibleness. A dirty grayish shirt without a
+linen collar, is seen between the lapels of the greasy and dusty cloth
+coat, sloping at the shoulders; and under his worn brown trowsers, the
+manacle of iron makes an ugly garter to his carpet clipper.
+
+This is David Harold, who shared the wild night-ride of Booth, and
+barely escaped that outlaw's death in the burning barn.
+
+He stoops to the rail of the dock, now and then, to chat with his
+attorney, and a sort of blank anxiety which he wears, as his head turns
+here and there, shifts to a frolicking smile. But a woman of unusual
+attractions enters the court, and Harold is much more interested in her
+than in his acquittal.
+
+Great Caesar's dust, which stopped a knot-hole, has in this play boy an
+inverse parallel. He was at best hostler to a murderer, and failed in
+that. His chief concern at present is to have somebody to talk to; and
+he thinks upon the whole, that if an assassination is productive of so
+little fun, he will have nothing to do with another one.
+
+That Harold has slipped into history gives us as much surprise as that
+he has yet to suffer death gives us almost contempt for the scaffold.
+But if the scaffold must wait for only wise men to get upon it, it must
+rot. Your wise man does no murder in the first place, and if so, in the
+second, he dodges the penalty. In this world, Harold, idiotcy is oftener
+punished than guilt.
+
+That Booth should have used Harold is very naturally accounted for.
+Actors live only to be admired; vanity rises to its climax in them.
+Booth preferred this sparrow to sing him peans rather than live by an
+eagle and be screamed at now and then.
+
+At the right hand side of Harold sits a soldier in blue, who is
+evidently thinking about a game of quoits with his comrades in the jail
+yard; he wonders why lawyers are so very dry, and is surprised to find a
+trial for murder as tedious as a thanksgiving sermon.
+
+But on the soldier's other hand is a figure which makes the center and
+cynosure of this thrilling scene. Taller by a whole head than either his
+companions or the sentries, Payne, the assassin, sits erect, and flings
+his barbarian eye to and fro, radiating the tremendous energy of his
+colossal physique.
+
+He is the only man worthy to have murdered Mr. Seward. When against the
+delicate organization, the fine, subtle, nervous mind of the Secretary
+of State, this giant, knife in hand, precipitated himself, two forms of
+civilization met as distinctly as when the savage Gauls invaded the
+Roman senate.
+
+Lawlessness and intelligence, the savage and the statesman, body and
+mind, fought together upon Mr. Seward's bed.
+
+The mystery attending Payne's home and parentage still exists to make
+him more incomprehensible. Out of the vague, dim _ultima thule_, like
+those Asiatic hordes which came from nowhere and shivered civilization,
+Payne suddenly appeared and fought his way to the _sanctum sanctorum_ of
+law. I think his part in the assassination more remarkable than Booth's,
+The latter's crime was shrewdly plotted, as by one measuring
+intelligence with the whole government. But Payne did not think--he only
+struck!
+
+With this man's face before me as I write, I am reminded of some Maori
+chief waging war from the lust of blood or the pride of local dominion.
+His complexion is bloodless, yet so healthy that a passing observer
+would afterward speak of it as ruddy. His face is broad, with a
+character nose, sensual lips, and very high cheek bones; the cranium is
+full and the brow speaking, while the head runs back to an abnormal apex
+at the tip of the cerebellum. His straight, lusterless black hair, duly
+parted, is at the summit so disturbed that tufts of it rise up like Red
+Jacket's or Tecumseh's; but the head is kept well up, and rests upon a
+wonderfully broad throat, muscular as one's thigh, and without any
+trace, as he sits, of the protuberance called Adam's apple. Withal, the
+eye is the man Payne's power. It is dark and speechless, and rolls here
+and there like that of a beast in a cage which strives in vain to
+understand the language of its captors. It seems to say, if anything,
+that, it has no sympathy with anybody approximate, and has submitted,
+like a lion bound, to the logic of conviction and of chains.
+
+Payne looks at none of his fellow-prisoners: assassins caught seldom
+cares to recognise each other; for while there is faithfulness among
+thieves, there is none among murderers. His great white eyeball never
+roves to anybody's in the dock, nor theirs to his. He has confessed his
+crime and they know it; so they have no mutual hope; they listen to the
+evidence because it concerns them; ho looks at it only, because it
+cannot save him. He is entirely beardless, yet in his boyish chin more
+of a man physically than the rest, combined.
+
+While I watch this man I am constantly repeating to myself that stanza
+of Bryant's:
+
+  "Upon the market place he stood,--
+  A man of giant frame,
+  Amid the gathering multitude
+  That shrank to hear his name;
+  All proud of step and firm of limb,
+  His dark eye on the ground--
+  And silently they gazed on him,
+  As on a lion bound."
+
+His dress, which we scarcely notice in the grander contrast of his pose
+and stature, is an old shirt of woolen blue, with a white nap at the
+button-holes, and upon his knees of black cloth he twirls, as if for
+relaxation, between his powerful manacles, a soiled white
+handkerchief--if from his mother, we conjecture, a gift to a bloodhound
+from his dam. His heavy handcuffs make his broad shoulders more narrow.
+Yet we can see by the outline of the sleeves what girth the muscles has,
+and the hand at the end of his long and bony arm is wide and huge, as if
+it could wield a claymore as well as a dirk. He also wears carpet
+slippers, but his ankles are clogged with so heavy irons that two men
+must carry them when he enters or leaves the dock. For this man there
+can be no sentiment--no more than for a bull. The flesh on his face is
+hard, as if cast, rather than generated, and while we see how he towers
+above the entire court, we watch him in wonder, as if he were some
+maniac denizen of a zone where men without minds grow to the stature and
+power of fiends.
+
+The face of Payne is not of the traditional southern peculiarities. He
+resembles rather a Pennsylvania mountaineer than a Kentucky rustic.
+
+Three weeks ago I gave, in an account of the conspiracy which many
+gainsayed, but which the trial has fully confirmed, a sketch of this
+man, to which I still adhere. He was furnished to Booth and John Surratt
+from Canada; sent upon special service with his life in his hands; and
+he faced the murder he was to commit like any prize-fighter. I pity
+Beall, who died intelligently for a wretched essay against civilians,
+that his biography and fate must be matched by this savage's!
+
+Next to Payne, and crouching under him like a frog under a rock, is an
+inconsiderable soldier, who chews his cud, and would cheerfully hang his
+protege for the sake of being rid of him. My sympathies are entirely
+enlisted for this soldier; he has neither the joy of being acquitted,
+nor the excitement of being tried. He is quite a sizable man by himself,
+but Payne overhangs him, and the dullness of the trial quite stultifies
+him. The few points of law which are admitted here are not so evident to
+this soldier as the point of his bayonet. I see what ails him.
+
+He wants to swear.
+
+A beam running overhead divides the court lengthwise in half, and as the
+prisoners sit at the end of the court, the German Atzerott, or Adzerota,
+has a place just beneath the beam. This is very ominous for Atzerott.
+The filthiness of this man denies him sympathy. He is a disgusting
+little groveler of dry, sandy hair, oval head, ears set so close to the
+chin that one would think his sense of hearing limited to his jaws, and
+a complexion so yellow that the uncropped brownness of his beard does
+not materially darken it. He wears a grayish coat, low grimy shirt, and
+the usual carpet slippers of threadbare red over his shifting and
+shiftless feet. His head is bent forward, and seems to be anxiously
+trying to catch the tenor of the trial. Many persons outside of the
+court, Atzerott, are equally puzzled!
+
+From as much examination of this man as his insignificance permits, I
+should call him a "gabby" fellow--loud of resolution, ignoble of effort.
+Over his lager no man would be braver. His face is familiar to me from a
+review of those detective cabinets usually called "Rogues' Galleries."
+As a "sneak thief" or "bagman," I should convict him by his face; the
+same indictment would make me acquit him instantly of assassination. In
+this estimate I rely upon evidence as well as upon appearance. Atzerott
+swaggered about Kirk wood's Hotel asking for the Vice-President's room;
+Payne or Booth would have done the murder silently. Nobody pities a
+dirty man. The same arts of dress and cleanliness which please ladies
+influence juries.
+
+Next to Atzerott sits a soldier--a very jolly and smooth faced
+soldier--who at one time hears a witness say something laughable. The
+soldier immediately grins to the farthest point of his scalp. But he is
+chagrined to find that the joke is too trivial to admit of a laugh of
+duration. Very few jokes before the present court do so. But this
+soldier being of long charity and excellent patience, awaits the next
+joke like a veteran under orders, and reposes his chin upon the dock as
+if aware that between jokes there was ample time for a nap.
+
+The next prisoner to the right is O'Laughlin. He is a small man, about
+twenty-eight years of age, attired in a fine, soiled coat, but without
+white linen upon either his bosom or neck, and handcuffs rest hugely
+upon his mediocrity. His moustache, eye-brows, and hair are regular and
+very black. He does not look unlike Booth, though he seems to have
+little bodily power, and he is very anxious, as if more earnest than any
+of the rest, to have a fair lease upon life. His countenance is not
+prepossessing, though he might be considered passably good looking in a
+mixed company.
+
+Between O'Laughlin and the next prisoner, Spangler, sits a soldier in
+ultramarine--a discontented soldier, a moody, dissatisfied, and
+arbitrary soldier. His definition of military justice is like the boy's
+answer at school to the familiar question upon the Constitution of the
+United States:
+
+"What rights do accused persons enjoy ?"
+
+The boy wrote out, very carefully, this answer:
+
+"Death by hanging."
+
+The boy would have been correct had the question applied to accused
+persons before a court-martial.
+
+Spangler, the scene-shifter and stage-carpenter, has the face and
+bearing of a day-laborer. His blue woollen shirt does not confuse him,
+as he is used to it. He has an oldish face, wrinkled by fearful
+anticipations, and his hair is thin. He is awkwardly built, and watches
+the trial earnestly, as if striving to catch between the links of
+evidence vistas of a life insured. This man has a simple and pleading
+face, and there is something genial in his great, incoherent
+countenance. He is said to have cleared the stage for Booth's escape,
+but this is indifferently testified to. He had often been asked by Booth
+to take a drink at the nearest bar. Persons who drink assure me that the
+greatest mark of confidence which a great man can show a lesser one is
+to make that tender; this, therefore, explains Booth's power over
+Spangler.
+
+Spangler is the first scene-shifter who may become a _dramatis personæ_.
+
+A soldier sits between Spangler and Doctor Mudd. The soldier would like
+Spangler to get up and go away, so that he could have as much of the
+bench as he might sleep upon. This particular soldier, I may be
+qualified to say, would sleep upon his post.
+
+Doctor Mudd has a New England and not a Maryland face. He compares, to
+those on his left, as Hyperion to a squatter. His high, oval head is
+bald very far up, but not benevolently so, and it is covered with light
+red hair, so thin as to contrast indifferently with the denseness of his
+beard and goatee. His nose would be insignificant but for its sharpness,
+and at the nostrils it is swelling and high-spirited. His eyes impinge
+upon his brows, and they are shining and rather dark, while the brows
+themselves are so scantily clothed with hair that they seem quite naked.
+Mudd is neatly dressed in a green-grass duster, and white bosom and
+collar; if he had no other advantages over his associates these last
+would give it to him. He keeps his feet upon the rail before him in true
+republican style, and rolls a morsel of tobacco under his tongue.
+
+The military commission works as if it were delegated not to try, but to
+convict, and Dr. Mudd, if he be innocent, is in only less danger than if
+he were guilty. He has a sort of home-bred intelligence in his face, and
+socially is as far above his fellows as Goliah of Gath above the rest of
+the Philistines.
+
+On the right of Doctor Mudd sits a soldier, who is striving to look
+through his legs at the judge-advocate, as if taking a sort of secret
+aim at that person, with the intent to fetch him down, because he makes
+the trial so very dry, and the soldier so very thirsty.
+
+The last man, who sits on the extreme right of the prisoners, is Mr.
+Sam. Arnold. He is, perhaps, the best looking of the prisoners, and the
+least implicated. He has a solid, pleasant face; has been a rebel
+soldier, foolishly committed himself to Booth, with perhaps no intention
+to do a crime, recanted in pen and ink, and was made a national
+character. Had he recanted by word of mouth he might have saved himself
+unpleasant dreams. This shows everybody the absurdity of writing what
+they can so easily say. The best thing Arnold ever wrote was his letter
+to Booth refusing to engage in murder. Yet this recantation is more in
+evidence against than then his original purpose.
+
+Arnold looks out of the window, and feels easy.
+
+The reporters who are present are generally young fellows, practical and
+ardent, like Woods, of Boston; Colburn, of THE WORLD; and Major Poore,
+who has been the chronicler of such scenes for twenty years. Ber.
+Pitman, one of the authors of phonetic writing, is among the official
+reporters, and the Murphies, who could report the lightning, if it could
+talk, are slashing down history as it passes in at their ears and runs
+out at their fingers' ends.
+
+The counsel for the accused strike me as being commonplace lawyers. They
+either have no chance or no pluck to assert the dignity of their
+profession. Reverdy Johnson is not here. The first day disgusted him, as
+he is a practitioner of _law_. Yet the best word of the trial has been
+his:
+
+"I, gentlemen, am a member of that body of legislators which creates
+courts-martial and major-generals!"
+
+The commission has collectively an imposing appearance: the face of
+Judge Holt is swarthy; he questions with slow utterance, holding the
+witness in his cold, measuring eye. Hunter, who sits at the opposite end
+of the table, shuts his eyes now and then, either to sleep or think, or
+both, and the other generals take a note or two, and watch for occasions
+to distinguish themselves.
+
+Excepting Judge Holt, the court has shown as little ability as could be
+expected from soldiers, placed in unenviable publicity, and upon a duty
+for which they are disqualified, both by education and acumen. Witness
+the lack of dignity in Hunter, who opened the court by a coarse allusion
+to "humbug chivalry;" of Lew. Wallace, whose heat and intolerance were
+appropriately urged in the most exceptional English; of Howe, whose
+tirade against the rebel General Johnson was feeble as it was
+ungenerous! This court was needed to show us at least the petty tyranny
+of martial law and the pettiness of martial jurists. The counsel for the
+defence have just enough show to make the unfairness of the trial
+partake of hypocrisy, and the wideness of the subjects discussed makes
+one imagine that the object of the commission is to write a cyclopedia,
+and not to hang or acquit six or eight miserable wretches.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER IX.
+
+THE EXECUTIONS.
+
+
+Washington, Friday, July 7th.
+
+The trial is over; four of the conspirators have paid with their lives
+the penalty of the Great Conspiracy; the rest go to the jail, and with
+one exception for the remainder of their lives.
+
+Whatever our individual theories may be, the great crime is ended, and
+this is the crowning scene:
+
+It was a long and dusty avenue, along which rambled soldiers in bluishly
+white coats, cattle with their tongues out, straying from the herd, and
+a few negroes making for their cabins, which dotted the fiery and vacant
+lots of the suburbs. At the foot of this avenue, where a lukewarm river
+holds between its dividing arms a dreary edifice of brick, the way was
+filled with collected cabs, and elbowing people, abutting against a
+circle of sentinels who kept the arsenal gate. The low, flat, dust-white
+fields to the far left were also lined with patrols and soldiers lying
+on the ground in squads beside their stacked muskets. Within these a
+second blue and monotonous line extended. The drive from the arsenal
+gate to the arsenal's high and steel-spiked wall was beset by companies
+of exacting sabremen, and all the river bank to the right was edged with
+blue and bayonets. This exhibition of war was the prelude to a very
+ghastly but very popular episode--an execution. Three men and a woman
+were to be led out in shackles and hung to a beam. They had conspired to
+take life; they had thrilled the world with the partial consummation of
+their plot; they were to reach the last eminence of assassins, on this
+parched and oppressive noon, by swinging in pinioned arms and muffled
+faces in the presence of a thousand people.
+
+The bayonets at the gate were lifted as I produced my pass. It was the
+last permission granted. In giving it away the General seemed relieved,
+for he had been sorely troubled by applications. Everybody who had
+visited Washington to seek for an office, sought to see this expiation
+also. The officer at the gate looked at my pass suspiciously. "I don't
+believe that all these papers have been genuine," he said. Is an
+execution, then, so great a warning to evil-doers, that men will commit
+forgery to see it?
+
+I entered a large grassy yard, surrounded by an exceedingly high wall.
+On the top of this wall, soldiers with muskets in their hands, were
+thickly planted. The yard below was broken by irregular buildings of
+brick. I climbed by a flight of rickety outside stairs to the central
+building, where many officers were seated at the windows, and looked
+awhile at the strange scene on the grassy plaza. On the left, the long,
+barred, impregnable penitentiary rose. The shady spots beneath it were
+occupied by huddling spectators. Soldiers were filling their canteens at
+the pump. A face or two looked out from the barred jail. There were many
+umbrellas hoisted on the ground to shelter civilians beneath them.
+Squads of officers and citizens lay along the narrow shadow of the
+walls. The north side of the yard was enclosed on three sides by columns
+of soldiers drawn up in regular order, the side next to the penitentiary
+being short to admit of ingress to the prisoner's door; but the opposite
+column reached entirely up to the north wall.
+
+Within this enclosed area a structure to be inhabited by neither the
+living nor the dead was fast approaching completion. It stood gaunt,
+lofty, long. Saws and hammers made dolorous music on it. Men, in their
+shirt sleeves, were measuring it and directing its construction in a
+business way. Now and then some one would ascend its airy stair to test
+its firmness; others crawled beneath to wedge its slim supports, or
+carry away the falling debris.
+
+Toward this skeleton edifice all looked with a strange nervousness. It
+was the thought and speculation of the gravest and the gayest.
+
+It was the gallows.
+
+A beam reached, horizontally, in the air, twenty feet from the ground;
+four awkward ropes, at irregular intervals, dangled from it, each noosed
+at the end. It was upheld by three props, one in the center and one at
+each end. These props came all the way to the ground where they were
+morticed in heavy bars. Midway of them a floor was laid, twenty by
+twelve feet, held in its position on the farther side by shorter props,
+of which there were many, and reached by fifteen creaking steps, railed
+on either side. But this floor had no supports on the side nearest the
+eye, except two temporary rods, at the foot of which two inclined beams
+pointed menacingly, held in poise by ropes from the gallows floor.
+
+And this floor was presently discovered to be a cheat, a trap, a
+pitfall.
+
+Two hinges only held it to its firmer half. These were to give way at
+the fatal moment, and leave only the shallow and unreliable air for the
+bound and smothering to tread upon.
+
+The traps were two, sustained by two different props.
+
+The nooses were on each side of the central support.
+
+Was this all?
+
+Not all.
+
+Close by the foot of the gallows four wooden boxes were piled upon each
+other at the edge of four newly excavated pits, the fresh earth of which
+was already dried and brittle in the burning noon.
+
+Here were to be interred the broken carcasses when the gallows had let
+go its throttle. They were so placed as the victims should emerge from
+the gaol door they would be seen near the stair directly in the line of
+march.
+
+And not far from these, in silence and darkness beneath the prison where
+they had lain so long and so forbodingly, the body of John Wilkes Booth,
+sealed up in the brick floor, had long been mouldering. If the dead can
+hear he had listened many a time to the rattle of their manacles upon
+the stairs, to the drowsy hum of the trial and the buzz of the garrulous
+spectators; to the moaning, or the gibing, or the praying in the bolted
+cells where those whom kindred fate had given a little lease upon life
+lay waiting for the terrible pronouncement.
+
+It was a long waiting, and the roof of a high house outside the walls
+was seen to be densely packed with people. Others kept arriving moment
+by moment; soldiers were wondering when the swinging would begin and
+officers arguing that the four folks "deserved it, damn them!" Gentlemen
+of experience were telling over the number of such expiations they had
+witnessed. Analytic people were comparing the various modes of shooting,
+garroting, and guillotining. Cigars were sending up spirals of soothing
+smoke. There was a good deal of covert fear that a reprieve might be
+granted. Inquires were many and ingenuous for whisky, and one or two
+were so deeply expectant that they fell asleep.
+
+How much those four dying, hoping, cringing, dreaming felons were
+grudged their little gasp of life! It was to be a scene, not a
+postponement or a prolongation. "Who was to be the executioner?" "Why
+had not the renowned and artistic Isaacs been sent for from New York?"
+"Would they probably die game, or grow weak-kneed in the last
+extremity?" Ah, the gallows' workmen have completed the job! "Now then
+we should have it."
+
+Still there was delay. The sun peeped into the new-made graves and made
+blistering hot the gallows' floor. The old pump made its familiar music
+to the cool plash of blessed water. The grass withered in the fervid
+heat. The bronzed faces of the soldiers ran lumps of sweat. The file
+upon the jail walls looked down into the wide yard yawningly. No wind
+fluttered the two battle standards condemned to unfold their trophies
+upon this coming profanation. Not yet arrived. Why? The extent of grace
+has almost been attained. The sentence gave them only till two o'clock!
+Why are they so dilatory in wishing to be hanged?
+
+Suddenly the wicket opens, the troops spring to their feet, and stand at
+order arms, the flags go up, the low order passes from company to
+company; the spectators huddle a little nearer to the scaffold; all the
+writers for the press produce their pencils and note-books.
+
+First came a woman pinioned.
+
+A middle-aged woman, dressed in black, bonnetted and veiled, walking
+between two bare-headed priests.
+
+One of these held against his breast a crucifix of jet, and in the folds
+of his blue-fringed sash he carried an open breviary, while both of them
+muttered the service for the dead.
+
+Four soldiers with musket at shoulder, followed, and a captain led the
+way to the gallows.
+
+The second party escorted a small and shambling German, whose head had a
+long white cap upon it, rendering more filthy his dull complexion, and
+upon whose feet the chains clanked as he slowly advanced, preceded by
+two officers, flanked by a Lutheran clergyman, and followed, as his
+predecessor, by an armed squad.
+
+The third, preacher and party, clustered about a shabby boy, whose limbs
+tottered as he progressed.
+
+The fourth, walked in the shadow of a straight high stature, whose tawny
+hair and large blue eye were suggestive rather of the barbarian striding
+in his conqueror's triumph, than the assassin going to the gallows.
+
+All these, captives, priests, guards, and officers, nearly twenty in
+all, climbed slowly and solemnly the narrow steps; and upon four arm
+chairs, stretching across the stage in the rear of the traps, the
+condemned were seated with their spiritual attendants behind them.
+
+The findings and warrants were immediately read to the prisoners by
+General Hartrauft in a quiet and respectful tone, an aid holding an
+umbrella over him meantime. These having been already published, and
+being besides very uninteresting to any body but the prisoners, were
+paid little heed to, all the spectators interesting themselves in the
+prisoners.
+
+There was a fortuitous delicacy in this distribution, the woman being
+placed farthest from the social and physical dirtiness of Atzerott, and
+nearest the unblanched and manly physiognomy of Payne.
+
+She was not so pale that the clearness of her complexion could not be
+seen, and the brightness of the sun made her vail quite transparent. Her
+eyes were seen to be of a soft gray; her brown hair lay smoothly upon a
+full, square forehead; the contour of her face was comely, but her teeth
+had the imperfectness of those of most southern women, being few and
+irregular. Until the lips were opened she did not reveal them. Her
+figure was not quite full enough to be denominated buxom, yet had all
+the promise of venerable old age, had nature been permitted its due
+course. She was of the medium height, and modest--as what woman would
+not be under such searching survey? At first she was very feeble, and
+leaned her head upon alternate sides of her arm-chair in nervous spasms;
+but now and then, when a sort of wail just issued from her lips, the
+priest placed before her the crucifix to lull her fearful spirit. All
+the while the good fathers Wigett and Walter murmured their low, tender
+cadences, and now and then the woman's face lost its deadly fear, and
+took a bold, cognizable survey of the spectators. She wore a robe of
+dark woolen, no collar, and common shoes of black listing. Her general
+expression was that of acute suffering, vanishing at times as if by the
+conjuration of her pride, and again returning in a paroxysm as she
+looked at the dreadful rope dangling before her. This woman, to whom,
+the priests have made their industrious moan, holding up the effigy of
+Christ when their own appeals became of no avail, perched there in the
+lofty air, counting her breaths, counting the winkfuls of light,
+counting the final wrestles of her breaking heart, had been the belle of
+her section, and many good men had courted her hand. She had led a
+pleasant life, and children had been born to her--who shared her
+mediocre ambition and the invincibility of her will. If the charge of
+her guilt were proven, she was the Lady Macbeth of the west.
+
+But women know nothing of consequences. She alone of all her sex stands
+now in this thrilled and ghastly perspective, and in immediate
+association with three creatures in whose company it is no fame to die:
+a little crying boy, a greasy unkempt sniveller, and a confessed
+desperado. Her base and fugitive son, to know the infamy of his
+cowardice and die of his shame, should have seen his mother writhing in
+her seat upon the throne his wickedness established for her.
+
+Payne, the strangest criminal in our history, was alone dignified and
+self possessed. He wore a closely-fitting knit shirt, a sailor's straw
+hat tied with a ribbon, and dark pantaloons, but no shoes. His collar,
+cut very low, showed the tremendous muscularity of his neck, and the
+breadth of his breast was more conspicuous by the manner in which the
+pinioned arms thrust it forward. His height, his vigor, his glare made
+him the strong central figure of this interelementary tableaux. He said
+no word; his eyes were red as with the penitential weeping of a
+courageous man, and the smooth hardness of his skin seemed like a
+polished muscle. He did not look abroad inquisitively, nor within
+intuitively. He had no accusation, no despair, no dreaminess. He was
+only looking at death as for one long expected, and not a tremor nor a
+shock stirred his long stately limbs; withal, his blue eye was milder
+than when I saw him last, as if some bitterness, or stolidness, or
+obstinate pride had been exorcised, perhaps by the candor of confession.
+Now and then he looked half-pityingly at the woman, and only once moved
+his lips, as if in supplication. Few who looked at him, forgetful of his
+crime, did not respect him. He seemed to feel that no man was more than
+his peer, and one of his last commands was a word of regret to Mr.
+Seward.
+
+I have a doubt that this man is entirely a member of our nervous race. I
+believe that a fiber of the aboriginal runs through his tough sinews. At
+times he looked entirely an Indian. His hair is tufted, and will not lie
+smoothly. His cheek-bones are large and high set. There is a tint in his
+complexion. Perhaps the Seminole blood of his swampy state left a trace
+of its combative nature there.
+
+Payne was a preacher's son, and not the worst graduate of his class. His
+real name is Lewis Thornton Powell.
+
+He died without taking the hand of any living friend.
+
+Even the squalid Atzerott was not so poor. I felt a pity for his
+physical rather than his vital or spiritual peril. It seemed a
+profanation to break the iron column of his neck, and give to the worm
+his belted chest.
+
+But I remember that he would have slain a sick old man.
+
+The third condemned, although whimpering, had far more grit than I
+anticipated; he was inquisitive and flippant-faced, and looked at the
+noose flaunting before him, and the people gathered below, and the
+haggard face of Atzerott, as if entirely conscious and incapable of
+abstraction.
+
+Harold would have enjoyed this execution vastly as a spectator. He was,
+I think, capable of a greater degree of depravity than any of his
+accomplices. Atzerott might have made a sneak thief, Booth a forger, but
+Harold was not far from a professional pickpocket. He was keen-eyed,
+insolent, idle, and, by a small experience in Houston street, would have
+been qualified for a first-class "knuck." He had not, like the rest, any
+political suggestion for the murder of the heads of the nation; and upon
+the gallows, in his dirty felt hat, soiled cloth coat, light pantaloons
+and stockings, he seemed unworthy of his manacles.
+
+A very fussy Dutchman tied him up and fanned him, and he wept
+forgetfully, but did not make a halt or absurd spectacle.
+
+Atzerott was my ideal of a man to be hung--a dilution of Wallack's
+rendering of the last hours of Fagan, the Jew; a sort of sick man, quite
+garrulous and smitten, with his head thrown forward, muttering to the
+air, and a pallidness transparent through his dirt as he jabbered
+prayers and pleas confusedly, and looked in a complaining sort of way at
+the noose, as if not quite certain that it might not have designs upon
+him.
+
+He wore a greyish coat, black vest, light pantaloons and slippers, and a
+white affair on his head, perhaps a handkerchief.
+
+His spiritual adviser stood behind him, evidently disgusted with him.
+
+Atzerott lost his life through too much gabbing. He could have had
+serious designs upon nothing greater than a chicken, but talked
+assassination with the silent and absolute Booth, until entrapped into
+conspiracy and the gallows, much against his calculation. This man was
+visited by his mother and a poor, ignorant woman with whom he cohabited.
+He was the picture of despair, and died ridiculously, whistling up his
+courage.
+
+These were the dramatis personæ, no more to be sketched, no more to be
+cross-examined, no more to be shackled, soon to be cold in their
+coffins.
+
+They were, altogether, a motley and miserable set. Ravaillae might have
+looked well swinging in chains; Charlotte Corday is said to have died
+like an actress; Beale hung not without dignity, but these people,
+aspiring to overturn a nation, bore the appearance of a troop of
+ignorant folks, expiating the blood-shed of a brawl.
+
+When General Hartrauft ceased reading there was momentary lull, broken
+only by the cadences of the priests.
+
+Then the Rev. Mr. Gillette addressed the spectators in a deep impressive
+tone. The prisoner, Lewis Thornton Powell, otherwise Payne, requested
+him to thus publicly and sincerely return his thanks to General
+Hartrauft, the other officers, the soldiers, and all persons who had
+charge of him and had attended him. Not one unkind word, look, or
+gesture, had been given to him by any one. Dr. Gillette then followed in
+a fervent prayer in behalf of the prisoner, during which Payne's eyes
+momentarily filled with tears, and he followed in the prayer with
+visible feeling.
+
+Rev. Dr. Olds followed, saying in behalf of the prisoner, David E.
+Harold, that he tendered his forgiveness to all who had wronged him, and
+asked the forgiveness of all whom he had wronged. He gave his thanks to
+the officers and guards for kindnesses rendered him. He hoped that he
+had died in charity with all men and at peace with God. Dr. Olds
+concluded with a feeling prayer for the prisoner.
+
+Rev. Dr. Butler then made a similar return of thanks on behalf of George
+A. Atzerott for kindness received from his guards and attendants, and
+concluded with an earnest invocation in behalf of the criminal, saying
+that the blood of Jesus cleanses from all sin, and asking that God
+Almighty might have mercy upon this man.
+
+The solemnity of this portion of the scene may be imagined, the several
+clergyman speaking in order the dying testament of their clients, and
+making the hot hours fresh with the soft harmonies of their
+benedictions.
+
+The two holy fathers having received Mrs. Surratt's confession, after
+the custom of their creed observed silence. In this, as in other
+respects, Mrs. Surratt's last hours were entirely modest and womanly.
+
+The stage was still filled with people; the crisis of the occasion had
+come; the chairs were all withdrawn, and the condemned stood upon their
+feet.
+
+The process of tying the limbs began.
+
+It was with a shudder, almost a blush, that I saw an officer gather the
+ropes tightly three times about the robes of Mrs. Surratt, and bind her
+ankles with cords. She half fainted, and sank backward upon the
+attendants, her limbs yielding to the extremity of her terror, but
+uttering no cry, only a kind of sick groaning, like one in the weakness
+of fever, when a wry medicine must be taken.
+
+Payne, with his feet firmly laced together, stood straight as one of the
+scaffold beams, and braced himself up so stoutly that this in part
+prevented the breaking of his neck.
+
+Harold stood well beneath the drop, still whimpering at the lips, but
+taut, and short, and boyish.
+
+Atzerott, in his grovelling attitude, while they tied him began to
+indulge in his old vice of gabbing. He evidently wished to make his
+finale more effective than his previous cowardly role, and perhaps was
+strengthening his fortitude with a speech, as we sometimes do of dark
+nights with a whistle.
+
+"Gentlemen," he said, with a sort of choke and gasp, "take ware." He
+evidently meant "beware," or "take care," and confounded them.
+
+Again, when the white death-cap was drawn over his face, he continued to
+cry out under it, once saying, "Good bye, shentlemens, who is before me
+now;" and again, "May we meet in the other world." Finally he drifted
+away with low, half-intelligible ebullitions, as "God help me," "oh!
+oh!" and the like.
+
+The rest said nothing, except Mrs. Surratt, who asked to be supported,
+that she might not fall, but Harold protested against the knot with
+which he was to be dislocated, it being as huge as one's double fist.
+
+In fact all the mechanical preparations were clumsy and inartistic, and
+the final scenes of the execution, therefore, revolting in the extreme.
+When the death-caps were all drawn over the faces of the prisoners, and
+they stood in line in the awful suspense between absolute life and
+immediate death, a man at the neck of each adjusting the cord, the knot
+beneath the ears of each protruded five or six inches, and the cord was
+so thick that it could not be made to press tightly against the flesh.
+
+So they stood, while nearly a thousand faces from window, roof, wall,
+yard and housetop, gazed, the scaffold behind them still densely packed
+with the assistants, and the four executioners beneath, standing at
+their swinging beams. The priests continued to murmur prayers. The
+people were dumb, as if each witness stood alone with none near by to
+talk to him.
+
+An instant this continued, while an officer on the plot before, motioned
+back the assistants, and then with a forward thrust of his hand,
+signaled the executioners.
+
+The great beams were darted against the props simultaneously. The two
+traps fell with a slam. The four bodies dropped like a single thing,
+outside the yet crowded remnant of the gallows floor, and swayed and
+turned, to and fro, here and there, forward and backward, and with many
+a helpless spasm, while the spectators took a little rush forward, and
+the ropes were taut as the struggling pulses of the dying.
+
+Mrs. Surratt's neck was broken immediately; she scarcely drew one
+breath. Her short woman's figure, with the skirts looped closely about
+it, merely dangled by the vibration of her swift descent, and with the
+knot holding true under the ear, her head leaned sideways, and her
+pinioned arms seemed content with their confinement.
+
+Payne died a horrible death; the knot slipped to the back of his neck,
+and bent his head forward on his breast, so that he strangled as he drew
+his deep chest almost to his chin, and the knees contracted till they
+almost seemed to touch his abdomen. The veins in his great wrists were
+like whip-cords, expanded to twice their natural dimensions, and the
+huge neck grew almost black with the dark blood that rushed in a flood
+to the circling rope. A long while he swayed and twisted and struggled,
+till at last nature ceased her rebellion and life went out unwillingly.
+
+Harold also passed through some struggles. It is doubtful that his neck
+was broken. The perspiration dripped from his feet, and he swung in the
+hot noon just living enough to make death irritable.
+
+Atzerott died easily. Life did not care to fight for his possession.
+
+The two central figures lived long after the two upon the flanks.
+
+There they hung, bundles of carcass and old clothes, four in a row, and
+past all conspiracy or ambition, the river rolling by without a sound,
+and men watching them with a shiver, while the heat of the day seemed
+suddenly abated, as if by the sudden opening of a tomb.
+
+The officers conversed in a half-audible tone; the reporters put up
+their books; the assistants descended from the gallows; and the medical
+men drew near. No wind stirred the unbreathing bodies, they were stone
+dead.
+
+The bodies were allowed to hang about twenty minutes, when surgeon Otis,
+U. S. V., and Assistant Surgeons Woodward and Porter, U. S. A., examined
+them and pronounced all dead. In about ten minutes more a ladder was
+placed against the scaffold preparatory to cutting the bodies down. An
+over-zealous soldier on the platform reached over and severed the cord,
+letting one body fall with a thump, when he was immediately ordered down
+and reprimanded. The body of Atzerott was placed in a strong white pine
+box, and the other bodies cut down in the following order, Harold,
+Powell, and Mrs. Surratt.
+
+The carcasses thus recovered were given over to a squad of soldiers and
+each placed in a pine box without uncovering the faces. The boxes were
+forthwith placed in the pits prepared for them, and directly all but the
+memory of their offense passed from the recording daylight.
+
+In the gloomy shadow of that arsenal lies all the motive, and essay of a
+crime which might have changed the destinies of our race. It will be
+forever a place of suspicion and marvel, the haunted spot of the
+Capitol, and the terror of all who to end a fancied evil, cut their way
+to right with a dagger.
+
+
+
+
+EXTRA MURAL SCENES.
+
+
+As everything connected with this expiation will be greedily read I
+compile from gossip and report a statement of the last intramural hours
+of the prisoners.
+
+During the morning a female friend of Atzerott, from Port Tobacco, had
+an interview with him--she leaving him about eleven o'clock. He made the
+following statement:
+
+He took a room at the Kirkwood House on Thursday, in order to get a pass
+from Vice-President Johnson to go to Richmond. Booth was to lease the
+Richmond theater and the President was to be invited to attend it when
+visiting Richmond, and captured there. Harold brought the pistol and
+knife to the room about half-past two o'clock on Friday. He (Atzerott)
+said he would have nothing to do with the murder of Johnson, when Booth
+said that Harold had more courage than Atzerott, and he wanted Atzerott
+to be with Harold to urge him to do it. There was a meeting at a
+restaurant about the middle of March, at which John Surratt, O'Laughlin,
+Booth, Arnold, Payne, Harold and himself were present, when a plan to
+capture the President was discussed. They had heard the President was to
+visit a camp, and they proposed to capture him, coach and all, drive
+through long old fields to "T. B.," where the coach was to be left and
+fresh horses were to be got, and the party would proceed to the river to
+take a boat. Harold took a buggy to "T. B." in anticipation that Mr.
+Lincoln would be captured, and he was to go with the party to the river.
+Slavery had put him on the side of the South. He had heard it preached
+in church that the curse of God was upon the slaves, for they were
+turned black. He always hated the nigger and felt that they should be
+kept in ignorance. He had not received any money from Booth, although he
+had been promised that if they were successful they should never want,
+that they would be honored throughout the South, and that they could
+secure an exchange of prisoners and the recognition of the confederacy.
+
+Harold slept well several hours, but most of the night he was sitting
+up, either engaged with his pastor, Rev. Mr. Olds, of Christ Church, or
+in prayer. His sisters were with him from an early hour this morning to
+twelve o'clock; they being present when he partook of the sacrament at
+the hands of Dr. Olds. The parting was particularly affecting. Harold
+conversed freely with them, and expressed himself prepared to die.
+
+Powell conversed with Dr. Gillette and Dr. Striker on religious topics
+during the morning, sitting erect, as he did in the court-room. From his
+conversation it appears that he was raised religiously, and belonged to
+the Baptist church until after the breaking out of the rebellion. He
+appeared to be sincerely repentant, and in his cell shed tears freely.
+He gave his advisers several commissions of a private character, and
+stated that he was willing to meet his God, asking all men to forgive,
+and forgiving all who had done aught against him. Colonel Doster, his
+counsel, also took leave of him during the morning, as well as with
+Atzerott.
+
+Mrs. Surratt's daughter was with her at an early hour. One of her male
+friends also had an interview with her, and received directions
+concerning the disposition of her property. During the night and morning
+she received the ministrations of Revs. J. A. Walter and B. F. Wigett,
+and conversed freely with them, expressing, while protesting her
+innocence, her willingness to meet her God. Her counsel, Messrs. Aiken &
+Clampitt, took leave of her during the morning.
+
+A singular feature of this execution was the arrest of General Hancock
+this morning, who appeared in court, to answer a writ of _habeas
+corpus_, with a full staff. It is well to notice that this execution by
+military order has not, therefore, passed without civil protest.
+President Johnson extended to General Hancock the right conferred upon
+the President by Congress of setting aside the _habeas corpus_.
+
+As usual in such executions as this, there were many stirring outside
+episodes, and much shrewd mixture of tragedy and business. A
+photographer took note of the scene in all its phases, from a window of
+a portion of the jail. Six artists were present, and thirty seven
+special correspondents, who came to Washington only for this occasion.
+
+The passes to the execution were written not printed, and, excepting the
+bungling mechanism of the scaffold, the sorrowful event went off with
+more than usual good order. Every body feels relieved to night, because
+half of the crime is buried.
+
+On Monday, Mudd, Arnold, O'Laughlin, and Spangler, will go northward to
+prison. The three former for life, the last for six years.
+
+Applications for pardon were made yesterday and to-day to President
+Johnson, by Mrs. Samuel Mudd, who is quite woe-begone and disappointed,
+in behalf of her husband, by the sisters of Harold, and by Miss Ann
+Surratt. Harold's sisters, dressed in full mourning and heavily veiled,
+made their appearance at the White House, for the purpose of interceding
+with the President in behalf of their brother. Failing to see the
+President, they addressed a note to Mrs. Johnson, and expressed a hope
+that she would not turn a deaf ear to their pleadings. Mrs. Johnson
+being quite sick, it was deemed expedient by the ushers not to deliver
+the note, when, as a last expedient, the ladies asked permission to
+forward a note to Mrs. Patterson, the President's daughter, which
+privilege was not granted, as Mrs. Patterson is also quite indisposed
+to-day. The poor girls went away with their last hope shattered.
+
+The misery of the pretty and heart-broken daughter of Mrs. Surratt is
+the talk of the city. This girl appears to have loved her mother with
+all the petulant passion of a child. She visited her constantly, and
+to-day made so stirring an effort to obtain her life that her devotion
+takes half the disgrace from the mother. She got the priests to speak in
+her behalf. Early to-day she knelt in the cell at her mother's feet, and
+sobbed, with now and then a pitiful scream till the gloomy corridors
+rang. She endeavored to win from Payne a statement that her mother was
+not accessory, and, as a last resort, flung herself upon the steps of
+the White-House, and made that portal memorable by her filial tears.
+About half-past 8 o'clock this morning, Miss Surratt, accompanied by a
+female friend, again visited the White-House, for the purpose of
+obtaining an interview with the President. The latter having given
+orders that he would receive no one to-day, the door-keeper stopped Miss
+Surratt at the foot of the steps leading up to the President's office,
+and would not permit her to proceed further. She then asked permission
+to see General Muzzy, the president's military secretary, who promptly
+answered the summons, and came down stairs where Miss Surratt was
+standing. As soon as the general made his appearance, Miss Surratt threw
+herself upon her knees before him, and catching him by the coat, with
+loud sobs and streaming eyes, implored him to assist her in obtaining a
+hearing with the President. General Muzzy, in as tender a manner as
+possible, informed Miss Surratt that he could not comply with her
+request, as President Johnson's orders were imperative, and he would
+receive no one. Upon General Muzzy returning to his office, Miss Surratt
+threw herself upon the stair steps, where she remained a considerable
+length of time, sobbing aloud in the greatest anguish, protesting her
+mother's innocence, and imploring every one who came near her to
+intercede in her mother's behalf.
+
+While thus weeping she declared her mother was too good and kind to be
+guilty of the enormous crime of which she was convicted, and asserted
+that if her mother was put to death she wished to die also. She was
+finally allowed to sit in the east room, where she lay in wait for all
+who entered, hoping to make them efficacious in her behalf, all the
+while uttering her weary heart in a woman's touching cries: but at last,
+certain of disappointment, she drove again to the jail and lay in her
+mother's cell, with the heavy face of one who brings ill-news. The
+parting will consecrate those gloomy walls. The daughter saw the mother
+pinioned and kissed her wet face as she went shuddering to the scaffold.
+The last words of Mrs. Surratt, as she went out of the jail, were
+addressed to a gentleman whom she had known.
+
+"Good-bye, take care of Annie."
+
+To-night there is crape on the door of the Surratt's, and a lonely lamp
+shines at a single window, where the sad orphan is thinking of her
+bereavement.
+
+The bodies of the dead have been applied for but at present will not
+given up.
+
+Judge Holt was petitioned all last night for the lives and liberties of
+the condemned, but he was inexorable.
+
+The soldiers who hung the condemned were appointed against their will. I
+forbear to give their names as they do not wish the repute of
+executioners. They all belonged to the Fourteenth Veteran Reserve
+Infantry.
+
+Here endeth the story of this tragedy upon a tragedy. All are glad that
+it is done. I am glad particularly. It has cost me how many journeying
+to Washington, how many hot midnights at the telegraph office, how many
+gallops into wild places, and how much revolting familiarity with blood.
+
+The end has come. The slain, both good and evil, are in their graves,
+out of the reach of hangman and assassin. Only the correspondent never
+dies. He is the true Pantheist--going out of nature for a week, but
+bursting forth afresh in a day, and so insinuating himself into the
+history of our era that it is beginning to be hard to find out where the
+event ends and the writer begins.
+
+Next week Ford's Theater opens with the "Octoroon." The gas will be
+pearly as ever; the scenes as rich. The blood-stained foot-lights will
+flash as of old upon merry and mimicking faces. So the world has its
+tragic ebullitions; but its real career is comedy. Over the graves of
+the good and the scaffolds of the evil, sits the leering Momus across
+whose face death sometimes brings sleep, but never a wrinkle.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Life, Crime and Capture of John
+Wilkes Booth, by George Alfred Townsend
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+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOHN WILKES BOOTH ***
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