Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination that Changed America Forever

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

It is Good Friday morning, the day on which Jesus Christ was crucified, died an agonizing death, and was quickly buried. All of this after he had been betrayed by Judas and scorned by a public that had lionized him just days before.

Abraham Lincoln is a religious man but not a churchgoer. He was born into a Christian home in the wilderness, where established churches were rare. His father and mother were staunch “hard-shell” Baptists, and at a young age he attended the Pigeon Creek Baptist Church. Lincoln’s church attendance became sporadic in his adult life. Nevertheless, he took comfort in reading the Bible on a daily basis and often used the words of God to make important points in his public pronouncements. Indeed, his faith has grown because of the war. But because Lincoln never attached himself to an organized religion as an adult, his ability to combine the secular and the religious in the way he goes about his life will later have everyone from atheists to humanists to Calvinists claiming that he is one of theirs. The truth is, Abraham Lincoln does believe in God and has relied on Scripture in overcoming all the challenges he has confronted.

Lincoln rises at seven A.M. Outside the White House, the Washington weather is a splendid, sunny fifty degrees. Dogwoods are blooming along the Potomac and the scent of spring lilacs carries on the morning breeze as the president throws his size 14 feet over the edge of the bed, slides them into a pair of battered slippers, pulls on an equally weathered robe, pushes open the rosewood bedroom door, says good morning to his night watchman, and walks down a second-floor hallway to the White House library. The quiet night at home has been good for his soul. Lincoln’s sleep was restful. All symptoms of his migraine have disappeared.

Petitioners sleeping in the White House hallway leap to their feet upon the sight of Lincoln. They have come seeking presidential favors—a pardon, a job, an appointment. The president is courteous but evasive at their shouted requests, eager to be alone in the quiet of the library. That strangers actually sleep on the White House floor is commonplace at the time. “The multitude, washed or unwashed, always has free egress and ingress” into the White House, an astonished visitor wrote earlier in Lincoln’s presidency.

The White House’s open-door policy ends today.

The president’s favorite chair is in the exact center of the room. He sits down and opens his Bible, not because it is Good Friday but because starting the day with Scripture is a lifelong custom. Glasses balanced on the end of his prominent nose, he reads a verse, then another, before setting the Good Book on a side table. He leans back in the chair to meditate, enjoying the only quiet and solitary moments he will know this day.

Lincoln traipses down the hall to his office. His desk is mahogany, with cubbies and shelves. Behind him is the willow-lined Potomac, seen clearly outside the window.

Secretaries John Nicolay and John Hay have laid the mail on the desk, having already removed the love letters Lincoln sometimes receives from young ladies, and the assassination letters more often sent by older men. Typically, the president gets almost three hundred letters a day, of which he reads only a half dozen, at most.

Lincoln skims the mail, then jots down a few notes. Each is signed “A. Lincoln” if it is of a more official nature, or just “Yours truly,” as in the case of his note to William Seward. The secretary of state continues to recover from his horrible accident, his jaw and shattered skull mending slowly. Now he lies in bed at home, a convenient stone’s throw across the street from the White House.

Breakfast is scheduled for eight o’clock. Lincoln finishes his brief business and enters a small room, where he grooms himself. Daily baths and showers are rare, even in the White House. Lincoln is eager to be downstairs, for his son Robert is just back from the war and will be joining him, twelve-year-old Tad, and Mary for breakfast. More importantly, Robert was in the room when Lee surrendered at Appomattox. Though Lincoln heard the story from Grant yesterday, he is keen to hear more about this landmark event. The war’s end is one topic he never gets tired of talking about.

Just twenty-one, with a thin mustache and a captain’s rank, Robert is still boyish, despite his time at the front. As Lincoln sips coffee and eats the single boiled egg that constitutes his daily breakfast, Robert describes “the stately elegant Lee” and Grant, “the small stooping shabby shy man in the muddy blue uniform, with no sword and no spurs.”

When Lincoln asks what it was like to there, his son is breathless. “Oh, it was great!” the normally articulate Robert exclaims, unable to find a more expressive way to describe being present at one of the seminal moments in American history.

Robert hands Lincoln a portrait of Lee. The president lays it on the table, where it stares up at him. Lincoln tells his son that he truly believes the time of peace has come. He is unfazed by the small but bitter Confederate resistance that remains. His thoughts are far away from the likes of John Wilkes Booth.

Pressing business awaits Lincoln in his office, but he allows breakfast to stretch on for almost an hour. He can permit himself this luxury, with the war finally over. At last he stands, his body stooped, now just an inch or two less than the towering height of his youth. He is relaxed and happy, even though his severe weight loss makes him look like “a skeleton with clothes,” in the words of one friend.

Lincoln reminds Mary that they have a date for a carriage ride this afternoon. To Robert, he suggests that the time has come to remove the uniform, return to Harvard, and spend the next three years working on his law degree. “At the end of that time I hope we will be able to tell if you will make a good lawyer or not,” he concludes, sounding more serious than he feels. The words are a sign that he is mentally transitioning from the easy part of his day into those long office hours when, even with the war concluded, the weight of the world presses down on his shoulders.

By nine A.M., President Lincoln is sitting at his desk in the Oval Office.

Every aspect of Lincoln’s early morning has the feel of a man putting his affairs in order: reading the Bible, jotting a few notes, arranging for a last carefree whirl around Washington with his loyal wife, and setting his son on a path that will ensure him a successful future. All of this is done unconsciously, of course, but it is notable.

Even if it is not mentioned on this day in the White House, the potential assassination of the president is a topic of discussion in and around Washington. The chattering class doesn’t know when it might occur, but many believe an attempt will come very soon.

“To those familiar with the city of Washington,” a member of his cavalry detail will later write, “it was not surprising that Lincoln was assassinated. The surprising thing to them was that it was so long delayed. It is probable that the only man in Washington who, if he thought upon the subject of all, did not think that Mr. Lincoln was in constant and imminent danger, was Mr. Lincoln himself.”

But today it is as if Lincoln subconsciously knows what is about to happen.

A mile down Pennsylvania Avenue, the man who does know what is about to happen is also setting his affairs in order.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

John Wilkes Booth walks slowly down the hotel corridor, momentarily at a loss for words. He has come to say good-bye to his beloved Lucy. He struggles to think of a way to break off their secret engagement and intimate that he might never see her again. Even though their relationship has been all but dead since Newport, of all the terrible things he must do today, what he is about to do next breaks his heart like no other.

The Hales are living in the National Hotel, on the corner of Pennsylvania and Sixth. Booth lives in the same hotel, room 228. Lucy does charity work for the Sanitation Committee and even rode to the front lines of nearby battlefields to visit the troops. It’s well known that her father wishes her to marry someone powerful and well connected. For Lucy to not only slink off to the room of an actor but also agree to marry him would enrage Senator Hale. So while the relationship has slowly become more public, she and Booth have kept their pending nuptials a secret.

It’s nine A.M. when Booth knocks on her door. He wears a ring she gave him as a keepsake. Booth has the eccentric habit of kissing the ring absentmindedly when out drinking with friends, and he does so now, as he nervously waits for her to answer. This will be the last time he’ll see her for quite a while—perhaps forever. Lucy’s father has been appointed ambassador to Spain, and the entire family will accompany him abroad. Booth plans to escape to Mexico after shooting Lincoln and then perhaps sail to Spain for a clandestine visit with Lucy if all goes well.

But how to say good-bye? How to make the next few moments as touching and romantic as any farewell should be, while also not letting her know he’s leaving and why?

Their relationship began in 1862. Booth became enchanted after glimpsing her in a crowd and sent Lucy an anonymous Valentine’s Day love letter. This was followed shortly afterward by another missive, revealing his identity. If its intended effect was to make twenty-one-year-old Lucy swoon, it worked. Booth was at the height of his fame and good looks, delighting women across the country with his performance as the male lead in a traveling production of Romeo and Juliet. One actress even tried to kill herself after he rebuffed her advances.

But Lucy Lambert Hale was not in the habit of throwing herself at men. So while Booth might have had the upper hand at the start, she made him work hard for her affection. The relationship simmered for two years, starting with flirtation and then blossoming into something more. The pair became intimate. When he was on the road, Booth was as faithful as a traveling thespian could be, which is to say that he made love to other women but considered them second to Lucy in his heart.

Booth is not the sort of man to mean it when he says, “I love you.” For the most part, women are the objects of his own gratification. But Lucy has long treated men the same way, holding them at arm’s length emotionally, basking in their charms, and then discarding them when someone newer and better comes along. In each other, Booth and Lucy met their match.

But they are also opposites in many ways. She comes from a more elite level of society, one that does not consider acting a gentlemanly career. She is an abolitionist, and he is most certainly not. He professes a heartfelt belief in the southern cause, while she is the daughter of a ferociously partisan northern senator. The engagement is doomed.

Booth has not seen Lucy since their ill-fated getaway to Newport. They haven’t so much as exchanged letters or passed each other in the hallway, even though they live in the same hotel. He has no idea how she will react to his visit.

A servant answers the door and ushers him inside the suite. Lucy appears a moment later, the unfinished business of their argument hanging between them. They both know that it’s over. Nothing more needs to be said, much to Booth’s relief. They make small talk, skirting the obvious issue. And then it is time to say good-bye. Before leaving, Booth asks Lucy for a photograph so that he might have something to remember her by.

She steps out of the room and returns with a small portrait of her face in profile. Her hair is pulled back off her forehead and her lips are creased in a Mona Lisa smile. Booth thanks Lucy and gives her a long last look. He then turns and walks out of the Hales’ suite, explaining breezily that he is off to get a shave, wondering if he will ever make it to Spain to see Lucy again.

As he walks back down the hallway, the sound of the closing door still echoing in the corridor, he admires the picture and slips it into his breast pocket, next to the pictures of four other women who have enjoyed his charms. The life of a narcissist is often cluttered.

The pictures will remain in Booth’s pocket for the rest of his short life.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Mary Lincoln has tickets for a play—and what a spectacular performance it will be. Grover’s Theatre is not only staging a lavish production of Aladdin, or The Wonderful Lamp but is adding a grand finale for this night only, during which the cast and audience will rise as one to sing patriotic songs written especially for the occasion. Everyone is Washington is talking about it.

But Mary is torn. Word has come from James Ford, the manager of Ford’s Theatre, that he is staging the wildly popular farce Our American Cousin. Tonight the legendary actress Laura Keene is celebrating her one thousandth performance in her signature role as Florence Trenchard. This milestone, Ford has politely suggested to Mary, is something not to be missed.

Keene, thirty-eight, is not only one of America’s most famous actresses but also very successful as a theater manager. In fact, she is the first woman in America to manage her own high-profile career and purchase a theater. That theater will later be renamed the Winter Garden, and it is still in existence today at a different location in New York City. Offstage, Laura Keene’s life is not so tidy—she pretends to be married to her business manager, but in truth she is secretly married to a convicted felon who has run off to Australia. During an extended tour of that faraway continent, Keene quarreled mightily with her costar, the equally vain Edwin Booth.

But onstage Laura Keene is a force. The gimlet-eyed actress owes much of that success to Our American Cousin. At first she thought very little of the script, which places a country bumpkin in the upper class of British society. But then Keene changed her mind and bought worldwide rights. Debuting seven years earlier at Laura Keene’s Theatre on Broadway, it soon became the first blockbuster play in American history. It was performed in Chicago on the same night in May 1860 that Lincoln was confirmed as the Republican nominee for the presidency. Many of the play’s screwball terms, like “sockdologizing” and “Dundrearyisms” (named for the befuddled character Lord Dundreary), have become part of the cultural lexicon, and several spinoff plays featuring characters from the show have been written and performed.

Despite all that, ticket sales for this run of the play have been so sluggish that Ford’s will be nearly empty. But Mary Lincoln doesn’t mind. What matters most to her is that on this most patriotic of evenings, she and the president will celebrate their first visit to the theater since the war’s end by enjoying the quintessential American comedy, on a night that features one of America‘s—if not the world’s—most famous actresses.

Aladdin can wait.

With this sudden and impulsive decision to attend one show and not the other, an eerie coincidence will unravel: thanks to the performance that took place in Chicago in 1860, Our American Cousin will bracket both the beginning and the end of the Lincoln administration.

Over breakfast a few hours earlier, Mary told the president that she wanted to go to Ford’s. Lincoln absentmindedly said he would take care of it.

Now, between Oval Office appointments, Lincoln summons a messenger. He wants a message delivered to Ford’s Theatre, saying that he will be in attendance this evening if the state box is available. General Grant and his wife will be with him, as will Mary.

Abraham Lincoln is the undisputed leader of the world’s most ascendant nation, a country spanning three thousand miles and touching two oceans. During the war, he could send men off to die with a single command to his generals. He has freed the slaves. This is a man who has the power to do almost anything he wants. And tonight, if truth be told, he would prefer to see Aladdin.

Yet Lincoln would never dream of contradicting Mary’s wishes. His life is much easier when she is appeased. A volatile and opinionated woman whose intellect does not match her considerable capacity for rage, Mary Lincoln is short and round, wears her hair parted straight down the middle, and prefers to be called “Madame President,” which some believe is pretentious, to say the least. Mary’s rants about some person or situation that has angered her can sidetrack Lincoln’s day and drain him of precious energy, so he does all he can to make sure nothing upsets her unstable psyche.

But to be fair, Mary Lincoln has also suffered the deaths of two young sons during her twenty-two-year marriage. Lincoln dotes on her. A compassionate man, he tries more to ease the lingering pain than to merely keep the peace. Mary Lincoln is almost ten years younger than her husband, and they had an on-again, off-again courtship and even broke off their first engagement when Lincoln had cold feet about marrying her. Mary is from an affluent home, which afforded her an education that few American women enjoyed at the time. Lithe in her early twenties, Mary has put on considerable weight. And though she had many suitors as a young woman, few would now consider her to be good-looking. Nevertheless, Lincoln is enamored. The president considers Mary the love of his life. Some historians believe that because Lincoln lost his mother at the age of nine, he was drawn to women with maternal, protective instincts. Mary Lincoln certainly fits that description.

Lincoln is overdue at the War Department. He also has a cabinet meeting scheduled in just over an hour. He hurriedly steps out of the White House and walks over to see Stanton. Mary demands that he wear a shawl, and so he does, not caring in the slightest that the gray garment draped over his shoulders gives him a decidedly nonpresidential appearance.

Lincoln strolls into Stanton’s office unannounced, plops down on the couch, and casually mentions that he’s going to the theater that night. The words are designed to provoke a reaction—and they do.

Stanton frowns. His network of spies have told him of assassination rumors. Last night, during the Illumination party at his home, Stanton adamantly warned Grant away from going to the theater with the Lincolns. Stanton is no less stern with Lincoln. He thinks the president is a fool for ignoring the assassination rumors and argues that Lincoln is risking his life.

“At least bring a guard with you,” Stanton pleads, once it becomes obvious that Lincoln will not be dissuaded. That statement is the best evidence we have that Secretary of War Stanton did not wish Lincoln ill. If, as some conspiracy theorists believe, Stanton wished Lincoln dead, why would he want to provide him with protection?

The president is in a playful mood. “Stanton,” Lincoln says, “did you know that Eckert can break a poker over his arm?”

Major Thomas T. Eckert is the general superintendent of the Military Telegraph Corps. He once demonstrated the shoddy nature of the War Department’s fireplace irons by breaking the defective metal rods over his left forearm.

“Why do you ask such a question?” Stanton replies, mystified.

“Stanton, I have seen Eckert break five pokers, one after the other, over his arm, and I am thinking that he would be the kind of man who would go with me this evening. May I take him?”

“Major Eckert has a great deal of work to do. He can’t be spared.”

“Well, I will ask the major himself,” Lincoln responds.

But Eckert knows better than to cross Stanton. Despite a barrage of good-natured pleading by the president, Eckert says he cannot attend the theater that evening.

His business with Stanton concluded, Lincoln wraps his shawl tightly around his shoulders and marches back to the White House for his cabinet meeting.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Lincoln’s messenger reaches Ford’s at 10:30 A.M. “The president of the United States would like to formally request the state box for this evening—if it is available,” the note reads.

The state box is available, James Ford immediately responds, barely containing his excitement. He races into the manager’s office to share the good news with his brother Harry and then barks the order for the stage carpenter to come see him right this instant.

Ford’s may be the city’s preeminent stage, but business has been extremely slow this week. The postwar jubilation means that Washington’s theatergoers are making merry on the streets, not penned together inside watching a show. In fact, Ford had been anticipating yet another dismal night. Our American Cousin is no match for the Grover’s Aladdin, which has been made all the more spectacular by the postshow victory rally, thus allowing audience members to watch a play and make merry. Ford can almost hear the actors’ words echoing off empty seats, and the punch lines that will receive a yawn instead of the guffaw a packed and energized theater so often guarantees. But now, with word that the president will be in the audience, the night should be a sellout.

Ford’s was originally known as the First Baptist Church of Washington. When the Baptists moved out, in 1861, James’s brother John purchased the building and turned it into a playhouse. When Ford’s Athenaeum was destroyed by fire in 1862, some said it was God’s will, because many churchgoers considered the theater to be the devil’s playground. But John Ford was undeterred. He not only rebuilt the great brick building; he reshaped it into the nation’s most modern theater.

Ford’s reopened to rave reviews in August 1863. The building is flanked on either side by taverns—the Greenback Saloon to the left and Taltavul’s Star Saloon to the right—so that theatergoers can pop next door for a drink at intermission. The outside of the theater itself features five decorative archways. Patrons enter through the center arch, leading directly into the ticket booth and lobby. The steps leading up from the street are granite. The unpaved streets are often muddy this time of year, so Ford has built a wooden ramp from the street into the lobby. This ensures that ladies won’t soil their evening wear when stepping out of their carriages.

Inside, three seating levels face the stage. Gas lamps light the auditorium until the curtain falls, when they are dimmed by a single backstage valve. The chairs are a simple straight-backed cane but, inside his special presidential box, Lincoln prefers to sit in the red horsehair-upholstered rocking chair that Ford’s reserves for his personal use.

Boxes on either side of the stage allow the more privileged patrons to look straight down onto the actors. The state box, where the Lincolns and Grants will sit this evening, is almost on the stage itself—so close that if Lincoln were to impulsively rise from his rocking chair and leap down into the actors’ midst, the distance traveled would be a mere nine feet.

The state box is actually two side-by-side boxes. When not being used by the president or some other national dignitary, they are available for sale to the general public and simply referred to as boxes 7 and 8. A pine partition divides them.

On nights when the Lincolns are in attendance, the partition is removed. Red, white, and blue bunting is draped over the railing and a portrait of George Washington faces out at the audience, designating that the president of the United States is in the house. Out of respect for the office, none of the other boxes are for sale when the Lincolns occupy the state box.

Now, with the news that this will be such a night, the first thing on James Ford’s mind is decorating the state box with the biggest and most spectacular American flag he can find. He remembers that the Treasury Department has such a flag. With governmental offices due to close at noon for the Good Friday observance, there’s little time to spare.

By sheer coincidence, John Wilkes Booth marches up those granite front steps at that very moment. Like many actors, he spends so much time on the road that he doesn’t have a permanent address. So Ford’s Opera House, as the theater is formally known, is his permanent mailing address.

As James Ford reacts to Lincoln’s request, an Our American Cousin rehearsal is taking place. The sound of dramatic voices wafts through the air. The show has been presented eight previous times at Ford’s, but Laura Keene isn’t taking any chances with cues or blocking. If this is to be her thousandth and, perhaps, final performance of this warhorse, she will see to it that the cast doesn’t flub a single line. This bent toward perfectionism is a Keene hallmark and a prime reason she has enjoyed such a successful career.

Booth’s mail is in the manager’s office. As he picks up a bundle of letters, stage carpenter James J. Clifford bounds into the room, curious as to why Ford wants to see him. When the theater manager shares the exciting news about the Lincolns, Clifford is ecstatic, but Booth pretends not to hear, instead staring straight down at his mail, acting as if he is studying the return addresses. He grins, though he does not mean to. He calms himself and makes small talk with Ford, then says his good-byes and wanders out into the sunlight. Booth sits on the front step, half-reading his mail and laughing aloud at his sudden good fortune.

Ford walks past, explaining that he is off to purchase bunting—and perhaps a thirty-six-star flag.

Until this moment, Booth has known what he wants to do and the means with which he will do it. But the exact details of the murder have so far eluded him.

Sitting on the front step of Ford’s Theatre on this Good Friday morning, he knows that he will kill Lincoln tonight and in this very theater. Booth has performed here often and is more familiar with its hidden backstage tunnels and doors than he is with the streets of Washington. The twofold challenge he now faces is the traditional assassin’s plight: find the most efficient path into the state box in order to shoot Abraham Lincoln and then find the perfect escape route from the theater.

The cast and crew at Ford’s treat Booth like family. His eccentricities are chalked up to his being a famous actor. The theatrical world is full of a hundred guys just as unpredictable and passionate, so nobody dreams that he has a burning desire to kill the president. So it is, as Booth rises to his feet and wanders back into the theater to plan the attack, that it never crosses anyone’s mind to ask what he’s doing. It’s just John being John.

The seats are all empty. The house lights are up. Onstage, the rehearsal is ending.

John Wilkes Booth prowls Ford’s Theatre alone, analyzing, scrutinizing, estimating. His journey takes him up the back stairs to the state box, where he steps inside and looks down at the stage. A music stand provides an unlikely burst of inspiration. He hefts it in his hand, nervous but elated, knowing how he will make use of it tonight. By the time he is done, Booth has come up with an audacious—and brilliant—plan of attack.

On Booth’s mind are these questions: Will he commit the perfect crime? And will he go down in history as a great man?

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

A hazy sun shines down on Washington’s empty streets. The city is so quiet it seems to be asleep. The Good Friday observance means that its citizens are temporarily done celebrating the war’s end. They are now in church or at home repenting, leaving the local merchants to lament the momentary loss of the booming business they’ve enjoyed the past few days.

Hundreds of miles to the south, in Fort Sumter, South Carolina, a massive celebration is about to take place, commemorating the raising of the Stars and Stripes. Major General Robert Anderson stands before forty-five hundred people as the very flag that was lowered there four years earlier, marking the beginning of the war, now climbs the flagpole. A minister offers a prayer of thanksgiving. The Union is reunited.

Back in Washington, General Grant walks to the White House, feeling conflicted. He was supposed to meet with Lincoln at nine A.M., but the president rescheduled for eleven so that Grant can attend the cabinet meeting. Now he feels obligated to attend the theater tonight with the Lincolns. But Julia Grant, who thinks Mary Lincoln is unstable and a gossip, has bluntly refused. When the theater invitation arrived from Mary Lincoln earlier that morning, Julia replied with a firm no, stating that the Grants would be leaving town that afternoon and noting, “We will not, therefore, be here to accompany the President and Mrs. Lincoln to the theatre.” She is, in fact, adamant that they catch the afternoon train out of Washington. Going to the theater with Mary Lincoln is out of the question.

General Grant is caught in the middle. Lincoln has become such an ally and dear friend that turning down his invitation seems rude. But displeasing his wife, who has endured many a sacrifice these past years, is equally daunting.

The two soldiers standing guard at the White House gate snap to attention as their general in chief arrives. Grant tosses them a return salute with the casual ease of a man who has done it thousands of times, never breaking stride as he continues on to the front door.

The doorman nods graciously as Grant steps inside, dressed in his soldier’s uniform, moving past the police bodyguard currently on duty and a rifle-bearing soldier also in dress uniform. Then it’s up the stairs to Lincoln’s second-floor office, where another soldier stands guard. Soon Grant is seated in Lincoln’s cabinet meeting, somewhat surprised by the loose way in which such matters are conducted. He assumed that Lincoln’s entire cabinet would be in attendance, particularly since there are so many pressing matters of state to discuss. But a quick glance around the room shows no sign of Secretary of War Stanton or Secretary of the Interior John P. Usher. Secretary of State William Seward, home recovering from his carriage accident, is represented by his son Frederick. And as Lincoln leans back in his chair along the south window, the half-filled room feels more like a collegiate debating club than a serious political gathering. Lincoln guides the dialogue, which jumps from elation at the war’s end to other topics and back, taking no notes as he soaks in the various opinions. His behavior is that of a first among equals rather than the ultimate decision maker.

The meeting is into its second hour as Grant is shown into the room, and his entrance injects a new vitality—just as Lincoln intended. The cabinet, to a man, is effusive in praise of the general and begs to hear details of the Appomattox surrender. Grant sets the scene, describing the quaint McLean farmhouse and the way he and Lee sat together to settle the country’s fate. He doesn’t go into great detail, and he makes a point of praising Lee. The cabinet members are struck by his modesty but clamor for more.

Lincoln tries to draw him out. “What terms did you make for the common soldiers?” the president asks, already knowing the answer.

“To go back to their homes and families, and they would not be molested, if they did nothing more.”

There is a point to Lincoln’s inviting Grant to this meeting, as evidenced by this new line of inquiry. Lincoln hopes for a certain pragmatic lenience toward the southern states, rather than a draconian punishment, as his vice president, Andrew Johnson, favors. Lincoln has not seen Johnson since his second inauguration. But Lincoln’s lenient plan for the South is not borne solely out of kindness nor with just the simple goal of healing the nation. The South’s bustling warm-water ports and agricultural strength will be a powerful supplement to the nation’s economy. With the nation mired in more than $2 billion of wartime debt, and with Union soldiers still owed back pay, extra sources of income are vitally needed.

Grant’s simple reply has the desired effect. Lincoln beams as the cabinet members nod their heads in agreement.

“And what of the current military situation?”

Grant says that he expects word from Sherman any minute, saying that General Joe Johnston has finally surrendered. This, too, is met with enthusiasm around the table.

Throughout the proceedings, Grant’s feeling of unease about that evening’s plans lingers. He makes up his mind to tell Lincoln that he will attend the theater. Doing otherwise would be ungracious and disrespectful. Julia will be furious, but eventually she will understand. And then, first thing in the morning, they can be on the train to New Jersey.

The cabinet meeting drags on. One o’clock rolls past. One-thirty.

A messenger arrives carrying a note for Grant. It’s from Julia and she’s not happy. Mrs. Grant wants her husband back at the Willard Hotel immediately, so that they can catch the 6:00 P.M. to Burlington, New Jersey.

General Grant’s decision has now been made for him. After months and years of men obeying his every order, he bows to an even greater authority than the president of the United States: his wife.

“I am sorry, Mr. President,” Grant says when the cabinet meeting ends, just after one-thirty. “It is certain that I will be on this afternoon’s train to Burlington. I regret that I cannot attend the theater.”

Lincoln tries to change Grant’s mind, telling him that the people of Washington will be at Ford’s to see him. But the situation is out of the general’s hands. Lincoln senses that and says good-bye to his dear friend.

The Grants will make their train. Julia is so eager to leave town that she has chosen the local, which takes thirteen long hours to reach Burlington. The faster option would be the seven-thirty express in the morning, but that would mean a night at the theater with the daft and unbalanced Mary Lincoln. Julia Grant’s mind is made up.

What Ulysses S. Grant does not know is that he will be returning to Washington by the same train within twenty-four hours.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Two thousand years after the execution of Jesus, there are still many unanswered questions about who was directly responsible for his death and what happened in the aftermath. And so it is, on Good Friday 1865, that a series of bizarre occurrences will take place.

In the hours to come guards will inexplicably leave their posts, bridges that should be closed will miraculously be open, and telegrams alerting the army to begin a manhunt for Lincoln’s killer will not be sent—all happenings that have been tied to a murky conspiracy that most likely will never be uncovered. What we do know is that in these hours, John Wilkes Booth is putting the final touches on his murderous plan.

Booth is on an emotional roller coaster, his spirits rising and falling as he ponders the assassination and its consequences, all the while running down his checklist, completing the tasks that must be done for tonight. He is dressed in dashing fashion, with tight black pants, a tailored black coat, and a black hat. With those clothes and his broad black mustache, he couldn’t look more like a villain. The only thing he wears that isn’t black are his boots—they’re tan.

The first stop is Mary Surratt’s boardinghouse on H Street. She is walking out the door for a trip into the country to collect on an old debt, but Booth catches her just in time. He hands her a spyglass wrapped in brown paper and tied with a string, telling her to make sure that it doesn’t get wet or break. One of Surratt’s tenants, Louis Weichmann, is a soldier and government clerk whose job deals with the care and housing of prisoners of war. Weichmann senses that there’s something shady about Booth, having listened to his rants and spent enough time around the Surratts to discern the pro-Confederate leanings of the crowd. So he leans in to eavesdrop as Mary and Booth confer by the marble fireplace.

Mary catches him. She calmly orders Weichmann to leave her house at once and pick up a horse and buggy for her journey.

By the time Weichmann returns with the horse and buggy, Booth is gone, walking the five blocks to Herndon House, where Lewis Powell is lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling. He and Booth discuss the evening’s plan. The trick in killing Secretary of State Seward, Booth reminds him, isn’t the actual murder—Seward is still barely conscious and in great pain after his carriage accident. He is incapable of putting up any resistance.

No, the hard part will be getting in and out of Seward’s home. There is at least one male military nurse to protect the secretary, along with Seward’s wife and three of his children. In a worst-case scenario, Powell will have to kill them all, Booth says. Powell, mentally impaired since that long-ago mule kick to the head, says he has no problem with mass murder.

Then Booth is on the move again, headed for Pumphrey’s stable to arrange for his getaway horse. He prefers a small sorrel, but it’s already gone for the day. Instead, Booth rents a compact bay mare with a white star on her forehead. Pumphrey warns Booth that although the mare is just fourteen hands high, she’s extremely high-spirited. She mustn’t be tied to a post if he leaves her anywhere, because she’ll pull away and escape. Better to have someone hold her reins at all times.

The bay tries to bite Booth as the groom cinches the English saddle under her belly and adjusts her stirrups. To demonstrate her high spirits, the groom smacks the mare on the rump. She jumps and kicks, much to Booth’s delight.

Booth saddles up. He likes the horse with the black mane and tail, but the stirrups don’t feel right. The groom shortens them one notch and Booth is on his way, walking the mare up Sixth Street to Pennsylvania Avenue, where he jabs his spurs into her flanks so she’ll run. It’s a ludicrous idea. The street is jammed with pedestrians and carriages. Union soldiers, returning from the front, march in loose formation, dog-tired and in no mood for a horseman to romp through their ranks. But today Booth is above the law. He gallops the bay down Pennsylvania, ignoring the angry curses hurled in his mud-splattered wake.

Booth stops at Grover’s Theatre, where the marquee announces THE GORGEOUS PLAY OF ALADDIN, OR THE WONDERFUL LAMP. He doesn’t have any business there, but theaters are safe refuges no matter what city he’s visiting. Booth knows not only the insides of the building but also each nearby bar and restaurant, where he’s sure to see a friendly face. On a day like today, when his stomach is churning and he’s battling with all his might to stay calm and focused, nothing could be more natural than making his way to a theater, just to experience a few moments of calm reassurance. For the child of actors, raised on greasepaint and footlights, it’s like going home.

Against Pumphrey’s explicit direction, he ties the mare to a hitching post, then wanders up to Deery’s tavern and orders a bottle. Alone at the bar, nursing a brandy and water to the sounds of the clacking of billiard balls from the nearby table, he pauses to reflect on what he is about to do. Getting into the theater should be easy enough. Getting past the bodyguard at the door to the state box, however, might get bloody. And the odds of killing Lincoln and escaping are low. He accepts all that.

But what if nobody knows it’s him?

What if the euphoric triumph of shooting Lincoln is followed by the devastating letdown of anonymity—that is, until he reaches some safe refuge where he can shout his accomplishment to world and then parlay his infamy into some even greater glory. But what if no one believes him? What if John Wilkes Booth shoots the president and makes a clean getaway, only to be ignored when he tells everyone that he’s the man who did it?

This cannot be. Booth craves the limelight too much. He needs to make sure he’ll get immediate credit for such a bold and dramatic act.

Booth tosses a dollar onto the bar and walks downstairs to the Grover’s manager’s office. It’s empty. Sitting at the desk, Booth removes paper and an envelope from the pigeonholes. He then writes a letter to the editor of the National Intelligencer stating, in specific terms, what he is about to do.

He signs his name, then adds those of Powell, Atzerodt, and Herold. They are all members of the same company, in theatrical terms. They deserve some sort of billing—even if they might not want it.

After sealing the envelope, Booth steps outside. He is pleased to see that his feisty bay is still where he left her. A motley and dispirited group of Confederate prisoners is marching down the street as he saddles up. “Great God,” he moans, mortified by such a sad sight. “I no longer have a country.”

But seeing those downtrodden rebels is yet another reminder of why Booth has embraced violence. Thus fortified, Booth spies fellow actor John Matthews in front of the theater. Booth leans down from his horse to hand him the envelope and gives him specific instructions to mail it the next morning. However, hedging his bets in case things go bad, Booth says he wants the letter back if he finds Matthews before ten tomorrow morning.

It’s a petty and spiteful trick, designed to implicate Matthews, who will be onstage in the role of Richard Coyle during Our American Cousin. Booth had asked him to be part of the conspiracy and was turned down. The night after his aborted kidnapping attempt on the Soldiers’ Home road four weeks earlier, Booth even lounged on Matthews’s bed in a small boardinghouse across from Ford’s Theatre, trying to cajole the fellow actor to join him.

But Matthews continued to refuse. Now Booth is getting his revenge, implicating Matthews by association.

Matthews, completely unsuspecting, is distracted by an unusual sight. “Look,” he says to Booth. “Over there.”

Booth is stunned to see General and Mrs. Grant leaving town in an open carriage piled high with luggage. Julia is inside, with another female passenger, while the general sits up top, next to the coachman.

Booth trots after them, just to see for himself. He parades his horse past the carriage, turns around, and guides the bay back toward the Grants at a walk. He stares as the carriage passes, glaring at Sam Grant with such intensity that Julia will later recall quite vividly the crazed man who stared them down. It is only after the assassination that Mrs. Grant will realize who he was.

“I thought he was going to Ford’s tonight, with Lincoln,” Booth says to a stranger.

“Somebody said he’s going to Jersey,” the man responds, confirming Booth’s worst fears. Glumly, he realizes that one of his two primary targets will not be at Ford’s this evening. He wheels the horse around and heads for that theater.

Washington, D.C., is a relatively small city. All the locations associated with Booth’s activities throughout the week are situated close together. Mary Surratt’s boardinghouse is just a few blocks from the National Hotel, which is just a few blocks from Kirkwood House, where Vice President Johnson is staying, which is just a few blocks from the White House, which is right across the street from Secretary Seward’s home. The National, the White House, and Mary Surratt’s boardinghouse constitute the three corners of a broad triangle. Within that triangle are all the other locations. And in the very center is Ford’s Theatre, which is right across the alley from Herndon House, where Lewis Powell is now eating an early dinner of cold beef and potatoes before checking out.

The alley is known as Baptist Alley, due to Ford’s origins as a house of worship. A maid at Ford’s hears the sound of galloping hooves coming from the alley. When she looks outside, she sees a most unusual sight: the famous actor John Wilkes Booth racing a horse north up the alley from E Street, then galloping out the other end on F Street. He does this twice. The maid, Margaret Rozier, watches as Booth dismounts after the second dry run of his escape, not in a million years imagining what she has just witnessed. When he is done, Booth stops at Ford’s stage door, where he invites stagehands Jim Maddox and Ned Spangler to join him for a drink next door at Jim Ferguson’s Greenback Saloon.

As they come back outside after their drink, Booth mounts the bay and says hello to Jim Ferguson himself. Ferguson has heard about the Lincolns and is making plans to see Our American Cousin tonight. “She is a very nice horse,” Booth says, noting the way Ferguson admires her. “She can gallop and can almost kick me in the back.”

Booth prods her with his spurs and gallops back to the National Hotel, his errands complete. The energy whooshes out of him as the alcohol wears off and the brute realization of what he is about to do hits him hard. His face is so pale that the desk clerk inquires about his health.

Booth says he’s fine, orders a cup of tea, and heads upstairs to rest.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

“Crook,” Abraham Lincoln says to his bodyguard, “I believe there are men who want to take my life. And I have no doubt that they will do it.”

The two men are walking down Pennsylvania Avenue, on their way back to the War Department for their second meeting of the day. Lincoln wants a short session with Stanton to discuss the fate of a Confederate ringleader who very recently made the mistake of crossing the border from Canada back into the United States. Stanton is in favor of arresting the man, while Lincoln prefers to let him slip away to England on the morning steamer. As soon as Lincoln makes his point, he aims to hurry back to the White House for the carriage ride he promised Mary.

William Crook is fond of the president and deeply unsettled by the comments.

“Why do you think so, Mr. President?”

Crook steps forward as they come upon a group of angry drunks. He puts his body between theirs and Lincoln’s, thus clearing the way for the president’s safe passage. Crook’s actions, while brave, are unnecessary—if the drunks realize that the president of the United States is sharing the same sidewalk, they give no notice.

Lincoln waits until Crook is beside him again, then continues his train of thought. “Other men have been assassinated,” Lincoln says.

“I hope you are mistaken, Mr. President.”

“I have perfect confidence in those around me. In every one of you men. I know that no one could do it and escape alive,” Lincoln says. The two men walk in silence before he finishes his thought: “But if it is to be done, it is impossible to prevent it.”

At the War Department, Lincoln once again invites Stanton and telegraph chief Major Thomas Eckert, the man who can break fireplace pokers over his arms, to attend Our American Cousin that night. Both men turn him down once again. Lincoln is upset by their rejection, but he doesn’t show it outwardly. The only indication comes on the walk back to the White House, when he admits to Crook, “I do not want to go.” Lincoln says it like a man facing a death sentence.

Inside the White House, Lincoln is pulled into an unscheduled last-minute meeting that will delay his carriage ride. Lincoln hides his exasperation and dutifully meets with New Hampshire congressman Edward H. Rollins. But as soon as Rollins leaves, yet another petitioner begs a few minutes of Lincoln’s time. A weary Lincoln, all too aware that Mary will be most upset if he keeps her waiting much longer, gives former military aide Colonel William Coggeshall the benefit of a few moments.

Finally, Lincoln marches down the stairs and heads for the carriage. He notices a one-armed soldier standing off to one side of the hallway and overhears the young man tell another, “I would almost give my other hand if I could shake that of Lincoln.”

Lincoln can’t resist. “You shall do that and it shall cost you nothing, boy,” he exclaims, smiling broadly as he walks over and grasps the young man’s hand. He asks his name, that of his regiment, and in which battle he lost the arm.

Only then does Lincoln say his farewells and step outside. He finds Mary waiting at the carriage. She’s in a tentative mood—they’ve spent so little time alone in the past few months that being together, just the two of them, feels strange. She wonders if Lincoln might be more comfortable if they brought some friends along for the open-air ride. “I prefer to ride by ourselves today,” he insists. Lincoln helps her into the barouche and then is helped up from the gravel driveway to take his seat beside her. The four-wheeled horse-drawn carriage features two facing double seats for passengers and a retractable roof. The driver sits in a box seat up front. Lincoln opts to keep the roof open, then covers their laps with a blanket, even though the temperature is a warm sixty-eight degrees.

The war has been hard on their marriage. Mary is delighted beyond words to see that Lincoln is in a lighthearted mood. She gazes into her husband’s eyes and recognizes the man who once courted her.

“Dear Husband,” she laughs, “you startle me by your great cheerfulness. I have not seen you so happy since before Willie’s death.”

“And well I may feel so, Mary. I consider this day, the war has come to a close.” The president pauses. “We must both be more cheerful in the future—between the war and the loss of our darling Willie we have been very miserable.”

Coachman Francis Burns guides the elegant pair of black horses down G Street. The pace is a quick trot. Behind them ride two cavalry escorts, just for safety. The citizens of Washington are startled to see the Lincolns out on the town. They hear loud laughter from Mary as the barouche passes by and see a grin spread across the president’s face. When a group calls out to him as the carriage turns onto New Jersey Avenue, he doffs his trademark stovepipe hat in greeting.

Throughout the war, Lincoln has stayed in the moment, never allowing himself to dream of the future. But now he pours his heart out to Mary, talking about a proposed family trip to Palestine, for he is most curious about the Holy Land. And after he leaves office he wants the family to return to their roots in Illinois, where he will once again hang out his shingle as a country lawyer. The “Lincoln & Herndon” sign has never been taken down, at Lincoln’s specific request to his partner.

“Mary,” Lincoln says, “we have had a hard time of it since we came to Washington, but the war is over, and with God’s blessing we may hope for four years of peace and happiness, and then we will go back to Illinois and pass the rest of our lives in quiet. We have laid by some money, and during this term we will try to save up more.”

The carriage makes its way to the Navy Yard, where Lincoln steps on board USS Montauk. His intent is just a cursory peek at the storied ironclad, with its massive round turret constituting the deck’s superstructure. But soon its crew mobs Lincoln, and he is forced to politely excuse himself so that he can return to Mary. Unbeknownst to Lincoln, the Montauk will soon serve another purpose.

Lincoln offers a final salute to the many admirers as coachman Burns turns the carriage back toward the White House. It’s getting late, and the Lincolns have to be at the theater.

John Wilkes Booth is expecting them.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

William Crook stands guard outside Lincoln’s office door. The twenty-six-year-old policeman and presidential bodyguard has had a long day, having arrived at the White House at precisely eight A.M. His replacement was supposed to relieve him three hours ago, but John Parker, as always, is showing himself to be lazy and unaccountable. Crook is deeply attached to Lincoln and frets about his safety. How this drunken slob Parker was designated as the president’s bodyguard is a great mystery, but Crook knows that the president does not involve himself in such things.

After their carriage ride, the Lincolns eat dinner with their sons, and then Crook walks the president back to the War Department for a third time, to see if General Sherman has sent a telegraph stating the disposition of his troops in the South. Lincoln has become so addicted to the telegraph’s instant news from the front that he still can’t let go of the need for just one more bit of information, even though the prospect of another great battle is slim.

Then Crook walks back to the White House with Lincoln, his eyes constantly scanning the crowds for signs that someone means his employer harm. He remembers well the advice of Ward Hill Lamon, the walrus-mustached, self-appointed head of Lincoln’s security detail, that Lincoln should not go out at night, under any circumstances. “Especially to the theater,” Lamon had added.

But tonight, Lincoln is going to the theater—and it’s no secret. The afternoon papers printed news about him attending Our American Cousin with General Grant and their wives, almost as if daring every crackpot and schemer with an anti-North agenda to buy a ticket. Indeed, ticket sales have been brisk since the announcement, and—recent outpourings of affection notwithstanding—Lincoln’s status as the most hated man in America certainly means that not everyone at Ford’s will be there out of admiration for the president.

Lincoln, however, doesn’t see it like that. Even though Mary says the carriage ride gave her a headache that has her second-guessing the night out, the president feels obligated to go. He might feel differently if he hadn’t missed the Grand Illumination last night. That, plus the fact that the Grants aren’t going, makes Lincoln’s obligation all the more urgent—he knows his constituents will be deeply disappointed if both of America’s two most famous men fail to appear.

And then there’s the minor issue of disappointing the Grants’ last-minute replacements. Just when it seemed like everyone in Washington was terrified of attending the theater with the Lincolns, Mary found guests, the minor diplomat Major Henry Reed Rathbone and his fiancee (and stepsister) Clara Harris, who watched Lincoln’s speech with Mary three nights before. Mary is deeply fond of Clara, the full-figured daughter of Senator Ira Harris of New York. They enjoy an almost mother-daughter relationship. Just as important, Major Rathbone is a strapping young man who saw service during the war; he has the sort of physical presence Lincoln might need in a bodyguard, should such services be required.

The president doesn’t know either of them. When he received news that this unlikely couple would be their guests, he was enjoying a quiet dinner with Tad and Robert. Lincoln’s response was neither joy nor disappointment but merely a silent nod of acknowledgment.

William Crook is a straightforward cop, not one to search for conspiracies or malcontents where none exist. Yet the bodyguard in him wonders about the tall, athletic Rathbone and whether or not he poses a security risk. What better way to kill the president than shooting him in his own box during the play?

Finally, Crook hears feet thudding up the stairs. Parker ambles down the hallway, patting the bulge in his jacket to show that he is armed. He is a thirty-four-year-old former machinist from Frederick County, Virginia, and the father of three children. Parker served in the Union army for the first three months of the war, then mustered out to rejoin his family and took a job as a policeman in September 1861, becoming one of the first 150 men hired when Washington, D.C., formed its brand-new Metropolitan Police Department.

Throughout his employment, Parker’s one distinguishing trait has been an ability to manufacture controversy. He has been disciplined for, among other things, swearing at a grocer, swearing at a supervising officer, insulting a woman who had requested police protection, and being drunk and disorderly in a house of prostitution. At his trial, the madam testified that not only was Parker drunk and disorderly but that he had been living in the whorehouse for five weeks before the incident. Apparently, the authorities chose to ignore that testimony. The trial took place before a police board, rather than in the criminal courts. The board found no wrongdoing by Parker and quickly acquitted him.

And so Parker continued his questionable behavior. He appeared before the police board just two weeks later for sleeping on duty. Ninety days after that, another police board: this time for using profane language to a private citizen. Both charges were dismissed.

His innocence proven again and again, Parker had no qualms about putting his name into the pool when, late in 1864, the Metropolitan Police Department began providing White House bodyguards. It was prestigious duty and kept him from being drafted back into the army. Mary Lincoln herself wrote the letter exempting him from service. So far, the only blemish on Parker’s record while serving the president is a penchant for tardiness, as Crook knows all too well. So when Parker finally appears several hours late for his shift, Crook is upset but not surprised.

Crook briefs Parker on the day’s events, then explains that the presidential carriage will be stopping at Fourteenth and H to pick up Major Rathbone and Miss Harris. The presence of two additional passengers means that there will be no room for Parker. “You should leave fifteen minutes ahead of the president,” says Crook, pointing out that Parker will have to walk to Ford’s Theatre—and that he should arrive before the presidential party in order to provide security the instant they arrive.

As Crook finishes, Lincoln comes to his office door. A handful of last-minute appointments have come up, and he is eager to get them out of the way so he can enjoy the weekend.

“Good night, Mr. President,” Crook says.

He and the president have repeated this scene a hundred times, with Lincoln responding in kind.

Only this time it’s different.

“Good-bye, Crook,” Lincoln replies.

All the way home, that subtle difference nags at William Crook.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

As Lincoln is bidding farewell to William Crook, Booth is gobbling down a quick dinner in the National Hotel’s dining room. Food, sleep, and adrenaline have him feeling sober once more. Our American Cousin starts at eight, and his plan will go into action shortly after ten P.M. If all goes well, any residual effects of the afternoon’s alcohol will have worn off by then. In fact, Booth is feeling so good that he starts drinking again. What he is about to do is very grave, indeed. Liquid courage will make sure he doesn’t get stage fright and miss his cue.

That cue is simple: there is a moment in the third act when the actor Harry Hawk, playing the part of Asa Trenchard, is the only person on stage. He utters a line that never fails to make the audience convulse with laughter. “Don’t know the manners of good society, eh?” he says to the character of the busybody, Mrs. Mountchessington, who has insulted him before exiting the stage. “Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal—you sockdologizing old man-trap.”

The instant that the punch line hits home and the Ford’s audience explodes, Booth will kill Lincoln. If everything goes according to plan, he will already be concealed inside the state box. All he needs to do is pull out his Deringer and fire. Booth will toss the pistol aside after shooting Lincoln, then use his Bowie knife to battle his way out, if cornered.

His plan is to keep moving forward at all times—forward from the back wall of the box, forward to Lincoln’s rocking chair, forward up and over the railing and then down onto the stage, forward to the backstage door, forward to Maryland, and then forward all the way to Mexico, exile, and safety.

But Booth will stop for an instant in the midst of all that rapid movement. The actor in him cannot resist the chance to utter one last bold line from center stage. After leaping from the balcony Booth will stand tall and, in his best elocution, announce, “Sic semper tyrannis”: Thus always to tyrants.

The Latin phrase is meant to sound smart, the sort of profound parting words that will echo down the corridors of history. He has stolen it, truth be told, from the state of Virginia. It is the commonwealth’s motto.

No matter. The words are perfect.

Booth plans to have another last-minute rendezvous with his co-conspirators at eight P.M. He returns to his room and polishes his Deringer, then slips a single ball into the barrel. The gun goes into his pocket. Into his waistband goes the Bowie knife in its sheath. Outside he can hear Washington coming to life once again, with still more of the endless postwar parties, bonfires, and street corner sing-alongs that annoy him no end.

Booth packs a small bag with a makeup pencil, false beard, false mustache, wig, and a plaid muffler. As he is about to leave the hotel on his deadly errand, he realizes that his accomplices might be in need of firearms. So he slips a pair of revolvers into the bag. Their firepower far exceeds the Deringer’s.

And yet what Booth leaves behind is just as powerful: among the personal effects that authorities will later find are a broken comb, tobacco, embroidered slippers, and one very telling scrap of paper. On it are written the keys to top-secret coded Confederate messages that link him with Jefferson Davis’s office in Richmond and with the million-dollar gold fund in Montreal. Finally, Booth leaves behind a valise filled with damning evidence that implicates John Surratt and, by extension, his mother, Mary.

Booth could have destroyed these items, but such is his malevolence that if he is ever apprehended or killed, he wants everyone else to go down as well. He also wants to show the world that he, Booth, was the mastermind behind killing Abraham Lincoln.

He walks downstairs and slides his key across the front desk. “Are you going to Ford’s tonight?” he asks George W. Bunker, the clerk on duty.

“No,” comes the reply.

“You ought to go,” Booth says with a wink on his way out the door. “There is going to be some splendid acting.”

Booth laughs at his own joke as he steps into the night air. Washington is covered in a fine mist, giving the streetlights and the Capitol dome a ghostly appearance. Booth feels like he is viewing the city through frosted glass.

He trots his horse over to Ford’s. Once again he examines his escape route, then slides down from the saddle and ties the mare to a hitching post. He steps into a nearby tavern, where he runs into Ford’s orchestra director, William Withers Jr., who’s having a last quick drink before the eight P.M. curtain. They talk shop, the conversation veering toward mutual friends in the theater. Withers mentions Booth’s late father. When Booth suggests that he is the better actor of the two, Withers laughingly shoots back that Booth will never be as talented as his father.

Booth’s face hardens, but he manages a thin smile. Focusing his gaze on Withers, he utters the truest sentence he will ever speak: “When I leave the stage I will be the most talked about man in America.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

“Would you have us be late?” Mary Lincoln chides her husband, standing in his office doorway. Speaker of the House Schuyler Colfax dropped by a half hour ago and was immediately granted a few minutes of Lincoln’s time. But those few minutes have stretched into half an hour and, across town, the curtain has already risen on Our American Cousin. Making matters worse, the Lincolns still have to stop and pick up their theater guests. They’ll be lucky to arrive at Ford’s in time for the second act.

It is five minutes after eight. Mary wears a gray dress that shows her ample bosom and a matching bonnet. She is eager to get to the theater but tentative in her approach because Mr. Lincoln’s moods have been so unpredictable lately.

Once again, he has lost all track of time. Speaker Colfax stopped in to discuss the possibility of a special session of Congress. Colfax has plans to leave in the morning on a long trip to California but says he will cancel it if Lincoln calls the special session. Lincoln won’t hear of it. He tells Colfax to enjoy himself and to enlist the support of the western states in reuniting America.

As he makes to leave, Colfax pauses at the door. He is a true admirer of Lincoln’s. Colfax has heard rumors of violence against Lincoln and mentions how afraid he was when Lincoln visited Richmond a week earlier. “Why, if anyone else had been president and gone to Richmond, I would have been alarmed, too,” Lincoln chuckles. “But I was not scared about myself a bit.”

Lincoln asks Colfax if he has plans for the evening, and, if not, would he be interested in attending Our American Cousin? Colfax replies that although he is deeply honored by the invitation, he cannot go.

This marks a half dozen rejections for Lincoln today. First the Grants, then Stanton and Thomas Eckert, then his son Robert just a half hour earlier, and now the Speaker of the House.

Former Massachusetts congressman George Ashmun waits to see Lincoln as Colfax exits. But Mary’s pleas finally have an effect. It is time to leave for the theater. Lincoln hastily pulls a card from his jacket pocket and jots a small note inviting Ashmun to return at nine in the morning.

Finally, Lincoln walks downstairs and out onto the front porch, where the presidential carriage awaits.

The roof is now closed, which is a comfort on this misty night. Footman Charles Forbes helps Mary up the steps and into her seat as Lincoln says a few final words to Ashmun and Colfax, who have followed him outside. Suddenly, yet another caller steps out of the night, seeking a few moments of Lincoln’s time. The president hears the footsteps on the gravel and the familiar voice of former Illinois congressman Isaac Arnold yelling his name.

Lincoln is about to climb into the carriage, but he waits until Arnold is close enough that they can shake hands. Arnold was a staunch backer of Lincoln’s during the war’s darkest hours, and the resulting dip in the president’s popularity cost him his seat in the House. The least Lincoln can do is acknowledge him. He bends his head to listen as Arnold whispers a quiet petition in his ear.

Lincoln nods but refuses to give an immediate answer. “Excuse me now,” he begs. “I am going to the theater. Come see me in the morning.”

The Harris residence, at H and Fifteenth Streets, is almost right across the street from the White House, so the Lincolns have little time alone before picking up their guests. But in that short interval Lincoln turns lighthearted and happy, chatting excitedly about the night. Mary is delighted at her husband’s sudden jocularity and his ability to seemingly leave the burdens of the White House behind the instant they leave the grounds.

As the carriage threads the seven blocks to the theater, Rathbone, with his muttonchops and broad mustache, sits facing Lincoln, talking about his experiences in the war. Along the way, another impromptu victory parade on Pennsylvania Avenue slows their progress and makes them even later for the show. Once they finally approach Ford’s, they can smell and see the tar torches casting their ghostly yellow light on the front of the theater. The carriages of theatergoers line Tenth Street. A crowd of soldiers gathers, there to see Lincoln and Grant. A barker calls out, “This way to Ford’s!”

Driver Francis Burns steps down and walks the horses the final few feet to the theater, fearful that the commotion might cause them to bolt. The two cavalry escorts trailing the carriage wheel their horses back to their barracks, knowing that they will return and finish their guard duty once the show ends.

It is eight twenty-five when Lincoln steps through the front door of the theater. A young boy, in a moment he will remember for the rest of his life, shyly offers him a program. The president accepts it with a smile. Now rejoined by bodyguard John Parker, the Lincolns and their guests climb the stairs leading to their box. Onstage, the actors are more than aware that the audience is in a foul mood. Having bought tickets in hopes of seeing Lincoln and Grant, the theatergoers had monitored the state box, only to find that neither was in house.

So when Lincoln finally arrives, there is relief onstage. Laura Keene ad-libs a line that refers to Lincoln, making the audience turn toward the back of the theater in order to witness his appearance. William Withers, the orchestra director who had a drink with John Wilkes Booth less than an hour ago, immediately stops the show’s music and instructs the band to perform “Hail to the Chief.”

The audience members rise to their feet and cheer, making a noise that Withers can only describe as “breathtaking.” Lincoln does not seek out such adulation. Indeed, he has “an almost morbid dread” of causing a scene. But he works the crowd for full effect, allowing Rathbone and Harris to enter the state box first, followed by Mary. Then Lincoln strides forth so the crowd can see him. As patriotic cheering fills the house, he honors his constituents by standing at the edge of the box and bowing twice.

Only when the applause dies down does Lincoln ease into the rocking chair on the left side of the box. A curtain partially shields him from the audience, giving him privacy should he decide to nod off and take a nap. The crowd can see him only if he leans forward and pokes his head over the ledge; otherwise he is entirely invisible to everyone in the theater, except for those in the state box and the actors onstage.

Lincoln takes advantage of the privacy, reaching out for Mary’s hand and holding it lovingly. She blushes at such scandalous behavior. “What will Miss Harris make of my hanging on to you so?” she giggles to her husband.

“She will think nothing about it,” he replies, squeezing her hand but not letting go.

Behind Lincoln, a single door leads into the state box. On the other side of the door is a narrow unlit hallway. At the end of the hallway is yet another door. This is the only route to and from the state box, and it is John Parker’s job to pull up a chair and sit in front of this door, making sure that no one goes in or out.

But on the night of April 14, 1865, as Abraham Lincoln relaxes in his rocking chair and laughs out loud for the first time in months, John Parker gets thirsty. He is bored, and he can’t see the play. Taltavul’s saloon calls to him. Pushing his chair against the wall, he leaves the door to the state box unguarded and wanders outside. Footman Charles Forbes is taking a nap in the driver’s seat of Lincoln’s carriage, oblivious to the fog and drizzle.

“How about a little ale?” Parker asks, knowing that Forbes will be an eager drinking buddy. The two walk into Taltavul’s and make themselves comfortable. The show won’t be over for two more hours—plenty of time to have a couple beers and appear perfectly sober when the Lincolns need them again.

President Abraham Lincoln’s only bodyguard, a man with a career-long history of inappropriate and negligent behavior, has left his post for the last time. Incredibly, he will never be punished for this gross dereliction of duty.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Less than two hours to go.

John Wilkes Booth summarizes the final details with his co-conspirators as the Lincolns settle into their seats. Though Lewis Powell checked out of his hotel room hours earlier, the four men meet outside the Herndon House because of its close proximity to Ford’s. With the exception of Atzerodt, each man is on horseback. Though he has been drinking steadily on and off all day, Booth is thinking and acting clearly. None of the co-conspirators has any cause to doubt him.

First, and most important, Booth tells them, the precise time of the president’s assassination will be ten-fifteen P.M. Unlike the night before, when the assassination plans had a haphazard quality, tonight’s events are timed to the minute. Shows at Ford’s usually start promptly. If that’s the case, then Harry Hawk will be alone onstage, delivering his punch line, at precisely ten-fifteen.

Second, Booth tells them, the murders of Seward and Johnson must also take place at ten-fifteen. The precision is vital. There can be no advance warning or alarm to the intended targets. The attacks must be a complete surprise. Booth hopes to create the illusion that Washington, D.C., is a hotbed of assassins, resulting in the sort of mass chaos that will make it easier for him and his men to escape. With officials looking everywhere for the killers, on streets filled with bonfires and spontaneous parades and hordes of drunken revelers, blending in to the bedlam should be as simple as staying calm.

Next comes the list of assignments. The job of murdering of Secretary of State Seward will be a two-man affair, with Lewis Powell and David Herold now working together. Powell will be the man who actually walks up to the door, finds a way to enter the house, and commits the crime. The ruse that will get him in the door is a fake bottle of medication, which Powell will claim was sent by Seward’s physician.

Herold’s role is to assist in the getaway. He knows Washington’s back alleys and shortcuts and will guide Powell, who knows little about the city, to safety. During the murder, Herold must wait outside and hold their horses. Once Powell exits the house, the two men will gallop across town by a roundabout method in order to confuse anyone trying to give chase. Then they will leave town via the Navy Yard Bridge and rendezvous in the Maryland countryside.

As for George Atzerodt, he will act alone. Killing Vice President Andrew Johnson does not look to be a difficult task. Though Johnson is a vigorous man, he is known to be unguarded and alone most of the time. Atzerodt is to knock on the door of his hotel room and shoot him when he answers. Atzerodt will also escape Washington via the Navy Yard Bridge, then gallop into Maryland to meet up with the others. From there, Atzerodt’s familiarity with smugglers’ trails will allow him to guide the men into the Deep South.

Once the plans are finalized, Booth will head for Ford’s. There he will bide his time, making sure the theater’s entries and exits are unguarded, that the secret backstage passageways are clear, and that his horse is ready and waiting.

Booth clears his throat just before they ride off in their different directions. He tells them about the letter he wrote to the National Intelligencer, implicating all of them in this grand triple assassination. The message is clear: there is no going back. If the men object to Booth outing them, there is no historical record to show it.

Booth looks over his gang. These four unlikely men are about to change the course of history, just as surely as Grant or Lincoln or Lee or any of the hundreds of thousands of men who died during the Civil War. They are now ninety minutes away from becoming the most wanted men in all of the world.

He wishes them good luck, then spurs his horse and trots off to Ford’s.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Booth guides his mare into the alley behind Ford’s. The night is quiet, save for the peals of laughter coming from inside the theater. He dismounts and shouts for Ned Spangler to come hold his horse. The sceneshifter appears at the back door, visibly distressed about the possibility of missing an all-important stage cue. Booth doesn’t care. He demands that Spangler come outside and secure the animal. The last thing Booth needs is for his escape to be thwarted by a runaway mare.

Spangler, completely unaware of the assassination plot, insists that he can’t do the job. Booth, ever persuasive, insists. The unshaven, heavy-lidded stagehand weakens but does not capitulate. His employment is contingent on moving the right scenes at the right time. He is willing to do anything for a great actor such as Booth—anything but lose his job. Leaving Booth in the alley, Spangler dashes back into the theater and returns with Joseph Burroughs, a young boy who does odd jobs at Ford’s and goes by the nickname “Peanut John.” Booth hands Peanut John the reins and demands that he remain at the back door, holding the horse, until he returns. The boy must not leave that spot for any reason.

Peanut John, hoping that Booth will give him a little something for the effort, agrees. He sits on the stone step and shivers in the damp night air, his fist clutched tightly around those reins.

Booth slides into the theater. The sound of the onstage actors speaking their lines fills the darkened backstage area. He speaks in a hush as he removes his riding gloves, making a show of saying hello to the cast and crew, most of whom he knows well. His eyes scrutinize the layout, memorizing the location of every stagehand and prop, not wanting anything to get in the way of his exit.

There is a tunnel beneath the stage, crossing from one side to the other. Booth checks to make sure that nothing clutters the passage. Nobody guesses for an instant that he is checking out escape routes. When he reaches the far side, Booth exits Ford’s through yet another backstage door. This one leads to an alley, which funnels down onto Tenth Street.

There’s no one there.

In one short dash through Ford’s Theatre, Booth has learned that his escape route is not blocked, that nobody is loitering in the alley who could potentially tackle him or otherwise stop him from getting away, and that the cast and crew think it’s the most normal thing in the world for him to stroll into and out of the theater.

And, indeed, no one questions why he’s there nor finds it even remotely suspicious.

Feeling very pleased with himself, Booth pops in Taltavul’s for a whiskey. He orders a whole bottle, then sits down at the bar. Incredibly, Lincoln’s bodyguard is sipping a large tankard of ale just a few feet away.

Booth smiles as he pours water into his whiskey, then raises the glass in a toast to himself.

What am I about to do? Can I really go through with this?

He pushes the doubts from his head. We are at war. This is not murder. You will become immortal.

At ten P.M. Booth double-checks to make sure John Parker is still drinking at the other end of the bar. Then, leaving the nearly full whiskey bottle on the bar, he softly lowers his glass and walks back to Ford’s.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

The third act is under way. Soon the play will be over, and Lincoln can get back to the White House. Meanwhile, the unheated state box has gotten chilly. Abraham Lincoln drops Mary’s hand as he rises to put on his overcoat, tailored in a black wool specially for his oversized frame by Brooks Brothers. The silk lining is decorated with an eagle clutching a banner in its beak. The words on the streamer are Lincoln’s unspoken manifesto, and every time he slips on the coat he is reminded of his mission. “One country, one destiny,” it reads, quite simply.

Sitting back down in the horsehair rocker, Lincoln shifts his gaze from the performers directly below him. He pushes back the privacy curtain, then leans forward over the railing to look down and to the left, at the audience.

Lincoln lets go of the curtain and returns his attention to Our American Cousin.

It is seven minutes after ten. At the exact same moment, John Wilkes Booth strolls through the front door of Ford’s—heart racing, whiskey on his breath, skin clammy to the touch. He is desperately trying to appear calm and cool. Always a man of manners, Booth takes off his hat and holds it with one hand. When ticket taker John Buckingham makes a joke of letting him in for free, “courtesy of the house,” Booth notices the bulge in Buckingham’s lip and asks if he has any extra tobacco. Like so many other minor theater employees, Buckingham is in awe of Booth’s celebrity. Not only does he hand over a small plug of tobacco, he also summons the courage to ask if he might introduce Booth to some close friends who happen to be at the show. “Later,” Booth promises with a wink.

Buckingham notes the deathly pallor on Booth’s face and how incredibly nervous the normally nonchalant actor seems to be. As Booth walks off, Buckingham’s fellow Ford’s employee John Sessford points out that Booth has been in and out of the theater all day. “Wonder what he’s up to?” Sessford mutters to Buckingham. They watch as Booth climbs the staircase to the dress circle, which accesses the hallway to the state box. But neither man thinks Booth’s unusual behavior merits closer scrutiny. They watch him disappear up the stairs and then once again return their attention to the front door and to the patrons late in returning from intermission.

At the top of the stairs, Booth enters the dress circle lobby. He is now inside the darkened theater, standing directly behind the seats of the second-level audience. He hums softly to himself to calm his nerves. In hopes of increasing the theater’s capacity for this special performance, Ford’s management has placed extra chairs in this corridor, and now Booth walks past two Union officers sitting in those seats. They recognize the famous actor and then turn their focus back to the play. They make no move to stop him, because they have no reason to.

Booth approaches the door leading into the state box. It is attended by a White House messenger but not a pistol-packing bodyguard. He sees the chair where John Parker should be sitting and breathes a sigh of relief that the bodyguard is still in the saloon. Handing the messenger one of his calling cards, Booth steps through the doorway without a question.

In the theater below, a young girl who came to the theater hoping to see Lincoln has spent the night staring up at the state box, waiting for him to show his face. Now she is awed by the sight of John Wilkes Booth, the famous and dashing actor, standing in the shadows above her. At the same time, her heart leaps as Lincoln moves his gaze from the stage to the audience, once again poking his head out over the railing. Finally, with the play almost over, she has seen the president! She turns to the man next to her, Taltavul’s owner, Jim Ferguson, and grins at her good fortune.

She turns to get another glimpse of Booth, but by then he has already pushed through the door and now stands in the darkened hallway leading into the state box. He is completely alone. If he wants, he can go back out the door and get on with his life as if nothing has happened. The letter boasting of his deed has not yet been sent. Other than the other members of the conspiracy, no one will be the wiser. But if he walks forward down the hallway, then through the rear door of Lincoln’s box, his life will change forever.

Booth has a head full of whiskey and a heart full of hate. He thinks of the Confederate cause and Lincoln’s promise to give slaves the vote. And then Booth remembers that no one can put a stop to it but him. He is the one man who can, and will, make a difference. There will be no going back.

Earlier that day Booth spied a wooden music stand in the state box. He now jams it into the side of the door leading to the corridor. The music stand has become a dead bolt, and Booth double-checks to make sure it is lodged firmly against the wooden door frame. This seals the door shut from the inside. When he is done, the door might as well be locked, so perfect is his blockade. It’s impossible to push open from the other side. No one in the theater can get in to stop him.

Booth then creeps down the hallway. Booth’s second act of preparation that afternoon was using a pen knife to carve a very small peephole in the back wall of the state box. Now he looks through that hole to get a better view of the president.

As Booth already knows, the state box is shaped like a parallelogram. The walls to the left and right of Lincoln slant inward. Booth sees that Clara Harris and Major Rathbone sit along the wall to his far right, at an angle to the stage, and the Lincolns sit along the railing. The Lincolns look out directly onto the stage, while Clara and her beau must turn their heads slightly to the right to see the show—if they look directly forward they will be gazing at Mary and Abraham Lincoln in profile.

But it is not their view of Lincoln that matters. What matters is that Booth, through the peephole, is staring right at the back of Lincoln’s head. He can hear the players down below, knowing that in a few short lines Harry Hawk’s character Asa Trenchard will be alone, delivering his “sockdologizing old man-trap” line.

That line is Booth’s cue—and just ten seconds away.

Booth presses his black hat back down onto his head, then removes the loaded Deringer from his coat pocket and grasps it in his right fist. With his left hand, he slides the long, razor-sharp Bowie knife from its sheath.

Booth takes a deep breath and softly pushes the door open with his knife hand. The box is dimly lit from the footlights down below. He can see only faces. No one knows he’s there. He presses his body against the wall, careful to stay in the shadows while awaiting his cue. Abraham Lincoln’s head pokes over the top of his rocking chair, just four short feet in front of Booth; then once again he looks down and to the left, at the audience.

“You sockdologizing old man-trap” booms out through the theater.

The audience explodes in laughter.

CHAPTER FORTY

A few blocks away, someone knocks hard on the front door of the “Old Clubhouse,” the home of Secretary of State William Seward. The three-story brick house facing Lafayette Park, across the street from the White House, took that name from its day as the headquarters of the elite Washington Club. Tragedy paid a visit to the building in 1859, when a congressman shot his mistress’s husband on a nearby lawn. The husband, Philip Barton Key, was a United States attorney and the son of Francis Scott Key, who wrote “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Key’s body was carried inside the club, where he passed away in a first-floor parlor.

That tragedy, however, will pale in comparison with what will happen in the next ten minutes.

There is another sharp knock, even though it’s been only a few seconds since the first one. This time the pounding is more insistent. Secretary Seward does not hear it, for he is sleeping upstairs, his medication causing him to drift between consciousness and unconsciousness. William Bell, a young black servant in a pressed white coat, hurries to the entryway.

“Yes, sir?” he asks, opening the door and seeing an unfamiliar face.

A handsome young man with long, thick hair stares back from the porch. He wears an expensive slouch hat and stands a couple inches over six feet. His jaw is awry on the left, as if it was badly broken and then healed improperly. “I have medicine from Dr. Verdi,” he says in an Alabama drawl, holding up a small vial.

“Yes, sir. I’ll take it to him,” Bell says, reaching for the bottle.

“It has to be delivered personally.”

Bell looks at him curiously. Secretary Seward’s physician had visited just an hour ago. Before leaving, he’d administered a sedative and insisted that there be no more visitors tonight. “Sir, I can’t let you go upstairs. I have strict orders—”

“You’re talking to a white man, boy. This medicine is for your master and, by God, you’re going to give it to him.”

When Bell protests further, Lewis Powell pushes past him, saying, “Out of my way, nigger. I’m going up.”

Bell simply doesn’t know how to stop the intruder.

Powell starts climbing the steps from the foyer to the living area. Bell is a step behind at all times, pleading forgiveness and politely asking that Powell tread more softly. The sound of the southerner’s heavy work boots on the wooden steps echoes through the house. “I’m sorry I talked rough to you,” Bell says sheepishly.

“That’s all right,” Powell sighs, pleased that the hardest part of the plot is behind him. He feared he wouldn’t gain access to the Seward home and would botch his part of the plan. The next step is locating Seward’s bedroom.

Out front, in the shadow of a tree across the street, David Herold holds their horses, prepared for the escape.

But now the secretary’s son Frederick stands at the top of the stairs in a dressing gown, blocking Powell’s path. He was in bed with his wife, but the sound of Powell’s boots woke him. Young Seward, fresh off a heady day that saw him represent his father at Lincoln’s cabinet meeting, demands to know Powell’s business.

Politely and deferentially, Powell holds up the medicine vial and swears that Dr. Verdi told him to deliver it to William Seward and William Seward only.

Seward takes one look at Powell and misjudges him as a simpleton. Rather than argue, he walks into his father’s bedroom to see if he is awake.

This is the break the assassin is looking for. Now he knows exactly which room belongs to the secretary of state. He grows excited, eager to get the job done as quickly as possible. He can feel the revolver stuffed inside his waistband.

Frederick Seward returns. “He’s sleeping. Give it to me.”

“I was ordered to give it to the secretary.”

“You cannot see Mr. Seward. I am his son and the assistant secretary of state. Go back and tell the doctor that I refused to let you go into the sickroom, because Mr. Seward was sleeping.”

“Very well, sir,” says Powell, handing Frederick the vial. “I will go.”

As Frederick Seward accepts the vial, Powell turns and takes three steps down the stairs. Suddenly he turns. He sprints back up to the landing, drawing a navy revolver. He levels the gun, curses, and pulls the trigger.

But the gun jams. Frederick Seward will later tell police he thought he was a dead man. Frederick cries out in fear and pain, throwing up his arms to defend himself. He has the advantage of standing one step higher than Powell but only for a second. The two men grapple as Powell leaps up onto the landing and then uses the butt of his gun to pistol-whip Frederick. Finally, Frederick Seward is knocked unconscious. His body makes a horrible thud as he collapses to the floor, his skull shattered in two places, gray brain matter trickling out through the gashes, blood streaming down his face.

“Murder, murder, murder!” cries William Bell from the ground floor. He sprints out the front door and into the night, screaming at the top of his lungs.

Across the street, David Herold holds the two getaway horses. Bell’s cries are sure to bring soldiers and police to the house within minutes. Suddenly, the long list of reasons why Herold wants to be part of the Lincoln conspiracy are forgotten. He panics. He ties Powell’s horse to a tree, spurs his own mount, and gallops down Fifteenth Street.

Back inside the Seward home, Lewis Powell isn’t done. He pounds on Frederick’s head without mercy, blood spattering the walls and his own hands and face. The beating is so savage that Powell’s pistol literally falls to pieces in his hands. Only then does he stand up straight and begin walking toward the secretary of state’s bedroom.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

The commotion in the hallway and the sound of a body dropping heavily to the hardwood floor have alerted twenty-year-old Fanny Seward to the intrusion. The daughter of the secretary of state is clad only in a nightdress and has been sitting at the foot of her father’s bed, trying to coax him to sleep. Also inside the room is Sergeant George Robinson, sent by the army to watch over Seward. Now Private Robinson pushes his full weight against the door, even as the assassin tries fight his way in. Soon Lewis Powell forces open the door and slashes at Robinson with his Bowie knife, cutting the soldier’s forehead to the bone and almost putting out an eye. As Robinson crumples to the ground, Fanny Seward places herself between Powell and her father. “Please don’t kill him,” she begs, terrified. “Please, please don’t kill him.”

Secretary Seward then awakens on the bed. Something about the word “kill” jars him from his slumber.

Powell punches Fanny Seward hard in the face, instantly knocking her unconscious. A split second later he is on the bed, plunging his knife downward into Seward’s neck and shoulders.

The room is pitch-black, save for the sliver of light from the open door. Powell’s first thrust misses, making a hollow thud as it slams into the headboard. Seward desperately tries to roll away from his attacker and squeeze down into the gap between the mattress and the wall.

He doesn’t succeed. Powell kneels over him, stabbing Seward again and again and again. The secretary wears a splint on his broken jaw, which, luckily, deflects the knife away from the jugular vein, but it does little to protect the rest of his skull. The right side of his face is sliced away from the bone and now hangs like a flap. Blood jets from three deep punctures in his neck, drenching his now-useless bandages, his nightdress, and the white bedsheets and spattering all over Powell’s torso.

The assassin is almost finished. Powell brings up his knife for one final killer blow. But at that exact moment, Seward’s son Augustus enters the room. He is thirty-nine, a decorated graduate of West Point and a career army officer. He has fought in the Mexican War, battled the Apache, and seen action in the Civil War. Never once has he been injured. But now, that changes. Powell leaps at August Seward, stabbing him seven times. In the midst of the attack, Private Robinson staggers to his feet and rejoins the fight. For his trouble, Robinson is stabbed four more times.

Powell is finally exhausted. Lying in front of him are four human beings, all of them still alive. But Powell doesn’t know that. He steps over Fanny’s limp body and races from the room, still clutching his knife. At that very moment, State Department messenger Emerick Hansell arrives at the Seward home on official business. He sees Powell, covered with blood, running down the steps and turns to flee for his life. But Powell catches him, stabbing the courier just above the fourth vertebrae. Powell is in such a hurry, fortunately, that he pulls the knife back out before it can go any deeper, thus sparing Hansell’s life.

“I’m mad! I’m mad!” Powell screams as he runs into the night, hoping to scare off anyone who might try to stop him.

He is, however, anything but mad. Powell is as lucid as he is powerful. He now turns all his focus to the getaway. With adrenaline coursing through his veins, his senses heightened, and his broad shoulders aching from fists rained down upon him in the fight, he hurls the blood-covered knife into the gutter. He then looks right and left into the darkness for David Herold and their getaway horses. Seeing nothing, he listens for a telltale clip-clop of approaching horseshoes.

“Murder! Murder!” William Bell cries from the porch, risking his life by chasing after Powell. Soldiers come running from a nearby sentry box. Powell sees his horse now, tied to the tree where Herold left it. Realizing he has been betrayed, Powell feels his heart sink. He knows that without Herold he will be lost on the streets of Washington. Still, he can’t very well just stand around. He needs to get moving. Powell unties the horse and mounts up. He has the good sense to wipe the blood and sweat from his face with a handkerchief. Then, instead of galloping away, he kicks his heels gently into the horse’s flanks and trots casually down Fifteenth Street, trailed all the while by William Bell and his shouts of “Murder!” But instead of stopping him, the unsuspecting soldiers ignore the black man and run right past Powell.

After a block and a half, Bell falls behind. He eventually returns to the Seward home, where four gravely injured men and one woman lie. Incredibly, they will all recover. But this horrific night will haunt them for the rest of their lives.

Lewis Powell trots his horse toward the darkness on the edge of town. There he hides in a field and wonders if he will ever find a way out of Washington. Powell’s thoughts then turn to President Lincoln and Vice President Johnson. They should be dead by now.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

As John Wilkes Booth tiptoes into the state box and Lewis Powell knocks on William Seward��s front door, George Atzerodt, the would-be assassin of Vice President Andrew Johnson, is drinking hard, late for his date with destiny.

If any man in Washington has incurred the wrath of the Confederacy, it is Johnson, the former governor of Tennessee, whom many southerners consider a rank traitor. Johnson’s bitter words are seldom compatible with Lincoln’s. So it is no surprise that his views on punishing the South stand in stark contrast to Lincoln’s lenience. “And what shall be done with the leaders of the rebel host? I know what I would do if I were president. I would arrest them as traitors, I would try them as traitors, and, by the Eternal, I would hang them as traitors,” Johnson shouted from the steps of the War Department as recently as Monday night.

Like Johnson, Atzerodt the carriage painter is staying at Kirkwood House, on the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and Twelfth Street, four blocks from the White House and just one block from Ford’s Theatre. He has passed the time aimlessly since his meeting with Booth and the other conspirators, drawing attention to himself through the simple act of trying not to draw attention to himself.

At nine-thirty he visits Naylor’s stable on E Street to pick up his horse. The owner knows George Atzerodt and his friend David Herold and does not care for either of them. Nevertheless, when a nervous, sweating Atzerodt asks if he’d like to get a drink, Naylor answers with a quick “Don’t mind if I do.” He is concerned about Herold, who rented a horse from him earlier that day and is long overdue. Naylor hopes that Atzerodt will disclose his friend’s location after a drink or two.

They leave Atzerodt’s mare and walk to the bar of the Union Hotel. Atzerodt, whom Naylor suspects has been drinking for some time, orders a stiff whiskey; Naylor chugs a tankard of ale. Atzerodt pays. They return to the stable after just one round, with Naylor none the wiser about Herold’s location.

“Your friend is staying out very late with his horse,” Naylor finally prods. Atzerodt has just handed him a five-dollar tip for boarding his horse.

“He’ll be back after a while,” Atzerodt glibly replies as he mounts the mare.

But Atzerodt is too wasted on alcohol to ride a straight line. He almost falls out of the saddle when the mare takes a sudden turn. On a hunch, Naylor decides to follow Atzerodt on foot. The trail, however, is only a block long. Atzerodt dismounts and ties the horse at a hitching post in front of Kirkwood House. Naylor waits across the street, just out of sight. When Atzerodt walks back out a few minutes later and trots the mare over toward Ford’s Theatre, Naylor gives up the surveillance and returns to his stable.

Andrew Johnson, meanwhile, is behaving very much like a man waiting to be summoned. He eats an early dinner alone. He turns down a last-minute invitation to attend Our American Cousin. His assistant is out for the night, and Johnson has no one to talk with. So he goes up to his room and lies down on his bed, fully clothed, as if some great incident is about to occur and he needs to be ready to spring into action on a moment’s notice. Johnson is a boorish man. Largely uneducated, he learned to read and write late in his life. A tailor by trade, he entered politics in his twenties and worked his way up to the Senate. He owes a lot to President Lincoln, who first appointed him the military governor of Tennessee and then chose him to run on the vice presidential ticket after Lincoln asked Hannibal Hamlin of Maine to step down. Hamlin was a hard-core northerner and Lincoln needed a southern presence on the ticket.

Up until this point, Johnson has had no power at all. He is simply a figurehead.

At ten-fifteen George Atzerodt is back inside Kirkwood House, getting thoroughly smashed in the bar. Truth be told, even more than when he tried to bow out a few days earlier, the German-born carriage painter wants no part of murder. A few floors above him, Johnson lies alone in his room. In his lifetime he will suffer the ignominy of impeachment and endure the moniker of “worst president in history.” Andrew Johnson will not, however, suffer the far worse fate of death at the hand of an assassin. For that, Johnson can thank the effects of alcohol, as a now very drunk George Atzerodt continues to raise his glass.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

John Wilkes Booth takes a bold step out of the shadows, Deringer clutched in his right fist and knife in his left. He extends his arm and aims for the back of Abraham Lincoln’s head. No one sees him. No one knows he is there.

Booth squeezes the trigger. Unlike the crazed Richard Lawrence, whose pistols misfired when he attempted to assassinate Andrew Jackson, Booth feels his gun kick. The ball launches down the barrel as the audience guffaws at the play. Abraham Lincoln has chosen this precise moment to lean forward and turn his head to the left for another long look down into the audience. A half second later, he would have been leaning so far forward that the ball would have missed his skull completely. But the president is not so lucky. The man who has worried and fretted and bullied America back from the brink of disaster, holding fast to his faith in the Union at a time when lesser men argued that it should be dissolved, feels a split second snap of pain—and then nothing at all.

“The ball entered through the occipital bone about one inch to the left of the median line and just above the left lateral sinus, which it opened,” the autopsy will read. “It then penetrated the dura matter, passed through the left posterior lobe of the cerebrum, entered the left lateral ventricle and lodged in the white matter of the cerebrum just above the anterior portion of the left corpus striatum.”

The president’s calvarium—or skullcap—will be removed with a saw. A surgeon will probe the exposed brain before slicing into it with a scalpel, using the path of coagulated blood to trace the trajectory of the ball. This will show that the ball entered behind the left ear and traveled diagonally across the brain, coming to rest above the right eye.

Yet the autopsy will be inconclusive. Four different doctors will examine the body. Each will have a different conclusion about what happened once the sphere of Britannia metal poked a neat round hole in Lincoln’s skull and then pushed fragments of that bone deep into Lincoln’s brain as it traveled precisely seven and a half inches before plowing to a stop in the dense gray matter.

At ten-fifteen on the night of April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln slumps forward in his rocking chair. Mary Lincoln, lost in the play until this very instant, stops laughing. Major Henry Reed Rathbone snaps his head around at the sound of gunfire—a sound he knows all too well from the battlefield. He’s had his back to the door, but in an instant he’s on his feet, striking a defensive pose.

John Wilkes Booth drops the Deringer and switches the knife to his right hand. Just in time, for Major Rathbone sets aside his own safety and vaults across the small space. Booth raises the knife to shoulder level and brings it down in a hacking motion. Rathbone throws his left arm up in a defensive reflex and instantly feels the knife cut straight down through skin and biceps to the bone.

Booth moves quickly. He steps to the front of the box, ignoring a stricken Mary Lincoln. “Freedom!” he bellows down to the audience, though in all the laughter and the growing confusion as to why the cast has added the sound of gunfire to the scene, his words are barely heard. Harry Hawk stands alone on stage, staring up at the state box with growing concern.

Booth hurls his body over the railing. Up until this point, he has performed every single aspect of the assassination perfectly. But now he misjudges the thickness of the massive United States flag decorating the front of the box. He means to hold on to the railing with one hand as he vaults, throwing his feet up and over the edge, then landing on the stage like a conquering hero.

This sort of leap is actually his specialty. Booth is famous among the theatrical community for his unrehearsed gymnastics, sometimes inserting jumps and drops into Shakespeare plays on a whim. During one memorable performance of Macbeth, his fall to the stage was several feet longer than the fall from the state box.

But Booth’s right spur gets tangled in the flag’s folds. Instead of a gallant two-footed landing on the stage, Booth topples heavily from the state box. He drops to the boards awkwardly, left foot and two hands braced in a bumbling attempt to catch his fall.

The fibula of Booth’s lower left leg, a small bone that bears little weight, snaps two inches above the ankle. The fracture is complete, dividing the bone into two neat pieces. If not for the tightness of Booth’s boot, which forms an immediate splint, the bone would poke through the skin.

Now Booth lies on the stage in front of a nearly packed house. His leg is broken. He holds a blood-smeared dagger in his right hand. The sound of gunfire has just ricocheted around Ford’s. Major Rathbone is bleeding profusely from a severe stab wound. And just above him, slumped forward as if very drunk or very asleep, the president of the United States is unconscious.

Yet still nobody knows what happened. James Ford steps out of the box office and thinks Booth is pulling some crazy stunt to get attention. Observers in the audience have heard the pop and are amazed by the sudden appearance of a famous matinee idol making a cameo on the stage right before their very eyes—perhaps adding some comical whimsy to this very special evening. Harry Hawk still holds center stage, his head turned toward Booth, wondering why in the world he would intrude on the performance.

Time stops for a second—but only one.

Then the assassin takes charge. “Booth dragged himself up on one knee,” Hawk will later remember, “and was slashing that long knife around him like one who was crazy. It was then, I am sure, I heard him say, ‘The South shall be free!’ I recognized Booth as he regained his feet and came toward me, waving his knife. I did not know what he had done or what his purpose might be. I did simply what any man would have done—I ran.”

Booth scurries to his feet and limps off the stage, “with a motion,” observes one spectator, “like the hopping of a bull frog.”

“Stop that man!” Major Rathbone screams from above.

“Won’t somebody please stop that man!” Clara Harris echoes.

“What is the matter?” cries a voice from the audience.

“The president has been shot!” she shouts back.

The reverie is shattered, and with it all the joy of Washington’s postwar celebration. The theater explodes in confusion. In an instant, the audience is on its feet. It is a scene of utter chaos, “a hell of all hells.” Men climb up and over the seats, some fleeing toward the exits while others race to the stage, hoping to climb up into the box and be part of the action. Women faint. Children are trapped in the panic. “Water!” some yell, tending to the collapsed.

A former congressman yells something far more pointed: “Hang the scoundrel!”

Meanwhile, Booth passes within inches of leading lady Laura Keene as he limps off the stage. William Withers, the orchestra leader with whom he had a drink just hours earlier, stands between Booth and the stage door. Withers is paralyzed with fear, but Booth assumes he is intentionally blocking the way and slashes at him, “the sharp blade ripping through the collar of my coat, penetrating my vest and under garments, and inflicting a flesh wound in my neck,” Withers will later testify.

Only one man is bold enough to give chase. Set carpenter Jake Ritterspaugh and Booth reach the stage door at the very same time. Booth thrusts the knife blade at him. Ritterspaugh leaps back. And in that instant, Booth is gone, squeezing through the door and hauling himself up into the saddle.

Rather than give Peanut John the shiny nickel the boy had hoped for, Booth kicks him hard and bludgeons him with the butt of his knife.

“He kicked me! He kicked me!” the boy moans, falling to the ground.

At the same instant, yet another spontaneous torchlight parade blocks Booth’s getaway on Tenth Street. He swerves into the alley, spurs his horse down the cobblestones dividing two large brick buildings, and then turns onto F Street, completely avoiding the procession.

In an instant, John Wilkes Booth disappears into the night.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Booth slows the mare to a walk. Word is already spreading through Washington that the president has been shot. The news is shouted, breathlessly exclaimed, passed from citizen to citizen, bonfire to bonfire. People aren’t racing away from Ford’s, they’re racing to Ford’s, to see for themselves if these wild rumors are true. Victory marches turn into mobs of the curious and scared, determined to fight their way to the theater.

When a drunk shouts into the night, “I’m glad it happened!” a furious mob beats and kicks him unconscious, tearing off his clothes, and hauls his limp body to a lamppost for a lynching. Ironically, he will be rescued by the Union cavalry.

Now another troop of cavalry is summoned to Ford’s and plunges recklessly through the throngs assembling outside. Inside, the crowd surges toward the stage, trapping small children in its midst, chanting all the while that Booth must be lynched. Laura Keene has the presence of mind to march to center stage and cry out for calm and sanity, but her words go unheeded. The crush against the stage is made worse as the news explodes into the street in front of Ford’s Theatre. Passersby rush inside to see for themselves, some of them hoping that Booth is still trapped inside but most just wanting a glimpse of the injured president.

Across town at Grover’s Theatre, the patriotic celebration is in full swing. A young boy is reciting a poem when a man bursts into the theater and shouts that the president has been shot. As the crowd reacts in horror, a young soldier stands and yells for everyone to sit still. “It’s a ruse of the pickpockets,” he says, explaining that thieves spread such disinformation to fleece the crowd as people rush for the exit.

The six hundred theatergoers take their seats once again. The boy onstage exits, his poetry reading complete. But he is back just seconds later, struggling to control his voice as he shares the horrific news that President Lincoln has, indeed, been shot. Tad Lincoln, the president’s twelve-year-old son, is in the audience with a White House staffer. Stunned, he returns to the White House, where he collapses into the arms of the doorkeeper, shouting, “They’ve killed Papa dead! They’ve killed Papa dead.”

Soon more bad news begins to spread: Secretary Seward has been assaulted in his bed.

At Rullman’s Hotel, on Pennsylvania Avenue, the bartender shouts out the mournful news that Lincoln has been shot. Mike O’Laughlen, the would-be conspirator who stalked the Grants last night, drinks in the corner. He is drunk again but still coherent enough to know in an instant that Booth is the killer—and that he must get out of town before someone implicates him, too.

In front of the Willard Hotel, the stable foreman John Fletcher is still seething that David Herold hasn’t return the roan he rented earlier. At that very moment, Herold trots past. “You get off that horse now!” Fletcher cries, springing out into the street and grabbing for the bridle. But Herold spurs the horse and gallops away. Acting quickly, Fletcher sprints back to his stable, saddles a horse, and races after him.

In the midst of all this, a lone rider galloping away from the chaos at Ford’s would most certainly attract attention. So Booth guides the mare slowly up and down the streets and alleys of Washington, even as his veins course with adrenaline and euphoria, and pandemonium breaks out all around him. Despite his considerable celebrity, Booth blends in and proceeds unmolested through the streets. It is Friday night, after all, a time when Washington comes to life. There are plenty of men trotting horses through town. It’s only when Booth finally nears the end of his three-mile journey to the Navy Yard Bridge that his fears about being caught force him to spur the horse and ride hard to freedom.

It is ten forty-five when Booth pulls back on the reins once again and canters up to the wooden drawbridge by the Navy Yard—almost thirty long minutes since the Deringer did its deadly job. Booth approaches like a man confident that his path will go unblocked. “Where are you going, sir?” cries the military sentry. His name is Silas T. Cobb, and his long and boring shift will be over at midnight. He notices the lather on the horse’s flanks, a sign that it’s been ridden hard.

“Home. Down in Charles,” Booth replies.

“Didn’t you know, my friend, that it is against the laws to pass here after nine o’clock?” Cobb is required to challenge anyone entering or exiting Washington, but the truth of the matter is that the war has ended and with it the formal restrictions on crossing the bridge after curfew. He wants no trouble, just to finish his shift in peace and get a good night’s sleep.

“No,” lies Booth. He explains that he’s been waiting for the full moon to rise, so that he might navigate the darkened roads by night. And, indeed, a waning moon is rising at that very moment.

“I will pass you,” Cobb sighs. “But I don’t know I ought to.”

“Hell, I guess there’ll be no trouble about that,” Booth shoots back. Ignoring the rule that horses be walked across the bridge, he trots the mare into the night.

Booth is barely across the Potomac when David Herold approaches Silas T. Cobb. He gives his name as just “Smith.” Once again, after a brief discussion, Cobb lets him pass.

One more rider approaches Cobb that night. He is John Fletcher, the stable foreman who is following David Herold. Fletcher can clearly see Herold on the other side of the bridge, now disappearing into the Maryland night.

“You can cross,” Cobb tells him, “but my orders say I can’t let anyone back across the bridge until morning.”

The Maryland countryside, with its smugglers and spies and illicit operatives, is the last place John Fletcher wants to spend the night. He turns his horse’s reins back toward his stable, settling on the hope that Herold and the missing horse will one day make the mistake of riding back into Washington.

In fact, Fletcher will never see the horse again, for it will soon be shot dead, its body left to rot in the backwoods of Maryland—yet another victim of the most spectacular assassination conspiracy in the history of man.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

Lincoln’s life is slipping away. Mary Lincoln lays her head to the president’s breast as Major Rathbone uses his one good arm to yank the music stand from its notch in the doorway. Booth’s knife missed a major artery by just one-third of an inch. Otherwise Rathbone would now be dead.

The major swings open the outer door of the state box. Dozens of unruly theatergoers fill the dress circle and try to fight their way into the state box. “Doctors only!” Rathbone shouts as blood drips down his arm and pools on the floor. The truth is that the major needs medical attention, but all eyes are on Lincoln.

“I’m bleeding to death!” Rathbone shouts as a twenty-three-year-old doctor, Charles Leale, fights his way forward. Dr. Leale came to the theater solely because he wanted to see Lincoln in person. Now he is the first physician to come upon the crime scene. Leale reaches out a hand and lifts Rathbone’s chin so that he might look into his eyes and gauge his physical condition. Noting in an instant that Rathbone is quite obviously not bleeding to death, Dr. Leale turns his attention to Lincoln.

“Oh, Doctor,” sobs Mary Lincoln as Leale slowly removes her from her husband’s body. “Can he recover? Will you take charge of him?”

“I will do what I can,” Dr. Leale says calmly. With a nod to the crowd of men who have followed him into the box, the young doctor makes it clear that Mary must be removed. She is ushered to a couch on the other side of the box, next to Clara Harris, who begins stroking her hand.

Leale asks for a lamp and orders that no one else be admitted to the state box except for physicians. Then he stands in front of the rocking chair, facing Lincoln’s slumped head. He pushes the body upright, the head lolling back against the rocker. He can feel the slightest breath from Lincoln’s nose and mouth, but Leale is reluctant to touch the body without making a preliminary observation. One thing, however, is quite clear: Lincoln is not dead.

Dr. Leale can’t find any sign of injury. Onlookers light matches so that he can see better, and the call goes out for a lamp. The front of Lincoln’s body shows no sign of physical violence, and the forward slumping indicates that the attack must have come from behind. Yet there’s no visible entry wound or exit wound. If Dr. Leale didn’t know better, he would swear that Lincoln simply dozed off and will awaken any minute.

“Put him on the floor,” the doctor orders. Gently, ever so gently, Lincoln’s long torso is lifted by men standing on both sides of the rocking chair and then lowered to the carpet.

Based on Major Rathbone’s wounds, and the fact that he didn’t hear any gunshot during the performance, Leale deduces that Lincoln was stabbed. He rolls the president on one side and carefully searches for a puncture wound, his fingers slipping along the skin, probing for a telltale oozing of blood. But he feels nothing, and when he pulls his hands away, they’re completely clean.

He strips Lincoln to the waist and continues the search, cutting off the president’s white shirt with a pocketknife. But his skin is milky white and smooth, with no sign of any harm. Leale lifts Lincoln’s eyelids and examines the pupils. Finding clear evidence that the right eye’s optic nerve has somehow been cut, he decides to reexamine. Perhaps Lincoln was stabbed in the back of the skull. Head wounds are notorious bleeders, so such a wound is unlikely, but there has to be some explanation.

Dr. Leale, more befuddled by the mystery with each passing moment, runs his hands through Lincoln’s hair. This time they come back blood-red.

Alarmed, Leale examines the president’s head a second time. Beneath the thick hair, just above and behind the left ear, hides a small blood clot. It’s no bigger than the doctor’s pinkie, but when he pulls his finger away, the sensation is like a cork being removed from a bottle. Blood flows freely from the wound, and Lincoln’s chest suddenly rises and falls as pressure is taken from his brain.

Dr. Leale has been a practicing physician for all of two months, having just graduated from Bellevue Hospital Medical College. He wears an army uniform, as befitting a doctor who currently works in the Wounded Commissioned Officers’ Ward at the U.S. Army’s General Hospital in nearby Armory Square. The bulk of his medical education took place during the Civil War, so despite his short time as a practicing physician, he has seen more gunshot wounds than most doctors see in a lifetime. Yet he encountered those wounds in hospitals far removed from the battlefield, when the patients were in advanced stages of recovery. He has never performed the sort of critical life-saving procedures that take place immediately after an injury.

But now Dr. Leale somehow knows just what to do—and he does it well.

Working quickly, Leale straddles Lincoln’s chest and begins resuscitating the president, hoping to improve the flow of oxygen to the brain. He shoves two fingers down Lincoln’s throat and presses down on the back of the tongue, just in case food or drink is clogged in the esophagus. As he does so, two other doctors who were in the audience arrive on the scene. Though far more experienced, army surgeon Dr. Charles Sabin Taft and Dr. Albert King defer to Dr. Leale. When he asks them to stimulate the blood flow by manipulating Lincoln’s arms in an upand-down, back-and-forth manner, they instantly kneel down and each take an arm. Leale, meanwhile, presses hard on Lincoln’s torso, trying to stimulate his heart.

Then, as Leale will one day tell an audience celebrating the one hundredth anniversary of Lincoln’s birth, he performs an act of great and urgent intimacy: “I leaned forcibly forward directly over his body, thorax to thorax, face to face, and several times drew in a long breath, then forcibly breathed directly into his mouth and nostrils, which expanded the lungs and improved his respirations.”

Dr. Leale lies atop Lincoln, his lips locked with Lincoln’s, offering what looks to be a lover’s kiss. The theater below is a madhouse. Men in the box around him look on, recognizing that Leale is performing a medical procedure, but struck by the awkward pose nonetheless.

Dr. Leale doesn’t care. Every bit of his energy is poured into accomplishing the impossible task of saving Lincoln. Finally, he knows in his heart that the procedure has worked. He will later recall, “After waiting a moment, I placed my ear over his thorax and found the action of the heart improving. I arose to the erect kneeling posture, then watched for a short time and saw that the president could continue independent breathing and that instant death would not occur. I then announced my diagnosis and prognosis.”

But Dr. Leale does not utter the hopeful words the onlookers wish to hear. They have seen the president breathe on his own. They know that his heart is functioning. Clearly, they think the president might survive.

Only Dr. Leale has seen the dull look in Lincoln’s pupils, a sure sign that his brain is no longer functioning. “His wound is mortal,” Leale announces softly. “It is impossible for him to recover.”

A soldier vomits. Men remove their caps. Mary Lincoln sits just a few feet away but is in too much shock to comprehend what’s been said. Someone hands Dr. Leale a dram of brandy and water, which he slowly dribbles into Lincoln’s mouth. The president’s prominent Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows.

The pandemonium in the theater, meanwhile, has not diminished. The frenzy and shouting are deafening. No one in the state box speaks as Dr. Leale works on Lincoln, but its list of occupants has grown larger and more absurd. With John Parker, Lincoln’s bodyguard, still strangely missing, no one is blocking access to the little room. To one side, on the couch, the distraught Mary Lincoln is being comforted by Clara Harris. Major Rathbone drips blood on the carpet, trying to stanch the flow by holding tight to the injured arm. There are three doctors, a half dozen soldiers, and a small army of theater patrons who have battled their way into the box. And then, almost absurdly, the actress Laura Keene forces her way into their midst and kneels at Lincoln’s side. She begs to be allowed to cradle Lincoln. Dr. Leale, somewhat stunned but knowing it can do no harm, agrees.

Keene lifts the president’s head into her lap and calmly strokes his face. Before becoming an actress she worked for a time as a restorer of old paintings, so she is more than familiar with the world of art and sculpture. She knows that this moment is Michelangelo’s Pietà come to life, with her as Mary and Lincoln as Christ. Surrounded on all sides by what can only be described as anarchy, Laura Keene nurtures the dying man. The war years have been hard on her—drink has made her face puffy, and the constant wartime barnstorming has done little to stop her slowly declining popularity. The chestnut-eyed actress with the long auburn hair knows that this moment will put her name in papers around the world, so there is more than a touch of self-indulgence in her actions. But Laura Keene is not maudlin or the slightest bit dramatic as Abraham Lincoln’s blood and brains soak into the lap of her dress. Like everyone else in the state box, she is stunned. Just a few minutes before, the president of the United States had been a vibrant and larger-than-life presence. Now everything has changed.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

The president of the United States cannot die on a dirty floor. No one knows how much longer he will live, but he must be moved. Dr. King suggests they move him to the White House, where he can pass the final moments of life in the comfort of his own bed. But Dr. Leale knows better than to attempt a bumpy carriage ride through Washington, D.C., particularly through panicked crowds that will necessitate the driver stopping and starting and turning quite suddenly. “He will be dead before we get there,” Leale says firmly.

The young doctor agrees, however, that Lincoln should be resting in a bed, not on the floor. Dr. Taft sends a soldier to scour nearby boarding-houses for an empty room. Four other young soldiers are ordered to lift Lincoln back into the rocking chair and carry the president out of the theater.

But Dr. Leale overrules Taft. The logistics of carrying a rocking chair containing a man with very long legs borders on the absurd. Just getting down to the lobby involves navigating sharp angles, a narrow corridor, two small doorways, and a flight of stairs. A stretcher would be ideal, but none is available. Leale orders the four soldiers to stop gawking and get to work. They will lock their hands beneath the president and form a sling. Two will lift the torso, while two will carry the legs. They will transport Lincoln headfirst. Leale will walk backward, cradling Lincoln’s head in his hands.

Laura Keene steps aside. She can’t help but marvel at Lincoln’s upper body, still possessing the lean musculature of the young wrestler renowned for feats of strength. The youthful power and appearance of his chest is in marked contrast to that famously weathered face. The only clue that this great body is actually dying is that his skin is pale and growing more so by the moment.

The four soldiers—John Corry, Jabes Griffiths, Bill Sample, and Jacob Soles of the Pennsylvania Light Artillery—now slip their hands under that torso and raise Lincoln to a sitting position. Dr. Leale, with help from the other two physicians, dresses the president in his frock coat and buttons it.

“Guards,” barks Leale. “Clear the passage.”

As if leading a processional, Laura Keene waits for the body to be lifted. She then marches out of the box, followed by the backward-walking Leale, the four soldiers, and Dr. King, who supports a shoulder, if only so he can remain a part of the action. Through the hallway, out into the dress circle, and down the stairs they travel. Mary Lincoln follows in their wake, stunned and shaky as she walks.

Their progress is slow, for two reasons. The first is that theatergoers block the way, desperate for a peek—desperate to be able to say they saw Lincoln’s corpse. The faithful make the sign of the cross and mumble a quiet prayer as Lincoln passes before their very eyes.

“Clear the way,” Leale barks. Soldiers in the crowd respond, jumping forth to push back the mob. It becomes a wrestling match. Chairs are destroyed. Punches are thrown. Noses are bloodied. A Union officer finally draws his sword and threatens to cut down any man standing in Lincoln’s path. This manages to quiet the crowd but only for an instant.

The second reason for the dawdling pace is that the bullet hole in Lincoln’s head is clotting at an amazing rate. When this happens, Lincoln appears to be in obvious discomfort from increased pressure against his brain. So despite the anarchy all around him, Dr. Leale orders the processional halted every few feet. Then he slips his forefinger into Lincoln’s skull to clear the hole, bringing forth even more blood but taking pressure off the president’s brain.

They finally reach the lobby but don’t know where to go next. By now, soldiers have found the partition usually used to divide the state box. At seven feet long and three inches thick, it makes a perfect stretcher for Abraham Lincoln. His body is shifted onto the board.

Dr. Leale and the other two surgeons decide they will carry Lincoln into Taltavul’s, right next door. A soldier is sent to clear the tavern. But he soon comes back with word that Lincoln will not be allowed inside—and for very good reason. Peter Taltavul is a patriot, a man who spent twenty-five years in the Marine Corps band. Of all the people in the crowd on this frenzied night, he is one of the few who has the foresight to understand the significance of the presidency and how the night’s events will one day be viewed. “Don’t bring him in here,” Taltavul tells the soldier. “It shouldn’t be said that the president of the United States died in a saloon.”

But where should they bring him?

Leale orders that Lincoln be lifted and carried to the row houses across the street. There is an enormous crowd in front of Ford’s. It will be almost impossible to clear a path through their midst, but it’s vital that Leale get Lincoln someplace warm and clean, immediately. The pine stretcher is lifted and Lincoln’s body is carried out into the cold, wet night, the procession lit by that murky yellow light from the tar torches. Lincoln’s carriage, with its magnificent team of black chargers, is parked a few feet away.

Then his bodyguards arrive. Not John Parker, for the instant he heard that Lincoln was shot he vanished into the night, continuing his villainy. No, it is the Union Light Guard, otherwise known as the Seventh Independent Company of Ohio Volunteer Cavalry, that gallops to the rescue. These are the men who have served as Lincoln’s bodyguards during his rides around the city and out to the Soldiers’ Home. They raced over from their stables next to the White House when they heard about the shooting. Rather than dismount, they work with other soldiers on the scene to make a double-wide corridor from one side of Tenth Street to the other. Leale and the men carrying Lincoln make their way down Ford’s granite front steps and onto the muddy road, still not knowing where they will finally be able to bring him but glad to be away from the chaos and frenzy of Ford’s.

Only more chaos awaits them in the street. The violent mob has swelled from dozens to hundreds in mere minutes, as people from all around Washington have sprinted to Ford’s Theatre. Many are drunk. All are confused. And no one is in charge.

“Bring him in here,” a voice shouts above the madness.

Henry S. Safford is a twenty-five-year-old War Department employee. He has toasted the Union victory every night since Monday, and tonight he was so worn out that he stayed in to rest. He was alone in his parlor, reading, when the streets below him exploded in confusion. When Safford stuck his head out the window to see what was happening, someone shouted the news that Lincoln had been shot. Safford raced downstairs and out into the crowd, but “finding it impossible to go further, as everyone acted crazy or mad,” he retreated back to the steps of the Federal-style brick row house in which he rents a room from a German tailor named William Petersen. Safford stood on the porch and watched in amazement as Lincoln’s failing body was conveyed out of Ford’s. He saw the confusion on Dr. Leale’s face as the contingent inched across Tenth Street, and witnessed the way Dr. Leale stopped every few feet and poked his finger into Lincoln’s skull to keep the blood flowing. He saw Leale lifting his own head and scanning the street front, searching for someplace to bring Lincoln.

Now Safford wants to help.

“Put him in here,” he shouts again.

Dr. Leale was actually aiming for the house next door, but a soldier had tried and found it locked. So they turn toward Safford. “This was done as quickly as the soldiers could make a pathway through the crowd,” a sketch artist will remember later. Just moments earlier he had been so enthralled with the happy crowd in front of Ford’s that he had impulsively grabbed a pad and begun drawing��“women with wide skirts and wearing large poke bonnets were as numerous as the men … . The scene was so unusual and inspiring.”

But now he is sketching a melee and the sad scene of “the prostrate form of an injured man.”

He will later say, “I recognized the lengthy form of the president by the flickering light of the torches, and one large gas lamp. The tarrying at the curb and the slow, careful manner in which he was carried across the street gave me ample time to make an accurate sketch. It was the most tragic and impressive scene I have ever witnessed.”

Leale and his stretcher bearers carry Lincoln up nine short, curved steps to the front door of the Petersen house. “Take us to your best room,” he orders Safford. And though he is hardly the man to be making that decision, Safford immediately realizes that his own second-floor room will not do. He guides the group down to the spacious room of George and Huldah Francis, but it is locked. Safford leads them deeper into the house, to a room that is clearly not Petersen’s finest—but that will have to do. He pushes open the door, which features a large glass window covered by a curtain, and sees that it is empty.

The room is that of William Clark, a twenty-three-year-old army clerk who is gone for the night. Clark is fastidious in his cleanliness, so at just under ten feet wide and eighteen feet long, furnished with four-poster bed, table, bureau, and chairs, the bedroom is a cramped though very neat space.

But Lincoln is much too big for the bed. Dr. Leale orders that the headboard be broken off, but it won’t break. Instead, the president is laid down diagonally on the red, white, and blue bedspread. The lumpy mattress is filled with corn husks. His head points toward the door and his feet toward the wall. Ironically, John Wilkes Booth often rented this very room during the previous summer. In fact, as recently as three weeks ago, Booth lolled on the very bed in which Lincoln is now dying.

Everyone leaves but the doctors and Mary Lincoln. She stares down at her husband, still wearing his boots, pants, and frock coat; there are two pillows under his head, and that bearded chin rests on his chest. Now and then he sighs involuntarily, giving her hope.

“Mrs. Lincoln, I must ask you to leave,” Dr. Leale says softly.

Mary is like a child, so forlorn that she lacks the will to protest as others make her decisions for her. The first lady steps out of William Clark’s rented room, into the long, dark hallway.

“Live,” she pleads to her husband before she leaves. “You must live.”

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

Dr. Leale strips Lincoln’s body. He, too, marvels at the definition of the muscles on the president’s chest, shoulders, and legs. This is clearly the body of a man who has led a vigorous life. Dr. Leale searches the body for signs of another wound but finds none. The area around Lincoln’s eyes and forehead is becoming swollen and black and blue, like a boxer’s face after a tough fight.

Moving down the long and slender frame, Leale is disturbed to feel that Lincoln’s feet are now icy to the touch, which he immediately treats by applying a mustard plaster to every inch of the front of Lincoln’s body, from shoulders down to ankles. “No drug or medicine in any form was administered to the president,” he will later note. “But the artificial heat and mustard plaster that I had applied warmed his cold body and stimulated his nerves.”

He then covers the president with a blanket as Dr. Taft begins the process of removing the ball from Lincoln’s head. Taft inserts his index finger into the wound and pronounces that the bullet has penetrated beyond the fingertip.

Meanwhile, Lincoln’s pockets are emptied and his belongings carefully cataloged: an Irish linen handkerchief with the embroidered letter A; money, both Confederate and U.S.; newspaper clippings; an ivory pocketknife; and a pair of gold-rimmed glasses whose broken frame the president had mended with string.

More brandy and water is poured between Lincoln’s lips. The Adam’s apple once again bobs during the first spoonful but not at all for the second. With great difficulty, the doctors gently turn Lincoln on his side so that the excess fluid will run from his mouth and not choke him.

Lincoln is battling to stay alive. This is quite clear to each doctor. A normal man would be dead by now.

The surgeon general of the army, Dr. Joseph Barnes, arrives and takes control of the scene. Barnes is closely followed by future surgeon general Charles H. Crane. Dr. Leale has been bold and aggressive these past few hours since the shooting. He now explains his course of action in great detail to two of the most powerful and well-regarded physicians in America. Both men agree with Leale’s assessment and treatment, much to the young physician’s relief.

The human brain is the most complex structure in all the world’s biology, a humming and whirring center of thought, speech, motor movement, memory, and thousands of other minute functions. It is protected on the outside by the skull and then by a layer of connective-tissue membranes that form a barrier between the hard bone of the cranium and the gelatinous, soft tissue of the brain itself. Lincoln’s brain, in which a Nélaton’s probe (a long, porcelain, pencil-like instrument) is now being inserted in hopes of finding the bullet, contains vivid memories of a youth spent on the wild American frontier. This brain dazzled with clarity and brilliance during great political debates. It struggled with war and the politics of being president, then devised and executed solutions to the epic problems of the times. It imagined stirring speeches that knit the country together, then made sure that the words, when spoken, were uttered with exactly the right cadence, enunciation, and pitch. It guided those long slender fingers as they signed the Emancipation Proclamation, giving four million slaves their freedom. Inside his brain, Lincoln imagined the notion of “One country, one destiny.” And this brain is also the reservoir of Lincoln’s nightmares—particularly the one in which, just two weeks earlier, he envisioned his own assassination.

Now, thanks to a single round metal ball no bigger than a marble, Lincoln’s brain is finished. He is brain-dead.

Dr. Leale realizes that he is no longer needed in that cramped bedroom. But he does not leave. Emotion supersedes professional decorum. Leale, like the others, can barely hold back his tears. He has noticed that Lincoln is visibly more comfortable when the wound is unclogged. So he sits next to Lincoln’s head and continues his solitary vigil, poking his finger into the blood clot every few minutes, making sure there’s not too much pressure on Lincoln’s brain.

A light rain is falling outside, but the crowd is eager for news and will not leave. In the room next door, Secretary of War Stanton has arrived and now takes charge, acting as interim president of the United States. Word of the assassination has brought a crowd of government officials to the Petersen house. The police investigation is beginning to take shape. It is clear that Booth shot Lincoln, and many believe that the actor also attacked Seward in his bed. Vice President Andrew Johnson, whose luck held when his assassin backed out, now stands in the next room, summoned after learning of Lincoln’s plight.

All the while, Dr. Leale maintains his vigil by the dim candlelight. The occupants of the bedroom change constantly, with clergymen and officials and family members stepping in for a moment to pay their respects. More than sixty-five persons will be allowed inside before the night is through. The most frequent presence is Mary Lincoln, who weeps and even falls to her knees by the bedside whenever she is allowed a few moments with her husband. Leale takes care to spread a clean white handkerchief over the bloody pillow whenever she is about to walk in, but the bleeding in Lincoln’s head never ceases, and before Mary Lincoln departs the handkerchief is often covered in blood and brain matter.

At three A.M., the scene is so grisly that Mary is no longer admitted.

The various doctors take turns recording Lincoln’s condition. His respiration is shallow and fast, coming twenty-four to twenty-seven times a minute. His pulse rises to sixty-four at five-forty A.M., and hovers at sixty just a few moments later. But by then Leale can barely feel it.

Another doctor makes notes on Lincoln’s condition:

“6:30—still failing and labored breathing.”

“6:40—expirations prolonged and groaning. A deep, softly sonorous cooing sound at the end of each expiration, audible to bystanders.”

“6:45—respiration uneasy, choking and grunting. Lower jaw relaxed. Mouth open. A minute without a breath. Face getting dark.”

“6:59—breathes again a little more at intervals.”

“7:00—still breathing at long pauses; symptoms of immediate dissolution.”

With the president’s death imminent, Mary Lincoln is once again admitted. Dr. Leale stands to make room. She sits in the chair next to Lincoln and then presses her face against her husband’s. “Love,” she says softly. “Speak to me.”

A “loud, unnatural noise,” in Dr. Leale’s description, barks up from Lincoln’s lungs. The sound is so grotesque that Mary collapses. As she is carried from the room she steals one last glimpse of her husband. She has known him since he was just a gangly country lawyer and has shared almost half her life with him. This will be the last time she sees him alive.

“I have given my husband to die,” she laments, wishing that it could have been her instead.

Dr. Leale can’t find a pulse. Lincoln’s breathing becomes guttural, then ceases altogether before starting again. The room fills with a small army of elected officials, all of whom wish to witness the historic moment of Lincoln’s death. Outside, it is dawn, and the crowds have grown even larger, with everyone waiting for a sliver of news.

In the bedroom, Robert Lincoln sobs loudly, unable to control his grief. He stands at the head of the bed and looks down at his father. Dr. Barnes sits in the chair, his finger on Lincoln’s carotid artery, seeking a pulse. Dr. Leale has moved to the other side of the bed and wedged himself against the wall. He once again holds Lincoln’s hand, simultaneously using his index finger to feel for a pulse on Lincoln’s wrist.

There is no death rattle. Lincoln draws his last breath at seven twenty-one. His heart beats for another fifteen seconds, then stops altogether at ten seconds past seven twenty-two A.M.

More than twenty men are packed into the bedroom. Nobody says a word for five long minutes. Dr. Barnes reaches into his vest pocket for a pair of silver coins, which he places over Lincoln’s eyes—one of which is now completely black and blue. Dr. Leale, meanwhile, folds the president’s arms across his chest and carefully smooths his hair.

He barely hears Secretary Stanton rumble, “Now he belongs to the ages.”