The Lincoln Assassination: Crime and Punishment Myth and MemoryA Lincoln Forum Book 9780823263950

Citation preview

The Lincoln Assassination

T h e L i n c o l n Fo r u m

The Lincoln Assassination Crime and Punishment, Myth and Memory edited by

Harold Holzer, Craig L. Symonds, and Frank J. Williams

FORDHAM UNIVERSITY PRESS N e w Yo r k • 2010

Frontispiece: A. Bancroft, after a photograph by the Mathew Brady Gallery, To the Memory of Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States . . . . Lithograph, published in Philadelphia, 1865. (Indianapolis Museum of Art, Mary B. Milliken Fund) Copyright  2010 Fordham University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher. Fordham University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Lincoln assassination : crime and punishment, myth and memory / edited by Harold Holzer, Craig L. Symonds, and Frank J. Williams.—1st ed. p. cm.— (The North’s Civil War) ‘‘The Lincoln Forum.’’ Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8232-3226-0 (cloth : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-8232-3228-4 (eBook) 1. Lincoln, Abraham, 1809–1865—Assassination. 2. Lincoln, Abraham, 1809–1865—Death and burial. 3. Assassins—United States—History—19th century. 4. Conspiracies—United States—History—19th century. I. Holzer, Harold. II. Symonds, Craig L. III. Williams, Frank J. IV. Lincoln Forum. E457.5.L735 2010 973.7092—dc22 2009054038 Printed in the United States of America 12 11 10 5 4 3 2 1 First edition

Contents

List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Lincoln’s Deathbed in Art and Memory: The ‘‘Rubber Room’’ Phenomenon Harold Holzer and Frank J. Williams

vii xi 1

9

2. Abraham Lincoln’s New York City Funeral Richard E. Sloan

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3. Not Everybody Mourned Lincoln’s Death Thomas P. Lowry

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4. Lincoln’s Chief Avenger: Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt Elizabeth D. Leonard

115

5. The Lincoln Assassination in Law and Lore Frank J. Williams

137

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6. Writing History in a Vacuum: The Lincoln Assassination Thomas R. Turner

157

7. ‘‘Let the Stain of Innocent Blood Be Removed from the Land’’: The Military Trial of the Lincoln Conspirators Edward Steers Jr.

175

8. Process versus Truth in the Case of the Lincoln Conspiracy Michael W. Kauffman

195

9. The Martyr and the Myth: The Lincoln Nobody Knows Richard Nelson Current

217

List of Contributors

241

Board of Advisors of the Lincoln Forum

245

Index

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Illustrations

A. Bancroft, after a photograph by the Mathew Brady Gallery, To the Memory of Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States. . . . Lithograph, 1865 Frontispiece 1. Lincoln’s Deathbed in Art and Memory: The ‘‘Rubber Room’’ Phenomenon 1 The Petersen House—the boarding house where Abraham Lincoln died—in a late-nineteenth-century cabinet photograph 2 Albert Berghaus, [Lincoln’s feet protruding from deathbed coverlet], Washington, 1865 3 Hermann Faber, [The death of Lincoln], Washington, 1865 4 N[athaniel]. Currier, Death of Washington, Dec: 14. A.D. 1799. Lithograph, New York, 1846 5 Currier & Ives, Death of President Lincoln./At Washington, D.C., April 15th, 1865./The Nation’s Martyr. Lithograph, 1865

13 14 15 18

19

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6 George Patterson, after John Frederick Herring Sr., The Village Blacksmith 7 Currier & Ives, Death of President Lincoln . . . . Lithograph (second state), 1865 8 Currier & Ives, The Death Bed of the Martyr President Abraham Lincoln./Washington, Saturday Morning, April 15th, 1865, at 22 Minutes Past 7 o’clock. Lithograph, 1865 9 H. H. Lloyd & Co., Lincoln’s Death Bed./453 Tenth Street, Washington, D.C. Wood engraving, ca. 1865 10 Printmaker unknown, [Deathbed of Lincoln], ca. 1865 11 J[ohn]. H. Bufford, Last Moments of President Lincoln./ Washington, D.C., April 15th, 1865. Lithograph, 1865 12 Gustave May, Die Letzten Augenblicke des Prasidenten Lincoln./Am 15 April 1865. The Last Moments of the President Lincoln./15 April 1865. Lithograph, 1865 13 E[dmund]. B[urke]. & E[lijah]. C[hapmam]. Kellogg, Death of Abraham Lincoln./April 15th 1865. Lithograph, 1865 14 C. A. Asp, Death Bed of Lincoln. Engraving, Washington, ca. 1865 15 J[oseph]. L. Magee, Death Bed of Abraham Lincoln./ Died April 15th 1865 16 E. H. Miller, after Alexander Gardner, The Last Moments of Lincoln,/15th April, 1865 17 Max Rosenthal, The Last Moments of Abraham Lincoln President of the United States./April 15th 1865 18 A[lexander]. H[ay]. Ritchie, [Death of Lincoln]. Steel engraving, New York, 1868 19 Key to the Ritchie engraving, 1868 20 John H. Littlefield, Death-Bed of Lincoln./April 15th 1865 21 Alonzo Chappel, The Last Hours of Lincoln [1868]

21 24

25 26 27 28

29

30 31 32 33 34 36 37 38 40

Illustrations

22 Mathew Brady Gallery, [Robert Lincoln]. Photograph, Washington, ca. 1868 23 Mathew Brady Gallery, [Andrew Johnson]. Photograph, Washington, ca. 1868 24 Mathew Brady Gallery, [Hugh McCulloch and Edwin M. Stanton], ca. 1868 25 Original salesman’s subscription book for The Last Hours of Abraham Lincoln 26 Brief Sayings of Eminent Men, issued in praise of the Chappel painting 27 Engraver unknown, The Last Hours of Lincoln./Key 28 M. David, Key to the Last Day of Lincoln, by A. Chappel: 1865 [sic]. Lithograph, 1908 29 John Tenniel, Britannia Sympathises with Columbia. Woodcut engraving, May 6, 1865

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41 42 43 44 45 47 48 50

2. Abraham Lincoln’s New York City Funeral 1 The southern tip of City Hall Park, from a nineteenthcentury print 2 The same view of City Hall Park as it appears today 3 The decorations at the Astor House as recorded after his death by an anonymous diarist 4 Singers joining members of the New York City Council around Lincoln’s casket 5 The restored City Hall, photographed in 2006 6 Jeremiah Gurney’s photograph of Abraham Lincoln in his open casket inside City Hall, New York 7 Currier & Ives lithograph of Lincoln’s body in the City Hall Rotunda 8 The landing atop the famous staircase in the City Hall Rotunda 9 The scene at midnight during the Lying in State

60 61 62 66 67 68 70 71 71

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10 Lincoln’s hearse passes Lord & Taylor’s department store 11 Lincoln’s hearse passes up Broadway 12 The same block as it appears today 13 The funeral procession pauses at Astor Place 14 Anonymous diarist’s sketch of elaborate signage at Cooper Union 15 Soldiers gather in front of Cornelius Van Schaack Roosevelt’s home on the corner of Broadway and 14th Street 16 The Broadway and 14th Street block as it appears now 17 Currier & Ives, The Funeral of President Lincoln, New York, April 25th, 1865./Passing Union Square 18 Period illustration of the Departure of the Funeral Train from New York for the West

74 76 77 80 81

82 83 84 85

3. Not Everybody Mourned Lincoln’s Death 1 General court-martial orders of Lieutenant Colonel Nicholas H. Dale, June 6, 1865 2 The racist ranting of Major Charles Whiting

98–99 100

7. ‘‘Let the Stain of Innocent Blood Be Removed from the Land’’: The Military Trial of the Lincoln Conspirators 1 Dr. Samuel A. Mudd 2 The military tribunal 3 Major General Thomas Ewing Jr.

178 180 188

Acknowledgments

The editors are above all grateful to their colleagues on the Lincoln Forum Board of Advisors, whose wise counsel, loyal support, and hard work make it possible not only to host such successful annual symposia at Gettysburg but to organize the publication of the best papers from each symposium into books like this one. Special thanks go to Treasurer Russell H. Weidman (and to Advisory Board Member Budge Weidman as well), and to Betty Anselmo, our administrator, along with Lincoln Forum Secretary George Buss and Executive Board member Edna Greene Medford. We express our additional gratitude to all the Lincoln leaders who serve on our Board of Advisors—and whose names appear in the roster at the back of this book—and to the entire membership as well, especially our most generous life members. Every blossom that blooms from the Forum reminds us of its roots, and much of our original success came from the expert work of our late founding treasurer, Charles D. Platt. We all miss him very much and remain grateful for his contributions, along with those of his wife, Linda Platt, who continues to support an annual

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Forum essay contest for students, and to their daughter Annette Platt Westerby, our first Forum administrator. Many other people helped the editors produce this volume. We are indebted to Rebecca Schear and Kraig Smith at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and also to Donna Petorella, for their labor on the manuscripts. Special editing credits must go to Marylou Symonds and Marcia Ewing Current. To all at Fordham University Press, our home now for several Lincoln Forum volumes, we offer our thanks for encouraging and shepherding this enterprise. Particular gratitude for his encouragement and patience goes to the director of the Press, Fredric Nachbaur. And we are delighted to have the opportunity again to work with production manager Loomis Mayer, managing editor Eric Newman, and marketing manager Kate O’Brien-Nicholson, along with the rest of the staff, including Katie Sweeney. Finally, the editors would like to express their eternal gratitude to their wonderful spouses for all their work and enthusiasm for the Lincoln Forum, and just for tolerating (and inspiring) their husbands. So thank you once again to Edith Holzer, Marylou Symonds, and Virginia Williams. Harold Holzer Craig L. Symonds Frank J. Williams September 1, 2009

The Lincoln Assassination

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Introduction

The murder of Abraham Lincoln on Good Friday, April 14, 1865, struck the American psyche like a hammer blow—opening a wound that in many ways has never completely healed. No previous president had ever been assassinated (though three have been killed since). And coming as it did at the end of a brutal, punishing four-year war, and in the midst of widespread national rejoicing at the restoration of peace, Lincoln’s murder seemed so gratuitous, so irrational, and so utterly un-American that it defied logic, tradition, and even prayer. Yet because the harrowing crime took place just before the most sacred holidays in the religious calendar, it also seemed to some almost divinely ordained—as if it had occurred as national punishment for the sins of slavery and fratricidal conflict. As the historian Allan Nevins reminds us, Lincoln’s slaying ‘‘was clearly a sequel of the war, a product of its senseless hatreds, fears and cruelties.’’ Indeed, historians have often treated the Lincoln assassination as a sequel—an epilogue—to the story of the Civil War. Few have attempted to show how Americans responded to the crisis at the

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time, and what their response reveals about the American character at the end of the rebellion that nearly destroyed the nation. Some biographers devote only a few lines to the tragedy, hardly pausing to acknowledge just how calamitous it proved in altering the destiny of the now re-united but still agonized nation. In fact the absence of Lincoln’s paternal hand on the tiller of State during Reconstruction proved a tragedy almost as great as the war itself. Gone suddenly was the leader who had patiently guided the Union to victory, deftly steered a government roiled by unprecedented challenge, inspired a people through the most perilous crisis in the nation’s history, and established black freedom. His successor in the White House, Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, was a pro-war Democrat with limited political skills, undisguised racial prejudices, and implacable loyalty to state sovereignty. Americans, especially those freed through emancipation and the Thirteenth Amendment, had ample reason to mourn Lincoln’s passing. Even Lincoln could never have solved all the problems of the postwar years. His departure, however, undermined the possibility that the ideals of the Union could provide the beginnings, at least, of progress toward achieving the original promise of the Declaration of Independence. Thanks to John Wilkes Booth and his cohorts, the president’s death in office assured the unchecked ascendancy of racism, while also guaranteeing the near-beatification of Lincoln as the secular saint who had saved democracy. It is little wonder that this dramatic crime evoked a flood of often conflicting emotions, as chronicled in this book: unprecedented mass mourning, coupled with a desire among many for vengeance and swift justice; widespread admiration for Lincoln, along with the occasional insistence that the martyred president had deserved his fate. For all these reasons, along with the mysteries, myths, and controversies associated with the crime and its punishment, the assassination immediately—and ever since—has inspired a library of books: a flood of dramatic recounting, memoirs, and

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analyses that began churning off the nation’s presses within months of the assassination and continues unabated. Interest in the event and its aftermath has never really flagged, nor has there been a lack of conspiracy theories to explain the momentous tragedy. For just this reason, the Lincoln Forum, an assembly of students and scholars that meets annually at Gettysburg to discuss Lincoln’s life, has always devoted a portion of its schedule to that other subject that continues to grip his admirers: the story of his death. In 2005, the 140th anniversary of Lincoln’s murder, the Forum focused exclusively on this topic, inviting renowned assassination authorities to offer fresh scholarship and investigation. They did. The result is this volume of many voices—an attempt, collectively, to return to the original sources, and the original culture, of 1865, to help shed light on the public, judicial, and memorial reaction to Lincoln’s death—reactions that, for better or for worse, helped forge, and still largely sustain, the indefatigable Lincoln legend. In this, the fourth Lincoln Forum book, a distinguished roster of contributors helps to place this catastrophic event squarely within the context of the tumultuous times in which they occurred, and to demonstrate just how momentous it truly was in so many ways— how much more, in retrospect, than a mere epilogue. The writers here explore the legal, cultural, political, and even emotional consequences of the assassination. We are proud to note that all but one of these essays—that of the veteran Civil War and Lincoln scholar Richard Nelson Current—were initially presented at a symposium of The Lincoln Forum, an organization that since 1996 has convened each November in Gettysburg. To begin this volume, two of its co-editors, Harold Holzer and Frank J. Williams, explore the iconography of Lincoln’s death. They show how artists of the day portrayed—and routinely exaggerated—the scene inside the small (but liberally and imaginatively

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enlarged!) boarding house bedroom to which the president was carried to die after he was shot across the street at Ford’s Theatre. Anxious to know and remember precisely how their president had breathed his last, Americans eagerly purchased these interpretations, however wildly exaggerated. For artists depicting the scene, the death supplied a grand opportunity to memorialize a great historical event (and sell pictures). As one after another of them worked to include more and more bedside mourners, the death chamber expanded to host them—creating a phenomenon modern historians now describe as the ‘‘rubber room.’’ And thus the supposed grandeur of Lincoln’s rather plain final surroundings became enshrined in American memory. After his death, a special funeral train carried Lincoln’s remains north and west over a thousand-mile journey home to Illinois, stopping for ceremonies in the leading cities of seven states. In a poignant essay, Richard E. Sloan describes the passage of Lincoln’s body through New York. One feels like a witness to history as Sloan follows the cortege through Manhattan’s richly decorated streets and observes the event through the keenly focused eyes of contemporary journalists. The city had never seen so elaborate, and so crowded, an event for any hero, and Sloan helps transport the modern reader onto the Broadway of the mid–nineteenth century, with its famously gaudy signs and shops now draped in black and adorned with Lincoln images for his last ‘‘visit’’ to the nation’s largest metropolis. Among the many mourners, Sloan notes, were surely New Yorkers who had long and bitterly opposed the Republican president in politics; but unlike the unapologetic critics who found themselves in legal difficulties elsewhere for openly demonstrating their hostility, Sloan shows an overwhelmingly Democratic city united in sorrow. Without doubt the death of Abraham Lincoln provoked a national trauma. There is significant evidence that ex-Confederates, as well as stout Unionists, quickly recognized Lincoln’s death as a

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national catastrophe. But not all of them. Thomas P. Lowry’s indefatigable research reveals that some citizens—including, surprisingly, a number of Union soldiers and sailors—were not saddened at all by President Lincoln’s passing. In fact, many of them publicly expressed joy over the assassination. Their doing so had legal ramifications, too, for Lowry proves that merely expressing satisfaction at Booth’s deed often resulted in imprisonment, a fine, or both. Lowry examined seventy-eight long-ignored files in the National Archives involving cases of those tried for rejoicing over Lincoln’s death. In such cases, the protections of the First Amendment were overwhelmed by public anger—and by sometimes harsh prosecution—at citizens who would applaud the murder of a president. The historian and biographer Elizabeth D. Leonard in turn offers a thorough and revealing profile of Kentuckian Joseph Holt, who had served in the Lincoln administration as Judge Advocate General and, during the time these emotional funerals were taking place, became the chief prosecutor of the conspirators. Leonard’s explorations offer useful and original insights into the man whose work in the summer of 1865 made such a major impact on the conspirators’ fate—and on legal history. Although Holt was politically a Democrat, his loyalty to the Union and the president proved to be unmatched, earning him the respect of another onetime Democrat, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, who entrusted the swift conviction of the Lincoln assassination conspirators to this complex, hardworking man. Rhode Island Chief Justice Frank J. Williams (retired), too, explores the nature of the military tribunal that weighed the fate of the conspirators—with a different goal in mind. His own detailed account illuminates the important questions its work raised (and continues to raise) on the issue of constitutional due process, deficient at many junctures during the conspirators’ trial. Strikingly, the questions about such tribunals in Lincoln’s day mirror those

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confronting Americans in the twenty-first century. Williams’s account thus serves as backdrop to the use of military tribunals, and the due process to be accorded the accused, in the modern wars on terror. The lessons of yesterday, as always, offer potentially valuable insights into the problems of today. In a chapter that has important contemporary reverberations, Thomas R. Turner discusses the legal ramifications of the use of a military court to try the Lincoln conspirators. He notes that, after a war that cost 620,000 lives—Northern and Southern—Americans were traumatized as never before. Turner shows how the staggering death toll profoundly affected the pursuit, imprisonment, and trial of the assassins. To Turner, the use of a military commission to try them was a rational decision in 1865, and he argues that the commission proved more objective than a civil trial might have been at the time. Nevertheless, the emotions of the moment had much impact on the proceedings. To show this, Turner focuses particularly on the later trial of John Surratt, the son of the conspirator Mary Surratt, who, who unlike his mother, escaped conviction at a civil trial because of a hung jury. Surratt’s release fueled the impression that the 1865 military commission had been biased in favor of the prosecution. Turner argues that the major difference between the two trials was the less frenzied environment that prevailed in 1867. Edward Steers Jr., in turn, offers his own stout defense of the military tribunal that convened under the supervision of General David Hunter and was prosecuted by Judge Advocate General Holt. In 1865, the District of Columbia, scene of the trial, remained under martial law. Steers argues that the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus there was clearly constitutional under prevailing war conditions, and that it met the standard outlined in Article I, section 9, clause 2 of the Constitution, which states that the writ may be suspended as the ‘‘public safety may require it.’’ Steers offers a valuable reminder that the Lincoln assassination prosecution focused

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not only on obtaining a conviction of the conspirators but also on linking Booth’s small gang of hangers-on and ne’er-do-wells to the Confederate government. To Hunter and Holt, it is sometimes forgotten, it was President Jefferson Davis, as much as the conspirators themselves, who deserved to stand trial. And in another related essay, the noted Booth biographer Michael W. Kauffman deftly points out the differences between current rules of evidence and those that applied in 1865—suggesting that many facts remained undisclosed at the Lincoln assassination trial. Kauffman shows how the search for the truth after Lincoln’s murder was frustratingly thwarted by a lack of discovery, by prejudicial rulings against the defense by the commission, and by rules that limited the testimony of witnesses favorable to the defense. To an audience that has grown up watching legal shows on television, the rules of evidence in effect in 1865 will come as a major surprise. Without doubt they affected the course of the proceedings, as well as the reputation of the commission’s work in history. Finally, this volume ends with the reprinting of a classic piece— Richard Nelson Current’s justly famous essay on Lincoln as the victim of both murder and mythology. It was originally published more than half a century ago in Current’s memorable book The Lincoln Nobody Knows. The editors had many reasons for including this thoughtful, and still fresh, account here. First, it seemed remarkable to us that Current’s scholarship still has so much to teach us— that his writing style still delights us—so long after he first wrote these words. Second, the Forum wanted to honor this great historian for whom its annual award of achievement is named and who stands alone today as the dean of all Lincoln scholars. We are honored that he not only consented to the reprinting of the chapter but at the age of ninety-six made a significant alteration in which—with typical honesty and elegance—he changes his mind on a point he first made in 1953!

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The editors hope that together, these contributions will provide a fresh examination, for a wide reading audience, and through the eyes of the most accomplished contemporary assassination scholars, into the legal, social, and iconographic impact of Abraham Lincoln’s death. It is a subject that continues to fascinate readers, and these new essays will surely fuel debate and discussion in the future.

CHAPTER 1

Lincoln’s Deathbed in Art and Memory The ‘‘Rubber Room’’ Phenomenon Harold Holzer and Frank J. Williams

Introduction Modern research into the American presidency suggests that the death of a sitting chief executive invariably generates a deep and enduring impact on the citizenry. Personal shock quickly gives way to public anxiety, fueled by a bombardment of news and images of the tragedy that keep nightmarish memories vividly and profoundly alive. Americans who live through such traumas are virtually lurched from the abyss of political apathy. By contrast, deaths of other leaders, political and national alike, seem to inspire only momentary ripples in the public consciousness.1 The pervasive mourning triggered by the violent deaths of incumbent U.S. presidents—from Lincoln to Garfield to McKinley to Kennedy—proves that the resident of the White House occupies a unique place in the collective American psyche. Presidents are more than authority figures; they are the living ‘‘fathers’’ of their country.2 Sometimes the separation between family and state blurs. After all, when would-be assassin Lynette ‘‘Squeaky’’ Fromme

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Lincoln’s Deathbed in Art and Memory

pointed her pistol at Gerald Ford in 1975, Americans learned after her attack, she may have been taking aim not only at a president, but at a middle-class father who had ousted her from her family home.3 The death of a president can stimulate a uniquely potent rite of passage for a polity. John F. Kennedy’s murder in 1963 froze the chief executive in national memory as an eternal youth and compelled Americans who lived through his death to leave their own youth and innocence behind. The aching sense of loss generated by that assassination may help explain why Kennedy’s brief time in office has been so treasured, for so long, by so much of the American public, a reverence that many historians judge to be out of proportion to Kennedy’s accomplishments.4 The first—and still the most wrenching—of these national calamities was the murder of Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865, only days after the Union had achieved victory in the long and bloody Civil War. Lincoln died at the successful conclusion of an Armageddon that finally reconciled the living nation’s values with those enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, so mass shock and mourning were surely not surprising. But Lincoln also died generations before the age of live television, years before photographs could even be reproduced in newspapers. The vast majority of his constituents never saw Lincoln in the flesh and was totally unfamiliar with the theater where he was shot or the house where he died. Yet his assassination made mourners out of countless Americans who were able to visualize the scenes of his martyrdom and death. They did so through the vastly under-appreciated medium of popular art. The seemingly primitive depictions of Abraham Lincoln’s final moments that have so often been dismissed by modern observers assumed in their own day the status of holy icons. That is not to say that they were all dependably researched, skillfully crafted, or free of commercial motivation. In fact, few could claim such status. The

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somber death scene that ended Abraham Lincoln’s life offered to visual artists the same transcendent opportunity to preserve a defining historical moment that peace and re-union had afforded Lincoln himself in life. Many of the artists failed where Lincoln had succeeded. But even if most pictorial representations of Lincoln’s death lacked realism and good draftsmanship, all of them—paintings, popular prints, and photomontages—deserve renewed historical attention today because of their staggering popularity at the time they were issued, and their decisive impact on popular culture and American collective memory. Their original power may be hard to re-imagine in an era of twenty-four-hour-television news, streaming video, and the World Wide Web, but in an era in which pictures were still precious, not ubiquitous, these seemingly primitive and static images were wildly popular and deeply influential. Then, as now, image makers—in Lincoln’s era this meant artists, engravers, lithographers, and photographers—produced their array of pictures in response to commercial demand. But their results confirmed, and may have influenced, Lincoln’s status as the martyr of liberty. Through these pictures, today’s Americans can open a window into the way nineteenth-century Americans learned about Abraham Lincoln’s death and came to respond to it as the defining event of their age.

From Ford’s Theatre to the Petersen House At one time, every schoolchild knew the story. After John Wilkes Booth fired the fatal shot in a crowded Ford’s Theatre, all was confusion. Forcing his way into the president’s box, a twenty-threeyear-old assistant Army surgeon named Charles Leale ordered the president placed on the floor and then examined the wounded chief executive. Finding blood on the back of Lincoln’s head, Dr. Leale searched for and found the hole made by Booth’s attack. Realizing

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Lincoln’s Deathbed in Art and Memory

that the bullet was still lodged in the president’s brain, Dr. Leale concluded that Lincoln had been mortally wounded. Quickly, he put his own mouth over the president’s and forced his own breath into his lungs. The president’s labored breathing began again. As a group of onlookers carefully carried Lincoln out of the theater and outside onto Tenth Street, some on the scene urged that he be taken back to the White House. But Dr. Leale insisted that he would not survive the trip. It was then decided to move Lincoln to a dwelling nearby. At virtually the same moment, young Henry Safford, a tenant in William Petersen’s house across from Ford’s Theatre on Tenth Street (Figure 1), heard noises from the street, opened his window and shouted, ‘‘What’s the matter?’’5 ‘‘The president has been shot,’’ came the frenzied answer. Rushing to the front door, Safford heard a voice call out, ‘‘Where shall we take him?’’ Safford cried, ‘‘Bring him in here.’’ Then he watched in horror as the men bearing Lincoln struggled with the right angle of the steep front steps. Commanded to ‘‘take me to your best room,’’ Safford led the way to a modest sleeping chamber, only 91/2 by 17 feet in dimensions, at the back of the first floor hall. It was rented at the time to one William T. Clark, a soldier on leave who was not at home at the time Lincoln arrived.6 At 6⬘4, the president’s frame required that he be laid diagonally across Clark’s spool bed. Lincoln’s head was propped up so he could breathe more easily. His feet protruded from beneath the covers, as vividly described later to an artist named Albert Berghaus (Figure 2) by Clark, the displaced boarder.7 Officials began gathering around the bedside, beginning a vigil later described to another artist, Hermann Faber, who sketched the scene only a few hours after Lincoln’s death (Figure 3). By this time, Dr. Joseph K. Barnes, the Surgeon General of the Army, had joined several other doctors at the scene. All they could do, however, was try to keep Lincoln warm, administer occasional stimulants, apply the then-popular mustard plaster to his chest, and

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Figure 1. The Petersen House—the boarding house where Abraham Lincoln died—as seen in a late-nineteenth-century cabinet photograph by an unknown photographer. The house became a tourist attraction under the stewardship of one of the first great Lincoln collectors, Osborn H. Oldroyd, a Union veteran who moved his trove of Lincolniana—and himself—into the shrine in 1893, offering tours to the public. (Photograph courtesy Harold Holzer)

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Lincoln’s Deathbed in Art and Memory

Figure 2. Albert Berghaus, [Lincoln’s feet protruding from deathbed coverlet], Washington, 1865. This sketch was based on a description of the death scene by Petersen House boarder Willie Clark, who lived in the room where Lincoln died. (Ford’s Theatre Collection)

Figure 3. Hermann Faber, [The death of Lincoln], Washington, 1865. This and a companion sketch owned by the Armed Forces Medical Museum were made on the scene not long after the president’s body was returned to the White House. The onlookers, added later, were sketched from period photographs. Faber’s raw and powerful drawing was the first—and last—to suggest that doctors had bandaged the president’s head. (Meserve-Kunhardt Collection)

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Lincoln’s Deathbed in Art and Memory

keep the wound open and free of blood clots to prevent pressure from building up inside his brain. In this condition, Lincoln lingered for almost nine excruciating hours before he drew his last breath at 7:22 the next morning, Saturday, April 15, 1865.8 Several times during the night, a distraught Mary Lincoln entered the death room for brief periods. Once, she threw herself on the bed beside her husband, imploring him to live. On her final visit, she wailed and fainted. Summoned from the White House, her eldest son, Robert, either stood by his father’s side weeping or struggled to soothe his mother while Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, in turn, comforted Robert. All manner of governmental personnel came and went throughout the night. In all, some fifty-five individuals visited the dying president’s bedside—but not all at the same time, as some artists would later suggest in their interpretations of the scene. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton took charge. No one questioned his authority, even though Vice President Andrew Johnson, next in line for the presidency, made a brief call during the vigil. From the Petersen House parlor, Stanton directed the search for Booth and his co-conspirators after the actor had been identified as the assailant.9 At least that is what Americans read in the first editions of their morning newspapers. Beyond these sketchy details, almost any embellishment was deemed possible and, judging by the artistic results, believable to a gullible public hungry for visualizations of the tragic scene. Even the circumstances surrounding Lincoln’s removal from the theater to his deathbed across the street were suffused with controversy and eventually pictured differently by artists. Confusion begins with how Lincoln was ‘‘borne by loving hands,’’10 in the words of the title of one painting of that frenzied scene. Some speculated that he was carried on a theater box partition. Others claimed men holding him in their arms carried him. Many accounts suggest that

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the president was transported on a flat board of some type. Who carried Lincoln from the theater? Surely the number was fewer than the dozen eyewitnesses who later claimed the honor of removing the president.11 The artist Albert Berghaus later described the tiny room where Lincoln died: The walls are covered with a brownish paper, figured with a white design. Its dimensions are about ten by fifteen feet. Some engravings and a photograph hang upon the walls. . . . The only furniture in the room was a bureau covered with crochet, a table, eight or nine plain chairs, and the bed upon which Mr. Lincoln lay when his spirit took its flight. The bedstead was a low walnut, with headboard from two to three feet high. The floor was carpeted with Brussels, considerably worn. Everything on the bed was stained with . . . blood. . . .12

Here was a simple scene in a middle-class home—perhaps a fitting place in which a man of modest birth should breathe his last, but hardly the setting artists believed worthy of the much-mourned victim and the history-altering conspiracy that had claimed him. They would take huge artistic license to make the setting worthy of the dying hero—reality notwithstanding. The real Lincoln death vigil centered, of course, on the deathbed itself. To an almost unnerving degree, the imagination, the emotion, and the memory of ordinary Americans hovered over what its citizens came to transform into a sacred spot. For its news value alone, it is small wonder that printmakers ultimately gravitated to it and made it the center of their scenes (even though Willie Clark’s bed actually stood against an inside wall). The deathbed would serve almost as a sacred altar in period pictures of Lincoln’s dying moments, in the same way George Washington’s deathbed

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Lincoln’s Deathbed in Art and Memory

Figure 4. N[athaniel]. Currier, Death of Washington, Dec: 14. A.D. 1799. Lithograph, New York, 1846. Published before Currier began his productive partnership with James Merritt Ives, this simple print set the standard for death scenes of American heroes. Note the family slaves weeping in the doorway—an artistic device the lithographer would employ again to depict Mary and Tad Lincoln in the third and final version of the firm’s Lincoln deathbed print. (Library of Congress)

occupied the center of the scenes of the final moments of the Father of His Country (Figure 4).13 Lincoln’s path to sainthood was further assured because he was assassinated on Good Friday, dying suddenly and violently, and not at home in bed as George Washington had in 1799. Printmakers seemed to believe that the public preferred its fallen leaders to die in places worthy of their exalted positions, and this perception encouraged them to enhance and embellish the place where Lincoln expired. They ignored, in large part, what the people recognized and appreciated: the symmetry and humility consistent with greatness in a president who was born in a log cabin and who died in a simple boarding house.

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The Artists’ ‘‘Rubber Room’’ It was the New York print-publishing firm of Currier & Ives that set the pace, if not the standard, with a Lincoln deathbed lithograph copyrighted on April 26, 1865 (Figure 5).14 While it ordinarily took at least three weeks to produce a Civil War–era print, Currier & Ives assassination and deathbed scenes were produced in only eleven days—lightning speed at the time—comparable to today’s instantaneous television coverage of breaking news events and reflective of both the keen interest of the Civil War–era public and the marketing skills of the printmakers. First an artist had to sketch

Figure 5. Currier & Ives, Death of President Lincoln./At Washington, D.C., April 15th, 1865./The Nation’s Martyr. Lithograph, New York, 1865. The first of three versions of the death room by America’s best-known printmakers, this hand-colored lithograph included portraits of twelve eyewitnesses, including young Tad Lincoln (crying on his mother’s lap), even though he was not present that night. (Photograph courtesy Harold Holzer)

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such a scene on paper, then produce a lithograph on stone. Once printed, Currier & Ives prints were hand-colored, with a separate artist assigned to apply each tint. The prints were then placed on a clothesline to dry.15 Like most of the prints that soon flooded the marketplace, theirs showed a stoic and sterile Lincoln free of even a trace of pain or discomfort. Albert Berghaus may have seen bloodstains at the scene, but Americans would not: There was no blood in these prints, and certainly no evidence of the swelling and blackening of Lincoln’s eye so clearly visible by the morning of his death. His surgeons typically were depicted sitting stoically by his bedside, not at work—as they really were—periodically removing blood clots from his wound and keeping him warm.16 Nor was Lincoln’s wife depicted in the hysterical frenzy that in reality overtook her that night. Instead she was typically portrayed as a calm, resolute woman moving almost gracefully through the event, gowned as if for an inaugural ball. Lincoln was almost always shown in a discreetly opened dress shirt or full nightgown, when in fact his doctors had stripped him, immediately upon his arrival in the Clark bedroom, to search for other wounds. The dying president lay naked beneath the covers for the last few hours of his life. What is surprising about the Currier & Ives print is not its errors—some attributable to artistic conventions, some to artistic license like the insertion of little Tad Lincoln crying on his mother’s lap. Tad was in fact never brought to his father’s bedside that night, even though Mary more than once expressed the irrational belief that her husband would awake if only he could hear Tad speak. What should surprise the modern viewer even more is how many details the artist got right: particularly the print within the print on the wall behind the deathbed. Many printmakers not only knew that an engraving of the English painting The Village Blacksmith (Figure 6) hung in Lincoln’s death room but took pains to draw it into their scenes as well. At least Currier & Ives did not attempt to cram

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Figure 6. George Patterson, after John Frederick Herring Sr., The Village Blacksmith. Engraving, n.d., printed by W. H. Dunbar for members of the Cosmopolitan Art Association. This is a copy of the print that hung over the bed where Lincoln died. Many printmakers included it in their depictions of the president’s final moments. Coincidentally, the British artist who painted the original died the same year as Lincoln. (Photograph courtesy Harold Holzer)

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the death room with celebrity visitors—at least not at first. Most printmakers would prove unaware of—or unwilling to accept—the modest size of the death chamber itself, giving rise in popular art to what assassination expert Lesley A. Leonard has aptly termed the ‘‘rubber room’’ phenomenon.17 In successive prints, the modest Petersen House chamber grew larger and larger to accommodate the number of people who propriety-driven publishers believed must be portrayed in it. The death chamber expanded exponentially with the artists’ evident desire to aggrandize the circumstances surrounding a great man’s death.18 Though first, fast, and fairly accurate with its timely print, Currier & Ives was not yet satisfied. Within days the firm had second thoughts about one major omission from its initial group portrait: The new president, Andrew Johnson, had not been portrayed in their original deathbed scene. Reconsidering, they deemed General Henry W. Halleck (at left in Figure 5, holding a handkerchief) expendable and removed him from a revised second version of the lithograph, replacing him with Lincoln’s successor (Figure 7). With Johnson included, a print of the last moments of President Lincoln thus became as well a print of the first moments of President Johnson, symbolizing peaceful succession and national continuity in the face of crisis. Perhaps that is why a third and final interpretation of Lincoln’s death by Currier & Ives proved the most politically correct of all three (Figure 8). Here, Johnson (fourth from the left) advanced even farther toward the bedside. Mary Lincoln, on the other hand, by then losing public sympathy for failing to leave the White House and refusing to attend any of her husband’s funerals, was banished to the doorway, weeping alone as her husband expires inside. Johnson is shown weeping, too, holding a handkerchief to his eyes. To demonstrate a final reconciliation by Lincoln’s political adversaries, the scene also included former Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase (fifth from the right), even though he had unsuccessfully

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challenged Lincoln for the presidential nomination the year before. Yet Lincoln had only recently named Chase Chief Justice of the United States. In reality, Chase never visited Lincoln’s bedside that fateful night. But Currier & Ives might have included him so that all aspects of private and public grief—the family, the executive branch, the legislative branch, and the judicial branch—might be represented, even if that representation meant diminishing the traditional role of the bereft widow. Most printmakers preferred to keep Mrs. Lincoln in their scenes. For example, Currier & Ives’ New York neighbor, the engraver H. H. Lloyd, exercised considerable artistic latitude by depicting Mary sprawled across the bed, Tad kneeling beside her in prayer, and Secretary Stanton (the bearded figure at center with his hand to his cheek) so squashed by fellow witnesses that he seems to find it difficult to raise his right arm to wipe away a tear (Figure 9). The deceptions—and the fantasy—were only beginning. But there were some exceptions to the rule ‘‘publish first, research later.’’ One simple but affecting ‘‘last moments’’ scene by an unknown printmaker, for example, actually showed blood, however discreetly, on the pillow (Figure 10), a rare concession to the reality of the assassination, and featured the attending doctor realistically checking the dying man for a pulse. Even more blood appeared in the print that probably inspired it (Figure 11), an otherwise routine offering from the Boston firm of J. H. Bufford, which in 1860, just five years earlier, had issued one of the first print portraits of Lincoln based on a painting done from life.19 A surprisingly rigorous German print, one of several foreignmade deathbed scenes, featured a chillingly accurate spool bed much like the one in which Lincoln had died (Figure 12). Issued by Gustave May of Frankfurt and modeled after an American print by John Henry Bufford of Boston, it managed to convey the impression of the dying moment with considerable power, except perhaps for Andrew Johnson’s pose (at the right) of casual indifference.

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Figure 7. Currier & Ives, Death of President Lincoln . . . . Lithograph (second state), New York, 1865. For the revised version of their deathbed print, the lithographers substituted Vice President Andrew Johnson (fourth from left) for General Henry W. Halleck. The portrait of Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton (sixth from left) was vastly improved, as were those of Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles (seventh from left), the surgeon general (holding Lincoln’s hand), and Mary Lincoln (weeping at bedside). The portrait of the dying president, wholly original in the early print, was now based on Mathew Brady’s familiar 1864 photograph, which for years adorned the five-dollar bill. (Photograph courtesy Harold Holzer)

Closer to home, the lithographers E. B. & E. C. Kellogg of Hartford, Connecticut, produced a print with a unique head-on perspective. It was as original as their unique, rear-view companion assassination print—which was marred by bizarre errors like the inclusion of a Tad-sized figure depicted as ‘‘Young Petersen,’’ as if the boarding house owner’s son actually would have been allowed into President Lincoln’s death chamber (Figure 13).

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Figure 8. Currier & Ives, The Death Bed of the Martyr President Abraham Lincoln./Washington, Saturday Morning, April 15th, 1865, at 22 Minutes Past 7 o’clock. Lithograph, New York, 1865. The firm’s third and final Lincoln death scene, this stately ensemble piece (with Lincoln’s portrait again based on the Brady photo, now flopped) showed several eyewitnesses dissolved in tears, but it inexplicably moved the deathbed to the wrong side of the room. Although President Johnson was given pride of place next to Lincoln’s bedside, and Mary Lincoln and her son (who was not there at all) were relegated to the open doorway, the print depicted only fourteen onlookers in the chamber, maintaining a semblance of reality even as it mysteriously shuffled portraits and altered details. (Indiana Historical Society; P 0406)

Some prints erred on the side of grandeur, like the remarkably realistic, almost photographic engraving by C. A. Asp of Washington (Figure 14). But it suffered from rigidity of pose and impreciseness of background while the skill of the artist made it look perhaps too realistic for comfort. Its rarity in large display print format may suggest that it was not particularly well received in its day. But it

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Figure 9. H. H. Lloyd & Co., Lincoln’s Death Bed./453 Tenth Street, Washington, D.C. Wood engraving, New York, ca. 1865. The only Lincoln death print to include the address of the Petersen House, this crude woodcut showed an unrealistically thin, long-haired woman representing Mary sprawled across her husband’s bed and perpetuated the myth that Tad Lincoln had not only participated in the vigil but knelt in prayer. Most of the portraits—save for that of Senator Charles Sumner (right)—were crudely drawn and awkwardly positioned. (From the Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection, courtesy of the Indiana State Museum)

was photographic enough in style to achieve considerable popularity as a carte-de-visite for family photograph albums. Other prints remained helplessly shackled to the propriety of including Lincoln’s successor. In J. L. Magee’s almost comical deathbed lithograph (Figure 15), Johnson even got to hold Lincoln’s hand as the attending pastor delivered a final sermon. The clergyman looks little like Reverend Phineas D. Gurley, who was, in fact, present, and is extravagantly robed as if he has been escorted from

Figure 10. Printmaker unknown, [Deathbed of Lincoln], ca. 1865. Little is known of this scene, save for its obvious artistic debt to J. H. Bufford’s print (see Figure 11). Whatever its shortcomings, it did boast superior portraiture. (Photograph courtesy Harold Holzer)

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Figure 11. J[ohn]. H. Bufford, Last Moments of President Lincoln./ Washington, D.C., April 15th, 1865. Lithograph, Boston, ca. 1865. A grimly accurate scene despite haphazard portraiture and an unrealistically overcrowded death chamber, this print uniquely showed blood oozing onto the pillow on which Lincoln rests his head. (From the Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection, courtesy of the Indiana State Museum)

a Sabbath pulpit, not summoned in the middle of the night. Mary Lincoln, meanwhile, is in this image relegated to the far side of her husband’s deathbed where she seems to be locked in an incestuous kiss with her son Robert. The absent Chase (second from the right) is included too. Amidst this flurry of imagined prints, the Washington photographer Alexander Gardner, who had made portraits of Lincoln and most of the important figures in the capital during the Civil War, copyrighted his own startlingly realistic composite scene, which did feature Reverend Gurley standing at the center (Figure 16). Twice

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Figure 12. Gustave May, Die Letzten Augenblicke des Prasidenten Lincoln./ Am 15 April 1865. The Last Moments of the President Lincoln./15 April 1865. Lithograph, Frankfurt, Germany, ca. 1865. Another variation of the Bufford print, this lithograph—with captions in both English and German, no doubt to satisfy the president’s many German-born American admirers—featured a strangely dispassionate Vice President Andrew Johnson. He was shown lost in his thoughts at right, as if contemplating the troubled country he will soon inherit. (From the Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection, courtesy of the Indiana State Museum)

during the night, Gurley said prayers while visitors knelt. But in Gardner’s photomontage, the minister’s stoic presence is not sufficiently comforting to prevent both Mary and Robert Lincoln from dissolving into tears, the latter on the shoulder of Senator Charles Sumner. Undoubtedly based on Gardner’s stock supply of previously made photographs of the eyewitnesses, the composite also boasts a wholly original image of the dying Lincoln. Rare for the genre, it actually seems to show the president suffering. Most deathbed prints ranged from the ridiculous to the sublime, if fanciful. Max Rosenthal, a Philadelphia lithographer, produced

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Figure 13. E[dmund]. B[urke]. & E[lijah]. C[hapmam]. Kellogg, Death of Abraham Lincoln./April 15th 1865. Lithograph, Hartford, Connecticut, 1865. Currier & Ives’ chief East Coast rivals in the print publishing world produced a death scene with a distinctive head-on perspective, with eighteen onlookers crowded behind Lincoln’s bed as if arranged for a stage production. The print inexplicably featured ‘‘Young Petersen,’’ son of the boarding house keeper, who hardly would have been permitted inside the death room of the president of the United States. (Photograph courtesy Harold Holzer)

an extraordinary print (Figure 17) remarkable not so much for the portraiture of the eyewitnesses, which was adequate, but for the artist’s inclusion of a band of angels hovering above the death room’s cloud-and-mist–suffused ceiling, come to escort the nation’s newest martyr to a heaven already occupied by his illustrious predecessor George Washington. Photographers were already busy churning out cartes de visite showing Washington embracing Lincoln in the afterworld (each dressed in the garb of his own earthly era). But Rosenthal’s was the one and only display print designed to illustrate Lincoln’s transformation from man to myth.20 One of the most lavish and skillfully marketed, even if not the most accurate, of all the Lincoln deathbed scenes was the work of

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Figure 14. C. A. Asp, Death Bed of Lincoln. Engraving, Washington, ca. 1865, co-published by Jones & Clark, New York, and W. M. Kohl, Philadelphia. This startlingly realistic scene combined vivid portraiture and the absence of decorative embellishment. The face of the dying president was modeled after the Mathew Brady profile photograph, taken February 9, 1864, and later adapted for the copper penny. The print achieved its chief popularity as a carte-de-visite photograph for family albums. (Library of Congress)

engraver Alexander Hay Ritchie. Ritchie was the printmaker who had contracted to engrave artist Francis B. Carpenter’s justly famous painting of the first reading of the Emancipation Proclamation, one of the best-selling Lincoln prints ever. He took two years to produce a painting of The Death of President Lincoln, which he then engraved himself (Figure 18). Although he claimed that he personally visited the Petersen House to make sketches, Ritchie’s work nonetheless depicted no fewer than twenty-six recognizable onlookers (identified in a separately published key (Figure 19)—in a room that in reality could not have

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Figure 15. J[oseph]. L. Magee, Death Bed of Abraham Lincoln./Died April 15th 1865. Unintentionally comical, this oddest of all known deathbed prints suffers from a host of outlandish exaggerations. Andrew Johnson is seen holding the dying Lincoln’s hand, for example, while Mary Lincoln appears to be kissing her son Robert passionately in the background. The entire mad scene is framed as an elaborate stage set, draped in black as a proscenium. (From the Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection, courtesy of the Indiana State Museum)

accommodated more than six or seven of them at once. Here the tiny death chamber took on the grand proportions of a royal chamber, and with it, Lincoln’s final moments assumed the trappings of the death of a king. At the same time, Ritchie was scrupulous enough to exclude both Vice President Johnson and Mrs. Lincoln. Ritchie advertised heavily, probably because he published two years after his rivals did, an eternity where newsworthy pictures were concerned. His engraving was not only mammoth in size, maybe prohibitively so—at nearly two feet by three feet—but also

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Figure 16. E. H. Miller, after Alexander Gardner, The Last Moments of Lincoln,/15th April, 1865. Composite photograph, published by Philip & Solomons and copyrighted by Gardner, Washington, 1866. An extraordinary visual accomplishment, based on existing photographic portraits that Gardner had made of the eyewitnesses over the years, this haunting montage featured nineteen onlookers, including the president’s assistant private secretary, John M. Hay, seated at left. The cast of mourners was carefully identified in the caption. (Library of Congress)

expensive: $20 for plain proofs and $30 for signed artist’s proofs, a hefty sum in post–Civil War America. Ritchie believed the result worth it. He boasted that the print offered not only portraiture of ‘‘striking character and individuality’’ but also a priceless ‘‘record of the passing history of the nation.’’ And the characters portrayed agreed when asked to endorse the

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Figure 17. Max Rosenthal, The Last Moments of Abraham Lincoln President of the United States./April 15th 1865. Lithograph, designed and published by Joseph Hoover and printed by L. N. Rosenthal, Philadelphia, 1865. As George Washington—in the form of a stellar divinity—looks on from above, angels from the afterworld descend through the Petersen House ceiling to escort the dying Abraham Lincoln to heaven. This large and lavish print is a hand-colored lithograph, though printmaker Rosenthal took pains to credit himself as its ‘‘engraver,’’ suggesting the more refined and expensive form of popular print. He then grandly dedicated the picture to the ‘‘people of the United States.’’ (From the Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection, courtesy of the Indiana State Museum)

product for advertisments. Reverend Gurley, for one, raved about it in an endorsement quoted in publicity material: ‘‘It renews my eye and heart with surprising vividness the scenes and impressions of the sadly memorable morning.’’ It was, Gurley said, ‘‘a work of surpassing merit.’’ And Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs, another visitor to the deathbed that night, expressed his

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hope ‘‘that the engraving may well have a place in thousands of American homes.’’21 Judging by the print’s rarity today, however, Meigs’s hope—and Ritchie’s—went unfulfilled. Perhaps its large size and even larger cost ruined its chances for success. Perhaps it simply arrived on the market too late to win the kind of following that the less accurate, even the more laughable but timelier, interpretations had excited. But we know that only a few short years ago, a cache of mint-condition, signed artist’s proofs was unearthed at the John Hay Library at Brown University—unseen, and apparently unsold, for more than a century. Ritchie would soon be equaled in pictorial hyperbole. The painter John H. Littlefield’s exaggerated vision of the death room (Figure 20), published in 1866, offered a similarly grand rendering of the scene. No fewer than twenty-five people were depicted seated or standing around Lincoln’s bedside, without any evidence that the multitude had been the least bit crowded by what in reality would have been a chokingly claustrophobic experience. But the Littlefield and Ritchie prints were destined to be eclipsed in grandiosity by the last and grandest entry in the genre. Alonzo Chappel’s huge canvas, The Death of Lincoln (Figure 21), expanded the Petersen House to its ultimate monumentality to hold a staggering forty-seven mourners, all of whom, to be sure, had actually visited there at one time or another during the night— although not together. By comparison, Ritchie had depicted ‘‘only’’ twenty-six and John H. Littlefield twenty-five onlookers. Currier & Ives’ initial lithograph, published less than two weeks after the assassination, had shown but twelve eyewitnesses. In just three years, the cast of mourners had nearly quadrupled as the ‘‘rubber room’’ expanded to accommodate them. Widely exhibited and lavishly praised when it was completed, Chappel’s work boasted perhaps the most realistic portraiture of any of the deathbed scenes ever attempted by artist or printmaker.

Figure 18. A[lexander]. H[ay]. Ritchie, [Death of Lincoln]. Steel engraving, New York, 1868. One of the largest, handsomest, and most lavish of all Lincoln deathbed prints, but also one of the most rigidly formal, and unrealistically crowded, the Ritchie print was heavily advertised—perhaps to make up for its expensive price tag ($20 for plain proofs). (Frank and Virginia Williams Collection of Lincolniana)

Figure 19. Key to the Ritchie engraving, 1868, was published as a fold-out in the marketing brochure for the print, which itself bore no title, caption, or identifying information. (From the Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection, courtesy of the Indiana State Museum)

Figure 20. John H. Littlefield, Death-Bed of Lincoln./April 15th 1865. Engraving, based on photographs by John Goldin, Washington, 1866. No fewer than twenty-four eyewitnesses crowd the scene in this print adaptation of Littlefield’s painting—which considerably expanded the dimensions of the Clark bedroom at the Petersen House. (From the Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection, courtesy of the Indiana State Museum)

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The artist produced these lifelike qualities through an ingenious and audacious shortcut: convincing the principals he intended to portray in his painting to pose for photographs assuming the precise poses that Chappel intended them to strike in his canvas. Notwithstanding Robert Lincoln’s notorious penchant for privacy, he allowed himself to be convinced to pose for one such photograph (Figure 22), head bowed and clutching a handkerchief, as if in tears. It is difficult to imagine Robert’s tolerating such an invasion of his period of mourning, but he consented nonetheless. So did President Johnson (Figure 23), although Chappel ultimately chose to pose him somewhat differently in the painting, and Lincoln Administration cabinet veterans: Treasury Secretary Hugh McCulloch and Secretary of War Stanton (Figure 24). At least one photo historian, Lloyd Ostendorf, argued late in his career that the painter had somehow obtained a photograph of Lincoln’s corpse as well, taken right after his White House autopsy.22 But the surviving carte de visite, showing a rather unruffled Lincoln dressed in an open shirt with impeccably manicured hair and a beard much thicker than the goatee he was wearing at the time of his murder, is probably nothing more than a retouched version of an existing photograph or engraving. Chappel’s final painting, designed by John B. Bachelder, famous for his exhaustively researched Gettysburg print panoramas, was no less complex than one of his battle scenes. But the artist also wanted success on a smaller scale—for the private home. Evidently, Chappel hoped his painting would be adapted immediately as a popular print. He distributed an order book to subscribers soon after the painting was unveiled, promising that ‘‘a First Class, Steel Engraving, from this beautiful painting is about to be published,’’ at 31 by 17 inches in size. Artist’s proofs were offered at $100, India proofs at $60, plain proofs at $35, and plain prints at $15—healthy prices indeed for the 1860s.

Figure 21. Alonzo Chappel, The Last Hours of Lincoln. Oil on canvas, 52  891/2 inches, 1868, designed by John B. Bachelder. The most elaborate of all the Lincoln deathbed scenes, Chappel’s mammoth canvas was populated by forty-seven figures, crowded into a chamber that had assumed palatial dimensions. Perhaps owing to its size and complexity, or the diminution of demand for such scenes, the ambitious painting was not adapted into a print for forty years. (Chicago History Museum)

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Figure 22. Mathew Brady Gallery, [Robert Lincoln]. Photograph, Washington, ca. 1868, commissioned by John B. Bachelder as a model for Alonzo Chappel’s painting The Last Hours of Lincoln. The president’s son was portrayed in precisely this pose, handkerchief in hand, in the final canvas (see Figure 20). (Chicago History Museum)

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Figure 23. Mathew Brady Gallery, [Andrew Johnson]. Photograph, Washington, ca. 1868. This pose was also commissioned by Bachelder for Chappel’s use, but in the end, the artist depicted the then–vice president seated. Although besieged by political problems, Lincoln’s successor agreed to pose for this photograph, no doubt in tribute to his fallen chief. (Chicago History Museum)

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Figure 24. Mathew Brady Gallery, [Hugh McCulloch and Edwin M. Stanton]. Photographs, Washington, ca. 1868. Two more models by Brady for Bachelder, these poses were precisely copied by Chappel for his large and complex canvas (see Figure 20). (Chicago History Museum)

And the surviving original subscription book, now in the Chicago Historical Society, reveals no shortage of customers (Figure 25). Robert Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant both ordered the most expensive proof available. However grandiose the result, Surgeon General Joseph K. Barnes, an eyewitness to Lincoln’s final hours, understood what the artist was intending to do: record each and every witness who had spent even a few minutes in the Petersen House that fateful night. Dr. Barnes enthusiastically endorsed the picture (Figure 26), expressing his belief that the picture presented ‘‘with remarkable fidelity, the portraits of those in attendance at various times during the night of April 14, 1865, preserving truthfully the principal features of that most sad event.’’ Judge David K.

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Figure 25. Original salesman’s subscription book for The Last Hours of Abraham Lincoln./Painted by Alonzo Chappel,/From a design by Jno. B. Bachelder. Among the celebrities whose signatures were solicited—not just to record their orders but to demonstrate enthusiasm for the project, for the benefit of other prospective customers—was the late president’s son, Robert T. Lincoln (top), who signed on for a $100 artist’s proof. (Chicago History Museum)

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Figure 26. Brief Sayings of Eminent Men, issued in praise of the Chappel painting, came from, among others, the surgeon general who attended Lincoln and the clergyman who prayed at his deathbed. (Chicago History Museum)

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Cartter, another visitor to Lincoln’s bedside, hardly seemed to notice the throng crowding the canvas. ‘‘I can say, in all sincerity,’’ he wrote, ‘‘that the painting, as a whole, is faithful to the scene of the death-chamber on that eventful night, and impressively truthful in its portraiture.’’23 Indeed, Chappel’s great claim to preeminence in the Lincoln deathbed genre was his realistic portraiture. As ‘‘Arc.,’’ a critic for the Washington Herald, marveled after seeing it for the first time, ‘‘Portraits so minutely like I have never seen. . . .’’ Added the writer: The grandeur in the face of Lincoln, is grand indeed. The cold hues of death are warmed to the eye by the red rays of a candle held over him, and the flickering flare causing a Rembrandt-like effect, is very felicitously managed. The eye rests in love and pity on it. . . . If ever there was a National picture, this is one.24

Despite endorsements—and the appearance of a pre-publication advertising brochure designed to promote the promised engraving—there is no evidence that a print of the Chappel painting ever made it to the marketplace in the nineteenth century. The only known print adaptations were a key to the original (Figure 27), created as a plate for an exhibition of ‘‘the great Historical Painting of ‘The Last Hours of Lincoln,’ ’’ and a rather inky lithograph by one M. David of New York, which did not appear until the eve of Lincoln’s centennial birthday, in 1908 (Figure 28). By that time, Lincoln was better remembered for his simple origins than for the kind of grandiose, embellished death that Chappel had invented for him. Like no other artist before him, Alonzo Chappel had stretched the ‘‘rubber room’’ into unrecognizable dimensions. He clearly believed in his project and planned aggressively to market it. But apparently the public was no longer buying.

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Figure 27. Engraver unknown, The Last Hours of Lincoln./Key, published as an invitation to the public ‘‘to call and examine the great Historical Painting’’ during a ‘‘short’’ exhibition. The key offered the first official identifications of the forty-seven people portrayed in the painting. (Chicago History Museum)

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Figure 28. M. David, Key to the Last Day of Lincoln, by A. Chappel: 1865 [sic]. Lithograph, published and copyrighted by David, 1908. This print tribute to the Chappel painting was issued forty-three years after the assassination, and only a year before the centennial of Lincoln’s birth. It proved to be the only print adaptation of the largest of all Lincoln deathbed scenes—the original of which, inexplicably, was never engraved as a display print during the nineteenth century. (From the Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection, courtesy of the Indiana State Museum)

Conclusion The April 29, 1865, issue of Harper’s Weekly was the first to feature advertisements for pictorial products inspired by the assassination. For the next twelve weeks, its pages were filled with offerings for medals, mourning badges, and, of course, prints. By July 22, the ads had ceased. After only three months, the vogue for assassination,

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deathbed, and funeral prints had not only quickly come but, by the standards of 1865, had even more quickly gone.25 Politicians kept aglow the flame of presidential martyrdom far longer than printmakers. But by the time retrospective painters like Ritchie and Chappel had produced their heroic, grandiose canvases, public interest in such depictions had waned. Within hours of his passing, Republican members of Congress saw Lincoln’s death as ‘‘a godsend’’ to their partisanship, expecting President Johnson to exact appropriate revenge on Southerners.26 Stunned by the magnitude of public grief over the assassination of the president who in life had been an easy target for criticism, members of Congress chose to capitalize on a changing national mood. The following February saw a joint session of Congress commemorating the Emancipator’s birth. The historian George Bancroft offered praise, extolling Lincoln as a leader who was molded by events rather than one who shaped the times in accordance with his own will—an oversimplification worthy of the modest martyr of legend, if not the politically astute master of men portrayed by historians more recently.27 In an irony that America’s sixteenth president would have thoroughly appreciated if he himself could have choreographed a dramatic finale to his presidency, Edwin Stanton, the one-time lawyer who had pointedly dismissed Lincoln as backward in an Illinois courtroom but later served Lincoln as Secretary of War, delivered the final benediction ‘‘in the rubber room.’’ ‘‘Now,’’ Stanton said simply, ‘‘he belongs to the ages.’’28 Stanton’s eloquent summation suggests that fate, in the end, had allowed Lincoln to define both his life and his death. Stanton’s echo from the ‘‘rubber room’’ helped to inspire subsequent generations to come to terms with Lincoln’s leadership, just as popular art had created a secular, political heaven for—however fanciful, but fully worthy of—the new American saint.

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Figure 29. John Tenniel, Britannia Sympathises with Columbia. Woodcut engraving, published in Punch, or the London Charivari, May 6, 1865. This eloquent, simple, and deeply moving tribute to the American martyr— crafted by the engraver who achieved his greatest fame illustrating Alice in Wonderland—was meant to apologize pictorially for four years of merciless lampooning in England’s best-known picture weekly. (From The Lincoln Foundation Collection, courtesy of The Indiana State Museum)

American image makers created an almost royal European-style death for the quintessential native son. Ironically, it took a British printmaker to create the most evocative image of Lincoln’s death. John Tenniel’s Britannia Sympathises with Columbia (Figure 29), published in the London Punch just three weeks after Lincoln’s death, depicted only three mourners before Abraham Lincoln’s body: a woman clutching a flag, an unshackled and weeping African American, and the national symbol, Columbia, gently laying a

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wreath on the martyr’s bier.29 With eloquent simplicity and raw artistic power, they managed to represent—and substitute for—all the mourners who had passed through the Petersen House ‘‘rubber room.’’ Notes This chapter is a modified and updated version of the authors’ monograph Lincoln’s Deathbed in Art and Memory: The ‘‘Rubber Room’’ Phenomenon (Gettysburg, Pa.: Thomas Publications, 1998). That monograph, in turn, was based on a paper first delivered by the authors at Ford’s Theatre, Washington, on November 10, 1996, at a symposium to commemorate the centennial of federal ownership of the Petersen House. The authors are grateful to Dwight Pitcaithley, then–chief historian of the National Park Service, and the late Michael Maione, then–site historian at Ford’s Theatre, as well as to Donna Petorella, who has typed this manuscript at least three times over the past ten years. 1. Fred I. Greenstein, ‘‘What the President Means to Americans,’’ in James D. Barber, ed., Choosing the President (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1974), 123. 2. Ibid., 142–43. 3. James W. Clarke, American Assassins: The Darker Side of Politics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982), 153, 262. 4. Dean K. Simonton, Why Presidents Succeed (New Haven. Conn.: Yale University Press, 1987), 185–228. See also Arthur Schlesinger Jr., ‘‘The Schlesinger Poll,’’ New York Times Magazine, December 15, 1996. 5. Dorothy Meserve Kunhardt and Philip B. Kunhardt Jr., Twenty Days (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 46–47. 6. Account of Henry Safford, Springfield Republican, February 18, 1917. 7. Kunhardt and Kunhardt, Twenty Days, 46–47. 8. W. Emerson Reck, A. Lincoln: His Last 24 Hours (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1994), 136–48. 9. Ibid., 139–40. 10. See Carl Bersch’s painting Lincoln Borne by Loving Hands (1865) in Harold Holzer and Mark E. Neely Jr., Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: The Civil War in Art (New York: Orion Books, 1993), 167. The original painting is in the Ford’s Theatre Collection. 11. Timothy S. Good, We Saw Lincoln Shot: One Hundred Eyewitness Accounts (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1995), 24.

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12. Stefan Lorant, Lincoln: A Picture Story of His Life (rev. ed., New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1969), 269. 13. See, for example, G. Washington in his last Illness attended by Docrs. Craik and Brown . . ., etching in Wendy C. Wick, George Washington: An American Icon—the Eighteenth-Century Graphic Portraits (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, 1982), 142–43; Harold Holzer, Washington and Lincoln Portrayed: National Icons in Popular Prints (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., 1993), 52, 54. 14. Copyright records, Southern District of New York, 1865, in the Library of Congress, Rare Book Collection. 15. Frederic A. Conningham, Currier & Ives Prints: An Illustrated Check List (rev. ed., New York: Crown Publishers, 1970), v–viii. 16. Good, We Saw Lincoln Shot, 26. 17. Lesley A. Leonard, ‘‘Abraham Lincoln and the ‘Rubber Room,’ ’’ Surratt Courier 11 (1986); 1, 8. 18. See, for comparison, the prints illustrated side by side in Lorant, Lincoln: A Picture Story of His Life, 267–69. 19. Bufford’s lithograph of Joseph E. Baker’s crayon portrait of Lincoln, made in Springfield, Illinois, for the 1860 presidential campaign, can be seen in Harold Holzer, Mark E. Neely Jr., and Gabor S. Boritt, The Lincoln Image: Abraham Lincoln and the Popular Print (New York: Scribner’s, 1984), 54–55. 20. For two examples, Washington & Lincoln (Apotheosis) by S. J. Ferris and The Founder and the Preserver of the Union (Apotheosis) by Thurston & Herline, see Holzer, Washington and Lincoln Portrayed, 201, 203. John Sartain issued a large engraving of Lincoln and Washington in heaven, Abraham Lincoln. The Martyr. Victorious, also in 1865, but it did not include a deathbed scene. 21. Ritchie’s Historical Picture, Death of President Lincoln (advertising brochure) (New York: A. H. Ritchie & Co., 1868), 8–9. 22. Lloyd Ostendorf, Lincoln’s Photographs: A Complete Album (Dayton, Ohio: Morningside Books, 1998), 374. 23. ‘‘Brief Sayings of Eminent Men,’’ from a brochure issued in 1866 to promote the Alonzo Chappel painting. Original in the Chicago Historical Society. 24. Ibid. 25. See advertisements in Harper’s Weekly for April, May, June, and July 1865.

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26. David Donald, ‘‘Getting Right with Lincoln,’’ Lincoln Reconsidered (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956), 4; Adam Gopnik, Angels and Ages: Lincoln, Darwin, and the Birth of the Modern Age (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010). 27. George Bancroft, Memorial Address on the Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1866); Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006). Recently, the writer Adam Gopnik has begun a lively debate on whether Stanton uttered the phrase ‘‘Now he belongs to the ages,’’ or whether in fact he used the word ‘‘angels’’ instead—connoting an entirely different meaning: sainthood vs. secular fame. See Gopnik, Angels and Ages, esp. 23–29. 28. Kunhardt and Kunhardt, Twenty Days, 80. See also Good, We Saw Lincoln Shot, 26. 29. The drawing in Punch, May 6, 1865, included a poetic tribute by the English playwright Tom Taylor, whose comedy Our American Cousin Lincoln was viewing at Ford’s Theatre when he was assassinated. ‘‘You lay a wreath on murdered Lincoln’s bier,’’ it began, asking forgiveness for four years of merciless anti-Lincoln lampoons, ‘‘you, who with mocking pencil wont to trace/Broad for the self-complacent British sneer/His length of shambling limb, his furrowed face.’’ See Herbert Mitgang, ed., Abraham Lincoln: A Press Portrait (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1971), 487–90.

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CHAPTER 2

Abraham Lincoln’s New York City Funeral Richard E. Sloan

In his introductory remarks at Cooper Union in 1860, Abraham Lincoln said, ‘‘The facts with which I shall deal . . . are mainly old and familiar; nor is there anything new in the general use I shall make of them. If there shall be any novelty, it will be in the mode of presenting the facts.’’1 Similarly, the facts relating to Lincoln’s New York City funeral may, in the main, also be ‘‘old and familiar,’’ but in the present account, the ‘‘mode of presenting’’ them will use the words of eyewitnesses—mostly reporters—as though they were describing them today on radio or television. In effect, the reader will step back in time, to ‘‘witness’’ the flavor and the emotions of this great and sad event, and to look at the scenes along the route as they appeared then, and as they appear now. This will require some imagination, because some of the buildings along the route no longer stand. As befitting the great city, Manhattan actually staged two funeral processions for the martyred president. The first one was a short but nevertheless emotional one on Monday, April 24. It began at a ferry dock on the Hudson River, traveled east along Canal Street,

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down Broadway for just a few blocks and around the tip of City Hall Park, passed ‘‘Newspaper Row,’’ and then moved on to City Hall, where Lincoln’s casket lay in state for almost twenty-four hours. The second, official procession took place the following day. This one went as far uptown as 34th Street, and then over to a railroad depot on 29th Street. The now-legendary train bearing Lincoln’s casket, along with the funeral party, traveled 1,600 miles and stopped in 10 griefstricken cities between Washington, D.C., and Springfield, Illinois, over a 12-day period. It also carried the disinterred remains of Lincoln’s son Willie, who was to be buried next to his father. Upon its arrival in Jersey City, the president’s casket was transferred from the train to a ferry draped in mourning that carried it across the Hudson to Manhattan.2 During the crossing from New Jersey, 100 singers performed funeral dirges on board, and cannons echoed from distant batteries down river, with chilling effect.3 On the New York side, the ferry dock stood at the foot of DesBrosses and West streets, where some of its rotting old pier can still be seen in the water. The crowd that waited here for Abraham Lincoln that morning was enormous.4 According to the New York Tribune, the day ‘‘dawned with clear skies, balmy air, and gentle breezes—one of the most perfect days of spring.’’5 After the funeral party disembarked, eight stalwart and dedicated soldiers from the Veteran Reserve Corps reverently removed the hearse from the ferry and then took their places on either side of it.6 New York City’s elite Seventh Regiment formed a square around them, proudly serving as the city’s official escort, the members of their popular band lining up next to them. General John A. Dix supervised the entire New York operation, because he had been given command of the War Department in the East when the draft riots commenced in 1863 and had remained in that post. Now he stood at the head of the formation with seven other high-ranking officers, waiting for word that everyone was

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ready. New York City’s funeral for Abraham Lincoln was about to begin. Riding in the carriages were the widow Mary Lincoln’s relatives, along with old friends of the late president. Mrs. Lincoln herself did not travel with the funeral party; she stayed behind in seclusion at the White House, under the care of her physician.7 Filling other carriages were members of Congress, an Illinois delegation, three governors, New York City Mayor C. Godfrey Gunther, Police Superintendent John Kennedy, and various other city officials.8 Choirs from New Jersey that had just sung so beautifully aboard the ferry during the river crossing completed the processional; they would sing again at City Hall later that night. The cortege entered DesBrosses Street, which ran through a very poor neighborhood. ‘‘Every window was full of heads; every house was covered with mourning,’’ reported the New York Tribune. The housetops were ‘‘so crowded with spectators,’’ observed the New York Times, it was ‘‘a wonder’’ the roofs did not ‘‘fall in!’’9 ‘‘Despite the vast numbers,’’ there was ‘‘complete and utter silence’’ here. ‘‘Even the children, shoeless and with dirty faces, seemed to know that they must behave until the procession has passed.’’10 The procession moved at a slow and measured pace here. It made a rather sharp turn onto Canal Street, which was ‘‘heavily draped in mourning.’’11 Portraits of the martyred president were displayed in many windows, flags waved at half-mast, and private homes, businesses, and public buildings were adorned with makeshift signs and banners featuring quotations from Shakespeare and the words of Lincoln’s great speeches.12 One reporter believed that ‘‘Never, in the history of this broad avenue of traffic and business, did it present so memorable, so mournful, so honorable a display.’’13 Many of ‘‘the windows are crowded with the sad faces of Negroes and Mulattos, most of whom are ladies . . . all of whom are bathed in tears.’’14 Some cried out from the crowd. One witness heard an

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elderly woman cry out from her window, ‘‘He died for me! He was crucified—for me! God Bless him!’’ It was the same sentiment many New Yorkers had heard expressed from the pulpit a few days earlier, on Easter Sunday.15 Down at City Hall Park, thousands of citizens had gathered since dawn in anticipation of the casket’s arrival.16 People had surged into town from every direction, by ferry, wagon, and train, in hopes of getting a glimpse of it. By the next day, downtown Manhattan would be at a complete standstill.17 The cortege now turned onto Broadway, home of the city’s most popular theaters, restaurants, stores, and photo galleries, all of which would remain closed until the president’s casket left the following afternoon. Most other commercial establishments in town suspended business as well.18 The hotels did remain open to accommodate the mourners, and the more expensive ones along Broadway were completely sold out. The avenue was already lined with thousands of citizens. As the hearse passed, they looked on ‘‘in gloom and silence’’ and disbelief. ‘‘A deathlike stillness pervaded the whole line.’’19 Young men ‘‘were perched on boughs and branches of the trees to the peril of life and limb’’ to get a better view. The police were unable to get them to come down.20 The hearse next passed a familiar old site: a narrow, five-story building in the middle of the block at 359 Broadway. Until about five years earlier it had been Mathew Brady’s popular gallery, where many celebrities of the day had posed for portraits before the celebrated photographer relocated uptown. He never photographed Lincoln here, but he later took many portraits of the president in Washington.21 Approaching the corner of Chambers Street, the solemn procession passed A. T. Stewart’s old ‘‘Marble Palace,’’ the country’s first department store.22 In front of this store, during the city’s terrible draft riots two years before, a nine-year-old African-American boy had been attacked by a mob—in broad daylight.23 Next the cortege

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passed the west side of City Hall (Figures 1 and 2), traveled around the park, and turned uptown to enter the gates on the eastern side. In the distance, to the west, stood the old Astor House, a mourning slogan hanging above its front door. Across the street was Barnum’s Museum, the city’s biggest tourist attraction. Sandwiched between them, behind some trees, was historic old St. Paul’s Church, where George Washington had often worshipped.24 Dozens of citizens now crowded atop Barnum’s roof to watch the arrival of the hearse. Even though the coffin was closed, these onlookers had paid handsomely for the superb view the museum offered, just as they had four years before when Lincoln arrived at the Astor House as president-elect.25 All along the route of both processions, scalpers sold spots on other rooftops for as much as $40.26 The Astor House, where many members of the funeral party had booked rooms, was heavily draped in mourning crepe.27 Back in February 1861, President-elect Lincoln and his family had been guests at this hotel when they stopped in the city on their way to Washington.28 They had pulled right up to its front entrance with an entourage of some two dozen carriages, escorted by half of the city’s police force. Upon their arrival, thousands of people had cheered the president-elect from across the street. After being greeted by city officials, the Lincolns had been escorted to a suite on the second floor. The crowd had shouted for a speech, and although Lincoln was a little hoarse, he obligingly climbed onto the portico through an open window and told the crowd he had nothing really worthwhile to say and begged to be excused. Nevertheless, the crowd obliged him with a big round of applause.29 Later that evening, the Seventh Regiment’s band had serenaded the Lincolns with tunes that included ‘‘Yankee Doodle.’’30 Now the cortege was passing the very same spot, and the same musicians were playing Handel’s ‘‘Death March’’ instead. And over the Astor House doorway, beneath the very portico from which Lincoln had spoken to the crowd that day four years earlier, a huge sign read: ‘‘Only the

Figure 1. The southern tip of City Hall Park, which Lincoln’s funeral procession passed on its way to City Hall, from a nineteenth-century print by Deroy, after a drawing by August Kollner. The Astor House is on the right, St. Paul’s Chapel is next door, and Barnum’s Museum stands on the left. (New-York Historical Society)

Figure 2. The same view of City Hall Park as it appears today. Only St. Paul’s (behind the trees) still stands. (Photograph by Richard Sloan)

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Figure 3. The decorations at the Astor House—a hotel Lincoln had stayed in three times in life—were recorded after his death by an anonymous diarist. (John Hay Library, Brown University)

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actions of the just smell sweet and blossom in the dust’’ (Figure 3). Two entire divisions of the police were posted on each side of the street to keep the crowds back, to maintain order, and to arrest any pickpockets.31 So far, however, everyone—for the most part—had been orderly and respectful. The procession next passed St. Paul’s Church at the south end of the park, where it made a rather sharp and difficult turn onto Park Row and toward ‘‘Newspaper Row,’’ the home of the city’s most influential journals, including the Times and the Tribune. During the 1860 presidential campaign, 12,000 Lincoln supporters had marched past here en masse, bearing torchlights.32 Two years later, after draft rioters had demonstrated violently across the street at City Hall, a mob had stormed the Tribune offices and clashed violently with police. They smashed windows in an attempt to break inside and kill its publisher, Horace Greeley, an ardent Lincoln supporter and abolitionist. But the rioters were turned back, and Greeley was spared.33 Now the procession slowly turned in to the east gate of City Hall, which was fully decorated, its pillars wrapped in mourning.34 The cortege made for a ‘‘melancholy scene,’’ bathed in ‘‘soft April sunbeams.’’35 One reporter saw ‘‘Grown men unashamedly crying.’’36 Lined up on each side of the steps were members of several German singing societies, and at the moment the casket was carried inside, they began singing the chorus of the returned pilgrim, from Wagner’s opera Tannhauser.37 On the right, a short line of about fifteen frail, elderly gentlemen leaned against an iron railing for support. These were the city’s surviving veterans of the War of 1812, the ‘‘venerable men who fought and bled in their country’s cause half a century ago.’’38 They would pay their respects at the bier later. The hearse arrived ‘‘slowly and solemnly . . . while the bright sunshine glimmered on brilliant uniform and glittering sword.’’39 And then the soldiers of the Veteran Reserve Corps carried the coffin up the steps and into the Rotunda

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(Figures 4 and 5). With their heavy burden, they now began climbing the beautiful curved marble staircase toward the landing on the top floor,40 where an empty catafalque awaited. There, they reverently lowered the casket onto a velvet-covered bier outside the ‘‘Governor’s Room.’’ The lid was then slowly slid back. The first two of the twelve honor guards assigned to watch over the president’s remains throughout the night now took their places. At the head of the coffin stood Admiral Charles Henry Davis, representing Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles. General Edward Townsend, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton’s personal emissary, stood at the foot. To view the martyred president’s remains, the public would ascend the Rotunda’s right-hand staircase, pass by the coffin, and then descend the left staircase. Members of the funeral party and the various officials and dignitaries would emerge from the Governor’s Room through a pair of glass-paned doors directly behind the casket.41 Before anyone could be admitted, however, the body first had to be touched up, after which, despite orders to the contrary from the War Department, a photographer named Jeremiah Gurney made a pictorial record (Figure 6) of the historic scene—the only surviving photograph of Lincoln lying in state.42 The stately chamber was originally intended for use by the governors of New York state whenever they were in the city. It was decorated with busts and portraits of former presidents, governors, mayors, and other leading historical personages, all of which were now draped in mourning.43 Among the dignitaries expected were U.S. Supreme Court Justice David W. Davis, Congressman Elihu Washburn, Marshal of the District of Columbia Ward Hill Lamon, Illinois Governor Richard Oglesby, and Jesse K. Dubois, all close Illinois friends of the late president. One of New York’s U.S. senators, Ira Harris, who held the Senate seat that the now–grievously wounded William H. Seward had vacated when he became Lincoln’s Secretary of State, arrived early.

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His daughter, Clara Harris, and her fiance´, Major Henry Rathbone, had been sitting with the president and Mrs. Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre when John Wilkes Booth struck.44 The major was reportedly recovering well from the deep knife wound he had received at the hands of the assassin, and the latest report from Surgeon General Joseph K. Barnes in Washington was that Seward’s condition was improving; he was gaining strength after having been so severely daggered that same night while lying in his sickbed. Seward’s son Frederick, brutally beaten about the head by one of Booth’s coconspirators, was recovering as well.45 The War Department had just announced the arrest of ‘‘the wretch who so nearly accomplished’’ the attack on the Seward home, adding, ‘‘the President’s murderer is still at large.’’46 Lincoln’s casket now lay right outside the room where the city had officially greeted him as president-elect. Its most famous piece of furniture, a beautiful rosewood desk that once belonged to George Washington, the nation’s other great president,47 also had served as the centerpiece for Lincoln’s reception in 1861. Fernando Wood, the city’s Democratic mayor at the time, had greeted Lincoln from behind this very relic. Although Wood eventually became an ardent Union supporter, he had initially proposed that New York withdraw from the Union and become a ‘‘free city.’’ Lincoln had been well aware of these sentiments when he and Wood shook hands. At the public reception that followed here, Lincoln had greeted about 200 guests—from dignitaries and city officials to ordinary citizens.48 City Hall’s outside doors were now thrown open, and the public began filing inside and up the staircase (Figures 7 and 8) to pay their respects. Observers noted ‘‘representatives of all ages and all walks of life—the rich, the poor, black and white alike . . . making this slow and solemn pilgrimage.’’49 When they passed before the open casket, many of them acted as though ‘‘treading on holy ground.’’50 Some reached out to touch it (before being admonished

Figure 4. A period photograph shows singers joining members of the New York City Council around Lincoln’s casket as it is solemnly carried into heavily draped City Hall. (Fran Berman Collection)

Figure 5. The restored City Hall, photographed in 2006, now looks almost exactly as as it did in 1865. (Photograph by Richard Sloan)

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Figure 6. Jeremiah Gurney’s photograph of Abraham Lincoln in his open casket inside City Hall, New York, April 24, 1865. (Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum)

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not to do so), ‘‘as if something of the goodness within might flow out’’ to them.51 ‘‘To those who had not seen Mr. Lincoln in life, the view may be satisfactory,’’ reported the Times. ‘‘But to those familiar with his features, it is far otherwise.’’52 Onlookers reported the familiar visage to be ‘‘pale, shrunken and haggard . . . the face around the eyes discolored. The cheekbones . . . unusually prominent, the cheeks hollowed . . . lips shut tight . . . and the small chin covered with a slight beard.’’53 At least one woman leaned over as though to kiss the president, only to be ‘‘pulled back’’ by a ‘‘vigilant’’ officer.54 A number of children in the line seemed ‘‘proud of [seeing] . . . the remains of the savior of their country, and . . . when their hair becomes silver, may they recall back with feelings of pride . . . [this day] . . . when they paid a last tribute to the memory of the great and good Abraham Lincoln.’’55 Outside, more than a half a million souls waited on lines that extended in all directions, as far as the eye could see.56 Some of them vowed they would remain on line all night. ‘‘Never,’’ reported the Tribune, had ‘‘such fortitude, perseverance, and patience been exhibited.’’57 All day the crowd passed the bier. By evening, the ‘‘great number of people [on line], the darkness of the night, and the solemnity of [the] . . . occasion formed a deeply impressive scene.’’58 And although it was a chilly spring night, ‘‘the mournful procession, rather than diminishing,’’ grew larger.59 The Rotunda presented ‘‘a strange spectacle. The heavy draping of the [walls and the] dome caused the light from the gas-lit chandelier[s] to assume a sickly glare as it was reflected . . . on the faces’’60 of all who come here ‘‘a step at a time, and a very little step at that.’’61 ‘‘So magnificent are some of the decorations,’’ wrote one observer, ‘‘that it is hard to divest the mind of the fact that it is . . . not a magnificent pageant of joy, instead of one of dark and overwhelming sorrow.’’62 At midnight, the choir gathered beneath the staircase and sang the ‘‘Integer

Figure 7. Although photographers were banned from making pictorial records of Lincoln lying in his open coffin, authorities did not think to restrict the access of Currier & Ives’ artists, or censor their lithographs. This stark scene clearly shows the dead president in the City Hall Rotunda. (Harold Holzer Collection)

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Figure 8. The landing atop the famous staircase in the City Hall Rotunda appears just as it did when Lincoln’s remains were displayed between the pillars. (Photograph by Michael W. Kauffman)

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Vitae’’—‘‘A Man of Upright Life’’ (Figure 9).63 The effect was chilling. At noon on Tuesday, April 24, the time allotted for public viewing of the remains of the martyred president finally ended. As expected, thousands of citizens had to be turned away.64 Official representatives from Russia, France, and Great Britain reached City Hall just moments earlier, and even ‘‘they were too late,’’65 arriving as the closed casket was already being carried slowly down the stairs ‘‘on the sturdy shoulders of the Veteran Reserves.’’ As the casket was carried outside, the Seventh Regiment band played ‘‘Rest Spirit Rest.’’ The effect was grand, thrilling, solemn, and impressive.66 A new hearse and a hushed crowd awaited the remains, and all heads were uncovered. The coffin was reverently carried to the majestic, magnificent-looking vehicle, decorated with more than a dozen flags and huge plumes of sable. Hanging just a few inches over the casket was a glittering, gilt-painted eagle that seemed to hover in mid-air. Topping it off was a miniature gold and white temple of Liberty, with a little flag at half-mast.67 ‘‘Slowly, mournfully, wearily . . . the funeral car, with its precious burden,’’68 was led out of the west gate by sixteen black horses shrouded in black and sixteen African-American grooms onto the stony pavement of a hushed Broadway.69 The procession included representatives of foreign governments, city employees, the judiciary, and federal and state employees who worked in the city. Hundreds of regiments, bands, and civilians waited on Broadway, all the way up to 14th Street, to get in line.70 Although it was a beautiful spring day, one would never have known it by looking at Broadway, which seemed virtually shrouded in darkness. Nearly every building was draped in mourning (and had been for the past nine days). Nearly everyone was dressed in black; even the Stars and Stripes was trimmed in black. The Times reported that the ‘‘wailing notes of the dirges played by the bands’’ heightened the mournful effect.

Figure 9. The scene at midnight during the Lying in State. The choir sings the Integer Vitae—‘‘A Man of Upright Life.’’ First published by the New York Common Council in 1866. (Richard Sloan Collection)

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The procession now crossed Canal Street, past Lord & Taylor’s elegant department store (Figure 10). It, too, was so beautifully and tastefully draped in mourning that one journalist called its windows ‘‘among the most attractive in a street where there was so much to attract attention,’’ noting, In one windows [sic] there was a diagonal cross of some fine material of white and black. In another window was a gilt

Figure 10. Lincoln’s hearse passes Lord & Taylor’s department store, in a magic lantern slide produced in the 1890s. (Richard Sloan Collection)

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eagle, perched upon a pyramid of red, white and blue moire´ antique, with black crape [sic] caught in its beak and flowing down over silken folds beneath. . . . In front of this was a portrait of Lincoln, draped as usual. On either side there was a magnificent urn, supported by a black column. On each of these columns is the letter ‘‘L.’’71

Across the street, its flag flying at half-mast, stood Brooks Brothers, the famous men’s clothing emporium. It had presented Lincoln with the suit he had worn to his second inauguration a month earlier. It was the same suit he wore now.72 The car then approached one of Broadway’s many popular little theaters, Mechanic’s Hall. During an 1859 performance by the Bryant’s Minstrels, Dan Emmett had introduced the song ‘‘Dixie’’ here. Much to his chagrin, it later became the anthem of the Confederacy.73 Just two weeks previously, after Lincoln gave his last public speech at the White House, the president had asked a band to play the tune, saying that ‘‘Dixie’’ was always one of his favorites and now that General Robert E. Lee had surrendered, it was ‘‘our lawful prize.’’74 At the intersection at Canal and Spring streets, the sun beat down unmercifully on the tremendous grieving throng that had waited patiently for hours to glimpse the hearse (Figures 11 and 12). They witnessed the grandest, saddest parade this city had ever seen. ‘‘Regiment after regiment, brigade after brigade, marched steadily by.’’75 The soldiers were all smartly dressed, their weapons reversed,76 and their ‘‘swords and bayonets sparkling and glinting in the . . . sunlight.’’77 The colorfully dressed Zouaves Hawkins were a particularly dazzling sight in their bright-hued pantaloons. Every soldier wore black crepe on his left sleeve, as did most of the spectators.78 Finally, the funeral car rolled ‘‘slowly and gloomily before us,’’ with ‘‘its heavy plumes nodding and waving to and fro.’’79 ‘‘A simultaneous hush’’

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Figure 11. Lincoln’s hearse passes up Broadway. (Fran Berman Collection)

seemed to come over ‘‘the entire crowd.’’80 For once, the Tribune reporter on the scene confessed, words failed ‘‘to convey an adequate idea of the impressive scene.’’81 The Herald’s correspondent had no such difficulty, describing the ‘‘funeral cortege of Abraham Lincoln’’ as ‘‘a triumphant procession greater, grander, more genuine, than any living conqueror or hero ever enjoyed.’’82 ‘‘Four years ago,’’ the Herald reporter reflected, Lincoln had ‘‘passed through . . . [this] city—to be armed with authority as the nation’s leader on the eve of a great, bloody, and uncertain war.’’83 That day, the church and firehouse bells had heralded Lincoln’s arrival. Although some New Yorkers had greeted him warmly, the many others who had voted against him did not. Now some of those same dissenters paid tribute to him, tolling bells in his honor.84

Figure 12. The same block as it appears today. (Photograph by Richard Sloan)

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The soldiers of the Seventh Regiment looked especially gallant as they escorted the casket, ‘‘their drill excellent and their march superb.’’ They moved ‘‘with such singular precision and rare exactness’’ that the effect was ‘‘nothing short of hypnotic.’’85 They had marched down Broadway when the war began, as New York gave them a rousing send-off on their way to Washington to defend the capital, the first to answer the president’s call for troops. The boulevard then was ‘‘a street of banners, and the national colors floated from . . . windows and housetops.’’86 ‘‘Handkerchiefs [had] fluttered in the air like . . . white butterflies,’’87 as men ‘‘cheered and shouted as never men cheered and shouted before.’’88 Upon its arrival in Washington, the regiment had passed in review before the president at the White House. As it did, ‘‘he smiled all over.’’89 That was a proud day. And now, four years later—to the day!—they marched up Broadway, escorting his casket. Next came the first of the civilian divisions. They represented medical societies, churches, synagogues, lodges, Masonic orders, firemen, schoolteachers, and representatives of all of the city’s trade unions: cigar makers, waiters, plumbers, and longshoremen, to name just a few. Many held up large pictures of the president or carried signs with such sayings as ‘‘Our Chief Has Fallen’’ and ‘‘Death to Assassins.’’90 Marching at the end of the procession was a contingent of about 200 African-Americans. They carried banners inscribed ‘‘To Millions of Bond[s]men He Liberty Gave’’ and ‘‘Abraham Lincoln—Our Emancipator.’’91 Initially, their application to participate had been rejected by the city’s Arrangements Committee, for fear that their presence might incite a riot. The decision created quite a stir until Secretary of War Stanton overruled it. The Times reporter noted that theirs ‘‘was the only portion of the procession which was received with any demonstration of applause. For them a just and kindly enthusiasm overrode the proprieties of the occasion, and handkerchiefs waved and voices cheered all along as they marched.’’92 ‘‘And thus . . . do the remains of the great and

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lamented Abraham Lincoln pass through the city of New York, on the way to their last resting place.’’93 When the funeral procession crossed Houston Street, it passed a beautiful old theater that stood where a Radio Shack store stands today. It was once known as Laura Keene’s Varieties, named for the same Laura Keene who was performing in Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theatre when Lincoln was fatally shot. The comedy’s world premiere had been held here in 1856, with Miss Keene in the lead role.94 The procession also passed another of Mathew Brady’s early photography galleries on the corner of Bleecker Street, one that he’d operated only briefly, until his brand-new establishment on 10th Street could be made ready for business. In 1860, Brady had taken Abraham Lincoln’s most important picture here, just a few hours before he spoke at Cooper Union (Figures 13 and 14), a photograph that, in Lincoln’s own words, helped make him president. How fitting that Lincoln’s funeral procession now rode right past the very spot where he had posed for it, and where he had first met the image maker Brady.95 Just a few doors beyond is the site of the old Winter Garden theater. One night in 1864, John Wilkes, Edwin, and Junius Brutus Booth Jr.—the three actor-sons of the great tragedian Junius Brutus Booth—starred right here in a much-celebrated performance of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. At the time, John Wilkes Booth was already plotting to kidnap the president. Five months later, after dying at Booth’s hands, Lincoln’s casket rolled by this same theater.96 A few blocks farther uptown, just below Union Square, was Cornelius Van Schaack Roosevelt’s mansion, now also long gone. Upstairs, in one of the second-floor windows, two little boys watched the funeral procession pass by below.97 They were Roosevelt’s grandsons—six-year-old Theodore (‘‘Teedie’’) Roosevelt, the future president, and his younger brother, Elliott, who would become Eleanor Roosevelt’s father.98 Their own father, also named Theodore

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Figure 13. The funeral procession pauses at Astor Place. Just around the corner sits Cooper Union, where five years earlier Lincoln delivered the speech that ignited his campaign for the presidency. (Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum)

Roosevelt, was a member of the exclusive Union League that marched in the procession (Figures 15 and 16).99 Perhaps the boys were not nearly as interested in seeing Lincoln’s hearse as they were in watching their father march by. The procession then passed Union Square (Figure 17), the ‘‘Times Square of the nineteenth century’’ and the site of Henry Kirke Brown’s famous equestrian statue of George Washington. The city’s official memorial service for Lincoln, featuring an oration by George Bancroft, was held there two hours after the procession passed by.100 Five years later, the country’s very first bronze statue of the sixteenth president would be erected here in the square, it too the work of Henry Kirke Brown.101

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Figure 14. The anonymous diarist who recorded New York City’s signs of tribute to the martyred Lincoln sketched this elaborate signage at Cooper Union. (John Hay Library, Brown University)

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Figure 15. Soldiers gather in front of Cornelius Van Schaack Roosevelt’s home on the corner of Broadway and 14th Street, waiting for the signal to begin their march. Little Teddy Roosevelt, the future president, and his brother, Elliott, are believed to be the small figures watching from their grandfather’s second-floor window. (Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum)

Figure 16. The Broadway and 14th Street block as it appears now. (Photograph by Richard Sloan)

Figure 17. Currier & Ives, The Funeral of President Lincoln, New York, April 25th, 1865./Passing Union Square./The magnificent Funeral Car was drawn by 16 gray horses richly caparisoned with ostrich plumes and cloth of black trimmed with silver bullion. (Harold Holzer Collection)

Figure 18. Period illustration of the Departure of the Funeral Train from New York for the West, first published by the New York Common Council in 1866. (Richard Sloan Collection)

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The procession finally reached the Hudson River Railroad Depot at 4:15 p.m.—nearly four hours after it had left City Hall.102 When this depot opened in 1861, President-elect Lincoln had been its first official passenger. (Today a large annex of the U.S. Post Office occupies the entire site located two blocks from the presentday Madison Square Garden. A plaque near the employees’ entrance on 30th Street commemorates the occasions of both Lincoln’s 1861 arrival and his 1865 departure.)103 The hearse pulled up to the depot’s heavily draped 29th Street entrance. The casket was then brought inside, placed in the funeral car, and reunited with the coffin of little Willie Lincoln. After the conductor shouted ‘‘All aboard,’’ the train slowly chugged off (Figure 18), pulled by the very same engine that had brought Presidentelect Lincoln to the depot in 1861. By the time the African-American marchers at the end of the procession arrived at the depot, the funeral train was already in Albany. Six hours later, in Virginia, John Wilkes Booth was cornered, shot, and killed.104 At least half a million people witnessed the solemn Lincoln funeral procession in New York, more than in any other city. Approximately 100,000 men marched in it. Between 110,000 and 120,000 people gazed upon Lincoln’s face at City Hall.105 Throughout Broadway’s colorful history, it has witnessed great funerals for many other great men, along with ticker-tape parades for the country’s heroes. But it had never seen anything—either in size or in grandeur—like its funeral for Abraham Lincoln. Notes 1. Harold Holzer, Lincoln at Cooper Union: The Speech That Made Abraham Lincoln President (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), 252. 2. This paper originated as a multimedia show performed at the Lincoln Forum with funeral music; where music accompanied the original words, I have indicated the names of period dirges and other selections. 3. New York Times, April 25, 1865.

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4. Ibid. There were ‘‘several thousands,’’ according to the Times. 5. New York Tribune, April 25, 1865. 6. A Record of the Life, Assassination, and Obsequies of the Martyred President (New York: Bunce & Huntington, 1865), 164–67. 7. ‘‘She is yet much depressed in spirits and unable to leave her room.’’ New York Times, April 26, 1865. 8. The mayor and other city officials had taken the ferry to New Jersey earlier that morning so that they could personally escort Lincoln’s casket to Manhattan. New York Tribune, April 25, 1865. 9. Ibid. 10. New York Herald, April 25, 1865. 11. New York Tribune, April 25, 1865. 12. Ibid. The historian Ted Widmer published the anonymous diarist’s extraordinary scrapbook, which recorded the drapery and slogans that adorned a grieving New York. See Widmer, ‘‘New York’s Lincoln Memorial,’’ New York Times, April 17, 2009. 13. New York Herald, April 25, 1865. Canal Street was—and still is— perpetually congested with traffic because it offers a direct connection between Brooklyn and New Jersey. Many of the buildings that the procession passed along Canal and DesBrosses streets still stand. 14. New York Tribune, April 25, 1865. 15. Ibid. For further incidents along Canal Street, see Victor Searcher, The Farewell to Lincoln (New York: Abingdon Press, 1965). 16. The number reached 10,000 by 10 a.m. New York Times, April 26, 1865. 17. Ibid. 18. New York Herald, April 25, 1865. 19. Ibid. 20. New York Tribune, April 25, 1865. 21. This building still stands. For more than a century its exposed brick south wall visibly bore the faded white hand-painted sign ‘‘Brady’s Gallery.’’ This writer was the first modern-day Lincoln student to notice it and bring it to the attention of the New York Photographica Society. A few years later, together with members of the Society, I requested that the city protect the structure by declaring it an official landmark. Upon learning of this development, the owner whitewashed over the old name—but the city landmarked the building anyway. It is still owned by the same landlord, but the ‘‘Brady’’ sign is gone. Alexander Gardner, who took many wartime photographs of President Lincoln, served his apprenticeship here.

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22. Built in 1846, Stewart’s was also once the country’s largest department store. The structure still stands at 280 Broadway, now serving as a New York state office building. 23. New York Tribune, July 14, 1863, quoted in Iver Bernstein, The New York City Draft Riots: Their Significance for American Society and Politics in the Age of the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 21. 24. Washington worshipped at the church as president in 1789. Barnum’s Museum stood at the corner of Ann Street; it burned down a few months after Lincoln’s funeral, in July 1865. When the Lincolns visited the city in 1861, Mrs. Lincoln and young Willie spent an afternoon there. See Victor Searcher, Lincoln’s Journey to Greatness (Philadelphia: John Winston & Co., 1960), 202. 25. Barnum refused to comply with police department orders that all places of amusement close immediately after the assassination and remain closed until the president’s body had left the city. Although the New York Times called his actions contemptible, Barnum continued to conduct business for the entire week, shutting down only a few days before Lincoln’s body arrived in town. New York Times, April 21, 1865. 26. New York Times, April 26, 1865. 27. ‘‘The dark decorations of mourning waved sullenly from basement to roof.’’ New York Tribune, April 25, 1865. The hotel, which stood at 225 Broadway on the corner of Vesey Street, was built in 1836 and remained the city’s finest through the 1850s. Lincoln stayed there three times. The building was torn down in 1913, its best days behind it. The so-called Transportation Building and the adjacent Astor House Building now occupy the block-long site. See Gerard Wolfe, New York—A Guide to the Metropolis (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994), 78. 28. Holzer, Lincoln at Cooper Union, 72. 29. Searcher, Lincoln’s Journey to Greatness, 182–87. 30. Ibid., 212–13. 31. The police arrested twenty pickpockets in City Hall Park alone. New York Tribune, April 25, 1865. 32. Harper’s Weekly, October 13, 1860. 33. Edward Robb Ellis, The Epic of New York City (New York: Kondansha International Publishers, 1966), 308–9. Pace University’s New York City campus now stands on the Tribune site, between Franklin and Spruce streets. 34. Erected in 1811, City Hall is considered ‘‘one of the city’s greatest architectural treasures.’’ See Wolfe, New York, 87. For the best illustrated history of the building, see Ernest Neufeld, The Renascence of City Hall . . . (New York: New York City Department of Public Works, 1956).

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35. New York Tribune, April 25, 1865. 36. New York Herald, April 25, 1865. 37. New York Tribune, April 25, 1865. The singers included the Saengerbrund, Liederkranz, and Arion societies. According to the New York Times (April 25, 1865), they sang ‘‘with fine effect, and in perfect harmony.’’ They followed with Schubert’s ‘‘Chorus of the Spirits.’’ 38. New York Times, April 25, 1865, in David Herbert Donald and Harold Holzer, eds., Lincoln in the Times: The Life of Abraham Lincoln as Originally Reported by the New York Times (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2005), 323. The paper also reported that some of the 1812 veterans were blind, others lame. The New York Herald of the same date described their visit to the casket as ‘‘one of the most affecting incidents of the day,’’ observing that they stood alongside it, ‘‘hats in hand . . . sobbing, weeping, and praying.’’ 39. New York Tribune, April 25, 1865. 40. The ‘‘hanging’’ interior circular staircase is one of City Hall’s outstanding features. Neufeld, The Renascence of City Hall . . ., 93. For an excellent description of the elaborately decorated catafalque and Rotunda, see the New York Times, April 25, 1865, and Donald and Holzer, Lincoln in the Times, 324–25. 41. New York Herald, April 25, 1865. 42. It was an hour or longer before the public was finally admitted. The picture of the president in his coffin required a thirty-minute exposure because of the small amount of available light (New York Times, April 25, 1865). Secretary Stanton was furious when he learned the picture had been taken, having instructed General Townsend that no photographs of the remains were to be permitted during the entire journey from Washington to Springfield, Illinois; for a time Stanton considered disciplinary action against Townsend, who had given personal permission to Gurney and had himself posed in absolutely stillness before the casket. Stanton excused Townsend because, he wrote, he had ‘‘no other officer of the Adjutant General’s office that can relieve you.’’ However, Townsend was also his longtime friend, and namesake of one of Stanton’s nephews, and the secretary likely did not want to dishonor him. Stanton ordered Gurney’s two negative plates and test prints confiscated and destroyed, but he quietly kept one of the prints, which his son later gave to Lincoln’s former secretary John Nicolay. See Official Records of the Rebellion, Series I, vol. 46:95; and Harold Hyman, Stanton: The Life and Times of Lincoln’s Secretary of War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962), 404–5. Stanton’s print sat undetected until its discovery in the Nicolay Papers at The Illinois State Historical Library (now the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum) in Springfield, Illinois,

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in 1952 by Ronald Rietveld, a fourteen-year-old Lincoln researcher. For Rietveld’s account, see A Day with Mr. Lincoln—Essays in Honor of the Lincoln Exhibit at the Huntington Library (Redondo Beach, Calif.: Rank and File Publications, 1994), 107–11. His story can also be found on the Web, at http:// showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/news/rietveldmem.htm. 43. The New York City Arts Commission maintains the recently restored Governor’s Room as a museum. 44. The senator’s daughter once attended the opera with the Lincolns. Thomas A. Boger, American Presidents Attend the Theatre (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2009), 112. 45. Their condition was reported in the New York Times, April 25, 1865. 46. New York Times, April 16, 1865. The characterization was made prior to the arrest of Lewis Powell (or Paine), who attacked Seward. 47. President Washington used it at Federal Hall from 1789 to 1790, when New York City served as the nation’s first capital. See Neufeld, The Renascence of City Hall . . ., 12. 48. For the details of the reception, see Harold Holzer, Lincoln PresidentElect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter, 1860–1861 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008), 362–64; for text of Wood’s and Lincoln’s remarks, see the New York Times, February 20, 1861, in Donald and Holzer, Lincoln in the Times, 50–52. 49. New York Tribune, April 25, 1865. 50. Searcher, The Farewell to Lincoln, 135. 51. Ibid. 52. New York Times, April 25, 1865. 53. Most of this description comes from the New York Times, April 25 and April 26, 1865. 54. New York Tribune, April 25, 1865. 55. New York Herald, April 25, 1865. 56. New York Times, April 25, 1865. 57. New York Tribune, April 25, 1865. 58. New York Herald, April 25, 1865. 59. New York Tribune, April 25, 1865. 60. New York Herald, April 25, 1865. 61. New York Times, April 26, 1865. 62. New York Herald, April 25, 1865. 63. An English translation of the ‘‘Integer Vitae’’ can be found on the Web, at http://www.daypoems.net/poems/176.html. 64. Some 300,000 people were turned away from City Hall. See Lloyd Lewis, Myths After Lincoln (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1929), 141.

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65. New York Times, April 26, 1865. 66. New York Tribune, April 26, 1865. 67. The Assassination & History of the Conspiracy (New York: J. R. Hawley & Co., 1865; reprint by Hobbs, Dorman & Co., 1965), 109. The construction of the hearse cost the city $6,504.88. Its design by an architect cost $250. The bills for these services are now owned by Professor Leo Hershkowitz of Queens College in New York, who literally retrieved them from a Dumpster after learning that the City of New York had unceremoniously thrown them out. He also saved for posterity many bills to the city for the parade horses, batons, drums, badges, carriages, bands, and hotel rooms for members of the official funeral party. They were exhibited at Hofstra University in 2004 and Queens College in 2006. 68. New York Times, April 26, 1865. 69. Ibid. 70. Ibid. 71. Ibid.; New York Tribune, April 26, 1865. The building stood at 443 Broadway at the northwest corner of Grand Street until 1960. That year, more than half a century after Lord & Taylor moved uptown, its old building burned to the ground. New York Times, November 19, 1960. The spot remained an empty lot until the erection of a thirteen-story condominium in 2006. 72. The structure now on the site (built in 1879) houses the French Culinary Institute; Wolfe, New York, 202. Brooks Brothers, still in business, takes great pride in noting that it supplied Lincoln with the suit he wore to take the oath of office for the second time on March 4, 1865. However, they erroneously claim that Lincoln wore the same suit the night he was killed (that suit is in the Ford’s Theatre Museum in Washington). See the store’s Web site, brooksbrothers.com/ info/famous.tem. 73. Terry Miller, Greenwich Village and How It Got That Way (New York: Crown Publishers, 1990), 79. 74. Kenneth A. Bernard, Lincoln and the Music of the Civil War (Caldwell, Ohio: Caxton Printers, 1966), 300. 75. New York Times, April 26, 1865. 76. Ibid. 77. Ibid. 78. Searcher, The Farewell to Lincoln, 126. 79. New York Times, April 26, 1865. 80. New York Herald, April 26, 1865, quoted in William T. Coggeshall, The Journeys of Abraham Lincoln: From Springfield to Washington, 1861, as President-Elect and from Washington to Springfield, 1865, as President Martyred (Columbus: Ohio State Journal, 1865), 197.

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81. New York Tribune, April 26, 1865. 82. New York Herald, April 25, 1865. 83. Ibid. 84. New York Herald, April 26, 1865. 85. New York Times, April 25, 1865. 86. Emmons Clark, History of the Seventh Regiment of New York, 1806– 1899, 2 vols. (New York: Seventh Regiment, 1890), 2:474. 87. Ibid. 88. Ibid., 2:473. 89. William Roehrenbeck, The Regiment That Saved the Capital (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1961), 125, quoting an unidentified account in the New York Tribune. 90. Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years, 4 vols. (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1939), 2:396. 91. New York Tribune, April 26, 1865. 92. The text of Stanton’s order can be found in the New York Times, April 15, 1865. The African-American contingent was originally to number between 1,000 and 2,000 private citizens. Even after Stanton’s order, only 200 showed up. Theirs ‘‘was the only portion of the procession which was received with any demonstration of applause. For them, a just and kindly enthusiasm overrode the proprieties of the occasion, and handkerchiefs waved and voices cheered all along as they marched.’’ New York Times, April 26, 1865. The marchers were instructed to assemble on Reade Street, just west of Broadway, facing in the direction, ironically, of a long-forgotten African-American burial ground containing 20,000 graves that would be discovered in 1991. See Jill Lepore, New York Burning (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 226–32. 93. New York Herald, April 25, 1865. 94. The address was 622 Broadway. When the Lincoln family stopped in town en route to the first inaugural, Tad Lincoln was taken to the theater to see Miss Keene’s production of The Seven Sisters and the patriotic tableau Uncle Sam’s Magic Lantern (Searcher, Lincoln’s Journey to Greatness, 209); fire destroyed the building in 1880 (Wolfe, New York, 195). 95. The historian Mary Panzer cites an October 6, 1860, New York Times article as evidence that Lincoln posed for his ‘‘Cooper Union’’ photograph at 643 Broadway. See Panzer, Mathew Brady and the Image of History (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, 1997), 220–21. For Lincoln’s crediting Brady and Cooper Union for making him president, see Holzer, Lincoln at Cooper Union, 2005 paperback edition, 302n46. 96. The Winter Garden was destroyed by fire in 1867. John Wilkes Booth sat in the audience here, just twenty days before Lincoln’s casket was carried

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past the theater, to see his brother Edwin’s one hundredth performance as Hamlet. See Michael Kauffman, American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies (New York: Random House, 2005), 189. The date is given in Arthur Loux, John Wilkes Booth (privately printed, 1989), 235. 97. The building stood at 851 Broadway. When the procession was ordered to begin at City Hall, the soldiers on 14th Street were given the signal— probably by a soldier on horseback—to march. New York Times, April 26, 1865. 98. For the earliest publication of the picture of the two tiny figures watching the events of the day, see Stefan Lorant, Lincoln: A Picture Story of His Life (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957), 256. 99. Theodore Roosevelt Sr.’s name appears on a list of the Union League members who marched in the procession. See David Valentine, Obsequies of Abraham Lincoln in the City of New York (New York: Edmund Jones & Co., 1866), 241. 100. The square was the scene of many Civil War rallies. By the 1950s, it had become part of a bargain shopping area as well as a hangout for drug addicts and the homeless. It has recently undergone a revival. See Seth Kamil and Eric Wakin, The Big Onion Guide to New York City (New York: New York University Press, 2002), 113–14, 118–19. 101. The Lincoln statue was not well received at first. The public felt it lacked dignity because of the informal pose and rumpled appearance of the clothes. Kamil and Wakin, The Big Onion Guide to New York City, 112, 119. 102. Ibid. The New York Times criticized the Arrangements Committee for making the funeral procession too long and thus dissipating the grief it was designed to express. See Barry Schwartz, Abraham Lincoln and the Forge of National Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 51. 103. The plaque reads: ‘‘On this site stood in 1861 the station of the Hudson River Railroad. The first passenger to use it was Abraham Lincoln, who came to New York on February 19, 1861 on the way to his inauguration as President of the United States. His funeral train left here on April 25, 1865 for Springfield, Illinois. This tablet placed February 19, 1941 by the Railway & Locomotive Historical Society.’’ 104. Searcher, The Farewell to Lincoln, 154. The locomotive was the Union. 105. New York Times, April 26, 1865. The figures were supplied by General John A. Dix.

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CHAPTER 3

Not Everybody Mourned Lincoln’s Death Thomas P. Lowry

Sixty-five years ago, my father, the skipper of a Navy ship, received notice of the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt along with orders to conduct an appropriate ceremony. The product of three generations of Republicans, my father disliked Roosevelt intensely, but he obeyed orders. He wrote home to my mother, ‘‘We learned that old Rosie was dead. I called all hands together and ordered 60 seconds of silence for them to meditate on the occasion. It would have been hypocrisy for me to give some eulogy.’’ In April 1865, not everyone was as discreet as they would be in April 1945. When I was eleven, my family visited Vicksburg and had a guided tour by a white-haired lady, probably a member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, who seemed increasingly cranky as we visited each historic site. Afterward, I asked my father, ‘‘She seemed really mad. What was she mad about?’’ He replied, ‘‘It was something many years ago. It doesn’t concern you.’’ He was only partially correct. I spent my childhood in California, where we

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never thought about the Civil War. Now we live in Virginia, where the Civil War is everywhere. A few years ago I made another visit to Vicksburg, this time with my wife, Beverly, and I again visited the Courthouse Museum in Vicksburg. The director told us, ‘‘We don’t think much of Mr. Lincoln down here.’’ It is not surprising that in the South, back in 1865, there would be some grim satisfaction with, even rejoicing over, the death of Lincoln. After all, for five years he had been portrayed as a baboon, a gorilla, a monster, a murderer, a tyrant, and a thief. Up north, the feelings of the Peace Democrats and the Copperheads no doubt included joy at the death of the president, but what is more surprising is that court records show that nearly seventy Union soldiers and sailors were prosecuted for exclaiming, in some very heated language, that they were delighted to hear of the assassination. There was also a surprise or two in the miscreants’ views of Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson. The offending sailors and soldiers (and some civilians) who made these statements included a number of commissioned officers, men whose duty it was to lead, to inspire, and to set a good example. Instead, their statements brought them before a trial board of thirteen officers. Lieutenant Colonel Nicholas Dale had had an illustrious career with the 2nd Wisconsin Cavalry. He enlisted in 1861 as a private and by the following year was a captain. In 1864, he was promoted to major, and a few days after being wounded at Yazoo City, Mississippi, on December 1, 1864, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel. However, he began a downward spiral in April 1865 when, in the words of the charges filed against him (Figure 1), he did use disrespectful and contemptuous language, in words and effect as follows, viz: ‘‘Abe Lincoln is a fool’’; ‘‘Abe Lincoln is an imbecile’’ and did use other disrespectful and opprobrious language . . . having been informed of, and wellknowing the melancholy fact of the violent death of the late

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president of the United States . . . did answer and remark, ‘‘that it is all right, the country suffers nothing by such a loss’’ . . . and did thereby greatly incense, and create a feeling of indignation among officers and men of his command; in consequence whereof, strenuous efforts and endeavors were required of the officers of the 2nd Wisconsin Cavalry Volunteers, to suppress riot and insubordination.

According to the charge, Dale also used the occasion to denounce Secretary of State William H. Seward as ‘‘base, corrupt, and dishonest,’’ this after Seward’s face had been slashed open by assassination conspirator Lewis Powell. Lieutenant Colonel Dale was found guilty of some of the charges and sentenced ‘‘to be reprimanded.’’ The sentence was confirmed by Brevet Major General John E. Smith, who added that Dale’s behavior ‘‘merits the severest condemnation . . . are [sic] unworthy of the officer and man, and as such cannot but have an injurious and demoralizing effect upon the service.’’ Dale’s promotion to full colonel was never approved.1 Charles J. Whiting was truly an ‘‘old soldier.’’ He entered West Point in 1831, became a 2nd lieutenant in 1835, resigned his commission the following year, and rejoined the army in 1855 as a captain in the 2nd U.S. Cavalry. He was promoted to major in that same regiment in July 1862. But in 1863 he was court-martialed for ‘‘conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.’’ He was busy disrespecting Lincoln two years before the president’s death (see Figure 2), exclaiming, The president has taken just the course to unite the South and divide the North and in my opinion it is perfectly idle to talk of restoring the country to its former unity with the present party in power . . . the president has exceeded his authority in issuing his Proclamation setting the niggers free and suspending the writ of Habeas Corpus. . . . [Y]ou cannot

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Figure 1 (above and opposite). General court-martial orders of Lieutenant Colonel Nicholas H. Dale, June 6, 1865. (National Archives)

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Figure 2. The racist ranting of Major Charles Whiting, blaming Abraham Lincoln for the prospect of African-American equality. (National Archives)

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succeed in this abolition nigger war . . . the cry has been ‘‘On to Richmond,’’ but the army has never yet got more than a very short distance into Virginia and then they were glad to get back to Washington.

While many others held the same opinions, a commissioned officer was not permitted to express them, and Whiting was dismissed. Three years later he was reinstated as a major in the 3rd U.S. Cavalry, fought the Indians in New Mexico, was mustered out in 1871, and died in 1890.2 Two other officers jumped the gun by insulting the president while he was still alive. Captain James M. Cockefair, 3rd Indiana Light Artillery, was in a saloon, drinking with enlisted men (forbidden), using bad language about his commander-in-chief (forbidden), and loudly proposing a toast to Clement Vallandigham, the Copperhead congressman, convicted of treason the year before. For these indiscretions, Cockefair was cashiered.3 Captain Andrew Finch, 13th Iowa, was raising hell in Louisiana around Christmas 1863. He stole the company roster, helped enlisted men steal government whiskey, and drank much of it himself. In this condition, he loudly proclaimed Lincoln to be ‘‘a goddamned black abolitionist son of a bitch.’’ Finch was dismissed.4 After Lincoln’s death, he made his long, sad last journey back to Springfield, stopping at several cities where he lay in state (see Chapter 2). The Philadelphia viewing was at Washington House. First Lieutenant Lucien Olmstead of the 187th Pennsylvania and his company formed part of the honor guard. Olmstead marked the occasion by getting seriously drunk with enlisted men in a public bar and then making a drunken disturbance at the viewing site. This was regarded as showing insufficient respect, and he, too, was cashiered.5 On August 26, 1863, Lincoln had written a long letter to an old friend, Illinois politician James C. Conkling. In that letter, which

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was intended for a public audience, Lincoln praised the bravery of the troops on land, but did not neglect the Navy. ‘‘Nor must Uncle Sam’s Web-feet be forgotten. At all the watery margins they have been present. Not only on the deep sea, the broad bay, and the rapid river, but also up the narrow muddy bayou, and wherever the ground was a little damp, they have been and made their tracks.’’ Sadly, not all navy men reciprocated this praise, including one commissioned officer and nine enlisted men. In May 1864, Assistant Engineer Robert Taylor was dismissed for publicly asserting, ‘‘President Lincoln is a thief and a bastard and was run out of Kentucky for stealing hogs.’’6 Post-assassination comments were expressed over a wide swath of oceans and rivers. At Cape Haitien, on Haiti’s north coast, twenty-year-old Seaman Daniel Coinlard of the USS Galatea told his comrades, ‘‘I’m damned glad Lincoln is dead and I only wish that Jeff Davis had killed him,’’ an outburst that earned Coinlard two years in prison.7 At Natchez, Mississippi, bosun’s mate Thomas Smith was equally ungenerous: ‘‘If I could find his grave, I’d shit on it.’’ Smith went to prison for one year.8 The day after John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln, the Revenue Service (the predecessor of the present-day Coast Guard) cutter Nemaha was tied to the wharf at St. Helena, South Carolina. Boatswain Patrick O’Donnell called down to the workers on the dock, ‘‘I am glad of it . . . come up here, you damned black sons of bitches, your best friend is dead and now I will put you through.’’9 O’Donnell was joined by Seaman William E. Dinan, who said that Lincoln’s death was ‘‘a damned small loss,’’ and Coxswain Edwin Goodfellow, who told the crew, ‘‘I am damn glad of it . . . if I had a bottle of whisky, I would get drunk on the occasion.’’ Each man got three months in the brig.10 Seaman George Ashton was a deserter from the USS Ohio. He had jumped ship at the Boston Navy Yard and was on a train, headed for parts unknown. Instead of lying low, he called attention

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to himself in a wild and exuberant display of drunken boastfulness, telling his fellow passengers that he was a close friend of John Wilkes Booth, that he belonged to the ultra-secret ‘‘Jeff Davis Clique,’’ and that his only sorrow regarding the assassination was that Lincoln’s entire cabinet had not been killed. When a policeman arrived, Ashton showed him some gold coins and claimed that Booth had given them to him. The court sentenced him to five years in the penitentiary, then suggested clemency in light of the prisoner’s seven children.11 At Brooklyn, Captain of the Foretop Thomas Jackson of the USS Saratoga got a year in prison for these comments: ‘‘It served him right and the man who did the deed deserved great credit. . . . He ought to have been shot sooner. . . . [T]he man who shot him was the smartest man in the country.’’12 Illustrating the lack of uniformity in 1860s military justice, Seaman James Simmons, a patient at Philadelphia’s Naval Asylum, got ten years in prison for saying, ‘‘I wish he had been killed long ago.’’13 Another navy man was Seaman James Tozier of the Powhatan, who called for three cheers on hearing of the assassination. A Norfolk, Virginia, trial gave Tozier a year in prison.14 The enlisted ranks of the Union army made many contributions to this ocean of malfeasance. The first case confirms the adage ‘‘No man is a prophet in his own home.’’ John Largest, 24th Michigan, was at Springfield, Illinois, when the news came to Lincoln’s hometown of the president’s death. Largest publicly expressed this thought: ‘‘The man who killed Lincoln did a good thing.’’ This opinion was not well received, and he went off to prison for two years.15 Two New Yorkers cheered Lincoln’s death because they believed that Andrew Johnson would be an improvement. Sergeant Max Puhan was in Alabama when the bad news came. Max was quick to see a silver lining in this cloud: ‘‘Hip, hip, hooray, Lincoln is dead, whisky will be cheap now, and Andrew Johnson is our next president.’’ He was reduced to the ranks and given a year in

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prison.16 Patrick Kelly, 15th New York Heavy Artillery, went further: ‘‘It is a good thing that Abraham Lincoln was killed. We will now have a better man, one who is a drunkard and a Rebel.’’17 In Baltimore, Private John Tillman, 10th Veterans Reserve Corps, was drunk when he shouted, ‘‘Bully for [the assassination]. I am glad of it. The flag is at half mast. It should be all the way down.’’ Spying some passing mules, Tillman added: ‘‘There go some of Old Abe’s brothers.’’ He was given two years and a dishonorable discharge. Tillman’s doctor, Surgeon C. J. Morton, wrote to President Johnson to urge clemency. ‘‘Tillman was under my surgical care at the USA hospital, Chester Pa. for 18 months,’’ Morton wrote, adding that Tillman had been ‘‘wounded before Richmond . . . wounded in four places . . . two musket balls still in him . . . [had a] damaged stiff ankle joint . . . [was] imprudent while intoxicated . . . half-witted and scarcely responsible . . . a poor German youth, a stranger in a strange land . . .’’ and that he was a ‘‘silly, half-witted illiterate German. . . . I hope you will give his case a merciful consideration.’’18 Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt wrote Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton recommending that the remainder of Tillman’s sentence be remitted. The records do not reveal what happened next, but it is likely that Tillman was released. Under San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge is a massive brick fort, Fort Point, now part of the National Park Service. There, James Walker of the 8th California Infantry, on hearing of the president’s death, said, ‘‘Abraham Lincoln was a long-sided Yankee son of a bitch and ought to have been killed long ago.’’ For this, Walker was sentenced to be shot by a firing squad. He submitted a lengthy written defense, which included this: ‘‘While serving in Mexico I was wounded in the head by a musket ball, and when I drink to excess I have no recollection of what transpires. While in that state I am Non Compos Mentis.’’ A court recommended mitigation of the death sentence, which was granted.19

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Sergeant David J. Parsons had enlisted in the 16th Maine and was captured at the Battle of Fredericksburg. The Confederates returned him a year later, far too sick for active duty. Parsons was serving in the 1st Veterans Reserve Corps and was apparently disenchanted with the administration and with the war when he proposed this toast: ‘‘Here is to Abe Lincoln, may he go to hell and be found damned; may the assassin who murdered him sit on the right hand of God forever.’’ Already sick and a survivor of Southern prisons, Parsons was sentenced to three years in a Northern prison. Twenty years after the war, he wrote to the War Department asking that his case be reconsidered.20 Barney Lowrie of the 5th New York Artillery was also disenchanted with heroics. He was in a Baltimore hospital when he declared, ‘‘I am glad the President is killed; many a poor fellow has been killed and it is no worse for Lincoln to be killed than any other man. . . . [I]t’s not a sad affair at all. . . . [W]here art thou now, Father Abraham?’’ But because no witnesses could be found to verify these remarks, Lowrie was acquitted.21 Private James S. Deck, US Army Signal Corps, was not only disloyal but also a swindler and a thief. In August 1864 he said, A man ought to be hung who would name a horse after Abe Lincoln. I have fought for Uncle Sam as long as I will. The Federal army has taken two of my brothers prisoner and one of them has died. If Old Abe is re-elected I will go to Canada; if [George B.] McClellan is elected, I will go South. It would have been better if the Capitol had been blown up before the last sitting of Congress.

Deck was also convicted of swindling the sutler out of $38 by impersonating an officer. Deck received a dishonorable discharge.22 Even in far-away Oregon Territory there were soldiers who were disenchanted with the war and the president. At Fort Vancouver, on the Columbia River, John McCarty of the 1st Oregon Territory

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Cavalry, upon hearing of Lincoln’s death, exclaimed, ‘‘I’m glad the old son of a bitch is dead!’’ Just what motivated him is unclear, but the court gave him ten years in prison.23 A few of those punished for their insensitivity were guilty of bad manners rather than abuse of the dead president. Augustus Ohman had enlisted at age nineteen at Utica, served in the 57th New York, and was wounded at Fredericksburg. He was in the 9th Veterans Reserve Corps, guarding the White House on April 15, 1865, and drunk enough to be very noisy and disruptive at the Executive Mansion as preparations were made to receive Lincoln’s corpse. When told to be quiet, he exclaimed, ‘‘I don’t give a damn for anyone.’’ He had six months in jail to reflect on his manners.24 Two other men of the 47th Wisconsin who had ‘‘expressed joy at the fate of the President’’ were tried by court-martial and sentenced ‘‘to have their heads shaved, to be drummed along the front of the brigade to the tune of the Rogue’s March, to forfeit all pay or allowances now due or to become due, and to serve the balance of their year in the Dry Tortugas.’’25 William Hall of the 151st New York got into trouble for what seemed to him an objective historical analysis of the event. ‘‘I do not blame the man for killing the President,’’ he said. ‘‘I would kill Jeff Davis if I had a chance and this man had a right to kill Abe Lincoln. This government once was in rebellion against England and the south had the same right to rebel against us and if they could gain their end by killing President Lincoln, I do not blame them for doing it.’’ Hall overlooked two important points. First, the war was over and shooting Lincoln could not help the South. But more important, April 1865 was not a time for cool objectivity. He got a dishonorable discharge.26 During the Civil War, military commissions, formed of Union officers, tried many civilian offenders. One such trial concerned a long-forgotten and startling bit of California history. In 1859, the California legislature passed a bill dividing that state in two. North

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California would remain ‘‘free.’’ The southern half would become a slave area, to be called The Territory of Colorado. The governor signed the bill, and delegates went east to obtain federal approval. The events at Fort Sumter overtook the division of the Golden State, but pro-Confederate sympathy remained strong in a region now known for sunshine, surfing, and movie stars.27 When news of Lincoln’s death reached Charles Helms in a Los Angeles saloon, the ‘‘Colorado,’’ he quickly proclaimed his political sympathies: ‘‘I’d walk a thousand miles for the privilege of shitting on Lincoln’s grave.’’ At his trial, a meeker and more sober Helms begged for clemency. ‘‘I was drunk. I am an ignorant person, occupying no social position, and I am an invalid.’’ He was given seven weeks in jail.28 The Maryland official state song, even today, refers to Union men as ‘‘Northern scum,’’ and Baltimore bankers and ship owners were a vital part of the Southern economy, so it is not surprising to find similar cases from that city. In the city’s harbor, aboard the schooner R. H. Harper, Samuel White opined, ‘‘They are building another part in hell for Abraham Lincoln. If they had killed him 3 or 4 years earlier it would have been better for us all but as long as they had put it off this long, it looked a little bad.’’ This cost White a month in jail and a $500 fine (the equivalent of $15,000 today).29 A week later, in a saloon at the corner of Pratt and Poppleton streets, James Hall told his fellow barflies, ‘‘Jeff Davis fought for a good cause and John Wilkes Booth done right and was justified in murdering the president,’’ musings that earned him two years in prison.30 A third Baltimore citizen, Samuel Peacock, was of the opinion that ‘‘The damned son of a bitch is dead at last. He ought to have been killed long ago.’’ Peacock got thirty days at hard labor.31 Edgefield, a village northeast of Nashville, Tennessee, experienced a scene worthy of a soap opera. The ‘‘Widow Brian’’ owned a boarding house and contracted with Mrs. S. E. Hunter to manage it. Hunter sold the contract to Maria Martin, who refused to give it

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up when Hunter changed her mind. Swiftly, Hunter’s three daughters sided with their mother, and the little house seethed with hatred, complicated by the visits of Union soldiers who hung around the kitchen table as a sort of Greek chorus, gossiping, commenting on the domestic drama, and flirting with the girls, while Mrs. Hunter did the soldiers’ laundry. When the news of the assassination reached Edgefield, Mary Hunter, Martin’s bitterest enemy, told the court, ‘‘Maria said she was glad that he was dead . . . when soldiers passed by she’d call out, ‘Your daddy’s dead and I’m damned glad of it.’ . . . [W]hen Negroes passed by she’d holler out, ‘Uncle, your daddy’s dead.’ ’’ Gideon Niles, a Michigan cavalryman, recalled that Maria burst out, ‘‘I’m glad the old devil is dead. . . . I hope Jeff Davis will be our next president.’’ The court discounted Niles’ testimony when it was revealed that he had told others, ‘‘Miss Martin is a goddamned whore, a damned dirty little bitch who ought to be turned out of doors.’’ The gallant Hugh McBratney nobly defended Maria’s honor, denying that she had ever uttered such words. The court raised a collective eyebrow on learning that Maria shared Hugh’s bed and was supported by him. The court, baffled by probably perjured evidence, came to no conclusion.32 Elsewhere in Edgefield, Benjamin Myers got ninety days at hard labor for telling friends that Lincoln’s death was ‘‘great and glorious news.’’33 At nearby Nashville, a compositor setting type for a special assassination issue suggested ‘‘Glorious News’’ for a headline. For that suggestion, James Hart got ninety days at hard labor, half of it with a ball and chain.34 New Orleans citizens had never quite accepted the Yankee presence. After Lincoln’s death, a group of ‘‘colored citizens’’ were hanging mourning crepe on their homes, honoring the author of the Emancipation Proclamation, when Patrick Shields, a former slave owner just passing by, offered this opinion: ‘‘You will soon be back under your master’s lash, where you ought to be,’’ and added, ‘‘I am damn glad that Lincoln was killed.’’ For reasons unclear,

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Shields was acquitted.35 On the other hand, C. Orrez, owner of a cigar shop at 560 Magazine Street, got four months at the parish prison for his exclamation that ‘‘I am glad that he was shot.’’36 In Fayette County, Kentucky, Thomas Outten was charged with assault with intent to kill for beating a ‘‘colored man’’ almost to death, and telling onlookers, ‘‘Old Lincoln is dead and I will kill all the goddamned Negroes now.’’37 At Limestone Creek, Alabama, federal employee Richard McDermott told his co-workers, ‘‘Old Abe is killed and I do not care a damn. He was an abolitionist and he had been the cause of thousands of innocent men being killed.’’ McDermott’s opinions cost him a year in prison with a twelvepound ball and chain.38 West Virginia had been made a separate State during the war, but not all of its citizens were pro-Union. Underage John Craig had been prevented from enlisting in the Union army by his mother’s intercession, and yet at Wheeling he was tried for shouting, ‘‘I’m damned glad President Lincoln was killed.’’39 At Wellsburg, Robert Brown, a potter, was tried for giving ‘‘aid and comfort to enemies of the United States’’ for having said that Lincoln’s death was a good thing, and that even more men should have been killed. Brown got a year in prison.40 Dozens more Union soldiers were court-martialed for rejoicing in Lincoln’s death. James Corner, 17th U.S. Infantry, was tried for exclaiming, ‘‘The news is too good to believe; the best news I have heard for 4 years, it ought to have been done 4 years ago.’’ In his defense Corner entered a 1,100-word document. A few excerpts will convey its tone: For the first time in my life I stand on my defense before a court, charged with uttering a sentiment in connection with the assassination of our late President Abraham Lincoln, the heartless atrocity of which alone would prove to those who know me that they could not have been uttered

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by me. If this accusation is not a piece of gratuitous malice, arising from the petty jealousies which are unfortunately but too prevalent in a camp or garrison it must have been founded on my reluctance to believe in the loss of so great and good a man. Had I, like some who have testified against me, greedily devoured the first intelligence and reveled in the revolting details of a crime that will stain the page of history, there would have been some probability for such a charge. . . .

There follows four more pages of such eloquence, eloquence deemed insufficient by the court, which gave Corner a dishonorable discharge.41 Twelve of the men tried by court-martial had called for retroactive assassination. Five others were less precise. James Flint, 36th Ohio, said Lincoln ‘‘ought to have been killed years ago.’’42 At Mouse Creek, southwest of Knoxville, Tennessee, John Casey of the 1st Wisconsin Heavy Artillery also opted for ‘‘years ago,’’ adding, ‘‘He was never worth anything . . . now he’s dead and gone to hell.’’43 On Nashville’s Buena Vista Pike, John Nash of the 142nd Indiana put in another vote for ‘‘should have been killed long ago.’’44 Daniel Heeden of the 182nd Ohio added some flourishes. ‘‘It’s a damn pity that the old son of a bitch had not been killed before he took his seat. . . . [I]f Jeff Davis and Abraham Lincoln were put up for targets, I’ll be goddamned if I wouldn’t shoot Old Abe first.’’45 Henry Lopshire, who served in John Nash’s regiment, offered a similar assessment: ‘‘The old cuss should have died long ago.’’46 Six soldiers were more precise as they called for retroactive death. Henry Peters of the 5th U.S. Volunteers said, ‘‘He should have been killed two years ago.’’47 The time period of four years was most popular. At Barrancas, Florida, Stephen St. John of the 2nd Illinois Cavalry told his peers, ‘‘That is good news and ought to have happened four years ago.’’48 At Richmond, Virginia, Sergeant Henry

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Brainard of the 98th New York added to the chorus: ‘‘Damn him, he should have been shot four years ago.’’49 Eli Smith of the 182nd Ohio, speaking out at Nashville, told his peers, ‘‘I don’t care if the goddamned son of a bitch had been dead four years ago.’’50 Garret C. Cole of the 1st New Jersey was acquitted of saying, ‘‘Lincoln should have been shot four years ago.’’ Major General John Dix reviewed the case and pronounced it an utter waste of time, as there was no evidence.51 The soldier with the strongest hindsight was Jacob Campbell of the 30th Michigan, who said, ‘‘The old curse, he ought to have been shot twelve years ago.’’52 Dozens more had opinions on the assassination, some marked by weirdness, while most repeated a now-familiar theme. Henry Breed of the 12th New York Cavalry was critical of Lincoln for having put himself in harm’s way, yet he still approved of his death. ‘‘The President of the United State was a goddamned fool for going [to] the theatre . . . and I’m glad he’s dead.’’53 John Ryman of the 30th Michigan declared, ‘‘I am glad he was shot, the damned old whoremaster. I would like to have been there to shoot him myself.’’ Ryman offered no defense and was given a dishonorable discharge.54 Elijah Chapman, a cook in the 10th Veterans Reserve Corps, told the court, ‘‘Though I am in the service of the United State[s] I have never shouldered a musket against the Rebels.’’ He had no use for the president, because, ‘‘Lincoln took off his hat to Negroes and ignored white men. A damn sight better man than Abraham Lincoln has died and not as much fuss was made about it.’’55 Charles Hodson joined the 4th New Jersey in 1861. He was wounded and captured at Gaines Mill, losing much of the use of his right arm. During his service with the 2nd Veterans Reserve Corps, he said of the assassination, ‘‘I hope the intelligence is true, that he ought to be killed,’’ adding that the government was a damned set of robbers. He escaped from the guard house and was charged with desertion. Together these capers earned him two courts-martial.56

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Sing Sing prison loomed in the future of Frederick Bodmer of the 39th Ohio, who, on hearing of the president’s death, waved his hat in the air and whooped, ‘‘More of these abolitionists should have the same treatment!’’57 Twelve more trials are in the records, almost exact duplicates of the ones just cited; the creative well seemed to run dry for many men in their efforts to express joy at Lincoln’s death. Though the vast majority of the army’s rank and file, and its officer corps, felt bereft by the news of Lincoln’s death, these courtmartial records show that a small but vocal minority felt otherwise. These records also show that in the wake of national tragedy, the courts were inclined to treat outbursts of expressed enthusiasm for Lincoln’s murder with strict justice. Expressions of support for Lincoln’s murder, even casting aspersions on his character, earned scores of men punishments—from a reprimand (Colonel Dale) to the death penalty (Private Walker), though prison sentences were most common. Notes 1. After the Civil War, the War Department carefully preserved the handwritten transcripts of Union courts-martial, military commissions, and courts of inquiry, a total of 75,964 trials for the years 1861–65. When the National Archives opened in the 1930s, these records were transferred to National Archives custody. In the years 1994–2004 the author and his wife, Beverly, read and summarized all those records. Beverly then entered all the summaries into a multi-variable, fully searchable Microsoft Access database. (For a full discussion of court-martial procedures, see the author’s Don’t Shoot That Boy—Abraham Lincoln and Military Justice [New York: Da Capo Press, 1999] and/or the forthcoming Merciful Lincoln: The President and Military Justice.) The cases presented here were found by using the key words language and Lincoln. This search produced a wide variety of cases, and the ones used here are most illustrative of the issues raised in these trials. Scholars wishing to read the original transcripts should use the following method of citation: National Archives Record Group RG 153, Records of the Judge Advocate General’s Office (Army),

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entry 15, Court-Martial Case File, file OO1076, hereinafter cited by file number only. Within each file folder, such as OO1076, there may be many trials. Finding a particular trial may require some searching within each folder. 2. MM3652. 3. LL2656. 4. LL2676. 5. MM1947. 6. 3537. Navy courts-martial during the Civil War received a four-digit number. The Union navy courts-martial have been microfilmed. This citation is: M273, Records of General Courts Martial & Courts of Inquiry of the Navy Department, 1799–1867. The records constitute 198 rolls of 35mm microfilm. 7. 3961. 8. 4082. 9. OO1191. 10. OO1191. 11. 4137. 12. 3920. 13. 4050. 14. 4103. 15. MM2047. 16. OO1277. 17. OO1267 18. MM2093. 19. MM2771. 20. OO940. 21. MM2190. 22. MM2213. 23. MM2226. 24. MM2680. 25. Terry Johnston Collection. 26. MM2384. 27. Leonard L. Richards, The California Gold Rush and the Coming of the Civil War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007), 215. 28. NARA Record Group 109, Entry 213, Box 14, Provost Marshal File. 29. MM2091. 30. MM2092. 31. NN3708.

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32. Thomas P. Lowry, Confederate Heroines (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006), 86. 33. OO1235. 34. OO1235. 35. OO934. 36. OO934. 37. MM2544. 38. MM2870. 39. OO893. 40. MM2110. 41. MM2379. 42. MM2344. 43. OO908. 44. MM2531. 45. MM2145. 46. MM2145. 47. OO719. 48. MM2164. 49. MM2011. 50. OO1173. 51. OO1146. 52. OO1129. 53. OO1155. 54. OO1129. 55. MM1936. 56. OO1177, MM2304. 57. MM1997.

CHAPTER 4

Lincoln’s Chief Avenger: Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt Elizabeth D. Leonard [A]mong those great men who in those trying days gave themselves, with entire devotion, to the service of their country, one who brought to that service the ripest learning, the most fervid eloquence, the most varied attainments, who labored with modesty and shunned applause, who in the day of triumph sat reserved and silent and grateful . . . was Joseph Holt, of Kentucky. —James G. Blaine1

The man who presided over the trial of the Lincoln assassination conspirators as Judge Advocate General was a lifelong Democrat who, four years earlier, played a crucial role in saving his and the late president’s common native state—Kentucky—for the Union. Joseph Holt was born two years before his fellow Kentuckian in Breckinridge County, Kentucky, on January 6, 1807, the son of John and Eleanor Stephens Holt. As a young child Holt attended a neighborhood school. Then, when he was fourteen, Holt’s wealthy and ambitious slaveholding parents sent the bright and articulate young Joseph off to school—first to St. Joseph’s College in Bardstown and then to the prestigious and expensive Centre College in Danville. Following his graduation, Holt studied law in Lexington with Robert Wickliffe, and by 1828, at the age of twenty-one, he and his partner, Benjamin Hardin, opened their first law office in Elizabethtown, not far from where Lincoln himself had been born.

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Successful in the law—one contemporary source claimed that ‘‘no man whom he prosecuted stood a chance for his life’’—Holt also became active in the Democratic Party, often speaking at rallies and stumping for candidates, employing his oratorical skills for their benefit. In 1832 Holt moved his practice to Louisville; four years later, he moved it again to Port Gibson, Mississippi, and then to Vicksburg.2 Over the next several years Holt’s Vicksburg law practice thrived as word of his masterful courtroom style and demeanor spread. During this same period, of course, Lincoln was just striking out on his own, moving to the frontier community of New Salem, Illinois, where he ‘‘embarked upon a rigid curriculum of self-improvement’’ and became ‘‘increasingly absorbed with politics.’’ Unlike Holt, however, Lincoln was not drawn to Andrew Jackson and the Democratic Party but to yet another Kentuckian, Henry Clay, not least of all because of Clay’s stance on slavery, which was reflected in Clay’s work with others to found the American Colonization Society in 1816. Also unlike Holt, whose political activism notably failed to develop in him a desire for an elective political office, in 1834, at the age of twenty-five Lincoln ran for and won election as a Whig to the state legislature of Illinois; at the same time, he began to study the law in earnest.3 Even as Lincoln began his first term as a state legislator in Springfield, in Vicksburg Joseph Holt maintained a vigorous law practice, spending so many hours on his work, in fact, that he began to undermine his health. The health of Holt’s wife, Mary, was not strong either, and by 1842 (the year Abraham Lincoln married Mary Todd), the childless couple deemed it prudent and found it economically feasible to return to Louisville, presumably to recuperate. Instead, by 1846, Mary was dead, and Holt tumbled into a two-year depression. By 1848, however, Holt found himself being drawn back into political activity, and by 1850, he was also remarried. As he regained his health, strength, and sense of well-being,

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Holt struck out again on the political lecture circuit with his familiar eloquence, giving speeches ‘‘as vivid as ever spurred a jury to convict.’’ In April 1857, he and his new wife, Margaret, moved to Washington, D.C., where they purchased a home on New Jersey Avenue near Capitol Hill. That September, Holt accepted President James Buchanan’s appointment as the new administration’s commissioner of patents. Of Holt’s qualifications for that position, the New York Times later commented, ‘‘The appointment . . . was not such as Mr. Holt’s previous occupations had best fitted him to fill; but it was one that in a high degree demanded perfect integrity of character, added to practical sense and a good knowledge of the law. In these qualities Mr. Holt stood preeminent.’’4 Eighteen months later, Buchanan named Holt his Postmaster General, following the death of the previous appointee, Aaron V. Brown. As Postmaster General, Holt earned a reputation for his ‘‘single-minded, unselfish, unhackneyed’’ approach and his ‘‘personal courage, intellectual energy, and patriotism’’: ‘‘He only filled [the] office to discharge its duties,’’ claimed the New York Times in 1861, ‘‘not to use it as a stepping-stone to reach a higher place.’’ Still, Holt was hardly a bland, unopinionated administrator: For one thing, he took a firm stance on the side of those determined to prevent the dissemination of abolitionist literature, which he considered incendiary, via the postal system. A native of the same border state as Clay and Lincoln (and also, of course, Jefferson Davis), Holt was a Union man at the same time that he was also sympathetic to many of the complaints of the Southern states. For him at this point, the primary objective was to save the Union by toning down such frightening extremism as was becoming evident on both sides of the slavery debate.5 By the end of 1860, however, the situation had changed dramatically. In November, Abraham Lincoln had been elected to the presidency of the United States. In the years since his first election to the state legislature of Illinois in 1834, Lincoln had enjoyed a steady

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involvement in politics and had also become a licensed practicing lawyer, based in Springfield but frequently called upon to travel among the county seats of central Illinois to defend the interests of his clients. By the late 1850s, he had become one of the best-known lawyers in Illinois, with political and business connections to some of the most powerful public figures in his state; he had also emerged as a leader himself, first in the Whig Party and then in the newly founded Republican Party. In 1858, the Republican Party in Illinois had gone so far as to nominate Lincoln its candidate for the United States Senate against the incumbent of Joseph Holt’s party, Democrat Stephen Douglas. The results of that election surely disappointed Lincoln. At the same time, however, he could rejoice in his professional success as a lawyer, his financial prosperity, and the advance he had clearly made in his quest for political power. On a more personal note, he could look to his three surviving sons with pride. And then, in November 1860, he was elected president, though president of a nation on the verge of collapse.6 Within weeks, the situation had changed indeed. And when South Carolina declared its independence from the United States, Holt’s Unionism firmly and irrevocably overrode any earlier desire to maintain sectional harmony at any cost. Holt, writes one biographer, ‘‘was a man whose connections and sympathies had heretofore been largely Southern, but when [he] was confronted with the issue of national loyalty, his Kentucky Unionism, fortified by the responsibilities of his position in the national Administration, constrained him to cast his lot with the North.’’ At the very end of December, Buchanan’s Secretary of War, the Virginian John B. Floyd, resigned in protest against what he perceived to be the administration’s determination to reinforce federal troops still stationed in Charleston Harbor, and Buchanan tapped Holt as Floyd’s successor. Recalled John G. Nicolay and John Hay, none other than Edwin M. Stanton, himself recently appointed Buchanan’s Attorney General, went to

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Holt’s New Jersey Avenue home near midnight on the night of December 31 in order to urge him to accept the position, at least on an interim basis, and to ‘‘impress upon him the grave nature of the exigency, and the need of a man in that place’’ whose Unionism was beyond question. Holt accepted the ad interim post, and on January 18, the already highly contentious Senate confirmed Holt as Secretary of War after some predictably heated debate. The New York Times praised Buchanan’s choice with enthusiasm, calling Holt ‘‘a Union man—honest, straightforward, and firm.’’7 Indeed, to Southern fire-eaters, who correctly believed that Holt had abandoned an earlier policy of conciliation for one of coercion, Holt’s appointment as Secretary of War foretold the nation’s collapse. On January 2, Senator Louis T. Wigfall of Texas sent South Carolina Congressman Milledge L. Bonham a succinct message: ‘‘Holt succeeds Floyd. It means war. Cut off supplies from [Major Robert] Anderson and take Sumter as soon as possible.’’ Even as Wigfall was pressuring Bonham to act quickly, Holt was busy trying to prevent Sumter’s demise. According to Nicolay and Hay, writing in 1904, ‘‘The newspaper dispatches of the day inform us that Mr. Holt had not been in the War Department five minutes’’ when he sent for General Winfield Scott, commander of the federal armed forces, to enlist his aid in handling the crisis pending in Charleston Harbor and, potentially, in the capital as well. Ordering Anderson to remain strictly on the defensive, Holt on January 5, 1861, authorized the USS Star of the West to sail from New York to Charleston, carrying supplies and soldiers. The chartered merchant vessel reached Charleston at night on January 8, and on the morning of the 9th, during the ship’s approach to Sumter, shots rang out first from Morris Island and then from Fort Moultrie, which had already fallen into Confederate hands. Because of the delayed arrival of orders permitting him to respond forcibly to any South Carolina batteries that might take aim at the ship, Anderson held his fire and, eventually, unable to complete its mission, the Star of the West

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headed back out to sea. The moment of truth in Charleston Harbor had been postponed, but Holt himself was becoming ever more doubtful about the ability of the Union to survive. To an old Vicksburg law partner he wrote on January 14: ‘‘The union is passing away, like a bank of fog before the wind.’’ Still, Holt firmly believed that the South’s own destruction would follow: The ‘‘fate of the South,’’ he prophesied, ‘‘will be that of Samson. She will pull down the temple, but she will perish amid its ruins.’’8 In the weeks remaining before Abraham Lincoln’s 1861 inauguration, Holt’s Unionism became even more entrenched, as he joined with Attorney General Stanton and Secretary of State Jeremiah S. Black in trying to push the reluctant Buchanan to take a more active stance against the South’s villainy. Throughout this period, Holt supported the notion that the advent of civil war lay in the hands of the South, and particularly those of South Carolina. ‘‘If,’’ he wrote in a February 6 letter to J. W. Hayne, the Attorney General of the Palmetto State, with all the multiplied proofs which exist of the President’s anxiety for peace and of the earnestness with which he has pursued it, the authorities of [South Carolina] shall assault Fort Sumter and peril the lives of the handful of brave and loyal men shut up within its walls and thus plunge our common country into the horrors of civil war, then upon them and those they represent must rest the responsibility.

Holt’s contempt for the forces of secessionism was not lost on his opponents. ‘‘I have such a horror of Holt,’’ wrote W. M. Gwin of California (a Tennessee native) to his friend C. Benham on February 8, ‘‘I cannot hope for his doing what he ought.’’ Nor was his hardening Unionism lost on his supporters: On February 4, the proUnion journal Confederation published an article defending Holt against his detractors. ‘‘This distinguished man,’’ declared the Confederation,

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who now so ably fills the important position of Secretary of War, is having emptied on his devoted head the vials of wrath of the ultra Union-haters of the South, simply because in the conscious discharge of his duty, he exhibits a disposition to preserve law and order, and protect public property from the reckless, ruthless hands of those who would destroy it, or appropriate it to their own use. They call him ‘‘a recreant son of the South,’’ ‘‘false Democrat,’’ and all manner of hard names, for no other reason than that he has the nerve to faithfully, yet temperately, fulfill the important mission placed in his charge.

The Confederation and Holt’s Unionist allies stood strongly behind him, but Holt’s list of opponents was growing longer, and it included many who had previously counted themselves among his friends, such as Jacob Thompson, who had himself recently resigned as Buchanan’s Secretary of the Interior, and Clement C. Clay, twice elected U.S. senator from Alabama (1853 and 1859) and an important figure in the Democratic Party. (Both of these men would later figure prominently in the Lincoln assassination conspiracy trial.) Indeed, even members of Holt’s own family, still located in Kentucky and parts farther south, despaired of his fierce antisecessionism.9 Meanwhile, as Lincoln’s inaugural drew nearer, in addition to monitoring the situation in Charleston Harbor, Holt worked actively with General Winfield Scott to guarantee the security of the incoming president. According to Nicolay and Hay, in a move that generated considerable controversy among those who perceived it as deliberately provocative, ‘‘Secretary Holt and General Scott wisely determined to keep all available troops in Washington,’’ to preserve the public peace, and to ensure that the inauguration in particular might ‘‘be accomplished without disturbance, and with

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its usual pageantry.’’ Noted Holt in his February 18 memo to President Buchanan regarding his plans for the defense of the capital: To those, if such there be, who desire the destruction of the Republic the presence of these troops is necessarily offensive; but those who sincerely love our institutions cannot fail to rejoice that by this timely precaution they have possibly escaped the deep dishonor which they must have suffered had the capital, like the forts and arsenals of the South, fallen into the hands of revolutionists, who have found this great Government weak only because in the exhaustless beneficence of its great spirit, it has refused to strike, even in its own defense, lest it should be the aggressor.

At the same time, Holt prepared for the end of the Buchanan administration, which would mean his own departure (at least temporarily) from official federal government service as the Lincoln administration took its own shape.10 Abraham Lincoln arrived in the capital on February 23; he was safely installed as president on March 4, for which the New York Times subsequently gave Secretary of War Joseph Holt full credit. To the bold patriotism of Mr. Holt . . . is the country indebted for the avoidance of the first bloody scene in the drama of the Secession rebellion—the assassination, or expulsion of President Lincoln from Washington, and the inauguration of a Southern military dictator in his place. . . . To Joseph Holt’s fidelity and to his sagacity and courage when clothed with the powers of the War Department, the present Administration owes the fact that it was peacefully inaugurated, or, perhaps, inaugurated at all.

And so the lives of these two backwoods Kentuckians, now in their early fifties, who had taken separate paths to accomplishment

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in the law and in politics, one a Democrat, the other a Republican, but equally committed to the Union above all—the lives of these two men came to be linked in a profound and enduring way. And indeed, rumors—and hopes—began to circulate almost immediately that Lincoln would assign to the man who had assumed responsibility for the new president’s life a cabinet post, or perhaps make him a Supreme Court justice.11 As it turns out, however, once Holt was released in early March from his duties as Secretary of War, he turned his attention (quite likely at Lincoln’s own request) to the struggle to keep Kentucky out of the Confederacy’s clutches. Throughout the spring and summer of 1861, Holt called repeatedly upon Kentuckians to move from ‘‘neutrality’’ to active Unionism, as it increasingly appeared to him, as to many others, that a choice for ‘‘neutrality’’ actually amounted to a pro-secession position. On May 31, Holt penned an open letter (published in the Louisville Journal and then the New York Times) to a friend from home whom he shared with Lincoln (Joshua F. Speed), in which he proclaimed the need for all true patriots to stand by their nation. ‘‘We are all,’’ wrote Holt on this occasion, with our every earthly interest embarked in midocean, on the same common deck, the howl of the storm is in our ears, and . . . while the noble ship pitches and rolls under the lashings of the waves, a cry is heard that she has sprung a leak at many points, and that the rushing waters are mounting rapidly in the hold. The man who in such an hour will not work at the pumps is either a maniac or a monster.

For himself, Holt noted, I would as soon think of being neutral in a contest between an officer of justice and an incendiary arrested in an attempt

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to fire the dwelling over my head; for the Government whose overthrow is sought is for me the shelter not only of home, kindred, and friends, but of every earthly blessing which I can hope to enjoy on this side of the grave.12

As he struggled to understand how the nation had come to the brink of its own destruction, and as he continued to give speeches and write articles through the summer regarding the political situation in the nation and particularly in Kentucky, Holt increasingly became convinced that the crisis was the work of a few evil fanatics, conspirators who had duped the common folk into setting a revolution in motion for the sake of their own ambitions. As good Southern people had yielded to the conspirators’ wiles, the sacred nation had collapsed under the weight of their depravity. Now he asked his own, Lincoln’s, and Davis’s fellow Kentuckians to stand firm against the ‘‘score or two of men, who, over all this national ruin and despair, are preparing to carve with the sword their way to seats of permanent power.’’ ‘‘It cannot be necessary,’’ he wrote in July, That I should declare to you . . . who they are whose parricidal swords are now unsheathed against the Republic of the United States. Their names are inscribed upon a scroll of infamy that can never perish. The most distinguished of them were educated by the charity of the Government on which they are now making war. For long years they were fed from its table, and clothed from its wardrobe, and had their brows garlanded by its honors. They are the ungrateful sons of a fond mother who dandled them upon her knee, who lavished upon them the gushing love of her noble and devoted nature, and who nurtured them from the very bosom of her life, and now, in the frenzied excesses of a licentious and baffled ambition, they are stabbing at that bosom with the ferocity with which the tiger springs upon his prey.

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Demand for copies of Holt’s speeches and letters was enthusiastic, as was support for the notion that he should be granted an official position within the Lincoln administration. Indeed, at the end of 1861, when it became clear that Simon Cameron planned to resign as Secretary of War, Lincoln initially considered Holt for the spot, but in mid-January 1862 he selected Edwin Stanton, a close ally of Holt’s in the Buchanan administration. Unembittered, Holt remained good friends with Stanton, perhaps even enhancing popular and congressional support for the notoriously crusty new Secretary of War by means of his own broad reputation for integrity and reason. On January 25, Stanton wrote to acknowledge Holt’s generosity, noting that the ‘‘cordial approval you have given to my appointment is known and fully appreciated. Your regard and support strengthen my heart more than I can tell. My feelings toward yourself you already know. We stood together at the beginning of this mighty contest,’’ Stanton added prophetically, ‘‘and by God’s blessing we will stand together until the end.’’13 Needless to say, Kentucky remained in the Union, and before long Stanton and Holt would indeed have the opportunity to work closely together in the Lincoln administration, for on September 3, 1862, Lincoln designated Holt as his choice to fill the post of Judge Advocate General in Stanton’s War Department, a position Holt would hold until he retired in December 1875.14 As Judge Advocate General, Holt worked under Stanton, overseeing the War Department’s policies regarding legal affairs within the military and regarding political prisoners, the latter policy soon to be extended by Lincoln’s September 24, 1862, proclamation requiring military trials for ‘‘all Rebels and Insurgents, their aiders and abettors within the United States, and all persons discouraging volunteer enlistments, resisting militia drafts, or guilty of any disloyal practice, affording comfort to Rebels against the authority of the United States.’’ In the eyes of Abraham Lincoln—himself no hardline defender of civil rights in a time of war—Holt was the ideal man

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for the job: an unswerving Unionist, ‘‘sternly, even rigidly, honest,’’ whose ‘‘belief in subordinating everything to the business of national success was comforting.’’ When the Bureau of Military Justice was established, Holt as Judge Advocate General became its chief administrator.15 For the duration of the war, the Bureau of Military Justice and its chief were very busy. In a March 1865 report to Stanton, Holt indicated that since November 1863 the Judge Advocate General’s office had reviewed almost 34,000 records of general courts-martial and military commissions and had made about 9,000 reports ‘‘as to the regularity of proceedings on applications for restoration to the service, the pardon of offenders, the remission or commutation of sentences,’’ and other miscellaneous questions. In this same period of time, Holt had also become deeply concerned about a particularly troubling ‘‘conspiracy’’ developing within his own Democratic Party, namely Copperheadism. For Holt, this movement was closely linked to, and indeed shared crucial features with, another— namely, Southern nationalism. According to Holt, the Copperheads, like Southern nationalists, were a small number of extremists whose influence over the masses bordered on the demonic, and whose agenda further imperiled the life of the nation. Holt’s fear of what he considered to be a conspiracy, and his determination to stamp it out (along with the Confederacy itself), grew apace.16 Certainly Holt’s post as Judge Advocate General in the Lincoln administration situated him well to go on the offensive against the twin conspiracies he saw besieging the nation, and he took up the task with fervor and dedication. A large proportion of the thousands of cases he oversaw had to do with affairs within the military itself: Among the most important of these during the war was the case of General Fitz John Porter of New Hampshire, who was relieved of command in the Army of the Potomac on November 10, 1862, on charges of ‘‘dereliction of duty and failure to obey orders’’ during

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the Second Battle of Bull Run. Between December 1862 and January 1863, Porter was tried by a court-martial on charges of ‘‘disloyalty to his commanding officer,’’ General John Pope, ‘‘and disobedience of orders.’’ Found guilty on most counts, Porter was dismissed from the service.17 Holt also oversaw the trials of thousands of civilians accused of various ‘‘disloyal practices,’’ two of whom—Clement L. Vallandigham of Ohio and Lambdin P. Milligan of Indiana—drew enormous public attention and demonstrated Holt’s hostility toward the Copperheads. Of the two cases, Milligan’s was perhaps of greater personal interest to Holt: In October 1864, Milligan was arrested and charged with treason in consequence (among other things) of his association with the Order of the American Knights, one of several secret societies in the North and the West—specifically Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, and Missouri—that Holt had spent much of the previous summer investigating, organizations ‘‘having for their object,’’ as one federal government official put it, ‘‘the embarrassment of the Government in its military operations, and possibly to incite armed opposition and rebellion.’’ Virtually simultaneous with the arrest of Milligan, Holt forwarded to Secretary of War Stanton his extensive report on the Knights of the Golden Circle, which he characterized as armed and drilling for revolution, dedicated to slavery and the overthrow of the federal government. For Holt, the Knights of the Golden Circle was a frighteningly large and effective fraternity, and, like spreading Copperheadism, Southern nationalism, and the war itself, was a manifestation of the power of a few ‘‘conspirators’’ to corrupt the minds of otherwise mild-mannered masses, to arouse in them a fiercely ‘‘parricidal spirit,’’ and to drive them to violent action against the benevolent institutions and leadership of the Republic and its loyal citizens. For Holt, the nation’s very life depended on identifying and crushing the fomenters of such madness and, if necessary, rooting out—even destroying—their dangerously deluded minions as

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well. Like Lincoln himself, Holt’s understanding of the concept of ‘‘constitutionality’’ derived directly from his understanding of what it would take to save the Constitution in the first place, which meant protecting the president and his administration, suppressing the rebellion, delivering the Union from the diabolical conspirators arrayed against it, and restoring the public peace.18 In early April 1865, when victory came to Union arms in Virginia, Holt surely rejoiced that the majority of this hard and essential work had finally been accomplished. To all appearances, the Union had been saved, the conspirators’ rebellion had been crushed, and the president’s frequently threatened life had been spared. Indeed, the evening of April 14, 1865, found Holt in Charleston, participating in ceremonies held at Fort Sumter to mark the federal government’s resumption of authority there. That evening at the Charleston House Holt delivered an impassioned speech entitled ‘‘Treason and Its Treatment,’’ in which, using words one historian has described as ‘‘lack[ing] the generosity in victory that marked the President’s public utterances,’’ he vowed (predictably) nothing but stern punishment for the guilty parties who had instigated and then prosecuted such a bitter war. Little did he know that even as he spoke, yet another band of conspirators was at work, taking the life of the President at Ford’s Theatre in Washington and attempting the murder of his Secretary of State, William H. Seward, as well.19 Word of the disaster reached Holt promptly, however, and he returned to the federal capital immediately. Holt was both enraged and confused: How could such a thing have happened? How could the man whose life he had pledged himself to save four years earlier now be dead, especially after so many threats against that life had been successfully thwarted? How could the Republic, whose survival had so recently been celebrated with illuminations and parades across the federal capital, now be in grave danger of

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descending into chaos again? Which particularly vicious and cunning conspirators against both Lincoln and the Union had miraculously managed to escape detection through years of careful investigation and prosecution, copious bloodshed on the battlefield, the death of hundreds of thousands of noble men in blue, the maiming of so many more? Holt’s grief over the assassination of Lincoln was surely matched in full by both his fury and his bewilderment. Especially in the first hours and days following the assassination, many different agencies—including the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police, the Provost Marshal General’s Bureau, and the United States Secret Service—were involved in pursuing the individuals associated with the crimes of the 14th, and in connection with this pursuit they all necessarily gathered evidence. Very quickly, however, Secretary of War Stanton placed responsibility for the investigation, and the prosecution of the accused, under the authority of his friend and ally Joseph Holt, and Holt’s Bureau of Military Justice. On April 22, Holt saw to it that an associate from Ohio, Henry L. Burnett, was detailed to Washington to help him supervise the investigation. As Judge Advocate General of the Union army’s Northern Department, headquartered in Cincinnati, Burnett had collaborated with Holt on the Vallandigham and Milligan cases in 1863 and 1864.20 Within ten days of the murder of the president and the attack on the Secretary of State, the investigation reached a crucial turning point. As Holt, Burnett, and others in the Bureau read the rapidly accumulating evidence and talked with hundreds of prisoners arrested in connection with the crimes (on May 2, the New York Times reported that ‘‘arrests are continuously being made, and thus far the whole number taken into custody will reach nearly three hundred’’), they arrived at the one plausible conclusion: All evidence to the contrary aside, the murder of Lincoln must have been the work of a small group of locally based conspirators acting on behalf of a much larger, ultimately more powerful and malevolent

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force. On April 24 (two days before John Wilkes Booth was captured and killed in Virginia), Secretary Stanton spoke for the investigators when he issued a bold public statement outlining (and lending his weight to) their theory that ‘‘the President’s murder was organized in Canada and approved at Richmond.’’ Here was the official position of Holt’s Bureau of Military Justice—namely, that John Wilkes Booth was more than a crazed individual seeking personal revenge for the collapse of the Confederacy and Lincoln’s determination not only to emancipate all the slaves but to enfranchise at least some of them. Rather, Booth was an official agent of the Confederacy, one of a team of traitors whose connections extended north to a number of other Confederate agents stationed in Canada and south to the Confederate leadership in Richmond itself.21 Just over a week later, Holt provided Stanton, President Johnson, and the public with additional details from the Bureau’s investigation, naming the key background figures among the Confederate leadership and its far-flung operatives whose hands, he firmly believed, were red with the blood of Lincoln and Seward. Indeed, on May 2 Holt officially placed Jefferson Davis himself at the head of the list of conspirators responsible for the crimes; Holt was certain that Booth and his local associates had acted on Davis’s authority. Holt also named several members of the Confederate government’s so-called ‘‘Canadian Cabinet,’’ a group of highly placed agents who had been operating primarily out of Montreal since the spring of 1864. These included Beverley Tucker, George N. Sanders, and William C. Cleary, as well as Jacob Thompson and Clement C. Clay, both of whom had been personal friends of Holt’s before the war, and before their Southern nationalism had come to blows with his unrelenting Unionism. That afternoon, at a cabinet meeting, it was determined that rewards ranging from $100,000 for Davis to $10,000 for Cleary would be offered for the arrest of each of the individuals named by Holt. Booth, of course, was already

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dead, and most of his local accomplices were already in prison in Washington. Reward posters for Davis and the others were printed and circulated, and President Johnson gave Holt the responsibility of ‘‘drawing up the actual charges against the accused.’’22 There is no question that Holt believed the murder of Lincoln and the attack on Seward to have been part of a grand plot conceived by Jefferson Davis and a number of his subordinates in Canada and Richmond—and perhaps also including some Copperhead leaders in the West—and then midwifed by Booth and his associates in and around Washington. Indeed, because of his fundamental worldview, his professional training, his experiences in the Buchanan administration, and the nature, scope, and intensity of his work on the Union’s (and Lincoln’s) behalf during the war, it seems highly unlikely that Joseph Holt could have imagined another scenario that might explain the disaster, nor could he have assumed any other role with regard to the assassination than that of being Lincoln’s chief avenger. Back in July 1861, Holt had given a speech in which he presaged his future role in the federal government’s response to Lincoln’s murder. ‘‘I am for this Union without conditions,’’ he declared, one and indivisible, now and forever. I am for its preservation at any and every cost of blood and treasure against all its assailants. . . . [E]very free people that have existed have been obliged, at one period or another of their history, to fight for their liberties against traitors within their own bosoms, and that people who have not the greatness of soul thus to fight, cannot long continue to be free, nor do they deserve to do so.23

Just over a year later, Holt had echoed his earlier sentiments in words that now appear almost eerie: ‘‘I am for the Union unconditionally as I am for protecting my own body, at every cost and hazard, from the knife of the assassin.’’24 Such remarks help explain

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how, for better or worse, in Holt’s mind a single explanation for the events of April 14 crowded out all other possible explanations, including the simplest, and thus perhaps most persuasive one to some—namely, that Booth and his clumsy local accomplices (who were, sadly, not quite clumsy enough to fail) had acted independently. Instead, Holt read the evidence that came in with the same eyes, mind, and heart that he had used to read the evidence associated with secession, Copperheadism, and the Knights of the Golden Circle. And while he firmly believed that each of these threats to the nation’s life had been the brainchild of a small number of evil, power-hungry conspirators, he knew that their successes had depended on those conspirators’ ability to delude others into doing the dirty work of realizing their extremist agendas. Similarly, while he fervently believed that the assassination conspiracy had its origins at the highest levels of the Confederate power structure, he also recognized the pattern of manipulating lesser folk (in this case, Booth and his local associates) into carrying out the leadership’s plan. Despite his most valiant efforts over more than four years to crush the enemy in each of its ugly forms—Southern nationalism, ‘‘neutrality’’ in the border states, ‘‘disloyal practices’’ among civilians, disobedience of orders in the military, Copperheadism in the West—Holt’s personal war for the Union was not yet over. Stunned but not immobilized, Holt refused to yield. Lincoln’s death, which seemed capable of throwing the Republic’s victory not only into shadow but also into doubt, had to be avenged. And in the months and years that followed, that is precisely what he sought to do. As Judge Advocate General, Joseph Holt pursued Booth’s co-conspirators with relentless fervor, serving as the government’s chief prosecutor in the May–June ‘‘trial of the conspirators’’ that led to the execution of Mary Surratt, Lewis Powell, David Herold, and George Atzerodt and the incarceration of Samuel Mudd, Samuel Arnold, Michael O’Laughlen, and Edman Spangler; working actively behind the scenes two years later to bring Mary

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Surratt’s son (and Booth’s close friend), John Surratt, to justice before a civil court in Washington, D.C.; and struggling against weak evidence, unreliable sources, a growing popular desire for sectional reconciliation, and the stubborn intractability of Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson, to prove that Jefferson Davis had been the moving force behind the assassination. Ultimately, and tragically, in this effort, Joseph Holt, who had been a beacon of hope and security to so many Northerners and Unionists everywhere, sacrificed much of the respect he had earned over the years for clear judgment, even-handedness, and adherence to law and principle. His determination to punish Lincoln’s killers, and the Confederate leaders who, he believed, had put them up to the dirty deed in the first place, became a surpassing, engrossing, consuming obsession. And the toll this obsession took on his reputation was nothing less than a kind of political death, followed by his purging from the ranks of the great figures we memorialize from the Civil War era. Rather than standing tall with Lincoln in memory, as a result of his impassioned quest to avenge Lincoln’s death (and, by extension, the war itself), Joseph Holt has faded from view, except when he is revived (though he never joined the Republican Party) as a symbol of the extremism of the Radical Republicans in their postwar determination to crush the errant South into submission. That he made mistakes—some grave ones—is not in doubt. That he was loyal to Lincoln and the Union, and an unwavering friend and defender of both, should not, however, be forgotten. Notes 1. Quoted in Louis J. Weichmann, A True History of the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln and of the Conspiracy of 1865 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975), 236. 2. New York Times, August 2, 1894; Mary Bernard Allen, ‘‘Joseph Holt, Judge Advocate General (1862–1875): A Study in the Treatment of Political Prisoners by the United States Government During the Civil War’’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1927), 47–49.

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3. Allen, ‘‘Joseph Holt,’’ 48–49; Stephen B. Oates, With Malice Toward None: A Life of Abraham Lincoln (New York: HarperPerennial, 1977), 20–26. 4. Allen, ‘‘Joseph Holt,’’ 50–52; New York Times, August 2, 1894; New York Times, September 3, 1861. 5. Autobiographical Statement, container 117, Joseph Holt Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (hereafter cited as Holt Papers); Allen, ‘‘Joseph Holt,’’ 59–60. 6. Oates, With Malice Toward None, 23–191. 7. Allen, ‘‘Joseph Holt,’’ 56–57; John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Abraham Lincoln: A History, 10 vols. (New York: The Century Company, 1904), 3:89n, 130; New York Times, January 19, 1861; New York Times, January 1, 1861. 8. The War of the Rebellion: The Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1881–1902), series I, volume 1, p. 252 (hereafter cited as Official Records); Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln, 3:90; Allen, ‘‘Joseph Holt,’’ 62. 9. New York Times, February 9, 1861; Official Records, series II, vol. 2, p. 1015; The Confederation, February 4, 1861. Letters in the Holt Papers from his brother, Robert S. Holt, and his aunt, Mary K. Stephens, reveal the divided nature of Holt’s own family on the questions of secession and war. See, among others, R. S. Holt to Joseph Holt, April 11, 1865, in container 47; R. S. Holt to Joseph Holt, May 20, 1865, in container 47; R. S. Holt to Joseph Holt, June 7, 1868, in container 48; and Mary K. Stephens to Joseph Holt, August 10, 1865, in container 49. 10. Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln, 3:146; Joseph Holt to James Buchanan, February 18, 1861, in Official Records, series I, vol. 51, pt. 1, 436–38. 11. New York Times, September 3, 1861; Abraham Lincoln to Joseph Holt, March 12, 1861, container 28, Holt Papers. 12. New York Times, June 13, 1861. 13. New York Times, June 13, 1861; Allen, ‘‘Joseph Holt,’’ 83–84; Edwin M. Stanton to Joseph Holt, January 25, 1862, in the Joseph Holt Papers, Huntington Library, San Marino, California. See also New York Times, July 18, 1861; July 20, 1861; August 6, 1861; and September 4, 1861. 14. In 1864, Lincoln offered Holt the position of Attorney General, but according to Nicolay and Hay, Holt, ‘‘with that modesty and conscientiousness which formed the most striking strait of his character, believed that the length of time which had elapsed since he had retired from active service at the bar had rendered him unfit for the preparation and presentation of cases in an

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adequate manner before the Supreme Court, and therefore declined the appointment,’’ which went instead to James Speed. (Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln, vol. IX, 72–73, 346–47.) 15. E. B. Long, The Civil War Day by Day (New York: Da Capo Press, 1971), 270–71; Allen, ‘‘Joseph Holt,’’ 87; New York Times, August 2, 1894; General Orders No. 270, October 11, 1864, in Official Records, series III, vol. 4, 774. 16. Joseph Holt to Edwin Stanton, March 2, 1865, in Official Records, series III, vol. 4, 1216. 17. David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler, eds., Encyclopedia of the American Civil War: A Political, Social, and Military History (Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 2000), 3:1555. 18. E. D. Townsend to Joseph Holt, July 12, 1864, in Official Records, series I, vol. 52, pt. 1, 567. See also Holt’s report to Stanton in the Official Records, series II, vol. 7, 930–53. 19. New York Commercial Advertiser, April 22, 1865; Roy Z. Chamlee Jr., Lincoln’s Assassins: A Complete Account of Their Capture, Trial, and Punishment (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 1990), 3. 20. William Hanchett, The Lincoln Murder Conspiracies (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983), 63–64. The records of the evidence gathered by the Bureau in connection with the assassination conspiracy are a part of RG 153, Records of the Office of the Judge Advocate General (Army), National Archives, Washington, D.C. They are also available on microfilm, taking up sixteen reels, and denoted as M-599. 21. New York Times, May 2, 1865; Hanchett, The Lincoln Murder Conspiracies, 64–65. 22. Chamlee, Lincoln’s Assassins, 203. See also William A. Tidwell, Come Retribution: The Confederate Secret Service and the Assassination of Lincoln (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1988), 175, 189, 192, 430; Hanchett, The Lincoln Murder Conspiracies, 64. 23. New York Times, July 18, 1861. 24. New York Times, November 13, 1862.

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CHAPTER 5

The Lincoln Assassination in Law and Lore Frank J. Williams

In the avalanche of intense mourning that greeted Abraham Lincoln’s death more than 144 years ago, Americans pursued a dual and not entirely compatible course of revenge and mythification. On the one hand, his admirers elevated Lincoln to the status of icon, a transfiguration into secular sainthood that was as swift as it was sure. Yet concurrently, Americans thirsted for revenge against the conspirators who had perpetrated the murder of the man they now mourned. Through the summer of 1865, the public was entirely able to sanctify the memory of Lincoln the forgiver, the preserver of American democracy, while at the same time applaud and support the trial of the assassins by questionable military means, and in conditions that would ordinarily have been repugnant to lovers of liberty. Precisely what did the military trial of the Lincoln assassination conspirators mean in law, culture, and history? Despite the intense and widespread hatred for Lincoln that existed during the Civil War, even in the North, there was an intense mourning for him upon his assassination. No doubt some Lincoln haters experienced a strong emotional reaction in his favor, but

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others would have found it impossible to forgive him what they saw as his despotism and championship of a despised race simply because of his death. Like Booth, they would have thought he had it coming to him and that the assassination served a patriotic end. But who can stand against an avalanche of mourning? Most of the individuals who continued to hate Lincoln were smart enough to keep quiet about it, so quiet that it soon came to seem that mourning for him had been universal. In his first and beautifully written chapter in Lincoln in American Memory, ‘‘Apotheosis,’’ Merrill Peterson gives this precise impression.1 The historian William Hanchett made this point, too, adding that some of the ostentatious grief displayed was insincere, as many Copperheads sought to appease Republican mourners by overdecorating their houses and businesses with flags and mourning crepe and by solemnly attending memorial services.2 ‘‘Within eight hours of his murder,’’ David Herbert Donald wrote, ‘‘Republican congressmen in secret caucus agreed that his death was a Godsend to their cause,’’ because his successor, Andrew Johnson, would punish the errant South in ways that Lincoln was resisting. ‘‘Politicians of all parties,’’ Donald pointed out, ‘‘were apparently startled by the extent of the national grief over Lincoln, and, politician-like, they decided to capitalize on it.’’3 Of course, the mourning for Lincoln was very real, and the long train ride of Lincoln’s remains to Springfield moved Americans in a way that is still reflected in Lincoln mythology. But the president who led the North to victory is more admirable than the myth, and this is the president whose death silenced, but did not convert, all his enemies. The facts that Americans elevated Lincoln to secular sainthood while at the same time they sought to discover and punish those responsible for his murder may not be incompatible. In fact, love for Lincoln would strengthen the public’s resolve that those who

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took his life not be allowed to escape punishment. That is one explanation of the subsequent military trial, which permitted a wideranging investigation of the assassination conspiracy in an attempt to implicate the Confederate government, as opposed to a civil trial, which would have had to confine itself to the guilt and innocence of those actually in the docket. As it turned out, the government could not prove a Confederate conspiracy, and so it was obvious that the defendants should have been tried in a civil court. Or so most people believe. It was four o’clock in the morning of April 15, 1865, when John Wilkes Booth and David E. Herold turned their horses onto the narrow, rutted lane that led to the home of Dr. Samuel A. Mudd, a quarter of a mile off the main road to Bryantown, in southern Maryland’s Charles County. After a few minutes the riders could make out the doctor’s plain, two-story clapboard house silhouetted against the sky at the top of a long rise. They stopped at the edge of the lawn and Herold, who had ridden ahead of Booth, dismounted and pounded on the door while Booth sat hunched on his horse, the very image of misery and discomfort. The doctor and his wife, asleep in a back room on the first floor of the house, were startled by the heavy pounding on their door. Dr. Mudd had not been feeling well, so he asked his wife to answer it. But the loud banging frightened Mrs. Mudd and she told her husband that she would rather he go and see for himself. So the thirty-one-year-old doctor rose and trudged wearily to the door in his nightshirt. Without opening the door he asked who was there and was told—he would later insist—that his callers were two ‘‘strangers’’ on their way to Washington. One of their horses had fallen, the voice said, and the rider believed his leg had been sprained or fractured. Dr. Mudd opened the door and helped the dismounted rider bring the injured man into the parlor where they laid him on a sofa. Trouble—big trouble—had descended on the little household of Dr. Samuel A. Mudd.

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With the exception of Mrs. Mary Surratt, no other person punished for complicity in the Lincoln plot has been so steadfastly and vociferously defended as an innocent victim of the federal government’s thirst for vengeance than Dr. Mudd. A school has been named for him, historical pageants have been presented in honor of his memory, and his plight has been publicized on radio and television programs. In 1936, Twentieth Century–Fox released the film Prisoner of Shark Island, which sympathetically portrayed the doctor’s conviction and imprisonment. That same year, Congressman Jennings Randolph, Democrat of West Virginia, introduced a resolution to place a tablet in the ruins of Fort Jefferson in recognition of Dr. Mudd’s ‘‘innocence of a crime for which he was held prisoner for four years.’’4 In 1973, the Michigan legislature, at the urging of Dr. Richard Mudd, who spent a lifetime trying to clear his grandfather’s name, adopted a resolution stating that Dr. Samuel A. Mudd ‘‘was innocent of any complicity in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln,’’ that ‘‘[H]istory has subsequently revealed that Dr. Samuel A. Mudd acted only as a physician and not as a conspirator,’’ and that he had been unjustly convicted.5 In 1979, President Jimmy Carter declared his personal belief in Dr. Mudd’s innocence. Nevertheless, the Federal Circuit Court in the District of Columbia ultimately denied relief to Dr. Mudd. By many, Mudd is remembered as a kind and gentle country doctor who was sucked into the whirlwind of violence by his innocent ministrations to an injured nighttime visitor who, unbeknownst to him, had shot the president of the United States a few hours earlier. Dr. Mudd, his supporters maintain, was the American Dreyfus, an innocent man convicted and sent to prison for a crime he did not commit, by an unconstitutional military commission composed of second-rate officers on a government-sanctioned blood quest. Even his place of confinement—Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas—smacked of Devil’s Island.

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Dr. Mudd’s conviction along with that of seven others by military tribunal, instead of a trial before a civil court, has inspired one of the most persistent complaints of his supporters. And because a civil jury failed to convict John H. Surratt Jr., using the same evidence, in 1867, this view has strongly reinforced supporters in their belief that the military commission was a hanging court. F. Lee Bailey, co-counsel for Dr. Samuel Mudd in an appeal before a moot appellate court at the University of Richmond Law School, asserted that the conspirators would not have been convicted by a civil jury. Yet Mudd’s reputation has more recently been called into question. Edward Steers Jr.’s 1997 book, His Name Is Still Mudd, argues that the doctor, one of Maryland’s largest slaveholders, was a strong Confederate sympathizer and had likely met with Booth as early as 1864.6 But given the inflamed conditions of 1865, it appears likely that a civil trial would also have found the conspirators guilty. By 1867, the interest of the public had moved on from the Lincoln murder to Reconstruction policy, the power struggle in President Johnson’s cabinet, and the possible impeachment of the president. One may also argue that the trial of the conspirators before a military commission in 1867 may well have resulted in a different outcome than before the 1865 military commission. The government’s list of defendants, some of whom were held at the Old Capitol Prison and ultimately brought to trial for the murder of Abraham Lincoln, was certainly a curious one, not so much because innocent American citizens were dragged before this military body but because so many individuals who might reasonably have been indicted were not. The government decided not to prosecute Samuel Cox, Thomas Jones, Colonel J. Hughes, and William Rollins, all of whom were known to have aided Booth’s escape or to have obstructed justice. There were others who almost certainly knew about the conspiracy but against whom no hard evidence had been gathered. The assassin’s brother Junius Brutus Booth Jr. was the author of, and recipient of, some suspicious correspondence with John Wilkes Booth.

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Anna Surratt, the daughter of Mrs. Mary Surratt and sister of John Surratt Jr., cannot have been unaware of the plotting going on around her at her mother’s boarding house, and some papers that were confiscated at the Surratt house support this suggestion. Private William Starke ‘‘Willie’’ Jett, eighteen, a commissary agent for the Confederate army, dropped Booth off at Richard H. Garrett’s farm on his escape route. Yet none of these individuals was indicted. The government settled on nine conspirators: David E. Herold, Lewis Powell, George A. Atzerodt, Mary E. Surratt, Edman Spangler, Samuel B. Arnold, Michael O’Laughlen, and Dr. Samuel A. Mudd, all of whom were in custody, and John H. Surratt Jr., who was hiding in Canada. However, a major question loomed: Before what tribunal should the conspirators be tried? President Johnson turned to Attorney General James Speed, who, on April 28, at what one writer calls ‘‘the prodding of the War Department,’’ advised the president that trial before a military commission, rather than before a civil court, was proper.7 This was not a universally accepted opinion. Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles was of the opinion that Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton had pressured Speed into this opinion. Welles wrote in his diary on May 9, 1865: ‘‘[T]he rash, impulsive, and arbitrary measures of Stanton are exceedingly repugnant to my notions, and I am pained to witness the acquiescence they receive.’’8 Former Attorney General Edward Bates shared the view that Stanton was behind Speed’s opinion. He wrote in his diary on May 25, 1865: ‘‘I am pained to be led to believe that my successor, Atty Genl. Speed, has been wheedled out of an opinion, to the effect that such a trial is lawful. If he be, in the lowest degree, qualified for his office, he must know better. . . .’’9 Bates then summed up the problem with a remarkable prophesy: ‘‘[I]f the offenders be done to death by that tribunal, however truly guilty, they will pass for martyrs with half the world.’’10

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Bates exhibited an astonishing prescience. Although Dr. Mudd was imprisoned, not executed, his own martyrdom began with the question of the jurisdiction of the military commission. Questions arose from the fact that no real precedent existed for what the government faced—the trial of civilians engaged in paramilitary actions at the close of a civil war. Military commissions were created during the Mexican War by General Winfield Scott to try civilians for crimes committed during a period of martial law and for violations of the laws of war. Little restraint was imposed on the officials in charge of the conspirators, and their conduct illustrates the dangers inherent in the use of courts organized to convict and calls for a more detailed examination of this military commission trial of eight civilians. The president was shot on the evening of April 14, 1865, and died the following morning. Five days later, the War Department distributed handbills throughout the country, offering a $50,000 reward for John Wilkes Booth and $25,000 each for ‘‘John H. Surratt and David C. Harold [sic].’’ Persons harboring or assisting these fugitives would be treated as accomplices and ‘‘subject to trial before a military commission and the punishment of death.’’ Both the type of trial and punishment were already laid out in this poster. Although the handbill was dated April 20, 1865, it was not until eight days later that the Attorney General of the United States submitted a brief note to President Johnson stating that in his opinion, ‘‘persons charged with the murder of the President . . . can be rightfully tried by a military court.’’11 He offered, at this time, no reason to justify this belief. Secretary of War Stanton and Major General Joseph Holt selected the officers who would sit on the commission named to try the accused. One commissioner, Major General C. B. Comstock, was unhappy at their first meeting on May 8, 1865. He was upset that the court was to meet in secret and believed that the defendants should be tried in a civilian court. During the next day’s session, he raised those issues. Holt, who would serve as Judge

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Advocate General and chief prosecutor during this trial, responded that the Attorney General had decided they had jurisdiction. The next morning, when Comstock appeared at the court, he and another officer unhappy with the prospect of a military trial of civilians received an order relieving both of the assignment. Later that day, Stanton sent word through General Ulysses S. Grant that the action represented no reflection on the officers, but that there may have been a conflict as both men were members of Grant’s staff, and the general, too, had been a target of the assassination plot. The secret sessions lasted only until May 13, when, responding to pressure in the press, President Johnson, apparently on the recommendation of General Grant, ordered the trial opened to the public. The trial itself displayed little evidence of a presumption of innocence of the accused and strict impartiality on the part of the judges. From the beginning, members of the military commission presumed the accused to be guilty. As Comstock described their first appearance in court: The men were chained and their faces almost entirely covered with black linen masks. The military officers who made up the court displayed their prejudice on several occasions. When Confederate General Edward Johnson was called to testify, one officer on the commission moved that Johnson be ‘‘ejected from the court as an incompetent witness on account of his notorious infamy.’’12 Because Johnson had been educated at West Point and had subsequently resigned from the army and borne arms against the United States, he appeared before the court with hands ‘‘red with the blood of his loyal countrymen.’’13 The motion to oust him was seconded, but before Johnson could be removed, Holt intervened. He advised the commission that the ‘‘rule of law’’ would not authorize the court to declare the ex-Confederate an incompetent witness, ‘‘however unworthy of credit he may be.’’14 Holt was also obliged to intervene when a member of the court challenged the right of Maryland Senator Reverdy Johnson to

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appear as counsel for one of the defendants. After some debate the commission allowed a stunned Senator Johnson to represent his client. Nevertheless, Holt presented testimony that had nothing to do with the charges against the defendants but that would serve to influence adversely the judges and the public at large against the Confederacy and the defendants. Evidence was introduced of plots by the Confederate Secret Service to stage raids from Canada on U.S. cities, to burn New York City, and to spread disease throughout the Union army by use of contaminated clothing. And perhaps most unfair of all, the government introduced witnesses and evidence dealing with the starvation of federal army prisoners at Libby, Belle Isle, and Andersonville prisons. The chained and hooded prisoners accused of complicity in the murder of President Lincoln were somehow connected with these atrocities, if one could believe Holt. In the closing statements of the attorneys, Senator Johnson challenged the right of the military to sit in judgment of the eight defendants. The Constitution allowed the writ of habeas corpus to be suspended but in no way permitted the suspension of other rights belonging to the accused. The Constitution and the laws determined in which courts civilians would be tried. But the defendants in the Lincoln conspiracy trial were doomed. The Judge Advocates strongly influenced the decisions of the untrained military officers. An example of the advantage enjoyed by the Judge Advocates is shown by the following: Using the printed transcript of the fiftythree-day trial, Professor Joe George found that the Judge Advocate, or the Special Judge Advocate, John A. Bingham, raised on thirty-four occasions objections to evidence introduced by the defense. In all instances the objections were sustained. Defense attorneys raised objections fifteen times. They were overruled on thirteen occasions. When the military officers, along with Holt and Bingham, deliberated the fate of the defendants behind closed doors at the end of

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the trial, the Judge Advocates were persevering and wanted all eight defendants hanged, according to General A. V. Kautz, one of the judges. The commission voted, however, to condemn four to the gallows and the remaining four to prison terms. The Judge Advocates were also quite surprised when five of the officers sitting on the commission signed a paper recommending clemency for Mary E. Surratt, one of the defendants sentenced to be hanged. The next step was for the Judge Advocate General to take the commission’s findings either to the Secretary of War, or, as in this instance, to the President himself, as capital offenses were involved. As was customary, Judge Holt added a statement of his own for the court record, for the benefit of his superiors. In this case Holt made a slight but significant change in this procedure. In two military trials before July 1865, Holt had specifically included in his comments accompanying the records sent to the president information that the commissions had found the defendants guilty but had also recommended clemency. Holt’s note to President Johnson dealing with the convictions of the Lincoln conspirators, however, urged the president to approve the findings of the court, saying nothing of the recommendation for clemency on behalf of Mrs. Surratt. Holt wrote: Having been personally engaged in the conduct of the foregoing case . . . I deem it unnecessary to enter in this report into an elaborate discussion of the immense mass of evidence submitted to the consideration of the court. After a trial continuing for fifty-three days, in which between three and four hundred witnesses were examined for the prosecution and defense, and in which the rights of the accused were watched and zealously guarded by seven able counsel of their own selection, the commission have arrived at the conclusions presented above. . . .

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The opinion is entertained that the proceedings were regular, and that the findings of the commission were fully justified by the evidence. It is thought that the highest consideration of public justice, as well as the future security of the lives of the officers of the government, demand that the sentences based on these findings, should be carried into execution.15

Nothing was said of the petition for clemency. Holt later insisted that he had included the petition with the record of the trial when he delivered the documents to the president. Johnson claimed that he never saw that petition. But whether or not Holt included the request for clemency, he should have informed the president of that fact in his covering statement, as he had done on previous occasions. His failure to do so was a serious dereliction of duty. Attorney General Speed had previously given the opinion that trials of civilians by military commissions were legal in time of war. But it was not until July 1865, after the trial was completed, that Speed issued his detailed statement justifying the legality of the military commission. Booth and his associates were ‘‘secret active public enemies.’’16 When Booth shouted, ‘‘Sic semper tyrannis,’’ after he shot Lincoln, and when he said, after being mortally wounded himself, ‘‘Say to my mother that I died for my country,’’ he demonstrated that he was not ‘‘an assassin from private malice,’’ but that he ‘‘acted as a public foe.’’17 As such, Speed said, [I]f the persons who are charged with the assassination of the President committed the deed as public enemies, as I believe they did, . . . they not only can, but ought to be tried before a military tribunal. If the persons charged have offended against the laws of war, it would be . . . palpably wrong for the military to hand them over to the civil courts . . . .18

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This remarkable opinion was dated ‘‘July [no date given] 1865,’’ and in the opinion of Speed’s predecessor was written after the four defendants had been executed.19 One desperate attempt was made on the morning of the execution to save Mrs. Surratt. Her attorneys went before Andrew Wylie, a judge of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, requesting that Wylie issue a writ of habeas corpus and demanding that the U.S. army surrender Mrs. Surratt to the court. General Winfield Scott Hancock, accompanied by Attorney General Speed, returned the writ and refused to surrender Mrs. Surratt, following instructions of the president. When Hancock refused to give up his prisoner, Wylie declared himself powerless to take any further action. Mrs. Surratt was doomed. Speed then spoke up at the courtroom as follows: This country is now in the midst [sic] of a great war and the commander-in-chief . . . was slain in the discharge of his duties, and if the armies of the United States cannot, under the laws of war, protect their commander-in-chief from assassination, and destruction . . . what has the government come to?20

Hindsight is always twenty-twenty. We now know that with General Robert E. Lee’s surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia, the soldiers of the Confederacy marched off the battlefield into the peaceful glory of the ‘‘legend of the Lost Cause.’’ But in late April and early May 1865, the direction of the rebel soldiers’ march was not nearly so certain. Had Lee or some other charismatic Southern leader issued a call to guerrilla warfare, still-armed and still-angry Southern soldiers may well have taken up the call, on the very outskirts of the nation’s capital. The history of civil wars is that they end in this fashion far more commonly than did the U.S. Civil War.

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At the time of Attorney General Speed’s opinion that trial before a military commission was proper, and of President Johnson’s order establishing the military commission, the idea that a state of war existed in Washington, D.C., was not a mere fanciful notion. One of the myths that surround the assassination of President Lincoln holds that his death was uniformly mourned throughout the South, where it was seen as a catastrophe, at least by all but the most ardent firebrands. In truth, Southerners reacted to Lincoln’s death much the same as Americans later reacted to the news of the deaths of Hitler and Mussolini. They saw it as the fitting end for a tyrant. Washington remained a fortified city and headquarters for directing military operations against the rebels during the trial. Sentries manned and controlled the flow of people into and out of the city. National forces fully guarded the city, with the army serving as protector as well as defender of the capital. President Johnson would not declare martial law over and peace finally restored within the United States until August 20, 1866. Whether it was politically astute to try the conspirators before a military commission or whether the conspirators received fair trials before the commission, which they did not, is not the issue here. The question is whether the United States had the legal right to try the conspirators before a military commission in the first place. After the 1866 Milligan decision, in which the Supreme Court disavowed military tribunals in favor of trials of civil courts, where operating, Samuel Mudd sought a writ of habeas corpus from Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, who turned him down but suggested he make application in the Federal Court for the District of Southern Florida. Mudd argued that the military court lacked jurisdiction and that he and the other prisoners held at Fort Jefferson should go free. In denying the appeal, Judge Thomas J. Boynton upheld the legitimacy of the military trial. This is the heart of his opinion:

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The President was assassinated not from private animosity nor any other reason than a desire to impair the effectiveness of military operations, and enable the rebellion to establish itself into a government; the act was committed in a fortified city, which had been invaded during the war, and to the northward as well as the southward of which battles had many times been fought, which was the headquarters of all the armies of the United States, from which daily and hourly went military orders. The President is the commander-in-chief of the Army, and the President who was killed had many times made distinct military orders under his own hand, without the formality of employing the name of the Secretary of War or Commanding General. It was not Mr. Lincoln who was assassinated, but the commander-inchief, for military reasons. I find no difficulty, therefore, in classing the offense as a military one, and with this opinion arrive at the necessary conclusion that the proper tribunal for the trial of those engaged in it was a military one.21

In retrospect, Boynton’s arguments, like some of Speed’s, have validity. The longtime reaction against the military commission comes from a failure to prove a Confederate conspiracy beyond Booth and his friends. Some, like the assassination scholar Edward Steers Jr., believe that such a conspiracy did, in fact, exist, and that within a few years we may look differently upon the military trial.22 Today the nation again finds itself questioning its government’s policies regarding the use of military tribunal. And the questions themselves are the same: Is it appropriate to try enemy combatants, removed from the field of battle, in military as opposed to civilian courts? And if so, what constitutes constitutional due process? How can we ensure that such trials protect the civil liberties of the accused, while protecting our national security? Are so-called ‘‘foreign combatants’’ entitled to full constitutional protections?

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Despite the fact that the threat to national security today is at least as great as that which Lincoln encountered during the Civil War and that President Johnson encountered just after the assassination, the administration of President George W. Bush had come nowhere as close to Lincoln in affecting civil liberties afforded by the Constitution. During the Civil War, under the aegis of the Lincoln administration, 75,964 Union army trials took place.23 Of these, 5,460 were trials before military commissions, and all were trials of civilian U.S. citizens.24 In stark comparison, the Bush administration prosecuted only 3 terrorists through military commissions. Only 13 of the remaining 225 detainees at the Guanta´namo Bay detention facility have even been assigned to prosecution before military commission.25 On January 20, 2009, Barack Obama took the oath of office as the forty-fourth president of the United States, setting the stage for a new approach to balancing civil liberties and national security. President Obama often invokes the words and images of Lincoln. Indeed, President Obama can claim many similarities to Lincoln: both lawyers from humble beginnings; both veterans of the Illinois legislature; both masters of the English language; and both, at least at first, seemingly unlikely candidates for president. During his presidential campaign, Obama routinely challenged the military commissions system. As he stated in August 2008, rather than rely on military commissions, ‘‘It’s time to better protect the American people and our values by bringing swift and sure justice to terrorists through our courts and our Uniform Code of Military Justice.’’26 Obama’s plan was based, at least in part, on the idea that such a shift from the Bush administration would ‘‘create a global wave of diplomatic and popular goodwill that could accelerate the transfer of some detainees to other countries.’’27 True to his campaign promises, shortly after taking office the new president signed several executive orders aimed at closing the detention facility at Guanta´namo Bay within one year; ending the

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Central Intelligence Agency’s worldwide network of secret rooms in which to imprison terror suspects; and imposing the requirement that all U.S. personnel conduct interrogations that ‘‘follow the noncoercive methods of the Army Field Manual.’’28 In addition, the president obtained a 120-day suspension of the military commissions.29 President Obama declared that such executive orders would send to the world the message that the ‘‘United States intends to prosecute the ongoing struggle against violence and terrorism . . . vigilantly . . . in a manner that is consistent with our values and our ideals.’’30 The president also directed that each detainee’s case be reviewed to determine who could be repatriated to third-party nations or referred to an American civilian court.31 President Obama personally reviewed the case of Ali al-Marri, detained without charge in a military jail in South Carolina.32 President Lincoln, too, personally reviewed certain cases before the military commissions of the Civil War. After the Sioux uprising in Minnesota that killed hundreds of white settlers in 1862, the military court had sentenced 303 Sioux to death.33 These cases came before Lincoln to review as final judge. Yet despite great pressure to approve these verdicts, Lincoln ordered that the complete records of the trials be sent to him. Working deliberately, Lincoln reviewed each case, one by one. Even though he was embroiled in the task of administering the government during the Civil War, Lincoln carefully worked through the transcripts for a month to sort out those who were guilty of serious crimes.34 Ultimately, Lincoln commuted the sentences of 265 defendants, and only 39 of the original 303 were executed. Criticized for this act of clemency, Lincoln responded: ‘‘I could not afford to hang men for votes.’’35 Despite President Obama’s criticism of the military commission system and his suspension of its use, the commissions did remain, as his Secretary of Defense stated, ‘‘very much on the table.’’36

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Then, only a few months after he suspended such tribunals, President Obama brought them back—but not without changes. The new rules and procedures of the commissions were intended to ‘‘offer terrorism suspects greater legal protections.’’37 Such protections would ‘‘block the use of evidence obtained from coercive interrogations, tighten the admissibility of hearsay testimony and allow detainees greater freedom to choose their attorneys.’’38 Most detainees would be transferred from Guanta´namo to a domestic U.S. prison, where they would remain until they received a habeas corpus hearing (although those who posed the highest security risk would remain at Guanta´namo to be tried by military tribunal).39 The president declared that these changes were ‘‘the best way to protect our country, while upholding our deeply held values.’’40 President Obama stated that he would also consider following Lincoln’s example of employing preventive detention measures to hold members of foreign terrorist organizations before they are able to carry out attacks. During the Civil War, the Lincoln administration detained between 13,000 and 28,000 citizens in Northern states—not even foreign detainees—preemptively under the fear that they either would engage in or encourage acts of rebellion against the Union. Lincoln defended the detentions with his everkeen understanding of military necessity: Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of a wiley [sic] agitator who induces him to desert? This is none the less injurious when effected by getting a father, or brother, or friend, into a public meeting, and there working upon his feeling, till he is persuaded to write the soldier boy, that he is fighting in a bad cause, for a wicked administration of a contemptible government, too weak to arrest and punish him if he shall desert. I think that in such a case, to silence the agitator,

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and save the boy, is not only constitutional, but, withal, a great mercy.41

Undoubtedly, President Obama learned the impracticalities of trying certain terrorist suspects in civilian courts. But he seems to have realized that certain rights enjoyed in a civilian criminal tribunal are impossible to maintain in the face of the current national security threat. In sensitive cases involving evidence secretly complied by an intelligence agency, for example, it is imprudent to have such information aired in an open, civilian court. Justice can still be served under a different framework that protects national security interests while ensuring a fair and impartial hearing. Abraham Lincoln knew of this necessity during the Civil War, as did Franklin Roosevelt during the Second World War. It appears that President Obama has himself embraced this necessity today. Reversing his original determination to end the military commissions was an act of political courage. Surely the president, feeling the loneliness of command, knew the ire such a decision would draw—especially from his most ardent campaign supporters. One human rights advocate declared that by ‘‘resurrecting this failed Bush administration idea, President Obama is backtracking dangerously on his reform agenda.’’42 Yet as Civil War veteran Oliver Wendell Holmes wisely noted, ‘‘War opens dangers that do not exist at other times. When a nation is at war, many things that might be said in time of peace are such a hindrance to its effort that no court could regard them as protected by any constitutional right.’’43 Such was true during Lincoln’s presidency, and such was true in the atmosphere surrounding the trial of the assassination conspirators. The lessons of yesterday serve as a useful guide to the very similar questions of today. We must take care that the mistakes of the past, brought about by passion and outrage, are not repeated, but that our very security is not sacrificed in the process.

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Notes 1. Merrill D. Peterson, Lincoln in American Memory (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 3–35. 2. William Hanchett, The Lincoln Murder Conspiracies (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983). 3. David Herbert Donald, Lincoln Reconsidered: Essays on the Civil War Era (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956), 4. 4. Roy Z. Chamlee, Lincoln’s Assassins: A Complete Account of Their Capture, Trial, and Punishment (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland Publishing, 1990), 560. 5. Ibid., 560–61. 6. Edward Steers Jr., His Name Is Still Mudd: The Case Against Doctor Samuel Alexander Mudd (Gettysburg: Thomas Publications, 1997). 7. Chamlee, Lincoln’s Assassins, 212. 8. Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy under Lincoln and Johnson, 3 vols. (New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1911), 2:304. 9. Howard K. Beale, ed., The Diary of Edward Bates 1859–1866 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1933), 483. 10. Ibid. 11. Official Opinions of the Attorney General of the United States (1869), 11:215. 12. Benn Pitman, The Assassination of President Lincoln and the Trial of the Conspirators (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2003), 64. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid. 15. Robert Watson Winston, Andrew Johnson, Plebeian and Patriot (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1928), 288. 16. Pitman, The Assassination of President Lincoln and the Trial of the Conspirators, 409. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid., 403. 20. Ibid., 210. 21. William H. Rehnquist, All the Laws but One: Civil Liberties in Wartime (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), 168. 22. Edward Steers Jr., Blood on the Moon (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2005). 23. E-mail from historian Thomas P. Lowry, December 8, 2005, 17:33 EST, on file with author, reporting his research in National Archives Record Group 153.

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24. Ibid. 25. Randy James, ‘‘A Brief History of Military Commissions,’’ Time, May 18, 2009, available at http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1899131,00 .html. 26. Peter Finn, ‘‘Guanta´namo Closure Called Obama Priority,’’ Washington Post, November 12, 2008. 27. Ibid. 28. Scott Shane, Mark Mazzetti, and Helene Cooper, ‘‘Obama Reverses Key Bush Policy, but Questions on Detainees Remain,’’ New York Times, January 23, 2009, A16. 29. Peter Finn, ‘‘Obama Set to Revive Military Commissions,’’ Washington Post, May 9, 2009. 30. Bobby Ghosh, ‘‘Obama Orders Gitmo Closed. Now the Hard Part,’’ Time, January 22, 2009. 31. Jess Bravin and Siobhan Gorman, ‘‘Obama Closes Detention Network,’’ Wall Street Journal, January 23, 2009, A3. 32. Shane, Mazzetti, and Cooper, ‘‘Obama Reverses Key Bush Policy.’’ 33. David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 394. 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid., 394–95. 36. William Glaberson, ‘‘U.S. May Revive Guanta´namo Military Courts,’’ New York Times, May 2, 2009, A12. 37. Finn, ‘‘Obama Set to Revive Military Commissions.’’ 38. Ibid. 39. James, ‘‘A Brief History of Military Commissions.’’ 40. Ibid. 41. Abraham Lincoln, Letter to Erastus Corning (June 12, 1863), in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 8 vols. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953–55), 6:266–67; Mark E. Neely Jr., The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 128. 42. ‘‘Anger at Obama Guanta´namo Ruling,’’ BBC News, available at http:// news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8052999.stm. 43. Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47, 52 (1919).

CHAPTER 6

Writing History in a Vacuum The Lincoln Assassination Thomas R. Turner

Everybody loves a good murder mystery. Walk into a Barnes & Noble or Borders bookstore and one will find the mystery-book section one of the largest. The continuing popularity of television’s ‘‘Law and Order,’’ its various spin-offs and derivatives, and the ‘‘CSI’’ series attests to this fascination with murder. At one level presidential assassinations are just other murders to be solved, usually surrounded by tales of deceit and betrayal and loaded with provocative questions: Was the vice president involved; did other members of the president’s administration betray him; did the assassin escape punishment, living the rest of his life looking over his shoulder, expecting at any moment that he might be discovered and vengeance carried out? Or in John Wilkes Booth’s case, allegedly accosting unwary travelers in such mundane places as Granbury, Texas, and Enid, Oklahoma; or more exotic locales like the South Seas, his guilty conscience causing him to confess who he was and what he had done?1 Who would not be eagerly drawn to such tales, reading every new book that appears and devouring every theory,

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the more outlandish the better? Assassinations have no difficulty in finding enthusiastic audiences. However, the fact that assassinations fit so readily into the conventions of murder mysteries has long been one of the major difficulties in researching and writing about them. A murder mystery, although taking place in a particular geographic setting—like Robert Parker’s hardboiled detective series Spencer, set in the city of Boston—often provides the reader with little real sense of the time period in which it occurs. The novel might just as well have taken place in the 1950s as in the 1990s for all the importance that timeframe has to the plot. Unfortunately, assassination authors have often written about presidential murders in a similar sort of vacuum. In the case of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, they made little connection between the fact that his death occurred at the end of the most violent event in American history, a war that cost more than 620,000 American lives. If you contemplate how traumatized Americans were by the deaths of their fellow citizens on September 11, 2001, a tragic event but one that pales in comparison, the impact that the timing of Lincoln’s death was bound to have on the pursuit, capture, and punishment of the assassins becomes readily apparent. Instead of being viewed in the context of these issues, however, the assassination was gradually converted into another murder mystery—very interesting, but increasingly divorced from its historical setting. A brief look at the historiography of the assassination illustrates this tendency. David M. DeWitt, in The Judicial Murder of Mary E. Surratt and The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln and Its Expiation (1909), planted the idea that the Radical Republicans and particularly Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton used the president’s death to foster their own ‘‘evil’’ agenda against the South. Because DeWitt was a lawyer and a Democratic political activist, he had no problem picturing the Radicals in this manner. Such views, of

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course, coincided with a generally negative portrayal of the Radicals in Civil War literature.2 Not until the 1950s and ’60s, influenced by a growing civil rights movement, did the Radicals come to be seen as reformers who had worked for such positive ends as African-American voting and civil rights. A new generation of revisionist historians began to portray the Radicals in a much more favorable light, but by then the damage of decades of negative portrayal was difficult to undo.3 If DeWitt saw the Radicals as evil, others believed that they were at least unscrupulous enough to have been involved in the president’s death. Because in this view Lincoln was too tender-hearted toward the defeated South, he had to be removed before the Radicals could carry out their agenda. Probably the most influential writer along these lines was a chemist-turned-historian, Otto Eisenschiml. In 1937, Eisenschiml used the clever technique of raising a series of provocative questions—why didn’t General Ulysses S. Grant accompany the Lincolns to the theater, why did the telegraph lines fail, why was the assassin’s escape route unguarded—concluding that ‘‘There was one man who profited greatly by Lincoln’s death; this man was his Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton.’’4 The technique employed is a clever one, reminiscent of asking someone if he or she has stopped using drugs. Obviously neither yes nor no is a very good answer to this question; either you’re saying you’ve stopped taking drugs or you are implying you are still on them. If you respond with an adamant denial that you have ever used drugs, many hearers of the denial will believe that where there is smoke there must be fire. While Eisenschiml always claimed that he was merely asking questions and occasionally backpedaled from the implied answers, he firmly planted the idea that Secretary Stanton had betrayed the president. The late Ford’s Theatre National Park historian Michael Maione often complained that hardly a week

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went by without a visitor’s lamenting that members of Lincoln’s own administration had been behind his murder. If there are those who raise provocative questions, then it is not long before others provide definitive answers. One prime example was the 1977 book and movie The Lincoln Conspiracy. According to the publisher, the book sold more than a million copies and the movie did quite well at the box office. In this account Booth was attempting on his own, aided only by a small band of conspirators, to capture the president in order to exchange him for Confederate prisoners. However, because Booth was inept, Stanton and the head of the National Detective Police, Lafayette Baker, replaced him with an ex–Confederate soldier, J. W. Boyd. Booth refused to be scared off, and on April 14 his plan changed to murder, just as Boyd was about to capture Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre. The plotters panicked, fearing that their treacherous plan would be revealed, but they were rescued when through a set of serendipitous circumstances Boyd rather than Booth was killed in Richard H. Garrett’s barn. Booth escaped, traveling to India and eventually dying in Enid, Oklahoma, in 1903.5 While William C. Davis in two articles in Civil War Times Illustrated destroyed the basic thesis of The Lincoln Conspiracy (among other things, Davis showed conclusively that Boyd was alive until 1866), one should never underestimate the power of sensational movies.6 I have experienced this power of the media myself in a modest way at Bridgewater State College. I can guarantee that if I publish a new article or even a book, I am not likely to be stopped as I walk the campus and receive congratulations, but if I appear on a television program, particularly one of the frequent repeats of the History Channel’s ‘‘Lincoln Assassination,’’ the reaction is quite different. Numerous people will approach me and say, ‘‘I saw you on television last night,’’ usually without acknowledging what an insightful point I made about the assassination. While I am flattered

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by the recognition, I am also somewhat alarmed at how the written word has been subsumed by various types of media. Clearly, well into the twentieth century, and despite the hundreds of works written about it, the Lincoln assassination had become mired in conspiracy theories and dubious interpretations. Fortunately that has changed since the 1980s as historians have struggled to interpret the assassination in the context of its times. Several major themes emerge through an examination of the assassination in its 1865 context. Similar to the end of most wars (New Yorkers celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II by erecting a statue of a sailor kissing a young woman, based on a famous photograph made in 1945 in Times Square), there was a tremendous outpouring of relief at news of victory, which in the case of the Civil War came with General Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. Hundreds of thousands of people filled the public squares, celebrating with fireworks, illuminations, and the roar of cannons. As one Philadelphian said, ‘‘It sounds like hell let loose, but it feels like paradise regained.’’7 While it would be naı¨ve to believe that this euphoric moment would not at some point have come up against the harsh realities of Reconstruction, Lincoln’s death was doubly hard for the public to accept because of the celebration that had immediately preceded it. The nation’s despair was well captured in the poem ‘‘The Martyr’’ by Herman Melville: He lieth in his blood— The Father in his face; They have killed him, the forgiver— The Avenger takes his place. . . . There is sobbing of the strong, And a pall upon the land: But the people in their weeping

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Bare the iron hand. Beware the people weeping When they bare the iron hand.8

As Melville so wisely perceived, one of the reactions to the president’s death was a cry for justice, but a justice that might be delivered with the iron hand of righteous violence. The immediate events outside of Ford’s Theatre on April 15, 1865, suggested the potential violence that was to occur. The crowd screamed to hang the assassin and burn the theater. When a nearby shopkeeper had the temerity to defend the Ford brothers, saying they would never have countenanced such an atrocious act, he found himself with a rope around his neck and was barely rescued by the police.9 C. D. Hess telegraphed his partner Leonard Grover, proprietor of another Washington theater, ‘‘President Lincoln shot to-night at Ford’s Theater. Thank God it wasn’t ours.’’10 Elsewhere those who were alleged to have expressed any sympathy toward the assassin or disparaged Lincoln in any way could anticipate a similar response. One of the most dramatic incidents was witnessed by Associated Press general manager Melville Stone: I made my way around the corner to the Matteson house. . . . [V]ery soon I heard the crack of a revolver and a man fell in the centre of the room. His assailant stood perfectly composed with a smoking revolver in his hand, and justified his action by saying: ‘‘He said it served Lincoln right.’’ There was no arrest, no one would have dared arrest the man. He walked out a hero. I never knew who he was.11

While DeWitt vilified Secretary Stanton as an out-of-control tyrant, to contemporaries he was one of the few people who kept their heads amidst the chaos that surrounded the assassin’s pursuit.

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Several people recorded their admiration for the war secretary, including James Tanner, who was pressed into service to take testimony because of his facility with shorthand. ‘‘Through all that awful night Stanton was the one man of steel.’’12 As with modern cases, tips about the assassination and Booth’s whereabouts poured in at an astonishing rate. Rumors that all leading government officials had been killed by the Confederates were so rampant that people rushed to and fro in panic. Even Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, who stayed in his home with armed guards pacing outside, called it ‘‘a night of horrors.’’13 The authorities also had no choice but to investigate every lead lest they risk ignoring the one piece of information that might actually lead to the assassin. If someone said he saw Booth disguised as a woman on E Street between 11th and 12th streets, a rumor that actually circulated, then the government had no choice but to seal off the entire block and make a house-by-house search, no matter how resource-intensive or time-consuming that task might be.14 In spite of all of this chaos, most of Booth’s alleged accomplices were arrested rather quickly. While Booth was not tracked down and killed until April 26, in retrospect the charges by many historians of gross governmental negligence do not stand up to close scrutiny. Had Booth not broken his ankle as a result of his leap from the presidential box to the stage, he might have been able to escape altogether. Had he reached Mexico, for example, his quick return to the United States would have been no certainty. It should be remembered that after shooting Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, James Earl Ray escaped Memphis driving his white Mustang. Ray eventually made his way to Canada and England, where he was arrested six weeks later, demonstrating that modern law enforcement is not always any more successful in apprehending notorious criminals than their nineteenth-century predecessors, despite possessing much more sophisticated tools with which to do so.15

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While the Radical Republicans have been accused of molding public opinion, the spontaneous violence that occurred belies such accusations. No one had to convince anyone that Southerners and/ or Southern sympathizers were behind the murder. At the end of the Civil War it was the only conclusion that the public could reach. The murder of John F. Kennedy in 1963 at the height of the Cold War produced similar, long-lasting rumors that Fidel Castro or the Soviets might have been behind his assassination. Sermons preached by ministers in 1865 reveal just how enraged people were, without needing any urging from politicians. The clergy still had an enormous influence in the nineteenth century, and tens of thousands of the faithful flocked to worship services on April 16 to hear their ministers try to explain the national calamity.16 Because Lincoln was shot on Good Friday, there were inevitable comparisons with Jesus. Jesus died for mankind; Lincoln died for his country. Other preachers offered analogies with Moses and Joshua. Lincoln had guided the country toward the Promised Land, but the kind-hearted president was too tender for the rigors of Reconstruction and therefore God had allowed him to be replaced with a sterner Joshua in the form of Andrew Johnson.17 The trying of Booth’s alleged accomplices by a military court has been one of the most controversial aspects of the assassination’s aftermath. Many authors have scorned the military tribunal as a kangaroo court, assembled to convict and deny constitutional rights to civilian defendants. (In the present day, the trying of civilians by military courts has once again emerged as a timely issue as part of the war on terror.) Sympathy was particularly strong for Mary Surratt, who was executed, and for Dr. Samuel Mudd, who served four years at Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas. Pardoned in 1869, he returned to his Maryland farm, where he died in 1883, a relatively young man who, it was argued, was broken by his ordeal.18 However, a military trial made a great deal of sense to people in 1865. Many Americans believed that a conventional civil trial could

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not get to the bottom of what was perceived to be a vast conspiracy. As the Boston Evening Transcript said on June 23 after the trial had gone on for a number of weeks, ‘‘It is now abundantly proved that a court confined within strictly legal bounds, and never traveling out of the narrow limits of merely technical investigation, could not have developed the full extent of the hideous plot.’’19 In some ways the military court, with its wider rules of evidence, served a role similar to that of the Warren Commission, which investigated President Kennedy’s assassination. More than half of the trial testimony concerned itself not with the alleged assassins in the dock but with alleged Southern atrocities. This reinforced the public perception that the actual assassins were merely pawns who were assigned their deadly work by Confederate President Jefferson Davis and his government.20 Despite its notorious reputation, the military tribunal was actually isolated from some of the pressures that might have influenced a civil jury. It is hard to believe that a civil jury—which would inevitably have included a few of those angry citizens who threatened to hang, or actually did shoot, those who expressed sympathy for the murderer (see Chapter 3)—would have shown much leniency to Booth’s accomplices. The military court, on the other hand, did demonstrate considerable discretion, for had it simply been out for vengeance, it could have found all of the defendants guilty and executed them. Instead, it sorted through the evidence and determined that those who had been involved in Booth’s plan to capture the president would serve jail sentences, while those they believed had been involved in the murder on April 14 would face execution. Three of the condemned seemed doomed whether the trial was military or civil. David Herold was discovered with Booth in Garrett’s barn and had aided the assassin in his flight after accompanying Lewis Powell to the home of Secretary of State William Seward. Powell, who was identified by witnesses, left the Seward household

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a bloody shambles, not only badly injuring the secretary but also attacking two of his sons, a male nurse, and a State Department messenger. About the only defense his lawyers could muster was that because he had been a Confederate soldier, he viewed Seward as the enemy, a sort of situational insanity. George Atzerodt freely admitted that Booth had assigned him to kill Andrew Johnson, his defense being that he had not done so. None of these three stood much chance of escaping the gallows.21 Three other conspirators, Samuel Arnold, Michael O’Laughlen, and Edman Spangler, received prison terms—Arnold and O’Laughlen for life and Spangler for six years as an accessory after the fact. Arnold and O’Laughlen were both involved in the capture plot (Arnold later wrote a memoir about his role), but their involvement in the murder was less certain. Spangler, whom Booth asked to hold his horse, although well acquainted with the actor and having done odd jobs for him, was in the wrong place at the wrong time. After a civil trial Arnold and O’Laughlen, at least, would certainly have served jail time and perhaps have suffered worse treatment.22 The two most controversial cases then and since were those of Mary Surratt and Samuel Mudd. While almost all of the historians who have written about the assassination have portrayed Mrs. Surratt as an innocent victim of military justice, most contemporaries viewed her as among the most guilty of Booth’s associates.23 Her son John was among Booth’s most intimate companions, and Louis Weichmann, a boarder at her Washington home, described many of the conspirators as its guests. John Lloyd, the proprietor of her Surrattsville tavern, also testified that Mrs. Surratt had told him to ‘‘have the shooting irons ready,’’ a reference to carbines that had had been secreted in the tavern, along with a field glass carried there for Booth the day of the murder. Most damning of all, Powell arrived at her home as she was being arrested, but when confronted with the burly visitor, she threw up her hands and proclaimed that she did not know him, even though he had boarded in her home.24

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Although there was ultimately some revulsion at hanging a woman, it was not based on a widespread belief in her innocence. A majority of the members of the military commission demonstrated the same hesitancy, signing a clemency plea asking that Mrs. Surratt’s life be spared. A long battle of words ensued between Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt and President Johnson as to whether Holt showed the plea to the president. It is not easy to this day to determine who was telling the truth; but if Johnson really did not see the plea, there is substantial doubt as to how he might have responded to it. Johnson was one of the most adamant about making an example of rebels, and he rebuffed an attempt by Mrs. Surratt’s daughter, Anna, to meet with him.25 Similar sympathy has attached itself to Dr. Mudd, whom historians have pictured as a country doctor, merely responding to pleas to treat the broken ankle of a stranger and not recognizing that it was Booth, who wore a disguise. Again, though, many contemporaries saw Mudd as a strong rebel sympathizer who had shot one of his slaves and threatened to send others to Richmond. In addition, because he was clearly acquainted with Booth, it was hard to believe that Mudd could not recognize him, and once he did express suspicions he took some time in informing anyone. Given his apparent hesitancy and general reputation for disloyalty, the military court had little difficulty in believing that he was involved in the capture plot and even in the assassination itself.26 Parenthetically, and despite the arguments of innocence by most historians, a recent discovery potentially sheds some light on the cases of both Surratt and Mudd. The historian Joan Chaconas discovered a document, often referred to as George Atzerodt’s ‘‘confession,’’ in the papers of one of the defense lawyers, William E. Doster. In this document Atzerodt revealed that Booth had sent Mary Surratt to tell Lloyd to ‘‘get the guns ready,’’ confirming Lloyd’s sworn testimony, and that supplies had been sent to Mudd as part of the capture plan. While this document does not prove that

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either Surratt or Mudd was directly involved in the assassination, it does call into question the portrayal of both individuals as innocent victims of military justice, although historians continue to debate the meaning of the ‘‘confession.’’27 The failure of the 1867 civil jury to convict John Surratt has also fueled the idea that the military commission was biased. John Surratt’s lawyers saw this trial as a vindication of his mother. One of the defense lawyers, Joseph Bradley, commented that the defense hoped to do ‘‘something in the way of vindicating the pure name of (Surratt’s) departed mother.’’28 Because much of the testimony was similar to that used at the 1865 trial, with the exception of the massive amounts of testimony about Confederate involvement, and there was a hung jury, it was easy to argue that the main difference was between an enlightened civil jury and a military court. In reality, the biggest difference between the two trials was not the civil versus the military issue but rather the much calmer atmosphere in 1867, as least as far as the assassination was concerned. The prosecution’s evidence initially caused many newspapers to argue that John Surratt was guilty, and that the 1865 verdict was justified. However, the defense began to chip away at this evidence, calling into severe question alleged eyewitness identification of Surratt in Washington on April 14 and demonstrating that he was very likely in upstate New York. The prosecution then had to change tactics, arguing that he might have been playing his role in the assassination from that location, as well as using a convoluted series of railroad and ferry schedules to show that he could have reached Washington by the evening of April 14. None of this was very convincing, and in 1889 District Attorney Edward Carrington admitted that there was no good evidence that Surratt had been in Washington on April 14.29 One of the most perceptive comments about the difference between the 1865 and 1867 trials was made by the New York Times:

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When, therefore, the Government availing itself of the existing state of war, cited the criminals before a Military Commission, which while respecting their rights, refused all delays and brushed aside the fictions and technicalities usual and useful in common cases, letting in every ray of light from any quarter upon motives and persons, and scanning the widest range of circumstances, most candid persons agreed that a case transcending all experience was rightfully tried in modes as extraordinary. . . . John H. Surratt was called to his account in a calmer state of the public mind, after time had appeased its righteous anger and the passion for retribution had been allayed.30

By 1867 the public was far more interested in Reconstruction and President Johnson’s possible impeachment and removal from office, amid rumors that Johnson himself might have been involved in his predecessor’s murder. In conclusion, we might ask, Where do assassination studies stand nearly a century and a half after the event? In 1934, the noted Lincoln scholar James G. Randall addressed the American Historical Association and asked the question ‘‘Has the Lincoln Theme Been Exhausted?’’31 Even then, historians were agonizing that with the millions of words that had been written about the sixteenth president, there was little left to be said. Actually, Lincoln scholars seem particularly prone to this introspection as it is difficult to imagine colleagues in other historical areas asking such a question. Randall, of course, concluded that Lincoln studies were still flourishing, and the continuing publication of excellent scholarly works since bears out his contention that this agony was unfounded. This brief survey has attempted to show that this was certainly not true of the assassination, about which until relatively recently scholars had barely scratched the surface. But with the books that have appeared

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over the past three decades, can we at last conclude that there is now a scholarly consensus about Lincoln’s murder? The answer is, of course, no. While a number of excellent recent works have approached the assassination in innovative ways, grappling with myths and errors, and liberating the assassination from being just another murder mystery, these scholarly studies have inevitably raised their own questions. Edward Steers’s His Name Is Still Mudd and Blood on the Moon and Michael Kauffman’s American Brutus are excellent examples.32 Following William Tidwell, James O. Hall, and David Gaddy’s Come Retribution: The Confederate Secret Service and the Death of Lincoln, Steers argues that Booth had many dealings with members of the Confederate Secret Service in Canada, who at a minimum must have been aware of his capture plan and were very likely actively supporting it. Steers also argues forcefully that Dr. Mudd was a virulent secessionist who handled mail for the Confederates, covered up an additional meeting that he had with the assassin, and then tried to mislead the authorities as to Booth’s escape route in an attempt to aid the assassin’s escape. The four years spent at Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas were probably about right for the crime he committed and perhaps not harsh enough.33 Kauffman argues just as vigorously that the clever actor Booth openly consorted with those he tried to induce to join his group, such as fellow actor Samuel Knapp Chester, so that if those approached failed to sign on, they would not be able to alert the authorities without implicating themselves. In a similar manner, Kauffman believes that Booth openly consorted with Confederate agents in Canada, this in an attempt to imply Confederate support for what he was doing, whether he really had such backing or not. Using a computer database, Kauffman contends that most of the conspirators’ business was actually conducted in stables where they kept their horses, making Mrs. Surratt’s boarding house much less of a focus. Kauffman also contends that Dr. Mudd was telling the

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truth that he did not recognize Booth and was therefore innocent of the charges against him.34 A number of these positions cannot be easily reconciled in any manner, and the resultant disagreements are bound to carry the debate forward as Steers and Kauffman sharpen their focus and other historians join the debate. Also, on a negative note, scholarly books have not crowded out the sensational works, which show no signs of abating either. Charles Higham’s Murdering Mr. Lincoln and Leonard Guttridge and Ray Neff ’s Dark Union bring us back decades to tales of ruthless cotton speculators, big-business men, evil Radical Republicans, and a John Wilkes Booth who survives Garrett’s barn. One is as apt to find copies of these two works in a bookstore as one is to find Blood on the Moon or American Brutus.35 Overall, it is preferable to end on an optimistic note. It is no longer possible for any serious student of the Lincoln assassination to view it as simply another murder mystery, and the fact that The Lincoln Forum saw fit to devote its entire 2005 symposium to the assassination attests to the stature that assassination studies have gained. As another assassination scholar, Elizabeth Leonard, suggests in her book Lincoln’s Avengers: Seen in its proper context, the assassination was an event that not only climaxed the Civil War but also served as an overture to Reconstruction. A great deal of progress has been made and despite the ongoing struggle with the sensationalists, I am confident that this progress will continue.36 Notes 1. See for example, Finis L. Bates, Escape and Suicide of John Wilkes Booth, or the First True Account of Lincoln’s Assassination, Containing a Complete Confession by Booth Many Years After His Crime. Giving in Full Detail the Plans, Plot and Intrigue of the Conspirators, and the Treachery of Andrew Johnson, then Vice-President of the United States (Boston: Geo. M. Smith, 1907). 2. David M. DeWitt, The Judicial Murder of Mary E. Surratt (Baltimore: John Murphy, 1895); The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln and Its Expiation (New York: Macmillan, 1909).

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3. See, for example, Hans L. Trefousse, The Radical Republicans: Lincoln’s Vanguard for Racial Justice (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1975). 4. Otto Eisenschiml, Why Was Lincoln Murdered? (Boston: Little, Brown, 1937), 396. 5. David Balsiger and Charles E. Sellier Jr., The Lincoln Conspiracy (Los Angeles: Schick-Sunn Classic Books, 1977). 6. William C. Davis, ‘‘Behind the Lines: Caveat Emptor,’’ Civil War Times Illustrated (August 1977): 33–37; ‘‘Behind the Lines: ‘The Lincoln Conspiracy’—Hoax?’’, Civil War Times Illustrated (September 1977): 47–49. Oliver Stone’s sensational movie JFK had a similar impact on beliefs about the Kennedy assassination. 7. Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, April 4, 1865. 8. Hennig Cohen, ed., The Battle-Pieces of Herman Melville (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1964), 130. 9. W. J. Ferguson, I Saw Booth Shoot Lincoln (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1930), 58. 10. Thomas Goodrich, The Darkest Dawn: Lincoln, Booth, and the Great American Tragedy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005), 122. 11. Unidentified newspaper clipping in Truman H. Bartlett Collection, Boston University. 12. New York Sun, April 16, 1905. 13. David Donald, ed., Inside Lincoln’s Cabinet: The Civil War Diaries of Salmon P. Chase (New York: Longmans, Green, 1954), 267. In the case of the more recent Natalie Holloway disappearance in Aruba, tips were at one time coming in at the rate of forty to fifty per hour. 14. Joseph H. Hill, in Letters Received, File H 609; Henry L. Burnett to General B. J. Sweet, April 22, 1865, in Telegrams Sent, Record Group 153, National Archives. 15. Gerald Posner, Killing the Dream: James Earl Ray and the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York: Random House, 1998). 16. David Chesebrough, No Sorrow Like Our Sorrow: Northern Protestant Ministers and the Assassination of Lincoln (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1994). 17. Thomas R. Turner, Beware the People Weeping: Public Opinion and the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982), 83–84.

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18. David M. DeWitt to John T. Ford, December 9, 1890, in Ford’s Theatre Collection, Maryland Historical Society. 19. Boston Evening Transcript, June 23, 1865. 20. For a modern version of the trial testimony, see Edward Steers Jr. (ed.), The Trial: The Assassination of President Lincoln and the Trial of the Conspirators, A Special Edition of the Trial Transcript as Compiled and Arranged by Benn Pitman (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2003). 21. Turner, Beware the People Weeping, 193–201. 22. Ibid., 201–3. 23. For authors favorable to Mary Surratt, see Helen Jones Campbell, The Case for Mrs. Surratt (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1943); Guy Moore, The Case of Mrs. Surratt: Her Controversial Trial and Execution for Conspiracy in the Lincoln Assassination (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1954); and Elizabeth Stegner Trindall, Mary E. Surratt: An American Tragedy (Gretna, La.: Pelican Press, 1996). For authors favorable to Mudd, see Hal Higdon, The Union vs. Dr. Mudd (Chicago: Follett, 1964); and Elden C. Weckesser, His Name Was Mudd: The Life of Dr. Samuel A. Mudd Who Treated the Fleeing John Wilkes Booth (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., 1991). 24. Steers, The Trial, 121–24. 25. Turner, Beware the People Weeping, 174–80. 26. Edward Steers Jr., His Name Is Still Mudd: The Case Against Dr. Samuel Alexander Mudd (Gettysburg, Pa.: Thomas Publications, 1997). 27. Ibid., 121–24. 28. United States Government, Trial of John H. Surratt in the Criminal Court for the District of Columbia, Hon. George P. Fisher Presiding (2 vols.; Washington: Government Printing Office, 1867), 1, 530–31. 29. Turner, Beware the People Weeping, 241. 30. New York Times, August 12, 1867. 31. James G. Randall, ‘‘Has the Lincoln Theme Been Exhausted?,’’ American Historical Review, 42 (January 1936): 270–94. 32. Steers, His Name Is Still Mudd; see also Steers, Blood on the Moon: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001); Michael Kauffman, American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies (New York: Random House, 2004). 33. Steers, Blood on the Moon, 71–84, 144–54; Steers, His Name Is Still Mudd, 39–59. 34. Kauffman, American Brutus, xiv, 140, 146, 176, 197, 230, 243, 333, 395.

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35. Charles Higham, Murdering Mr. Lincoln: A New Detection of the 19th Century’s Most Famous Crime (Beverly Hills, Calif.: New Millennium Entertainment, 2004); Leonard F. Guttridge and Ray A. Neff, Dark Union: The Secret Web of Profiteers, Politicians and Booth Conspirators That Led to Lincoln’s Death (Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley, 2003). 36. Elizabeth Leonard, Lincoln’s Avengers: Justice, Revenge and Reunion After the Civil War (New York: Norton, 2003).

CHAPTER 7

‘‘Let the Stain of Innocent Blood Be Removed from the Land’’ The Military Trial of the Lincoln Conspirators Edward Steers Jr.

On April 26, 1865, just twelve days after President Abraham Lincoln’s murder, a troop of Union cavalrymen cornered John Wilkes Booth and his cohort David Herold at the farm of a Virginia planter near Bowling Green.1 Following a bravura performance by Booth, he was killed and Herold taken prisoner. While Booth’s death brought an end to the hunt for President Lincoln’s killer, it did not bring closure to the nation’s grieving. It marked only the end of the first phase of an emotional period that had replaced the jubilation brought about by the surrender of Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia three weeks earlier. America’s greatest criminal manhunt lasted less than two weeks, resulting in hundreds of people being swept up in the government’s dragnet and thrown into prison, including those unlucky enough to be needed as witnesses in support of the government’s case. As the president’s funeral train made its way across the country toward his hometown of Springfield, the government prepared to prove to the world that John Wilkes Booth had been the tool of a larger conspiracy whose perpetrators were the leaders of the

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Confederacy. The government would claim that while Booth may have held the small derringer that ended the life of Abraham Lincoln, there were many fingers on the trigger, including those of Jefferson Davis. On May 1, President Andrew Johnson issued an executive order directing that the persons charged with Lincoln’s murder stand trial before a specially convened military tribunal.2 Johnson’s order rested on Attorney General James Speed’s decision that the accused were ‘‘enemy belligerents’’ whose alleged offenses were violations of the laws of war and had a military objective—to adversely affect the war effort of the North.3 Two and a half hours after Lincoln died on April 15, Johnson had assumed the presidency, and although the new chief executive was officially in charge of the federal government, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton controlled much of its operations. And Stanton wanted to keep control of the trial under the military and away from the civil courts. An accomplished lawyer, he knew that such an undertaking required the blessing of the Justice Department. Having obtained Speed’s approval, Stanton drafted the executive order in his own hand on War Department stationery for President Johnson.4 Little in the documentary record sheds light on what transpired leading up to the decision to try the accused before a military tribunal, but such a decision seems obvious in hindsight. The District of Columbia was still a city whose native civilian population held strong Southern sympathies, and many of its residents actively worked in support of the Confederacy. The majority of pro-Union men were in the army. Most of the policing activities in the District were carried out by the military, because the District was still operating under martial law and martial law takes precedence over civil law in every instance.5 Because part of the government’s case was aimed directly at Jefferson Davis and members of the Confederate government, Stanton feared what today is called jury nullification—acquitting a defendant regardless of the weight of evidence. It seems reasonable

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that this possibility was uppermost in Stanton’s mind when he decided to try the accused before a military commission instead of in a civil court even though some of his fellow cabinet members opposed his position.6 A military trial would ensure that the process would remain in loyal hands under Stanton’s control. A military trial would not necessarily alter the process of law, only the control of the proceedings. A perception has dominated the popular literature on the trial that military law and civil law differed significantly in both their administration and rules of evidence. This is a false perception. While military law, as practiced in courts-martial, has a codified set of rules, there are no set rules for a military tribunal. The president, or his designee, can establish his own rules as he pleases. Despite this, the trial closely followed the procedures of civil law, and both the prosecution and defense attorneys referred repeatedly to civil precedent in arguing their respective cases. The accused were charged under the conspiracy laws that existed in 1865. Most historians have acknowledged that the defendants were involved in one way or another with Booth’s plan to capture Lincoln. Many believe, however, that only Booth, Herold, Lewis Powell, and George Atzerodt were involved in the conspiracy to assassinate him. Mary Surratt, Samuel Mudd (Figure 1), Samuel Arnold, Michael O’Laughlen, and Edman Spangler (along with John Surratt, who was not a defendant7) were involved only in a plot to kidnap Lincoln and, therefore, wrongly charged with his murder. This conclusion is incorrect. By law, participation in the kidnapping plot, because it eventually led to murder, made the participants guilty of the greater crime. This would have been the case whether the trial was military or civil. A person may be a member of an unlawful conspiracy without necessarily knowing all the details of the conspiracy or even all the other conspirators. A person’s understanding the unlawful nature of a plan and willingly joining in the plan, even if only on one occasion, is sufficient to convict the individual of conspiracy even though that

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Figure 1. Dr. Samuel A. Mudd, who avoided the death penalty for his role in the Lincoln assassination by a single vote. The court rejected his argument that he did not recognize John Wilkes Booth and was only fulfilling his professional oath when he treated the assassin’s broken leg on the night of April 14. (Photograph courtesy Edward Steers Jr.)

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person played only a minor role. Most important to the case of the Lincoln conspirators is that when a felony (e.g., murder) has been committed in pursuance of a conspiracy that had as its design only a misdemeanor (e.g., kidnapping), the misdemeanor becomes merged into the felony. Simply stated, if the intent of the conspiracy is to kidnap and a homicide occurs as a result of the conspiracy, the crime becomes one of homicide, not kidnapping.8 This last point is especially important when considering the case of the Lincoln conspirators. Booth’s original conspiracy to capture shifted to one of murder, much to the dismay of some of his conspirators, and while they may have refused to take part in an assassination, their failure to take the necessary steps to prevent it from going forward made them culpable in the eyes of the law. The fact that the conspirators carried loaded weapons at the time of their first attempt to kidnap Lincoln on March 17, 1865, belies the argument that there was no plan to kill the president or anyone else. If that were true, why did they carry loaded weapons? Surely kidnapping the president and attempting to transport him over a hundred miles through enemy occupied territory would be expected to result in one or more individuals’ being killed at some point. The military trial officially began on May 10 and lasted until June 29, a total of fifty days. President Johnson’s executive order of May 1, establishing the military commission, designated army Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt to conduct the trial along with specially appointed assistant judge advocates John A. Bingham and Henry L. Burnett. Sitting in judgment (Figure 2) were nine federal officers whose selection was made by Holt but certainly involved Stanton. The nine officers were Major General David O. Hunter (president of the tribunal), Major General Lew Wallace, Brevet Major General August V. Kautz, Brigadier General Albion P. Howe, Brigadier

Figure 2. The military tribunal. Seated, from left to right: Lieutenant David Clendenin; Brevet Colonel Charles H. Tomkins, Brigadier General Albion P. Howe, Brevet Brigadier General James A. Ekin, Major General David Hunter, Brigadier General Robert S. Foster, Assistant Judge Advocate (Army) John A. Bingham, Judge Advocate General (Army) Joseph Holt. Standing, left to right: Brigadier General Thomas M. Harris, Major General Lew Wallace, Brevet Major General August V. Kautz, Brevet Colonel Henry L. Burnett. (Library of Congress)

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General Robert S. Foster, Brevet Brigadier General Cyrus B. Comstock, Brigadier General Thomas Harris, Brevet Colonel Horace Porter, and Lieutenant Colonel David R. Clendenin. Within twenty-four hours of their appointment, Comstock and Porter were relieved and replaced by Brevet Brigadier General James E. A. Ekin and Brevet Colonel Charles H. Tompkins. Included among the judges were four graduates of West Point who remained professional soldiers, a former United States marshal, a medical practitioner, an author, and a schoolteacher. Noteworthy is the fact that Wallace was the only lawyer among the nine judges. During the trial, more than 360 witnesses gave testimony on a wide range of subjects. These witnesses were nearly evenly divided between the prosecution and the defense. Of the witnesses, twentynine were black, all having been slaves at one time. These witnesses were identified in the trial record as ‘‘colored’’ apparently to isolate their testimony from that of the white witnesses. Of the twentynine, eighteen testified for the prosecution and eleven testified for the defense.9 Physical descriptions of the accused as reported in the daily newspapers reveal the prejudice of the times, both positive and negative. Samuel Arnold was described as having an ‘‘intelligent face, curly brown hair and restless dark eyes.’’ Edman Spangler, on the other hand, had an ‘‘unintelligent-looking face . . . swollen by the excessive use of alcohol, a low forehead, brown hair, and anxiouslooking eyes.’’ Michael O’Laughlen was a ‘‘small, delicate-looking man with pleasing features, uneasy black eyes, bushy black hair, and an imperial, anxious expression shaded by a sad, remorseful look.’’10 George Atzerodt fared worst of all. He was described as being ‘‘short, thickset, round-shouldered, brawny-armed with a stupid expression.’’11 Next came Lewis Powell. He had a ‘‘massive robustness of animal manhood in its most stalwart type’’ and exhibited ‘‘neither intellect nor intelligence in his dark gray eyes, low forehead, massive jaws, compressed full lips, small nose, large nostrils, dark hair

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and beardless face.’’12 David Herold was ‘‘a doltish, insignificantlooking young man, not much over one and twenty years of age, with a slender frame, and irresolute, cowardly appearance.’’13 The reporter who wrote this description was amazed that a villain like Booth would have selected ‘‘such a contemptuous-looking fellow’’ as a co-conspirator. Mary Surratt and Samuel Mudd were spared the stereotypical negative descriptions used for the others. Mary, ‘‘a belle in her youth,’’ had ‘‘rather pleasing features,’’ dark gray eyes, and brown hair. Those in the courtroom saw her as ‘‘the devoted mother of an attached family, of pious sentiments, and deserving the recommendations so lavishly given of her by her religious advisors.’’ Mary’s was the only description that included a lengthy biography of her life, which was thought to ‘‘inspire feelings of pity.’’14 Dr. Mudd seemed the most puzzling of the conspirators. He was ‘‘the most inoffensive and decent in appearance of all the prisoners.’’ Described as forty years of age, he was actually only thirtytwo. He was ‘‘rather tall, quite thin, with sharp features, a high bald forehead, astute blue eyes, compressed pale lips, and sandy hair, moustache and whiskers.’’15 Not all the descriptions of Dr. Mudd were positive. General Thomas Harris, a member of the tribunal and a student of phrenology, revealed his own pseudo-scientific prejudices when he wrote: ‘‘Mudd’s expression of countenance was that of a hypocrite. He had the bump of secretiveness largely developed and it would have taken months of acquaintanceship to have removed the unfavorable impression made by first scanning of the man. He had the appearance of a natural born liar and deceiver.’’16 Initially, the trial appeared to be two trials in one. At first, the government aimed its sights directly at Jefferson Davis and several of his associates. Along with the eight alleged co-conspirators present in the courtroom, the government named Jefferson Davis, George N. Sanders, Clement C. Clay, Beverley Tucker, Jacob Thompson, William C. Cleary, George Harper, George Young, ‘‘and

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others unknown.’’ All of Davis’s co-defendants were among the Confederate agents who had operated out of Canada in 1864–65 and had waged a campaign of ‘‘black flag warfare’’ against the northeastern states. This campaign included an attempt at ‘‘germ warfare’’ against Washington, Norfolk, and New Bern, North Carolina, and efforts to burn several Northern cities, including Boston, Cincinnati, Detroit, and New York.17 If Jefferson Davis and his rebel agents were capable of such acts of terrorism, the government reasoned, they were capable of assassinating Abraham Lincoln. Key to the prosecution’s case against Davis and his cohorts was the testimony of three government witnesses who claimed to have been in close contact with Davis’s agents in Canada and had intimate knowledge of a plot to kill Lincoln. Richard Montgomery, Sandford Conover18 (alias James Watson Wallace, real name Charles A. Dunham), and James B. Merritt became the prosecution’s chief witnesses. On the witness stand, these three placed Lincoln’s assassination directly on the desks of Jacob Thompson, the Confederate Confidential Agent to Canada, and Jefferson Davis himself. All three men told of personally hearing Thompson and others speak of plans to assassinate Lincoln and of seeing various members of Booth’s conspiracy meeting with Thompson and Sanders, including Booth, Herold, Powell, and John Surratt.19 The testimony of the three men was initially given in secret session ‘‘to protect the witnesses.’’20 The secrecy was breached when the official recorder of the trial, Benn Pitman, leaked a synopsis of their testimony to his hometown paper, the Cincinnati Enquirer. Holt was forced to release all of the testimony given in closed session, making public the testimony of Conover, Montgomery, and Merritt. It was at this point that matters began to fall apart for the government’s case against the Confederate leaders. The dates and places of alleged meetings proved to be fabricated. Confederate agents who supposedly met with the witnesses were shown to have been elsewhere at the times of the meetings.

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Equally damaging, the three witnesses claimed not to have known one another but were, in fact, acquainted. Conover had recruited Merritt, and possibly Montgomery, and had coached both of them in what to say in their testimony. The Chicago Tribune had somehow come into possession of a letter from Conover to Jacob Thompson dated March 20, 1865, which clearly showed that Conover had not met Thompson as of that date.21 And yet, Conover testified at the trial to having met with Thompson one month earlier, in February.22 In 1866 Conover was exposed again, this time as having fabricated testimony and coaching witnesses before a congressional committee investigating the assassination. In 1867 he was arrested and charged with committing and suborning perjury. Conover admitted he had coached witnesses and supplied false information. He was convicted and sentenced to a ten-year jail term. Thus in hindsight we know that most of the testimony from Conover and his cohorts was untrue. Within a few days the government’s case against Davis and the others began to unravel. Holt was faced with running the risk of tainting the government’s case against the eight defendants in the dock. Not all of the perjurers’ testimony was false. In truth, Booth had been in Toronto and had met with at least two known Confederate agents,23 but the damage had been done and Holt concluded the case against the Confederate leaders and focused his attention on the eight defendants in custody. The guilt of Powell and Herold was a foregone conclusion. Powell’s in particular was never disputed. His defense became a plea for his life. He was characterized as simply a rebel soldier carrying out his duty. His actions were no different from those of any other soldier with the exception that ‘‘he aimed at the head of a department instead of a corps; he struck at the head of a nation instead of at its limbs . . . he believed he was killing an oppressor.’’24

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Herold’s defense centered on his supposed inability to commit murder. His attorney pleaded that he was ‘‘unfit for deeds of blood and violence; he was cowardly.’’ His only service to Booth was his knowledge of roads; he was a pathfinder and nothing more.25 Atzerodt, who had been characterized as ‘‘crafty, cowardly and mercenary,’’ was simply a boatman. Like Herold, he was either too stupid or too cowardly to have participated in murder. His only role was ‘‘to furnish the boat to carry the party over the Potomac.’’ He was ‘‘the ferryman of the capture.’’ Atzerodt’s attorney, William E. Doster, pointed out to the tribunal that when Booth told Atzerodt ‘‘to take charge of the Vice-President, he must have known that the prisoner had not the courage, and therefore did not care particularly whether he accomplished it or not.’’26 The defense of Arnold and O’Laughlen was equally straightforward. Whatever role they may have played was solely as kidnappers, not accomplices to murder, their attorneys said. Whatever the relationship these two had with Booth and his plot to capture Lincoln, the defense claimed, they’d walked away from both Booth and his crazy scheme. Neither man knew about the murder, nor would either have had anything to do with it. But the prosecution didn’t buy it. The defense would have to come up with something better than claiming their defendants ‘‘walked away’’ from Booth’s conspiracy. Had they ‘‘walked into’’ police headquarters instead of away from Booth, Lincoln would never have been murdered. Thus the concept of ‘‘vicarious liability,’’ so common in modern-day jurisprudence, was introduced and weighed heavily against the accused accomplices. Bingham challenged the notion that the pair had walked away from Booth’s conspiracy. A letter, written by Arnold to Booth and found in Booth’s hotel room the day after the assassination, belied Arnold’s claim of having abandoned Booth, according to the prosecution. In the letter, dated March 27, seventeen days before the murder, Arnold, in an obvious reference to Booth’s capture plan, tells Booth to ‘‘go and see how it will be taken at R[ichmon]d,

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and ere long I shall be better prepared to again be with you.’’ Arnold closes his letter by writing, ‘‘[I]f you can possibly come on, I will, Tuesday, meet you at Baltimore at B[arnum’s Hotel].’’27 The case against Edman Spangler was perhaps the weakest of all the prosecutions. Well known to Booth, Spangler was an old crony who had the longest association with him. It was Spangler whom Booth called to hold his horse on the night of the murder. More important, it was Spangler who was accused of slamming the rear door of the theater immediately after Booth fled across the stage, out of the theater, and into the night. Booth may have duped Spangler, who would pay for being so gullible. The tribunal judges simply did not believe that Booth could have managed his escape from the theater without some sort of help, and the hapless Spangler had provided it. The prosecution saved its best efforts for Mary Surratt and Samuel Mudd. The two defendants who garnered the most public sympathy as innocents received the severest attack by the prosecution. While the other six defendants all had direct ties to Booth, Mary Surratt and Dr. Mudd were portrayed by their attorneys as innocent acquaintances, saying that the government had made a bad mistake in charging them as co-conspirators. Mary was merely a boarding house proprietor who was viewed by many as a victim because of her son, John. Dr. Mudd did nothing more than honor his Hippocratic oath to provide an injured man with medical attention. The prosecution painted a different picture. Mary Surratt not only ‘‘kept the nest that hatched the egg,’’ as President Johnson believed, she willingly did Booth’s bidding, carrying messages to John Lloyd at her tavern in southern Maryland where Booth and Herold would re-outfit themselves at the time of their escape. Furthermore, she helped tighten the noose around her own neck by denying on the night of her arrest that she knew Lewis Powell when he came to her house—even though he had been a boarder in her home.

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The most damaging circumstance for Mary, however, was the absence of her son, John. John Surratt had been introduced to Booth by Samuel Mudd at a meeting in Washington and became Booth’s chief ally. At the time of the assassination he was in Elmira, New York, on a mission for Confederate Secretary of State Judah P. Benjamin. The government considered John Surratt a key player in Booth’s plot; as a Confederate agent, he was an important link to Richmond and to Benjamin. The Confederate Secret Service fell under Benjamin’s authority, and John Surratt had reported directly to Benjamin on more than one occasion as an agent. If the government could not find John Surratt, it would squeeze his mother until he turned himself in. He never did. Surratt was arrested in 1866, seven months after his mother was hanged, and placed on trial in a civil court in the District of Columbia in 1867. He was released after the jury became deadlocked, unable to reach a unanimous verdict. Many thought the result was jury nullification, confirming Stanton’s earlier fears. Samuel Mudd had little more than his status as a physician and a strong defense counsel to fall back on. While his attorney, Thomas Ewing Jr. (Figure 3), performed well in his defense, Mudd hurt his case with his own lies. The prosecution showed that Mudd had lied repeatedly even when given every opportunity to come clean. Innocent men do not withhold the truth or mislead. Mudd did both, and the tribunal ignored his pleas of innocence. Thomas Harris had used the shape of Mudd’s head to conclude that he was ‘‘a natural born liar and deceiver,’’ but the other judges had Mudd’s own statements to show that he had lied repeatedly. Though he adamantly maintained that he had met John Wilkes Booth on only one occasion, the evidence showed that when Booth visited Mudd in the early morning hours of April 15, 1865, it was the fourth time the two men had met.28 When Booth first appeared in Charles County, Maryland, in November 1864, he carried a letter of introduction to Mudd written for him by a known Confederate agent working from

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Figure 3. Major General Thomas Ewing Jr., onetime senator from Ohio, served in several cabinet positions under Presidents William Henry Harrison and John Tyler before Andrew Johnson appointed him Secretary of War in 1868. (Photograph courtesy Edward Steers Jr.)

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Montreal.29 Mudd was the key connection in Booth’s conspiracy, introducing John Surratt and Thomas Harbin, both Confederate agents, to Booth. In the end, Mudd’s status as a physician may have saved him from the gallows, but not from prison. The nine judges voted five to four to hang the doctor. Mudd would be saved by a single vote; a sentence of death required six votes. Mary Surratt had no such luck. For her, the commissioners voted the death penalty. On June 30, the military commission rendered its decision. All eight defendants were found guilty. Lewis Powell, David Herold, George Atzerodt, and Mary Surratt were sentenced to death by hanging. Samuel Mudd, Samuel Arnold, and Michael O’Laughlen were sentenced to life in prison. Edman Spangler was sentenced to six years. The prison terms were to be served in the federal penitentiary at Albany, New York, only to be changed later by Stanton’s order to the military prison at Fort Jefferson located in the Dry Tortugas Islands off the Florida Keys. By moving the prisoners from a federal prison to a military prison, Stanton maintained complete control over their incarceration. Despite the judges’ harsh verdict, few expected Mary Surratt to hang. Following the tribunal’s recommendations on sentencing, five of the nine judges signed a second recommendation asking President Johnson to grant executive clemency to Mary in consideration of her sex and age.30 It was not until July 5, two days before she was scheduled to hang, that Holt carried the commission’s findings along with its recommendation of clemency for Mary Surratt to President Johnson. Johnson signed the papers approving the sentencing recommendations but did not sign the clemency plea for Mary Surratt. When word eventually leaked out that a clemency plea had been rejected by Johnson, he emphatically denied ever seeing a copy of it and claimed that he was not made aware of it until some time after the hanging. Holt was equally emphatic, claiming he had shown the petition to Johnson, who, Holt maintained, ignored it. Who was telling the truth was of little use to Mary Surratt at the time.

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General John Frederick Hartranft, the officer who was given the onerous duty of caring for the prisoners and carrying out the sentences of the tribunal, wrote in his official report to his commanding officer, Major General Winfield Scott Hancock: I did on July 6th 1865 between the hours of 11 A.M. & 12 M., read the ‘‘Findings & Sentences’’ of Lewis [Powell], G. A. Atzerodt, David E. Herold and Mary E. Surratt to each of them and also delivered a copy of the same to each. All this in your [Hancock’s] presence. After I had finished reading the sentences I asked Lewis [Powell] if he had any friends to send for or any special minister of the Gospel whom he wished to see, he replied that his friends and relations were too far away, but that he would like to see Rev. Mr. Striker of Baltimore and Major Eckert, Asst. Secty. Of War who had previously promised him the services of a Baptist Minister. I asked G. A. Atzerodt the same question. He desired to see his brother John C. Atzerodt, brother-inlaw John L. Smith and Marshal McPhail all of Baltimore. Also Mrs. Rose and child, five years of age of Port Tobacco, MD. And some Lutheran minister. I asked David E. Herold the same question, he desired me to notify his family and that they would send him a minister. I also asked Mary E. Surratt, the same question. She desired me to send for Father Walters, Father Wiget, and Mr. Brophy and her daughter, who had been staying with her mother though she chanced to be absent in the city at this time. All of these persons were promptly sent for.31

Shortly after the prisoners received official word of their fate on the morning of July 6, the arsenal carpenters began work on a gallows. They worked throughout the night until the early morning of the 7th, the day of the executions. During the entire period the

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prisoners could hear the sawing and hammering as they waited in their cells. Dr. Mudd and the three other prisoners who had received only prison sentences had not been made aware of their sentences, leaving them to ponder their fate. At 11:00 a.m. the carpenters had finished their grisly work and the large scaffolding stood ready for its grim assignment. Just to the right of the scaffold a squad of soldiers had stacked four wooden gun boxes to hold the bodies of the four condemned prisoners. Four narrow slots were dug in the dry earth, four feet deep, seven feet long, and three feet wide. Shortly after noon the preparations were finished. The graves had been dug, the gun boxes stacked, and the scaffold securely buttressed. The scaffold flooring consisted of two large trap doors, or ‘‘drops,’’ six feet long by four feet wide. Each trap was held in place by two upright beams. Each beam was attended by a soldier whose sole duty was to keep it secure until given the signal to knock it from its wooden base. No one except the assigned soldier was to touch the support beams. At the prescribed signal each beam would be struck a sharp blow using a long fourby-four post, knocking the beam from beneath the drops. With their supports knocked free, the platforms would drop, swinging on their hinges. The four bodies would fall six feet only to be snapped short of the ground by the rope fastened about each neck. If the hangings proceeded properly, the condemned prisoners’ necks would be broken and they would die instantly as a result of massive spinal cord injury. If the hangings proceeded improperly, they would slowly strangle to death dangling at the end of their ropes. The spectators began to grow restless waiting for the appointed hour. The warrant called for the executions to be completed by 2 o’clock and it was now a few minutes before one. David Herold was lying on a cot in his cell. He was pale and nervous as he and his sisters listened to the ministering words of Reverend Dr. Olds.32 Lewis Powell sat stoically in his cell, resigned to his fate, visited only by the Reverend Dr. Abram D. Gillette. Atzerodt’s mother and

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his common-law wife sat in his cell disbelieving what was about to happen. Fathers Wiget and Walters sat praying with Mary Surratt as she held her sobbing daughter, Anna, in her arms.33 At two minutes past one o’clock the four condemned prisoners were led from the penitentiary building into the courtyard. Mary Surratt came first, supported on either side by Fathers Wiget and Walters. Atzerodt came next, followed by Herold. Last to emerge was Lewis Powell. accompanied by Reverend Gillette. Leading the procession was General John F. Hartranft and members of his immediate staff.34 After each of the condemned had been seated in the chairs provided for them, Hartranft read the order of execution. As soon as Hartranft finished, Dr. Gillette made a statement on behalf of Powell, thanking Hartranft and his men for the kind manner in which he was treated during his imprisonment.35 The prisoners were then bound around their arms and legs with strips of white linen. The nooses were adjusted so that the knots lay snug against the side of the head in order to ensure a quick and clean break of the neck. Atzerodt was the only one who spoke aloud: ‘‘Good-bye, gentlemen who is [sic] before me. May we all meet in the other world.’’36 It was now twenty-one minutes after one o’clock. Captain Christian Rath, a precise soldier who was officially charged with carrying out the execution, had seen that every detail was ready for the hanging. Making sure that everyone, except the four condemned, had stepped free of the trapdoors, Rath clapped his hands three times. Four soldiers swung the pair of bludgeons forward, striking the upright braces near their bases. The crack from their rams resonated throughout the courtyard as the pillars fell away. The eyes of every spectator were transfixed on the wooden trapdoors, as they remained momentarily suspended in mid-air. Time seemed frozen. Then, with a loud, screeching sound, the platforms fell from beneath the bodies. The four wretched souls dropped in unison with a snapping thud. The stain of innocent blood had been removed from the land.

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Notes 1. The statement by Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton that serves as the title of this chapter is taken from a War Department circular dated April 20, 1865. See Official Records, Series I, Volume 46, Section 3, 847. 2. Johnson’s executive order appears in Edward Steers Jr., ed., The Trial: The Assassination of President Lincoln and the Trial of the Conspirators (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2003), 2. 3. Speed’s opinion is reprinted in Steers, ed., The Trial, 403–9. 4. A xerographic copy of the original order (in private hands) is reproduced in Lincolnian, a newsletter of the Lincoln Group of the District of Columbia. See Edward Steers Jr., ‘‘To Remove the Stain of Innocent Blood from the Land,’’ Lincolnian, vol. 1, no. 2 (November–December 1982), 4–5. 5. Martial law came into existence in the District of Columbia as a result of Lincoln’s proclamation of September 24, 1862. See Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 8 vols. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953–55), 5:436. Martial law was still in effect at the time of Lincoln’s assassination and the trial of the alleged conspirators. It was not revoked by President Johnson until after the trial and executions had taken place. 6. Howard K. Beale, Diary of Gideon Welles, 3 vols. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1960) 2:303–4. 7. John Surratt was hiding in Canada. He would make his escape to Italy, where he secured a position in the Papal Zuoaves. He was eventually arrested in November 1866 in Alexandria, Egypt, and returned to the United States, where he was tried in a civil court in June 1867. A mistrial resulted when the jury could not reach a verdict, and Surratt was released. 8. Ibid. 9. Steers, ed., The Trial, xvii. 10. Ben: Perley Poore, The Conspiracy Trial for the Murder of the President, 4 vols. (1865; reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1972), I:12. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid, 13. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid, 11. 16. Thomas M. Harris, Assassination of Lincoln. A History of the Great Conspiracy (Boston: American Citizen Company, 1892), 80. 17. Edward Steers Jr., ‘‘Terror—1860s Style,’’ North & South, 5 (May 2002): 12–18.

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18. Conover’s name appears as ‘‘Sanford’’ throughout the trial record. However, he spelled his name ‘‘Sandford.’’ 19. Steers, ed., The Trial, 24–37. 20. Thomas R. Turner, Beware the People Weeping. Public Opinion and the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982), 143. 21. Thomas R. Turner, The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln (Malabar, Fla.: Krieger Publishing Company, 1999), 50. 22. Steers, ed.,The Trial, 29. 23. William A. Tidwell, James O. Hall, and David W. Gaddy, Come Retribution: The Confederate Secret Service and the Assassination of Lincoln (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1988), 329–30. 24. Argument of William E. Doster in Steers, ed., The Trial, 311. 25. Argument of Frederick Stone in Steers, ed., The Trial, 268–75. 26. Argument of William E. Doster in Steers, ed., The Trial, 305. 27. Steers, ed., The Trial, 388. 28. See Edward Steers Jr., Blood on the Moon (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001). 29. Ibid. The agent was Patrick Charles Martin. 30. The five members were David O. Hunter, August V. Kautz, Robert S. Foster, James E. A. Ekin, and Charles H. Tompkins. Not signing the recommendation were Lew Wallace, Thomas M. Harris, David R. Clendenin, and Albion P. Howe. 31. Letterbook of John F. Hartranft, Pennsylvania State Archives. 32. National Intelligencer (Washington), July 8, 1865. 33. Ibid. 34. Ibid 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid.

CHAPTER 8

Process versus Truth in the Case of the Lincoln Conspiracy Michael W. Kauffman

We are all familiar with the typical charge given to a jury as it begins deliberations on the fate of a criminal defendant. ‘‘You,’’ says the judge, ‘‘are the sole and exclusive judges of what the truth is.’’ At their core, criminal courts are supposed to be a search for truth. The process is designed to recognize that people lie, misunderstand, or remember things that did not happen. Cross-examination and opposing testimony expose these human foibles, and in time a form of truth emerges. Only then can the jury reach a just response to the one question laid before it: Has the government proved, by the evidence brought into court, that the prisoner in the dock is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt? The question is extraordinarily narrow, and though it serves the needs of the criminal process, the interests of history and of justice are not the same. As historians, we want to know the whole story, and for this, the courts are not much help. This was especially true at the trial of the so-called Lincoln conspirators. Almost every book written on the Lincoln assassination is drawn largely from the transcripts of the trial testimony, which are

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regarded as a vital source of information about the case. Indeed, they are central to the story. But some authors have viewed them as the final word on all facts and issues. This is a grave mistake. The revelations of witnesses may seem to prove a point, but in fact they are as apt to mislead as to inform. They are the product of carefully guided questioning and do not represent a full and open discussion of the points in dispute. In other words, trial testimony provides only a small part of the truth, and the historian must look elsewhere for the context that will take the spin off those words. To omit this step is nothing short of irresponsible. The narrow focus of the conspirators’ trial record is not apparent at first glance. Three hundred seventy-one witnesses took the stand, producing 5,010 handwritten pages of testimony. Such a mass of information ought to be more than enough to flesh out a story. But even though the volume of material is large, the contents are superficial. Government prosecutors spent nearly one-fourth of their time discussing Confederate officials who were not even in the prisoners’ dock, and the rest of their efforts were spread among eight defendants with seven distinctly different stories. The principal figure in the case was not even among them. John Wilkes Booth had been killed while trying to evade capture, and consequently he did not occupy a significant share of the Judge Advocates’ attention.1 Even a brief inspection of the testimony reveals its weakness as a historical record. It is weaker still in light of what the government actually knew and could have produced at the time. Somewhere in the gulf between official records and actual knowledge is the larger truth behind the Lincoln conspiracy. Certainly, in that region lies the most interesting part of the story. Unfortunately, those associated documents are also incomplete. The War Department investigation produced thousands of pages of data, and much of it found its way to Colonel Henry L. Burnett, one of the prosecutors in the trial. Burnett’s interest was limited to

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the defendants themselves, and being under no obligation to keep or share his files, he was free to discard anything he did not consider useful. Even so, the documents he saved have often been ignored altogether in favor of the published versions of trial testimony. That is unfortunate, because the most popular of these was edited by Burnett himself but attributed to Benn Pitman, the prosecutor’s assistant. Here the testimony was paraphrased and only loosely represented what transpired in the courtroom. Pitman himself was a stickler for accuracy, and he did not care much for Burnett’s handling of the records. Privately, he pronounced the work ‘‘a great heap of rubbish.’’2 For historians, though, the real problem is not the transcripts but the testimony itself. It was filtered through a series of rules that, however well intentioned, effectively skewed our perception of what was really important in the case. This effect was not peculiar to military tribunals, such as the one that tried this case, but was common to all criminal trials of that period. In 1865, the rules of evidence were more restrictive than they are today, and every advantage seemed to be given to prosecutors, who guided the process from investigation to trial and beyond. Their charges and specifications laid out the boundaries of the case, and by the rules of criminal procedure, the defense could respond only to the evidence already brought in. With complete authority to frame the issues, prosecutors wielded enormous power over the conduct of the trial. This system excluded many a reasonable defense. Note, for example, what happened to defendant Edman Spangler. The actor Samuel K. Chester testified that Booth had planned to capture Lincoln in Ford’s Theatre, and he said that Booth had wanted someone connected with the theater to hold the door open while he and his cohorts carried the president out. Because Chester had declined the job, it stood to reason that Spangler, the only defendant employed at Ford’s, had been recruited to fill that position. Spangler’s attorney, Thomas Ewing, was ready with an explanation, but the

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rules of procedure slapped him down. Ewing called C. Dwight Hess, manager of Grover’s National Theatre, to show that Booth had cased his theater in addition to Ford’s but showed no interest in arranging for inside assistance. A prosecutor, John A. Bingham, objected to this line of questioning, saying that the government had not introduced evidence of any plot at the National Theatre. ‘‘The introduction of [such] proof,’’ Bingham added, ‘‘can neither excuse nor tend to excuse any man connected with Ford’s Theatre for any act of his [own]. . . .’’ In other words, Spangler was the defendant, not Booth, and only Spangler’s acts would be up for discussion. The commission excused Hess from further questioning, and nothing more was said about Booth’s alternate plans for the assassination. The legal record went silent, and a gap in the historical record went unfilled as well.3 One cannot help but wonder how much information has been lost through such legal maneuvering. Moreover, omissions were not the only result of these machinations. There were many distortions as well. Prosecutors accused Dr. Samuel A. Mudd of meeting with conspirators John Surratt and John Wilkes Booth at the latter’s Washington hotel room to discuss a plot against the president. Their witness Louis J. Weichmann testified that this meeting took place on January 15, and he gave several compelling reasons for fixing the date in his memory. But Thomas Ewing tried to impeach Weichmann’s account of the meeting, and his first line of attack was the date. After showing, through opposing testimony, that Dr. Mudd was not in Washington on January 15, Ewing brought in another witness to show that the event Weichmann described actually took place on December 23. But here again, John Bingham objected to this deviation from the rules. Nothing, Bingham claimed, had been said about a meeting in December, and the defense had no right to introduce such an event on their own. As a result of Bingham’s motion, Ewing was prevented from mentioning any meeting other

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than the one alleged to have taken place in January. In his final summation of the case, he said that no such event occurred, and this has led modern writers to conclude, unfairly, that Dr. Mudd had denied he ever saw Booth in Washington. In fact, Mudd was eager to give his own account of the meeting, but he was not allowed to do so.4 Louis Weichmann had seemed unshakable on the stand, yet he was wrong, and it was left to historians—not the system—to correct the record. The narrow track laid by the government had prevented the defense from challenging an important witness on the other side. The prisoners were always at a disadvantage when trying to contradict the government. Discovery laws were almost unknown, and the accused never really knew what surprises awaited them. Though defense attorneys were entitled to a witness list, they often had little idea of what the people on it would say when they took the stand. Normally they waited to find out, but that was a custom that Frederick Aiken, the neophyte attorney for Mary Surratt, wanted to break. Aiken went to the National Hotel in search of Detective George Cottingham, whose name had appeared on the government’s witness list. After a long conversation, Aiken felt he knew what Cottingham was all about. But when the detective was sworn before the military commission, his story changed in all its details. Aiken was dumbfounded, and all he could do was stare vacantly as the witness smugly walked out of the room. Recovering his wits, Aiken recalled Cottingham to the stand, where the detective cheerfully admitted he had misled the attorney when they first spoke. ‘‘Then you gave me to understand,’’ said Aiken, ‘‘and you are ready now to swear to it, that you told [me] a lie?’’ ‘‘Undoubtedly I told you a lie there [in the hotel],’’ said Cottingham, ‘‘for I thought you had no business to ask me. . . . I state here that I did lie to you, but when put on my oath, I told the truth.’’

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This drew a few snickers in the courtroom, but Cottingham had violated no laws, and nobody raised an objection to his unseemly tactic.5 The lack of discovery kept the trial focused, but it also kept useful information from the military commission. The commission never heard, for example, that some of the government’s witnesses had changed stories since their first interviews, and it did not know about other contradictions that lay buried in War Department files. Prosecutors were free to keep these things to themselves. More important, they were not required to divulge evidence that might corroborate the defense position. Had it been otherwise, the story might have taken on a whole new look. In the week following the assassination, photographs of John Wilkes Booth were distributed to detectives as an aid in the manhunt. According to some investigators, Dr. Mudd was shown one of these and was hesitant to identify its subject as the injured man who had come to him for aid after the president’s shooting. What the detectives did not say, however, was that the same photograph had drawn similar reactions from other witnesses. Mary Van Tyne, Daniel Loughran, Silas T. Cobb, and Brooke Stabler were all unimpressed with the photograph detectives were using, but only Mrs. Van Tyne said so in open court. ‘‘I think [Booth was] a better looking man than that is,’’ she testified, ‘‘but I think it is the man I saw. But it is a poor likeness of him.’’ Sergeant Cobb and Brooke Stabler had told investigators essentially the same thing. And Loughran was more specific. Loughran said that a standing portrait that had been shown to him earlier that day looked much more like Booth than the seated picture presented to him later. Yet despite the concurrence of others, Dr. Mudd was left under a cloud for having questioned the accuracy of that seated photograph. This is one of many small factors that weighed against him at trial.6 In fact, almost every point that Mudd’s defense tried to make could have been corroborated by War Department files, yet the

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defendant himself would never know it. Let us return to the key issue of Booth’s identity. Mudd, who had not seen his injured visitor in the daylight hours, told authorities that he was not sure he recognized him from an overnight visit the previous winter. Moreover, he claimed to have learned of the assassination in Bryantown, where he was told that someone named Boyle, not Booth, had been involved in the shooting. John H. Boyle was well known in the area, and the mere mention of his name gave Dr. Mudd a momentary doubt that a different man—the one lying injured back at his house—was actually the president’s killer. Detectives doubted the doctor’s sincerity, but they did nothing to verify his story. In fact, it was Lieutenant David Dana who had brought the name of Boyle to Bryantown that day. In telegrams and dispatches he sent to Washington on the morning of April 15, he claimed to have heard Boyle’s name while traveling through the village of Piscataway, south of Washington. This was the information he had distributed at Bryantown a short time later. David Dana could have cleared up another issue as well. When Dr. Mudd’s report of predawn visitors reached him on April 16, Lieutenant Dana chose to ignore it in favor of more timely (but mistaken) information he had received from a source a few miles farther south. Thus, the official follow-up on Mudd’s report was delayed, and detectives blamed the doctor, rather than the lieutenant, for this.7 Mudd’s claims on the identity issue would have found further support in another source known to the government. On April 27, conspirator David Herold was brought back to Washington and interrogated by Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt and his assistant John Bingham. Herold told them that Booth had given the name Tyson when he went to have his broken leg treated on the morning of April 15. Claiming (falsely) that he had not been present at that time, Herold implied that some other conspirator—‘‘a fellow named Henson’’—might have been traveling with the assassin. It is surely

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no coincidence that ‘‘Tyson’’ and ‘‘Henson’’ were the names Herold had used when he and Booth had stopped at Mudd’s home. But when Dr. Mudd gave those names to the investigators, they attributed the deception to him, not to Herold. David Herold told authorities a great deal after his capture, but the public knew almost nothing of what he said. He was questioned at length soon after his arrival in Washington, but the transcript was never entered into the record. He also wrote a lengthy statement during the course of the trial, but his statement has never seen the light of day. This apparent silencing of Herold surprised no one at the time. It did not violate any law or rule of evidence existing in 1865. In fact, it was in full conformity with the rule on ‘‘defendant declarations,’’ which had a long history in common law. By the end of the Civil War, it had been abandoned only in the state of Maine. By the terms of this rule, the statements of the accused could never be used in his own defense. Though the prosecutor might offer a defendant’s words into evidence, he could do so only if they were uttered as a component of the crime; otherwise they were regarded as self-serving and, presumably, contrived for the defendant’s future use. The rule was closely observed, especially when the charge was conspiracy. Francis Wharton’s A Treatise on American Criminal Law was the leading authority on legal procedure at the time, and it clearly spelled out the terms and conditions under which the rule took effect. ‘‘When . . .,’’ said Wharton, ‘‘the common enterprise is at an end, whether by accomplishment or abandonment, it is not material, no one is permitted by any subsequent act or declaration of his own to affect the others. His confession . . . even though by the plea of guilty, is not admissible in evidence, as such against any but himself.’’ Though a defendant might be convicted on his own confession, none of his accomplices could suffer the same fate by the words of a co-defendant.

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The rule on defendant declarations was, in fact, the most common point of contention in the conspiracy trial. John Bingham, in his usual hyperbolic style, explained its rationale: ‘‘Those who are charged with crime,’’ said Bingham, ‘‘are never permitted on their own motion to prove their random declarations to third persons, because if it were so, the greatest criminal that cursed the earth and disgraced our common humanity could make an abundant amount of testimony out of the mouth of the most truthful people on the planet.’’ Thus, the military commission never saw the confessions of George Atzerodt, the interrogations of Mary Surratt, or the statement of Samuel Arnold. Even the diary of John Wilkes Booth fell under the rule, because Booth was alleged to have conspired with each of the defendants.8 No other legal issue occupied a greater share of the Judge Advocates’ attention, and no other spread its influence over the entire sweep of the story. Its effects are easily seen, both in the way Booth developed his plot and in the way historians have viewed the case in subsequent years. We return to the example of Dr. Mudd. Time and again, John Bingham accused Mudd of withholding information from detectives who spoke to him during the week after the shooting. Indeed, the trial record in isolation makes the doctor appear less than candid. Bingham implied that this alleged concealment was a component of the crime, even though he knew that Mudd’s reticence was anything but voluntary. Once named as a defendant, Mudd was not allowed to discuss what he had told authorities, and his signed statement could be brought before the commission only second-hand, through the testimony of the man who had taken it. Colonel Henry H. Wells did not read the statement to the commission but offered snippets of it from memory, mixed with general recollections of his talks with the doctor during that crucial week in April. As it happened, Wells was not always able to recall with certainty what Mudd had told him.9

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The result of all this was a strong preference for hearsay, and this situation had unfortunate results for history, as well as for the defendants. If the accused had anything to say, he could say it only through the mouths of hostile witnesses, who did not always tell—or even know—the truth. On April 17, Detective Eaton G. Horner participated in the arrest of Samuel Arnold at Fortress Monroe. Arnold had been one of the original conspirators. After a falling-out with Booth, he left the Washington area to get away from impending trouble. Nevertheless, he was the first major suspect taken into custody. Upon his arrest, Arnold offered to tell all he knew of Booth’s conspiracy. His lengthy statement, taken down verbatim, was inadmissible under the law, so Detective Horner paraphrased it for the court. His account was grossly inaccurate. Horner said that, according to Arnold, Booth had been given two letters of introduction the previous fall from a man in Canada, and one of these, in Horner’s version, was addressed to Dr. Samuel Mudd. Though the letter was ostensibly about real estate, its real meaning was presumed to be something more sinister. Its origin in Canada gave it conspiratorial overtones, and its mention of Dr. Mudd left the unmistakable impression that the doctor had been a vital player in an international plot against the President. Mudd’s attorney, Thomas Ewing, was not about to let that impression stand. Ewing had already read Arnold’s full statement in the newspapers, and he knew that Horner’s account of it was blatantly false. He and his associates challenged Horner, but the witness refused to back down, and the damaging testimony was allowed to stand, pitting the defendant Arnold against the defendant Mudd. In fact, Arnold had said nothing in his lengthy statement about any letter of introduction, or about Dr. Samuel Mudd. Arnold had never even heard of Mudd.10 At the time of the trial, Arnold’s statement was still in War Department files, away from the prying eyes of defense attorneys. Had

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those attorneys been given access to that and other documents, the trial might have taken a different tack. Certainly, the accused would have sought the means to use the ‘‘defendant declaration’’ rule to challenge the testimony of some of their accusers—specifically, witnesses John M. Lloyd and Louis Weichmann. Both had liabilities of their own. As the tenant of Mary Surratt’s tavern in Surrattsville, Maryland, Lloyd had helped the conspirators hide weapons for a plot to spirit the president out of Washington. On the night of the assassination, he gave one of those guns to Booth and Herold as they fled the scene of the crime. During the next few days, he denied having seen anyone on the night of the shooting, thus thwarting the pursuit, and he admitted otherwise only when threatened with hanging. When the trial began, Lloyd became a lightning rod, as several detectives expressed their disgust that he was not prosecuted. Even so, one investigator filed a claim for reward money, based on his having arrested Lloyd. Surely, Mary Surratt’s tenant had played an active role in helping Booth escape. If the defense could have had its way, he would have been charged as a conspirator as well.11 Another witness, Louis J. Weichmann, was equally vulnerable. By the start of the trial, Judge Holt’s Bureau of Military Justice had ample evidence that Weichmann had provided sensitive information to the Confederacy; that he was much more intimate with the conspirators than he would admit; and that in spite of sworn claims to the contrary, he lived in mortal fear of prosecution. They knew that Weichmann had gone to Baltimore with John Surratt when the latter brought Lewis Powell into the plot. They knew that Mary Surratt had run errands for Booth with Louis Weichmann’s help. In fact, it could be said that the prosecution’s star witness had been much too close to the conspiracy to be ignorant of its intentions. Of course, Weichmann’s case was not that simple. If charged, he could not testify, and he was the only person who could place Booth and the defendants together at all the critical times. Prosecutors

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must have struggled over what to do with him. Fortunately, the only people who knew of Weichmann’s predicament were prosecutors or prisoners, so public disclosure was unlikely. Joseph Holt could take his time to weigh the options.12 The lack of discovery and the rule on defendant declarations were more than mere technicalities; in fact, they figured largely in the way Booth developed his plot. Booth knew as well as anyone that a person who looked guilty was almost sure to be charged. Plea bargaining was illegal, and prosecutors had no right to ignore the evidence or look the other way. And once charges were filed, the system itself would neutralize the suspect as a threat to his cohorts. Booth had staked his life and the security of his plot on that idea. Thus, it is one of the great ironies of this case that, by gathering evidence against those he didn’t trust, Booth was able to turn the criminal justice system into a protective umbrella for his criminal enterprise. His friend and fellow actor Sam Chester was one of the first to learn how this worked. When Chester refused to join the plot, Booth knew that a simple warning would guarantee his silence. ‘‘I have documents in my possession,’’ Booth said, ‘‘that can ruin you for life.’’ The two had exchanged letters about a ‘‘speculation’’ that Booth had not yet explained. This gave their correspondence a vagueness that, in hindsight, may have looked like secretiveness. Chester could see how such letters might be taken in light of Booth’s real aims. He said nothing of the matter to anyone, and Booth’s threat served its purpose. A similar threat brought David Herold back into line when Herold threatened to abandon Booth in his flight from the city. ‘‘There are parties in Washington that would implicate you,’’ Booth told his companion. Considering the difficulty of explaining oneself from the prisoner’s dock, this was a threat that had real teeth. Calling Booth’s bluff was a life-or-death gamble.13

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Booth went to great lengths to make sure this kind of threat was effective. Samuel B. Arnold learned this the hard way after he caused a rift among Booth’s cohorts in March 1865. They had once planned to abduct the president on one of his rides into the country, then deliver him to the Confederacy in Virginia. With Lincoln a hostage, the Northern government would have had to resume its former policy of exchanging prisoners—something the South desperately needed. From this, the Confederate army could replenish its ranks and thousands of lives would be saved. In theory, nobody would be hurt. But in mid-January 1865, Booth changed the plan to something entirely unworkable, and from that time on, he seemed fixated on a scheme to capture Lincoln in front of a theater audience. Appalled and horrified, Arnold tried to talk some sense into his friend, but with limited success. Eventually, he took his case to their associates. In response to Arnold’s grumbling, Booth called a meeting on March 15, and there Booth argued once more in favor of his theater plan. Questioning his sincerity and even his sanity, Arnold called Booth’s attention to the difficulties of such a scheme, and he pointed out that the original motive for abduction—to force a prisoner exchange—had become a moot point, because an earlier exchange agreement had already gone back into effect. Harsh words and threats passed between them, and suddenly Arnold found himself a target of Booth’s ire.14 Somehow Booth convinced his cohorts that they still had something to gain from an abduction, and they agreed to give it a try in its original form, in the country near the Soldiers’ Home. On the morning of March 17, Booth called them together and said that he had just learned of an opportunity to implement their plan. Lincoln, he said, was attending a play at a hospital north of the city, and not too far from the site they had originally selected for the abduction. They might be able to capture him on his way back home. Booth told them to wait for him in a restaurant at the edge of town, and

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while they headed there, he rode alone toward the hospital to check on the situation. In time, Booth returned with the news that the president had not gone to the hospital after all. The plan was off, he said. They had failed and might as well give up their scheme for good. Relieved, Arnold and his fellow conspirator Michael O’Laughlen soon returned to Baltimore, perhaps thinking the plot and the danger were finally behind them. But John Wilkes Booth had other ideas. As long as Arnold remained at home in Baltimore, only Booth and O’Laughlen knew of his relation to Booth. When Arnold grew skeptical of their chance for success, Booth wanted to tie him to the conspiracy. He moved him into a Washington boarding house, to which Booth made frequent and noticeable visits. After the divisive meeting on March 15, he dropped Samuel Arnold’s name in front of anyone who might be paying attention, ensuring that Arnold’s connection to Booth became common knowledge. Had he thought about it at the time, Arnold might have grown uneasy. He might also have been distressed at the openness of that so-called abduction attempt of March 17. He and his fellow conspirators had not met in a remote location, as common sense dictated, but had gathered in a public restaurant, in the presence of witnesses who had seen them all together. And he would have found the next day’s (March 18) issue of the Daily National Intelligencer equally puzzling. According to that paper, Abraham Lincoln had spent the previous afternoon in the city, at a ceremony at the National Hotel—Booth’s own lodging—where the governor of Indiana was presented a captured Confederate flag. Apparently, Lincoln had had no intention of going to see a play, as Booth had claimed.15 A little more than a week after these events, a messenger arrived at the Baltimore County farm where Arnold had taken up residence and delivered a summons from Booth. Though Arnold responded immediately, Booth was nowhere to be found. Determined to set matters straight, Arnold returned home and wrote his old associate

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a letter. He expressed his surprise at being called back to the plot so soon. Surely, he said, his family would wonder why he had returned to Washington in such a hurry. Though he might rejoin Booth at ‘‘a time more propitious,’’ he preferred to wait and ‘‘see how it will be taken in R d’’—perhaps in the hope that someone in the Confederate capital would have sense enough to squelch the plan. After three days of emotional turmoil, Arnold mailed the letter on March 30. Only then did he realize what a foolish thing he had done, and with O’Laughlen in tow, he raced to Washington in hopes of minimizing the damage. His conversation with Booth was surprisingly friendly. Booth said that there was nothing to worry about; the scheme had been called off. Arnold mentioned the letter and asked Booth to destroy it when it arrived. Booth promised he would, but that letter was just what he needed from Arnold, and they both knew it. So Arnold backed quietly away and took the earliest ship to Fortress Monroe. He was anxious to get away, but he could not get far enough. Two weeks later Booth shot the president, and Arnold’s letter was one of the first pieces of evidence the authorities found. It did indeed seal Arnold’s fate. No matter how cooperative he was, the government simply could not ignore the evidence against him. Charges were brought, and another insider was compromised and muzzled. In retrospect, Booth took many chances, but he covered himself well. Existing records show that this frame-up strategy was used dozens of times in the months leading up to Lincoln’s death. Typical of the victims was John Mathews, an actor in the stock company of Ford’s Theatre. Early in 1865, Booth confided to Mathews that he was planning to abduct the president, and he urged him to take part in the scheme. But Mathews recoiled at the idea, and for a time, Booth did little to conceal his anger. He spoke disparagingly of the young actor, calling him a coward, ‘‘not fit to live.’’ He told Samuel

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Chester that he had ‘‘documents in his possession that would implicate [Mathews]’’ in the plot, and indeed he did. He had persuaded the actor to deliver a parcel to a friend in Baltimore, along with a note, in Mathews’s own hand and over his own signature, explaining what Booth’s friend should do with it. Though innocently written, the note could be retained for insurance against exposure. Booth had told Chester that he ‘‘wouldn’t mind sacrificing’’ Mathews, and in fact, he nearly did just that. Pretending to put aside their differences, Booth cozied up to Mathews, visiting him privately in the room he briefly rented across from Ford’s Theatre— the same one in which President Lincoln later died—and he even presented him with a beautiful sword box as a peace offering. Unknown to Mathews, the gift was intended as a trap. It was the same kind of box the conspirators had used for transporting arms, and in light of later events, Mathews might have paid a terrible price for being caught with it.16 Clear-eyed and cold-blooded, Booth pursued a strategy of creating apparent guilt. For Arnold, Mathews, and others, it was not their knowledge of the plot that made them targets, but the uneasiness they caused in Booth. An intricate web of evidence surrounded all the people he had come to distrust, and almost all of it was deliberately contrived to neutralize their effectiveness as witnesses. Some of Booth’s victims were not even aware of his scheme but were in a position to learn what his intentions were. The key determinant was trust—or the lack thereof. Not even Booth’s relatives were spared. When passing through Philadelphia, Booth usually stopped at the home of his sister, Asia Booth Clarke. On one of these visits he told her (falsely) that he had been doing secret work for the Confederacy. It was the kind of information that would have enraged her husband, actor John Sleeper Clarke. Booth and Clarke detested each other, and their political shouting matches had caused some tense moments at family gatherings. Not without reason, Booth came to feel that if Clarke

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had seen or overheard something incriminating, he wouldn’t hesitate to use it against his brother-in-law. So in November 1864, Booth stopped at the Clarke house once more and placed a large envelope in the family safe. Inside was a letter, ostensibly to Clarke (‘‘My Dear Sir’’), in which he explained why he intended ‘‘to make a prisoner of this man [Lincoln] to whom the country owes all her troubles.’’ Though John Sleeper Clarke was an unlikely suspect in any of Booth’s intrigues, the presence of this letter in his home would lead to his arrest as a possible conspirator.17 Booth’s quest for protective evidence nearly became an obsession, and for good reason. With such evidence, he could coax behavior, guarantee silence, and, in short, do everything necessary to develop a serious plot during the most paranoid of times. This alone explains the most puzzling aspect of Booth’s plot: his apparent recklessness when the lives and safety of his own people were at risk. He didn’t transact his business in dark corners, whispering to his cohorts and doing all he could to protect them from potential witnesses. On the contrary, he appeared to do everything in the open, in the presence of strangers whose attention would surely be drawn to the handsome, famous actor and the working-class men who didn’t seem to belong in his company. More to the point, he seemed to draw closer to those he had less reason to trust, such as the drunken George Atzerodt, the distrustful Dr. Mudd, and the nosy Louis Weichmann. Booth’s method was effective, and ultimately it gave the War Department a way out of a dilemma. It needed witnesses, but almost everyone who had useful information had been compromised by Booth’s tactics. If the government used such witnesses, it might be forced to support that witness before an organized and hostile defense. Could it do so without conceding that the evidence was not always what it seemed to be? Fortunately for Judge Holt and his staff, John Wilkes Booth had left one piece of evidence that left the prosecution with one supportable witness.

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Booth had taken great pains to assemble evidence against Louis Weichmann, the boarder at Mary Surratt’s house, but Booth had kept one item he should have destroyed: a letter, sent to Weichmann on March 19, 1865, that showed him as a frightened and baffled bystander. Father Joseph B. Menu, priest and mentor to both Weichmann and John Surratt, had written the letter in response to one in which Weichmann had tried to unburden himself about the puzzling activities at the Surratt house. It was clear from the priest’s response that Weichmann did not know what to make of things, and that he feared that the people around him were involved in disloyal acts. What later added credence to the letter’s contents was the fact that Weichmann himself knew nothing about its existence. The letter was addressed to him at the Surratt house, but someone there had intercepted it before it reached the addressee. Authorities found it when sorting through the papers of John Wilkes Booth.18 The Menu letter was all Booth needed to prove that Weichmann posed a threat. He acted accordingly and stepped up his efforts to frame the hapless boarder at every turn. From that point on, every trip and every meeting was treated as another opportunity to create the impression that Weichmann was deeply involved in the plot against the president. In time, the record became overwhelming. But Father Menu unraveled Booth’s work. The priest’s letter had given Judge Holt and his associates unmistakable evidence that Louis Weichmann had not been a knowing, willing participant in Booth’s designs after all. Knowing this, they could use his testimony in good conscience. As Joseph Holt knew, such evidence, when taken at face value, could implicate many people, both in and out of the conspirators’ inner circle. Thus, the stain of guilt was more likely to affect the better sort of people—the unwilling, the distrustful, and the openly hostile—because these were the people Booth feared the most. As

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potential witnesses, they suffered the most from Booth’s heartless manipulations. Thus did the criminal justice system as it existed in 1865 serve the purposes of John Wilkes Booth. The challenge for historians, now, is to recognize that the nineteenth-century legal record does not offer the final word on the Lincoln tragedy. The criminal process brings out only a part of the truth, and in many ways, a small slice of truth is just another form of lie. Notes 1. A statistical analysis of the trial, undertaken by the present writer, is forthcoming. 2. Benn Pitman to Thomas Ewing Jr., July 11, 1865, in Ewing Family Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. Though Pitman said here, ‘‘I am hard at work on the testimony,’’ he was in no way responsible for the wording that would appear in print. He was so disenchanted with the work that he became a lifelong critic of the commission and even left the phonography business (briefly, as it turned out) to embark on a second career in woodworking. His work and story are featured prominently in the Cincinnati Art Museum. 3. The defense’s responsive role is spelled out in several texts, including Stephen Vincent Benet, A Treatise on Military Law and the Practice of CourtsMartial (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1864), 287. Hess’s testimony and the Ewing–Bingham exchange are in Ben: Perley Poore, The Conspiracy Trial for the Murder of the President, 2 vols. (Boston: J. E. Tilton, 1865), 2:539–41. 4. Weichmann in Poore, Conspiracy Trial, 1:70–71, 1:94–101. Weichmann did not concede he was wrong about the date until May 25, 1866, when being interviewed by a congressional investigator. See Weichmann interrogation in the Papers of Benjamin F. Butler, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Box 175. 5. Cottingham in Poore, Conspiracy Trial, 2:216. 6. For changed stories in the record, compare Mary Van Tyne’s interrogation with her testimony. Record Group 153, Records of the Judge Advocate General’s office, on Microcopy M-599, Lincoln Assassination Suspects File, reel 6, frame 438 (hereinafter LAS), National Archives; and Poore, Conspiracy Trial, 1:139–43. For contradictions, see the statements of Alexander Lovett and Joshua Lloyd under oath. Poore, Conspiracy Trial, 1:260–70, 1:273–81. Their

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claims, as well as those of William Williams, Simon Gavacan, and Aquilla R. Allen are in Record Group 94, the records of the Adjutant General’s Office in M-619, reel 455, beginning at frame 598 and reel 456, frames 488, 492, 497, and 501. For witness reactions to Booth’s photographs, see Mary Van Tyne in Poore, Conspiracy Trial, 1:140; Brooke Stabler in LAS, 6:136; Daniel Loughran in LAS 5:135; and Silas T. Cobb in LAS 4:174. 7. David D. Dana in M-619, 458:467. In a reward claim sent to the Congress, George Cottingham identified Dana’s source as Nodley Anderson, a hotel keeper in Piscataway. See Cottingham’s file in Record Group 233, House Committee on Claims, National Archives. 8. Quote from Francis Wharton, A Treatise on American Criminal Law (Philadelphia: Kay and Brothers, 1886), section 703. The rule remained unchanged from the edition cited in the conspiracy trial: American Criminal Law (Philadelphia: Kay and Brothers, 1853). At 1:358, Wharton says that treason defendants were an exception to the rule. Bingham quote in Poore, 2:183. Note that confessions, which are intended to concede guilt, are different from statements of the defendant that are calculated to prove innocence. 9. Wells in Poore, Conspiracy Trial, 1:282–93. 10. Horner in Poore, Conspiracy Trial, 1:430. The actual Arnold statement, witnessed by Horner, is in M-619, 458:305–12. 11. The War Department had a statement from Washington Police Superintendent A. C. Richards to the effect that Lloyd had falsely denied seeing Booth on the night of the shooting, and this was corroborated by Detective John A. W. Clarvoe. LAS 2:940 and 2:199, respectively. According to Alexander Lovett, Lloyd had confessed to being an accessory. LAS 5:193. Both Lovett and Cottingham later mentioned Lloyd’s arrest in their claim for reward money. See Lovett and Cottingham files in RG-233, Committee on Claims, National Archives. 12. Providing sensitive information: Augustus Howell interrogation, which is now in the John T. Ford Papers, MS 371, Maryland Historical Society. Fear of prosecution: Weichmann letter to Henry Burnett in LAS 6:500, and contradictory testimony by Weichmann in Poore, Conspiracy Trial, 1:377. John P. Brophy wrote a series of charges against Weichmann that were published in the Washington Constitutional Union, July 11, 1865. The original document is in LAS 7:399–401. Weichmann himself admitted to being present at several key events, but he always denied knowing their significance. See, for example, his testimony in Poore, Conspiracy Trial, 1:73, 102, and Trial of John H. Surratt in the Criminal Court of the District of Columbia (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1867), 373.

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13. Booth’s threat to Chester was recounted in Poore, Conspiracy Trial, 1:46, and in LAS, 4:149. Herold’s statement is in LAS 4:442. Booth even involved theater owners John T. Ford and Matthew Canning Jr. in the frame-up of Chester. 14. Samuel B. Arnold, Memoirs of a Lincoln Conspirator (Bowie, Md.: Heritage Books, 1995), ed. Michael W. Kauffman, 25–27; and Arnold statement in M-619, 458:310–12. 15. Arnold’s account of the incident is in Arnold, Memoirs, 26, and in a statement he gave to Benjamin Butler’s congressional committee in 1867. Butler Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. Thomas E. Richardson, editor of the Washington Constitutional Union, later claimed to have been with Booth during the National Hotel ceremony. New York Herald, June 18, 1878, clipping in the John T. Ford Papers, Maryland Historical Society. 16. Mathews in the Philadelphia Press, December 4, 1881. Chester in Poore, Conspiracy Trial, 1:48, and LAS 4:167. 17. Clarke found the letter after the assassination and turned it over to a U.S. marshal. Nevertheless, he was arrested and taken to the Old Capitol Prison in Washington, where he remained for more than a month. The original Booth letter is in the Treasure Room of the National Archives. Among other items in the same envelope were letters from a family friend—undoubtedly the documents that could ‘‘ruin’’ Sam Chester. Unknown to Clarke, Asia had removed and destroyed these other letters. 18. J. B. Menu to ‘‘My Dear Friend,’’ in LAS, 2:381.

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CHAPTER 9

The Martyr and the Myth The Lincoln Nobody Knows Richard Nelson Current

[Editors’ note: This chapter is reprinted, with the kind permission of the author, from his 1958 classic, The Lincoln Nobody Knows.] On July 3, 1881, having lived somewhat beyond his allotted threescore years and ten, Abraham Lincoln died quietly in his sleep, after a brief illness, at his home in Springfield, Illinois. The previous day, in Washington, an assassin had shot President James A. Garfield. This news continued to fill the headlines. The report from Illinois was not neglected, however; obituaries of Lincoln were carried in all the papers. While editors wondered about the prospects for Garfield and the nation—whether he would live or die, and what would be the consequences of his death—they also recalled the past and speculated upon one of the might-have-beens of history. Suppose the bullet from Booth’s gun had reached Lincoln that April evening in 1865. . . . Then Andrew Johnson would have become president. Johnson in 1865 had the reputation of a Radical, yet he was a Southerner

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and a Democrat. He was strong-willed and stubborn—not a supple, subtle politician. Unless he saw eye to eye with the most extreme group of Republicans, he probably would have gotten into serious difficulty with the party that had elected him to the vice presidency. He might even have been impeached. Certainly he would not have handled politics and policies with the skill that Lincoln demonstrated throughout his second as well as his first term in office. Of course, Lincoln had his troubles during the second term. He was saved by his sure instinct for dealing with politicians, his deep concern about the Republican Party and its preservation, his willingness to compromise. These traits of his could be read between the lines, in 1881, as newspapers reviewed the high spots of Lincolnian reconstruction from 1865 to 1869. At the end of the Civil War, Lincoln’s policy for the postwar South was not entirely clear in its details. He possessed no fixed and uniform program for the region as a whole. As he said in his speech of April 11, 1865, ‘‘so great peculiarities’’ pertained to each state, and ‘‘such important and sudden changes’’ occurred in the same state, and ‘‘so new and unprecedented’’ was the whole problem that ‘‘no exclusive and inflexible plan’’ could ‘‘safely be prescribed.’’1 With respect to states like Louisiana and Tennessee, he continued to urge acceptance of new governments set up under his ‘‘ten per cent plan’’ during the war. With respect to states like Virginia and North Carolina, he seemed willing, near the war’s end, to use the old rebel governments temporarily as a means of transition from war to peace. He was on record as opposing the appointment of ‘‘strangers’’ (carpetbaggers) to govern the South. He also opposed the vote for Negroes, except the ‘‘very intelligent’’2 and those who had served the Union cause as soldiers. In spirit and in general outline, Lincoln’s intentions with regard to Reconstruction, early in 1865, seemed clear enough. He favored a rather quick and easy restoration of the Southern states to their ‘‘practical relations’’ with the Union. But the Radicals of his party

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disagreed with him. They and he appeared to be further apart than a year before, when he pocket-vetoed the Wade–Davis bill and was denounced in the Wade–Davis manifesto. At the time of the assassination attempt, in April 1865, Lincoln already had begun to modify his stand and narrow the gap between himself and the Radicals. He recalled the permission he had given for the assembling of the rebel legislature in Virginia, and he approved in principle Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton’s plan for the military occupation of the South. The Radicals in his official family felt that he was coming over to their side after the cabinet meeting on the morning of April 14. That evening occurred the incident in Ford’s Theatre. The mad actor John Wilkes Booth fired point-blank at the president from only a few feet away and yet, in his excitement, failed to make a direct hit, the bullet only grazing Lincoln’s head. The same night, the convalescing Secretary of State William H. Seward was badly mauled in an assassination attempt at his home, and Vice President Johnson escaped without injury only because of the irresolution of the conspirator assigned to murder him. It was a night of terror—terror that spread throughout the North with the spread of the news. Stanton spoke darkly of a Confederate plot, and most Northerners believed him. They became more nearly unanimous than ever in their conviction that rebels must suffer and the South must be remade. Public opinion caught up with the position the Radicals already had reached. The terror was still at its height, and the would-be assassin Booth still at large, when the news came that General William T. Sherman had made what amounted practically to a treaty, and a very generous one, with the Confederate General Joseph Johnston in North Carolina. Lincoln promptly and firmly overruled the Sherman Johnston agreement. At the same time he issued a statement freeing Sherman of all censure. Sherman had been out of touch with recent events, Lincoln charitably explained.

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Not long after, the president made the ‘‘new announcement to the people of the South’’ which, in his speech of April 11, he had said might be forthcoming. In this new announcement he was rather cautious with words. Radical Republicans professed to find much comfort in the phrasing, but so did conservative Republicans and many Democrats, Southern as well as Northern. What Lincoln proposed was a temporary military government for the South. This was the way, he explained, to bring about safe transition from war to peace, from rebellion to reunion. An army was needed to prevent outbreaks of guerilla warfare, to protect the freedmen in their newfound liberty, and to reassure the Southern whites who feared Negro uprisings. Within a year Lincoln and the Radicals had drifted apart again. Some of them denounced him because of his vetoes and his pardons. He vetoed a couple of Reconstruction bills, including one for giving civil rights immediately to Southern Negroes. He pardoned former rebel leaders, right and left. He even pardoned a couple of convicted assassination conspirators—Mrs. Mary Surratt, who had been condemned to death, and Dr. Samuel Mudd, who had been sentenced to prison on the Dry Tortugas—and he commuted to life imprisonment the death sentences of the other three consigned to the gallows. (Booth himself was killed resisting capture.) The vetoes and pardons led a few extremist congressmen to speak openly of impeachment. As the congressional elections of 1866 approached, a crisis brewed within the Republican Party. A faction of Radicals in Congress were about organize in opposition to what they called the party of the president’s friends. They denounced the Seward influence and demanded Seward’s removal as Secretary of State. Lincoln responded in his characteristic way. On the one hand, he appeased the Radicals by procuring Seward’s resignation. On the other hand, he defied and disciplined the more extreme of the Radicals by his manipulation of patronage. He removed a number of

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government job holders who were friends of the extremists. Some of these job holders he did not immediately replace with new men. He left the jobs empty as a kind of bait. By these tactics he held his party together and kept himself at the head of it, in fact as well as in name. The returns on election day foretold a greatly increased Republican majority for the next Congress. Meanwhile, at the end of the last session of the existing Congress, in March 1867, Lincoln killed a Radical Reconstruction measure by withholding his signature. He sent in a message explaining his objections to one of the bill’s features—the ‘‘ironclad oath,’’ which required a Southerner to swear he never had willingly supported the rebellion, before he could take any part in statemaking or in politics. Lincoln still believed, as he had all along, that the oath should look ahead and not back, that a man should swear to future and not to past loyalty. Without waiting a call from the president, the newly elected Congress met immediately after the final adjournment of the previous one. Many congressmen seemed determined to pass the same sort of Reconstruction bill as before, ironclad oath and all. But Lincoln blunted a good deal of opposition, talking with Republican leaders, both conservative and Radical, and even with Democrats. He made some further changes in the federal payroll, removing a few more officeholders and appointing new men to their places and to the other places he previously had left vacant. Most of the Radicals in the Senate and the House calmed down. Congress passed a modified bill, and the president signed it. This Reconstruction Act of 1867 was something of a hybrid. It was not exactly what either Lincoln or the Radicals desired. They would have preferred the ironclad oath, to keep most Southern whites from voting or holding office, but on this point Lincoln was unmovable. On the other hand he would have preferred only a limited suffrage for freedmen, yet all adult males among the Negroes were given the right to vote.

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In most of the reconstructed Southern states, this right to vote proved illusory in practice. States like Mississippi and South Carolina were almost solidly Democratic from the start. Negroes were allowed to go to the polls only if they followed the advice of their white neighbors and voted as Democrats. But in North Carolina and a few other states a two-party system quickly reappeared. In these states, many Negroes exercised the right of suffrage, and did so with considerable freedom. There sprang into being a sizable party of conservative Republicans—or Conservative Unionists, as they usually preferred to call themselves. This party was made up largely of old Whigs, of men with whom Lincoln and many of his friends had cooperated in the years before the Republican Party was born. Radicals continued to criticize Lincoln. Some of them accused him of cultivating the friendship of former rebels so as to build a personal machine in the South. Others accused him of throwing the freedmen to the wolves, of leaving them to the tender mercies of their former masters. But these critics could do little more than grumble. They took up Ulysses S. Grant as a conquering hero with a future in politics no less than in war. Lincoln, with his genius for holding the support of opposites, stayed on good terms with Grant as well as those former Confederate generals who had turned Republican. Such, in essence, was the story that the Lincoln obituaries recalled in 1881. On the whole, the editors both Republican and Democratic adjudged Lincoln a worthy statesman, one of the very greatest in the history of the republic. Some of the newspapers noted that, by the record of his first term alone, to say nothing of his second term, he deserved to be compared favorably with the long-dead and long-honored George Washington. Indeed, one paper reprinted a selection of comments made in 1863, 1864, and the first months of 1865 to show that Lincoln’s greatness had been appreciated even that early.

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In the summer of 1863 the Washington Chronicle had found a resemblance between Abraham Lincoln and George Washington in their ‘‘sure judgment,’’ ‘‘perfect balance of thoroughly sound faculties,’’ and ‘‘great calmness of temper, great firmness of purpose, supreme moral principle, and intense patriotism.’’ About a year later the Buffalo Express referred to Lincoln’s ‘‘remarkable moderation and freedom from passionate bitterness,’’ then added: ‘‘We do not believe that Washington himself was less indifferent to the exercise of power for power’s sake.’’ Similar comparisons occurred to English journalists. In March 1865 the Spectator of London observed that, while Lincoln faced a task not quite so heavy as Washington’s, he required as great or greater personal resources, for he was compelled to perform the task without the benefit of education or experience comparable to Washington’s. In the midst of the war another English journal, the Liverpool Post, suggested that ‘‘no leader in a great contest ever stood so little chance of being the subject of hero worship as Abraham Lincoln,’’ if one were to judge only by the way he looked. His long arms and legs, his grotesque figure, made him too easy to caricature and ridicule. ‘‘Yet,’’ the newspaper concluded, ‘‘a worshiper of human heroes might possibly travel a great deal farther and fare much worse for an idol than selecting this same lanky American.’’ His inner qualities—his faithfulness, honesty, resolution, insight, humor, and courage—would ‘‘go a long way to make up a hero,’’ whatever the man’s personal appearance. Such estimates of Lincoln were widely re-echoed after his death in 1881. The consensus was that he deserved to be remembered as a national hero, for he had served the nation well, reuniting it after four years of war and then holding it together through four years of troubled peace. The foregoing is, of course, hypothesis after April 14, 1865. It is history as it conceivably might have been written if Lincoln had lived to finish his second term.

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If Booth had missed, our knowledge of Lincoln undoubtedly would be much clearer than it is, much less clouded by mystery and myth. The awful fact of the assassination falls between us and the man. It is like a garish, bloodstained glass, in which all perspectives are distorted, and the overall view dimmed. Lincoln’s whole life tends to become obscured by the circumstances of his death. In the assassination itself, posterity has been prone to see little but the unearthly, incredible, and weird. Considering the legends that have since arisen, the bare facts are distinctly anti-climactic. John Wilkes Booth, Maryland-born, a member of a famous thespian family and himself an actor of some note, developed a psychopathic vanity and a mad attachment to the Southern cause. Craving to strike a spectacular blow for himself and for the South, he plotted at first to kidnap President Lincoln and later to kill him, along with other high officials of the government. On the night of April 14, 1865, in Ford’s Theatre, he succeeded in mortally wounding the President. The rest of his plan went awry, though one of his accomplices horribly mauled the Secretary of State. Booth managed, despite a broken leg, to make his way into Virginia. There he was trapped in a tobacco barn and was shot to death. After a military trial three men and a woman were hanged as fellow conspirators, and four men were sent to prison. That is a fair summary of the events, but such a dry recital was not enough for a people emotionally upset by four years of war, nor has it sufficed for later generations of Americans. From the moment that Booth pulled the trigger, the myth makers got busy, and since then the implausible often has seemed more satisfying than the plausible, the unreal more convincing than the real. It has seemed somehow appropriate, for example, to believe that Booth was not killed in the Virginia tobacco barn. The victim must have been somebody else. The real Booth got away. Reports of the exhumation of the body, and of inconsistencies and disagreements

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among those who undertook to identify it, had the effect of confirming doubts as to whether the right man had been caught. It has been said, for instance, that certain of Booth’s neck vertebrae, bullet-shattered when he was shot, had been removed. But the exhumed corpse lacked no vertebrae. ‘‘Under such circumstances,’’ an authority on Myths After Lincoln observes, ‘‘it is no wonder that, before long, various dark-haired, pallid men who walked with a limp, began to be pointed out as J. Wilkes Booth.’’3 A Virginia preacher was taken for him. A Texas saloon keeper claimed to be the real Booth. And, year after year, other suspects or pretenders arose. Whether or not Booth made his escape, similar myths aver he must have had high-placed abettors in the assassination scheme. He could hardly have conceived it all by himself. To discover the mastermind, the archplotter, one has but to look for a motive and a person capable of acting upon it. At least three such villains have been nominated. To the war-worn and assassination-shocked people of the North in 1865, Jefferson Davis was a most likely suspect. As president of the Confederacy he had authorized irregular methods of warfare while hostilities were on. His spies and agents in the North had undertaken to sabotage railroads, set fire to hotels and other buildings, free rebel prisoners, and stir up sedition. As the devil of Union propaganda for four years, Davis now seemed equal to anything, no matter how foul or fiendish. When he was captured in flight, after the fall of Richmond, he was held on charges that included complicity in Lincoln’s murder. To some Radical Republicans it appeared, once the conflict between their representatives in Congress and the stubborn new president had come to a head, that Andrew Johnson might be the guilty man. He, after all, had had much to gain from Lincoln’s death—the presidency itself. Moreover, though in earlier times a foe of Jefferson Davis, he had become in a sense the successor of Davis rather

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than of Lincoln, for was he not the champion of the rebels in their resistance to Radical Reconstruction? To at least one student of the assassination, there was a less obvious but more likely suspect than either Johnson or Davis. This— believe it or not—was none other than a member of Lincoln’s own official family. It was the man who is credited with having said so simply and fittingly, as Lincoln breathed his last: ‘‘Now he belongs to the ages.’’ It was the Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton. Stanton took charge of pursuit and punishment after the assassination. He raised the hue and cry for Jefferson Davis and gave official confirmation to the idea that the whole thing had been a Confederate plot. Could it be that he was trying cleverly to divert suspicion from himself? Supposedly he profited from Lincoln’s death. He might have been frustrated in his policies of vengeance upon the South, and he might even have lost his position in the cabinet if Lincoln had lived. And Stanton—heartless, two-faced, unprincipled—had a personality that might well have qualified him for even the most unthinkable of crimes. The evidence against him is at best circumstantial. Besides throwing off suspicion upon Davis and the South, he did other things that can be made to seem incriminating. He was grossly negligent, to say the least, in the provisions he made for Lincoln’s safety on the fateful night of April 14. He bungled the chase after Booth in such a way that, had it not been for the broken leg, the assassin surely would have got away. Stanton reserved for his own ‘‘trusted lieutenants’’ the actual capture, and it happened—or did it merely happen?—that the fugitive was not returned alive, to talk. Extraordinary measures were taken to silence Booth’s associates before their trial, and then to stop their mouths forever by peremptory convictions and execution or banishment. As for Stanton’s contacts with Booth, President Johnson could have been the go-between. Johnson is said to have been acquainted with Booth, and Stanton is said to have had a ‘‘singular hold’’ over Johnson.

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Of course, Stanton’s latter-day accusers must concede that all this is guesswork; against Stanton there is no evidence that would hold up in court. And so the accused is left without a charge to be answered, but with innuendo that evades reply.4 Now, Stanton had his repulsive traits, but it remains to be proved that he could, or did, contrive Lincoln’s murder. More than that, it remains preposterous, and his trial-by-innuendo results in a gross libel upon his name. The same is true of the charges against Davis and Johnson. Indeed, no legal case could be made against Davis, and he was never brought to trial. Whatever help Booth had, the crazy actor surely was the prime mover of his crazy plot. Its shape reveals the workings of his diseased mind. The deed must be done in a theater, before the eyes of a crowd, because the actor had to have an audience. The theater was not a logical place, or would not have been for an assassin whose sole concern was to kill and flee. There were plenty of other opportunities to pick off the president, opportunities that would better have enabled the assassin to make sure of his escape. Lincoln, though not wholly unprotected, was not efficiently guarded, especially during the first two or three years of the war. Generally he had an escort of some kind, but often he did not. Even at night he would go out on foot, on horseback, or in his carriage, unguarded and at times alone. If he stayed home he was scarcely safer, for the White House doors were far from foolproof against intruders. On one occasion a representative of the United States Sanitary Commission, amazed at having walked unchallenged into Lincoln’s presence, ventured to protest to him against the absence of proper security arrangements. Lincoln was aware of danger. He could not help being aware of it. From time to time assassination threats came to him in crank letters, one of which informed him: ‘‘You shall be a dead man in six months from date Dec. 31st 1863.’’ Other assassination threats were made openly, in the newspapers, as in the La Crosse (Wisconsin)

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Democrat, which proclaimed during the electoral campaign of 1864: ‘‘If Abraham Lincoln should be re-elected for another term of four years of such wretched administration, we hope that a bold hand will be found to plunge the dagger into the Tyrant’s heart for the public welfare.’’5 One night, according to one of Lincoln’s bodyguards, Ward Hill Lamon, a shot was fired at the president as he rode alone toward his summer cottage at the Soldiers’ Home. His tall hat was knocked off, with a bullet hole through it. In referring to the danger, Lincoln sometimes discounted it, assuring his friends that he was less apprehensive than they about his life. At other time, in gloomier moods, he seemed to think he had little chance of surviving the presidency. There was solace for him in his fatalistic philosophy, though there was little in it to thwart a plotter against his life. So, to much of the mystery-making about the assassination, a commonsense reply would seem to be something like this: There is comparatively little mystery in the fact that Lincoln finally was shot. The mystery, if any, lies in the fact that he was not assassinated sooner than he was. Nevertheless, the assassination story does have its moot points, its unresolved dilemmas. Were all the accused and convicted conspirators actually guilty? Was Mrs. Mary E. Surratt? Was Dr. Samuel A. Mudd? Did she deserve the gallows, and did he deserve confinement at hard labor on a remote and barren island? Until his arrest, the well-bred, well-educated Mudd practiced medicine and farmed in southern Maryland. Like many of his neighbors he sympathized with the rebellion, at least for a time, but he changed his attitude and in 1864 voted for Lincoln’s reelection, or said he did. That November, at his home, he casually met a strikingly handsome and graceful young man with dark eyes, black mustache, and olive skin who was introduced as the well-known actor John Wilkes Booth. The young man said he was looking for a farm,

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and Dr. Mudd apparently had land to sell. Booth stayed overnight at the doctor’s house. Booth’s talk of real estate was only a subterfuge. Actually, he was hatching plans for a desperate stroke by which to save his beloved Confederacy. He aimed to kidnap the president of the United States and hold him for ransom. The price was to be high. It would include the cessation of hostilities and the recognition of Southern independence. Through Dr. Mudd, Booth made the acquaintance of John H. Surratt and, through John, that of his widowed mother. Mrs. Surratt, about forty-five years old, was personable or plain, according to the conflicting descriptions of her. She appears to have been captivated by the charming Booth, and perhaps she developed romantic daydreams about him, though this cannot be proved. Certain it is she shared his love for the South, his hatred for the North. And she held a pious conviction that the Lord would punish Northerners for their wickedness and pride. She readily fell in with Booth’s abduction scheme. He found her a most valuable recruit, for on H Street in Washington she ran a cheap boardinghouse that he could use as headquarters and hideout. At the Surratt house from time to time the little band of hot secessionists whom Booth gathered around himself met to plot. These included the muscular Lewis Powell, alias Payne, a former Confederate soldier from Florida; the stupid and shiftless George Atzerodt, a coachman and Confederate spy; the feckless David F. Herold, a youthful druggist’s clerk; and Mrs. Surratt and her son. Booth matured his kidnaping plot and outlined the part each was to play. They accumulated the necessary supplies—guns, ammunition, whisky, ropes, and whatnot—and left them under Mrs. Surratt’s care. Richmond fell and the Confederacy collapsed before Booth got around to his rescue work. His thoughts then turned to vengeance.

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He decided to murder Lincoln and, for good measure, to have Seward and Johnson murdered also. But it is not clear just when he came to this decision, or how many of his late associates were informed of the new plan. To Atzerodt he assigned the killing of Johnson and to Powell the killing of Seward. To Herold he gave the task of assisting the getaway from Ford’s Theatre, while he reserved the highest honor for himself. Whether he told Mrs. Surratt of his altered enterprise or allowed her any share in it is not altogether certain. On Friday, April 14, 1865, she asked one of her boarders, a twenty-three-year-old government employee named Louis J. Weichmann, to drive her the thirteen miles to Surrattsville, in southern Maryland, where she owned a tavern. This she leased to John M. Lloyd. As a tavernkeeper, Lloyd was hardly an ideal choice, because with his prodigious capacity for liquor he must have drunk up most of the profit. In a rented buggy Mrs. Surratt and Weichmann made the trip to Surrattsville and back during the afternoon. For her, it was a fateful journey. What she said en route and at the tavern was, of course, not recorded at the time. She was to hang because of what Weichmann and Lloyd afterward testified about her remarks that day, and because of a lie she told a few days later. On Monday night the military police descended upon her house, looking for her son. He had fled, but the police came upon other quarry. While they were at Mrs. Surratt’s, they answered a knock on the door to find a bewildered man with a pickax on his shoulder. He explained that he had been hired to do some work for Mrs. Surratt and had come to inquire as to when he could begin. The police asked her about him. Raising her right hand, as if she were in the witness box, she solemnly declared (according to later testimony): ‘‘Before God, I do not know him, never saw him, and never hired him.’’ But she had seen him and did know him. He had been one of the kidnap-plotters who met at her house. He was Powell, or Payne, and he recently had attempted to kill the Secretary of State.

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On Friday night, Booth and Herold stopped briefly at the Surrattsville tavern, then rode on through the moonlight. Before dawn, they reached the house of Dr. Mudd. Booth needed a physician to treat his broken leg. Mudd helped Herold bring Booth into the house, then put him on a sofa, slit his left boot to remove it (inside was the name ‘‘J. Wilkes’’), set the bone, applied an improvised splint, and assisted the cripple upstairs and to bed. After Booth woke in the afternoon, Mudd talked with him, fashioned a homemade crutch, and then sent the two riders on their way. When detectives got to Mudd, he at first denied that he had received or treated a visitor of Booth’s description. The doctor’s prevarications weakened his case, as Mrs. Surratt’s did hers. At his trial, Dr. Mudd insisted he did not recognize Booth at the time he treated him. ‘‘I did not see his face at all,’’ Mudd testified. He said Booth covered his head with a shawl or cloak while on the sofa, turned his face away while being assisted up the stairs, and shaved off his mustache before the afternoon chat. Now, it seems hard to believe that neither Mudd nor his wife remembered so unforgettable a man as Booth, who only a few months previously had been their guest. The judges of the military commission did not believe it. Yet the doctor may have told the truth at his trial, though he had lied to the detectives who first questioned him. Perhaps he had panicked upon learning the identity of his mysterious patient. Against Mrs. Surratt the most telling witnesses were her boarder Weichmann and her tavernkeeper Lloyd. Weichmann testified that, on the buggy ride to Surrattsville, she had taken along a couple of packages that she said were ‘‘things of Booth’s.’’ (It was alleged that this was why Booth on his flight paused at the Surrattsville tavern.) Weichmann testified, further, that on the return to Washington she said that the rejoicing in the city soon would be turned to sadness, also that Booth was an instrument of the Almighty to punish the sinful and the proud. And, to cap his testimony, Weichmann recalled hearing things which indicated that Booth had visited the

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Surratt house an hour before the assassination. The other damning witness, Lloyd, maintained that Mrs. Surratt, while at the tavern, gave instructions to have shooting irons ready in the evening. Lloyd was an alcoholic and an unreliable witness. Weichmann, himself suspected of complicity, may have made up testimony so as to save his own neck. One of the official reporters for the military commission, after listening to the trial day after day, concluded that Mrs. Surratt was innocent of the assassination plot. And the members of the commission themselves, whether because of mere chivalry or because of lurking doubts, addressed to President Johnson a plea for mercy in her case. But there was no mercy. On July 7, 1865, as the sun beat down in the Washington prison yard, the widow was hanged along with Powell and Adzerodt and Herold. Then she and they were buried at the foot of the gallows. Nearly three years later, when President Johnson was impeached, he was formally accused of an assortment of high crimes and misdemeanors, and he was informally accused of other things, including gross cruelty in rejecting the petition of the judges for mercy to Mrs. Surratt. Johnson protested that no such petition had ever been brought to him, and he charged War Secretary Stanton and Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt with deliberately keeping the matter from him. Before leaving office in 1869, President Johnson pardoned Dr. Mudd, who by then had spent the better part of four years in a military prison on the Dry Tortugas, a godforsaken islet a hundred miles off the Florida coast. The doctor’s guilt is especially open to question. Most probably he was guilty of nothing more serious than indiscretion in expressing rebel sympathies during the war, and then poor judgment in trying to cover up his visit from a patient who proved to have been the President’s assassin. Mudd was unlucky. Had Booth not had the accident with his leg, he surely would not have gone near Mudd’s

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house a second time. The house was some distance off the route Booth had planned for his original kidnaping venture, and it seems unlikely that Mudd was even a party to that earlier plot. [When I wrote these words more than half a century ago, the evidence against Dr. Mudd was scant and unconvincing. In recent years, however, a number of scholars, principally Edward Steers Jr., have unearthed important new material and made a strong case in support of Dr. Mudd’s guilt. Because of the excellent work by this new generation of dedicated assassination historians, I have come to the belief that—as Dr. Steers has put it—his name really is Mudd.] Mrs. Surratt unquestionably was a member, and a willing one, of the abduction conspiracy. But that was not the charge which brought her to the gallows. She was tried for complicity in the assassination. Of this, she probably was innocent. She probably was a victim of the irresponsibility of overimaginative witnesses, and a sacrifice prepared by Stanton to feed the popular hatred of the South. Lincoln, dead, was deified at once. Of course it was to have been expected that his opponents—they were numerous—should promptly desist from calumny, at least for a while, if not to honor the man, then to honor the principle of speaking no ill of the dead. They did more than cease. They turned to praise—almost to worship. Even in the South, though some took malicious satisfaction in the death of Lincoln, many mourned him as no ordinary mortal. In the North the fiery girl orator, America’s ‘‘Joan of Arc,’’ Anna E. Dickinson, who had been mimicking and making fun of him on the platform, talked on in tones of reverence as if she always had done so. In England the comic magazine Punch, more candid than many an American contemporary, confessed the error of its former ways. To foes of slavery it seemed plain that the murdered Lincoln was a martyr to the crusade for human liberty. ‘‘O God, Thou hast Thy martyr for Thy cause, assert that cause until slavery be rooted

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out from all the borders of our land,’’ the abolitionist Phillips Brooks prayed at a Philadelphia mass meeting. ‘‘Our President has fallen in the prime of his energy and usefulness, another martyr to the demon—Slavery,’’ the Chicago Tribune declared. ‘‘Abraham Lincoln has joined the noble army of Freedom’s Martyrs. ‘Christ died to make men holy; he died to make men free!’ ’’ said Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly. And many another commentator agreed. Lincoln the Christlike martyr—this concept arose from no single mind. It was everywhere at once, spontaneous, like an obvious truth. The assassination had occurred on Good Friday, and on the Sunday memorable as ‘‘Black Easter,’’ hundreds of preachers found a sermon in the event. Some of them saw more than mere chance in the fact that assassination day was also crucifixion day. ‘‘Yes, it was meet that the martyrdon should occur on Good Friday,’’ a Baptist preacher told his Hartford flock. ‘‘It is no blasphemy against the Son of God and the Saviour of men that we declare the fitness of the slaying of the second Father of our Republic on the anniversary of the day on which He was slain. Jesus Christ died for the world, Abraham Lincoln died for his country.’’ A few ministers of the gospel, dissenting from their fellows, feared that the deification of the late president already had gone too far. ‘‘I have frequently seen the statement in our papers,’’ one of the dissenters said, ‘‘and I have often heard it remarked, that Lincoln was the idol of the people. I fear this declaration was founded in truth. The people of this country are inclined to heroworship. There is a tendency in the human heart to exalt the creature to the throne of the Creator and render him that homage which is alone due to God.’’ Yet, in most pulpits, the idea of partnership between God and Lincoln prevailed. Lincoln in life had been an instrument of the Almighty; he also served God’s purposes in death. His removal cleared the way for sterner men to deal with the traitors of the

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South. Effected as it was by means of a treacherous plot, the horrible deed stirred the Northern people to the performance of their divinely appointed task. Now, without question, they would support the government in the thoroughgoing policy that was required to make the freedmen absolutely free. Preachers called upon the Lord to scourge the wicked and had little doubt that wickedness was pretty much a sectional monopoly. Radical politicians paraphrased the pulpit when, among themselves, they talked of Lincoln’s elimination as a ‘‘godsend’’ to them. They made the most of the nation’s grief. Stanton, their leader in the cabinet, took charge of the funeral train, sending it on a roundabout itinerary with frequent stops to enable the largest possible numbers to look upon the sad-faced, coffined figure. The spectacle was ‘‘half circus, half heartbreak.’’ The more the people grieved for Lincoln and the more they raged over his murder, the more they would become convinced that the Radicals were right (and, though this side of it was overlooked, that Lincoln therefore had been largely wrong) in the matter of reconstructing the South. Thus Lincoln, in his coffin and in his grave, was made to further policies he had resisted in the presidency. From the outset, Republican politicians worked hard to manufacture a party saint, and they continued to labor at the task for years without end. They succeeded well. Throughout more than three decades, from Grant to McKinley, the name of Lincoln, with its connotations of freedom and union, was one of the party’s most valuable vote-getting assets. Lincoln’s saintly reputation, however, is not a mere by-product of politics, not a mere deposit left by the oratory of power seekers pursuing their cynical vocation. As has been seen, his apotheosis was quick, effected overnight and with considerable spontaneity. The politicians encouraged, directed, and capitalized upon a movement that was far bigger than they.

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The preachers, more than the politicians, gave impetus to the idea of a kind of sainthood in Lincoln, and the preachers continued to keep the idea fresh, while taking care not to overstep the shadowy line between hero worship and blasphemy. The analogy between Lincoln and Christ was not allowed to expire with the passing of the general hysteria his death occasioned. As late as 1922, in an analysis of Lincoln’s greatness, the dean of the Yale Divinity School drew a parallel, ‘‘with the utmost reverence,’’ between the life of ‘‘the greatest man of the Nineteenth Century’’ and the life of ‘‘the Greatest of all the Centuries.’’ Both were humbly born, the one in a log cabin, the other in the manger of a stable, according to the Yale dean. Their fathers were carpenters. Jesus, in speaking at the Nazareth synagogue, used words that would have fit well in Lincoln’s first inaugural when He said that God had sent Him ‘‘to bind up the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and to set at liberty them that are bruised.’’ Lincoln, like Jesus, spoke in parables and homely sayings. Each in his own fashion had to contend with the bigoted on the one hand and the morally dull and slow on the other. Of Lincoln’s looks it might have been said as it was said of the promised Messiah: ‘‘There is no form nor comeliness in him that we should desire him.’’ The characteristic sadness of the wartime president is a reminder of the One who was called ‘‘A Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief.’’ As if these similarities were not enough, there is that final and conclusive parallel, the one so widely noted on the Black Easter of 1865. Lincoln went to his fatal rendezvous on the anniversary of the day that Christ had gone to the cross. In the nineteenth century as in the first, it seemed to the dean, there could be no remission of sin without shedding of the most precious blood. Finally, it would seem no mere coincidence that, in the middle of the twentieth century, an author [Jim Bishop] should write a

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bestseller with the title The Day Lincoln Was Shot and then produce a sequel with the title The Day Christ Died. Plainly Lincoln’s reputation has been shaped not only by the achievements of his life but also by the timing and the circumstances of his death. In a sense, perhaps, he was more fortunate than some of his rivals for historical fame, such as George Washington, who a dozen years after leaving the presidency died prosaically of what would now be called a ‘‘strep throat.’’ Lincoln is both man and myth, sixteenth president and national folk hero. Either way, he is superlative. The historical Lincoln appeals because of the grand if not entirely glorious events in which he had a central part. He appeals because of the subtleties of his personality, the re-echoing vibrations of which still have the power to stir a resonance in all but the most unresponsive. He appeals because of the very elements in his history that make him in so many ways unknown, if not unknowable. Lincoln the legend may be studied as an entity in itself, apart from Lincoln the man, though it is not always possible to separate the unreal from the real. The two images, the legendary and the historical, overlap. The legendary is to be sought in imaginative literature and in folklore—in poems, plays, novels, anecdotes, and the like. But it also is to be found in ostensibly factual productions, including footnoted biographies and history books. The legendary Lincoln has grown into a protean god who can assume a shape to please almost any worshiper. He symbolizes democracy and at the same time a more than regal splendor, as a person who from humble birth soared to ‘‘a majesty higher than kings.’’ He is an uncommon common man. In the ode of Richard Henry Stoddard he is: One of the People! Born to be Their curious Epitome;

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To share, yet rise above Their shifting hate and love.6

He embodies the virtues of the middle class, as Ralph Waldo Emerson has said. As others point out, he combines the virtues of all levels of society. He is Old Abe—and a natural gentleman. He is also Honest Abe and a being of superhuman shrewdness and cunning. He is Father Abraham, the wielder of authority, supporter of the weak. He also is an equal and a friend. ‘‘And he was my neighbor, anybody’s neighbor,’’ as Witter Bynner writes. He is a product of his prairie days in the West, of his birth and parentage in the South, of his Yankee ancestry in the East. He belongs to every section, is confined to none, is uniquely the symbol of Americanism: ‘‘New birth of our new soil, the first American.’’ He is more than that. Rising beyond the limitations of a national hero, he symbolizes for all the world (the English playwright John Drinkwater declares) the universal values of the spiritual, the moral, the intellectual, the democratic—and the values of Anglo-American unity besides. A myth is a mirror that reflects much of the inward as well as the outward traits of a people. In our conceptions of the mythical Lincoln, we Americans reveal many of our own aspirations and ideals. Some of the representations are tawdry and tedious. Some are self-interested, designed to sell a product or advance an irrelevant cause. Some are fraudulent. Yet, on the whole, we need not be ashamed of what we have made of Lincoln. In honoring him we honor ourselves. Notes 1. Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 8 vols. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953–55), 8:404. 2. Ibid., 403.

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3. Lloyd Lewis, Myths After Lincoln (New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1929), 239. 4. See Otto Eisenschiml, Why Was Lincoln Murdered? (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1937). 5. La Crosse Democrat, reprinted by the Cincinnati Enquirer, July 30, 1864. 6. Richard Henry Stoddard, ‘‘Abraham Lincoln: An Horatian Ode’’ (1865), reprinted in Harold Holzer, ed., The Lincoln Anthology (New York: Library of America, 2009), 158.

[The following additional bibliographical essay appeared in the original publication, The Lincoln Nobody Knows, which was published in New York by McGraw-Hill in 1958.] Otto Eisenschiml, in Why Was Lincoln Murdered? (1937), points the finger of suspicion at Stanton. The most readable account of the assassination and its aftermath is Lloyd Lewis’s Myths After Lincoln (1929). George S. Bryan’s The Great American Myth (1940), which disagrees with Lewis in some respects, is more detailed at certain points and probably more reliable on the whole. Roy P. Basler’s The Lincoln Legend is still the basic work on its subject. See also David Donald’s analysis of ‘‘The Folklore Lincoln’’ in Lincoln Reconsidered. Much Lincoln mythology is exemplified in Emanuel Hertz’s collection of anecdotes, Lincoln Talks. Charles R. Brown, in Lincoln the Greatest Man of the Nineteenth Century (1922), compares Lincoln and Jesus. For Lincoln in comparison with other American heroes, see Dixon Wecter’s The Hero in America.

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Contributors

Harold Holzer, co-editor, was co-chairman of the U.S. Lincoln Bicentennial Commission and is senior vice president for external affairs at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. His thirtyfive books on Lincoln and the Civil War include Lincoln at Cooper Union, which earned a Lincoln Prize in 2005, and Lincoln PresidentElect; along with several books on the Lincoln assassination, most recently, with Edward Steers Jr., The Lincoln Assassination Conspirators. He has served as co-editor of all four Lincoln Forum books. Craig L. Symonds, co-editor, retired in 2005 after nearly thirty years as professor of history at the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, where he taught Civil War and naval history, winning awards for both research and teaching. He later served as chief historian of the USS Monitor Center at the Mariner’s Museum in Virginia. His many books on the period include biographies of Franklin Buchanan, Patrick Cleburne, and Joseph Johnston, as well as Lincoln and His Admirals, which won the 2009 Lincoln Prize. Frank J. Williams, co-editor, is founding chairman of The Lincoln Forum, longtime president of the Ulysses S. Grant Association,

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Contributors

and a member of the U.S. Lincoln Bicentennial Commission. He retired in 2009 after serving eight years as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Rhode Island, and he continues to serve as Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Military Commission Review, appointed by the President and the Secretary of Defense. His many books include Judging Lincoln and, most recently, Lincoln Lessons. Richard Nelson Current, born in 1912, is the universally acknowledged dean of Lincoln scholars. His name graces the Lincoln Forum’s annual award of achievement, and he received an honorary edition of the award in tribute to his own lifetime of accomplishments. His classic books include Lincoln and the First Shot, The Lincoln Nobody Knows, Mr. Lincoln, and Reconstruction, 1865– 1877. He has taught history throughout the world and won countless awards, including the coveted Bancroft Prize. Michael W. Kauffman is the author of the acclaimed 2004 biography American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies. For forty years he has used advanced computerized and total immersion techniques to study the Lincoln murder, even living for a time in Booth’s own home. He continues to conduct research on the assassination, lectures throughout the United States, appears on radio and television, serves as an expert advisor and consultant on the topic, and conducts acclaimed tours of Booth’s escape route. Elizabeth D. Leonard is John J. and Cornelia V. Gibson Professor of History at Colby College. She is the author of four books on the Civil War era, including Lincoln’s Avengers: Justice, Revenge, and Reunion after the Civil War (2004) and Men of Color to Arms!: Black Soldiers, Indian Wars, and the Quest for Equality, forthcoming in spring 2010. She is currently working on a biography of Lincoln’s Judge Advocate General, Joseph Holt. Thomas P. Lowry earned his B.A. and M.D. degrees from Stanford University and spent forty years as a practicing psychiatrist and

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academic, retiring as associate clinical professor at the University of California, San Francisco. He is the author of eleven books on the Civil War era, including Abraham Lincoln and Military Justice (Don’t Shoot That Boy!) and Tarnished Scalpels: The Courts-martial of 50 Union Surgeons. His newest book, Lincoln the Merciful, deals with presidential pardons. Richard Sloan is co-founder and former president of the Lincoln Group of New York. He has written for American Heritage magazine, and his essay ‘‘The Reel Lives of Lincoln and Booth’’ appears in Richard Bak’s book The Day Lincoln Was Shot. Sloan served as consultant and appeared on the PBS program ‘‘History Detectives’’ in an episode on John Wilkes Booth. For thirty-eight years, he was a staff audio engineer at ABC-TV, where he also served as a historical consultant for Lincoln-related episodes of its news programming. Edward Steers Jr. is one of the United States’ leading authorities on the Lincoln assassination and its aftermath. After retiring from the National Institutes of Health after a thirty-year-long career as a research scientist, he produced a number of award-winning books on the subject, including Blood on the Moon: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln; His Name Is Still Mudd; and, with Harold Holzer, The Lincoln Assassination Conspirators: Their Confinement and Execution. His latest is The Lincoln Assassination Encyclopedia. Thomas R. Turner is the author of Beware the People Weeping, a classic 1982 study of the cultural impact of the Lincoln assassination. His other books include 101 Things You Didn’t Know About the Civil War and The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln. In addition to teaching history for many years at Bridgewater College in Massachusetts, Dr. Turner serves as editor of The Lincoln Herald and lectures widely, most recently at a bicentennial Lincoln symposium at Harvard University.

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The Lincoln Forum OFFICERS Hon. Frank J. Williams, Hope Valley, RI Chairman Harold Holzer, Rye, NY Vice-Chairman Russell Weidman, Springfield, VA Treasurer George Buss, Freeport, IL Secretary Craig L. Symonds, Annapolis, MD Member, Executive Committee Edna Greene Medford, Bowie, MD Member, Executive Committee Board of Advisors (As of December 10, 2009) Jean H. Baker, Baltimore, MD Henry F. Ballone, Saddle Brook, NJ Kim Bauer, Decatur, IL Michael Beschloss, Washington, DC Gabor Boritt, Gettysburg, PA Roger D. Bridges, Bloomington, IL Seth Bongartz, Manchester, VT Peter G. Brown, Plano, TX Ken Burns, Walpole, NH Joan Lee Chaconas, Brandywine, MD Honorable Mario M. Cuomo, New York, NY Richard Nelson Current, South Natick, MA

William C. Davis, Blacksburg, VA Jim Edgar, Urbana, IL Mark A. Fields, Indianapolis, IN Eric Foner, New York, NY Joseph R. Fornieri, Fairport, NY Gary Gallagher, Charlottesville, VA Joseph E. Garrera, Newton, NJ Jim Getty, Gettysburg, PA Doris Kearns Goodwin, Concord, MA Tina Grim, Gettysburg, PA Thomas A. Horrocks, Cambridge, MA Dale Jirik, Topeka, KS

John Keegan, Wilshire, England Ron Keller, Lincoln, IL Antigoni Ladd, Gettysburg, PA Everett Ladd, Gettysburg, PA Brian Lamb, Washington, DC Lewis Lehrman, Greenwich, CT Jim Lighthizer, Washington, DC David E. Long, Greenville, NC Eileen Machevich, Washington, DC Thomas Mackie, Harrogate, TN John Marszalek, Starkville, MS Don McCue, Redlands, CA

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James McPherson, Princeton, NJ Mark E. Neely, Jr., State College, PA Stephen Oates, Amherst, MA Paul L. Pascal, Bethesda, MD William D. Pederson, Shreveport, LA Linda Platt, Centennial, CO Gerald J. Prokopowicz, Greenville, NC

Ronald D. Rietveld, Fullerton, CA James A. Saunders, Springfield, IL Stuart Schneider, Oradell, NJ Richard Norton Smith, Washington, DC William S. Spears, Dallas, TX Edward Steers, Jr., Berkeley Springs, WV Phillip C. Stone, Bridgewater, VA

Louise Taper, Beverly Hills, CA Wayne C. Temple, Springfield, IL Tim Townsend, Springfield, IL Thomas R. Turner, East Bridgewater, MA Budge Weidman, Springfield, VA Daniel Weinberg, Chicago, IL Jay Winik, Chevy Chase, MD

Index

Abraham Lincoln and Military Justice (Don’t Shoot That Boy) (Lowry), 243 Aiken, Frederick, 199–200 American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies (Kauffman), 170, 242 ‘‘angels welcoming to heaven’’ print, 29–30 appointment of strangers to govern South, 218 Arnold, Samuel, 132 arrest, 204 Booth’s tying to conspiracy, 208 defense, 185 letter to Booth, 185–86, 209 Mudd, Dr. Samuel A. and, 204 physical description during tribunal, 181 prison term, 166 summons from Booth, 208–9 artistic depictions of Lincoln deathbed scene, 3–4, 10–11. See also individual engravings and portraits angels welcoming to heaven, 29–30 Asp, C. A., 25–26 bandages on Lincoln’s head, 15 bed on wrong side of room, 25 bloodstains, 20, 23 Brady, Mathew, 24 Bufford, J. H., 23

details, 20, 21 feet protruding, 14 Gardner, Alexander, 28–29 German print, 23 Kellogg, E. B. & E. C., 24 Lincoln, Mary, 20 Lincoln, Tad, 20 Lloyd, H. H. & Co., 26 Magee, J. L., 26–27 May, Gustave, 23 number of onlookers, 31, 35 public’s desire for, 16 decrease in, 48–49 range, 29–30 realism, 25–26 Washington welcoming Lincoln to heaven, 29–30 Young Petersen, 24 Asp, C. A., 25–26 assassination conspiracy Davis, Jefferson, 130–31 Holt, Joseph, pursuit of conspirators, 132 Holt, Joseph and, 128–31 joy over, 5 knowledge of Lincoln and, 224 as murder mystery, 158 narrative of, 11–18 as national punishment, 1 opportunities for, 227

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Index

plan failure speculation, 217–23 preachers’ use of timing for sermons, 234 recent interpretations, 161 retroactive, calls for, 110–11 as sequel of the war, 1 setting significance, 227 threats, 227–28 tips about, 163 unresolved dilemmas, 228–29 assassination conspirators, accused charges under conspiracy laws, 177 kidnap plot, 177 physical descriptions in tribunal and prejudices, 181–82 violations of laws of war, 176 weapons possession, 179 Assassination of Abraham Lincoln and Its Expiation, The (DeWitt), 158 Aston, George, reactions to Lincoln’s death, 102–3 Astor House (New York), 59 decorations during funeral, 62 Deroy print, 60 Astor Place (New York), 80 Atzerodt, George, 132 assignment to kill Andrew Johnson, 166 confession, 167–68 defense, 185 physical description during tribunal, 181 Bachelder, John B. (landscape painter and engraver), 39, 41 bad manners versus abuse of dead president, 106 Bailey, F. Lee, 141 Barnes, Dr. Joseph K., 12 Barnum’s Museum, 59, 60 Berghaus, Albert, 12 description of death room, 17 Beware the People Weeping (Turner), 243 Biblical characters, comparisons to, 164 Bingham, John A. (Special Judge Advocate) objections during commission, 145 trial appointment, 179

Bishop, Jim Day Christ Died, The, 237 Day Lincoln Was Shot, The, 236–37 Black, Jeremiah S. (Secretary of State), 120 black flag warfare, 183 Blaine, James G., on Joseph Holt, 115 Blood on the Moon: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln (Steers), 170, 243 bloodstains in deathbed depictions, 20, 23 Bodmer, Frederick, reactions to Lincoln’s death, 112 Booth, John Wilkes accomplices, arrest of, 163 and associates as secret active public enemies, 147 blackmail of Sam Chester, 206 Bureau of Military Justice opinion, 130 capture, 175 Confederate Secret Service, 170 conspiracy shift to murder, 179 as conspirators’ tool, 175–76 covering of self, 209–10 creating guilt, 210 criminal justice system of 1865, 212 death, 86 defendant declarations and, 206 discovery rules and, 206 documents implicating Mathews, 210 escape, 163 evidence against Louis Weichmann, 212 evidence presented in trial, 7 exhumation of body, 224–25 letters from Arnold, 185–86, 209 of introduction, 204 of introduction to Mudd, 187, 189 to John Sleeper Clarke, 211 message to mother, 147 Mudd, Dr. Samuel A., 139 meeting, 228–29 openness of behaviors, 211 photograph, others’ reactions to, 200 as public foe, 147 relatives’ involvement, 210–11 reward offered, 143

Index ‘‘sightings’’ after death, 225 summary of events, 224 summoning Arnold, 208–9 Surratt, Mary and, 229 threats to David Herold, 206 tips on whereabouts, 163 tours of escape route, 242 tying Arnold to conspiracy, 208 Tyson alias, 201–2 Booth, Junius Brutus Jr., 141–42 Boyle, John H., 201 Brady, Mathew depictions by Johnson, Andrew, 42 Lincoln, Robert, 41 McCulloch, Hugh, 42 Stanton, Edwin M., 42 gallery, 58, 79 Britannia Sympathises with Columbia (Tenniel), 50–51 Brooks Brothers, 75 Brown, Robert, reactions to Lincoln’s death, 109 Bufford, J. H., 23 Last Moments of President Lincoln, 28 Bureau of Military Justice Holt, Joseph, 126 position on Booth, 130 Burnett, Henry L. (Special Judge Advocate), 129 papers, 196–97 trial appointment, 179 Canadian Cabinet, 130 carriages in funeral procession, 57 Chaconas, Joan, confession of George Atzerodt, 167–68 Chapman, Elijah, reactions to Lincoln’s death, 111 Chappel, Alonzo Death of Lincoln, The, 35, 39 Last Hours of Lincoln, The, 40 Lincoln, Robert portrayal, 39 posing characters in engraving, 39 praise for portraits, 46 Chase, Salmon P. (Secretary of Treasury), 22–23 ‘‘night of horrors,’’ 163

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Chester, Samuel Knapp, 170 Booth’s blackmail of, 206 Chicago Tribune, letter from Conover to Thompson, 184 Cincinnati Enquirer, leak to, 183 City Hall (New York), 67 Rotunda, 71 City Hall Park (New York), 60–61 civil law, military law and, 177 Civil War assassination as sequel to, 1 celebrations at end, 161 and timing of assassination, 158 civilian divisions in funeral procession, 78 Clark, William T., 12, 14 Clarke, Asia Booth, 210 Clarke, John Sleeper, 210 Clay, Clement C. (Senator), 121, 130 Clay, Henry, Lincoln and, 116 Cleary, William C., 130 clemency plea for Mary Surratt, 146, 167, 189 clergy’s influence, 164 Cockefair, James M. (Captain), reactions to Lincoln’s death, 101 Coinlard, Daniel, reactions to Lincoln’s death, 102 Confederate conspiracy, proving, 139 Confederate Secret Service, Booth and, 170 Confederation, 120–21 confession of a defendant in court, 202–3 Conkling, James C., Lincoln’s letter to, 101–2 Conover, Sandford, 183 letter to Thompson, 184 perjury, 184 consensus about murder, 170 conspiracy Booth as tool, 175–76 Booth’s tying Arnold to, 208 Confederate, proving, 139 Davis, Jefferson, 130–31 Holt, Joseph, 130–31 pursuit of conspirators, 132 laws, 177, 179 prosecutions, 141–42 shift to murder, 179

250

Index

conspirators business conduct locations, 170 Davis, Jefferson, 176 government witnesses, 183 guests in Mary Surratt’s home, 166 military court, legal ramifications, 6 Cooper Union decorations for funeral, 81 Copperheads Holt, Joseph and, 126 mourning displays, 138 Vallandigham, Clement L., 101 Corner, James, reactions to Lincoln’s death, 109–10 Cottingham, George (Detective), 199–200 courts as search for truth, 195 Craig, John, reactions to Lincoln’s death, 109 criminal justice system of 1865, 212 Current, Richard Nelson, 7 Lincoln Nobody Knows, The, 7, 217 Currier, Death of Washington, 18 Currier & Ives lithographs deathbed, 19–20 Death of President Lincoln, 19, 24 funeral, 70 Funeral of President Lincoln, The, 84 Dale, Nicholas (Lieutenant Colonel), 96–97 court-martial documents, 98–99 Dana, David (Lieutenant), 201 Dark Union (Guttridge and Neff), 171 Davis, Charles Henry (Admiral), 64 Davis, David W. (U.S. Supreme Court Justice), 64 Davis, Jefferson conspiracy and, 130–31 as conspirator, 176 involvement, 225 public perception after military court, 165 Davis, William C., on The Lincoln Conspiracy, 160 Day Christ Died, The (Bishop), 236–37 Day Lincoln Was Shot, The (Bishop), 236–37

death as fitting end for tyrant, 149 as Godsend to Republican cause, 138 Death Bed of Abraham Lincoln (Magee), 32 Death Bed of the Martyr President Abraham Lincoln, The (Currier & Ives), 25 Death-Bed of Lincoln (Littlefield), 38 Death of Abraham Lincoln (Kellogg, E. B. & E. C.), 30 Death of Lincoln, The (Chappel), 35, 39 Death of Lincoln, The (Faber), 15 Death of President Lincoln (Currier & Ives), 19, 24 Death of President Lincoln, The (Ritchie), 31–32, 35 Death of Washington (Currier), 18 deathbed Currier & Ives lithograph, 19–20 description of room, 17 feet protruding, 12, 14 height, 12 Johnson, Andrew, 22 ‘‘rubber room,’’ 22–23 as sacred spot, 17 visitors, 16 Washington’s, 18 Deathbed of Lincoln, 27 Deck, James S. (Private), reactions to Lincoln’s death, 105 defendant, confession, 202–3 defendant declarations, Booth’s knowledge of, 206 Departure of the Funeral Train (New York Common Council), 85 desk belonging to Washington, 65 DeWitt, David M. Assassination of Abraham Lincoln and Its Expiation, The, 158 Judicial Murder of Mary E. Surratt, The, 158 views on radicals, 158–59 Die Letzien Augenblicke des Prasidenten Lincoln (Gustave May), 29 Dinan, William E., reactions to Lincoln’s death, 102 discovery laws, 199–200 Booth’s knowledge of, 206

Index disease spread plot, 145 dissenters. See also reactions to Lincoln’s death shooting of, 162 distortions of testimony, 198–99 Dix, John A. (General), 56 Dubois, Jesse K., 64 Dunham, Charles A., 183 Eisenschiml, Otto planting idea of Stanton’s profit, 159–60 Stanton’s profiting from death, 159 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 238 evidence rules in military tribunal, 197 divulging evidence to defense, 200 Ewing, Thomas Jr. (Major General), 188 executions last words of Atzerodt, 192 Rath, Christian (Captain), 192 spectators, 191–92 exhumation of Booth’s body, 224–25 Faber, Hermann, 12 failure of assassination plan, speculation, 217–23 Finch, Andrew (Captain), reactions to Lincoln’s death, 101 Floyd, John B., 118 folklore, 237 Ford, Gerald, assassination attempt on, 10 foreign combatants, 150 Fort Point, 104 Fromme, Lynette ‘‘Squeaky,’’ 9–10 funeral (New York) lying in state Astor House, 59 business closings, 58 Currier & Ives lithograph, 70 ‘‘Death March’’ (Handel), 59 desk belonging to Washington, 65 dignitaries, 64 ending, 72 Gurney photograph, 68 Olmstead, Lucien (First Lieutenant), 101 photographer, 64 scalpers, 59

251

touching casket, 65, 69 types of people attending, 65 viewing remains, 64 procession, 57 Brooks Brothers, 75 carriages, 57 civilian divisions, 78 Cooper Union, 81 Deroy print, 60 Dix, John A. (General), 56 German singing societies, 63 ‘‘He died for me!’’, 58 Hudson River Railroad Depot, 86 Lord & Taylor’s, 74–75 Marble Palace, 58 Mechanic’s Hall, 75 routes, 55–56 singers, 56, 66 spectators, 57 Union Square, 80 veterans of War of 1812, 63 train, 4 Lincoln, Willie, 56 trip length, 56 Funeral of President Lincoln, The (Currier & Ives), 84 gallows, 190–91 Gardner, Alexander, 28–29 Garrett, Richard H., 142 germ warfare, 183 German print of deathbed, 23 Gillette, Reverend, 192 Good Friday death, 18 sermons preached, 164 government witnesses, 183 Confederate agent meetings, 183–84 Conover’s perjury, 184 falsehoods, 183–84 half-truths, 184 governments, new, 218 Guanta´namo Bay closing, 151–52 guilt, appearance of, 206 Gunther, C. Godfrey (Mayor of New York City), 57 Gurley, Reverend Phineas D., 26–29 Gurney, Jeremiah, 64 photograph of open casket, 68 Guttridge, Leonard, Dark Union, 171

252

Index

habeas corpus Mudd’s request for, 149 surrender of Anna Surratt, 148 suspension of, in military commission, 145 Hall, William, reactions to Lincoln’s death, 106 Halleck, Henry W. (General), 24 Hanchett, William, grief displays, 138 hangings. See executions Harris, Clara, 65 Harris, Ira (New York Senator), 64 Hartranft, John Frederick (General), 190 hearsay, preference for, 204 Helms, Charles, reactions to Lincoln’s death, 107 Herold, David, 132 Booth’s identity and, 201–2 Booth’s threats to, 206 capture, 175 defense, 185 military commission and, 165 Mudd, Dr. Samuel A., 139 physical description during tribunal, 182 reward offered, 143 statements, 202 testimony transcript, 202 Higham, Charles, Murdering Mr. Lincoln, 171 His Name Is Still Mudd (Steers), 141, 170, 243 Hodson, Charles, reactions to Lincoln’s death, 111–12 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, dangers of war, 154 Holt, Joseph (Judge Advocate General) appointment by Lincoln, 125 assassination and, 128–29 birth and early life, 115–16 Bureau of Military Justice, 126 civilian trials, disloyal practices, 127 commissioner of patents appointment, 117 conspiracy in assassination, 130–31 Davis, Jefferson, 130–31 conspiracy, belief in, 124 constitutionality, 128

Copperheads, 126 Democratic Party and, 116 law practice, 116 Louisville Journal letter, 123 loyalty to Union and Lincoln, 5 marriage to Mary, 116 memo to President Buchanan, 122 military commission designation, 179 note to President Johnson, 146–47 political lecture circuit, 117 position on Booth, 130 Postmaster General, 117 pursuit of co-conspirators, 132 relationship with Stanton, 125 respect, loss of, 133 secession and, 120 Secretary of War, 118–19 release from duty, 123 South Carolina’s declaration of independence, 118–20 as symbol of extremism, 133 Union loyalty, 131–32 Vicksburg, 116 Horner, Eaton G. (Detective), Arnold, Samuel arrest, 204 Hudson River Railroad Depot, 86 Hunter, Maria (Mrs. S. E.), reactions to Lincoln’s death, 107–8 inauguration security, 121 Jackson, Thomas, reactions to Lincoln’s death, 103 Jeff Davis Clique, 103 Jett, William Starke ‘‘Willie,’’ 142 Johnson, Andrew President depicted by Brady, 42 Holt, 146–47 impeachment, 169, 232 order for military tribunal, 176 pardon of Dr. Mudd, 232 Vice President, 2, 16 Atzerodt, George, assignment to kill, 166 description, 217–18 gains from President’s death, 225–26

Index portrayal in death room portraits, 22 Johnson, Edward (Confederate General), vote to be removed from commission, 144 Johnson, Reverdy (Senator), 144–45 judges in trial, 179–81 Judging Lincoln (Williams), 242 Judicial Murder of Mary E. Surratt, The (DeWitt), 158 jurisdiction questions of military commission, 143 jury, courts and, 195 jury nullification, 176–77 Kauffman, Michael W., 7 American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies, 170 conspirators’ business location, 170 Keene, Laura, 79 Kellogg, E. B. & E. C., 24 Death of Abraham Lincoln, 30 Kelly, Patrick, reactions to Lincoln’s death, 104 Kennedy, John (Police Superintendent), 57 Kennedy, John F. (President), 10 Kentucky, Union and, 125 kidnap of Lincoln to exchange prisoners, 207–8 kidnap plot, accused, 177 Knights of the Golden Circle, 132 Lamon, Ward Hill (Marshal of the District of Columbia), 64 Last Hours of Lincoln, The (Chappel), 40 Last Moments of Abraham Lincoln President of the United States, The (Rosenthal), 34 Last Moments of Lincoln, The (Miller), 33 Last Moments of President Lincoln (J. H. Bufford), 28 law practice of Lincoln, 117–18 Leale, Dr. Charles, 11 Leonard, Elizabeth D., 5

253

Lincoln’s Avengers: Justice, Revenge, and Reunion after the Civil War, 171 letters from Arnold to Booth, 185–86, 209 from Father Joseph B. Menu, 212 of introduction to Mudd from Booth, 187, 189, 204 Lincoln, Abraham appeal of, 237 assassination attempt, botched, 228 awareness of danger, 227–28 blackening of eye, 20 Clay, Henry and, 116 comparisons to Christ, 164, 233–36 constitutionality, concept of, 128 Cooper Union introductory remarks, 55 death as godsend, 49 death vigil, 17 deification of, 233 ‘‘Dixie,’’ 75 dress in dying hours, 20 guest at Astor House, 59 haters of, 137–38 height, Petersen House bed and, 12 hero worship of, 223 historical, 237 as hostage, 207 illustration of transformation from man to myth, 30 kidnap attempt, first, 179 knowledge of and assassination, 224 last public speech, 75 law practice, 117–18 as leader who was molded by events, 49 legend of, overlapping with historical, 237 letter to James C. Conkling, 101 lingering after shooting, 16 loss of leadership, 2 lying in state, 64–72 appearance of body, 69 photograph of, 64 as martyr, 11, 233–34 noble army of Freedom’s Martyrs, 234 partnership with God, 234

254

Index

myth of uniform mourning, 149 national security, 154 nomination to Senate, 118 ‘‘Now he belongs to the ages,’’ 226 Obama comparison, 151–154 others’ joy over death, 96–112 parables, 236 personally reviewing military commission cases, 152 photographs of corpse, 39 most important, 79 policy for postwar South, 218 Reconstruction and, 218–22 remembrance of simple origins, 46 removal to Petersen House, controversy, 16 sainthood, 18, 235–36 Senate candidate, 118 Sherman Johnston agreement, 219 Stanton’s dismissal, 49 temporary military government for South, 220 traits, 218 transportation to Petersen House, 11–12, 16–17 Washington comparison, 223 Washington welcoming to afterworld, 30 Lincoln, Mary artistic depictions, 20, 22–23 funeral procession, 57 visits to dying President, 16 Lincoln, Robert deathbed and, 16 depicted by Brady, 41 portrayal in Chappel’s engraving, 39 Lincoln, Tad, artistic depictions, 20 Lincoln, Willie, 56 Lincoln Conspiracy, The 160 Lincoln in American Memory (Peterson), 138 Lincoln Nobody Knows, The (Current), 7, 217 Lincoln’s Avengers (Leonard), 171 Lincoln’s Death Bed (H. H. Lloyd & Co.), 26 [Lincoln’s feet protruding from deathbed] (Berghaus), 14

literature, 237 Littlefield, John H., 35 Death-Bed of Lincoln, 38 Lloyd, H. H. & Co., Lincoln’s Death Bed, 26 Lloyd, John Surratt, Mary and, 166 testimony, 205 witness against Mary Surratt, 231–32 Lord & Taylor’s, 74–75 Lowrie, Barney, reactions to Lincoln’s death, 105 Lowry, Thomas P., 4 Magee, J. L., 26–27 Death Bed of Abraham Lincoln, 32 Marble Palace, 58 martial law in Washington, D.C., 149, 176 Maryland official state song, 107 Mathews, John, 209–10 Booth’s implicating, 210 May, Gustave, 23 Die Letzien Augenblicke des Prasidenten Lincoln, 29 McCarty, John, reactions to Lincoln’s death, 105–6 McCulloch, Hugh (Secretary of the Treasury), 39 depicted by Brady, 43 McDermott, Richard, reactions to Lincoln’s death, 109 Mechanic’s Hall, 75 Meigs, Montgomery (Quartermaster General), 34 Melville, Herman, ‘‘The Martyr,’’ 161–62 Menu, Father Joseph B., 212 Merritt, James B., 183 military commission appearance of two trials in one, 182–83 Arnold defense, 185 Atzerodt defense, 185 clemency recommendation, 146 closing statements, 145 confessions, 203 Conover’s perjury, 184 control and, 177

Index Davis, Jefferson, public perception of, 165 defense, 6 discovery laws, 199–200 discretion shown, 165 government witnesses, 183 habeas corpus suspension, 145 hearsay, preference for, 204 Herold defense, 185 Johnson’s order for, 176 judges, 179–81 jurisdiction questions, 143 jury nullification, 176–77 legal ramifications, 6 legality of, 149 length, 179 Mudd, Dr. Samuel, 164, 186–87 defendant declarations, 203 defense, 200–1 shape of head, 187 vote for hanging, 189 Obama, Barack, challenges of, 151 objections during (Bingham), 145 officer selection, 143–44 O’Laughlen defense, 185 Paine, Lewis. See Powell, Lewis plots, evidence, 145 Powell, Lewis, defense, 184–85 presumption of guilt, 144 prisoners’ disadvantage, 199 return after Obama’s ending, 153 rules of evidence, 165, 197 divulging evidence to defense, 200 secret sessions, 144 government witnesses, 183 sentencing, 146, 189 Southern atrocities, 165 Spangler, Edman, case against, 186 Stanton’s control of, 176 Surratt, Mary, 164, 186–87 testimony distortions, 198–99 Lloyd, John, 205 transcripts, 195–96 Weichmann, Louis J., 205–6 trial, 142 verdicts, 189 vote to remove Edward Johnson, 144 witnesses, 181

255

military court trials of civilians in time of war, 147 trials of U.S. civilian citizens, 151 military law, civil law and, 177 military tribunals, nation’s questioning, 150 Miller, E. H., The Last Moments of Lincoln, 33 Milligan, Lambdin P., 127 Montgomery, Richard, 183 mourning, 137–38 Copperheads, 138 incumbent U.S. Presidents, 9 uniform throughout South myth, 149 Mudd, Dr. Samuel A., 132, 164, 178 Arnold, Samuel and, 204 Booth arrival of, 139, 228–29 letter of introduction, 187, 189, 204 Boyle, John H. and, 201 conviction, 141 court’s opinion, 167 defendant declarations, 203 defense, 140, 187, 200–1 denials, 231 Fort Jefferson plaque, 140 guilt, 232–33 habeas corpus request, 149 head shape, 187 new information supporting guilt, 233 pardon, 232 photograph of Booth, 200 physical description during tribunal, 182 Prisoner of Shark Island (film), 140 prosecution, 186–87 reporting on Booth’s identity, 201–2 as secessionist, 170 vote for hanging, 189 murder mystery of assassination, 158 Murdering Mr. Lincoln (Higham), 171 myths, 149, 224 Myths After Lincoln (Lewis), 225 narrative of assassination, 11–18 Navy, Uncle Sam’s Web-feet, 102 Neff, Ray, Dark Union, 171 new governments, 218

256

Index

New Orleans, reactions to Lincoln’s death, 108–9 New York Times, arrests, 129 Newspaper Row, 63 ‘‘Northern scum,’’ in Maryland official state song, 107 Obama, Barack (President) Guanta´namo Bay closing, 151–52 Lincoln’s preventive detention measures, 153 military commissions, 151 return, 153 personally reviewing military commission cases, 152 similarities to Lincoln, 151 terrorists in civilian courts, 154 O’Donnell, Patrick, reactions to Lincoln’s death, 102 Oglesby, Richard (Illinois Governor), 64 O’Laughlen, Michael, 132 defense, 185 physical description during tribunal, 181 prison term, 166 Oldroyd, Osborn H., 13 Olmstead, Lucien (First Lieutenant), behavior at viewing, 101 101 Things You Didn’t Know About the Civil War (Turner), 243 Orrez, C., reactions to Lincoln’s death, 109 Outten, Thomas, reactions to Lincoln’s death, 109 Parsons, David J. (Sergeant), reactions to Lincoln’s death, 105 Petersen House bandages on Lincoln’s head, 14 Lincoln’s height and bed size, 12 moving President to, 12 speculation, 16–17 photograph, 13 ‘‘rubber room’’ phenomenon, 22–23 as tourist attraction, 13 vigil, 12 Young Petersen, 24 Peterson, Merrill, Lincoln in American Memory, 138

photographer at funeral, 64 Pitman, Benn Burnett’s papers, 197 leak of information to hometown paper, 183 plots evidence during trial, 145 Surratt house, 229–30 policy for postwar South, 218 Powell, Lewis, 132 defense, 184–85 military commission and, 165–66 physical description during tribunal, 181–82 prejudices in physical descriptions of accused, 181–82 presumption of guilt in military commission, 144 prison sentences, 166 prisoner exchange for Lincoln plot, 207–8 Prisoner of Shark Island (film), 140 prisoners, 190–91 gallows building, 190–91 prosecution of conspirators, 141–42 Puhan, Max, reactions to Lincoln’s death, 103–4 racism, 2 Radical Republicans President’s death and agenda against South, 158 relationship with, 219–20 revisionist historians, 159 Randall, James G., flourishing of Lincoln studies, 169 Rath, Christian (Captain), 192 Rathbone, Henry (Major), 65 Ray, James Earl, 163 reactions to Lincoln’s death, 96 Aston, George, 102–3 bad manners versus abuse of dead, 106 Bodmer, Frederick, 112 Brown, Robert, 109 Chapman, Elijah, 111 Cockefair, James M. (Captain), 101 Coinlard, Daniel, 102 Corner, James, 109–10

Index Craig, John, 109 Dale, Nicholas (Lieutenant Colonel), 96–97 court-martial documents, 98–99 Deck, James S. (Private), 105 Dinan, William E., 102 Finch, Andrew (Captain), 101 Hall, William, 106 Helms, Charles, 107 Hodson, Charles, 111–12 Hunter, Maria (Mrs. S. E.), 107–8 Jackson, Thomas, 103 Kelly, Patrick, 104 Lowrie, Barney, 105 McCarty, John, 105–6 McDermott, Richard, 109 New Orleans, 108–9 O’Donnell, Patrick, 102 Olmstead, Lucien (First Lieutenant), 101 Orrez, C., 109 Outten, Thomas, 109 Parsons, David J. (Sergeant), 105 Puhan, Max, 103–4 Ryman, John, 111 Shields, Patrick, 108–9 Simmons, James, 103 Smith, Thomas, 102 soldiers, 103–4 Taylor, Robert, 102 Tillman, Patric (Private), 104 Tozier, James, 103 Walker, James, 104 White, Samuel, 107 Whiting, Charles J., 97 Reconstruction, 169 Lincoln and, 218–19 rejoicing over death, 5 Republicans death as Godsend to cause, 138 president’s death and agenda against South, 158 retroactive calls for assassination, 110–11 revisionist historians, Radical Republicans and, 159 rewards offered, 143 Ritchie, Alexander Hay advertisement, 32–33

257

Death of Lincoln, 35 Death of President Lincoln, The, 31–32 endorsements, 33–34, 35 key to Ritchie engraving, 36 Roosevelt, Cornelius Van Schaack grandchildren watching funeral, 79–80 print, 82 Roosevelt, Eleanor, 79 Roosevelt, Elliott, 79 Roosevelt, Theodore, watching funeral as a child, 79–80 Rosenthal, Max, 29–30 Last Moments of Abraham Lincoln President of the United States, The, 34 ‘‘rubber room’’ phenomenon, 4, 22–23 rumors that all leading government officials killed, 163 Ryman, John, reactions to Lincoln’s death, 111 sacredness of deathbed, 17 Safford, Henry, 12 Sanders, George N., 130 scalpers, 59 scholarly consensus about murder, 170 secession, Holt, Joseph and, 120 secret sessions of military commission, 144 Senate nomination of Lincoln, 118 sentencing at military commission, 146, 189 sermons preached after assassination, 164 Seward, William H. (Secretary of State), 96–97 Shields, Patrick, reactions to Lincoln’s death, 108–9 shopkeeper’s defense of Ford brothers, 162 ‘‘sightings’’ of Booth after death, 225 Simmons, James, reactions to Lincoln’s death, 103 Smith, Thomas, reactions to Lincoln’s death, 102 soldiers’ reactions to Lincoln’s death, 96, 103–4

258

Index

South Carolina’s declaration of independence, 118–20 Spangler, Edman, 132 case against, 186 physical description during tribunal, 181 prison term, 166 testimony and rules of procedure, 197–98 spectators executions, 191–92 funeral procession, 57 speculation about plan’s failure, 217–23 Speed, James (Attorney General), accused violations of laws of war, 176 St. Paul’s Church, 59, 60, 63 Stanton, Edwin M. (Secretary of War), 16, 24, 120 control of government operations, 176 over incarceration, 189 of trial, 176 depicted by Brady, 43 drafting of executive order for tribunal, 176 man of steel, 162–63 President’s death and agenda against South, 158 profiting from death according to Eisenschiml, 159 relationship with Holt, 125 as suspect, 226 Steers, Edward Jr., 243 Blood on the Moon: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, 170 His Name Is Still Mudd, 141, 170 military court, defense, 6 Stoddard, Richard Henry, 237–38 Stone, Melville, witness of shooting of dissenter, 162 strangers, appointment of to govern South, 218 Sumner, Charles (Senator), 16 Surratt, Anna, 142 efforts to save mother, 148 Surratt, John, 6 absence during tribunal, 187 arrest, 187

civil trial, 168–69 failure to convict, 168 reward offered, 143 trial, 133 Surratt, Mary, 6, 132, 164 boarding house as planning spot, 229–30 Booth and, 229 clemency plea, 167 clemency recommendation, 189 conspirators as guests, 166 hanging, hesitancy over, 167 as innocent victim of military justice, 166 Judicial Murder of Mary E. Surratt, The (DeWitt), 158 as most guilty of Booth’s associates, 166 physical description during tribunal, 182 Powell, Lewis, denial of, 166 prosecution, 186–87 shooting irons ready, 166, 232 witnesses against, 231–32 Taylor, Robert, reactions to Lincoln’s death, 102 Tenniel, John, Britannia Sympathises with Columbia, 50–51 testimony distortions, 198–99 Lloyd, John, 205 transcripts, 195–96 Herold, David, 202 weakness as historical record, 196 Weichmann, Louis J., 205–6 ‘‘The Martyr’’ (Melville), 161–62 Thompson, Jacob, 130 government witnesses at trial, 183 Holt, Joseph and, 121 letter from Conover, 184 Tillman, John (Private), reactions to Lincoln’s death, 104 timing of assassination, 1, 158 preachers use for sermons, 234 Townsend, Edward (General), 64 Tozier, James, reactions to Lincoln’s death, 103

Index transcripts from trial testimony, 195–96 weakness as historical record, 196 Treatise on American Criminal Law, A (Wharton), 202 trial. See also military commission of civilians in time of war, 147 discovery laws, 199–200 testimony, transcripts, 195–96 Tucker, Beverley, 130 Tyson alias for Booth, 201–2 Uncle Sam’s Web-feet, 102 Union Holt’s loyalty, 131–32 Kentucky and, 125 Union Square, 80 U.S. President death of impact on citizenry, 9 as rite of passage, 10 as father figure, 9–10 USS Star of the West, 119 Vallandigham, Clement L., 101, 127 verdicts in military commission, 189 Vicksburg trip, 96 Village Blacksmith, The, 21 violations of laws of war, 176 violence after assassination, 162 Wade-Davis bill, 219 Walker, James, reactions to Lincoln’s death, 104

259

Wallace, Watson James, 183 Walters, Father, 192 War of 1812 veterans at funeral, 63 Warren Commission, 165 Washburn, Elihu (Congressman), 64 Washington, George and rosewood desk, 65 ‘‘welcoming Lincoln to heaven’’ images, 29, 30 Washington, D.C. martial law, 149, 176 sentries, 149 Southern sympathies, 176 Weichmann, Louis J. Booth’s evidence against, 212 testimony, 198–99, 205–6 witness against Mary Surratt, 231–32 Welles, Gideon (Secretary of the Navy), 24 Wharton, Francis, A Treatise on American Criminal Law, 202 White, Samuel, reactions to Lincoln’s death, 107 Whiting, Charles J. racist writings, 100 reactions to Lincoln’s death, 97 Wiget, Father, 192 Winter Garden theater, 79 witnesses in tribunal, 181 physical descriptions of accused and prejudices, 181–82 ‘‘Your Daddy’s dead,’’ 108

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The North’s Civil War Paul A. Cimbala, series editor 1. Anita Palladino, ed., Diary of a Yankee Engineer: The Civil War Story of John H. Westervelt, Engineer, 1st New York Volunteer Engineer Corps. 2. Herman Belz, Abraham Lincoln, Constitutionalism, and Equal Rights in the Civil War Era. 3. Earl J. Hess, Liberty, Virtue, and Progress: Northerners and Their War for the Union. Second revised edition, with a new introduction by the author. 4. William L. Burton, Melting Pot Soldiers: The Union’s Ethnic Regiments. 5. Hans L. Trefousse, Carl Schurz: A Biography. 6. Stephen W. Sears, ed., Mr. Dunn Browne’s Experiences in the Army: The Civil War Letters of Samuel W. Fiske. 7. Jean H. Baker, Affairs of Party: The Political Culture of Northern Democrats in the Mid–Nineteenth Century. 8. Frank L. Klement, The Limits of Dissent: Clement L. Vallandigham and the Civil War. With a new introduction by Steven K. Rogstad. 9. Lawrence N. Powell, New Masters: Northern Planters during the Civil War and Reconstruction. 10. John A. Carpenter, Sword and Olive Branch: Oliver Otis Howard. 11. Thomas F. Schwartz, ed., ‘‘For a Vast Future Also’’: Essays from the Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association. 12. Mark De Wolfe Howe, ed., Touched with Fire: Civil War Letters and Diary of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. With a new introduction by David Burton. 13. Harold Adams Small, ed., The Road to Richmond: The Civil War Letters of Major Abner R. Small of the 16th Maine Volunteers. With a new introduction by Earl J. Hess. 14. Eric A. Campbell, ed., ‘‘A Grand Terrible Dramma’’: From Gettysburg to Petersburg: The Civil War Letters of Charles Wellington Reed. Illustrated by Reed’s Civil War sketches. 15. Herbert Mitgang, ed., Abraham Lincoln: A Press Portrait.

16. Harold Holzer, ed., Prang’s Civil War Pictures: The Complete Battle Chromos of Louis Prang. 17. Harold Holzer, ed., State of the Union: New York and the Civil War. 18. Paul A. Cimbala and Randall M. Miller, eds., Union Soldiers and the Northern Home Front: Wartime Experiences, Postwar Adjustments. 19. Mark A. Snell, From First to Last: The Life of Major General William B. Franklin. 20. Paul A. Cimbala and Randall M. Miller, eds., An Uncommon Time: The Civil War and the Northern Home Front. 21. John Y. Simon and Harold Holzer, eds., The Lincoln Forum: Rediscovering Abraham Lincoln. 22. Thomas F. Curran, Soldiers of Peace: Civil War Pacifism and the Postwar Radical Peace Movement. 23. Kyle S. Sinisi, Sacred Debts: State Civil War Claims and American Federalism, 1861–1880. 24. Russell L. Johnson, Warriors into Workers: The Civil War and the Formation of Urban-Industrial Society in a Northern City. 25. Peter J. Parish, The North and the Nation in the Era of the Civil War. Edited by Adam L. P. Smith and Susan-Mary Grant. 26. Patricia Richard, Busy Hands: Images of the Family in the Northern Civil War Effort. 27. Michael S. Green, Freedom, Union, and Power: The Mind of the Republican Party During the Civil War. 28. Christian G. Samito, ed., Fear Was Not In Him: The Civil War Letters of Major General Francis S. Barlow, U.S.A. 29. John S. Collier and Bonnie B. Collier, eds., Yours for the Union: The Civil War Letters of John W. Chase, First Massachusetts Light Artillery. 30. Grace Palladino, Another Civil War: Labor, Capital, and the State in the Anthracite Regions of Pennsylvania, 1840–1868. 31. Christian B. Keller, Chancellorsville and the Germans: Nativism, Ethnicity, and Civil War Memory.

32. Robert M. Sandow, Deserter Country: Civil War Opposition in the Pennsylvania Appalachians. 33. Craig L. Symonds, ed., Union Combined Operations in the Civil War.