Chasing Lincoln’s Killer

Across town, Secretary of State William H. Seward was recuperating from a terrible carriage accident. Only a few days before, the president had walked to Seward’s house to visit his good friend and check on his recovery. Now, Seward was lying in bed, while his favorite child, the slender twenty-year-old Fanny sat nearby. For six years, Fanny had kept a detailed diary of all she observed among the Washington elite.

Outside the house, Lewis Powell and David Herold watched the street. They saw no guards and knew that Seward should be an easy target, weak and sure to be in bed after the serious accident that had been reported in the newspapers. The difficulties would be in entering the Seward mansion, discovering which room was the Secretary of State’s, and dealing with an unknown number of other occupants. Powell and Herold came up with a plan: Powell would tell the house’s occupants that he was there to deliver medicine sent by Seward’s doctor. He would carry a small package as a prop for this deception. Herold would wait outside, holding Powell’s horse and waiting for him.

Powell’s ring at the bell was answered by a black servant named William Bell. Bell believed Powell’s story, but argued with Powell when he said the doctor had told him he must deliver the medicine personally to the secretary of state and give him instructions for how to take the medicine. Powell insisted that he needed to see the secretary, but Bell did not back down. Powell backed Bell up the stairs, arguing all the way. At the top of the staircase, Seward’s son Frederick halted Powell. Powell told Frederick the same story, and Frederick told him he could not see the secretary.

Fanny Seward then poked her head out into the hall to tell Frederick that their father was awake. Powell tried to peer into the room behind Fanny, who held the door slightly ajar. Powell demanded to know if the secretary was asleep, and Fanny, in a terrible error, looked back at her father and replied, “almost.” Unwittingly, Fanny had shown Powell where his target lay. Powell likely assumed that Seward was lying there defenseless, only watched over by his daughter, but a wounded Union army veteran named Sergeant Robinson was also in the room with Seward.

Powell pretended to give up in his argument with Frederick and Bell and walked down the stairs, led by William Bell. Frederick walked back towards his room. Suddenly, Powell ran up the stairs. By the time Frederick had turned, there was a revolver pointed in his face. Powell squeezed the trigger, but the gun misfired. Although he had five more rounds in the gun, Powell raised the gun and broke the pistol over Frederick’s head, making it impossible to fire again. He then bludgeoned Frederick with the broken gun. Bell ran outside into the street, screaming, “murder!”

Fanny heard the noise in the hallway and opened the door to see Frederick beaten and bloody. Powell pushed past her and straight up to Sergeant Robinson, whom he hit in the forehead with a knife. Fanny tried to block Powell, but he ran to the secretary’s bed, pinned him to the bed, then tried twice to stab him, missing each time. The third time, he hit Seward, slicing his cheek so that the skin hung from a flap and his teeth were exposed. Sergeant Robinson recovered and charged at Powell and they fought one another in a life-or-death struggle. David Herold heard Fanny screaming, took fright, and fled the scene, abandoning Powell to his fate.

Augustus Seward, the secretary’s other son, then rushed in. At first, he thought his father had deliriously begun to struggle with the night nurse, but quickly realized the man was not his father. The three men then fought, and Powell stabbed Robinson twice deeply before he was wrestled out into the hall where the gaslight illuminated the three men’s faces. There, Powell made an odd confession to Augustus: “I’m mad. I’m mad!” he said. Powell had Robinson in a choke hold and could have killed him, but in a last-minute act of mercy, he instead punched him with his fist. Powell then fled the house, mounted his horse, and rode off, chased for a bit by Bell.

Fanny ran to her father’s bedroom. Seward had rolled out of bed to escape Powell, and was on the floor. Sergeant Robinson, who was severely wounded, lifted Seward into his bed. In unimaginable pain, Seward told his daughter, “I am not dead; send for a doctor, send for the police, close the house.”