Chasing Lincoln’s Killer: Chapter 4 Summary & Analysis

Back at Ford’s Theatre, one audience member gave chase. Joseph Stewart, who was six foot five, jumped across the orchestra pit and chased Booth into the wings and out into the alley, where Booth found his waiting horse. Booth mounted his horse, and although Stewart reached for the reins, Booth was able to steer the horse to run away and escape.

Booth rode quickly through the streets of Washington, avoiding Pennsylvania Avenue where the crowds celebrated. He hoped to outrun the news of his deed on his horse and escape across the river to Maryland.

At the river, Sergeant Silas T. Cobb told Booth that no one was supposed to cross the river after a 9 PM curfew, and he interrogated him about where he was going. Booth used his skills as an actor to convince the men to let him cross. Had Booth been forced to return to Washington, he surely would have been taken prisoner. If he had tried to force his way across the river, the guards would have shot and killed him. He was lucky to escape across the river.

Back in Washington, Fanny Seward and Sergeant Robinson used cloths and water to stop Seward’s bleeding. Doctors soon arrived, confirmed that Seward would survive despite his ghastly wounds, and treated the other four whom Powell had attacked: Sergeant Robinson, Fanny, Augustus, and Frederick. Terrified that Powell might return or that other assassins were hiding in the house, Fanny prowled the rooms of her house, drenched in blood. Despite his weakness, her father tried to reassure her.

Back in Ford’s Theatre, there was a chaotic scene as the fifteen hundred people in the audience tried to make sense of what had just happened. Confusion reigned as Booth made his escape.

Dr. Charles Leale rushed to the president’s box, and quickly determined that Major Rathbone was in no immediate danger from his stab wounds. He reassured Mrs. Lincoln that he would do all he could and began to examine the president. The president was unconscious and looked dead. Having seen Rathbone’s wounds, Leale at first assumed the president had also been stabbed. He cut open Lincoln’s clothes in search of a stab wound. When he found none, he lifted Lincoln’s eyelids and understood from the president’s pupils that there was a brain injury. He found the blood clot plugging the hole in Lincoln’s skull and pulled it out to relieve pressure on the president’s brain. Leale opened an airway and massaged the president’s heart, getting his heart to beat and his lungs to begin to suck in air. He had stabilized the president’s condition, but pronounced that there was no way Lincoln could recover.

At the Kirkwood House, George Atzerodt drank in the hotel lobby, unable to work up the courage to follow through on the plan to murder Vice President Andrew Johnson, who was staying in a room a floor below Atzerodt’s. He left the bar and rode away on his horse, unsure of what to do next.

Riding away from the scene of the Seward attack, David Herold regretted abandoning Powell, but was relieved to be safe and outside of suspicion for any crime. He followed Booth’s path, convincing Sergeant Cobb and his guards to allow him to cross the river to Maryland.

Lewis Powell, meanwhile, did not know Washington, D.C. well. Lost in a strange city and drenched in blood, he somehow managed to also lose his horse. For the next two nights, he slept in a tree. Eventually he recalled a boardinghouse that Booth had mentioned. He thought he would be safe there if he could find it.

In Ford’s Theatre, Dr. Leale was considering how to move the president. It would be undignified for Lincoln to die in a theater, a place of amusement, and all the more so on Good Friday. At the same time, the actress Laura Keene navigated the theater. She left the stage and moved towards the new center of drama in the president’s box. She asked Dr. Leale to allow her to cradle the president’s head in her lap, and despite the inappropriateness of this request, Leale allowed it. Keane’s dress was soaked in Lincoln’s blood and brain matter, and in the days afterwards people would beg to see this memento from the historic night. Meanwhile, Leale prepared to move the president, although he did not know where to take him.

Booth was now across the river in Maryland, a state which had not seceded but was filled with Southern sympathizers. Indeed, if Maryland had seceded, the war might have gone differently. This was safe ground for Booth, but he had none of the skills he needed to live in the wilderness and his leg injury was causing him pain. He planned to depend on Herold for aid. In the darkness, he struggled to find Soper’s Hill, the place he and Herold had chosen to meet. Finally, the sounds of hoofbeats reached Booth. He wondered if it was a cavalry pursuing him, and was relieved when Herold rode up.

Booth and Herold exchanged information. Herold knew nothing about Atzerodt’s mission, but he reported on how Powell’s trick with the package of medicine had worked to gain him entry and how the house’s inhabitants had begun to scream for help. Booth felt that this was evidence that Powell had succeeded in killing Seward. Booth may have been angry with Herold for abandoning Powell, who was a loyal follower of Booth’s and an excellent fighter, and who would be utterly lost now that he was left alone in the capital. However, Booth would have proudly regaled Herold with the story of his successful attack on Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre.

Back at Ford’s, Leale and others carried the unconscious Lincoln out onto the street. Leale demanded that a soldier find a place to bring the president, and the soldiers banged on doors across the street, but got no answer. Stranded in the middle of the street, in front of a mob of witnesses, Leale pulled another blood clot from the hole in Lincoln’s head. Suddenly, a door opened across the street. Someone at William Petersen’s boardinghouse had stepped outside to investigate the hullaballoo. Lincoln was carried into the boardinghouse.