Chasing Lincoln’s Killer

Booth and Herold rode through open country towards their safe house at Mary Surratt’s inn. They had outrun the spread of news; no one in Maryland yet knew that Lincoln had been shot. The news was spreading out from the theater as the fifteen hundred audience members spread out across Washington, notifying those in the government and people of their acquaintance. From near Seward’s mansion, meanwhile, the news began to spread about another assassination. Those who believed that Seward had been killed argued with those who had heard Lincoln was the victim, until eventually it emerged that both men had been attacked.

The news reached Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, a man Lincoln had entrusted through the war to shape the Union Army into an efficient fighting force. Earlier that evening, Stanton had visited Seward’s bedside. Only a couple hours later, messengers reached his house with the erroneous news that Seward had been murdered. Stanton was skeptical, but decided to ride to Seward’s house to investigate. Stanton arrived just after Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles. The two cabinet members heard the false news that Seward and his son Frederick had been killed and the true information that Lincoln had been shot at Ford’s. Welles immediately cursed the Confederates, saying they must be the ones behind the attacks. Stanton ordered that military guards be dispatched immediately to guard the homes of all other cabinet members and Vice President Johnson’s hotel.

Welles and Stanton then rode a carriage towards Ford’s Theatre to learn whether the stories they were hearing about the president were true. As they approached, people ran in all directions through the streets. Near the theater, a big angry mob swarmed the street. A crowd watched as Dr. Leale instructed those carrying Lincoln to bring him outside. It was the last time the American public would ever see Lincoln alive.

Thirteen miles away, Booth and Herold arrived at the Surratts’ tavern. In 1864, after her husband’s loyalty to the Union was questioned, Mary Surratt had rented the tavern, which served as an inn, saloon, and post office, to John Lloyd and moved her family to Washington. Herold dismounted and banged on the door, rousing Lloyd, who gave him the binoculars and shooting irons. Booth bragged to Lloyd that he was “pretty certain that we have assassinated the president and Secretary Seward.” The two men rode off towards a doctor to treat Booth’s injured left leg.

At the Petersen house, as other doctors arrived, Leale situated the wounded president in the room of a boarder who was out celebrating the war’s end. He ordered the gas in the room turned up, which lit the scene. Mary Todd Lincoln, grief-stricken, asked again and again, “where is my husband?” Eventually, Leale convinced her and the others to leave the room and give the assembled doctors space to do their work. But without a guard at the door, strangers seeking to see the wounded president entered the house and milled around, creating a chaotic situation.

Unable to move through the crowd in their carriage, Stanton and Welles, despite the possible danger, got out and walked through the crowd, pushing towards the theater.

Lincoln’s eyelids were filled with blood, making him look as if he had been punched in the face. His feet were getting cold; his breathing was regular but heavy. The doctors placed a small chair by his bed and summoned Mrs. Lincoln. She begged her husband to live and to speak to her and their children, but he was unconscious and heard nothing. Leale sent for the president’s oldest son, for Lincoln’s family doctor, and the president’s pastor, Reverend Dr. Phineas T. Gurley. He also sent for a Nelaton probe, which would allow him to access the bullet in Lincoln’s brain.

Stanton arrived at the Petersen house and took charge of the situation. He could see that Lincoln would die. Now his goal was to protect the Union from what he assumed was a Confederate plot to kill Union leaders and then send a rebel army marching towards Washington. He made the Petersen house his temporary headquarters. He sent a telegram summoning General Grant back to Washington and ordered soldiers to clear the crowds away from the entrance to the house.

Stanton then launched a criminal investigation into the attack. He would take the lead in this, while Vice President Andrew Johnson hung back. Stanton heard witnesses from the Ford Theatre; they all testified to that the shooter was John Wilkes Booth. Stanton then sent telegrams throughout Virginia, Delaware, and Pennsylvania. Bridges were to be guarded and cavalry were to stop anyone trying to cross rivers by boat. Stanton also sent word to New York, requesting that detectives be sent to Washington.

Army Major General Halleck made plans for the imprisonment of the assassins. Since vigilante mobs would be likely to storm the Old Capital Prison, prisoners would be kept on a warship on the river in the Washington Navy Yard.

The manhunt began while Lincoln was still alive. The murder weapon was retrieved from Ford’s, and Booth’s belongings were searched. Detectives found a letter to Booth from someone named “Sam,” which described a conspiracy against the Union.

Detectives who had heard about the connection between Booth and Mary Surratt went to her Washington boardinghouse in search of Booth and her son, John Surratt. A detective told the innkeeper the half-truth that Booth had killed the president and that Surratt had killed the secretary of state. Mary Surratt claimed not to know where her son was, while her boarder Lewis Weichmann told detectives that John Surratt was in Canada.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Lincoln wailed that she wished their young son Tad could see his father again before his death, and then she fell on the floor in a faint. Stanton cruelly sent her from the room.

Booth and Herold reached an isolated farmhouse where Dr. Samuel Mudd lived. It was distant enough from Washington that Booth and Herold could rest there. Booth and Mudd knew one another from when Booth was hatching his plan to kidnap the president, whom Booth had hoped to take to Richmond and either trade for Confederate prisoners of war or use as a bargaining chip for the South in peace negotiations. In 1864, Booth had been given a letter by an operative he met in Canada introducing him to Mudd. Mudd had then introduced Booth to a neighbor who sold the actor a horse that he would need for his kidnapping scheme. Mudd went with Booth to Washington and introduced him to John Surratt. Mudd had then gone back to Maryland and awaited word from Booth about the kidnapping scheme, but word had not come. Mudd assumed that with the war at an end, Booth had ceased plotting against Lincoln.

Dr. Mudd now recognized Booth and set about to treat him. Booth’s leg had swelled, and his thigh-high boot could not be pulled off without causing him pain, so Mudd carefully cut the boot and removed it. Mudd then diagnosed Booth: he had broken the bone two inches above the ankle. Mudd made Booth a splint. Booth decided to spend the next day resting and recuperating at Mudd’s farm, knowing that he was still ahead of the news of his crime. Mudd had no idea that he was giving shelter to the president’s assassin. Booth himself still did not know the fate of the rest of his accomplices and their victims, or if the gunshot had succeeded in killing Lincoln. Nor did he know that he would be condemned in the morning newspapers for his act. As Booth and Herold slept, a cavalry patrol rode from Washington in pursuit of the killer.