March 17, 1865
The original plot had been to abduct Lincoln and use him as a hostage to gain the release of Confederate prisoners of war (POW), said Severance, a retired Army colonel.
But as the rebel cause withered, Booth decided that something else had to be done, something he called “decisive and great . . . which the world would remember for all time,”
The possibility of political assassination increasingly enters the mind of the restless Booth.
John Wilkes Booth made the final decision to assassinate President Lincoln on April 11, 1865, agree many historians.
After the fall of Richmond and Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, he decided to kill, rather than kidnap, Lincoln.
By the beginning of April 1865, the Civil War was slowly winding to a close and Washington D.C. was in the mood to celebrate, the city of Washington had been putting on grand shows with fireworks, bonfires and torchlight parades.
Most everyone had reasons to be in good mood, of course with the exception of the well- known stage actor, John Wilkes Booth.
Just days after accepting Lee’s surrender, the Union general accepted Lincoln’s invitation to attend “Our American Cousin” at Ford’s Theater on the evening of April 14, 1865.
The general’s wife, however, had recently been the victim of Mary Todd Lincoln’s bitterness and wanted no part of a night on the town with the first lady.
Grant backed out, citing the couple’s desire to travel to New Jersey to see their children.
Booth and his conspirators plotted to not only kill Lincoln, but Grant, Secretary of State William Seward and Vice President Andrew Johnson.
On April 13 Booth dropped by Grover’s Theatre and asked C.D. Hess if the president was going to be invited to attend that venue.
Hess assured Booth that Lincoln would be invited.
Booth then went upstairs to Deery’s Billiard Saloon located above the lobby of Grover’s Theatre and asked the saloon’s owner, John Deery, to secure tickets for the box that adjoined where the Lincolns would be sitting.
Booth and Deery had been friends for years.
Booth told him, he didn’t want the management to give him complimentary tickets.
He desired to pay for them himself and gave the money to his friend.
Booth had now prepared himself if the Lincolns accepted the invitation from Grover’s.
Booth indicated to Deery that he would pick up the tickets later.
On Thursday, April 13, 1865, Charles Dwight Hess (often referred to as C.D. Hess), manager at Grover’s National Theatre, sent the Lincolns an invitation for the performance of Aladdin or The Wonderful Lamp.
Over the previous four years the Lincolns had attended many shows at Grover’s (located about three blocks from the White House).
The Lincolns had also frequently attended plays at Ford’s Theatre.
Ford’s was showing Tom Taylor’s Our American Cousin starring Laura Keene, which was running at the McVerick Theater in Chicago on May 18, 1860 -the same day Lincoln was nominated for president in that city.
The night of April 14th was supposed to be a night of celebration in the nation’s capital. Confederate General Robert E. Lee had surrendered days before and everyone was in high spirits.
April 14, 1865
7:00 AM
As usual the president arose at seven. Friday, April 14, 1865, began as a lovely spring day in Washington, D.C. The dogwood trees were in bloom, and there was a scent of fresh flowers in the air.
The willows along the Potomac River were green.
In the parks and gardens the lilacs bloomed.
Before breakfast Mr. Lincoln, 56, went to his office, sat down at an upright mahogany desk and worked for awhile.
Behind him was a velvet bell cord which he pulled to summon a secretary.
The president left instructions for Assistant Secretary of State Frederick Seward to call a Cabinet meeting at 11:00 A.M.
(Secretary of State William Seward was confined to bed due to a carriage accident.)
Mr. Lincoln also wrote a note inviting General Ulysses S. Grant to attend the Cabinet meeting.
8:00 AM
Abraham Lincoln ate breakfast. Normally he had one egg and one cup of coffee.
This morning Mary Todd Lincoln, 46, sat at the opposite end of the table with sons, Robert, 21, and Tad, 12, at the sides.
President Lincoln listened as Captain Robert Lincoln discussed his brief tour of duty in the Union Army.
Robert had been present at the Mclean House in Appomattox when General Robert E. Lee surrendered.
Mary said she had tickets to Grover’s Theatre, but she’d prefer to see Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theatre.
She also indicated a hope that General and Mrs. Grant would accompany them to the theater.
After breakfast the president excused himself to go back to work in his office which was located in the southeast corner of the White House.
9:00AM
Lincoln read the morning newspapers. His first visitor of the day was Speaker of the House Schuyler Colfax.
Lincoln told the Speaker his own ideas as to what the future policy should be toward the Southern states. Colfax expressed a concern, Lincoln would proceed with reconstruction without legislative branch consultation.
At the War Department, General Grant told Secretary of War Edwin Stanton that the Grants were going to decline the Lincolns’ theater invitation.
10:00AM
Mr. Lincoln greeted more visitors. One was New Hampshire Senator John P. Hale, recently been appointed minister to Spain. (Hale’s daughter, Lucy, was John Wilkes Booth’s fiancée.)
Mr. Lincoln then called for a messenger and requested that he go to Ford’s Theatre and reserve the State Box for the evening’s performance.
He did not yet know General Grant intended to decline the invitation and leave Washington on a late afternoon train.
The management of Ford’s was elated when they heard the news of their special guests for Good Friday’s Our American Cousin performance
About 10:30 A.M. on the morning of April 14, 1865, a White House messenger arrived at Ford’s Theatre.
He indicated that the Lincolns wanted to reserve the State Box for the evening performance.
The Lincolns had chosen to go to Ford’s.
In the next hour Booth stopped by Ford’s to pick up his mail.
While there he learned from Harry Ford that the Lincolns and Grants (who did not go) would be attending the evening performance of Our American Cousin.
Booth held one final meeting with his co-conspirators.
He said he would kill Lincoln at the theater (he had since learned that Grant had left town).
Booth gave the others their orders.
Booth also arranged to have a fast horse waiting for him.
All attacks were to take place simultaneously at approximately 10:15 P.M. that night.
Booth hoped the resulting chaos and weakness in the government would lead to a comeback for the South.
11AM-2PM
The president began the scheduled meeting of his Cabinet. Stanton, as usual, arrived late.
Grant was present at the meeting, and Lincoln was expecting important deliberations regarding reconstruction to occur.
He admitted he was open to suggestions on this very complex matter.
Lots of various ideas were proposed to begin the process of reconciliation between North and South.
Also discussed was what to do with the leaders of the Confederacy.
Lincoln spoke from the heart when he said, “... enough lives have been sacrificed.“
Grant was present at the meeting, and Lincoln was expecting important deliberations regarding reconstruction to occur.
He admitted he was open to suggestions on this very complex matter.
12:00 PM
The Cabinet meeting continued with more discussion of the process of putting the country on its feet again.
1:00 PM
Except for minor differences of opinion, the Cabinet seemed agreed that helping the South economically would also be beneficial to the North.
At this point, the president asked General Grant to describe the details of General Lee’s surrender.
Vice-President Andrew Johnson arrived at the White House.
With the Cabinet meeting still in progress, Johnson decided to take a walk and wait until Lincoln could see him.
The first Lady thought the Vice President was in on the plot, because hours before shooting Lincoln, Booth had mysteriously called on Johnson at the Kirkwood House and left a handwritten calling card that read:
“Don’t wish to disturb you. Are you at home? J. Wilkes Booth.”
The first lady, as she wrote to a friend, believed “that miserable inebriate Johnson had cognizance of my husband’s death.
Why was that card of Booth’s found in his box? Some acquaintance certainly existed.”
Atzerodt’s failure to attack the vice president was even seen by some as proof of Johnson’s complicity, in her opinion.
Atzerodt was charged with conspiring with Booth; his assignment was to kill Vice-President Andrew Johnson and he even rented a room in the Kirkwood House, the vice-president’s hotel, and directed a series of “suspicious” questions to the hotel’s bartender, but he made no attempt to kill Johnson.
Nevertheless, he was found guilty and hanged on July 7, 1865
2:00PM
The Cabinet meeting ended. Grant got up from his chair and walked over to Mr. Lincoln.
The general explained he and his wife would not be going to Ford’s Theatre; rather they were taking the evening train out of Washington to visit their children.
Grant’s unexpected departure removed him as a target.
At about 2:20 Lincoln left the office for lunch with Mary.
Although no record of the lunch time conversation exists, it’s quite likely Abraham told Mary that the Grants would not be accompanying them to see Our American Cousin.
Lincoln, back at work, studied some papers dealing with an army deserter.
He signed a pardon, and made the remark,
“Well, I think the boy can do us more good above ground than underground.”
3:00 P.M.
Andrew Johnson and Mr. Lincoln met for approximately 20 minutes.
Then the president met with a former slave named Nancy Bushrod.
Her husband had served in the Union Army, but he was missing some paychecks.
Lincoln promised to look into the matter. At the War Department, the Stantons decided to “send regrets” about attending Our American Cousin with the Lincolns that evening.
4:00 P.M.
Lincoln had finished his day’s work. Mary wished to go for a carriage ride.
The president met briefly with Charles A. Dana, Assistant Secretary of War.
5:00 P.M.
Congressman Edward H. Rollins of New Hampshire stopped by to get a pass for a constituent to go and see his wounded son in an army hospital.
The president and his wife came out on the White House porch.
A one-armed soldier, hoping to catch sight of Mr. Lincoln, yelled, “I would almost give my other hand if I could shake that of Abraham Lincoln.”
The president walked toward the soldier and grabbed his hand. Lincoln said, “You shall do that and it shall cost you nothing.”
The Lincolns then entered the carriage with Francis P. Burke, their coachman, as the driver.
Two cavalrymen followed the carriage as it started down the gravel White House driveway.
The carriage arrived at the Navy Yard, and the president took a short stroll on the deck of the monitor Montauk.
Then he got back in the carriage for the short trip back to the White House.
6:00 P.M.
The carriage pulled into the White House driveway. Two old friends from Illinois, Dick Oglesby and General Isham N. Haynie, greeted the president.
He invited them into his office for a friendly discussion of ‘old times.’ Word that dinner was ready reached Lincoln, and his old friends excused themselves.
The Lincolns ate as a family.
The Lincolns had extended invitation after invitation, but were repeatedly turned down for various reasons.
They finally received a “yes” from Clara Harris, daughter of New York Senator Ira Harris.
The senator’s daughter had become friends with Mary Todd from attending various social engagements in Washington.
Harris’s date for the evening was her fiancé, Major Henry Rathbone a U.S. military officer and diplomat, who was also her step-brother.
Below are the invited guest and their stated reason of declining.
Tad Lincoln, then 12, said nobody ever asked him to go.
Tad ended up going to see Aladdin or The Wonderful Lamp at Grover’s Theatre, a few blocks from Ford’s.
Tad was at Grover’s when his father was shot at Ford’s. Tad was taken to the White House and put to bed.
Tad Lincoln had made a friend of Leonard Grover’s young son, Bobby. Although Bobby was about 5 years younger than Tad the boys played together frequently.
In the afternoons Tad often attended rehearsals at Grover’s Theatre, and the two boys got along well with the stage workmen.
Tad aided the theater’s carpenters in arranging the settings for the stage.
At least twice Tad appeared in plays at Grover’s as an extra.
Helen Palmes Moss, C.D. Hess’s sister-in-law, wrote, “The two principal theaters, the ‘National’ (sometimes called Grover’s) and ‘Ford’s’ were vying with each other to secure the largest patronage, for they had always been great rivals.
A private box had been specially decorated in each theater, with the hope of having the President and his family occupy it.“
Mary told Abraham that a young couple, Clara Harris, 20, and Major Henry Rathbone, 28, had accepted a Ford’s Theatre invitation.
(Rathbone’s townhouse at 712 Jackson Place in Lafayette Square still stands.)
The Lincolns would pick up the couple at the Harris residence on H Street near Fourteenth.
7:00PM
Speaker of the House Colfax visited the president for a second time that day.
Lincoln told him he had decided not to call a special session of Congress to deal with reconstruction.
Colfax left, and at 7:50PM former Congressman George Ashmun arrived without an appointment.
Lincoln decided to see Ashmun anyway.
8:05PM
Lincoln’s business with Ashmun was still unfinished, and he requested a return visit in the morning.
Lincoln wrote out the last message of his life: “Allow Mr. Ashmun & friend to come in at 9:00 A.M. tomorrow.”
The note was signed “A. Lincoln, April 14, 1865.”
He and Mrs. Lincoln then went out the front door of the White House to the waiting carriage.
Mary wore a black and white striped silk dress and a matching bonnet; Abraham wore a black overcoat and white kid gloves.
Lincoln’s coat was made of wool and had been tailored for him by Brooks Brothers of New York.
The weather had changed; it was a foggy, misty night. On the way to Ford’s, the carriage stopped to pick up Clara Harris and Henry Rathbone.
The carriage proceeded to Ford’s. Clara Harris and Major Rathbone faced the Lincolns, riding backwards.
Also in the carriage were Burke, the coachman, and Charles Forbes, Lincoln’s valet.
They arrived at Ford’s at about 8:30 P.M. The play had already begun. John M. Buckingham, Ford’s main doorkeeper and ticket collector, greeted the honored guests.
John Parker led the presidential party as it entered the theater and walked towards the State Box.
The play stopped, and the orchestra played “Hail to the Chief.”
People in the audience stood and politely clapped.
Once the president was seated, Our American Cousin resumed.
His chair was a black walnut one with red upholstery.
It had been brought down from the Ford family’s personal quarters located on the 3rd floor above Taltavul’s Star Saloon.
9:00 PM
It was between 10:15 P.M. and 10:30 P.M
On stage actor Harry Hawk was saying, “Don’t know the manners of good society, eh?
Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal – you sockdologizing old mantrap!”
John Wilkes Booth came up behind Mr. Lincoln and shot him in the back of the head near point blank range.
The bullet entered the head about 3 inches behind the left ear and traveled about 7 1/2 inches into the brain.
Major Rathbone thought Booth shouted a word that sounded like “Freedom!”
(Many accounts have Booth yelling “Sic Semper Tyrannis” in the box, or when he landed on the stage.)
Rathbone attempted to apprehend Booth, Booth slashed a deep gash from Rathbone’s left arm with a dagger from the elbow to his shoulder.
photo: Booth’s Knife
Rathbone later recalled that he was horrified at the anger on Booth’s face.
Rathbone again grabbed at Booth as Booth prepared to jump from the sill of the box.
He grabbed onto Booth’s coat, causing Booth to fall awkwardly to the stage, perhaps breaking his leg.
Lincoln’s head went forward toward his chest, there was not a lot of blood and Mrs. Lincoln screamed, Help!
Despite his injury, Rathbone continued battling Booth, but the assassin was able to escape by dropping to the stage, some 12 feet below.
Booth nonetheless escaped, and remained at large for 12 days.
(At least one assassination expert, Michael Kauffman, feels Booth did not break his leg in his leap to the stage.
Kauffman feels Booth broke his leg later that night when his horse took a fall. Other’s believe Booth’s spur got caught on the picture of George Washington)
It was then that Rathbone returned to the President, still slumped in his chair. Sensing the seriousness of his condition, Rathbone hurried to get help.
Dr. Charles Leale, a surgeon, was the first to reach the scene.
After discovering a bullet hole in the back of Lincoln’s head, he suggested moving the injured man to a nearby boarding house for further examination.
Rathbone and Clara tended to the First Lady as Lincoln was being looked over, when, quite unexpectedly.
The first doctor to attend the president was 23 year old Charles Leale.
After examining the stricken man he sadly said, “His wound is mortal.”
After Booth fled Ford’s, Laura Keene raced from the stage to the President’s Box, where she discovered that Dr. Charles Leale had laid Lincoln on the floor.
Peterson House
She knelt beside the unconscious, dying president and cradled his head in her lap.
Dr Leale , stated, “It is impossible for him to recover.”
It was decided to move the president, and his comatose body was carried across the street to the Petersen House whose address was 453 Tenth Street (nowadays 516 Tenth Street).
Despite his serious wound, Rathbone escorted Mary Lincoln to the Petersen House across the street, where the president had been taken.
Shortly thereafter he passed out due to blood loss.
Harris arrived soon after and held his head in her lap while he lay semiconscious.
When a surgeon who had been attending Lincoln finally examined him, it was realized that his wound was more serious than initially thought.
Booth had cut him nearly to the bone and severed an artery.
Rathbone was taken home while Harris remained with Mary Lincoln as Abraham lay dying over the next nine hours.
While there, Rathbone became delirious, talking about the shooting and his guilt about not being able to apprehend Booth.
Within an hour after the assassination, Mary Lincoln summoned Mary Jane Welles to the Petersen House.
Mary Jane, the wife of Navy Secretary Gideon Welles, was one of Mary’s few friends in Washington.
They had bonded over shared sadness: In 1862, Mary Jane had helped nurse 11-year-old Willie Lincoln until he died of typhoid fever; the next year, the Welleses lost their 3-year-old son to diphtheria.
At 7:22 and 10 seconds a.m. on April 15, after an all-night vigil, Abraham Lincoln died in a back room at the Petersen House on a bed that was too small for his frame.
The doctors had had to lay him diagonally atop the mattress.
Soldiers wrapped his naked body in an American flag and put him into a plain pine box—a rectangular military crate.
Lincoln, the former rail-splitter, would not have minded so simple a coffin.
After they took him home to the White House, sheets, pillows, towels and a coverlet lay on the boardinghouse bed, still wet with the president’s blood.
The president’s body was placed in a temporary coffin, draped with a flag and escorted by armed cavalry to the White House, where surgeons conducted a thorough autopsy.
During the autopsy, Mary Lincoln sent the surgeons a note requesting that they clip a lock of Lincoln’s hair for her.
Edward Curtis, an Army surgeon in attendance, later described the scene, recounting that a bullet clattered into a waiting basin during the doctors’ removal of Lincoln’s brain.
He wrote that the team stopped to stare at the offending bullet, “the cause of such mighty changes in the world’s history as we may perhaps never realize.”
Unlike the President, Rathbone would recover from his physical wounds, but both he and his fiancé would have a hard time dealing with the after-effects of the tragedy in the years ahead.
Rathbone eventually healed back up to full physical health but the events of the night would leave him mentally haunted until his dark end.
Simultaneously:
Booth had assigned Lewis Powell to kill Secretary of State William H. Seward.
On April 5 Seward had been thrown from his carriage, suffering a concussion, a broken jaw, and a broken arm.
photo: Home of William Seward
On the night of the assassination he was confined to bed at his home in Lafayette Park.
Herold guided Powell to Seward’s house.
Powell carried an 1858 Whitney revolver (a large, heavy and popular gun during the Civil War) and a Bowie knife.
William Bell describes Powell, “a tall, well-dressed man” appeared at the residence of Secretary Seward at about half-past-ten, claiming to bear medicine prescribed for Seward by his doctor.
(Seward was convalescing from a carriage accident nine days previous.)
Powell knocked on Seward’s door slightly after 10 p.m.
Bell answered the door and Powell told him, he had medicine from Seward’s physician, and that his instructions were to personally show Seward how to take it.
When a servant refused admission, Powell pushed his way past and rushed up to the third floor.
At the top of the staircase he was stopped by Seward’s son, Assistant Secretary of State Frederick W. Seward, to whom he repeated the medicine story; Frederick, suspicious, said his father was asleep.
Powell tried to shoot him, but when his gun misfired he struck Frederick with it, fracturing his skull.
Powell also stabbed another son, Augustus Seward, before rushing into Secretary Seward’s room.
Hearing voices, Seward’s daughter Fanny emerged from Seward’s room and said, “Fred, Father is awake now” – thus revealing to Powell where Seward was.
Powell turned as if to start downstairs, but suddenly turned again and drew his revolver.
He aimed at Frederick’s forehead and pulled the trigger, but the gun misfired so he bludgeoned Frederick unconscious with it.
Bell, yelling “Murder! Murder!”, ran outside for help.
Fanny opened the door again and Powell shoved past her to Seward’s bed.
When the Secretary’s eldest son, Major William Seward, Jr., rushed into the room to defend his father, he was stabbed in the side.
As Augustus went for a pistol, Powell ran downstairs toward the door,where he encountered Emerick Hansell, a State Department messenger.
As Powell made his escape, he stabbed a State Department messenger, Emerick Hansell, in the back.
Fleeing the bloody scene, Powell then dashed downstairs, then ran outside exclaiming “I’m mad! I’m mad!”.
Powell mounted his horse and rode off.
Screams from the house had frightened Herold, who ran off, leaving Powell to find his own way in an unfamiliar city.
Because his fellow-conspirator David Herold had fled the scene in a panic, Powell was alone and lost in the streets of Washington.
Without Herold to guide him, Powell did not find his way back to the Surratt house until April 17.
He told detectives waiting there that he was a ditch-digger hired by Mary Surratt, but she denied knowing him. Both were arrested.
George Atzerodt hid at his cousin’s farm in Germantown, Maryland, about 25 miles (40 km) northwest of Washington, where he was arrested April 20.
The remaining conspirators were arrested by month’s end – except for John Surratt, who fled to Quebec where he was hidden by Roman Catholic priests.
In September, he boarded a ship to Liverpool, England, staying in the Catholic Church of the Holy Cross there.
From there, he moved furtively through Europe until joining the Pontifical Zouaves in the Papal States.
A friend from his school days recognized him in there in early 1866 and alerted the U.S. government.
Surratt was arrested by the Papal authorities but managed to escape under suspicious circumstances.
He was finally captured by an agent of the United States in Egypt in November 1866.
Powell, was eventually captured, wearing blood-stained clothing, upon his arrival at the home of Mary Surratt, who was being questioned for her role in the conspiracy.
Mary Surratt, boardinghouse owner, was charged with conspiring with Booth, “keeping the nest that hatched the egg,” and running errands for Booth that facilitated his escape.
It was alleged that Booth used her boardinghouse to meet with his co-conspirators. Mrs. Surratt was found guilty and was hanged on July 7, 1865.
Seward recovered from his wounds, as did the other 6 people who were stabbed. Frederick also recovered from his head injury, though he was in a coma for 2 month.
Booth and Herold
Within half an hour of fleeing Ford’s Theatre, Booth crossed the Navy Yard Bridge into Maryland.
An army sentry questioned him about his late-night travel; Booth said that he was going home to the nearby town of Charles.
Although it was forbidden for civilians to cross the bridge after 9 p.m., the sentry let him through.
David Herold made it across the same bridge less than an hour later rendezvoused with Booth.
After retrieving weapons and supplies previously stored at Surattsville, Herold and Booth went to the home of Samuel A. Mudd, a local doctor, who splinted the leg Booth had broken in jumping from the presidential box, and later made a pair of crutches for Booth.
After a day at Mudd’s house, Booth and Herold hired a local man to guide them to Samuel Cox’s house.
Cox in turn took them to Thomas Jones, a Confederate sympathizer who hid Booth and Herold in Zekiah Swamp for five days until they could cross the Potomac River.
On the afternoon of April 24, they arrived at the farm of Richard H. Garrett, a tobacco farmer, in King George County, Virginia.
Booth told Garrett he was a wounded Confederate soldier.
On the morning of April 15, Lincoln’s death room emptied of mourners (including Gideon Welles) save one: War Secretary Edwin M. Stanton, whom Lincoln called his “Mars, God of War.”
Stanton was an imperious and widely feared cabinet secretary, but he had loved the president, and the assassination was for him a profound personal tragedy.
Stanton had a moment alone with his fallen chief.
An April 15 letter to Todd from his brother tells of the rumors in Washington about Booth:
Today all the city is in mourning nearly every house being in black and I have not seen a smile, no business, and many a strong man I have seen in tears – Some reports say Booth is a prisoner, others that he has made his escape – but from orders received here, I believe he is taken, and during the night will be put on a Monitor for safe keeping – as a mob once raised now would know no end.
The hunt for the conspirators quickly became the largest in U.S. history, involving thousands of federal troops and countless civilians.
Edwin M. Stanton personally directed the operation, authorizing rewards of $50,000 (equivalent to $800,000 in 2018) for Booth and $25,000 each for Herold and John Surratt.
Booth and Herold were sleeping at Garrett’s farm on April 26 when soldiers from the 16th New York Cavalry arrived and surrounded the barn, then threatened to set fire to it. Herold surrendered, but Booth cried out, “I will not be taken alive!”
The soldiers set fire to the barn and Booth scrambled for the back door with a rifle and pistol.
Sergeant Boston Corbett crept up behind the barn and shot Booth in “the back of the head about an inch below the spot where his [Booth’s] shot had entered the head of Mr. Lincoln”, severing his spinal cord.
Booth was carried out onto the steps of the barn.
A soldier poured water into his mouth, which he spat out, unable to swallow.
Booth told the soldier, “Tell my mother I die for my country.”
Unable to move his limbs, he asked a soldier to lift his hands before his face and whispered his last words as he gazed at them: “Useless … useless.” He died on the porch of the Garrett farm two hours later.
Secretary of War Edwin Stanton issued this poster urging the capture of assassin John Wilkes Booth and his accomplices John Surratt and David Herold (both misspelled on the poster).
The technology to mass-produce photographs had not been invented, so photos were glued to each poster. Few were circulated
War Secretary Stanton proclaimed a $100,000 reward for the capture of Booth.
Booth shot Lincoln in front of 1,500 witnesses, escaped from Ford’s Theatre, galloped away on a horse and vanished to parts unknown.
The failure of several thousand pursuers to hunt down Lincoln’s assassin had become an embarrassment to the government.
The day after the assassination, technicians at the Surgeon General’s photo laboratory copied a popular carte-de-visite photo of Booth and printed multiple examples for distribution to the assassin’s pursuers.
This copy was issued to William Bender Wilson, a telegraph operator at the War Department who was in the field during the manhunt.
Wilson inscribed its provenance on the back of the card: “This picture of J. Wilkes Booth was given to me from the War Department at Washington, D.C. whilst Booth was still a fugitive.
Wm. B. Wilson.” Upon learning of Booth’s death, Wilson expressed his contempt for the murderer by defacing his image with a handwritten message: “…for the cause he said was a righteous one.
No! Cowardly murder suited him better.
And this is Chivalry is it? Like a viper he lived—like a dog died, and like a dog buried. ‘Assassin.’ ‘Booth the accursed.’”
Few other relics preserve so well the passions unleashed in April 1865.
On April 20, six days after the assassination, War Secretary Stanton proclaimed a $100,000 reward for the capture of Booth and two of his alleged accomplices.
It was a staggering sum—the average worker was earning about $1 a day—and the War Department printed broadsides to publicize it.
Every penny of the blood money was paid, divided among a few dozen of the pursuers most credited for the capture or death of John Wilkes Booth and his accomplices.
Booth was cornered in a barn in Virginia and killed, while the other conspirators were tried.
Powell reportedly attempted to kill himself by banging his head against his cell wall.
photo: Colorized Powell
His defense attorney argued not that Powell hadn’t participated in the attempt on Seward’s life, but that he was a fanatic who might be insane.
He also argued that, since Seward hadn’t actually died, Powell’s life should be spared, despite his participation in the conspiracy that murdered the president.
Four people — Powell, Herold, George Atzerodt (who had been assigned to assassinate Vice President Andrew Johnson) and Surratt — were hanged as co-conspirators on July 7, 1865.
Three others were sentenced to life in prison, and an eighth was sentenced to six years.
When John T. Ford attempted to reopen Ford’s Theater to performances on July 10, 1865, Stanton, who was “opposed to its ever being again used as a place of public amusement,” dispatched heavily armed soldiers to prevent the show from going on.
The federal government eventually purchased Ford’s Theatre for $100,000, gutted the auditorium and converted the building into war department offices.
On June 9, 1893, at the precise moment when funeral services for Edwin Booth began inside New York’s Church of the Transfiguration, three floors of Ford’s Theatre collapsed into the basement and killed 22 federal workers.
As time passed by, 17 years to be exact, Rathbone traveled to Albany, New York, to the office of his wife’s uncle.
Hamilton Harris was the man a younger Henry Rathbone studied law with and on this day, Rathbone was on his way back to Europe with his family.
This time was different though, as Harris thought, Rathbone was ill and when asked what was wrong, Rathbone simply said it was dyspepsia which is a chronic ailment of the stomach.
At one point, Clara Harris would make the peculiar decision of posing for Matthew Brady, a Civil War photographer, wearing the dress she had on the night of the assassination, still caked with her husband’s dried blood.
Photo: Maj and Clara Rathbone
Afterwards, she placed the garment in the back of her closet, eventually having it entombed by a brick wall.
Rathbone’s behavior was becoming increasingly unstable and over the years he was plagued by health problems, including chronic heart palpitations.
In 1867, Rathbone married Harris—who, by the way, also happened to be his stepsister—and retired from the army a few years later.
The union proved precarious.
All the surviving occupants of the presidential box at Ford’s theater ended up moving to Germany.
Mary Todd Lincoln and her son Tad lived in Frankfurt from 1868 to 1870, and Henry Rathbone moved to Hanover with his wife Clara and children in 1882 when the president appointed him U.S. Consul there.
In 1870, Rathbone retired from the Army due to his sickness.
After Rathbone’s visit to Hamilton Harris’s office, Rathbone and his family set sail to Germany.
After their arrival, Rathbone’s health continued to fail.
He became depressed and some people called him erratic.
His marriage also suffered more and was tense much of the time.
As Rathbone’s depression got worse he was convinced that his wife was leaving him and taking the kids.
He couldn’t bare to lose any semblance of the life he wished he could’ve lived.
Just before dawn, on Christmas Eve of 1883, Rathbone grabbed his revolver and knife and walked to his children’s bedroom.
His wife was able to distract him and had him follow her into their bedroom and closed the door. It was there that Rathbone shot and stabbed Clara until she died.
Rathbone then turned the knife on himself, a failed suicide attempt.
When the police arrived at the murder scene, the bloody and dazed Rathbone reportedly claimed there had been people hiding behind the pictures on the wall.
News spread fast about the tragic events that took place in Germany. Dr. Pope said, “He never was thoroughly himself after that night [the assassination]…I have no hesitation in affirming that the dreaded tragedy, which preyed upon his nervous and impressionable temperament for many years, laid the seeds of that homicidal mania.”
The broken man would never stand trial for his wife’s murder: He was declared insane and sent to the Provincial Insane Asylum, where he died in 1911, at age 74.
In 1910, the year before his father’s death, Henry Riggs Rathbone reportedly broke down the brick wall his mother had built decades ago to shut out the past, recovered her blood-stained dress, and set it ablaze—an attempt to put an end to what he felt was a family curse.
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