Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination that Changed America Forever Part 6

But the war is not so easily forgotten by others. Unbeknownst to all those men who risked their lives to fight those great battles-men who deservedly savor the peace-plans are being hatched throughout the South to seek revenge for the Union victory.

PART TWO.

THE IDES OF DEATH.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

MONDAY, APRIL 10, 1865 WAs.h.i.+NGTON, D.C.

NIGHT.

It seems like the entire town is drunk. Lee's Confederate army has surrendered. In the Union capital whiskey is chugged straight out of the bottle, church bells toll, pistols are fired into the air, fireworks explode, newsboys hawk final editions chock-full of details from Appomattox, bra.s.s bands play, church hymns are sung, thirty-five U.S. flags are hoisted, and army howitzers launch an astonis.h.i.+ng five-hundred-gun salute, which shatters windows for miles around the city.

The war is done! After four long years, and more than 600,000 dead altogether, euphoria now floats through the air like an opiate.

Complete strangers clasp one another's hands like long-lost friends. They rub shoulders in taverns, restaurants, cathouses, and the impromptu glow of blazing streetside bonfires. Revelers march from one place to the next, pa.s.sing the flask, aimless and amazed. Sooner or later it becomes obvious that their pa.s.sion needs a purpose-or, at the very least, a focus. The human ma.s.s snakes toward the White House, handheld torches lighting the way. The people of Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., overcome by news of the war's end, hope to glimpse their president on this historic night.

Perhaps, if they are very lucky, he will give one of the speeches for which he has become so famous.

The nation's capital is not yet the cosmopolitan city it will become. The streets are mostly dirt and mud. I t is not uncommon for traffic to stop as farmers drive cattle to market. Open s.p.a.ces have been military staging areas during the war, with the camp followers and soldiers' businesses such a designation implies. The Tiber Creek and its adjacent ca.n.a.l are open sewers, a breeding ground for typhus, cholera, and dysentery. The vile stench is made worse by the Central Market's butchers, fond of heaving freshly cleaved carca.s.ses into the rancid waters each morning. This might not be a problem, were it not for the Tiber being located a stone's throw from the Capitol Building, that beautiful unfinished idea that towers above the city like an allegory for the nation itself.

T o Lincoln, the Capitol is the most important structure in Was.h.i.+ngton. During the war, even when resources were limited and manpower was desperately needed on the battlefields, he refused to halt construction. I ts signature element, the dome, was fitted into place just over a year ago.

Inside, scaffolding still climbs up the curved walls of the unfinished rotunda. Workmen mingle with the Union soldiers who have used the Capitol as a barracks, sleeping on the sandstone floors and waking each morning to the aroma of baking bread, thanks to the cadre of bakers in the bas.e.m.e.nt turning out sixty thousand loaves each day for s.h.i.+pment to distant battlefields.

The Capitol was an obvious artillery target during the war, so the gas lamps atop the dome remained unlit for the duration. Now they blaze. The Capitol glows above the frenzied crowds like some great torch of freedom, a wondrous reminder that Lincoln's common refrain of "the Union must go on" has, indeed, come to pa.s.s.

So it is fitting that on the night the Capitol dome is lit, the crowd of more than two thousand staggers to an unruly halt on the gra.s.s outside the White House's front door, waiting for Lincoln to show himself from the windows of the second-floor residence. When Lincoln doesn't appear right away, they cry out for him. At first it's just a few random shouts. Then a consensus. Soon they roar as one: "Lincoln," the people cry. "Speech."

The crowd is crazy to touch President Lincoln, to see him, to hear his voice. They continue calling out to him, the chant getting louder until the sound is deafening.

But Lincoln is in no mood to speak. The president sends a messenger out to the people, letting them know he is not up to it tonight. That only makes the crowd cheer louder. Lincoln tries to mollify them by going to a window, pulling back a curtain, and waving. Upon seeing the president, the crowd explodes. Men hoist their caps and umbrellas and women wave their handkerchiefs.

Still, Lincoln does not give a speech.

The crowd doesn't leave. He goes to the window a second time, hoping his appearance will send them on their way. T o his utter amazement, twelve-year-old T ad Lincoln is now down on the gra.s.s with all those people, running through the crowd with a captured rebel battle flag. The people laugh good-naturedly at the stunned look on Lincoln's face, then cheer him as he steps alone from the front door of the White House to retrieve his young boy. I t will be impossible for him to escape without saying a word or two. Lincoln has no protection as he wades into the crowd to get Tad.

The president returns inside the White House, even as the folks remain in the front yard.

Lincoln, at heart, is a showman. He reappears at the second-floor window, smiling and holding up a hand in acknowledgment. "I am very greatly rejoiced to find that an occasion has occurred so pleasurable that the people cannot restrain themselves," he jokes, knowing that the crowd will respond by cheering even louder.

They do.

The president is tired, having hardly been able to sleep, due to a series of dreadful nightmares and anxiety over the struggles still to come. He sees the bonfires and the lanterns, and basks in the ovation, feeling the fatigue slip away. He hears the hurrahs, along with again the single loud cry in unison of "Speech."

Lincoln sighs inwardly. He has waited so long for this moment, and yet he must hold back. These words cannot be delivered impulsively. Nor can he hope to be bathed in applause after they are spoken.

The people need to hear the truth, even though that's not what they want to hear. The crowd wants retribution, not reconciliation; they want grand and eloquent words. Inspirational words. Fortifying words. Even boastful words. They will tell their children's children about the night after the war was won, the night they heard the great Abraham Lincoln frame the victory in the most beautiful and poetic way possible.

They wish, in other words, to witness history.

Lincoln would like to indulge them. But the sentiments are half-formed and the words not yet written. Instead of telling the crowd what's on his mind-how the thrill about the war's end that filled his heart just yesterday is being replaced by weariness at the prospect of the hard work to come -Lincoln smiles that easy grin for which he is so well known. I f you want to hear a speech, Lincoln yells to the crowd, please come back tomorrow night.

There is no malice in his tone, no undercurrent of sarcasm born of the many years of public ridicule. The veteran politician works his audience with professional ease. His unamplified voice carries powerfully through the chill night air.

Spying the Navy Yard bra.s.s band taking shelter under the White House eaves, he calls out a request: "I always thought that 'Dixie' was one of thebest tunes I ever heard. Our adversaries over the way, I know, have attempted to appropriate it. But I insist that yesterday we fairly captured it.

"I t is now our property," he informs the crowd, then directs the band to "favor us with a performance."

As the musicians strike up the Confederate anthem, and the crowd sings and claps to that old familiar rhythm, Lincoln slips back into the White House and starts writing the last speech he will ever give.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

MONDAY, APRIL 10, 1865 WAs.h.i.+NGTON, D.C.

NIGHT.

John Wilkes Booth picks up his gun.

One mile down Pennsylvania Avenue, so close he can almost hear the beloved strains of "Dixie" being belted out so heretically by a Yankee band, the twenty-six-year-old actor stands alone in a pistol range. The smell of gunpowder mixes with the fragrant pomade of his mustache. His feet are set slightly wider than shoulder width, his lean athletic torso is turned at a right angle to the bull's-eye, and his right arm is extended in a line perfectly parallel with the floor. In his fist he cradles the sort of pint-sized pistol favored by ladies and cardsharps.

He fires.

Booth scrutinizes the target. Satisfied, he reloads his single-shot .44-caliber Deringer. His mood is a mixture of rage and despondence. Things have gone to h.e.l.l since Lee surrendered. Richmond is gone, and with it the Confederate leaders.h.i.+p. The "secesh" community-those southern secessionist sympathizers living a secret life in the nation's capital-is in disarray. There's no one to offer guidance to Booth and the other secret agents of the Confederacy.

At this point, there are at least four Confederate groups conspiring to harm the president. Two are plotting a kidnapping, one is planning to smuggle dress s.h.i.+rts infected with yellow fever into his dresser drawers, and another intends to blow up the White House.

Booth is part of a kidnapping conspiracy. He prefers the term "capture." Kidnapping is a crime, but capturing an enemy during a time of war is morally correct. The Confederate government has strict rules governing its agents' behavior. I f Booth does indeed get the chance, he is allowed to capture the president, truss him like a pig, subject him to a torrent of verbal and mental hara.s.sment, and even punch him in the mouth, should the opportunity present itself. The one thing he is not allowed to do is engage in "black flag warfare."

Or in a word: murder.

Booth wonders if the restriction against black flag warfare still applies. And, if not, what he should do about it. That's why he's at the range. He has a major decision to make. Shooting helps him think.

Booth fires again. The split-second bang fills him with power, drowning out the celebrations and focusing his mind. Again, he tamps in a ball and a percussion cap.

There is a darkness to Booth's personality, born of the ent.i.tlement that comes with celebrity. He is a boaster and a liar, fond of embellis.h.i.+ng stories to make himself sound daring and adventurous. He is cruel and mercurial. He is a bully, eager to punish those who don't agree with his points of view. Outside of his love for his mother, Booth is capable of doing anything to satisfy his own urges.

Booth is also a white supremacist. His most closely guarded secret is that he has temporarily given up the profession of acting to fight for the pro- slavery movement. The abolition movement, in Booth's mind, is the real cause of the Civil War, a serpent that must be crushed. Enslavement of blacks is part of the natural order, Booth believes, and central to the South's economy. Blacks, he maintains, are third-cla.s.s citizens who should spend their lives working for the white man. Not only does this life fulfill them, but they are begging for correction when they step out of line. "I have been through the whole south and have marked the happiness of master and man," Booth writes. "I have seen the black man whipped. But only when he deserved much more than he received."

As a teenager, Booth was traumatized when runaway slaves killed a schoolmate's father. He is willing to swear an oath that this sort of violence will happen on a much larger scale if the South loses the war. Newly freed slaves will slaughter southern white men, rape their women and daughters, and instigate a bloodbath unlike any other in recorded history.

The only way to prevent that is to reinstate slavery by winning the Civil War.

I t crushes Booth to think that the South has lost. He shuts the idea out of his mind. Lee's surrender, Booth believes, was a gross error in judgment.

Even the great Ma.r.s.e Robert is allowed an occasional lapse.

Booth takes solace in the 146,000 Confederate troops spread out from North Carolina to T exas that have refused to lay down their weapons. So long as those men are willing to fight, the Confederacy-and slavery-will live on.

And now, Booth will give them another reason to fight.

That he was born just south of the Mason-Dixon Line and nearly a northerner means nothing. Booth nurtures a deep hatred for his father and the nation's father figure, Abraham Lincoln. Booth was jealous of his father, an accomplished actor who never acknowledged his young son's talent.

Booth's paternal loathing has now been transferred to the president; it flared to full burn when Lincoln issued the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation.

Booth could have enlisted in the war. But soldiering, even for the Confederate cause, is far too mundane for his flamboyant personality. He cares little about battles won or lost, or battlefields hundreds of miles from the fancy hotels he calls home. Booth is fighting the Civil War on his terms, using his talents, ch.o.r.eographing the action like a great director. The grand finale will be a moment straight from the stage, some stunning dramatic conclusion when antagonist and protagonist meet face-to-face, settling their differences once and for all. The antagonist, of course, will win.

That antagonist will be Booth.

And what could be more dramatic than kidnapping Lincoln?

The plan is for Booth to gag and bind him, then smuggle him out of Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., into the hands of Confederate forces. The president of the United States will rot in a rat-infested dungeon until slavery has been reinstated. Booth will sit before him and deliver a furious monologue, accusing Lincoln of stupidity and self-importance. I t doesn't matter that Lincoln won't be able to talk back; Booth has no interest in anything the president has to say.

Lincoln keeps a summer residence three miles outside Was.h.i.+ngton, at a place called the Soldiers' Home. Seeking respite from the Was.h.i.+ngton humidity or just to get away from the office seekers and politicos permeating the White House year-round, the president escapes there alone on horseback most evenings. From George Was.h.i.+ngton onward, presidents of the United States have usually been comfortable traveling with an entourage. But Lincoln, who enjoys his solitude, has no patience for that.The president thinks his getaways are secret, but men like Booth and the members of the Confederate Secret Service are always watching.

Booth's original mission, as defined by his southern handlers, was to capture Lincoln while he rode on the lonely country road to the Soldiers'

Home.

Booth tried and failed twice. Now he has a new plan, one that preys on Lincoln's fondness for the theater. He will grab him in mid-performance, from the presidential box at a Was.h.i.+ngton playhouse.

The scheme, however, is so crazy, so downright impossible that none of his co-conspirators will go along with it.

One of them has even backed out completely and taken the train home. I t is as if Booth has rehea.r.s.ed and rehea.r.s.ed for a major performance, only to have the production canceled moments before the curtain rises. He has poured thousands of dollars into the plan. Some of that money has come from his own pocket; most has been supplied by the Confederacy. And now the scheme will never come to pa.s.s.

Booth fires at the bull's-eye.

The Deringer is less than six inches long, made of bra.s.s, with a two-inch barrel. I t launches a single large-caliber ball instead of a bullet and is accurate only at close range. For this reason it is often called a "gentleman's pistol"-small and easily concealed in a pocket or boot, the Deringer is ideal for ending an argument or extracting oneself from a dangerous predicament but wholly unsuited for the battlefield. Booth has purchased other weapons for his various plots, including the cache of revolvers and long-bladed daggers now hidden in his hotel room. But the Deringer with the chocolate-colored wooden grip is his personal favorite. I t is not lost on him that the pistol's primary traits-elegance, stealth, and the potential to produce mayhem-match those of its owner.

Booth is almost out of ammunition. He loads his gun for one last shot, still plotting his next course of action.

He is absolutely certain he can kidnap Lincoln.

But as Booth himself would utter while performing Hamlet, there's the rub.

I f the war is over, then kidnapping Lincoln is pointless.

Yet Lincoln is still the enemy. He always will be.

So if Booth is no longer a kidnapper, then how will he wage war? This is the question that has bothered him all night.

Booth fires his last shot, slides the Deringer into his pocket, and storms out the door, only to once again find the streets full of inebriated revelers.

Outraged, he steps into a tavern and knocks back a drink. John Wilkes Booth thinks hard about what comes next. "Our cause being almost lost, something decisive and great must be done," he tells himself.

Until now, Booth has taken orders from Confederate president Jefferson Davis, currently in hiding. I t was Davis who, nearly a year ago, sent two agents to Montreal with a fund of $1 million in gold. That money funded various plots against Lincoln. But Davis is done, fleeing to North Carolina in a train filled with looted Confederate gold, most likely never to return. Booth alone must decide for himself what is wrong and what is right.

From this moment forward he will live and breathe and scheme in accordance with his brand-new ident.i.ty, and his new mission. The time has come for black flag warfare.