American History Hit - Capturing Lincoln’s Assassin

Episode Date: December 1, 2022

On shooting President Abraham Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth fled Ford’s Theatre in Washington, DC on horseback, eventually heading south. But Lincoln’s was not the only assassination planned that night. Michael Kauffman tells Don about the others - attempted and abandoned - on the evening of April 14th, 1865, and the ill-fated run from the law of Booth and his co-conspirators.Produced by Benjie Guy. Mixed by Thomas Ntinas. Senior Producer: Charlotte Long.For more History Hit content, subscribe to our newsletters here.If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts, and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Blocks behind, in the chaotic confusion of Ford's Theater, President Abraham Lincoln is now collapsed, shot in the head. In a matter of hours, he will die. His assassin, John Wilkes Booth, this man now steering his steed beyond the city limits, crossing the Anacostia River into the woods and country lanes of rural Maryland will soon be joined by fellow conspirator David Herald. Together, they follow a pre-planned escape route that leads across the Potomac River into Virginia, into the south, into the Confederacy,

where they expect to find refuge, safekeeping among their own. But the hard days ahead offers surprisingly little of that, and their desperate flight will ultimately prove fatal. Hello and welcome again to American History Hit. I'm Don Wildman. We are in the midst of things, the epic and intricate tale of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, April 14, 1865, and the days following. And we are speaking to Michael Kaufman, author of American Brutus, about John Wilkes Booth and his conspiracy to avenge the South, picking up with Booth's escape. Michael, let me take us back to the moment, the fateful moment, in Fort Theater, when John Wilkes Booth pulls the trigger. At a late point in the play, Booth famously waits for a particular line, a sort of explosion of laughter, pulls the trigger, shoots Abraham Lincoln in the head, has an altercation with his partner there in the opera box, and then leaps to the stage in a sort of grand way and screams the famous lines.

Tell me what those lines are. When Booth hit the stage at Ford's Theater, he raised a knife up over his head, and he cried out, sick-sempred Tyrannis, thus always to tyrants. Now, that Latin phrase was supposed to remind people about this whole thing, you know, that had been stewing among anti-Lincoln people about Lincoln being a tyrant. And Booth kept seeing the old Roman Republic and his head, his classical training, and his acting, his theatrical business. Also, all of these plays that he had performed in, you know, Julius Caesar and all these things. I mean, this was a heroic act.

Yeah, of course. This is a Shakespearean drama that this man is in the middle of. He sees himself as a Shakespearean hero. He is killing Julius Caesar. He is delivering his big line on stage. It's crazy. And one can assume psychopathic of this man to be in this moment. You know, he's both in a play and in real life.

He then dashes out of the theater, but not so easily because he has probably broken his leg at this point. On impact, as one would, jumping from a 12-foot height, he cracks his leg. leg, right? It has always been said that Booth broke his leg when he landed on the stage. And I don't actually believe that was true. It has always been said that when Booth landed on the stage, he broke his ankle. And from then on, he's spending the rest of his life on the run, and he's doing it while limping around with a crutch under his arm and so on. My feeling is that he broke his leg later on when his horse slipped and fell over and he was unable to take his foot out of the stirrup at the time. And he got what doctors call a stirrup fracture, which they described in exactly the way that Booth would have described his own injury.

This begins another phase, really an act two of this whole drama, which is the escape of John Wilkes Booth. I have to say, you're one of several people I've encountered in all of this research who have really devoted, enormous amounts of time and energy into understanding the machinations of all of this, which later comes out in the trial against the conspirators, all the different phases going on. But really when you reverse engineer the escape of John Wilkes Booth, you see how complex the conspiracy really was and all the players that come to the fore through it. Before we leave this moment, we have to take a sidebar, a very dramatic sidebar, which is another part of this conspiracy is happening in a different part of town. Louis Powell is attacking with. William Seward. Lewis Powell was the most trusted member of Booth's conspiracy. Very quiet. Nobody knew who he was or anything else. And you can tell how well Booth trusted him because he gave him the second most important job. And that was killing the Secretary of State. Now, William Seward, later known for purchase of Alaska and all that. William Seward was in political lockstep with Abraham Lincoln. He was very high profile. Secretary of State. And he lived in a mansion just across from the White House on the night of the assassination, timed roughly at the same moment Booth was trying to kill Lincoln. Seward was lying in bed. He had injured himself in a carriage accident, and Lewis Powell forced his way into Seward's house and trudged up the steps to the darkened bedroom where the secretary lay injured from a

carriage accident the week before. Powell threw the door open and was met there by Seward's son, Frederick. In fighting off Frederick, Powell broke his pistol over Frederick's head and then pushed him aside and leaped onto the secretary's bed with a large knife and tried to stab William Seward to death. It was one horrendous scene, just unbelievable carnage in that place. Everybody who jumped on Powell tried to pull him off of the secretary. They all got grievously injured. And fortunately, nobody died in that household. And Powell was kind of lucky to get away.

And he would not be seen again for a couple of days. It's incredible to imagine the scene. Seward is saved, really, because his very brace, he's broken his jaw and sort of the machine, the mechanism or machinery that's holding his jaw kind of blocks the blow. And that's the reason he doesn't lose his life, really. At the same time, in another part of town, George Atserrat is supposed to be killing Andrew Johnson, the vice president. That doesn't happen. Well, George Atserrat was not a very trustworthy person. He was not a very reliable or discreet kind of a person. He's not somebody you would want to give

an important assignment to. What Booth did was he told Atserrat to check in to the same hotel where Vice President Andrew Johnson was staying. And then when Booth checked on Atzarat later on, he said, did you check in? He says, yes. And Booth took the key away from Atserrat. Atserrat went off, shrugged it off. He says, I'm not going to do any of this stuff.

And he went off and got drunk that night. when the police broke into Atserrat's rented room, remember he had signed his name in the register, George Atserrat, Charles County, Maryland, they broke into his room. They found a prosecutor's dream, John Wilkes Booth's bank book with his name on it, handkerchiefs with John Surat's name embroidered, all kinds of things that tied George Atserrat directly to the other conspirators. Because, see, one of the things that almost anybody knew in those days was that if you are a part of a plot, you cannot testify against the other people. There were no plea bargains in those days. George Atserrat's fate was sealed when John Wilkes Booth told him to go and kill Vice President Johnson. He made it impossible for Atserrat to do it, but then he, in a sense, framed Atzerat so that Atzarat could not blow the whistle.

So as John Wilkes Booth gallops away into the night, heading for the Navy Yard Bridge to head across into Maryland, he believes that, well, he knows that he's killed the president. He believes that the Secretary of State is dead, but you're saying he did not, he diffused the whole thing about the vice president. That doesn't make any sense to me. No, it doesn't. And that's why the original version that Atzarat was supposed to kill the vice president, has lived for so long because it was assumed anybody in the Lincoln administration would have been fair game. But look at the situation. Andrew Johnson, the vice president, had been a Southerner. He had been drunk at his own inauguration. He was from Tennessee, yes.

He was from Tennessee. Regardless of what his record was, there were a lot of people in his home state of Tennessee and all over the union who absolutely despise Johnson, and he was certainly no Abraham Lincoln, if you hand the government of the United States over to a person like Andrew Johnson, he's going to have a lot of trouble. And I think Booth was probably aware of that and probably realized that Andrew Johnson as president was going to be pretty ineffective. Wow, that's quite a forward-thinking intuition that Wilkes Booth has, because that's in many ways what happened. So as John Wilkes Booth heads off into the night. He crosses the Navy Yard Bridge. There are guards there who are, you know,

Civil War is still going on, sort of, but the guards would have been watching people coming and going all throughout the war. But suddenly this man comes from inside the city, so that's not too suspicious. And he gets across the Navy Yard Bridge without too much trouble and off into the night. Where's he headed? John Wilkes Booth has already scoped out a general idea of where he's going to go after the assassination. He knows that Mary's Surat, who had the boarding house in Washington, also owns a tavern about 12 miles south of Washington in Prince George's County at a place called Sarattsville. He has already arranged for David Harold to hide some weapons there. Harold catches up to Booth because he's been out coordinating these

different attacks and so on. And Harold finally catches up to Booth outside the city. and the two of them go together over to the Surat Tavern. The town, by the way, is now called Clinton. But at any rate, they stop there. And the Tavern Keeper, who's drunk, everybody in this story seems to be drunk. And they say, hey, make haste and get those guns. And so John Lloyd, the Tavernkeeper, who's been renting the place from Mary Surratt, goes and pulls out two Spencer Carbines.

Now, those were the assault weapons of the day. They were very modern. They were not the sort of thing that a hunter would have or any ordinary person. And so John Lloyd brought out two guns and handed them to Booth. And Booth said, I broke my leg, so I really can't carry one of them. So they took one of them away. And Booth and Harold continued on their way. And now at this point, he's mentioned the broken leg and he needs to find a doctor.

I'll be back with more American history after this short break. And that doctor is Samuel Mudd, a controversial figure in this whole story because he ends up becoming arrested and included in this conspiracy, in fact, sent away for a good number of years. Many people don't believe that Mudd was involved directly in this conspiracy. Do you agree with that? Samuel Mudd has really been kind of a lightning rod over the years. Initially, he was described as an innocent country doctor who had set Booth's leg. hours after the assassination. Later on, in the 1970s, a number of people said, no, he was as guilty as sin and so on. Well, Mud had been convicted of being a part of the conspiracy because Booth had visited his farm the previous year.

And when the Federals found that out, they said, oh, okay, you know, he's hiding something. And so Mud was put on trial and given a life sentence. Later on, he was. pardoned by Andrew Johnson and then went off to live a quiet life as a country doctor. In the 1970s, a number of people put two and two together and said, hey, you know what, prosecutors were right. Mudd knew it all along. And so the controversy continues to this day. I happen to be one of those who believes Dr. Mudd was not guilty. Of course, I have my reasons for that. That's a whole hour in itself. At the Mudd show, on the other side of the story, we have an enormous, obviously, huge scene happening in Washington.

Lincoln is carried out of the theater across the street to a house directly across the street from Ford's Theater. You can still visit. And laid down to bed, his entire, you know, the administration comes. There are many, many visitors to this room. And overnight, he finally perishes. Edward Stanton has taken charge, Secretary of War. Obviously, Seward is in no condition to step forward.

He really steps forward and starts running the show at this point, dispatching a, a force in pursuit, and all of this becomes organized. It's the largest manhunt in the history of the country at that point, involving federal troops and so forth. So we now begin to see a very exciting pursuit take place in which John Wilkes Booth and David Herald on horseback are charging through the night. Wilkes Booth spends the night getting his leg repaired and on where they go. Meanwhile, the federal troops start chasing that path. How do they even know where to go? I've always been confused about that. The pursuers really had no idea where to go. And they checked out every imaginable lead and they went off in every possible direction. And over the years when they wrote

their memoirs or gave newspaper interviews, they made it sound as though they knew immediately where booth had gone. So it's one of the reasons that I stayed with the contemporary sources. Just ignore what they said later on. They were all huffing and puffing. But at any rate, how they eventually caught up with Booth. Booth had been hiding in the woods in southern Maryland, way south of Washington, waiting for a chance to cross over the Potomac River, which by this time was just swarming with gunboats and people looking for him. And he wanted to get across into the northern neck of Virginia, King George County over there, which would put him back on the original courier route that John Surat and others knew so well. And when he finally saw a chance, he got on the river almost a week after the assassination and crossed

into Virginia and then everything changed. Ironically, Booth had met up with a lot of first support and then grudging support in Maryland. But when he got to Virginia, the word was the same everywhere he went. Get lost. Why was that? For them, the war was over before the assassination. Lee surrendered Virginia troops. Virginia had borne the brunt of the war. Thousands of battles and skirmishes had taken place in Virginia. Their men had died in very large numbers. Their farms had been devastated, and they knew the experience of defeat. In Maryland, that was not the case. So it's very easy for somebody like Booth to go, oh, it's not over yet.

Keep fighting. We can keep doing this. He didn't really feel crushed like the people of Virginia did. And so when Booth got into Virginia, he learned a very hard lesson about the difference between a border state and a real southern state. He gets over there and he says, I need a place to stay. He goes, oh, you're the guy who killed Lincoln. He thinks that's going to help him. It doesn't.

And he ends up concealing his identity as he gets farther along because people down there really want to tear him apart. Why are you opening the wounds now? You know, it was over. We were looking forward to peace. At that point, I think that Booth's mindset had all been about Julius Caesar, that the saving, of the Republican, so forth, the minute booth gets into Virginia, the story changes to Macbeth. And he goes from one place to another. And it's blood and gore everywhere, and it's regret and it's guilt, and it's all kinds of things like that. And ironically, I love this kind of stuff.

Ironically, the first person that he tries to stay with, he tries to get an invitation to stay at this house, it happens to be a direct descendant of the man for whom the play Macbeth was written. Wow. This is Stuart King. And then Booth has a little pocket diary. He's writing in it. And that day, which happens to be Shakespeare's birthday, he writes down a little quote, a little throwaway quote that happens to be from Macbeth. And then he also writes a note to Dr. Stewart.

in which he quotes Macbeth again and again and again. There's no more Julius Caesar in any of this, but it is all Macbeth. I think that's fascinating, but, you know. Wow. His downfall is coming. This pursuit has several stages, takes about 10 days for the feds to catch up with him. So this final scene of John Wilkes Booth's eventual tragedy happens in Virginia on a farm. The irony of this whole ending is that he does not find the same.

safety and comfort of his allies in Virginia, you know, where he expected to have the easy part of this whole thing. He ends up in a barn on a farm, and that's where the feds find him and try to take him capture. But explain what happens in that scene. On the 24th of April, 10 days after the shooting of Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth and David Herald end up at the farm of Richard Garrett in Caroline County, Virginia. and they spend the night in the Garrett house. And the following day, the Garrett's suspicions are raised when Booth seems to be spooked by the presence of federal troops in the area. And they say, okay, what's going on? And they say, you know what, go sleep out in the barn tonight.

You're not sleeping in this house again. And because they had some valuables in the barn, they locked him in. And so by the time the troops came along, the 16th New York Cavalry, when they came along looking for Booth, Booth couldn't get away. He was locked in the tobacco barn of Richard Garrett. Michael, this pursuit, eventual capture, lasts for 10 days. It has many different elements to it, several chapters that unfold. It ends up with John Wilkes Booth being shot in that burning barn on Garrett's farm, dragged out, perishing at the doorstep of Garrett's farmhouse. What follows then is a long trial, which is itself an epic story.

But tell me about the fate of John Wilkes Booth's circle of conspirators. Well, eventually, eight people were put on trial. They were all civilians, but it was a military trial. And that, of course, added another layer of complexity to things. The military commission of nine officers made their own rules. That's kind of the way it had been going throughout the war. and one of those rules said that a simple majority vote would convict. You don't need unanimous jury.

And if there were two-thirds of the members who voted for guilt, that was the death penalty. There's no penalty phase. You know, if six people decide that, you were guilty, then you're also condemned to death. Four people were condemned to death in this. Louis Powell, understandably, who had attacked Seward. He was given the death penalty. David Harold, who had been with Booth all along, death penalty, and Mary Sarat. And that was interesting.

First woman ever executed by the federal government. She was thought to be the ringleader. And she was given the death penalty as well. And George Atserrat, because the commission believed he was in it right up to the end. And he had been willing, but unable, to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson. So four people, this gruesome scene, four people executed altogether on a very large scaffold in the penitentiary of the Washington Arsenal. Then there were four other people who got less than a death penalty.

Sam Arnold and Michael Lachlan, the Friends of Booth from Baltimore, they both got life in prison. Dr. Samuel Mudd got life. got life in prison because they believed that he had been in it all along. And then there was a man named Ned Spangler. Edmund Spangler had been a stagehand at Ford's Theater. And Booth came out on the night of the assassination, brought a rented horse over to the back door of the theater, and asked Spangler to hold the horse for him.

Spangler got impatient and said, you know, I've got something to do here. And he went and found a boy, they called him Peanuts, here, hold Booth's horse for him. And then he said, and if anything goes wrong, just blame me. And he goes back into the theater. It turns out that Spangler had been chummy with Booth for a long, long time. That describes a lot of people. But at any rate, it was enough to get Spangler a six-year prison sentence, although they did find him innocent of everything that came up in the trial.

So I always say, you know, he was found in a prison sentence. and given six years. Again, they made their own rules. But that's what happened in the conspiracy trial. And the four people condemned to death were hanged on July 7th of 1865. And in the last day of his administration, Andrew Johnson, 1869, pardoned three people who were still in prison down in Fort Jefferson off of Key West Florida. Now, I say three. If you're doing the math, you know there's one left. Michael O'Loughlin died in prison during a yellow fever epidemic in 1867. And so that's what happened to the rest of the so-called Lincoln conspirators. It's an amazing tale. Well told within the covers of your book, American Brutus, John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln conspiracies,

written by Michael Kaufman. I really recommend that anybody read this. It stays fresh over the years. It was actually published in 2004. I still look at it to remind myself of all the details of this important event. Thank you. Michael, both for writing this book and for appearing on this show and giving us quick description of something that really ought to be given a lot more attention. Well, as you know, Don, I could go on and on forever. It's harder to get me to stop talking than to get me to talk. Well, so will the conspiracy theories of this whole thing. I mean, people spend their lives figuring this thing. Just like they do with John Kennedy. All these assassinations have so many different aspects to it, but they're especially rich in the telling of this one. Well, thank you very much. I always thought the truth was a lot more interesting than fiction.

And this story proved that it's one of the things. One of the reasons that kept me going for as long as it took to write this book is that every time you turn around, there's something new that you didn't know from other books. And so it kept it alive. I mean, really, I regretted finishing the book because I just loved doing the research. Yeah, it shows. The prose sparkles, you're a really fine writer. Every page has some sort of, huh, factor to it that I didn't understand, partly because, most Americans and myself included, don't get a chance to get into everything about something the way you have in this case.

But also, you've just done a lot of really careful research. So thank you for what you've done, and I will keep reading this book as long as I live. Well, thank you so much. I appreciate that. Thanks for listening to this episode of American History Hit. I hope you enjoyed it. Please don't forget to like, review, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. I'll see you next time. This podcast includes music from Epidemic Sound.