Infamous America - BOOTH Ep. 3 | "Enemies, Foreign and Domestic"

Episode Date: April 14, 2020

Booth and Herold continue to flee south and arrive at the farm of Dr. Samuel Mudd. Mudd gives them aid, but then learns about the assassination and forces them to leave. In Washington, President Lincoln passes away and grief spreads across the nation. For more details, please visit www.blackbarrelmedia.com. Our social media pages are: @blackbarrelmedia on Facebook and Instagram, and @bbarrelmedia on Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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On the night of April 14, 1865, the War Department moved its headquarters to the back parlor of William Peterson's home for all intents and purposes. That was where War Secretary Edwin Stanton conducted business. President Lincoln lay dying in a bedroom a few feet away, and Stanton methodically organized the military and civilian law enforcement to find the president's killer. He dropped an avalanche of orders on his assistance. They burned up the telegraph lines sending instructions and news reports all over the country. Stanton sent guards to the homes of every member of the cabinet.

He ordered military units to kick it into high gear. Double the guards, man every gun, put the forts on high alert. He shut down Washington City. trains were stopped rivers and roads were guarded anyone who looked suspicious was questioned and or arrested at midnight he told major thomas eckert to find general ulysses s grant and get him back to washington now ecchard sent a telegram to grant who was on his way to new jersey it said the president was assassinated tonight at ford's theater at ten thirty tonight and cannot live the wound is a pistol shot through the head. Secretary Seward and his son Frederick were also assassinated at their residence and are in dangerous condition. The Secretary of War desires you to return to Washington immediately. Welcome to infamous America. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer. This is a seven-part

series about one of the largest manhunts in American history, the search for John Wilkes' booth after he assassinated President Abraham Lincoln. This is Chapter 3. Enemies, foreign and domestic. Around midnight, at the same time Stanton sent an urgent telegram to Grant, John Wilkes Booth, and David Harold arrived at Sarattsville. Sarattsville was a multi-purpose building in the Maryland countryside about 10 miles from Washington. It was a hotel and a tavern and a safe haven for Confederate spies.

John Lloyd rented it from Mary Sorat, whose late husband had built it a few years ago. Booth and Harold woke up John Lloyd and took a rifle and a set of field glasses that Lloyd had been holding for them. Then they turned south and continued to ride through Maryland. Maryland was Booth's home state and he felt comfortable in it, but he was not a woodsman. He did not like roughing it. He was more comfortable in plush hotels surrounded by fancy people and strong cocktails. As they traveled south, Booth relied on his companion, David Harold, to guide him.

Harold was 23 and had been raised in Washington but spent lots of time hunting in Charles County, Maryland, where they were now. He knew the area better than Booth, and Booth was more focused on suppressing the pain in his ankle while he bounced in the saddle. Harold idolized Booth. Harold was loyal, and he became a kind of scout or point man for the escape. And at the moment, he needed to point them in the direction of a doctor's house. Booth needed treatment for his injured ankle, which he feared was broken. They pointed their horses toward the farm of Dr. Samuel Mudd. Booth met Mudd six months earlier when Booth was planning his kidnapping scheme. If he had been able to kidnap Lincoln, he would have transported the president down to the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia.

To make the journey, he wanted to enlist the help of the Confederate Secret Service. The Confederate Secret Service was a network of spies. couriers and supporters that ran from Georgia to Montreal, Canada. Booth had gone to Canada and secured the help of the Secret Service. When he returned to America, he held two letters of introduction that vouched for his loyalty to the Confederacy. One letter introduced him to Dr. William Queen, and the other introduced him to Dr. Samuel Mud. The letter connected Booth to Mud, and then Mud helped Booth set up the kidnapping plot.

Mud introduced Booth to a Confederate courier named John Sorot, whose mother Mary owned a boarding house in Washington and a tavern outside the city that she rented to John Lloyd. Mud also helped Booth buy a horse for a conspirator named Louis Powell, the man who had attacked Secretary of State William Seward less than an hour ago. But the kidnapping never materialized. Booth had sent liquor and supplies to Mud's farm in advance of the big event, but then it never happened.

Mud hadn't seen or heard from Booth since the plan had apparently been abandoned. But now, in the wee hours of the morning, Booth and Harold headed for Mudd's farm. The farm was almost certainly a way station for Confederate agents. It would be a safe place to stop for a while, and of course, Booth badly needed medical treatment for his ankle. While Booth and Harold traveled south through the darkness, aided by occasional light from the moon, Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, tore Washington apart looking for conspirators. A little after 1 a.m., Stanton sent a telegram to the chief of police in New York that ordered him to send three of his best detectives to Washington to help the investigation. John Wilkes Booth was the starting point.

Every department and agency rushed to capture anyone who knew him. Within four hours of the attack on the president, various authorities in Washington had identified several of the key, spiritors and had begun to retrace the steps of the attackers. Detectives interviewed John Fletcher, the stable manager who had been with George Atserrat and David Herald before the attacks. Fletcher had chased Harold through the city to the Navy Yard Bridge just minutes after the assassination. Policemen talked to the young man who held Booth's horse behind Ford's theater.

They now knew Booth was riding a small mayor, though that information got lost in the chaos of the night for quite a while. The Washington police learned that Booth had a close friend named John Surrott, and John's mother, Mary, had a boarding house in the city. At 2 a.m., detectives knocked on her door and asked for her son. She said he was not home. This first visit to Mary Surrott's boarding house was brief, but it would not be the last. Before long, her home would be the epicenter of the investigation.

A detective raced to the Kirkwood House Hotel to check on Vice President Andrew Johnson. Rumors were rampant that Johnson had been killed. When the detective arrived, he found that Johnson was okay, but the desk clerk said that the man who rented the room directly below Johnson had been acting funny. That room was rented to George Atserrat. The detective forced opened the door and discovered several items that could be considered incriminating. There was a gun under the bed pillow and a large buoy knife wedged between the sheets and the mattress. Most damning of all was a bank book from the Ontario Bank in Montreal, Canada. The name on the account was Jay Wilkes Booth.

But Atzerat himself was nowhere to be found. After he had abandoned his assignment to kill the vice president, Atzarat had gone to a friend's house to get a room for the night, but he was denied. He ended up finding a room at a boarding house and hunkered down while the detective ransacked his room at the Kirkwood. At the same time, a similar thing. procedure was happening in Booth's room at the National Hotel. A letter was discovered that was potentially explosive. It was dated March 27th, three weeks ago, and addressed from Hookstown, Maryland, and was signed by a man who called himself Sam. In the letter, he referred to an arrangement of

some kind, and he implored Booth to delay action on the arrangement, whatever it was. The man called Sam wanted to wait and see what Richmond thought of the plan. This letter was a game changer for Edwin Stanton. It seemed to imply that Booth's conspiracy did not just involve the handful of people who had participated in the attacks. It might have been sanctioned or organized by the upper levels of the Confederacy. Jefferson Davis himself, the president of the Confederacy, might have signed off on the attacks. None of this was written explicitly, of course, but it gave Stanton enormous leeway to go after virtually everyone, and use any means necessary to secure the truth.

And by 3 a.m., Stanton believed he had secured another piece of the puzzle. A horse had been found on a road. Its owner was missing, but the horse had blood on it. Stanton thought it was Booth's horse, and Stanton and everyone else were confident that the attackers were trapped in the city. But of course, it wasn't Booth's horse. It was Lewis Powell's horse, the horse that had been bought by Dr. Mud and given to Powell for use in the kidnapping.

The most common account of Powell's whereabouts during these first frenzied hours of the investigation is that he hid in a cemetery. He'd lost his hat during the attack on Seward and had abandoned his horse sometime afterwards and found shelter in a cemetery for two days. About an hour after Powell's horse was found in Washington, Booth and Harold rode into the yard of Dr. Dr. Samuel Mudd. Harold dismounted. Booth stayed on his horse, listening for any hint of danger. Mud's house was dark.

Six people slept inside. Dr. Mudd, his wife, and their four young children. Harold knocked at the door. There was no answer. Harold pounded on the door, and this time the sound resonated in the doctor's bedroom. Dr. Mudd got up and moved cautiously to the door without lighting a lamp. He called out through the door and asked who was there. Harold said they were strangers on the road to St. Mary's County.

One of their horses had fallen, and the rider had broken his leg in the accident. They needed help. Mud walked outside and studied the two men. As he moved closer to Booth, he recognized the famous actor. Mud helped Booth limp into the house. Harold stayed outside to care for the horses. When the horses were in the stable, Harold joined them in the house. To do a proper examination, Mud helped Booth upstairs to a bed.

Booth's leg and ankle were swollen, so Mud had to cut off Booth's tall boot. Mud examined Booth's injured leg and confirmed that Booth had broken his fibula two inches above his ankle. But the injury wasn't serious. Mud made a splint, and he instructed his gardener to make a pair of crutches. It was about 5 a.m., roughly seven hours after Booth attacked. hacked Lincoln. The sun was coming up and the family was beginning to waken. Mud and Harold went downstairs for breakfast, but Booth stayed in bed. As Booth lay in bed, he had a choice to make.

Harold was downstairs eating and asking cryptic questions about the fastest way to the Potomac River. They had a boat stashed there that would allow them to cross the river and move farther south into the safety of the Confederacy. At this point, they were still ahead of the news as it applied to people in rural settings. People like Mud, who lived on farms, didn't have telegraph lines. They had to ride to the nearest town to get the newspaper. Out here, news traveled person to person. Booth and Harold did not reveal their assassination attempts,

and the Mud family had no sense of the chaos that gripped Washington 30 miles away. As Booth studied his options, he made his choice. It was too dangerous to travel during the day. He and Harold would hide at Mudd's farm until dark, and they continue their journey to the Potomac River. While Booth rested, and David Harold ate breakfast with Dr. Mudd's family. The investigation quickened in Washington. War Secretary Edwin Stanton was now positive that John Wilkes Booth had attacked President Lincoln. Stanton still didn't know the identity of the man who had attacked Secretary Seward,

but he was confident that the man would be caught soon. Stanton had learned the names of two more close friends of Booth, both of whom were considered conspirators, Michael O'Loughlin and Samuel Arnold. Arnold was the man who had written the letter that urged Booth to wait on whatever action he was going to take until people in Richmond had weighed in. The letter had been signed simply Sam. To Stanton, it was a clear indication of a vast conspiracy that reached all the way to the top of the Confederate government. At the crack of dawn, a young typesetter was dragged out of bed to produce wanted posters that would be handed out all over the city.

The first poster didn't name the assassins, but it offered a $10,000 reward for the men who had attacked the president and secretary Seward. As the young man worked feverishly to print the posters, another of the conspirators escaped the city. George Atserrat left his hotel at 6 a.m. and walked to Georgetown. He ate breakfast with a friend, then sold his guns, and then boarded a stagecoach to Rockville, Maryland. When the stage reached the outskirts of the city, it hit a military roadblock. Azzarot hopped off the stage and made his way to a checkpoint where people waited in line to leave the city. He bought drinks of hard cider for the soldiers, and then convinced a farmer to give him a ride in a wagon. With a couple's simple but effective moves, he escaped the dragna.

and was in Montgomery County, Maryland. As the time neared 7 a.m. on Saturday, April 15th, 1865, George Atzarat was in Gathersburg, Maryland, northwest of Washington. Booth and Harold were at Dr. Mudd's farm southeast of Washington. Lewis Powell was hiding somewhere in the city, and President Abraham Lincoln was about to lose his battle with the assassin's bullet. Dr. Charles Leal sat with the president all night. The 23-year-old Army captain had been the first person to examine Lincoln at the theater,

and had helped carry him across the street to the Peterson home. Leal knew that people who were on the verge of death frequently regained consciousness and recognition for a brief moment before the end. He held the president's hand for several hours. He wanted the president to know, even if his eyes never opened, that he was in the presence of a friend. Dr. Leal kept his finger on the president's wrist to check. his pulse. At 6 a.m., it began to drop. Lincoln's breathing became labored, and his pulse continued to fail

for the next hour. Nearly every man in the room stared at his pocket watch. The end was close. There was no delaying it now. At 721 and 55 seconds, President Lincoln drew his last breath. At 7.22 and 10 seconds, his heart stopped. The president gave no great moan or any dramatic physical exertion. He simply slipped away. The room was quiet for several minutes. Eventually, Edwin Stanton broke the trance by asking a doctor a question. Then the minister said a prayer.

After several more minutes of silence, Stanton uttered a phrase that became immortal, but has always been debated. The tradition is that Stanton said, Now he belongs to the ages. After the pronouncement, the other men in the room filed out, and Stanton was alone with Lincoln.

The two men were similar, yet vastly different. There were both lawyers from the Midwest, but Lincoln was calm and measured, and Stanton was impatient and often rude. They had their conflicts, but they also worked well together. They both opposed slavery, but Lincoln was willing to tolerate it before the war if it meant keeping the union together.

Stanton was an absolutist. He hated slavery with a fire that few white men possessed. Many people pressured Lincoln to remove Stanton, but Lincoln wouldn't hear of it. Now Stanton sat by himself in a room that had been crowded with people all night. He looked at Lincoln. The president's form was tranquil and untroubled for the first time in ten hours. It would never be troubled again, and now it was Stanton's mission in life to bring every single person to justice who had anything to do with the assassination of his friend. The President's Secretary, John Hay, captured the relationship best when he wrote a letter to Stanton a few days later. Hay said, Not everyone knows as I do how close you stood with our lost leader, how he loved you and trusted you,

and how vain were all efforts to shake that trust in confidence, not lightly given and never withdrawn. A telegram was on its way to a general in New York with the latest news, but its import would circle the globe by the end of the day. Stanton had written just a single line that said, Abraham Lincoln died this morning at 22 minutes after 7 o'clock. While news of the president's death spread like wildfire through Washington and buzzed across telegraph lines all over the country. John Wilkes Booth slept at Mudd's farm. He had no way of knowing that his goal had been accomplished or what had happened to Powell and Azzarant. Booth was secluded in the upstairs bedroom and Harold gave no hint of their actions to Mudd's family.

But as the day progressed, the doctor learned the shocking news. That afternoon, Harold and Mud rode toward Bryan Town to find a buggy or a carriage for booth. Briantown, Maryland was about 30 miles southeast of Washington. As Mud and Harold trotted toward the village, they spotted something that caused Harold to stop in his tracks. The 13th New York Cavalry rode into town to set up a base of operations for the manhunt in Southern Maryland. Harold suddenly changed his mind about the buggy.

He told Mud he no longer needed it, and he galloped back toward Mud's farm. Mud continued into town. He bought supplies for his farm and talked to his neighbors. It didn't take long for him to learn the news that rocked the nation. President Lincoln had been assassinated the previous night by John Wilkes Booth. The town was crawling with soldiers and detectives, and Mud kept his mouth shut. He returned to his farm and ordered Booth and Harold to leave. He was furious that they had involved him in the crime without his house.

consent and he wanted them off his farm. Booth and Harold heard Mud's order, but at the moment, they were more occupied with the joyous news that the attack on Lincoln had been successful. The act in itself was glorious, but now Booth was also certain that he would be hailed as a hero as he reached the South. His legend and legacy would be secure as the man who ended the tyranny of Abraham Lincoln. Mud snapped Booth out of his reverie. Mud was anti-union, anti-Lincoln, and pro-slavery, but he didn't have time to rejoice in the assassination. Manhunters were only five miles from his farm. Right now, Mudd was more concerned with the safety of his family. He wasn't going to turn Booth in, but Booth needed to leave quickly.

Mud told Booth and Harold about two Confederate operatives who lived farther south. The two men lived close to the Potomac River, and they would be willing to help the assassins. At 7 p.m., Booth and Harold mounted up and trotted away from Mud's farm. Mud had fashioned a kind of shoe for Booth to protect his injured ankle in the stirrup, but it would still be a long and painful ride to the homes of the Confederate agents. As they began their journey in the growing darkness, George Azzarot settled down for the night in a mill near Germantown, Maryland. He had continued moving north while Booth and Harold moved south.

In Washington, the early morning hours had been consumed with shock and sadness, but they soon gave way to the needs of a government and crisis. At the Peterson home, Mary Lincoln could not bear to look at her husband. She was so overcome with grief that her attendants took her back to the White House at 9 a.m. In the back bedroom, Stanton directed the transportation of the president. Soldiers draped an American flag over his body and laid, laid him in a plain pine coffin for his transport to the White House. The soldiers carried the coffin through the Peterson home and outside to a wagon, and the wagon

made its short procession to the home of the President. At 10 a.m., two blocks from the Peterson House, Andrew Johnson was sworn in as the 17th President of the United States. The ceremony took place in Johnson's rooms at the Kirkwood House Hotel and was attended by Supreme Court Justices, Congressman, and other officials. That afternoon, Lincoln's body was cleaned and embalmed and dressed in the suit he wore for his second inauguration. While that somber work took place,

Edwin Stanton summoned one of the men who would lead the effort to find John Wilkes' booth. That man was Lieutenant Colonel Lafayette Baker. Baker and Stanton had a complicated relationship. Baker had been accused of abusive tactics on numerous occasions. He had also thrown people in jail for no cause and without charge, and at one point he had been fired by Stanton for spying on Stanton. Now, Baker was the head of an organization that he called the National Detective Police in New York City. Despite their conflicts in the past, Stanton asked Baker to come to Washington immediately to help find the assassins.

While Baker was in route, Stanton reached. returned to the scene of the crime. He examined the president's box at Ford's theater. He retraced Booth's steps. He wanted to see the crime as Booth saw it. And then he called for the most surreal step of the investigation. He rounded up all the actors from our American cousin who were still in town and made them perform the play. Stanton and his aides sat in the audience and watched a bizarre rendition of the show. Some of the actors had already fled the city. They feared they would be implicated, so the awkward performance was rendered more strange without the full cast. The lines echoed through the hall with an unsettling effect, and there was no laughter when Harry Hawk finally reached the line that Booth had used for cover to fire his gun.

But it was enough for Stanton to confirm the timing of Booth's attack. Stanton still didn't know the full extent of the conspiracy, or the identities of all the conspirators, but the timeline of the assassin's, was coming into focus. In two more days, he would have his first major break in the case. Colonel Baker and others would arrest several conspirators, including the man who had viciously attacked the Seward family. But despite the windfall, he was no closer to catching the man he really wanted. John Wilkes Booth and David Herald were 30 miles south and moving farther away by the minute.

Next time on Infamous America, Booth and Harold get lost in the dark swamps of southern Maryland as they tried to cross the Potomac River to Virginia. If Booth thought he was roughing it up to this point, it was nothing compared to what he was about to face. At the same time, the nation mourns the loss of its president. Easter Sunday becomes the darkest Easter in the nation's history. That's next week on Infamous America.

Research for this season was provided by Joey McAdams. editing and sound design by Dave Harrison. I'm your writer and host, Chris Wimmer. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening. Please visit our website, blackbarrelmedia.com, for more details and join us on social media.

We're BlackBarrel Media on Facebook and Instagram and B-Barrel Media on Twitter. Thanks again. We'll see you next week.