Infamous America - BOOTH Ep. 6 | "The Garrett Farm"

Episode Date: May 5, 2020

Booth and Herold finally make it to Virginia, but they are not welcomed with hospitality. As they continue their trek south, they meet three Confederate soldiers who agree to help them. Ultimately, the soldiers deliver the fugitives to the site of their last stand: the Garrett farm. Meanwhile, Edwin Stanton's top manhunter discovers the clue that leads the searchers to Booth's doorstep. 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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From headquarters, middle military division, Washington, D.C., April 24, 1865. To the colored people of the District of Columbia and of Maryland, of Alexandria and the border counties of Virginia, your president has been murdered. He has fallen by the assassin and without a moment's warning. simply and solely because he was your friend and the friend of our country. Had he been unfaithful to you and to the great cause of human freedom, he might have lived. The pistol from which he met his death, though held by Booth, was fired by the hands of treason and slavery. Think of this, and remember how long and how anxiously this man labored to break your chains and to make you happy.

I now appeal to you by every consideration which can move loyal and grateful hearts to aid in discovering and arresting his murderer. Concealed by traitors, he is believed to be lurking somewhere within the limits of the District of Columbia, of the state of Maryland, or Virginia. Go forth then, and watch and listen, and inquire, and search, and pray, by day and night, until you shall have succeeded. in dragging this monstrous and bloody criminal from his hiding place. W.S. Hancock, Major General U.S. volunteers, commanding middle military division. 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 6, The Garrett Farm. Wilkes Booth and David Harold sat on the farmland of John Hughes for two days. They'd arrived in the early morning hours of April 21st, and now it was the night of the 22nd. They'd lost another 40 hours, and they were no farther from Washington than they'd been a week ago when they'd fled the city. After dark on the 22nd, they shoved off from the Maryland shore in their small boat. They repeated the same process. Harold rode and Booth steered. And after long, hours of hauling themselves across the dark water, they finally landed in Virginia early on the morning of April 23rd. They missed their original destination and landed in a creek about a

mile from their next person of contact, Mrs. Cuisenberry. Booth stayed in the boat and Harold walked to the woman's home. Her house was a well-known stop for Confederate agents. When Harold arrived, Mrs. Cuisenberry was not at home. He told her daughter that he was traveling with brother who was injured. When Mrs. Cuisenberry returned home sometime later, she refused to offer the strangers any help other than to give them some food. But in a happy turn of fate for Booth, the man who brought that food was someone he knew. Dr. Mudd had introduced Booth to this man five months earlier during the planning of the kidnapping. The man agreed to help Booth and Harold continue their journey. He directed them or connected them to the next man.

in line, a farmer who lived about three miles away. The farmer provided a horse for Booth to make the trip to their next destination. Booth and the farmer rode and Harold walked eight miles to the home of a doctor. The small group arrived around 8 p.m. as Dr. Richard Stewart was finishing supper with his family. Harold and their farmer guide went to the door. Booth stayed on his horse in the background. Harold knocked on the door and pleaded his case to the doctor, but Stewart was very suspicious of the young man and the nighttime arrival. Stewart repeatedly refused to help, no matter which tactic Harold tried. But finally, Stewart relented to one request.

He would allow the two strangers to come in and eat. As Harold helped Booth into the house, Stewart stayed outside and talked to the farmer. He insisted the men could not spend the next to the next. night at his house. The farmer didn't want to care for them either. He'd agreed to get them to Stewart's house, and he'd done it. His part was finished. By now, the doctor had a pretty good guess as to who the men were. They hadn't given their names, but Stewart quickly put the pieces together. The two strangers were haggard, like they'd been living outside for several days.

One of them was clearly refined and educated. He was certainly not a Confederate source. He was certainly not a Confederate soldier returning from the war the way his friend claimed he was. The smaller of the two, the one who talked a lot, didn't seem like a soldier either. Dr. Stewart was sure these two men were the most wanted men in America. He knew their names. Everyone did. But he didn't want to say them out loud. He hurried into his house to push them to eat quickly and leave. While the doctor was inside, the farmer took the chance to leave as well. As he trotted away from the house, the doctor sprinted up beside him. He begged the farmer to help him get the two strangers out of his home. The farmer reluctantly agreed

to help one last time. The doctor told him about a former slave who owned a small cabin down the road. They should go there. Booth struggled back into the saddle, and he and Harold and the farmer left Dr. Stewart's house. Around midnight, they made it to the former slaves cabin. Harold screamed the man's name into the night. The sound woke up the dogs on the property, and they started barking. The barking woke up the homeowner. The homeowner, William Lucas, was worried, of course, but then the farmer spoke up. He announced himself, and the two men knew each other, and Lucas opened the door with relief. But his husband was a little bit of course. But His relief was short-lived.

Harold made his own announcement. He told Lucas they were going to stay at his house tonight no matter what. He said again they were Confederate soldiers, and they'd been traveling all night, and they were tired. They were staying at Lucas's house. Lucas tried to protest. He said his house was very small, and his wife was inside sick. But Booth and Harold didn't care. They were exhausted and edgy.

Booth would have been extremely insulted by being forced out of the house of a white southern gentleman and sent to the crude cabin of a former slave. Booth might have pulled a knife and flashed it at Lucas to finish the argument. He told Harold that they were going to stay there for the night and would use Lucas' horse and wagon tomorrow. William Lucas felt he couldn't push it any further. There were three white men in his yard, two of whom were angry and armed. The farmer rode away, leaving William Lucas to handle the strangers.

Booth and Harold forced Lucas and his wife out of the house. The fugitives slept inside, and the homeowner and his sick wife spent the night on their own front porch. Booth and Harold were finally able to sleep indoors, but the series of delays over the last two days had proved costly, though they didn't know it yet. When they awoke in the Lucas cabin the next morning, the U.S. cavalry was just a couple hours away from dropping into their backyard. Over the last three days, while Booth and Harold finally made it from Maryland to Virginia, the president's funeral train began its journey from Washington to Springfield, Illinois.

Mary Lincoln decided that her husband's final resting place would be his adopted hometown of Springfield, and an elaborate procession was designed to take him there. On the morning of the 21st, as Booth and Harold struggled out of the Potomac River after their failed crossing, President Lincoln's body was moved from the capital to a special train. The luxurious funeral car was decorated in black for the long trip to Springfield. The direct route was about 675 miles, but the train was going to zigzag through the east and stop at several major cities as it worked its way west.

Hundreds of thousands of people streamed into venues to view the president's body in Baltimore, Harrisburg, Philadelphia, and New York. It was estimated that as many as 300,000 people in Philadelphia alone paid their respects. Thousands more lined the railroad tracks as the train arrived at or departed from each new city. It was in Philadelphia just over four years ago that President Lincoln gave a speech in which he declared he would rather be assassinated than to give up the principle of liberty to save the union.

Two years after the speech, he gave liberty to millions of slaves. Two years after that, he was assassinated. The funeral train was filled with distinguished guests, but one of them was not Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. He was working around the clock in Washington to find Booth, and he was about to get his big break, that we probably didn't recognize it in the moment.

On the morning of April 24th, as Booth and Harold woke up in William Lucas's cabin, Stanton's forces played a desperate card. General Winfield Scott Hancock issued a public statement that implored all colored people, as the statement said, to search high and low for the assassins. Ultimately, the lengthy appeal didn't have time to produce results. That same day,

Stanton's chief manhunter picked up a tip and put the troops in motion who would catch the fugitives. Stanton had recruited Colonel Lafayette Baker to lead the hunt for Booth. Baker was a shady character, to say the least. He was more interested in claiming the reward money than he was in catching the president's killer. He'd been loitering in the telegraph office, scanning the wires for any nugget of information that might be helpful. He found a telegram from a detective in northern Virginia. The tip said that a boat had been found, and two men might have crossed the Potomac River in it. Baker seized on the information.

He kept the tip to himself and secretly recruited men to follow up on it. He brought in two detectives to lead the search, his cousin Luther Byron Baker and Everton Conger. Then he requested an army unit to bolster the effort. The mission was given to the 16th New York Cavalry and Lieutenant Edward. Edward Doherty. Doherty accepted 25 volunteers, and they boarded a steamship. Their destination was a spot roughly 20 miles from where Booth and Harold had landed in the creek just yesterday.

They didn't know it yet, but they were less than 24 hours from finding the trail of the assassins. Booth and Harold stepped out of William Lucas's cabinet around 6 a.m. on April 24th. They instructed Lucas to prepare his horse and wagon. They wanted to rent them to get to the small town of Port Conway about 10 miles away. But this was a one-way trip for the fugitives, so they asked if William's son Charles could drive them so that he could bring the horse and wagon back. They made a deal. The fee for the services of the Lucas family would be $20.

Around 7 a.m., Charles Lucas snapped the reins and began driving Booth and Harold toward Port Conway. They arrived at the little river town around noon. And either at this moment or during the drive, Booth took the time to write a note to Dr. Stewart. The actor passive-aggressively chastised the doctor for the lack of hospitality the previous night. Booth didn't know the cavalry was moving in his direction at that very moment, but he obviously knew that Manhunters were scouring the known universe for him. Yet he still took the time to rebuke Dr. Stewart. Not once, but twice.

Booth wrote two drafts of the letter. He tore the first one up and stuffed it into his pocket, where it would be discovered by the cavalry less than 48 hours from now. Then he wrote a second draft and gave it to Charles Lucas to deliver to the good doctor. He signed it, Yours respectfully, Stranger.

Charles Lucas dropped his passengers at an old ferry crossing and turned around for home. Booth and Harold met the man who operated the ferry and hit yet another delay. The man's boat was on the other side of the river. It was prime fishing season right now, and the man didn't have time to take travelers across the river. He needed to get out on the water and catch some fish. He could take them later if they were willing to wait. Booth and Harold said they'd wait.

While they waited, they met the three young men who would lead them to their final destination. Three Confederate soldiers rode up to the ferry landing. Harold asked them which unit they belonged to. Two of them were part of the legendary cavalry outfit Mosby's Rangers. The other was a former private who'd been knocked out of the war by a bullet that nearly killed him. He'd recovered, but he was not fit for action. Harold was delighted. He assumed the soldiers were traveling south to continue fighting.

He identified himself and booth. as brothers, David Boyd, and John Boyd. He said his brother had been injured at Petersburg, and that's why he was on crutches. They were eager to get South to join up with what was left of the Confederate Army. And this declaration made the soldiers suspicious. Colonel John Singleton Mosby had surrendered. Mosby's Rangers had disbanded.

The soldiers weren't going south to keep fighting. They were going away from the war. And now they wondered, Why were these two guys so anxious to get to the war? It was all but over. Confederate soldiers who had survived and were allowed to go home were not usually anxious to rejoin the fight. And these two guys didn't look like soldiers anyway.

So the Confederates were not immediately eager to help the strangers. But then Harold was able to talk to the private alone. When the private asked him who he really was, Harold gave him a shockingly honest answer. He said, We are the assassinations of the president. That changed the game. The soldiers agreed to help.

When the ferry operator returned from fishing, Booth and Harold said they no longer needed his services. They rode with the soldiers to a different ferry operation. Together, the five men crossed the Rappahannock River to Port Royal, Virginia. The private, whose name was Willie Jett, thought he knew a house where Booth could spend the night. It was well into the afternoon now, and Booth hadn't slept in a place he considered comfortable since he'd walked out of his room at the National Hotel on the morning he assassinated the president.

He was desperate to spend a night indoors, in a real bed. When the five men arrived at the House of William Jett's contact, Jett did the talking. He asked the young woman who lived there if she could accommodate a wounded soldier for the night. She said yes, sight unseen. But when Booth hobbled into her house, she changed her mind. Maybe she recognized him, or maybe there was just something about him that scared her. Suddenly she said it would not be proper to entertain a male guest while her brother, the man of the house, was away. She recommended a place down the road, the Garrett Farm.

The group left the house and rode two miles to the farm of Richard Garrett. Garrett was a Confederate supporter. His two eldest sons were soldiers who had just returned from the war. The outer gate to the Garrett farm was on the main road. Harold and one of the rangers stayed at the gate. Booth, Jett, and the other ranger passed through the gate and trotted down the lane toward the house. They passed through a second gate and then rode into the front yard. Once again, William Jett did the talking.

He knocked on the door and Richard Garrett answered. Jet said he was with a Confederate soldier named Boyd, except this time Jet called him James Boyd. Jet asked Garrett if he'd be willing to care for this wounded soldier for a day or so. Richard Garrett said yes. He wouldn't refuse accommodations to a wounded soldier, especially after his sons had survived and returned home intact. Booth struggled down from the horse of one of the Rangers

and hobbled up to the last house he would ever sleep in. The three soldiers had accomplished their mission. They'd found a place for Booth to stay. Now they were going to return to their regularly scheduled activities. They were headed a few more miles down the road to the town of Bowling Green. Private Willie Jett was sweet on a girl there and he was desperate to see her. The two rangers, Ruggles and Bainbridge, were headed that way also, and they allowed Harold to tag along. Harold wanted to buy some new shoes, and he probably wanted some different company.

He and Booth had been stuck together for ten days, and they could probably use some time apart. As the three soldiers took David Harold to Bowling Green, John Wilkes Booth, now calling himself James Boyd, enjoyed the comfort of the Garrett home. Booth and Richard Garrett sat on the front porch for a while. Booth almost certainly felt the first sense of safety in the room. and calm he'd experienced in 10 days, even though we also knew that manhunters were tearing the country apart to find him. A little while later, Richard's eldest son, John, walked out to the porch and met the stranger who called himself Boyd. Neither Richard nor John suspected Boyd was anything other than what he said he was, a wounded Confederate soldier returning home from the war.

As afternoon drew down to evening, the Garretz invited Booth into the house for supper. The whole family gathered for the meal, and Booth was back in his element. He had a captive audience for a performance. He didn't go into his fake story of being a soldier. That would come later. But he socialized pleasantly with the ten people at the table. And he charmed the women, of course. After supper, he hobbled back out to the porch to smoke his pipe.

John Garrett provided tobacco that may have come from his family's own stock. The Garrett's dedicated some of their 517 acres to tobacco farming, and they had a tobacco barn behind the house. When Booth finished his pipe, it was time for bed. He walked and hopped up the stairs to the second floor of the house. He would share a room with the Garrett's sons. He undressed for the first time in more than a week. He took off a belt that held two guns and a large knife. John Garrett helped him pull off his tall riding boot.

He removed the shoe, the one Dr. Munn had made for him, from his injured foot. John Garrett got a look at the broken leg. Now Booth had to give his second performance of the night. John had just returned from the war. He knew what a battle wound looked like. Booth spun a tale about being in the core of Confederate General A.P. Hill at Petersburg. When the city had been evacuated, Booth had been hit by a shell fragment that broke his leg. The story seemed to work, at least for the moment.

Booth slipped under the covers of John Garrett's bed. It was his first night on a soft mattress and a nice pillow in a week and a half. He said good night and fell asleep almost instantly. While Booth slept at the Garrett Farm, a steam ship landed 20 miles up the Rappahannock River. 26 men of the 16th New York Cavalry and two detectives disembarked. It had taken Booth 10 days to reach this area. It took the cavalry four hours. The troopers began waking up the people of Belle Plain, Virginia.

They looked for doctors first. If Booth had stopped there, he probably would have gone to a doctor to check his leg. There were three local doctors, but none had seen Booth. The cavalry had also received telegrams on the steamship that said Booth might be farther south around the twin towns of Port Conway and Port Royal.

It was late now, and the troopers were tired. They went to sleep. But tomorrow, they'd ride for Port Conway. When Booth awoke on the final full day of his life, he almost certainly felt refreshed to an extent he could hardly remember. It was April 25th, 11 days since he shot President Lincoln. He still had a long way to travel to reach the Deep South, where he'd be more safe.

But things were looking up. He left his guns and his knife in the bedroom and went downstairs to the front porch to smoke his pipe. When he finished his smoke, he went for a walk around the Garrett property. There were woods near the house and a tobacco barn out back and two sheds used for storing corn. It didn't take long for Booth to use up his energy, so he returned to the front porch,

sat down on a bench, and began to doze. Sometime later, William Garrett joined him on the porch. William was John's younger brother, and he wanted to hear the story of how Booth had been injured. So Booth spun the tale. He blended fact with fiction in a masterclass of lying and acting. He said he'd been down at Petersburg, about 65 miles south of the Garrett Farm. He'd been hit in the leg by a fragment of a cannon shell. When the city fell and everyone evacuated,

He'd traveled north. He wanted to get to Annapolis, Maryland. He'd wanted to cross the Potomac River at a major crossing, but the Union soldiers who guarded the river wanted him to sign a loyalty oath, and he was never going to do that. So he had crossed the river in secret and landed in Southern Maryland. He and his cousin David Boyd had holed up in a small town for a little while, but then they got into a brief fight with some Union soldiers.

The soldiers chased them, and the Boyd Cousins escaped into a swamp. The cousins hid in a pine thicket for his spell and then bought a boat and tried to cross into Virginia. But a storm wrecked their first attempt and they ended up back in Maryland. The next night, they made it across the river and worked their way to Port Conway.

They met three Confederate soldiers at the ferry crossing and traveled with them to Port Royal. And then finally, they made it to the Garrett Farm yesterday. afternoon. The story sounded plausible enough, and it explained where there might be Union soldiers looking for James Boyd and his cousin David. So, if Union cavalry showed up at the farm, or if the Garrett's heard that troopers were looking for two guys from Maryland, that was why. It was just a simple little scrape, nothing more. And William Garrett seemed to believe the story. A little while later, the family sat down for lunch.

William's older brother John had exciting news to share. John had run an errand in a local village, and he'd learned that the U.S. government was willing to pay $140,000 for the capture of the men who'd killed the president. And then there was an animated conversation about the motive of the assassins and the effect the assassination would have on the public. Booth made a couple cryptic comments, but for the most part, he kept his mouth shut.

John Garrett said later he didn't sense any uneasiness about Booth, but Booth was starting to get uneasy. He was doing a good job of hiding it, but he was starting to feel anxious. He'd enjoyed the comfort of the Garrett home, but it was now early afternoon. He'd been stationary for another 24 hours. And David Herald hadn't returned. He'd gone to Bowling Green with the three soldiers and had stayed in the home of one of their friends last. night. Harold was Booth's life support. Booth couldn't travel without him. He needed Harold to return so they could get back on the road. When the family finished lunch, Booth began

to plan the next leg of his escape. Unbeknownst to him, the fictional cavalry he'd mentioned to William Garrett in his war story was very real, and it was just two miles away in Port Conway. Next time on Infamous America, it's the season finale in the story. story of the manhunt for John Wilkes Booth. When Booth woke up on April 25th, he had no idea that the cavalry was bearing down on him. By the next morning, he'll be trapped in a burning barn, and there's only one way the story will end.

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.