man’s face and neck, again and again and again, until he rolled onto the floor—dead.
Or so Powell thought. Seward was wearing a metal neck brace as a result of his carriage accident. Despite deep gashes to his face, the blade failed to find his jugular.
Powell stabbed Fanny Seward in the hands and arms as he ran past her and into the hallway. Continuing down the staircase, another of the secretary’s children, Augustus, and an overnight guest, Sergeant Robinson, tried to stop him. Both were stabbed for their efforts, as was Emerick Hansell, a telegram messenger who’d had the misfortune to arrive at the front door just as Powell was running out of it.
Incredibly, none of the victims died.
Outside, the nervous pharmacist was nowhere to be found. The sound of Fanny Seward’s screams had frightened him off. Powell, who knew little of the area, was left to fend for himself. He threw the bloody knife into a nearby gutter, untied his horse, and galloped off into the night.
As disastrous as the attack on Seward had been, Powell could have consoled himself in the knowledge that he’d fared far better than George Atzerodt. The reluctant German had lost his nerve, gotten drunk in the bar at the vice president’s boardinghouse, and then wandered the streets of Washington until sunrise.
VII
Charles Leale, twenty-three, helped his fellow soldiers lower the president onto a bed on the first floor of Petersen’s Boarding House—directly across the street from Ford’s Theater. They were forced to lay him diagonally, as he was too tall to lie straight. Leale, an army surgeon who’d been in the audience, had been the first to attend to the president. He’d shoved his way through the crowd, up the narrow stairs, and into the box, where he’d found Lincoln slumped over in his chair. Upon lowering the president and examining him, he’d detected no pulse; no breath. Moving quickly, the young doctor had felt around the back of Lincoln’s head until he’d found a hole just behind the left ear. After a blood clot was removed from the wound, Lincoln had begun to breathe again.
Leale was young, but he wasn’t naive. He’d seen enough of these injuries in the field to know the outcome. Minutes after the president had been shot, he’d delivered his bleak, accurate medical opinion: “His wound is mortal. It is impossible for him to recover.”
Mary couldn’t bear to be in the room with her dying husband. She remained in the parlor of Petersen’s Boarding House all night, weeping. Robert and Tad arrived sometime after midnight and took their place at Abe’s bedside, just as Abe had knelt at his dying mother’s side almost fifty years earlier. They were joined by Gideon Welles, Edwin Stanton, and an endless parade of Washington’s best doctors, all of whom came to offer their advice. But nothing could be done. Dr. Robert King Stone, the Lincolns’ family physician, examined the president during the night and concluded that his case was “hopeless.”
It was only a matter of time.
By sunrise, a large crowd had gathered outside. The president’s breathing had become increasingly faint through the night, his heartbeat erratic. He was cool to the touch. Many of the doctors remarked that a wound of this type would have killed most men in two hours; maybe less. Abe had lasted nine. But then, Abe Lincoln had always been different. Abe Lincoln had always lived.
The infant a mother attended and loved;
The mother that infant’s affection who proved;
The husband that mother and infant who blessed,
Each, all, are away to their dwellings of rest. *
Abraham Lincoln died at 7:22 in the morning, on the Ides of April 1865.
The men at his bedside lowered their heads in prayer. When they were finished, Edwin Stanton declared, “Now he belongs to the ages.” With that, he returned to his telegrams. John Wilkes Booth was on the run, and Stanton meant to catch him.
VIII
Booth and Herold had managed to elude the Union Army for eleven days, escaping first to Maryland, then to Virginia. They’d hidden in swamps for days on end; slept on beds of cold earth. Booth had expected to be embraced as a hero, the Savior of the South. Instead, he’d been cast out into the cold. “Ya gone too far,” they’d said. “The Yanks’ll burn every farm from Baltimore to Birmingham lookin’ fer ya.”
The second of the gypsy’s predictions had come true. Booth had amassed a “thundering crowd of enemies.”
On April 26th, Booth woke to shouting, and knew at once.
Richard Garrett had been one of the few Virginians who hadn’t turned them away. He’d given them food to eat and a warm tobacco barn to sleep in. Judging by the Union soldiers outside, he’d sold them out for the reward money, too.
Herold was nowhere to be found.
“Give yerself up, Booth! We ain’t gonna warn ya again!”
Booth stayed put. True to their word, the Union soldiers issued no further warnings. They simply set fire to the barn. Boards were set alight; torches thrown onto the roof. The dry old barn was engulfed in a matter of seconds. The blinding flames made the barn’s dark corners seem deeper. Booth put his dark glasses on as ancient beams began to creak overhead, and fingers of gray smoke crawled up the walls. He stood center stage and tugged on the bottom of his coat—an old actor’s habit. He wanted to look his best for this. He wanted the Yankee devils to see exactly who it was before they…
Booth turned in circles, ready for an attack that might come from any direction, at any moment. His fangs descended; his pupils swelled until his eyes were nothing more than black marbles. He was ready for anything….
But there was nothing. Nothing but smoke, and flame, and shadow.
“Because you are weak…”
Booth spun in the direction of the man’s voice.
Henry Sturges stepped out of the darkest corner of the barn. “… and you think too much.”
Somehow, Booth understood everything. Perhaps this stranger wanted him to understand—forced him to understand.
“You would destroy me over a living man?” Booth backed up as Henry advanced.
“OVER A LIVING MAN?”
Henry said nothing. There was a time and a place for words. His fangs descended; his eyes turned.
Booth couldn’t help but smile.
John Wilkes Booth was about to make a bad end.
FOURTEEN
Home
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”
