CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
As Lincoln is bidding farewell to William Crook, Booth is gobbling down a quick dinner in the National Hotel’s dining room. Food, sleep, and adrenaline have him feeling sober once more.
That cue is simple: there is a moment in the third act when the actor Harry Hawk, playing the part of Asa Trenchard, is the only person on stage. He utters a line that never fails to make the audience convulse with laughter. “Don’t know the manners of good society, eh?” he says to the character of the busybody, Mrs. Mountchessington, who has insulted him before exiting the stage. “Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal—you sockdologizing old man-trap.”
The instant that the punch line hits home and the Ford’s audience explodes, Booth will kill Lincoln. If everything goes according to plan, he will already be concealed inside the state box. All he needs to do is pull out his Deringer and fire. Booth will toss the pistol aside after shooting Lincoln, then use his Bowie knife to battle his way out, if cornered.
His plan is to keep moving forward at all times—forward from the back wall of the box, forward to Lincoln’s rocking chair, forward up and over the railing and then down onto the stage, forward to the backstage door, forward to Maryland, and then forward all the way to Mexico, exile, and safety.
But Booth will stop for an instant in the midst of all that rapid movement. The actor in him cannot resist the chance to utter one last bold line from center stage. After leaping from the balcony Booth will stand tall and, in his best elocution, announce,
The Latin phrase is meant to sound smart, the sort of profound parting words that will echo down the corridors of history. He has stolen it, truth be told, from the state of Virginia. It is the commonwealth’s motto.
No matter. The words are perfect.
Booth plans to have another last-minute rendezvous with his co-conspirators at eight P.M. He returns to his room and polishes his Deringer, then slips a single ball into the barrel. The gun goes into his pocket. Into his waistband goes the Bowie knife in its sheath. Outside he can hear Washington coming to life once again, with still more of the endless postwar parties, bonfires, and street corner sing-alongs that annoy him no end.
Booth packs a small bag with a makeup pencil, false beard, false mustache, wig, and a plaid muffler. As he is about to leave the hotel on his deadly errand, he realizes that his accomplices might be in need of firearms. So he slips a pair of revolvers into the bag. Their firepower far exceeds the Deringer’s.
And yet what Booth leaves behind is just as powerful: among the personal effects that authorities will later find are a broken comb, tobacco, embroidered slippers, and one very telling scrap of paper. On it are written the keys to top-secret coded Confederate messages that link him with Jefferson Davis’s office in Richmond and with the million-dollar gold fund in Montreal. Finally, Booth leaves behind a valise filled with damning evidence that implicates John Surratt and, by extension, his mother, Mary.
Booth could have destroyed these items, but such is his malevolence that if he is ever apprehended or killed, he wants everyone else to go down as well. He also wants to show the world that he, Booth, was the mastermind behind killing Abraham Lincoln.
He walks downstairs and slides his key across the front desk. “Are you going to Ford’s tonight?” he asks George W. Bunker, the clerk on duty.
“No,” comes the reply.
“You ought to go,” Booth says with a wink on his way out the door. “There is going to be some splendid acting.”
Booth laughs at his own joke as he steps into the night air. Washington is covered in a fine mist, giving the streetlights and the Capitol dome a ghostly appearance. Booth feels like he is viewing the city through frosted glass.
He trots his horse over to Ford’s. Once again he examines his escape route, then slides down from the saddle and ties the mare to a hitching post. He steps into a nearby tavern, where he runs into Ford’s orchestra director, William Withers Jr., who’s having a last quick drink before the eight P.M. curtain. They talk shop, the conversation veering toward mutual friends in the theater. Withers mentions Booth’s late father. When Booth suggests that he is the better actor of the two, Withers laughingly shoots back that Booth will never be as talented as his father.
Booth’s face hardens, but he manages a thin smile. Focusing his gaze on Withers, he utters the truest sentence he will ever speak: “When I leave the stage I will be the most talked about man in America.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
“Would you have us be late?” Mary Lincoln chides her husband, standing in his office doorway. Speaker of the House Schuyler Colfax dropped by a half hour ago and was immediately granted a few minutes of Lincoln’s time. But those few minutes have stretched into half an hour and, across town, the curtain has already risen on
It is five minutes after eight. Mary wears a gray dress that shows her ample bosom and a matching bonnet. She is eager to get to the theater but tentative in her approach because Mr. Lincoln’s moods have been so unpredictable lately.
Once again, he has lost all track of time. Speaker Colfax stopped in to discuss the possibility of a special session of Congress. Colfax has plans to leave in the morning on a long trip to California but says he will cancel it if Lincoln calls the special session. Lincoln won’t hear of it. He tells Colfax to enjoy himself and to enlist the support of the western states in reuniting America.
As he makes to leave, Colfax pauses at the door. He is a true admirer of Lincoln’s. Colfax has heard rumors of violence against Lincoln and mentions how afraid he was when Lincoln visited Richmond a week earlier. “Why, if anyone else had been president and gone to Richmond, I would have been alarmed, too,” Lincoln chuckles. “But I was not scared about myself a bit.”
Lincoln asks Colfax if he has plans for the evening, and, if not, would he be interested in attending
This marks a half dozen rejections for Lincoln today. First the Grants, then Stanton and Thomas Eckert, then his son Robert just a half hour earlier, and now the Speaker of the House.
Former Massachusetts congressman George Ashmun waits to see Lincoln as Colfax exits. But Mary’s pleas finally have an effect. It is time to leave for the theater. Lincoln hastily pulls a card from his jacket pocket and jots a small note inviting Ashmun to return at nine in the morning.
Finally, Lincoln walks downstairs and out onto the front porch, where the presidential carriage awaits.
The roof is now closed, which is a comfort on this misty night. Footman Charles Forbes helps Mary up the
