When
we left off on the last outing, two men officially identified as John
Wilkes Booth and David Herold had just crossed the Navy Yard Bridge from
Washington, DC into Maryland. They were the only two people to cross
the bridge after curfew that fateful night, so being allowed to do so
was quite the lucky break for the pair. Just as it had been a lucky
break for Booth that Lincoln’s bodyguard for the evening, John Parker,
had abandoned his post (as had coachman Francis Burns and presidential
aide Charles Forbes, all three of whom went next door to drink in the
same bar as John Wilkes Booth), and that General Grant and his military
entourage had not accompanied the Lincoln party to the theater.
Booth
caught numerous ‘lucky breaks’ that night, like having the telegraph
service go down right after the assassination. But as Thomas Eckert
later explained to a congressional committee, that apparently was a
trivial matter: “It did not at the time seem sufficiently important, as
the interruption only continued about two hours. I was so full of
business of almost every character that I could not give it my personal
attention … I could not ascertain with certainty what the facts were
without making a personal investigation, and I had not time to do that.”
For
those who may have forgotten, Eckert was hired specifically to set up
and maintain the telegraph system, which naturally raises the question
of what other, more important “business of every character” he had to
attend to on a night when keeping the system running should have been,
one would think, of utmost importance.
Four versions of Booth’s alleged escape route
Leonard Guttridge and Ray Neff have written in Dark Union that
Booth caught another lucky break when, at the same time that the
telegraph system mysteriously went down, “someone at the gasworks on
Maryland Avenue shut off the gas that fed the lights around the Capitol
and westward along Pennsylvania Avenue,” plunging the assassin’s escape
route into darkness at a most opportune time. (Leonard Guttridge and Ray
Neff Dark Union: The Secret Web of Profiteers, Politicians, and Booth Conspirators That Led to Lincoln’s Death, Wiley, 2003)
Booth
also caught a lucky break when his questionable choice of a firearm
turned out to be surprisingly adequate for the job. He took a huge risk,
it will be recalled, in bringing a Derringer as his only firearm – a
risk that was, as James Swanson noted in Manhunt, completely
unnecessary: “Booth couldn’t have chosen the Deringer [sic] because he
could not obtain a revolver. He had already purchased at least four, and
if he did not have any in his hotel room within easy reach, he could
have gone out and bought another one. In the war capital of the Union,
thousands of guns, including small, lightweight pocket-sized revolvers,
were for sale in the shops of Washington.” (James Swanson Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer, William Morrow, 2006)
Another
lucky break for Booth was that the locks on both of the doors leading
into the presidential box at Ford’s Theatre were conveniently broken,
rendering them useless. And a spy hole had been drilled into one of them
at eye level, so that someone approaching could survey the scene inside
the booth before entering. Both of those anomalies were apparently
unnoticed by Lincoln and his not-very-security-oriented entourage. And,
as previously discussed, a heavy piece of lumber precisely long enough
to wedge the door shut happened to be on hand. Many historians have
claimed that Booth himself had come by earlier in the day and broken the
locks, drilled the hole, and fashioned and hidden the wedge for the
door, but no evidence to support such claims has ever been presented.
Booth
also caught a lucky break in that he was able to successfully execute
an unlikely and extremely risky escape from a crowded theater. As no
less a scholar than Bill O’Reilly has had written for him, “A less
informed man might worry about being trapped in a building with a
limited number of exits, no windows, and a crowd of witnesses—many of
them able-bodied men just back from the war.” Donald Winkler was a bit
more blunt in his assessment: “It sounded like a foolhardy plan with no
chance of success. How could one man with a single-shot derringer, a
bullet, and a knife walk nonchalantly through a crowded theater, pass
unobstructed through two doors into the State Box, stand behind the
president without being seen by the two occupants in the box, kill the
president with no one hearing the sound of the shot, leap eleven feet to
the stage, take time to yell a message to the audience, and escape
through a rear exit? Fulfilling this mission required far more than
blind luck.” (Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination That Changed America Forever, Henry Holt, 2011; and H. Donald Winkler Lincoln and Booth: More Light on the Conspiracy, Cumberland House, 2003)
Actually,
there were obviously more than two occupants in the box and plenty of
people heard the shot, but such glaring errors are commonplace in the
existing literature on the assassination.
So having
caught numerous ‘lucky breaks,’ Booth and Herold rode off separately
into the Maryland night, with Booth having a lead on Herold. No mention
is ever made of why Powell, who had supposedly attacked the Seward
family, and Adzerodt, who was supposed to have killed second-in-command
Andrew Johnson, were not included in the escape plan. In any event,
Booth and Herold supposedly met up eight miles from the city limits. How
they did so in the dark and with no communication devices is anyone’s
guess. No mention is made in the literature of Booth asking Herold
anything about how the alleged attack at the Seward mansion had gone
down, or about the attack on Johnson that had supposedly been planned,
or about what had become of Powell and Adzerodt.
The Surrat Tavern in Surrattsville
The
pair’s first stop, so the story goes, was at Mary Surratt’s tavern in
Surrattsville, run by John Lloyd. They allegedly arrived there around
midnight. Lloyd, known as a raging drunkard, allegedly supplied the pair
with two carbines, field glasses, and booze. By many accounts, his
confession to such high crimes was obtained through torture. And it is
never explained why the pair wouldn’t have already had those items, and
various other provisions, from the outset. Lloyd became a witness for
the prosecution at the pseudo-trial of the conspirators. Of course, his
other option was certain conviction and probable execution, so he was
highly motivated to tell the story the government wanted him to tell.
The
pair’s next stop – at about 4:30 in the morning on April 15, 1865, with
Lincoln still clinging to life – was at the home of Dr. Samuel Mudd,
who gained the dubious distinction of being the only person along
Booth’s alleged escape route to be prosecuted and convicted. “Wanted”
posters issued by Secretary of War Edwin Stanton warned that “All
persons harboring or secreting the conspirators or aiding their
concealment or escape, will be treated as accomplices in the murder of
the President and shall be subject to trial before a military
commission, and the punishment of death.” As we shall see though,
various historians have identified at least two dozen people who
supposedly provided aid and comfort to the fugitives, and none of them,
other than Mudd, were ever prosecuted for their alleged crimes and all
of their names are now long forgotten.
The home of Dr. Mudd and family
Booth
and Herold supposedly introduced themselves to Mudd using the aliases
of Tyson and Henson, and by some accounts, Booth wore a fake beard –
which of course makes perfect sense since Booth had chosen not to don a
disguise before committing the crime, and had left his real name
scattered about the crime scene and the escape route. And by virtually
all accounts, Mudd knew Booth and had had prior dealings with him, so
the good doctor would surely have seen through a cheap disguise. For the
record, Mudd claimed that he did not recognize the man he treated as
John Wilkes Booth, and he could not identify David Herold from a
photograph.
Herold, meanwhile, maintained that he
had crossed the bridge out of Washington on the afternoon of April 14
and was long gone from the city when Lincoln was shot. He also claimed
that he had not gone to the Mudd house with Booth or anyone else. And
evidence does indeed suggest that Herold spent the afternoon of April 14
on a horseback ride in the Maryland countryside. And he did so with –
and I couldn’t possibly make this stuff up – a sixteen-year-old kid by
the name of Johnny Booth, who was apparently not related to the far more
famous John Booth. Herold and the young Booth got drunk and passed out
and were found the next morning by Johnny’s father. Johnny and his
father, of course, were not called upon the testify at the mock trial.
Meanwhile,
Mudd repaired the damage to his visitor’s leg, which he later described
in a statement as a not very serious or painful wound, and fashioned a
splint for him. He then offered the exhausted travelers sleeping
accommodations. After catching some sleep and paying the good doctor for
his services, the pair left later that day. At the infamous trial of
the conspirators, the story did not pick up again until nine days later,
on April 24, when the pair allegedly took a ferry across the
Rappahannock River. Various historical narratives have filled in those
missing nine days, though not necessarily with a story that has much
credibility.
Thomas Jones and namesake
According
to Lincoln folklore, a guy by the name of Oswell Swann (sometimes
identified as Oswald Swann), described as being half black and half
Indian, guided the pair to the home of a Samuel Cox at about 1:00 AM on
April 16, 1865. Cox allegedly advised Booth and Herold to hide out in a
nearby pine thicket, and had his overseer, Franklin Robey, guide them
there. He then summoned Thomas Jones to supply them with food, blankets,
and newspapers. Needless to say, none of these men were ever prosecuted
for their alleged capital offenses.
Samuel Cox
Booth
and Herold supposedly spent five long days cooling their heels in that
pine thicket. During that time, they had to keep quiet at all times for
fear of alerting any nearby patrols to their whereabouts. They couldn’t
light a fire to keep warm. And Booth is generally described as being
immobilized and in considerable pain from his injury (the one that Dr.
Mudd described as not particularly painful). According to the
best-selling Manhunt, for example, “Booth never rose from the
ground during the time in the thicket.” So the wealthy, accomplished,
well-bred actor spent five agonizing days lying hungry and motionless on
the cold, unforgiving ground of a Maryland pine thicket. Sounds
perfectly reasonable.
One problem with that tall
tale though concerns the fate of Booth’s and Herold’s horses. It is
agreed that they surely had horses when they arrived at the pine
thicket, and they would have had to get rid of them to avoid giving away
their position to any passing patrols. So what happened to them? In Manhunt,
James Swanson tells the following tale: “Davey [Herold] untied both
horses and led them by the reins to a quicksand morass about a mile from
the pine thicket. Quickly, he shot each one in the head with a pistol
or the carbine, and then sank their bodies, still accoutered with
saddles, bits, bridles, stirrups, and all. There they rest in an
unmarked grave, their skeletons undiscovered to this day.”
Here
Swanson has acknowledged something that historians agree on: despite
one of the world’s most exhaustive manhunts, no trace of the two horses
was ever found. According to the guy who actually writes the books that
Bill O’Reilly puts his name on, “A combined force of seven hundred
Illinois cavalry, six hundred members of the Twenty-second Colored
Troops, and one hundred men from the Sixteenth New York Cavalry Regiment
now enter the wilderness of Maryland’s vast swamps [on April 18, 1865] …
Incredibly, eighty-seven of these brave men will drown in their
painstaking weeklong search for the killers.” No large animal carcasses
were found on that search, or on any other searches. O’Reilly doesn’t
mention, by the way, how many of those eighty-seven alleged drowning
deaths involved members of the Twenty-Second Colored Troops (sorry – I
couldn’t resist).
Historians also agree that Booth
was far too seriously injured to be of any help to Herold, leaving
Herold solely responsible for disposing of the horses. There are,
generally speaking, two versions of the ‘story of the disappearing
horses,’ both of which are laughably absurd. One commonly told fable
holds that Herold led the two horses into quicksand; the other posits
that he shot and buried them. Swanson has essentially weaved a new
version of the tall tale by combining the two.
Some
historians just avoid any mention of the disappearing horses trick,
probably out of a desire to not sound like buffoons. But others have no
problem with repeating tales that have stood unchallenged for well over a
century despite being easily discredited. Because the reality, dear
readers, is that there is no rational explanation for how two horses and
all the gear accompanying them could have just vanished into thin air.
Only in some fantasy world would it be possible for one man, working
alone in fairly primitive conditions and with no tools at his disposal,
to dig graves deep enough to completely conceal two very large animal
carcasses without even leaving mounds for searchers to find. And even if
he could somehow dig the holes, how would one man get those very heavy
carcasses into those miraculously excavated graves? And wouldn’t
shooting them be a very risky maneuver, since gunshots tend to attract
attention? It seems rather unlikely then that Herold shot the horses and
then buried them both with his bare hands.
Equally
preposterous is the claim that Herold led the horses into quicksand and
let them sink to their deaths. Horses can be rather obedient creatures,
to be sure, but they certainly aren’t stupid and they won’t willingly
walk into what they would surely perceive as a deathtrap. And how
exactly would someone go about leading them into quicksand?
Wouldn’t that require that the person doing the leading would have to
walk out into the quicksand ahead of the horses? Those are rather moot
points though given that Wikipedia describes quicksand as
“harmless,” and notes that “People falling into (and, unrealistically,
being submerged in) quicksand or a similar substance is a trope of
adventure fiction, notably in movies.”
It doesn’t
actually happen, you see, in real life. But that hasn’t stopped
mainstream historians and academics from promoting such nonsense for
decades.
As previously noted, Swanson has combined
the two versions of the ‘disappearing horses’ fable. No graves needed to
be dug because the bodies were disposed of in quicksand, though
horse-swallowing quicksand pits only exist in movies and TV shows from
the 1960s – and in bestsellers that begin with the words, “This story is
true.” And in this particular version of the fable, Herold didn’t have
to lead the horses into the mythical quicksand, he just led them to it.
But what Swanson leaves out is an explanation of how Herold
single-handedly drug or pushed those half-ton horse carcasses into a
fictional quicksand pit. The only way that could actually happen is in a
cartoon.
In any event, after allegedly spending
five long days lounging in a Maryland pine thicket, our antiheroes
supposedly emerged to attempt a crossing of the Potomac River in a boat
supplied by local fisherman Henry Rowland. Their first attempt though
failed when the ‘pair that couldn’t row straight’ supposedly paddled the
wrong direction and ended up in Nanjemoy Creek, still on the Maryland
side of the Potomac. Not to worry though – they went to a farm owned by
Peregrine Davis and operated by his son-in-law, John Hughes, who happily
put his life on the line by feeding and sheltering the fugitives.
The
next night, April 21, Booth and Herold chose not to attempt a second
crossing of the Potomac, for reasons never explained by historians. It
had been a full week since the assassination and the most wanted men in
America had failed to put much distance at all between themselves and
Washington, but they apparently weren’t in any hurry.
Elizabeth Quesenberry and her home
The
dynamic duo allegedly made a second attempt the next night and
successfully navigated into Machodoc Creek, near the home of Elizabeth
Quesenberry. They arrived at Quesenberry’s home at around 1:00 PM on
April 23. The lady of the house promptly sent for Thomas Harbin, who was
reportedly Thomas Jones’ brother-in-law. Harbin arrived at about 3:00
PM with horses and two associates, William Bryant and Joseph Baden. The
five men then rode to the home of Dr. Richard Stuart, who was apparently
related in some way to General Robert E. Lee.
Thomas Harbin
Dr. Richard Stuart
Stuart
directed the party, which arrived at around 8:00 PM, to the cabin of a
freed slave by the name of William Lucas – because, you know, freed
slaves were highly motivated to assist Lincoln’s alleged assassin. From
there, Booth and Herold were supposedly transported by son Charley Lucas
to Port Conway hidden under a load of straw in a wagon. In Port Conway,
the fugitive pair hooked up with three Confederate soldiers by the
names of Mortimer Ruggles, Absalom Bainbridge and William Jett, who by
some accounts had been under the command of notorious Confederate
intelligence operative John S. Mosby (Mosby, by the way, would soon
enthusiastically campaign for and serve in the cabinet of Ulysses S.
Grant, the man who had defeated his supposedly beloved Confederacy).
Booth,
Herold, Ruggles, Jett and Bainbridge, along with a few horses,
purportedly took a ferry across the Rappahannock River. At approximately
3:00 PM on April 24, 1865, they arrived at the Garrett home. The
gravely injured, or not so gravely injured, John Wilkes Booth stayed at
the home while Herold rode on to Bowling Green with his new friends.
Booth spent the night with one of the Garrett sons while Herold and
Bainbridge slept at the home of Joseph and Elizabeth Clarke. Herold
returned the next day with Ruggles and Bainbridge, though Jett stayed
behind in Bowling Green, from where he would soon lead a posse to the
Garrett farm.
Ruggles
Bainbridge (both circa 1890)
Jett
Booth
and Herold spent the next night, April 25, supposedly locked in the
Garretts’ tobacco barn, making them easy prey for the posse that would
soon arrive. The Reverend Richard Garrett, however, who was just eleven
at the time of the assassination, would later note that the barn
actually had double doors on all four sides and large windows in the
upper story. William H. Garrett would add that some of those doors and
windows fastened on the inside. There was, therefore, no way to actually
lock the fugitives inside, another unfortunate fact that has been swept
aside by historians.
The posse that would
allegedly end the life of John Wilkes Booth arrived at the Garrett home
at around 2:00 AM on April 26, 1865. A few hours later, Booth, or
someone playing the part of Booth, had been shot. In due time, Dr.
Richard Stuart, William Bryant, Elizabeth Quesenberry, Samuel Cox,
Thomas Jones, the Garrett sons, and various others were arrested and
taken to the Old Capital Prison. Curiously though, they were all freed
without being charged. All but Dr. Mudd.
Sign commemorating fictional historical events
Meanwhile,
as Booth and Herold were following their convoluted path to the Garrett
farm, a massive manhunt spearheaded by Edwin Stanton was underway. We
shall pick up there on the next outing.
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