Skeletons in the Closet
John Wilkes Booth was born on May 10, 1838 in a large log cabin set in a clearing among the lilac-strewn primeval forests of northern Maryland, not far below the Pennsylvania border.
He was the ninth child...
In town, he would listen wide-eyed to the stories of old men who had taken part in the American Revolution; he found their courage in the face of British bayonets fascinating.
His parents promoted this sort of inspiration, his father being related to England's agitator-statesman John Wilkes (for whom Wilkes was named) and his mother a hopeless romantic. In fact, the latter had told him that, on the night he was born, she had asked God to give her a hint of what her son's future held in store for him. In answer, she saw the flames in the open hearth form the image of letters that, as she studied them, spelled the word "country." This, she believed, meant that he was to endure the fires of persecution, but emerge as patriot in the final act.
In her memoirs of her brother, Asia Booth recalls this episode in verse:
"...I implore to know on this ghostly night
Whether t'will labor for wrong, or right,
For — or against Thee?
The flame up-leapt
Like a wave of blood, an avenging arm crept
Into shape; and COUNTRY shone out in the flame..."
Squire Booth
A small graveyard edged the property; here lay several of the Booth children (Henry, Mary Ann, Frederick and Elizabeth) who died when yellow fever swept the East.
After the farming work was done for the day, Squire Junius brought his family together before Tudor Hall's roaring parlor fire to pour over dramas and sagas from the Booth bookshelves. He demanded that his brood be well-versed in the arts and social graces. He would make his surviving children — Junius, Rosalie, Edwin, Asia, Wilkes and Joseph — memorize sonnets and soliloquies from Shakespeare and other masters, then recite them evenings for the rest of the family. Son Edwin, who was five years older than Wilkes and who often "chaperoned" his father on the road, had no trouble learning them. Neither did Wilkes, who it was said memorized entire dramas as most children his age learned nursery rhymes.
That Wilkes was his father's pet was no secret, not even to Edwin. He showered the boy with compliments and gifts, calling him a beautiful boy, and fostering what he saw as a high spirit, reminiscent of the patriot John Wilkes he was christened after. The other children did not complain, for they too saw in their brother the same dramatic fire and energy that moved their own beloved "Papa June."
A Gypsy's Prophecy
During the winter seasons, the Booth children attended boarding school in Cockeysville, Md., where Wilkes seemed to be more interested in causing mischief than studying. His friends called him "Billy Bowlegs" to tease him; they knew that he wore long coats whenever possible to conceal that trait.
During summers on The Farm, however, he had few friends. Most of his siblings were older than he (Edwin had embarked on a stage career of his own), and Wilkes often turned for entertainment to the many ballades and novels his father had given him. On these glorious pages he discovered Ivanhoe, Hawkeye, William Tell, Robin Hood, Sir Lancelot, Don Quixote...heroes of the highest caliber whose colorful lives he wanted to emulate.
His closest friend became his sister, Asia, to whom he confided his dreams of adventure. She would often see him midsummer nights, ripping his father's horse Peacock down Churchville Road, a twig for a lance, shouting oaths to the trees that he fashioned as fire-breathing dragons or Cyclopes.
It was with Asia that he attended a carnival in Harford County one autumn evening. Townsfolk from Bel Air and other neighboring burghs came out to enjoy the festivities. One of the sideshows that attracted the teenage Wilkes was a Gypsy fortune teller; amusedly, he wandered into her wagon. But, once she began reading his palm, his smile faded. Her prophesy was one of bad fortune: "Your lines are all criss-crass," she told him. "You will live a charmed life, but it will be brief and you will die violently." The old hag's words frightened him. Asia laughed off the experience, but to Wilkes, who recalled his mother's vision the night he was born — those rhetorical flames — the Gypsy's words were all too poignant.
Asia had been observing, While her family had never shown any prejudice toward the few Negroes they hired out seasonally to harvest the fields — indeed Junius had always treated them like his sons — Wilkes began complaining of having to eat his meals with them after the day's work. This sudden haughtiness, she felt, seemed to mirror the "master" and "slave" relationships of the Deep South. What they both did not understand at the time was that this prejudice was the first visible evidence of a bad root slinking below the surface towards what the Gypsy said would become manifest.
Stage Struck
Brother Edwin, now a full-blown matinee idol, was fast inheriting his father's thespian mantle...Letters sent home from Edwin...Wilkes, at home, grew dizzy with jealousy. "Fame, I must have fame!" he would rave to anyone who listened.
Asia had by this time acquainted the city's top theatrical comedian, J. Sleeper Clarke, and Wilkes began pestering Asia to have Clarke procure for him a role in one of his productions. Persistence paying off, Clarke talked the city's Charles Street Theatre into offering Wilkes, then 17, the hefty role of Lord Richmond in Richard III. Wilkes moaned and droned his lines like an amateur. Critics were kind, but audiences brutalized him with insulting laughter and catcalls. He swore he would never return to the platform. Clarke, on Asia's persistence, tutored him. After Clarke and Asia married and moved to Philadelphia in 1859, Clarke convinced the management of the Arch Street Theatre to cast Wilkes in a potpourri of supporting roles. Of his own volition, the boy chose to use the moniker John Wilkes so as not to dishonor the Booth name further.
If audiences didn't laugh his pupil offstage they hissed him off. In The Gamester, fellow actors had to carry Wilkes off after he froze with stage fright. Then there was the time he was played an Italian courtier named Petruchio Pandolfe in the play, Lucretia Borgia, opening night Wilkes entered to the roll of drums: "Allow me to offer my services, Countess of the House of Borgia, for I will fight the enemy battering your borders! I am yours! I am Petru...." and he blanked. Mumbling incoherences, he finally lost composure, turned to a fellow actor and blurted, "Drat it! Who the hell am I?" A tumult of guffaws sent him racing for the wings.
Women theatre goers alarmed at his dark good looks and would tarry near the stage entrance after performances to steal a closer peek as he exited.
The Romantic South
His brother Edwin had come forward with a proposition to give Wilkes' sagging career a boost. Peopling a theatre troupe for an upcoming tour, he invited Wilkes to join him. The troupe would perform in several major cities in the geographic South...one condition: that Wilkes no longer hide behind an illegitimate name...the Booth name could open many new doors. It was a powerful name, Booth.
On the tour, no one laughed at this "J. Wilkes Booth" this time. Rather, he displayed a figure and an aire that glowed Stage Presence. His sudden onstage elegance, nurtured no doubt by Edwin, fit well with the romantic-minded Southern society that saw in him one of their own. Backstage, he became the darling of many Southern actresses.
Wilkes developed, almost overnight, a kinship with the South because of the laurels expended on him there. He became a devotee of their own devotions — of preserved traditions and states' rights — and soon became a political bedfellow. He linked to them, and they to him. He became their Adonis, the epitome of the Southern gentry in silk stock tie and with gifted swordhand. Secreted political parleys supporting slavery, games of whist dealt in posh riverboat salons, masqued balls, moonlight kisses under magnolias, and ruffled petticoats...he hadn't trouble getting involved in any of them.
While riding the crest professionally, Wilkes straddled the political fence for a direction and, weighing the balance, came to the conclusion that the North was the bully. He often made his opinions public, much to the embarrassment of Edwin, a staunch Unionist. He argued how Southern voice was muffled in Congress; how tradition should be maintained despite modernity's pressures; how Northern abolitionists like Brown had no right to interfere with the way others lived below Mason and Dixon's Line. And when the acting troupe came to Richmond, Va., he quickly joined a local militia called the Richmond Greys, a political party founded on the preservation of the Old Tradition. When the Greys were summoned to serve as Honor Guard at Brown's execution, Wilkes donned his uniform of gold and gray and marched alongside his brethren to the Charlestown train, fifes and drums blaring and a mob cheering them onward. But, he later reported, he found the experience of watching Brown hang to be an auspicious moment. The "old man up there" spoke of a forthcoming torch that would spark the gunpowder of war. For the first time, Wilkes felt himself being enmeshed in something much bigger than the death of one mad abolitionist. The Gypsy's prophesy haunted him once again.
Civil War
Wilkes did not enlist to fight, and that fact rankled his conscience. There were two reasons he did not. First, he had promised his mother to avoid the battlefield; she still grieved over the death of Junius and could not face the possibility of losing her sons. Also, he had become a major theatrical star who, as he himself recognized, owed much of his popularity to his looks. A scarred face would ruin that.
But, because he was a star, he also realized he could use his influence to benefit his beloved Confederacy. Theatres on the circuit included The Holliday in Baltimore, The Academy in Cleveland, Wood's in Cincinnati, McVicker's in Chicago, and other playhouses throughout the North. He moved in and around high society with grace and at any time of day or night, in any neighborhood, he could travel unquestioned. The name Booth, as Edwin suggested, opened doors. Who better than he could relay messages back and forth to and from Confederate agents planted throughout the North?
He joined a network of spies and smugglers known as the Knights of the Golden Circle, operating between Richmond and Montreal, Canada. Relentlessly, the group implemented many underground activities, including blockade-smashing efforts along the East Coast and the disbursement of medicines (largely quinine and laudanum) down from Canada, through Union lines, thence to Virginia. The Knights also managed a secret mail route throughout the North and were largely responsible for inciting the New York Draft Riots that burned down blocks of Manhattan.
That Wilkes was a Southern sympathizer was common knowledge. He made his opinions known vocally throughout especially Washington City and wore his sentiments like a gaudy cloak. For this reason, fewer and fewer theatre managers refused to put him on their bill. At a production of The Apostate at Ford's Theatre, Wilkes learned that Lincoln was in the private box stage left; whenever his character Pescara spoke of oppression or revenge, Wilkes intentionally threw those lines in Lincoln's direction. Mary Todd, Lincoln's wife, was reported to have commented that the experience left her uncomfortable.
When in Washington, he resided at the elite National Hotel on 6th Street, not far from the Capitol Building. Its saloon was a hangout for "Secesh" — or Secessionist — gentlemen of leisure. Day and night it rumbled with war talk. It was here that, under iridescent glow of oil lamp, many an intrigue was hatched by members of the Knights of the Golden Circle.
A Strange Conspiracy
It may have been in the smoke-filled saloon at the National Hotel that the wildest conspiracy of all time began. No one knows for sure where or when exactly it evolved. But, sometime around Christmas of 1864, when the nation had already bloodied itself by four years of war, Wilkes devised a plan to kidnap President Lincoln.
"Something great and decisive had to be done," Wilkes wrote in his diary. He determined that if Lincoln were captured and hustled away to Richmond, Va. — the Confederate capital 100 miles south of Washington — he would draw quite a large ransom. Specifically, terms would demand return of all captured Confederate soldiers rotting in Union prison camps, as well as desperately needed artillery and powder. Their manpower rejuvenated and their armament restored, the South would have a renewed chance to regain control. Wilkes ascertained that the Union, joltingly discouraged by its setback, might wish to compromise.
It was a mad, balloon-headed plan. But Wilkes, who saw himself as a hero in those novels he read as a child, believed he could pull it off. Strangely enough, it now appears that he had been fluent enough to convince even the brilliant leaders of the Southern Underground for support, though not necessarily garner the approval of the Confederate legislature.
It was a last-ditch stand. In Washington, he assembled a local crew of devoted but motley allies to staff his kidnapping plot. This small band consisted of: Samuel Blaine Arnold and Michael O'Laughlen, two boyhood friends from Baltimore who had served in the war but had had enough of starving and death; George Atzerodt, a drunken German immigrant who ran a ferry boat, something they would require to carry their prize across the Rappahanock River into Virginia; Lewis Paine, a drifter from Florida; and David Herold, an immature star-struck boy from the tenements of Washington. Wilkes also had the fortune to befriend John Harrison Surratt, a young but respected member of the Knights of the Golden Circle. Surratt served as emissary between Wilkes and the Southern Underground.
Their loyalty to Booth was insured by money, and Booth could pay handsomely for services well done. In 1865, his yearly salary neared $12,000, a tremendous sum for the mid-19th Century. The conspirators usually met at Surratt's mother's boarding house at 541 H Street, near the federal district of the city.
It is very apropos that Wilkes' first kidnapping attempt took place at a theatre. Lincoln had scheduled to attend a performance of Jack Cade, or The Kentish Revolution on the evening of January 18, 1865, at Ford's Theatre. That evening, the State Box, overlooking stage left, was decorated in flags and bunting, awaiting the President's arrival.
The conspirators assembled early to take their positions. At a particular moment in the play, one man would extinguish the house gas lamps; at the same time, two others (including Wilkes) would enter the private box (habitually unguarded and unlocked); while one man held the other occupants at bay, Wilkes would knock the President unconscious and lower him in darkness onto the stage below where the remaining abductors would drag the ragamuffin out to a covered buckboard. Then, it would be a bee-line out of Washington, across the Anacostia Bridge and on a direct route towards Virginia. Abettors' residences would conceal them along the way.
Detained by business, the President never showed. But, to the would-be kidnappers, his absence meant one thing. They were suspect! Scrambling out, they retreated to their own abodes where, alone, they expected reprisal. After the night passed without further incident, however, they realized their paranoia and reconvened the following day.
Days turned into weeks and no other opportunity presented itself. Lincoln, having won a second term of Office, was reinaugurated on March 4. Shielded under the Capitol's gargantuan portico from a downpour, he addressed a throng blackening the plaza with umbrellas. 'With malice toward none and charity for all..." His words swept on the wind and into the annals of history. Above him on a buttress, within spitting distance, was Wilkes, one in a crowd of dignitaries with free passes. Silently, Wilkes listened to the man whose words of reconciliation and forgiveness meant nothing. "What an opportunity I had to kill him!" Wilkes reported later.
But, he had chosen to wait, and watch. And continue to court the dark-haired Bessie Lambert Hale, daughter of a New Hampshire senator, whom he met the previous year. It was through her he had received the ringside spot at the Inauguration. What has since evaded the logic of historians is why Wilkes would, despite her charm, chase the daughter of a Northern senator. After all, his own station allowed him social approval; he didn't require a liaison. But, court her he did, and sought and won betrothal. Marriage plans were put on hold because her father had just received a commission as Ambassador to Spain and wanted his family to accompany him for a while, at least until he was settled.
What tender words he whispered in her ears obviously hid his double-life. On March 20, as things became more desperate for the South — Richmond was now besieged and expected to surrender any day — Wilkes called his "enterprise," as he called it, together one more time. He had read that Lincoln was to attend a benefit at the U.S. Soldiers Convalescent Home in suburban Georgetown. The path the executive carriage would take, Wilkes learned, would be through a stretch of woodland on the outskirts of the city. But, as the company waited at a deserted crossing at a half-way point, Lincoln had changed his agenda. Instead, he chose to attend a function back in Washington...in the lobby of Wilkes' hotel.
Over the Edge
Headlines on April 10, 1865, splashed the celebratory words sea to sea: WAR IS ENDED. To the North, it was splendid news. To the South, it was bittersweet — their cause was lost, but they had borne the brunt of ruin and poverty and death. They were thankful if their sons, brothers and fathers were coming home alive. To a few the news brought resentment. To Wilkes it brought rage.
To avoid being bottlenecked in crumbling Richmond, General Lee had made a vainglorious attempt to sidestep the surrounding Union Army besieging Richmond. For a week, Northern General Ulysses S. Grant pursued closely. Then, near the little village of Appomattox, Va., he lassoed the fox. Unable to retreat, Lee surrendered.
Washington turned out to party. On the White House grounds the frenzy reached a delightful high when President Lincoln appeared in an upstairs window to greet the crowds that formed outside. Wilkes remained with co-conspirator Lewis Paine behind the mob and scowled, "That is the last speech he will ever make."
During the war, whenever pressure overwhelmed, President Lincoln would escape with his wife to one of Washington's two central playhouses, Ford's or Grovers. Some considered this behavior irreverent in the wake of a shooting war. But, no one criticized him now that the conflict had ended. He had aged terribly in four years, the pain of worry scarring his features, so when it was announced on Friday, April 14, that he would attend Ford's Theatre to see the celebrated comedy, Our American Cousin, the nation considered his respite well earned. Tonight, Lincoln would rest.
Wilkes learned of the President's coming when he stopped at Ford's at noon to pick up his mail, where he kept a post box. He noticed carpenters preparing Box 7 with the usual regalia and understood what that meant. He raced out to find his brigands.
Arnold and O'Laughlen, he learned, had returned to Baltimore, disinterested in further enterprise. John Surratt was nowhere to be seen. (Actually, he was in Canada on a final mission for the Underground.) Wilkes was able to locate Paine, David Herold and George Atzerodt to prepare them for an evening they had not expected.
His plan was spontaneous, it was bloody, and it was hellish. Comparing them to soldiers who must avenge their stricken South, he assigned each of them a human target to kill that night — one of a "senate of butchers" most responsible for the South's defeat. Paine would slay Secretary of State William H. Seward who was at home bed-ridden after a carriage accident days earlier; he would make an easy prey. David Herold's quarry was Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton who, Wilkes said, never went out nights. And Atzerodt's target was Vice President Andrew Johnson, who resided at the Kirkwood House, where the German was also staying.
But Wilkes chose for himself the starring role as the Brutus of this play, the man who would take the life of the dictator. He would bring down the Colossus of Rhodes at last.
Assassination
At about 9:30 p.m. the evening of April 14, that assassin sauntered into the Star Saloon next door to Ford's Theatre and ordered a shot of whisky. Peter Taltavul, the establishment's owner, thought it curious that Wilkes, a habitual brandy drinker, should suddenly order whisky. "Nevermind that," Wilkes smiled. "Do you plan on seeing the show tonight? You ought to. You'll see some damn fine acting!" With that, he checked the wall clock and left.
The President's carriage was parked on 10th Street outside the theatre; Forbes the coachman dozed in the driver's seat. A slight drizzle dampened the streets. Once inside the foyer, Wilkes checked the time again: three-quarters to ten. He nodded at ticket taker John Buckingham and ascended the stairs to the dress circle. From within the auditorium he could hear muffled echoes of stage dialogue. He recognized the lines he knew so well. He knew Our American Cousin; he knew that in Act III, Scene 2 — at any moment now — only one actor would be left alone onstage. That would be his cue.
Across Washington, the other conspirators synchronized their timepieces. Their plan was to strike all at once, to throw the city into confusion, thus making their egress from the city more possible. In Lafayette Square, adjacent to the Seward home, Paine checked his tools of trade: a revolver and a Bowie knife. A few blocks away, David Herold shivered in a fine mist that sent chills through him there in the gloom of Stanton's yard. He gulped, panic tightening his throat. George Atzerodt was drunk. He had no intention of killing anyone. When he discovered his bottle was empty, he left the Kirkwood House in search of the nearest tavern. Damn the Vice President.
Within Box 7, the Lincolns and their evening's guests — Major Henry Rathbone and his imper, Clara Harris — were immersed in the zany goings-on below the balustrade. Lincoln leaned over in his rocker toward the stage and was roaring. Beside him, wife Mary was pleased just to watch her husband finally at ease. Their backs were toward the box door. No one detected their visitor now standing behind them, his hand reaching inside his coat.
It was now time to fell the Colossus of Rhodes. Fifteen feet below, comedian Harry Hawk stood mid-stage, the entire platform his, still howling retorts in the direction of the other characters who had just exited stage right. The house was in stitches.
Wilkes did what he always enjoyed. He stole the scene. In one movement, he drew his derringer, fired a leaden ball into Lincoln's skull, and threw a leg over the balustrade to jump. Major Rathbone, half-realizing what had happened, grappled at the intruder, then recoiled when a dagger slashed his arm.
But the major's action had thrown Wilkes off balance so that, in thrusting himself from the railing, one boot spur tangled with a decorative government flag hanging there. Instead of taking the graceful leap intended, his body twisted sideways until it dropped, deadweight, onto the stage. Harry Hawk turned around at the noise, stunned. The spectators twittered...what is this? What does this have to do with the scenario? Isn't that J. Wilkes Booth?
Something was wrong with his left leg. Wilkes sensed it immediately. The ankle ached like the devil, and it didn't want to support him. Nevertheless, the actor he was, he found time to deliver his line...a phrase actually, the motto of the State of Virginia..."Sic Simper Tyrannis!" Latin for "Thus may it be ever to tyrants!" He turned his back on his last audience and hobbled past an opened-mouthed backstage crew until he reached the alley door where his bay roan waited.
It wasn't until he was gone that the realization of what had happened seeped in. It came in the form of Mary Lincoln's scream for help.
Riding his horse as if it were winged Pegasus in zig-zags though Washington, Wilkes came to the rendezvous point at the Anacostia Bridge. He had told his men to meet him there no later than 10:30 p.m., as he was the only one who knew the direct route to safety. After a few moments, Herold appeared, announcing that his chore was undone. He had rung Stanton's front doorbell; when no one answered, and a passing patrolman began eyeing him suspiciously, he absconded. As for Paine, when he failed to show, Wilkes and Herold rode off. They couldn't tarry lest the soldiers at the bridge might receive a telegraphic warning of the assassination and an order to detain any riders leaving the city.
Wilkes had hoped that when he struck out the South would rally behind him. But, that did not happen. Instead, the Southern heart wept for the man who didn't deserve to be shot in the back of the head. The man who — they could see clearly now that the smoke of battle had cleared — had only stuck to his principles and died for them. Wilkes became not their Brutus, but their blot of shame. John Wilkes Booth became the most hated man in America.
But, for two weeks following the assassination, Wilkes and Herold dodged the detachments of cavalry scouring Maryland and Virginia. In hiding, Wilkes realized he was without friend and turned to the only recourse left to still make him a hero, even posthumously: his diary. In it, he wrote,
"I am in despair. And why? For doing what Brutus was honored for - what made Tell a hero. And yet I, for striking down a greater tyrant than they ever knew, I am looked upon as a common cut-throat. My action was purer than either of theirs...I hoped for no gain. I knew no private wrong. I struck for my country and that alone. A country that groaned beneath this tyranny...and yet now behold the cold hand they extend me...I bless the entire world. Have never harmed or wronged anyone. This last was not a wrong, unless God deems it so..."
By chance, the 27th New York, riding thorough Port Royal, Va., heard about two men fitting Wilkes' and Herold's descriptions who had crossed the Rappahanock River and were staying overnight at a nearby farm owned by Richard Garrett. They surrounded the place before sunrise of April 26 and sought out farmer Garrett. He told them that, as far as he knew, his guests were two weary Confederate soldiers homeward bound, and yes, one of them did walk with a crutch. Garrett pointed to the small tobacco shed where he had put them up. The smell of lilacs permeated the pre-dawn.
Summoned to come out, Wilkes roared back that he would never surrender. The soldiery then knew that they had found their man. David Herold could be heard whimpering from within the unlit shed; after what sounded like debate among the two fugitives, he shuffled out, hands up, into the darkness. Two soldiers grabbed him and drew him into their ranks. Still Wilkes dared the soldiers to come and get him.
Flames splattered the night as several blue uniforms darted forward to toss torches against the shed. Singed tobacco leaves staled the air. The glare of the torchlight punctuated Wilkes' silhouette through the open vents of the hut. "One more stain on the old banner, eh, boys!" the form shouted. Then...a revolver cracked. Against orders to take him alive, one of the troopers shot in anxiety. The silhouette collapsed. On command, the others overtook the shed to drag the body out.
One wonders if perhaps in his final moments, the scent of lilacs in the air, he might have imagined he was a boy again, atop his father's horse Peacock, galloping down Churchville Road, shouting oaths to the dragons encircling him. Or if he dreamed he had the Colossus of Rhodes by the tail. But, one thing is certain. He had enough time to look at his palms and, with the eloquence of a despairing Hamlet, utter "Useless...useless."
