KARL WALLACE
John Wilkes Booth and Lucy Hale
Thirteen score and three years ago, Abraham Lincoln was murdered at Ford’s Theater. The day Lincoln died, Vice President Andrew Johnson became the new President and he, along with many others, wrongly believed John Wilkes Booth was part of a continuation of the five- year -old Civil War rebellion. President Johnson thereupon declared to the Secretary of State, “Find Booth, kill him, bury him.” At all three, he was successful.
With a $100,000 bounty, dead or alive, John Wilkes Booth was at large, hiding in the swamps of Virginia, writing in his journal, and waiting for the Confederacy to raise him to glory. At the same time, dozens of people in Washington, including everyone who had known the famous actor, were being jailed or questioned.
You’ve heard the story so many times; it reads like a fairy tale. The barn was set on fire. Running from the flames, his leg broken, Booth was shot. He lay paralyzed, mumbling and crying for the soldiers to kill him. He asked that his mother be contacted and told that what he did, for his country. His mother would soon be the first women ever to be hung for treason by the United States Government. It was over and done within a week by a jury-rigged Republican Party.
If this was 1865, think about it: you would be in shock. You'd find yourself suddenly sobbing, unable to talk about the assassination. A moment later, remembering that the long bloody Civil War was over, there might be a jolt of elation, followed by the crashing realization that Lincoln who carried you through 800 thousand deaths, was himself slaughtered. You, too, likely would have reacted as President Johnson did.
It would be a week before Booth was tracked to the Garrett Farm. Booth made an unusual request. He asked that his hands be lifted up so he could see them. This was done. He stared at his hands for a moment and mumbled, "Useless, useless." Then he died.
There are several omissions in the story. The day Lincoln died needs one added character, Lucy Hale. Lucy was engaged to Booth, although her father, New Hampshire Senator John P. Hale, denied it. Lucy and John had been seen spooning in the public rooms of the National Hotel in D.C. the day the President was shot. The toast of Washington, Lucy had gotten Booth his ticket to Lincoln's second inauguration. You can see him standing there, well within shooting distance in a photograph of the event.
Another omission: when Booth died outside that burning barn, Lucy’s photograph was in his pocket.
History has presented Lucy, known as "Bessie" Hale, as an innocent footnote to the death of Lincoln. Booth was a ladies' man and Lucy was just one of the ladies he played to off stage. The daughter of one of the nation's best known senators, she apparently wielded some social power. She had attracted the attention of Oliver Wendell Homes Jr. Her father hated Booth's Confederate beliefs and upbringing. Some say he had hoped to marry Lucy to President’s Johnson’s son, Robert Todd. Lucy appears to be a composite of Booth's lovers, but there is a clear proof that Booth was smitten. Washington gossip at the time considered the two practically married. There was a moment that Booth sweeps Lucy onto the dance floor at the hotel where he was also a guest.
"Have you gone mad?" Lucy asked as they span around the ballroom.
"Mad for you," Booth cajoles. "Have I caused you some trouble?"
"Seeing as my father's jaw is resting in his soup, I'd say so," she replies. That cuts straight to the core of the affair, and I’m quite sure Lucy gave John Wilkes Booth a ring which he flaunted openly, to display his love for Lucy and to taunt her northern abolitionist father. Booth was horrified by the concept of civil rights for slaves. In one incident, Booth is reportedly sitting in a tavern with an actor friend repeatedly kissing his ring and calling Lucy's name. His companion finds this distracting, but not as distracting as when Booth begins talking about how he had been within shooting distance of the President at the inauguration. There is no question that Booth and his ragged groups of conspirators were planning a crime, originally they were going to kidnap, not kill Lincoln. Booth's plan turned deadly when he learned of the fall of Richmond. He ran to Lucy Hale for comfort and love. Lucy and Booth were in bed in her room at the National Hotel when word came that Lee had surrendered at Appomattox. This was certainly the trigger that fired Booth into bloody action, but there was more, and a piece that I think has great significance in the psychological profile of the assassin.
According to White House records, Senator John P. Hale met with President Lincoln in his office on the morning of April 14 at 10 a.m., assignation day. After twenty years as a New Hampshire senator, he had lost the election. He asked Lincoln, for the position of American Ambassador to Spain and his request was granted. He wanted Lucy out of the country fast, and out of the influence of John Wilkes Booth. Witnesses report having seen Lucy and John in conversation in a public room at the hotel that morning. They met for the last time. Booth had already left Lucy's bed, met with his co-conspirators, gone to Ford's Theater and rigged the doorway so that he could slip into the President's box seat at the theater. Then Lucy confronted her fiancé with the news that her father was taking her away.
She begged Booth to let her stay with him, but he was suddenly philosophical."Your father is doing the right thing," he says. "I would only cause you pain."
The story plays Booth's passion for Lucy as deeper than his physical love for the show girls he won so easily. Wooing Lucy was Booth's finest performance. She was of a different world, one of important society. They were star-crossed and that made it more intense. She was less the cute little coquette than she appeared in her photos. Look more closely and you’ll see she is more motherly, more like a Mary Todd Lincoln than a Lady Gaga.This was a new attraction for Booth who wrote to his mother of his possible marriage to Lucy.
Lucy's imminent departure for Spain on top of the fall of the surrender of Lee was the real trigger. Lucy, after all, was not just his passion, but his access to the President. With her gone to Spain, he would need another means of getting close to President Lincoln.
Lincoln had not only taken away Booth's Confederacy, his country, and way of life, but also had directly stolen his lover–perhaps even stolen Robert Todd. Booth had seen Lucy dance with Robert Todd and had been jealous. Now Booth learned that the President was attending "My American Cousin" at the theater that night. He may have even heard that Robert Todd would be attending.
Booth did bring a knife and a gun as if he had two murders in mind--one to avenge his country, the other his heart. It is even possible that, in his twisted way, he imagined he would demonstrate his deep love for Lucy and win her back.
On the evening of April 14. Robert Todd did not attend the play. Neither did Vice-President Andrew Johnson. But Booth had crossed an emotional line and there was no turning back. The President was late, and the play stopped as the audience gave him a kingly welcome. Booth waited, and then slipped silently into the President's box. He shot Abraham Lincoln in the head, shouts "Sic semper tyrannies’" and leaped from the Presidential box, breaking his leg. He rode off intending to meet the co-conspirators who had failed to kill Vice President Johnson and Secretary of State Seward. Booth rode into infamy and Lucy disappears from public view.
Although every person who had even a passing acquaintance with Booth was interrogated, but Lucy, seen in the company of her fiancé assassin, was never even questioned. Lucy and her father spent the next five years in Spain where the aging senator suffered from depression; today, it would be called “National Hotel disease.” The country mourned for years and years. Lucy apparently never spoke of Booth although Booth's elder brother, Edwin, also a famous actor, received a distraught letter from Lucy after the assassination. After her father returned to Dover to die, the thirty something, Lucy married a man from Concord.
Lucy inherited her father's house on Central Avenue and it has become part of the Woodman Institute Museum. Lucy was to Booth what Jodie Foster was to John Hinckley and more. She was truly a woman of influence, part mother, part movie star, part lover. Perhaps because of their opposing worlds, she cared for him. She needed him. She was his solace, his safe place, his status. He was insecure and driven to outstrip his famous father and brother. He was drunk with ego, maybe with liquor. When all the pieces of Booth's fragile life fell apart, he did what he did best: he acted.
He moved his dry, cracked lips to kiss her ring a final time.
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