LINCOLN
One hundred and four years ago, Abraham
Lincoln the nation’s 16th president was murdered at Ford’s Theater. The day Lincoln died Vice President Andrew
Johnson became the new President. He, along with many others, wrongly believed
John Wilkes Booth was part of a large group of pro slavery Wigs continuing to
fight. President Johnson thereupon declared to the Secretary of State, Stanton,
“Find Booth, kill him, bury him.” At all three, Stanton was successful. Stanton
was scared to death that the unity of the country, which was tenuous to say the
least at the time, and he was in a panic to get order quickly.
“There are still armies in the field,
there’s a real feeling that the war is not yet won.”
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.
Informants were being paid for what they
passed on to the federal agents, sometimes even false information, even after
the Army learned of the scheme. Often information given was Bs. from shady
informants. Today a Judge might think it was to insubstantial to justify a
wiretap or the name misspelled in a police database. Prosecutors chopped a
decade off prison sentences for reliable information, or fingerprints worn away
scoured from years of labor, or shaky informants accepted.
Dozens of people including of Ivy
Howell, who had known the famous actor, were being jailed. Ivy said,
“I don’t think it right for a
convicted felon to get up on the stand in front of honest citizens and convict
other people. It’s not right, if the police says you can go home today, if you
say that box is red,” pointing a thick finger at a white cardboard box in the
corner of his cell.
You’ve
heard the story so many times, it reads like a fairy tale. It was a week before
Booth was tracked to the Garrett Farm. Booth made an unusual request. He requested that
his hands are 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.
The
barn he was hiding in was surrounded by the Union Seventh Regiment, and on all
sides set on fire. Running from the flames, his leg broken, Booth was shot
immediately. He lay paralyzed, mumbling and crying for the soldiers to kill
him. He then made an unusual request. He had earlier asked that his mother be contacted and told that what he did, 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 all over and done within a week. Using
a jury-rigged Abolunitists Federal Court in Washington D.C. four nooses
condemned conspires; Lewis Payne, David Herold and George Atzerodt Mary Surratt
are hung July 7, 1865. Mary Surratt was the first women executed by the
United States? Surratt 43 a Confederate sympathizer, widow and mother of three
ran the boardinghouse in Washington where her friend Booth and his
co-conspirators including her son, Confederate courier John planned their
harebrained schemes to decapitate the American government and somehow rescue
the lost Confederate cause.
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 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 Andrew Johnson did.
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, John P. Hale a New Hampshire Senator,
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 clear proof that
Booth was smitten. Washington gossip at the time considered the two practically
married. There was a moment where Booth sweeps Lucy onto the dance floor at the
hotel where he was also a guest. "Have you gone mad?" Lucy asked as
they dance around the ballroom. “Mad for you," Booth cajoles. "Have I
caused you some problems? That cuts straight to the core of the affair, and
Lucy gave John Wilkes Booth a ring which he flaunted openly, to display his
love for her and to taunt her abolitionist father. Booth was horrified by the thought
of civil rights for slaves. This country was formed for the white man not the
black. The hatred is extreme even by today’s standards. 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 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 the trigger that fired Booth into bloody
action, but there was more, a piece that I think has great significance in the
psychological profile of the assassin. According to White House records,
Senator John 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. Then Lucy
confronted her fiancé with the news that her father was taking her away.
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. She begged Booth to let her stay with him,
but he was suddenly philosophical. “Your father is doing the right thing, I
would only because 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 more
than the cute little coquette that appeared in photos. Look more closely and
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 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 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, shouted "Sic semper tyrannies’" and leaped from
the Presidential box onto the stage, 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.
Every person who had even a passing
acquaintance with Booth was interrogated, except 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. The
country mourned for years and years. Lucy apparently never spoke of Booth
again, 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, Maine. 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,
he needed her. 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.
In the end, he did what he did best: he
acted. He moved his dry, cracked lips to kiss her ring a final time, and said,
"I love
you."
Dr. KARL WALLACE D.D.S.
To read more Dr. Wallace stories go
to: Karl
wallaaceblog.blogspot.com
