Borne By Loving Hands

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(“Borne by Loving Hands,” a painting by 30-year old eyewitness to the scene Carl Bersch, 1865. It shows the stricken President being carried from Ford’s Theater for treatment. After trying other houses across the street, the Peterson Boarding House accepted the party, and placed the President in the back bedroom diagonally on the bed that was too short to accommodate his towering height. At the time, it was viewed as macabre, and not displayed for sixty years. As the national trauma of the assassination, and the long bloody conflict the preceded it began to fade, a descendent of the painter donated it to the Government. It was not deemed appropriate to display in the White House for obvious reasons, and is now in the Lincoln Museum under the theatre where the President was shot. It is the equivalent to the Zapruder film of JFK’s murder. Image courtesy of National Park Service.)

What we know about history is an accepted narrative that is modified and adapted to fit the times. You would be familiar with the process- it is going on right now and it is kind of amazing. I am going to ignore it, and cling to the version of history that I have studied and the part that I have lived.

Thespian and activist John Wilkes Booth is a case in point. I mention that because today is the 150th anniversary of the performance of a play called “Our American Cousin” at Ford’s Theater, a popular venue for entertainment just blocks from the White House.

There are a couple themes in the common narrative of what happened that night. The first is that Booth was one of those crazed Lone Gunmen, and the other was that the South never embraced the assassin of President Lincoln. Both are demonstrably false. Booth was a member of a conspiracy funded by the Confederate government and chartered by President Jefferson Davis.

In 1864, Davis had appointed two special operators named Jacob Thompson and Clement Clay to head the Confederate Secret Service. He funded it in the amount of $5 million (Confederate). The operations against the United States were based largely in Canada, and included espionage, as well as direct-action missions. The latter included a military raid on St. Alban’s, Vermont, to rob banks to fund the war, ars on attacks on New York City hotels, bio-terror attacks on the New York water supply and plans to infect Union troops with smallpox and yellow fever. They also had serious thoughts about blowing up the White House.

As the chances for British intervention or a negotiated settlement to the conflict faded in the Spring of 1865, the crown jewel of the Confederate Secret Service’s operations emerged: kidnap President Lincoln and hold him until Confederate soldiers were released to rejoin the fight.

They actually tried it. John Wilkes Booth was the cadre leader who laid in wait with his team for Lincoln to arrive at the Solder’s Home in March of 1865. The President’s plans changed, and Booth aborted the mission. Later events, including the fall of Petersburg, the evacuation of Richmond and the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia forced modification to the OPLAN.

By 14 April, the plan had changed to one of revenge: kill the President, Vice President Andrew Johnson, and SECSTATE William Seward. Members of the team were assigned their targets: Booth was to kill Lincoln, Johnson was to be murdered by George Atzerodt, and Lewis Powell got to tag the bedridden Seward.

Let’s frame the day: it was a giddy time in Washington. Lincoln had just returned from a brief and startling visit to fallen Richmond, and toured the office of his adversary, Jefferson Davis. There were still Confederate forces in the field, and there was animated discussion in the capital about how reconstruction would be accomplished and who was going to do it.

On a human level that day, there was back and forth about whether the President and his bride Mary Todd Lincoln would attend the play. She didn’t feel up to it, but in the end the President insisted, and the party’s composition changed to include a military aide named Major Henry Reed Rathburn and his fiancé Clara Harris. Booth stopped in at Ford’s Theater to check his mail in the morning and heard of the presidential attendance at the show that evening. Knowing the theater well, he climbed the stairs to the Washington Box and bored a small hole through it with a penknife that would allow him to view the occupants of he box.

The conspirators convened at Mary Surratt’s Boarding House to finalize timing on the triple assassination. Booth hoped the chaos that would follow the killings would give the Confederate Government time to reorganize and continue the war.

Booth had acted in the same play and knew the lines by heart. In the third act there was the punch line to a joke that would cover the discharge of his single-shot derringer pistol. That laughter would determine the timing. Booth carried a long dagger in case the gun misfired.

He stopped in the alley behind the Theater and paid a boy to hold his horse. He stopped at the saloon next to the theater, having a whiskey near the bodyguard who had left his post to have a quick snort while the President watched the play. He entered the theater, climbed the stairs, and as the audience roared in mirth, shot the President behind the left ear. Major Rathburn rose to attempt to detain him and suffered a severe slash to his arm that severed an artery.

You know the rest. Booth leapt from the box to the stage in front of the astonished play-goers, shouting “Sic Semper Tyrannis!” and breaking a bone in his foot. The phrase was adopted as the Motto of Virginia in 1776, and is still on the state flag. Hobbled but mobile, Booth exited stage left, leapt to his horse, struck the innocent boy in the face and galloped off into the night.

At the Seward home, Lewis Powell went to the door and claimed he had medicine for the Secretary, and climbed the stairs to the second floor. Seward’s son confronted him, and in the ensuing struggle, Powell fractured his skull with the pistol butt after the gun failed to fire. Powell then burst into the bedroom and stabbed the bedridden Secretary in the face and neck before the uproar in the house caused him to flee. Seward lived, as did his son.

That brings us around to the eye-witness scene in the street in front of the theater, and the somber procession into the rear bedroom of the first floor of the Peterson House at 453 10th Street. The President never regained consciousness as family and officials stood the vigil, Secretary of War Stanton running the government from the front parlor.

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(Abraham Lincoln is depicted in the Peterson House room rented to William Clark at the moment of his passing. The President is surrounded by his family, members of the Cabinet, (excluding Seward), officers and physicians.)

When Lincoln expired at 0722 the next morning, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton uttered his epigram: “Now he belongs to the ages.”

Booth stayed on the run for almost two weeks before being cornered in a tobacco barn southeast of Fredericksburg by Federal troops and shot to death. In his days as an actor, he was known as the “most handsome man in America.” His fellow conspirator Lewis Powell was captured alive.

Epilogue:

There is a bunch of Lincoln stuff to see and do in town, and I have tried to do most of them- it is worth a day’s activity when you are here.

The Lincoln Summer White House : the Emancipation Proclamation was drafted while the President was living in a Gothic Revival Cottage at the Soldiers’ Home on North Capitol Street. Lincoln’s time at the Cottage served as bookends for Civil War; he first visited the grounds three days after his inauguration and last rode out to the site the day before his assassination.

Ford’s Theater : The tragedy caused the Government to declare the place would never be used for merriment again, and was shuttered for use as a War Department warehouse. After years of neglect, a partial roof collapse killed 22 people. A full restoration of the facility, including the peephole bored by Booth remain. A splendid museum now is in the basement with many relics, including the gun that killed Lincoln, the President’s top hat, and the hoods worn at the execution of those convicted in the plot: Mary Surratt, Lewis Powell, David Herold, and George Atzerodt. The gallows were on the site of the tennis courts across from the Officer’s Club at Fort McNair. Local legend is that Mary, the first woman executed by the Federal Government, was framed. Her ghost is rumored to be seen periodically in the O’Club.

The Peterson House . Just across the street from the Theater, this is one of those little places that have enormous emotional impact. The Park Service runs it, bed covers and all.

Fort Stevens : Just south of the old Walter Reed Hospital, the fort was one of the ring of defenses that guarded Washington from the north. Lincoln came out from the city to watch the VI Army Corps repulse Lt. Gen. Jubal A. Early’s troops in a last ditch attempt to deflect Grant’s assault on Petersburg and seize the White House. This was the closest the Rebels got to Washington during the late Unpleasantness Between the States. Lincoln himself came under fire from Confederate sharpshooters, and reportedly was dragged down by future Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Booth Death Site: Just southeast of Tidewater Trail on Virginia Route 301. There is a historical marker, but the tobacco barn was located in what is now the median on the highway, a short walk from the marker.

The Surratt Boarding House : At 604 H Street NW, a row house where the conspirators met frequently to plan their acts of terror. It stands on the s outh side of the street. There is now a Chinese restaurant on the first floor. I used to walk by on the way to Five Guys from the office at the Bus Station. I once had an egg roll and some fried rice there.

New York Presbyterian Church : Where the President worshipped. President and Mrs. Lincoln first visited the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church shortly after he took office on March 4, 1861, and often attended services until his death on April 15, 1865. Located three blocks from the White House, the building was new when the Lincolns walked through the doorway. In 1951 this building was demolished and replaced with a similar structure; the tower was dismantled and rebuilt, so it is fairly authentic. Like the tower, they saved the Lincoln pew (I have sat in it) and the Presidential hitching post, which I did not need.

The Chair in Which the President Was Shot : at Greenfield Village in Dearborn Michigan because Henry Ford wanted it, bloodstains and all.

The Lincoln Bedroom : At the White House. I have never been there, but it has been for rent before and there could be the opportunity again in the near future.

Copyright 2015 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

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