George Washington Booth

“ This was his shroud; too like a soldier's. Harold, meantime, had been tied to a tree, but was now released for the march. Colonel Conger pushed on immediately for Washington; the cortege was to follow. Booth's only arms were his carbine knife, and two revolvers. They found about him bills of exchange, Canada money, and a diary. A venerable old negro living in the vicinity had the misfortune to possess a horse. This horse was a relic of former generations, and showed by his protruding ribs the general leanness of the land. ”

“ He also confessed that he was with Booth at the National Hotel on the evening referred to by Weichmann in his testimony; and that he came to Washington on that occasion to meet Booth by appointment, who wished to be introduced to John Surratt; that when he and Booth were going to Mrs. Surratt's house to see John Surratt, they met, on Seventh street, John Surratt, who was introduced to Booth, and they had a conversation of a private nature. I will here add that Dr. ”

“ Does it not bring a blush to our faces that a good, great man, like he who has died—our President—should have met his fate from one so inured to a life of ribaldry? Yet, only such an one could have been found to murder Abraham Lincoln.
The women persecuted Booth more than he followed them. He was waylaid by married women in every provincial town or city where he played. His face was so youthful, yet so manly, and his movements so graceful and excellent, that other than the coarse and errant placed themselves in his way. ”

“ No triumphal mourning can add to the President's glory; no further execration can disturb the assassin's slumbers. They have gone for what they were into history, into tradition, into the hereafter both of men and spirits; and what they were may be in part concluded. Mr. Lincoln's career passes, in extent, gravity, and eventful association, the province of newspaper biography; but Booth is the hero of a single deed, and the delineation of him may begin and be exhausted in a single article. ”

“ Mary E. Surratt, the widowed mother of the last named, formerly a woman of some property in Maryland, but reduced by reverses to keeping a small boarding-house in Washington. Booth was the leader of the little coterie. He was a young man of twenty-six. ... He was a fanatical secessionist; had assisted at the capture and execution of John Brown, and had imbibed at Richmond and other Southern cities where he had played, a furious spirit of partisanship against Lincoln and the Union party. ”

“ The General then addressed the soldiers, and facing toward the West and pointing he said:
“Out there in that direction is Washington and the President, and all the people of the United States, who are looking to you to set the world free from tyranny. Over there are the mothers who have bade you good-bye with tears and sent you forth, and are waiting at home and praying for you, trusting in you. Out there are the fathers and the sisters and the sweethearts you have left behind, all depending on you to do your best for the Right. ”

“ Abraham Lincoln, the friend of all mankind, whose life was free from petty vindictiveness, and whose whole aim was the restoration of the republic on a fair and just basis, a grand and unselfish man, was struck down by the hand of an assassin—J. Wilkes Booth. The President was shot while sitting with his wife and other friends, in a box at Ford's Theater, Washington, April 14, 1865, and he died the next morning. The entire nation was dumb with grief and consternation. ”

“ While Lincoln was planning his peaceful war with the Vindictives, scheming how to keep them from grinding the prostrate South beneath their heels, devising modes of restoring happiness to the conquered region, Booth, at an obscure boarding-house in Washington, was gathering about him a band of adventurers, some of whom at least, like himself, were unbalanced. They meditated a general assassination of the Cabinet. The unexpected theatre party on the fourteenth gave Booth a sudden opportunity. He knew every passage of Ford's Theatre. ”

“ What good American to-day is not, convinced that he has a share in what Washington and Lincoln accomplished years ago, and also—and this one may, or may not, regret—in the doings of Benedict Arnold and Booth? And, to put a very practical question, would it not be well if in the popular consciousness great men, good and bad, were really identified with history instead of being treated as fixtures outside of it? ”

“ Mr. Botts had been a leading member of the Whig Party and he was a Union man from the beginning of the contest to the end of the war. As the work of secession was advancing in the Gulf States Mr. Lincoln became anxious for the fate of the border States and especially for Virginia and Kentucky, which promised to serve as barriers to the aggressive movements of the South in case of war. Mr. Botts came to Washington at the request of Mr. Lincoln in the early days of April, 1861, and they were together and in private conversation during the evening of the 7th of April from seven to eleven o'clock. ”

“ Major Ruggles dismounted and placed Booth on his horse, when the whole party crossed over the Rappahannock, from Port Conway, in King George, to Port Royal, in Caroline County, Virginia, and after an ineffectual effort to find quarters for Booth in the town, they took him three miles on the road to Bowling Green, the county seat of the latter county, where they succeeded in getting a man by the name of Garrett to take him in, with the understanding that he would do all he could for his comfort and safety. ”

“ After his death there was found among these a note about the very plot in which Booth was the chief actor.
Fate plays strange tricks. For a few hours that spring, one friend in Washington unconsciously held Lincoln’s life in his hand. Harriet Riddle, since better known as Mrs. Davis, the novelist, was a pupil at a local convent school. Shortly before the tragedy at Ford’s Theater, a teacher who had been on a brief visit to a Southern town returned, apparently laboring under some terrible excitement which she was trying to suppress. ”

“ When Booth began "on his own responsibility," to hunt for accomplices, he found his theory at fault. The bold men he had dreamed of refused to join him in the rash attempt at kidnapping the President, and were too conscientious to meditate murder. All those who presented themselves were military men, unwilling to be subordinate to a civilian, and a mere play-actor, and the mortified bravo found himself therefore compelled to sink to a petty rank in the plot, or to make use of base and despicable assistants. ”

“ Napoleon placed France in the forefront of the nations, and established the foundations of a future eminence that had been shattered by the Revolution; Wellington and Nelson—for the two cannot be separated—guarded England against Napoleon's vaulting ambition and opened the vista of an Empire of freedom and justice; Washington founded a state which is now destined to see the last of our modern civilization. General Booth created an ecclesiastical authority of which he was the great high-priest. There was a universal need for such a man ”

“ I did confess to a casual or accidental meeting with Booth in front of one of the hotels on Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D. C. on the 23d of December 1864, and not on the 15th of January, 1865, as testified to by Weichman. Booth, on that occasion desired me to give him an introduction to Surratt, from whom he said he wished to obtain a knowledge of the country around Washington, in order to be able to select a good locality for a country residence. ”

“ Booth got there, with Herold, about daybreak (Frank Washington) . He usually wore a mustache (see photograph) , but he then wore heavy whiskers, and had his face muffled in it shawl, so as to disguise him. The disguise was kept up all day. (Col. Wells.) He was taken to a lounge in the hall, and then to a front room up stairs, where the broken bone was set, where a fee of $25 was paid for the service, and where, it is probable, he slept most of the day. They represented that the leg had been broken by a fall of the horse; that they had come from Bryantown, and were going to Parson Wilmer's. ”

“ True, the administration has put itself on the side of order; the city is alarmed for its existence, knowing full well that if it is given up to the military or the mob, and the representatives of eighteen free States are, for a single hour only, fugitives from the capital of the country, its re-occupation will be upon terms less agreeable to the inhabitants of the District and the neighboring States. The possession of Washington does, in a considerable degree, control the future of this country. ”

“ Booth gave eighty dollars for the horse. I have never seen Booth since that time to my knowledge until last Saturday morning.
When I assisted the wounded man into my house on Saturday morning last, the other party with him, who appeared to be very youthful, took charge of the horse and said he would keep it and the other one until they could be put in the stable. As soon as I could I woke my colored man Frank Washington, and sent him out to put the horses in the stable, and the young man came into the house. ”

“ From this visit, whatever encouragement Booth received, he continued in systematic correspondence with one or more of those agents down to the commission of his crime. I dare not say how far each of these agents was implicated. My personal conviction is that they were neither loth to the murder nor astonished when it had been done. They had money with discretion from the confederacy, though acting at discretion and outside of responsibility, and always, at every wild adventure, they instructed their dupes that each man took his life in his hand on every incursion into the north. ”

“ November 19, Gettysburg Cemetery address. December 9, pardon to rebels proclaimed.
1864--Unanimous nomination as Republican presidential candidate for re-election, June 7. Reelected November 8.
1865--March 4, inaugurated for the second term. April 14, assassinated in Ford's Theater, Washington, by a mad actor, Wilkes Booth. April 19, body lay in state at Washington. April 26, Booth slain in resisting arrest, by Sergeant Boston Corbett, near Port Royal. April 21 to May 4, funeral-train through principal cities North, to Springfield, Illinois. ”

“ What could please an actor, and the son of an actor, better than to mingle as a principal in a real conspiracy, the aims of which were pseudo-patriotic, and the end so astounding that at its coming the whole globe would reel. Booth reasoned that the ancient world would not feel more sensitively the death of Julius Cęsar than the new the sudden taking off of Abraham Lincoln.
And so he grew into the idea of murder. It became his business thought. It was his recreation and his study. He had not worked half so hard for histrionic success as for his terrible graduation into an assassin. ”

“ There is one very common illusion concerning General Booth. The vulgar sneers are forgotten; the scandalous slander that he was a self-seeking charlatan is now ashamed to utter itself except in vile quarters; but men still say--so anxious are they to escape from the miracle, so determined to account for every great thing by little reasons--that his success as revivalist lay only in his powers as an organiser. ”

“ In one of his addresses, delivered during his visit to the United States, in February, 1895, General Booth said: "We have, with God's help, been able to carry our banner and hoist our flag in 45 different countries and colonies, and we are reaching out day by day. We have been able to create and bring into harmonious action, with self-supporting and self-guiding officers, something like 4,000 separate societies. We have been able to gather together something like 11,000 men and women, separated from their earthly affiliations, who have gone forth as leaders of this host." ”

“ Let us be generous and acknowledge, now that it is too late to cheer his heart, that General Booth accomplished a work quite wonderful and quite splendid, a work unique in the records of the human race. Let us be frank and say that we ourselves could have done nothing like it. Let us forget our intellectual superiority, and, instead of criticising, endeavour to see as it stands before us, and as it really is, the immense marvel of his achievement. Our canons of taste, our notions of propriety, will change and cease to be. ”

“ Mrs. Lincoln then invited in their stead Miss Harris and Major Rathbone, daughter and stepson of Senator Ira Harris. Being detained by visitors, the play had made some progress when the President appeared.. The band struck up "Hail to the Chief," the actors ceased playing, the audience rose and cheered, the President bowed in acknowledgment, and the play went on again.
From the moment he learned of the President's intention Booth's actions were alert and energetic. He and his confederates were seen in every part of the city. Booth was perfectly at home in Ford's Theatre. ”

“ The New York merchants are anxious to do the same. I hope you will grant the order. Governor Andrew will put the work of preparation into the hands of our best merchants, who will charge no commissions whatever.
The whole North is wild and determined in its enthusiasm. Should not the Government make another requisition? They will be needed, I fear, and a short and vigorous campaign round Washington will be advantageous in the highest degree.
I am, very truly, your obedient servant,
GEORGE S. BOUTWELL. ”