American Experience (1988) s21e03 Episode Script

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NARRATOR:
In the early morning
of April 21, 1865,
a train draped
with black bunting
slowly departed Washington.
In the second-to-last car
rode the body
of America's first
assassinated president:
Abraham Lincoln.
Over the next 12 days,
the funeral train would wend
its way across the country.
Millions paused to stand
by railroad sidings
or file past his open casket
to glimpse the martyred
president's face.
MAN:
It's a nation mourning,
it's a people mourning,
it's a whole society mourning.
But, in the end,
they're mourning the death
of a simple man like themselves,
who came from a place
like they came from.
MAN:
You could not write this
from scratch.
You could not invent this
and make it believable,
the life and the death.
He's an authentic hero
who's bigger than life,
bigger than war,
and almost bigger than America
by the time he died.
NARRATOR:
At the very moment
Lincoln's funeral train
departed Washington,
his murderer lay shivering
in the reeds beside
the Potomac River.
The largest manhunt in American
history was closing in
and John Wilkes Booth managed
to scribble a few words
in his diary.
JOHN WILKES BOOTH (dramatized):
Our cause being almost lost,
something decisive
and great must be done.
A country groaned
beneath this tyranny,
and prayed for this end,
and yet now behold the cold
hands they extend to me.
God cannot pardon me
if I have done wrong.
Yet I cannot see any wrong.
MAN:
It's often said
that Booth killed Lincoln
because he was a failed actor,
because he went mad.
John Wilkes Booth shared
political views
that were identical to the views
held by millions of Southerners,
hundreds of thousands and
likely millions of Northerners.
John Wilkes Booth was not
insane, he was not mad,
unless you think
the country was mad.
For 150 years,
people have asked,
"Why did this handsome,
rich, happy young man
Why did he do it?"
MAN:
While millions of people
dislike Lincoln
and hundreds of thousands fought
against him in armies
and thousands wanted
to see him dead
and maybe dozens
even daydreamed about it,
only one person in millions
stepped up to him with a pistol,
and that was John Wilkes Booth.
(fireworks exploding)
NARRATOR:
The night of April 13, 1865,
was one of the most radiant
anyone in Washington
could remember.
With the agony of the Civil War
drawing to a close,
the city celebrated peace
by draping itself in lights.
DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN:
This incredible sense
of jubilation
that the war was finally coming
to an end,
and it was witnessed in the
light, the spectacular scenery,
with the crowds on the street
and the lights
in all the windows.
It must have been a beautiful
thing to behold.
NARRATOR:
"The great struggle is over,"
editorialized
the New York Times.
"The history of blood is brought
to a close.
"The last shot has been fired.
The last man, we trust,
has been slain."
That night John Wilkes Booth
walked among the revelers
in a haze of resentment
and alcohol.
JAMES SWANSON:
He heard the taunts
against General Lee
and the Confederate army.
He saw the Union soldiers
in their uniforms
marching up and down
the streets, celebrating.
It was the most beautiful,
joyful night in American history
since we had won
the Revolutionary War.
And John Wilkes Booth
had to witness it all.
NARRATOR:
Later, a disconsolate Booth
wrote his mother a note.
BOOTH (dramatized):
"Everything was bright
and splendid.
"Moreso in my eyes if it had
been a display
"in a nobler cause.
"But so goes the world.
Might makes right."
SWANSON:
When he went to bed that night,
he was a man with little hope.
He was a man without prospects.
He was a man who felt his world
and everything he held dear
had been crushed and humiliated.
NARRATOR:
John Booth grew up on his family
farm in Bel Air, Maryland.
SWANSON:
He really grew up in a country
style horseback riding,
he spent a lot of time outdoors.
He had a very idyllic,
free childhood.
He had a very vivid imagination;
so much so that he could create
all sorts of fantasies
in his own mind.
TERRY ALFORD:
When he was ten or 12,
he got an old lance
that a soldier had brought back
from the war with Mexico
and could be seen riding around
the woods making heroic speeches
and mounting mock charges
against trees and bushes.
GENE SMITH:
The words winning, buoyant,
gaiety, joyous,
cheerful, laughing,
it turns up in the mention of
Johnny by anybody who knew him.
NARRATOR:
To the Booths of Maryland,
greatness was assumed
as a birthright.
The flamboyant and eccentric
Junius Brutus Booth,
the family was known as the
foremost theatrical dynasty
of their time.
He was the son of
the greatest actor in America.
His brother Edwin was on his way
to inheriting the mantle
and Johnny Booth saw himself
I suppose the modern word
would be "entitled."
NARRATOR:
By 17, John had decided
to follow his famous father
and brother onto the stage.
SWANSON:
Booth was terrible
when he began.
He didn't know how to perform;
he would mess up his lines.
But he developed special skills
that his father didn't have
and his brother
Edwin didn't have.
ALFORD:
When you went to see
John Wilkes Booth,
you knew you would get
your money's worth.
You were going to get some
very exciting stage action.
He electrified you
with his movements.
He was very dynamic,
a tremendous swordsman.
He had presence, he had flair,
he had dramatic impulse,
he had a fiery quality
on the stage and off the stage.
And he was gorgeous to look at.
NARRATOR:
In 1858, at the age of 20,
Booth began traveling the
country as a featured performer.
ALFORD:
He appears to be, in fact,
the first American actor
who had his clothes
ripped by fans
when he was coming out
of the theater one night.
SMITH:
This dramatic, handsome young
man, filled with excitement,
with vibrancy, took the stage
by storm.
NARRATOR:
Just as Booth reached
stardom, however,
the country itself
was losing interest
in idle pursuits
like the theater.
A much more vivid drama was
turning North against South
and brother against brother.
The Booths were no exception.
SWANSON:
Edwin really became
a man of the North.
He became a star in the North.
And his political consciousness
developed along those lines.
John Wilkes spent most
of his time in the South.
That's where he received
his great acclaim,
that's where he felt best loved.
And over time
he naturally adopted
the Southern point of view.
NARRATOR:
"We are of the North,"
Booth's sister, Asia,
once insisted.
"Not I," he replied.
"So help me God, my soul,
life and possessions
are for the South."
There was a really big burden
to being a Booth,
whether you went on the stage
or not.
You have these giants
in your family
that you're inevitably
compared to,
and to some extent,
as a young man,
he needed to,
just psychologically,
to individualize himself
from them
and to show that he was
his own person.
NARRATOR:
While his family dispersed
across the North,
Booth spent most of his time
in Richmond, Virginia,
the citadel of the South.
He viewed the South as the ideal
type of society.
Unlike the North, which he
considered rough, mongrel,
the South was pure.
He did not view slavery
as an evil.
Slavery was God's blessing
to the African-American
It brought him to Christianity,
it brought him to higher
civilization.
It was the abolitionists
in the North
that were splitting
this country apart
and he hated abolitionists; he
hated the anti-slavery movement.
NARRATOR:
When radical abolitionist
John Brown was captured
while trying to incite
a slave rebellion
in Harpers Ferry, Virginia,
Booth heeded a call
for volunteers
to guard against Brown's escape.
He couldn't help
but be impressed
as Brown held the nation
spellbound from his prison cell,
issuing bloody prophecies about
the fate of the Union.
ALFORD:
One of the interesting features
of John Wilkes Booth
is his fascination
with romantic characters,
with heroic characters
in particular
People who define the age,
people whose acts
made everyone stand up
and pay attention
to what he was doing.
He loved characters
in the heroic mold.
NARRATOR:
In November, 1860, a
little-known Illinois politician
named Abraham Lincoln was
elected President.
The victory of an anti-slavery
Republican
provoked seven states to secede
from the Union
and enraged millions
of Southern sympathizers,
including John Wilkes Booth.
"We used to laugh
at his patriotic froth
whenever secession
was discussed,"
Edwin Booth remembered.
"That he was insane
on that one point,
no one who knew him
can well doubt."
ALFORD:
Shortly after Lincoln's
election, Booth wrote a speech.
He apparently wrote this
to deliver to an audience.
It doesn't appear that he ever
had an opportunity.
But it is a great window
into Booth's mind.
And it shows us that Booth is
terrifically disturbed
by the division of the country,
that he blames
the abolitionists entirely
and essentially he sees
what's happening
as a giant John Brown raid
on the South.
BOOTH (dramatized):
You all feel the fire now raging
in the nation's heart.
It is a fire lighted and fanned
by Northern fanaticism,
a fire which naught but blood
can extinguish.
The South wants justice,
has waited for it long;
she will wait no longer.
NARRATOR:
"This war is eating
my life out,"
President Lincoln once said.
"I have a strong impression
that I shall not live
to see its end."
The small skirmish that Lincoln
thought would be quickly over
had, by 1862, turned
into a bloody stalemate
with no end in sight.
Lincoln haunted
the War Department,
where reports of casualties
preyed on his mind.
JOSHUA WOLF SHENK:
This is not an abstract
conflict.
The important battlefields
could be heard,
or could be gone
to very quickly.
The casualties stumbled
into the capitol.
Lincoln was someone
who felt death
and disappointment
and difficulty
extremely clearly.
It was always with him,
the sheer, physical,
grueling horror of it.
HAROLD HOLZER:
Lincoln assumes the role
of a sort of a bereaved
and grieving father.
He does absorb all of the loss
and it ages him
and it weighs him down
and it makes him so melancholy
and somber.
NARRATOR:
In February 1862,
death reached out
and touched
Lincoln's own family.
His beloved 12-year-old son
Willie fell sick with typhoid,
contracted from drinking
tainted water.
After a weeklong illness,
Willie died.
HOLZER:
The light went out of his life
and he mourned
very, very deeply,
and then he was forced
to go back into the work
of seeing other boys die.
SHENK:
He was constantly wondering,
why is this happening?
What was God's purpose
in this death?
Why would he be so afflicting
Not only the nation
but Lincoln personally.
The biblical story that Lincoln
was seen reading
in the White House,
which is the Book of Job.
This man who just has everything
taken from him.
Job collapses
as Lincoln collapses.
But that's not the end
of the story.
The collapse is on its way
towards some new understanding
of the nature of reality
and the moral universe.
NARRATOR:
Out of suffering,
Lincoln resolved,
must come
"a new birth of freedom."
If so many had to lose
their lives,
it must be so that many more
could gain their freedom.
In January 1863, Lincoln issued
an order freeing the slaves
in the rebellious
Confederate states.
His Emancipation Proclamation
transformed the meaning
of the war.
DAVID BLIGHT:
He's now linked
the cause of black freedom
to the cause of the preservation
of an American republic,
which means, in effect,
the war is being fought
to reinvent the United States,
not to preserve it.
The government, the republic,
that would come out of this war
would not at all be
the same anymore.
ALLEN GUELZO:
What else could be God
leading us to,
what else could all this death
and suffering
and blood mean except
a greater understanding
of what it is to be
a free people?
SHENK:
He believed that the government
was built on an idea
and that this was a war
over an idea.
To withdraw, to compromise
on that idea
would be to surrender
something precious
for all humanity for all time.
NARRATOR:
"I expect to maintain this
contest until successful,"
Lincoln wrote, "or till I die
or am conquered,
or the country forsakes me."
JAMES McPHERSON:
There was no more talk
of conciliation,
no talk of compromise through
some kind of political process.
This is an outcome
that can only be
"tried by war
and decided by victory."
Tried by war,
decided by victory
Those six words put it
said it all.
(gunfire)
NARRATOR:
The trial of war would last
far longer
than Abraham Lincoln
ever imagined.
With Southern victories
at Manassas, Fredericksburg
public opinion in the North
began to falter.
In the summer of 1863,
draft riots broke out
in several Northern cities.
Newspapers denounced Lincoln
with what one friend called
a "frantic malignancy."
Soon sentiment was so strongly
against him
that Lincoln was certain
he would lose his bid
for reelection.
"The people are impatient,"
he said.
"The bottom is out of the tub."
The costs are mounting,
the politicians are complaining
and the voters are turning
against him.
And by the end of August 1864,
Lincoln has concluded,
"If we come to the polls
like this in November,
we're going to lose."
(gunfire)
NARRATOR:
Salvation for Lincoln
came in the form
of a battlefield victory.
On August 31,
General William Tecumseh Sherman
broke through the Confederate
defenses around Atlanta.
He sent a short telegram
to President Lincoln:
"Atlanta is ours
and fairly won."
McPHERSON:
And when that was published
in the Northern newspapers,
it changed Northern opinion
around almost overnight.
Lincoln, who looked
like the defeated
and discredited commander
in chief of a losing army,
now emerges as the leader
of a triumphant army
and he was triumphantly
reelected.
SWANSON:
Something turned in Booth when
Abraham Lincoln was reelected.
He realized Lincoln was
in there for good,
to prosecute the war to the end.
He knew Lincoln was not going
to settle with the South
and that many more would die,
that Lincoln was going to serve
another four years
in the White House.
BLIGHT:
These Yankees led by this
"black Republican,"
as they called him,
Abraham Lincoln
Were going to use this war now
to tear up the South,
to destroy its institutions,
to overthrow its way of life,
and to end their civilization
as they had known it.
NARRATOR:
By 1864, John Wilkes Booth
was only 25 years old,
yet he had already begun losing
interest in his acting career.
"I hardly know what to make
of you," his agent wrote him.
"Have you lost all
your ambition?"
ALFORD:
I don't think we should forget
that acting in those days
is very, very hard work.
There's travel, there's
exhausting performances,
there are drafty theaters,
managers who won't pay you.
And I think at some point Booth
began to tire of the stage.
NARRATOR:
To Booth, the war had rendered
his life marginal
and irrelevant.
"What are actors?" he wrote.
"They know little, think less,
and understand next to nothing."
Booth's dreams of glory
beyond the stage
were quickly passing him by.
He had nothing to show
for the war
but the scars of a few
overzealous stage duels.
BOOTH (dramatized):
For four years I have cursed
my willful idleness
and begun to deem myself
a coward.
I cannot longer resist
the inclination to go
and share the sufferings
of my brave countrymen
against the most ruthless enemy
the world has ever known.
NARRATOR:
Booth's anger and disappointment
began to focus on the one man
he held responsible
for the South's suffering.
ALFORD:
There's no doubt that the war
was pushing
Lincoln forward as a symbol,
an icon, something bigger
than life.
Booth began to focus on Lincoln
in this way,
that Lincoln, in fact,
was the source
of all the nation's troubles.
STEERS:
Because of the war,
Lincoln had to institute
a whole series of acts
that were viewed as
very anti-democratic
Suspension of the writ of
habeas corpus, for instance;
shutting down newspapers;
censoring people's speeches.
All of these things were an
anathema to John Wilkes Booth
and he viewed himself,
in the end, I think,
as someone that literally
God had put here
to correct the tyranny
of Abraham Lincoln.
ALFORD:
Early on, Booth seems
to have developed
this passionate hatred
for tyranny.
It's curious where
that came from.
If we remember that his father's
middle name was Brutus,
that may tell us a good bit.
Brutus, of course,
was the character
who assassinated Caesar,
and if you look both
in the play of Shakespeare
and in the writings of the
historians of ancient Rome,
Brutus was a character
as noble as Caesar,
as distinguished as Caesar,
as well-regarded as Caesar
and whose patriotism and decency
were unquestioned.
NARRATOR:
Like Brutus, Booth dreamed
of a single, grand gesture
that would turn the tide
of history
and catapult himself
into immortality.
SWANSON:
John Wilkes Booth felt he had to
justify why he wasn't a soldier
on the front lines.
Why didn't he volunteer?
Why wasn't he fighting?
Booth thought his resources,
his talent and skill
could be put to better use.
NARRATOR:
Booth began taking
on small assignments
for the Confederate Underground,
a loose network
of Southern spies
living north of
the Mason-Dixon Line.
It was here, in the ferment
of the Underground,
that Booth settled
on a bold plan.
He would kidnap the
president of the United States,
convey him south to the
Confederate capitol in Richmond,
and ransom him for thousands
of Confederate prisoners.
STEERS:
The idea of capturing
or kidnapping
a United States president
may seem preposterous
on the surface, but at the time
it was quite feasible.
Lincoln was unprotected.
He moved about frequently
on his own.
And he traveled as much as three
miles to his summer residence
at Soldiers Home often
unattended, by himself.
NARRATOR:
In November and December,
Booth made several trips
to southern Maryland,
a hotbed of sedition,
where he began to recruit
coconspirators
and scout escape routes.
SWANSON:
His most valuable conspirator
was John Surratt
College educated, Confederate
courier, known in Richmond.
He helped Booth interact
with other Confederate agents.
Without John Surratt, Booth
couldn't have organized
the conspiracy.
NARRATOR:
Surratt introduced Booth to
29-year-old George Atzerodt,
a German-born carriage painter
and boatman.
During the war,
Atzerodt secretly ferried
Confederate agents across the
waterways of southern Maryland.
Surratt also introduced Booth
to David Herold, 22,
an impressionable and
dull-witted pharmacy clerk
that would serve as the
conspirators' escape route.
Lewis Powell, tall and powerful,
was a former Confederate
prisoner of war
who would provide the muscle
for the kidnapping conspiracy.
Rounding out the group were two
of Booth's childhood friends,
Samuel Arnold and
Mike O'Laughlen,
both ex-soldiers
in the Confederate Army.
The group had little in common
other than a strong attraction
to the charismatic actor
who would be their leader.
A great star of the modern age
picked you,
a completely anonymous,
unknown person of no status,
no wealth, no importance.
A great star picks you to be
his confidante, his pal,
his companion, to travel with,
to dine with, drink with.
Many of them didn't join
the conspiracy
because they hated
Abraham Lincoln;
because they loved and admired
John Wilkes Booth.
NARRATOR:
On March 4, 1865, more than
50,000 people gathered
under rainy skies to witness
Abraham Lincoln's
second inauguration.
After four harrowing years,
the end of the war was at last
in sight.
Lincoln stood to address
the crowd,
just as a brilliant ray of light
pierced the clouds overhead.
"Let us strive on to finish
the work we are in,"
Lincoln implored, "to bind up
the nation's wounds;
"to care for him who shall have
borne the battle,
"and for his widow,
and his orphan;
"to do all which may
achieve and cherish
a just and lasting peace."
BLIGHT:
There's not even a moment
of bitterness.
There's not even the slightest
declaration of what will be done
with Confederate leadership.
It is remarkable that
in a moment like that,
in this country that has all but
won a victory
in an all-out, terrible,
total civil war,
and he doesn't even spend
one sentence to declare
the righteousness of victory and
the evil of Confederate defeat.
What he does is to suggest
that the sin of slavery
was shared by both sides.
His way of reaching
out to the South
Both sides read the same Bible,
both prayed to the same God,
neither's prayers were
fully answered.
And then, of course,
the words we remember:
"With malice toward none,
with charity for all,
let us bind up
the nation's wounds."
NARRATOR:
Standing on the steps
of the Capitol that day,
only yards from the president,
John Wilkes Booth seethed
with hatred.
For Booth, the prospect
of another Lincoln term
held not consolation, but the
sting of bitterness and defeat.
"What a splendid chance I had,"
he later confided,
"to kill the president
where he stood."
Two weeks later, Booth
and his coconspirators met
in the private dining room
of a Washington restaurant.
Over oysters and champagne,
Booth laid out
his kidnapping plan.
SWANSON:
When Booth started to reveal
the details,
they thought he was a madman.
"We're going to kidnap
Abraham Lincoln;
we're going to get him
at Ford's Theatre."
"will turn down the gaslights
at the signal
and the theater will be plunged
into darkness."
Lewis Powell will get
into the president's box.
He'll be the one who's going
to subdue Lincoln,
tie him up and then lower him
to the stage with a long rope
while the theater is plunged
into darkness.
NARRATOR:
Samuel Arnold scoffed at
the audacity of Booth's plan.
"You can be the leader
of the party," he said,
"but not our executioner."
He says, "Johnny,
all this is going to be done
"in front of an audience
that will include
several hundred soldiers
of the Union Army?"
And having gotten him
out the back
if the soldiers don't intercede,
nobody is going to give the
alarm throughout Washington,
which is crawling with Yankee
soldiers, cavalry patrols,
He says,
"It is madness beyond measure."
NARRATOR:
On April 3, the Confederate
capital of Richmond
finally fell to Union forces.
The president himself toured
the smoldering ruins,
as newly freed slaves
rushed to embrace him.
Six days later, Confederate
General Robert E. Lee
surrendered at the small town
of Appomattox's courthouse.
After four bloody years,
the war was over.
The Confederacy in ruins,
his kidnapping plot in tatters,
Booth sank into disappointment
and bitterness.
By April 1865, Booth was
certainly disillusioned.
Think of what he had to endure
from his point of view:
a few months before, the
reelection of the great tyrant;
his failure to kidnap
the president shamed him.
What was his future
in the defeated, crushed South?
NARRATOR:
Out of his disappointment,
Booth began to hatch a new,
even more desperate plan.
He will punish the North
through Lincoln;
he will punish the North for
what it's done to the South.
Now, revenge is not
a very noble motive,
but we all understand it is
a very compelling human motive
and sometimes it overwhelms.
NARRATOR:
The morning of April 14, 1865,
Abraham Lincoln awoke
unusually cheerful.
Less than a week
after the surrender
of the Confederate Army,
he allowed himself a moment
of satisfaction.
SHENK:
He seemed relieved.
His face looked different.
He had color; he had life
in a way that he hadn't
all through the war.
NARRATOR:
"He was transfigured,"
wrote one close friend.
"That indescribable sadness had
been suddenly changed
for an equally
indescribable joy."
HOLZER:
It is indeed the first day
that he really feels that
Washington is free and at peace.
NARRATOR:
At the morning cabinet meeting,
Lincoln again expressed
his desire for clemency
toward the South.
Then, in his usual way,
he regaled his cabinet
with stories.
GUELZO:
Lincoln even talks
about a dream that he had,
a dream that he was standing
on the deck of a ship.
The ship was heading towards
a dim shore ahead.
He said it was a dream
he'd always had
at important turning points
in the war
and he was convinced
that he'd had the dream again
because this was now the last
great, final turning point.
KEARNS GOODWIN:
He invited Mary to a carriage
ride that afternoon,
just the two of the together.
They talked about what it might
be like in Springfield
when they went home again to
the place where they had begun
and he said to her, "Mary, we've
got to try to be happy now.
Our future is ahead of us."
And then that night
they go to the theater.
NARRATOR:
That same morning,
John Wilkes Booth awoke late.
He made his way to Ford's
Theatre to pick up his mail,
held for him
by the theater's owners.
SWANSON:
And then somebody at
Ford's Theatre said,
"President Lincoln
is coming tonight."
That was the moment.
He's sitting on the front step
of Ford's Theatre
and someone tells him,
"He's coming here tonight."
NARRATOR:
"He left the theater
in a kind of hurry,"
remembered one onlooker,
"as if he had made up his mind
about something to be done."
Once Booth learned
that Lincoln would be
at the theater that night,
he had essentially eight hours
or so to get ready,
and he went into
a frenzy of action.
SWANSON:
He checked on his horse.
He made sure his derringer
pistol was ready.
He thought about what
he had to take on the road
during his escape.
NARRATOR:
That afternoon, Booth returned
to Ford's Theatre.
He went to the president's box
and in a small antechamber,
he carved a mortise in which
to brace a stick of wood.
The other end would bar the door
from the inside.
An hour later, Booth convened
what remained of his accomplices
at a restaurant nearby.
He informed them of a startling
change of plans.
SWANSON:
"Tonight, in about two hours,
"I am going to kill
Abraham Lincoln.
"You, Lewis Powell,
"will murder the secretary
of state, William Seward.
Your job is to murder the vice
president, Andrew Johnson."
Booth, of course, reserved
the greatest act for himself.
He would perform the Lincoln
assassination solo.
NARRATOR:
That night, the Lincolns set out
for Ford's Theatre
around 8:00 p.m.
Having been turned down by a
series of more luminous guests,
the Lincolns stopped to pick up
a young friend of Mary's
named Clara Harris and her
fiancé, Corporal Henry Rathbone.
The presidential party arrived
at the theater around 8:30,
half an hour after the play,
a popular comedy, had begun.
SWANSON:
No guard, no entourage,
no fanfare,
He simply entered the theater
and began walking to his box.
NARRATOR:
John Wilkes Booth rode up to the
back entrance of Ford's Theatre
around 9:00 on a small bay mare.
Leaving his horse
with a young stagehand,
he entered the theater's back
door, passed under the stage
and out again into a side alley,
where he whiled away the time
in a saloon.
ALFORD:
Maybe about 10:15,
Booth came by the ticket office
and started up the steps
to the dress circle.
He was dressed in an ordinary
dark business suit
with his trademark slouched hat.
He had a small, single-shot
pistol, derringer, with him
and a large, English-made
hunting knife.
As he goes across the back,
Booth stops,
he listens to what's occurring
on stage.
He's apparently timing the play.
Finally makes his way
to the door of the box
only to find the president's
valet and messenger,
Charles Forbes, sitting
in a seat right near the door.
Booth reached into his pocket,
handed him a small piece
of paper,
probably a calling card.
And, of course, Booth's calling
card would admit him
to almost any place
in Washington.
Booth then opens the outer door
leading to the vestibule
to the box and closes it,
and then picks up the wood stand
that he had left behind the door
earlier in the day
and uses it as a brace, wedging
it between the door and the hole
that he cut out in the wall.
Now he's one door away
from Abraham Lincoln.
He can hear the sound of
the play, the actors speaking.
He walks up to the door and
he looks through a peephole.
NARRATOR:
Below, the play had reached
a climax as actor Harry Hawk
prepared to deliver his biggest
laugh line of the evening.
SWANSON:
He was waiting to hear
that line.
The other actors
leave the stage,
Harry Hawk stands there alone
and he says the line
MAN:
"you sockdologizing old
man-trap"
NARRATOR:
Suddenly a shot rang out
through the auditorium.
Rathbone leapt to his feet
and Booth swung his dagger,
cutting the young officer's
shoulder to his elbow.
SWANSON:
Booth turned from Rathbone
and began swinging his leg
over the balustrade
and he caught one of his spurs
on the bunting
and on the framed photograph
of George Washington
that hung at the front
of the box.
NARRATOR:
Landing awkwardly
on the stage below,
Booth broke his left ankle.
Audience members later
would disagree
about what he shouted next.
Many heard
"Sic semper tyrannis"
"Thus always to tyrants";
others, "The South is avenged."
ALFORD:
He remained almost frozen
for a minute
as he struggled to gain
his composure,
and what he later told a friend
was all the courage he could
muster, he got to his feet
and started for the wings.
People look at each other
for a moment:
"Is this part of the play?
What is all this about?"
This lasts for a second,
two seconds, three seconds.
That's when the shouts go up:
"The president has been shot!"
"Somebody stop that man!"
But Booth has already bolted
past the scenery,
past the curtains,
out the back entrance.
He gallops away into
the dark of Washington.
NARRATOR:
As Booth made his escape,
his coconspirators
were not faring as well.
Around 10:15, Lewis Powell
knocked on the door
of Secretary of State
William Seward's mansion.
After forcing his way
up the stairs,
he entered Seward's bedroom,
where the Secretary was
recovering from a broken jaw
suffered during
a carriage accident.
KEARNS GOODWIN:
He has a huge Bowie knife,
he comes to Seward's bedside,
slashes his face with such force
that his entire cheek
is torn off.
He loses so much blood
that it was astonishing
he didn't die right then.
He is scarred for life.
However, because of the way
the jaw was wired
because of the carriage
accident,
he missed the jugular vein.
NARRATOR:
As the alarm was raised,
one of Seward's sons,
along with a nurse,
rushed the would-be assassin.
Powell dropped his knife
and escaped down the stairs
and out the door.
At the same time, George
Atzerodt approached his quarry:
Vice President of the United
States Andrew Johnson.
But as he neared Johnson's
residence, he lost his nerve.
SWANSON:
Atzerodt never went up
those stairs,
he never knocked on the door,
he never tried to assassinate
the vice president
of the United States.
He was the only conspirator
of Booth
who failed his master
that night.
NARRATOR:
Inside Ford's Theatre,
a young surgeon was the first
to gain access
to the presidential box.
SWANSON:
He cuts open Lincoln's shirt.
He can't find the wound.
There was no blood on him
at all.
He just won't wake up.
Where shall the president
of the United States die?
It can't be on the floor
of a theater box.
GUELZO:
Ten feet across F Street
from Ford's Theatre
is a young man standing out
in front of a boarding house
who shouts over the din
in the streets
they should bring him over here,
and they carry Lincoln's body
across the street,
up the small, winding steps
of the Petersen Boarding House
into the back bedroom,
and they lay him out crosswise
across the bedstead
that is in the back bedroom.
And that is when
the deathwatch begins.
By now, the attending doctor had
found a small bullet hole
below Lincoln's left ear.
He declared the wound mortal.
One by one, as they received
the terrible news,
Lincoln's cabinet members rushed
to the Petersen House.
"The giant sufferer lay extended
diagonally across the bed,"
remembered Navy Secretary
Gideon Welles.
"His slow, full respiration
lifted the bedclothes
"with each breath.
His features were calm
and striking."
STEERS:
After he was completely stripped
and covered in blankets
Mary Lincoln was brought
into the room to see him.
And she basically
became hysterical.
She kept pleading with Lincoln,
pleading with him
to open his eyes,
just to say one word to her,
but, of course, he couldn't.
NARRATOR:
Amid the chaos, Secretary of War
Edwin Stanton took charge.
GUELZO:
It's Stanton who was actually
the man who keeps his head.
He needs to get evidence,
he needs to get witnesses,
He wants troops put on alert,
he wants certain arrests made,
he wants bridges closed,
he wants a cordon put
around Washington.
In a situation like this,
there was no precedent.
The idea that this was done
by individuals
just was incomprehensible.
It had to be it had to be
something much larger,
much wider that
wasn't finished yet.
NARRATOR:
By 11:30 p.m.,
more than an hour after he had
fled Ford's Theatre,
John Wilkes Booth rendezvoused
with Davey Herold
in the Maryland countryside.
After picking up rifles
and a bottle of whiskey
at a country inn owned
by Mary Surratt,
they headed south
toward Virginia
and possible escape
into the Deep South.
STEERS:
Booth was now suffering
from the break in his leg.
He was clearly conscious
of it now.
The adrenaline
had stopped flowing,
the pain had taken over.
NARRATOR:
Knowing they needed
medical attention,
the fugitives galloped southeast
toward the home of a country
doctor named Samuel Mudd,
whom Booth had met months before
while scouting escape routes
through Maryland.
From the Surratt house to
Dr. Mudd's was about 17 miles
through a difficult country,
a road not always well marked,
pretty narrow in spots,
washed by rain at spots,
through a swamp and pine forest.
STEERS:
It was now overcast and
a light drizzle was falling
and they had to make their way
without the aid of moonlight.
It took them approximately four
hours to get to Mudd's house.
They arrived just before 4:00
in the morning.
Herold dismounted, went
to the door and pounded on it.
Dr. Mudd examined Booth,
removed the boot from the leg
and determined it was broken.
He set the broken leg and told
Booth that he needed to rest.
And so he took him upstairs
and put him to bed
in an upstairs bedroom.
(thunder)
NARRATOR:
As Booth slept, word of what he
and his accomplices had done
raced through the capital.
SWANSON:
People would encounter each
other in the street and say,
"The president has been shot."
"No, the secretary of state
has been attacked
and he was stabbed."
"No, it's Lincoln."
"No, it's Seward."
Then they realized it's both.
Rumors spread that
they had slaughtered
the Supreme Court justices,
they had burned the congressmen.
People were afraid to go
to bed at night.
Every horse that passed by
they took to be
the Confederate cavalry,
people were running
through the streets;
it was a horrible situation.
NARRATOR:
Inside the Petersen House,
as dawn approached,
Abraham Lincoln was
quickly fading.
HOLZER:
In the room,
it's eerily quiet.
Lincoln's breathing
is horrible to hear
because he's taking deep breaths
and he's rattling and wheezing,
and sometimes he doesn't breathe
for what seems like forever.
NARRATOR:
Finally, at 7:22 in the morning,
the surgeon general pronounced
the vigil over.
Abraham Lincoln was dead.
"We all stood transfixed
in our positions,"
remembered one witness,
"speechless around the dead body
of that great and good man."
KEARNS GOODWIN:
These men, who by that time had
come to love Lincoln,
showed their feelings
crying at that bedside.
And then, of course,
Stanton utters the words
that have come down over time.
"Now," Stanton said,
"he belongs to the ages."
HOLZER:
They send for a coffin,
and that's when many people
first realize that he's dead,
when they see this wooden coffin
being taken up the stairs.
And then a bit later, the doors
swing open
and the soldiers bring
the coffin out again,
and you can tell from their
struggles that it's
this time it's occupied.
NARRATOR:
By the morning
of Lincoln's death,
telegraphs reporting
the assassination had reached
nearly every major city
in America.
That evening, headlines broke
the shocking news.
"The sun set last night on a
jubilant and rejoicing nation,"
wrote the New York Herald.
"It rose this morning upon
a sorrow-stricken people."
No one grieved more than
the nation's newly freed slaves.
"There will be sadness today,
such as needs no funeral
orations or badges of mourning,"
"The tears of the forgotten,
outcast and oppressed slave
"will be the sincerest tears
that fall on the grave
of the president."
GUELZO:
Many black people feared
that with Lincoln's death
they would be, in fact,
returned to slavery,
that the Emancipation
Proclamation would somehow
be revoked.
NARRATOR:
Four hours after
Lincoln's death,
Andrew Johnson was sworn in
as the new president,
restoring a measure of stability
to the national government.
The fear quickly vanished and it
was replaced by a fervent rage.
NARRATOR:
In the field, Union soldiers
were kept unaware
of Lincoln's death
for several days
for fear that they might seek
retribution.
GUELZO:
Anyone known to profess
Confederate sympathies
would be well advised to stay
indoors with the shutters closed
and the doors locked.
People on Washington streets
who might,
with too great a load on
from celebrating,
say something like, "Oh, I'm
glad they shot old Abe,"
would come within an inch
of being lynched.
NARRATOR:
Within hours of Lincoln's death,
mobs had formed in many Northern
and occupied Southern cities.
In San Francisco, throngs
destroyed the newspaper offices
of the Democratic Press.
In Washington,
vigilantes surrounded a jail
holding Confederate prisoners.
Two former presidents Franklin
Pierce and Millard Fillmore
Faced angry crowds
outside their homes
after they failed to show
evidence of mourning.
It was a dangerous time.
Up to 200 people were murdered
in the streets
of America's cities
within two or three days
of the Lincoln assassination.
NARRATOR:
None suffered more
in the hysteria
than the Booth family itself.
Edwin Booth stationed guards
outside of his New York home.
"Think no more of him
as your brother,"
Edwin wrote his sister Asia.
"He is dead to us now, as he
soon must be to all the world."
Within days, federal agents
raided Asia Booth's home,
where they discovered
a trove of papers,
including a personal manifesto,
which her brother John
had asked her to keep safe.
BOOTH (dramatized):
Right or wrong, God judge me,
not man.
For four years have I waited,
hoped and prayed
for the dark clouds to break.
To wait longer would be a crime.
God's will be done, I go to see
and share the bitter end.
NARRATOR:
In the late afternoon
of April 15, Dr. Samuel Mudd,
finally realizing the danger
he was in,
ordered Booth and Herold
from his home.
ALFORD:
Booth was heavily armed,
in his house,
with his wife and four children.
Mudd simply could not afford
to host a shootout
in the family parlor.
So his idea was to get Booth
out of there,
get gone and pray for good luck.
NARRATOR:
The fugitives rode off in the
direction of the Zekiah Swamp,
a nearly impassable snarl
of creeks and bogs
bordering the Potomac.
They wandered in the swamp
for several hours,
until they found the home of a
known Confederate sympathizer
who directed them to a thicket
of pine trees on his property.
ALFORD:
This is a real thick stand
of young pine trees
That the visibility in there was
only 30, 40 feet at the maximum.
The fugitives were awakened
by a series of short whistles.
An agent of the Confederate
Underground named Thomas Jones
had been alerted to their
presence in the pine thicket.
SWANSON:
Thomas Jones told Booth,
"You have to stay
in this pine thicket.
"The troops are everywhere.
"You can't outrun them.
"The trick is going to be,
you stay in place
"while the soldiers pass through
the area and move on.
"Then, when the moment is safe,
I'll take you down to the river
and we'll cross."
ALFORD:
Besides the occasional visit
from Jones,
usually in the late morning,
Booth and Herold were left alone
in the pine thicket.
It was obviously quite lonely
in there,
and close enough to the road
from time to time
to hear the pursuers riding
up and down it.
On one occasion they
even heard voices
of these Union cavalrymen
shouting at each other.
NARRATOR:
It was cold and wet,
but the fugitives could not
light a fire
for fear of discovery.
To quiet their horses, Herold
led them deep into the swamp
and shot them, allowing
their bodies to disappear
into the thick ooze.
ALFORD:
Booth asks Jones, of course,
for food and news,
and particularly newspapers.
He wanted to know what
the public thought
What were the reviews of this
final performance of his?
And when he got the papers
from Jones,
he was absolutely stunned.
The country was furious
with him.
From right to left
across the spectrum,
from Copperheads to radicals,
from Southerners to Northerners,
they denounced Booth
in blistering language.
NARRATOR:
His head once filled
with visions of triumph,
Booth now staggered from
the sheer scale of the betrayal.
ANDREWS:
I don't think there's any doubt
that John Wilkes Booth expected
to be remembered
as a noble patriot,
as someone who had, in effect,
become the American Brutus.
He had liberated the country
from under this terrible
despot's heel
and the thanks that he got
was to be treated as
some sort of base villain.
ALFORD:
Booth had on him
a little pocket notebook
that he had purchased
the preceding year,
and in it he began to write down
his reaction
to the reaction of the public
to the murder of Lincoln.
SWANSON:
He wanted to justify
what he did,
and he wanted to be remembered.
These were his notes
to the play.
These were the director's notes.
He had to leave that behind.
He didn't want to vanish
from history
BOOTH (dramatized):
I struck boldly and not
as the papers say.
I walked with a firm step
through a thousand
of his friends,
was stopped but pushed on.
I passed all his pickets,
rode 60 miles that night
with the bones of my leg
tearing my flesh
with every jump.
I can never repent it.
Our country owed all
her troubles to him
and God simply made me the
instrument of His punishment.
(church bells ringing)
NARRATOR:
The day after Lincoln's death,
April 16, was Easter Sunday.
In a nation steeped in religion,
on the holiest day of the year,
churches and cathedrals
across the land
were swelled to the rafters
and draped in black.
In parishes from
Maine to California,
ministers tore up their
Easter sermons
and replaced them
with lamentations.
GUELZO:
Preachers in church after
church, in pulpit after pulpit,
seized upon the extraordinary
conjunction of this event
and all these events
of religious history.
And they began drawing
the inevitable connection,
that as Christ had died
to save men's souls,
Lincoln had died
to save the Union.
McPHERSON:
The parallels with Christ on the
cross could not escape anybody.
Lincoln was assassinated
on Good Friday.
He had taken on the burdens
of the whole nation
on his own shoulders,
and for that he was crucified.
Here is a man like Jesus
who was killed to save
the rest of us.
SWANSON:
It was with the assassination
that the myth of Abraham Lincoln
was born.
Lincoln was not universally
liked or beloved
during his presidency.
Millions of people hated him.
Once he was assassinated,
everything changed.
NARRATOR:
Amid the songs of praise
for Lincoln,
there were cries for revenge.
"Let the South perish,"
thundered one Northern minister.
"In the grave of our
murdered president,
let the last vestige of them
be buried."
SMITH:
It wasn't enough
that they had revolted
for four-and-a-half long years,
that they had slain
on the field of battle
the cream of a generation, that
they had destroyed themselves.
Now, to top it off,
they had killed Abraham Lincoln,
shot in the back in the presence
of his wife.
The South had indicted, tried
and convicted itself
of irredeemable evil.
NARRATOR:
In the occupied sections
of the Confederacy,
many feared retribution
and publicly expressed
their deepest condolences.
But in private, many praised
Booth as "our Brutus."
"After all the heaviness
and gloom,"
wrote one Southern woman,
"this blow to our enemies
comes like a gleam of light.
"We have suffered
till we feel savage.
Our hated enemy has met
the just reward of his life."
More than 60 hours after
Lincoln's assassination,
the nation was still in a state
of agitated suspense.
The pressure to capture
John Wilkes Booth was building.
SWANSON:
The public demanded
that Booth and his conspirators
be seized.
And it was frustrating
that day after day passed.
Booth escapes Washington.
Then he vanishes into Maryland.
Then no one knows where he went.
Reports were coming in
from everywhere:
Booth was dressed as a woman,
living in the basement
of some house in Washington.
He was seen in Philadelphia
in another disguise.
Several people were arrested
in the North simply because
they bore a resemblance
to John Wilkes Booth.
ALFORD:
There was a fear.
The South was so disordered
with Confederate armies
disbanding,
groups of guys going here
and there on horseback,
Booth could easily get lost
in that mix.
NARRATOR:
On April 17, the government's
luck changed.
Acting on a tip, soldiers raided
Mary Surratt's boarding house
in Washington, where Booth and
his accomplices had often met.
As they began to question
Mrs. Surratt,
a knock was heard
at the front door.
It was Lewis Powell,
the would-be assassin
of Secretary of State
William Seward.
ALFORD:
Powell was a stranger
to Washington, D.C.,
and he wasn't the first stranger
to get lost
in this maze of streets.
With nowhere to go,
no food, no money,
knowing no one, he went to one
of the only houses he knew
in Washington,
the home of the Surratts.
Unfortunately for him,
just at the moment that he chose
to come, late one night,
detectives were there
interrogating Mrs. Surratt.
When he walked in, he looked
implausible to them
and he got arrested.
NARRATOR:
Tipped off by a letter
discovered in Booth's
hotel room,
authorities also took into
custody Michael O'Laughlen
and Samuel Arnold.
The same day,
they arrested Edmond Spangler,
a stagehand at Ford's,
whom they suspected of having
aided Booth's escape.
On April 20,
George Atzerodt was arrested
on his cousin's farm
after he was overheard
boasting about his participation
in the conspiracy.
Most of the prisoners were taken
aboard the ironclad Montauk,
where they were ordered to wear
padded hoods
and confined to
three-foot-by-eight-foot cells.
While the government had most
of the conspirators in tow now
Booth and Herold, of course,
were still out there,
and the government really did
not have any good idea
where they were.
NARRATOR:
On April 20, Secretary Stanton
announced the largest reward
ever offered
by the federal government
$100,000 for the capture of John
Wilkes Booth and David Herold.
"Let the stain of innocent blood
be removed from the land
by the arrest and punishment of
the murderers," Stanton wrote.
"Every man should consider his
own conscience charged
"with this solemn duty and rest
neither night nor day
until it be accomplished."
It was the beginning
of the largest manhunt
in American history.
For five days and nights,
as thousands of soldiers
scoured the area,
Booth and Herold had hidden
safely in the pine thicket.
ALFORD:
If he could just get out
of Maryland,
get over to Virginia, he could
receive proper medical care,
he would find sympathetic
individuals,
people who could appreciate
what he had done.
Finally, Jones determined
that the area was clear enough
of Union pursuers to attempt
a crossing.
They began about a three-
to four-mile, very cautious walk
down cart lanes and public roads
in the direction of Jones' farm
and the river.
Luck was on their side
for once at least.
Nobody came out,
nobody noticed them,
SWANSON:
It's dark, it's quiet, and they
make it safely down the road
and across the open country.
Then he takes them down
to the crossing point.
It's a bluff that leads down
to the river.
STEERS:
Jones put the two of them
in a boat,
he gave them a compass
and a candle
and pointed on the compass
the number of degrees
where they should head for,
pushed the boat out into the
water and God-blessed them.
SWANSON:
All Booth had to do was cross
the Potomac that night
and he might make it
to Virginia,
might make it to the Deep South
and then it would be almost
impossible to catch him.
So there Booth and Herold are
in the middle of the night,
the river is dark
It's as black as ink
And they row the wrong way.
Instead of rowing west
across the river,
they start heading north
and west
and they end up in Maryland.
They haven't even left Maryland
after a night of rowing.
NARRATOR:
As dawn broke, Booth and Herold
took refuge in the weeds
beside the river.
Exhausted, Booth again took out
his notebook to write:
BOOTH (dramatized):
After being hunted like a dog
through swamps and woods,
wet, cold and starving, with
every man's hand against me,
I am here in despair.
And why?
For doing what Brutus was
honored for.
And yet I, for striking down
a greater tyrant
than he ever knew, am looked
upon as a common cutthroat.
I think I have done well,
though I am abandoned
with the curse of Cain upon me,
when if the world knew my heart,
that one blow would
have made me great.
NARRATOR:
On April 21, a special train
departed Washington, D.C.
It carried the remains
of Abraham Lincoln
and his son Willie,
disinterred so he could be
reburied next to his father.
For the next 12 days, the train
would reverse the route
Lincoln had taken
four years earlier
on his way to his
first inauguration.
In Philadelphia, Lincoln's
casket was displayed
in Independence Hall,
while a line of mourners
stretching more than three miles
waited to pay their respects.
In New York, the next day,
Lincoln's hearse was led down
Fifth Avenue
by 16 magnificent steeds,
as bells from Trinity Church
rang out.
More than half a million people,
a quarter of the city's
population, lined the route.
From New York, Lincoln's train
made its way slowly west.
GUELZO:
In remote areas people would
come miles to line the track
simply to stand and watch.
A newspaper reporter who was
with the funeral train
looked out the windows.
He could just see crowds
upon crowds of people
doing nothing
but standing silently
by the railroad tracks.
HOLZER:
They're there simply to lift
their caps or bow their heads
as this car goes by,
and what they see
for just the fleeting second
is worth the effort
and the wait,
and that is a soldier standing
on guard
in front of a big coffin
and a little coffin.
SWANSON:
The outpouring of grief
and emotion
during that 1,700-mile journey
of the funeral train
from Washington to Springfield
was not just for Lincoln.
The American people mourned
their president,
but they mourned every son,
every brother,
every husband, every father
lost in that war.
BLIGHT:
When people wept for Lincoln, or
when they went to their diaries,
as many did, and they drew black
around the pages,
they were really weeping
for themselves.
They were weeping
for their own kids.
They were weeping
for their own losses.
We mourn for ourselves even when
we mourn a great public leader.
NARRATOR:
"The nation rises up at his
coming," wrote one poet.
"Cities and states
are his pallbearers
"and cannon beat the hours
with solemn procession.
"Give him place, ye prairies!
"Ye winds that move over
the mighty space of the West,
"chant his requiem!
Ye people, behold a martyr."
As Lincoln's funeral train made
its slow way across the country,
the Navy boat John S. Ide was
steaming down the Potomac River.
On board were 25 soldiers
from the 16th New York Cavalry
and two detectives:
Luther Baker and Everton Conger.
The search party had formed
as a result of a fortunate case
of mistaken identity.
Union detectives and Union ships
were watching the Potomac River
very closely,
and some individuals
were seen to cross it.
NARRATOR:
In fact, the real fugitives were
only a few miles ahead
at a second river crossing
along the Rappahannock.
Having reached the small village
of Port Conway,
they met three
Confederate soldiers
who agreed to escort them deeper
into Virginia.
These Confederates say, "We know
a place to take you.
"When we get over the river,
we're going to take you
"to the Garrett farm.
Old man Garrett will help you."
NARRATOR:
Two hours later,
Booth and Herold arrived
at the farmhouse owned
by Richard Garrett,
where they were introduced
as Confederate soldiers
just back from the war.
SWANSON:
The image of Booth sitting
on that front porch,
smoking tobacco,
playing on the front lawn
with the Garrett children,
dazzling them with his compass,
he seems like he's relaxed
for the first time,
that he thinks he can get away.
The whole world is
hunting for him.
There's a frantic pursuit,
and here he is,
relaxing at the Garrett farm.
NARRATOR:
Unbeknownst to Booth, the
federal cavalry was closing in.
ALFORD:
When the federal pursuers got
to the ferry at Port Conway,
the wife of the ferryman
told them
that three Confederate soldiers
had taken two men,
one with a broken leg,
across the river.
The cavalrymen were very, very
excited to hear this.
NARRATOR:
That night the cavalry regiment
found one of the Confederate
soldiers
and forced him to disclose
Booth's whereabouts.
At around 2:00 a.m., they
arrived at the Garrett farm.
Booth and Herold were sleeping
in an old tobacco barn
on the property.
SWANSON:
Booth and Herold are up by then.
The dogs were barking, they
could hear the horses coming.
STEERS:
Booth and Herold are now
completely surrounded
by Union cavalry,
and there's no escape.
David Herold wants to surrender
and tells Booth he wants out
of this now.
He sends Herold out, who
surrenders to the troopers.
SWANSON:
Booth has certainly concluded by
now it's either escape or death.
Unbelievably,
he engages the soldiers
in negotiation and dialogue.
STEERS:
He tells Conger and his men
to back off a hundred feet,
let him come out shooting
and they'll have a standoff.
And of course Conger isn't going
to have a standoff with Booth.
He wants to take him alive.
NARRATOR:
Finally, at 3:00 a.m.,
the detectives ordered the barn
to be set on fire.
"The blaze lit up the black
recesses of the great barn
until every wasp nest
and cobweb was luminous,"
a witness remembered.
"About the center of the barn,
he stopped,
"drew himself up
to his full height
"and seemed to take in
the entire situation.
"There was a carbine in one
hand, a revolver in the other.
"Suddenly he threw down his
carbine, dropped his crutch,
raised the revolver and made
a spring for the door."
ALFORD:
As he was coming in their
direction, a shot rang out.
Booth had been shot in the neck
by someone
The doors were flung open,
they went in, they grabbed Booth
and dragged him outside before
the barn caught full fire.
NARRATOR:
A young officer named Boston
Corbett had pulled the trigger,
later claiming that God had
ordered him to do so.
The bullet passed
through Booth's neck,
severing his spinal cord.
"Booth had all the appearance
of a dead man,"
Lieutenant Conger recalled,
"but when I got back to him,
his eyes and mouth were moving.
"I put my ear down close and
finally I understood him to say,
'Tell Mother
I die for my country.'"
SMITH:
Booth is dragged out feet-first
from the barn,
which is crackling in flames.
The show is over.
The lighting can now
be turned out.
Booth was laid prostrate
on a blanket.
With the sun just coming up
over the horizon,
he managed to utter one,
final line.
SWANSON:
Booth can barely speak.
And then he speaks these last
words, looking at his hands,
"Useless, useless."
NARRATOR:
On May 12, eight defendants
stood trial
for the murder
of Abraham Lincoln.
ALFORD:
The only person, of course,
who died in the manhunt
All of his friends were captured
and put on trial.
And they had to face something,
in a way,
even worse than a bullet
in the neck
They had to face national scorn,
opprobrium and a military trial.
NARRATOR:
Booth's accomplices
Davey Herold, George Atzerodt
and Lewis Powell were
sentenced to death.
Booth's landlady, Mary Surratt,
who had knowledge
only of the kidnapping plan,
also received a death sentence.
The others
O'Laughlen, Arnold and Mudd
Were sentenced to life in prison
under hard labor.
On July 7,
on the grounds of the Old
Arsenal Prison in Washington,
the four condemned conspirators
were led up 13 steps
to the gallows.
STEERS:
The hoods were placed on them,
the nooses were fashioned
around their necks.
The executioner gave a signal by
clapping his hands three times.
The platforms fell and the four
condemned conspirators dropped
to their death.
NARRATOR:
Booth's body had been taken back
to Washington.
Following an inquest,
Secretary Stanton ordered
the corpse to be buried
on the grounds
of a federal prison.
It was later dug up and
reburied in an unmarked grave
in the Booth family plot
in Baltimore.
Rumors swirled around
John Wilkes Booth for decades.
Many were willing to believe
improbable stories:
that he had escaped
the Garrett barn
and gone on to live in Oklahoma,
only to die years later,
his mummified corpse
displayed in a carnival.
SWANSON:
The historical memory of Booth
is that he was the flawed,
young, tragic actor
who wrongfully sacrificed
his greatness and his life
for a cause he held dear.
Booth helped perpetrate that
because he performed
the assassination.
He performed the escape.
He performed his death.
And somehow he transmuted it all
into America's greatest drama.
And he's tricked us into
thinking it isn't all real.
It's too incredible to be real.
And so we forget
that Lincoln suffered.
We forget how his wife and
how his children suffered,
how the nation suffered.
NARRATOR:
Abraham Lincoln's body finally
reached his hometown
of Springfield, Illinois,
on May 3,
his face now so black
with decomposition
that it was barely recognizable.
Mary Lincoln,
too grief-stricken to accompany
her husband's casket
on its last journey,
had insisted that he be buried
in a cemetery
called Oak Ridge on
the outskirts of town.
One final funeral procession was
mounted, past Lincoln's home,
now draped in black.
Under a scorching sun,
a thousand people gathered
on a hillside overlooking
the simple vault
that would accept the bodies
of Abraham and Willie Lincoln.
A Methodist bishop,
Matthew Simpson,
gave the final benediction.
"More people have gazed
on the face of the departed
"than ever looked upon the face
of any other departed man.
"More have looked
upon the procession
"for 1,600 miles or more,
by night and by day,
"by sunlight, dawn, twilight
and by torchlight
"than ever before watched
a procession.
"He made all men feel
a sense of himself.
"They saw in him a man whom they
believed would do what is right
"regardless of the consequences.
"We crown thee as our martyr,
and humanity enthrones thee
as her triumphant son."
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