“They Have Killed Papa Dead!”

Five days following Robert E. Lee’s surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia to Grant at Appomattox, Abraham Lincoln attended a play with his wife and another couple at Ford’s Theater in Washington City on the evening of April 14, 1865. The 146th anniversary of that eventful evening, which fell on Thursday this week, should not go unnoticed.

Notwithstanding Lee’s surrender on April 9, Confederate armies continued to fight in the south. Confederate Lt. Gen. Johnson didn’t surrender to Union Maj. Gen. Sherman until April 26 near Durham NC, and Confederate General Kirby Smith surrendered near Brownsville, TX on May 26. However, as he went about his duties on April 14, Lincoln was sure that the war would soon end. It was Good Friday. He was six weeks into his second term. At 11 a.m. on the 14th Lincoln had a meeting with his cabinet and General Grant in which he discussed his plans for a reconstruction of the south without malice when the war ended. He asked Grant about news from the North Carolina war front. No word.

Late in the afternoon, Lincoln and Mary Todd, his wife, had ridden in an open carriage to the Navy Yard. He seemed cheerful – almost joyous – she later recalled. Lincoln told her he did feel exceptionally well because soon the war would no longer dominate his life. “We must both be more cheerful in the future,” Lincoln said, “between the war and the loss of our darling Willie, we have both been very miserable.”

Yet three days earlier, Lincoln had confided to Mary and Ward Lamon, his self-appointed bodyguard, a dream he had had.

About ten days ago, I retired very late. I had been up waiting for important dispatches from the front. I could not have been long in bed when I fell into a slumber, for I was weary. I soon began to dream. There seemed to be a death-like stillness about me. Then I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping. I thought I left my bed and wandered downstairs. There the silence was broken by the same pitiful sobbing, but the mourners were invisible. I went from room to room; no living person was in sight, but the same mournful sounds of distress met me as I passed along. I saw light in all the rooms; every object was familiar to me; but where were all the people who were grieving as if their hearts would break? I was puzzled and alarmed. What could be the meaning of all this? Determined to find the cause of a state of things so mysterious and so shocking, I kept on until I arrived at the East Room, which I entered. There I met with a sickening surprise. Before me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; and there was a throng of people, gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose face was covered, others weeping pitifully. 'Who is dead in the White House?' I demanded of one of the soldiers, 'The President,' was his answer; 'he was killed by an assassin.' Then came a loud burst of grief from the crowd, which woke me from my dream. I slept no more that night; and although it was only a dream, I have been strangely annoyed by it ever since.

The President and First Lady were scheduled to attend Ford’s Theater to see Laura Keene's acclaimed performance in the play, Our American Cousin. They still hadn’t found another couple to join them even though they had invited 14 people, including General and Mrs. Grant. All had turned them down for various reasons. In his memoirs, Grant wrote that he and Mrs. Grant had decided to visit their children in New Jersey, when in fact Julia Grant recalled a particularly distasteful scene in which Mary Lincoln had exploded in a fury of public anger, embarrassing the President, the Grants, and a number of nearby army officers and their wives, one of whom Mary had called a whore. Julia Grant refused to sit with “that crazy woman” for several hours in the confined space of the President’s Box at Ford’s Theater.

Mary Todd Lincoln suffered severe headaches and depression, particularly after the death of Willie Lincoln, their 11-year old son, from typhoid fever in 1862. Also, Mary’s family was from Kentucky – a border state which often found members of the same family on opposite sides of the war. Hers was no exception. One of her brothers was a surgeon in the Confederate army; several half brothers fought for the Confederacy and were killed in the war. These deaths brought on extended periods of mourning. Then there was the carriage accident during the White House years which caused a serious head injury. Modern health professionals, however, believe Mary was bi-polar.

Even the Lincoln’s oldest son, Robert, the only child who would survive into adulthood, declined to go to the theater with his parents. He had just returned from Appomattox where he had witnessed the Lee surrender. He was tired and preferred sleep to entertainment that evening. The only people who would accept the Lincoln invitation were Maj. Henry R. Rathbone and his fiancée, Clara Harris, the daughter of a New York senator.

John Wilkes Booth was a member of a famous acting family. He was a fanatical southern sympathizer. When Grant suspended prisoner of war exchanges, because he believed it was extending the war by returning fighting manpower to a southern army starved for it, Booth hatched a plan to kidnap Lincoln, take him to Richmond, and ransom him for further prisoner of war exchanges. Booth recruited six conspirators to help with the plot. But when Lincoln failed to show up at the kidnap location due to a change in his plans, the plot fell apart.

With Lee’s surrender, all of Washington City was in a celebratory mood. On Tuesday evening of this week, crowds had gathered at the White House asking the President to speak. He spoke of a post-war America without slavery which would be united; he wouldn’t tolerate an attitude of rejection and anger toward the South because it would be “discouraging and paralyzing” for both races. In the crowd, listening to Lincoln’s words, was John Wilkes Booth. He turned to Lewis Paine and David Herold, two of his conspirators and said, “That means nigger citizenship.” Booth implored Paine to use the gun he was carrying to shoot the President, which Paine refused to do. Booth turned away in disgust, saying, “By God, I'll put him through. That is the last speech he will ever give.”

At around noon on the 14th, Booth went to Ford’s Theater to pick up his mail and overheard that the Lincolns and the Grants would be attending the play that night. He determined this was the time to strike. Ironically, if the Grants had accompanied the Lincolns, there would have been armed military around the General, which likely would have prevented Booth’s assassination plan from ever succeeding.

Booth and his conspirators met later at the boardinghouse of Mary Surratt to discuss a plan for the night. Booth was to kill the President and Grant. David Herold, who knew his way around Washington City, was to guide Lewis Paine to the house of Secretary of State William Seward, whom he was to kill; then Herold would lead Paine out of the city to escape. George Atzerodt, another conspirator, was to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson. If they could succeed in Booth’s plan, it would disrupt the Union government and give the Confederacy an opportunity to reorganize and fight on. Mary Surratt, still owned a tavern in Surrattvile, MD. Allegedly, she was to arrange for two carbines and ammunition to be there for Booth and Paine to pick up that night as they made their escape into the Maryland countryside – a fact never proved.

The Lincolns and their two guests arrived late for the play. Taking their place in the President’s Box, Lincoln took his wife’s hand. "What will Miss Harris think of my hanging on to you so?" Mary Lincoln asked. “She won't think anything about it," Lincoln replied, speaking the last words of his life. For about 10:15 p.m. Booth slipped into the President’s Box and fired his single-shot derringer at the back of Lincoln’s head. As Lincoln slumped over and Mary grabbed him, Rathbone rose to wrestle Booth to the ground but was severely stabbed with a knife Booth held in his other hand. He continued to hold it when he leapt from the box toward the stage. But snaring his spur in the presidential bunting, he landed in the audience, breaking his left fibula. The audience thought it was part of the play and began to applaud until Mary Lincoln and Clara Harris began screaming and Rathbone pointed at Booth and cried “stop him.” Brandishing the knife, Booth yelled "Sic semper tyrannis!" (Thus always to tyrants) and made his way outside through a stage door where a horse was waiting for him.

An army surgeon in the audience made his way to the President’s Box and found that Lincoln had no pulse. Searching for a wound, he found it over the left ear where he removed a clot and Lincoln began to breathe easier. Another doctor arrived and an impromptu team hoisted the six-foot, four-inch President and carried him out the front door uncertain of their destination. Met by a man in the street with a lantern, crying “Bring him in here! Bring him in here!” Lincoln was carried across the street to the Petersen boarding house. Too large to fit the bed in a first floor bedroom, Lincoln was placed diagonally.

Several doctors had now gathered around the comatose President, but nothing could be done. Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles and United States Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton came and took charge. An hysterical Mary Lincoln was ordered out of the room. "Take that woman out of here,” Stanton ordered, “and do not let her in here again!" Captain Robert Lincoln arrived and stood at the head of his father’s bed.

Tad Lincoln, the Lincoln’s youngest surviving son, was but 12 years old. He had attended Grover's Theater to see Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp, and was not allowed to go to the Petersen House. Entering the White House East door of the basement, therefore, he ran to the White House doorman, Thomas Pendel, crying, “Oh, Tom Pen! Tom Pen! They have killed papa dead. They've killed papa dead!”Pendel tried unsuccessfully to calm Tad and finally got him to his bedroom where he put him to bed and laid down with him until Tad fell asleep around midnight.

Around 6 a.m. on the 15th the death struggle began. Robert had tried to be stoic but broke down and cried as his father lay dying. Stanton and Welles also cried. At 7:22 a.m. Lincoln breathed his last breath. “Now he belongs to the ages,” Stanton said, although some witnesses believe he said “angels” rather than “ages”.

Paine managed to force his way into the bedroom of Secretary of State Seward that night where Seward was recovering from a carriage accident. Paine succeeded in stabbing his victim many times in the chest and face, but Seward survived. The screaming of the Seward household as the attack took place rattled David Herold, and without waiting for Paine to come down, he took Paine’s escape horse for himself. Not knowing Washington City, Paine wandered around the streets for hours before he found the Surratt boardinghouse. There, he and Mary Surratt were arrested by detectives who had connected them to Booth.

Herold and Booth made it across the Anacostia River bridge on horseback about an hour apart and somehow managed to find each other in the dark. Booth knew the countryside and made his way to the house of Dr. Samuel Mudd who set Booth’s broken leg and provided him with crutches. The pair then continued on and arrived at the farm of Richard Garrett on the afternoon of the 24th. Claiming he was a wounded Confederate veteran, Booth and Herold were allowed to stay in Garrett’s tobacco barn where Union soldiers and detectives caught up with them. Herold surrendered and came out but Booth refused even when the barn was set afire by the Union troops. A soldier who had crept up to a window to look into the burning barn saw Booth inside and shot him in the neck, severing his spinal cord. Booth was dragged outside, and asking a soldier to raise his paralyzed arms before his face so he could see his hands, his last words were “Useless, useless.” He died at daybreak.

George Atzerodt lost his nerve and made no attempt to kill Vice President Johnson. He hid out in a Maryland farmhouse until he was tracked down and arrested.

Everyone who was known to have had anything to do with Booth or Herold, including Dr. Mudd and John Ford, the owner of the theater, was arrested and put in jail to await trial.

On May 1 a military tribunal convened to try eight suspects – Mary Surratt, David Herold, George Atzerodt, Lewis Paine, Samuel Mudd, and three others thought to have aided in the conspiracy. The trial lasted for seven weeks. Surratt, Herold, Atzerodt, and Paine were sentenced to death by hanging. Surratt thus became the first woman put to death by the federal government. Mudd avoided the death penalty by one vote and was sentenced to life imprisonment along with two others suspected but not proven to be involved in the plot. One of them died of yellow fever in prison. Mudd and the other person were pardoned by President Johnson four years later. They claimed their innocence for the remainder of their lives.

With Lincoln’s death, Andrew Johnson was sworn in as President and became one of the least popular presidents in American history. He was impeached by the House of Representatives in 1868 but the Senate failed to convict him by one vote.

William Seward recovered from his wounds and continued to serve as Secretary of State throughout Johnson's presidency. He later negotiated the Alaska Purchase from Russia in 1867, which was then known as Seward's Folly.

Henry Rathbone and Clara Harris married two years after the assassination, and Rathbone became an American consul to Germany. He later became mentally unstable and in 1883 shot and then stabbed Clara to death. He spent the rest of his life in a German asylum for the criminally insane.

John Ford was exonerated and attempted to reopen his theater a few months after Lincoln’s assassination. Public outrage forced him to close. The federal government bought it, and after several incarnations for other uses, in 1968 Ford’s Theater and the Petersen boarding house were combined into museums and a working playhouse. The President’s Box is never occupied during a play.

Lincoln’s body, along with that of his son Willie, was placed on a train on April 21 to begin 1,700 mile trip through 444 communities in seven states where he was repeatedly put on view or made to lie in state. The embalming arts were considerably less skilled than today’s and as Lincoln’s body began to decompose and change color, he was embalmed several more times and white makeup was used to cover his blackening face. Pungent flowers were used in decorations to cover the smell of his corpse. He finally arrived for his interment in Springfield IL on May 3.

The original Lincoln tomb was in constant need of repair and deteriorated significantly due to constructing it on unsuitable soil. In 1900, a complete reconstruction of tomb was undertaken. It was completed on April 25 1901. Grave-robbing for extortion was not unknown in the late 19th century and there was at least one attempt to steal Lincoln’s body in 1876. So when Robert Todd Lincoln visited the reconstructed tomb, he was unhappy with the security of his father’s body and ordered yet another placement in a crypt holding the coffin in a steel cage encased in concrete in the floor. On September 26, 1901, Lincoln's body was exhumed so that it could be reinterred in the newly built crypt. However, the two dozen people present, fearing that Lincoln’s body might have been stolen, decided to open the coffin to confirm that Lincoln’s body was in it.

A second major reconstruction of the tomb was undertaken between 1930 and 1931 because the work in 1901 had begun to deteriorate. During the repair, Lincoln’s sarcophagus was placed outside where souvenir hunters essentially destroyed it. His coffin was therefore placed in another sarcophagus inside the newly reconstructed tomb monument where it resides today.

After it was placed in the original vault on May 4, 1865, Lincoln's coffin was moved 17 times and opened six times before resting at its current site.