THE ASSASSINATION OF LINCOLN.*
So much has been written about the plots which ended in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln—the crime has become so characteristically a matter for legal minds interested in splitting hairs of evidence—that we feel there is no longer any need for dramatic narrative. Not that Mr. Dewitt meant to write a sensational narrative, for his purpose is obviously to arrive at legal truth and nothing else. But his method is neither that of the scientific historian nor that of the Criminologist, whose right is as clear as De Quincey's to horrify his readers. Mr. Dewitt indulges in many inappro- priate and grandiose phrases, as well as in an unnecessary and rather tiresome use of the historic present. And yet if English readers are unacquainted with one of the most astonishing crimes, and one of the most astonishing trials, in modern history, they cannot do much better than get to know them in this hook.
We have no disposition to obscure the distinction between deliberate, culpable crime and the crime which results from diseased impulses. But one has only to read the history of the actor Junius Booth, the father of Lincoln's assassin, to see that there was unmistakable insanity in the family. The genius of the father in interpreting the part of Richard III
genius which, of course, descended in a higher degree to his famous son Edwin Thomas Booth—was very near to madness indeed. His most pressing engagements were at the mercy of periodical aberration. He would disappear suddenly. Once in the last scene of Richard III. ho was seized with an 'irrational aversion from the actor who was playing Richmond, and refused to yield to him in the stage fight, till fortunately he was driven off by his adversary's superior skill. He once summoned a clergyman to bury some dead friends, and on his arrival displayed to him a basket full of wild pigeons, over which he himself knelt and moaned. His children, so far from treating his eccentricity as a drawback or a danger, seem to have looked on it with respect as a kind of prophetic inspiration. John Wilkes Booth, who was to become the murderer of Lincoln, expended his equivocal passions not so much on his art, in which he was compara- tively unsuccessful, as on an unreasoning political hatred for the leaders of the Federal cause in the American Civil War, and, indeed, for every one associated with Abolition. He was a handsome, athletic man, well known for his gymnastic feats and his extraordinary leaping upon the stage. In the Civil War it became his obsession to help the Southern States by some coup in which he should be the principal, and for which he should obtain all the credit. Apparently he had promised his Mother to take no part in the war as a soldier, nor does that seem to have been regarded by him as any deprivation. The humble prowess of a private soldier would not have satisfied his thirst for celebrity. His career as an actor had made' it natural, if not indispensable, for him to draw atten- tion to himself. He must always be under the limelight. Never was a man's weakness worse served by his choice of a profession.
His first scheme for helping the Confederates was his plot
* The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and its Empiatioth By David Miller Dewitt. London: Macmillan sad Co. [Cs. ed. net.] for capturing Lincoln. He thought that • by making Lificoln a prisoner of war in the hands of the Confederacy he would render the prosecution of the war by the North impossible. Grant bad already refused to exchange any more prisoners. "It is hard on our men," he said, "but it is humanity to those left in the ranks." And probably Grant was quite right, for the Northern prisons were then overcrowded with Confederate soldiers, and to have released them would have been to prolong the war indefinitely. John Wilkes Booth thought that if he could carry Lincoln across the Potomac, the prison doors of the North would have to be thrown open, or the Federals would forfeit the person of their President. He soon gathered round him a small company of conspirators, some of whom were utterly unsuitable for the purpose, and he himself was in favour of seizing Lincoln publicly when he visited the theatre. Eventually the conspirators resisted Booth's gro- tesque but characteristic advice, and it was decided that the attempt should be made quietly when Lincoln was driving in the suburbs of Washington. They lay in wait, and at last the carriage was beard approaching. But to the chagrin and amazement of all, the President was not inside, but an officer who was taking his place. It looked as though the plot had leaked out, and the band scattered apprehensively in different directions.
Impossible as Booth's first plan was, it had this grain Of sense in it,—that the life of Lincoln was seen to be the really valuable asset. That ought to be preserved at all costs. When Booth passed to his second plan of assassination his mind had yielded to sheer unreasoning fury ; it had, in fact, given way. Mr. Dewitt believes that murder took shape in Booth's wretched brain, just after the war had been ended by Lee's surrender, when the President made a speech at the White House
:- "On the evening of Tuesday, the eleventh, from a window of the White House, the President addressed a crowd on the lawn, in the midst of which were Booth and Payne. Referring to the experiment ho himself had initiated in reconstructing the state of Louisiana, he said : 'It is also unsatisfactory to some that the elective franchise is not given to tho colored man. I would myself prefer that it were conferred on the very intelligent and on those who served our cause as soldiers.' Phis utterance, though too mild to suit the radicals, threw Booth into such a rage that be urged his companion to shoot its author on the spot; but Payne protested that the risk was too great even for one so reckless as himself, and the two walked away, Booth muttering, 'That is the last speech he will ever make.'"
In his plans for the murder Booth had the help of three of the former conspirators : Payne, Atzerodt, and Herold. The rest of the band bad melted away. Of these; Atzerodb and Herold played a miserable part when the time came, moving aimlessly about Washington in an agony of hesita- tion. Payne, on the other hand, was a whole-hearted, blood- thirsty ruffian, and while Booth was engaged in the great crime at the theatre, he entered the house of Mr. Seward, the Secretary for State, and outrageously wounded him as he was
lying in pain on his bed after a severe accident. He wounded, also, other members of the household who grappled with him.
Atzerodt was to have killed Alexander Johnson, the Vice- President, who afterwards filled Lincoln's place, and will
always be remembered as the President who was impeached. But Johnson was in no danger from such a man, and one only wonders why invertebrates like him and Herold should ever have wanted to join their fortunes with a fearless and exalted fanatic like Booth. The assassination of Lincoln is a too familiar piece of history to be dwelt upon here, Every one knows how Booth entered his box in the theatre ; shot him from behind with a pistol ; then leaped down on to the stage and broke his leg in the fall, but managed to shout to the audience "Sic semper tyrannis !" and then shuffle away with his broken leg and escape at the back of the theatre, getting clear away on horseback. No doubt after this terrible crime, which paralysed the country with dismay, Stanton, the Secretary for War, grossly exaggerated the extent and significance of the conspiracy. The whole of the Confederacy was assumed to be in it, and if Jefferson Davis himself could have been arrested at that moment, he would very likely have been executed after a summary trial. As it was, one cannot
believe that justice was done in the case of all the alleged conspirators who were put on trial. Booth saved himself
the trouble of being tried. He was brought to bay in a warehouse where he had taken shelter near the Potomac. His captors set fire to the warehouse, and when Booth came to the door be fell shot through the head. It li. doubtful whether he died by his own band or from the shot of one of the soldiers, who for long after Wards enjoyed the popular credit of being the agent of justice, although after all his act, if be really performed it, was only a 'piece of disobedience. Perhaps the manner of Booth's death, like Robespierre's, will always be disputed, but Mr. Dewitt appears to have little doubt that he committed suicide.
The trial of the accomplices was remarkable for the way in Which the assassination was considered as necessarily inter- woven with the abortive "plot to capture." The conspirators were assumed to be the same in both, and thus it was that the charge was pressed against the family of Surratt, a member Of which had had the misfortune to be associated with the fiat plot. This young man (who, we believe, is alive to-day and reckoned a highly respectable citizen) revelled in the adventure, which he thought likely to help the Confederacy; but he was far away when Booth conceived his second idea of assasaination, and probably never heard of it till the deed was done. Then he guessed that he ,would be suspected, and be lay in biding till long afterwards. Meanwhile—also without his knowledge—his mother had been arrested, tried, and banged. Payne deserved his fate; and Atzerodt and Herold bad certainly courted theirs ; but we fear that posterity will always shake its head over the slight evidence which was pressed against Mrs. Surratt.
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