HANDSOMEST MAN ON EARTH

One day Thaddeus Stevens called at the White House with an elderly woman, whose son had been in the army, but for some offense had been court-martialed and sentenced to death. There were some extenuating circumstances, and after a full hearing the President turned to Stevens and said: "Mr. Stevens, do you think this is a case which will warrant my interference?"
"With my knowledge of the facts and the parties," was the reply, "I should have no hesitation in granting a pardon."
"Then," returned Mr. Lincoln, "I will pardon him," and proceeded forthwith to execute the paper.
The gratitude of the mother was too deep for expression, save by her tears, and not a word was said between her and Stevens until they were half way down the stairs on their passage out, when she suddenly broke forth in an excited manner with the words:
"I knew it was a copperhead lie!"
"What do you refer to, madam?" asked Stevens.
"Why, they told me he was an ugly-looking man," she replied, with vehemence. "He is the handsomest man I ever saw in my life."

Killing Lincoln : The Life, Crime, Capture of the Killer - 7

THE MARTYR.
Washington, May 14.

I am sitting in the President's office. He was here very lately, but he will not return to dispossess me of this high-backed chair he filled so long, nor resume his daily work at the table where I am writing.

There are here only Major Hay and the friend who accompanies me. A bright-faced boy runs in and out, darkly attired, so that his fob-chain of gold is the only relief to his mourning garb. This is little Tad., the pet of the White House. That great death, with which the world rings, has made upon him only the light impression which all things make upon childhood. He will live to be a man pointed out everywhere, for his father's sake; and as folks look at him, the tableau of the murder will seem to encircle him.

The room is long and high, and so thickly hung with maps that the color of the wall cannot be discerned. The President's table at which I am seated, adjoins a window at the farthest corner; and to the left of my chair as I recline in it, there is a large table before an empty grate, around which there are many chairs, where the cabinet used to assemble. The carpet is trodden thin, and the brilliance of its dyes is lost. The furniture is of the formal cabinet class, stately and semi-comfortable; there are book cases sprinkled with the sparse library of a country lawyer, but lately plethoric, like the thin body which has departed in its coffin. They are taking away Mr. Lincoln's private effects, to deposit them wheresoever his family may abide, and the emptiness of the place, on this sunny Sunday, revives that feeling of desolation from which the land has scarce recovered. I rise from my seat and examine the maps; they are from the coast survey and engineer departments, and exhibit all the contested grounds of the war: there are pencil lines upon them where some one has traced the route of armies, and planned the strategic circumferences of campaigns. Was it the dead President who so followed the march of empire, and dotted the sites of shock and overthrow?

Here is the Manassas country—here the long reach of the wasted Shenandoah; here the wavy line of the James and the sinuous peninsula. The wide campagna of the gulf country sways in the Potomac breeze that filters in at the window, and the Mississippi climbs up the wall, with blotches of blue and red to show where blood gushed at the bursting of deadly bombs. So, in the half-gloomy, half-grand apartment, roamed the tall and wrinkled figure whom the country had summoned from his plain home into mighty history, with the geography of the republic drawn into a narrow compass so that he might lay his great brown hand upon it everywhere. And walking to and fro, to and fro, to measure the destinies of arms, he often stopped, with his thoughtful eyes upon the carpet, to ask if his life were real and if he were the arbiter of so tremendous issues, or whether it was not all a fever-dream, snatched from his sofa in the routine office of the Prairie state.

There is but one picture on the marble mantel over the cold grate—John
Bright, a photograph.


I can well imagine how the mind of Mr. Lincoln often went afar to the face of Bright, who said so kindly things of him when Europe was mocking his homely guise and provincial phraseology. To Mr. Lincoln, John Bright was the standard-bearer of America and democracy in the old world. He thrilled over Bright's bold denunciations of peer and "Privilege," and stretched his long arm across the Atlantic to take that daring Quaker innovator by the hand.

I see some books on the table; perhaps they have lain there undisturbed since the reader's dimming eyes grew nerveless. A parliamentary manual, a Thesaurus, and two books of humor, "Orpheus C. Kerr," and "Artemus Ward." These last were read by Mr. Lincoln in the pauses of his hard day's labor. Their tenure here bears out the popular verdict of his partiality for a good joke; and, through the window, from the seat of Mr. Lincoln, I see across the grassy grounds of the capitol, the broken shaft of the Washington Monument, the long bridge and the fort-tipped Heights of Arlington, reaching down to the shining river side. These scenes he looked at often to catch some freshness of leaf and water, and often raised the sash to let the world rush in where only the nation abided, and hence on that awful night, he departed early, to forget this room and its close applications in the abandon of the theater.

I wonder if that were the least of Booth's crimes—to slay this public servant in the stolen hour of recreation he enjoyed but seldom. We worked his life out here, and killed him when he asked a holiday.

Outside of this room there is an office, where his secretaries sat—a room more narrow but as long—and opposite this adjacent office, a second door, directly behind Mr. Lincoln's chair leads by a private passage to his family quarters. This passage is his only monument in the building; he added nor subtracted nothing else; it tells a long story of duns and loiterers, contract-hunters and seekers for commissions, garrulous parents on paltry errands, toadies without measure and talkers without conscience. They pressed upon him through the great door opposite his window, and hat in hand, come courtsying to his chair, with an obsequious "Mr. President!"

If he dared, though the chief magistrate and commander of the army and navy, to go out of the great door, these vampires leaped upon him with their Babylonian pleas, and barred his walk to his hearthside. He could not insult them since it was not in his nature, and perhaps many of them had really urgent errands. So he called up the carpenter and ordered a strategic route cut from his office to his hearth, and perhaps told of it after with much merriment.

Here should be written the biography of his official life—in the room where have concentrated all the wires of action, and where have proceeded the resolves which vitalized in historic deeds. But only the great measures, however carried out, were conceived in this office. The little ones proceeded from other places..

Here once came Mr. Stanton, saying in his hard and positive way:

"Mr. Lincoln, I have found it expedient to disgrace and arrest General
Stone."


"Stanton," said Mr. Lincoln, with an emotion of pain, "when you considered it necessary to imprison General Stone, I am glad you did not consult me about it."

And for lack of such consultation, General Stone, I learn, now lies a maniac in the asylum. The groundless pretext, upon which he suffered the reputation of treason, issued from the Department of War—not from this office.

But as to his biography, it is to be written by Colonel Nicolay and Major Hay. They are to go to Paris together, one as attache of legation, the other as consul, and while there, will undertake the labor. They are the only men who know his life well enough to exhaust it, having followed his official tasks as closely as they shared his social hours.

Major Hay is a gentleman of literary force. Colonel Nicolay has a fine judgment of character and public measures. Together they should satisfy both curiosity and history.

As I hear from my acquaintances here these episodes of the President's life, I recall many reminiscences of his ride from Springfield to Harrisburg, over much of which I passed. Then he left home and became an inhabitant of history. His face was solid and healthy, his step young, his speech and manner bold and kindly. I saw him at Trenton stand in the Legislature, and say, in his conversational intonation:

"We may have to put the foot down firm."

How should we have hung upon his accents then had we anticipated his virtues and his fate.

Death is requisite to make opinion grave. We looked upon Mr. Lincoln then as an amusing sensation, and there was much guffaw as he was regarded by the populace; he had not passed out of partisan ownership. Little by little, afterward, he won esteem, and often admiration, until the measure of his life was full, and the victories he had achieved made the world applaud him. Yet, at this date, the President was sadly changed. Four years of perplexity and devotion had wrinkled his face, and stooped his shoulders, and the failing eyes that glared upon the play closed as his mission was completed, and the world had been educated enough to comprehend him.

The White House has been more of a Republican mansion under his control than for many administrations. Uncouth guests came to it often, typical of the simple western civilization of which he was a graduate, and while no coarse altercation has ever ensued, the portal has swung wide for five years.

A friend, connected with a Washington newspaper, told me that he had occasion to see Mr. Lincoln one evening, and found that the latter had gone to bed. But he was told to sit down in the office, and directly the President entered. He wore only a night shirt, and his long, lank hirsute limbs, as he sat down, inclined the guest to laughter. Mr. Lincoln disposed of his request at once, and manifested a desire to talk. So he reached for the cane which my friend carried and conversed in this manner:

"I always used a cane when I was a boy. It was a freak of mine. My favorite one was a knotted beech stick, and I carved the head myself. There's a mighty amount of character in sticks. Don't you think so? You have seen these fishing poles that fit into a cane? Well, that was an old idea of mine. Dogwood clubs were favorite ones with the boys. I 'spose they use'em yet. Hickory is too heavy, unless you get it from a young sapling. Have you ever noticed how a stick in one's hand will change his appearance? Old women and witches would'nt look so without sticks. Meg Merrilies understands that."

In this way my friend, who is a clerk, in a newspaper office, heard the President talk for an hour. The undress of the man and the witness of his subject would be staples for merriment if we did not reflect that his greatness was of no conventional cast, that the playfulness of his nature and the simplicity of his illustration lightened public business but never arrested it.

Another gentleman, whom I know, visited the President in high dudgeon one night. He was a newspaper proprietor and one of his editors had been arrested.

"Mr. Lincoln," he said, "I have been off electioneering for your re-election, and in my absence you have had my editor arrested. I won't stand it, sir. I have fought better administrations than yours."

"Why, John," said the President, "I don't know much about it. I suppose your boys have been too enterprizing. The fact is, I don't interfere with the press much, but I suppose I am responsible."

"I want you to order the man's release to-night," said the applicant. "I shan't leave here till I get it. In fact, I am the man who should be arrested. Why don't you send me to Capitol Hill?"

This idea pleased the President exceedingly. He laughed the other into good humor.

"In fact," he said, "I am under restraint here, and glad of any pretext to release a journalist."

So he wrote the order, and the writer got his liberty.

It must not be inferred from this, however, that the President was a devotee to literature. He had no professional enthusiasm for it. The literary coterie of the White House got little flattery but its members were treated as agreeable citizens and not as the architects of any body's fortune.

Willis went there much for awhile, but yielded to his old habit of gossiping about the hall paper and the teapots. Emerson went there once, and was deferred to us if he were anything but a philosopher. Yet he so far grasped the character of his host as to indite that noble humanitarian eulogy upon him, delivered at Concord, and printed in the WORLD. It will not do to say definitely In this notice how several occasional writers visited the White House, heard the President's views and assented to them and afterward abused him. But these attained no remembrance nor tart reproach from that least retaliatory of men. He harbored no malice, and is said to have often placed himself on the stand-point of Davis and Lee, and accounted for their defection while he could not excuse it.

He was a good reader, and took all the leading NEW YORK dailies every day. His secretaries perused them and selected all the items which would interest the President; these were read to him and considered. He bought few new books, but seemed ever alive to works of comic value; the vein of humor in him was not boisterous in its manifestations, but touched the geniality of his nature, and he reproduced all that he absorbed, to elucidate some new issue, or turn away argument by a laugh.

As a jester, Mr. Lincoln's tendency was caricatured by the prints, but not exaggerated. He probably told as many stories as are attributed to him. Nor did he, as is averred, indulge in these jests on solemn occasions. No man felt with such personal intensity the extent of the casualties of his time, and he often gravely reasoned whether he could be in any way responsible for the bloodshed and devastation over which it was his duty to preside.

An acquaintance of mine—a private—once went to him to plead for a man's life. He had never seen the man for whom he pleaded, and had no acquaintance with the man's family. Mr. Lincoln was touched by his disinterestedness, and said to him:

"If I were anything but the President, I would be constantly working as you have done."

Whenever a doubt of one's guilt lay on his mind, the man was spared by his direct interference..

There was an entire absence in the President's character of the heroic element. He would do a great deed in deshabille as promptly as in full dress. He never aimed to be brilliant, unconsciously understanding that a great man's brilliancy is to be measured by the "wholeness" and synthetic cast of his career rather than by any fitful ebullitions. For that reason we look in vain through his messages for "points." His point was not to turn a sentence or an epigram, but to win an effect, regardless of the route to it.

He was commonplace in his talk, and Chesterfield would have had no patience with him; his dignity of character lay in his uprightness rather than in his formal manner. Members of his government often reviewed him plainly in his presence. Yet he divined the true course, while they only argued it out.

His good feeling was not only personal, but national. He had no prejudice against any race or potentate. And his democracy was of a practical, rather than of a demonstrative, nature. He was not Marat, but Moreau—not Paine and Jefferson; but Franklin.

His domestic life was like a parlor of night-time, lit by the equal grate of his genial and uniform kindness. Young Thaddy played with him upon the carpet; Robert came home from the war and talked to his father as to a school-mate, he was to Mrs. Lincoln as chivalrous on the last day of his life as when he courted her. I have somewhere seen a picture of Henry IV. of France, riding his babies on his back: that was the President.

So dwelt the citizen who is gone—a model in character if not in ceremony, for good men to come who will take his place in the same White House, and find their generation comparing them to the man thought worthy of assassination. I am glad to sit here in his chair, where he has bent so often,—in the atmosphere of the household he purified, in the sight of the green grass and the blue river he hallowed by gazing upon, in the very centre of the nation he preserved for the people, and close the list of bloody deeds, of desperate fights of swift expiations, of renowned obsequies of which I have written, by inditing at his table the goodness of his life and the eternity of his memory.

"RATHER STARVE THAN SWINDLE."

Ward Lamon, once Lincoln's law partner, relates a story which places Lincoln's high sense of honor in a prominent light. In a certain case, Lincoln and Lamon being retained by a gentleman named Scott, Lamon put the fee at $250, and Scott agreed to pay it. Says Lamon:
"Scott expected a contest, but, to his surprise, the case was tried inside of twenty minutes; our success was complete. Scott was satisfied, and cheerfully paid over the money to me inside the bar, Lincoln looking on. Scott then went out, and Lincoln asked, 'What did you charge that man?'
"I told him $250. Said he: 'Lamon, that is all wrong. The service was not worth that sum. Give him back at least half of it.'
"I protested that the fee was fixed in advance; that Scott was perfectly satisfied, and had so expressed himself. 'That may be,' retorted Lincoln, with a look of distress and of undisguised displeasure, 'but I am not satisfied. This is positively wrong. Go, call him back and return half the money at least, or I will not receive one cent of it for my share.'
"I did go, and Scott was astonished when I handed back half the fee.
"This conversation had attracted the attention of the lawyers and the court. Judge David Davis, then on our circuit bench (afterwards Associate Justice on the United States Supreme bench), called Lincoln to him. The Judge never could whisper, but in this instance he probably did his best. At all events, in attempting to whisper to Lincoln he trumpeted his rebuke in about these words, and in rasping tones that could be heard all over the court-room: 'Lincoln, I have been watching you and Lamon. You are impoverishing this bar by your picayune charges of fees, and the lawyers have reason to complain of you. You are now almost as poor as Lazarus, and if you don't make people pay you more for your services you will die as poor as Job's turkey!'
"Judge O. L. Davis, the leading lawyer in that part of the State, promptly applauded this malediction from the bench; but Lincoln was immovable.
"'That money,' said he, 'comes out of the pocket of a poor, demented girl, and I would rather starve than swindle her in this manner.'"

CREDITOR PAID DEBTORS DEBT

A certain rich man in Springfield, Illinois, sued a poor attorney for $2.50, and Lincoln was asked to prosecute the case. Lincoln urged the creditor to let the matter drop, adding, "You can make nothing out of him, and it will cost you a good deal more than the debt to bring suit." The creditor was still determined to have his way, and threatened to seek some other attorney. Lincoln then said, "Well, if you are determined that suit should be brought, I will bring it; but my charge will be $10."

The money was paid him, and peremptory orders were given that the suit be brought that day. After the client's departure Lincoln went out of the office, returning in about an hour with an amused look on his face.
Asked what pleased him, he replied, "I brought suit against ——, and then hunted him up, told him what I had done, handed him half of the $10, and we went over to the squire's office. He confessed judgment and paid the bill."

Lincoln added that he didn't see any other way to make things satisfactory for his client as well as the other.

Killing Lincoln : The Life, Crime, Capture of the Killer - 6

THE DETECTIVES' STORIES.
Washington, May 2—P. M.

The police resources of the country have been fairly tested during the past two weeks. Under the circumstances, the shrewdness and energy of both municipal and national detectives have been proven good. The latter body has had a too partial share of the applause thus far, while the great efforts of our New-York and other officers have been overlooked. In the crowning success of Doherty, Conger, and Baker on the Virginia side of the water we have forgotten the as vigorous and better sustained pursuit on the Maryland side.

Yet the Secretary of War has thanked all concerned, especially referring to many excellent leaders in the long hunt through Charles and St. Mary's counties. Here the military and civil forces together amounted to quite a small army, and constituted by far the largest police organization ever known on this side of the Atlantic.

I think the adventures and expedients of these public servants worthy of a column. It would be out of all proportion to pass them by when we devote a dozen lines to every petty larceny and shoplifting.

On the Friday night of the murder the departments were absolutely paralyzed. The murderers had three good hours for escape; they had evaded the pursuit of lightning by snapping the telegraph wires, and rumor filled the town with so many reports that the first valuable hours, which should have been used to follow hard after them, were consumed in feverish efforts to know the real extent of the assassination.

Immediately afterwards, however, or on Saturday morning early, the provost and special police force got on the scent, and military in squads were dispatched close upon their heels.

Three grand pursuits wore organized: one reaching up the north bank of the Potomac toward Chain bridge, to prevent escape by that direction into Virginia, where Mosby, it was suspected, waited to hail the murderers;

A second starting from Richmond, Va., northward, forming a broad advancing picket or skirmish line between the Blue Ridge and the broad sea-running streams;

A third to scour the peninsula towards Point Lookout.

The latter region became the only one well examined; the northern expedition failed until advised from below to capture Atzerott, and failed, to capture Payne. Yet there were cogent probabilities that the assassin had taken this route; far Mosby would have given them the right hand of fellowship.

When that guerrilla heard of Booth's feat, said Captain Jett, he exclaimed:

"Now, by——! I could take that man in my arms."

Washington, as a precautionary measure, was doubly picketed at once; the authorities in all northern towns advised of the personnel of the murderer, and requests made of the detective chiefs in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New-York, to forward to Washington without delay their best decoys.

A court of inquiry was organized on the moment, and early in the week succeeding rewards were offered. An individual, and not the government, offered the first rewards.

There were two men without whom the hunt would have gone astray many times.

John S. Young, chief of the New-York detective force, a powerful and resolute man, whose great weight and strength are matched by boundless energy, and both subordinate to a head as clear as the keen and searching warrant of his eye. This man has been in familiar converse with every rebel agent in the Canadas, and is feared by them as they fear the fates of Beall and Kennedy. Without being a sensationist, he has probably rendered the cleverest services of the war to the general government. They sent for him immediately after the tragedy, and he stopped on the way for his old police companion, Marshal Murray. The latter's face and figure are familiar to all who know New-York; he resembles an admiral on his quarter-deck; he is a detective of fair and excellent repute, and has a somewhat novel pride in what he calls "the most beautiful gallows in the United States."

These officials were ordered to visit Colonel Ingraham's office and examine the little evidence on hand. They and their tried officers formed a junction on Sunday afternoon with the large detective force of Provost-Marshal Major O'Bierne. The latter commands the District of Columbia civil and military police. He is a New-Yorker and has been shot through the body in the field.

The detective force of Young and Murray consisted of Officers Radford,
Kelso, Elder, and Hoey, of New-York; Deputy-Marshal Newcome, formerly of
THE WORLD'S city staff; Officers Joseph Pierson and West, of Baltimore.


Major O'Bierne's immediate aids were Detectives John Lee, Lloyd,
Gavigan, Coddingham, and Williams.


A detachment of the Philadelphia detective police, force—Officers Taggert, George Smith, and Carlin, reporting to Colonel Baker—went in the direction of the North Pole; everybody is on the que vive for them.

To the provost-marshal of Baltimore, MacPhail, who knew the tone and bearing of the country throughout, was joined the zealous co-operation of Officer Lloyd, of Major O'Bierne's staff, who had a personal feeling against the secessionists of lower Maryland; they had once driven him away for his loyalty, and had reserved their hospitality for assassins.

Lieutenant Commander Gushing, I am informed, also rendered important services to the government in connection with the police operations. Volunteer detectives, such as Ex-Marshal Lewis and Angelis, were plentiful; it is probable that in the pitch of the excitement five hundred detective officers were in and around Washington city. At the same time the secret police of Richmond abandoned their ordinary business, and devoted themselves solely to this overshadowing offense.

No citizen, in these terrible days, knows what eyes were upon him as he talked and walked, nor how his stature and guise were keenly scanned by folks who passed him absent-faced, yet with his mental portrait carefully turned over, the while some invisible hand clutched a revolver, and held a life or death challenge upon his lips.

The military forces were commanded by Colonel Welles, of the Twenty sixth Michigan regiment, whose activity and zeal were amply sustained by Colonel Clendenning, of the Eighth Illinois cavalry, probably the finest body of horse in the service.

The first party to take the South Maryland road was dispatched by Major O'Bierne, and commanded by Lieutenant Lovett, of the Veteran Reserves. It consisted of twenty-five cavalry men, with detectives Cottingham, Lloyd, and Gavigan; these latter, with the lieutenant, kept well in advance. They made inquiries of a soothing and cautious character, but saw nothing suspicious until they arrived at Piscataway, where an unknown man, some distance ahead, observed them, and took to the woods. This was on Sunday night, forty hours after the murder.

Guided by Officer Lloyd, the little band dashed on, arriving at Bryantown on Tuesday. Here they arrested John Lloyd, of the hotel at Surrattsville, of whom they had previously inquired for the murderers, and he had said positively that he neither knew them nor had seen anybody whatever on the night of the crime. He was returning in a wagon, with his wife, whom he had ordered, the day before, to go on a visit to Allen's Fresh, The Monday afterward he started to bring her back. This woman, frightened at the arrest, acknowledged at once that in her husband's conduct there was some inexplicable mystery. He was taciturn and defiant as before, until confronted by some of his old Union neighbors.

The few Unionists of Prince George's and Charles counties, long persecuted and intimidated, now came forward and gave important testimony.

Among these was one Roby, a very fat and very zealous old gentleman, whose professions were as ample as his perspiration. He told the officers of the secret meetings for conspiracy's, sake at Lloyd's Hotel, and although a very John Gilpin on horseback, rode here and there to his great loss of wind and repose, fastening fire-coals upon the guilty or suspected.

Lloyd was turned over to Mr. Cottingham, who had established a jail at Robytown; that night his house was searched, and Booth's carbine found hidden in the wall. Three days afterward, Lloyd himself confessed—and his neck is quite nervous at this writing.

This little party, under the untiring Lovett, examined all the farm-houses below Washington resorting to many shrewd expedients, and taking note of the great swamps to the east of Port Tobacco; they reached Newport at last and fastened tacit guilt upon many residents.

Beyond Bryantown they overhauled the residence of Doctor Mudd and found Booth's boot. This was before Lloyd confessed, and was the first positive trace the officers had that they were really close upon the assassins.

I do not recall anything more wild and startling than this vague and dangerous exploration of a dimly known, hostile, and ignorant country. To these few detectives we owe much of the subsequent successful prosecution of the pursuit. They were the Hebrew spies.

By this time the country was filling up with soldiers, but previously a second memorable detective party went out under the personal command of Major O'Bierne. It consisted, besides that officer, of Lee, D'Angellia, Callahan, Hoey, Bostwick, Hanover, Bevins, and McHenry, and embarked at Washington on a steam-tug for Chappell's Point. Here a military station had long been established for the prevention of blockade and mail-running across the Potomao. It was commanded by Lieutenant Laverty, and garrisoned by sixty-five men. On Tuesday night, Major O'Bierne's party reached this place, and soon afterwards, a telegraph station was established here by an invaluable man to the expedition, Captain Beckwith, General Grant's chief cypher operator, who tapped the Point Lookout wire, and placed the War Department within a moment's reach of the theater of events.

Major O'Bierne's party started at once over the worst road in the world for Port Tobacco.

If any place in the world is utterly given over to depravity, it is Port Tobacco. From this town, by a sinuous creek, there is flat boat navigation to the Potomac, and across that river to Mattox's creek. Before the war Port Tobacco was the seat of a tobacco aristocracy and a haunt of negro traders. It passed very naturally into a rebel post for blockade-runners and a rebel post-office general. Gambling, corner fighting, and shooting matches were its lyceum education. Violence and ignorance had every suffrage in the town. Its people were smugglers, to all intents, and there was neither Bible nor geography to the whole region adjacent. Assassination was never very unpopular at Port Tobacco, and when its victim was a northern president it became quite heroic. A month before the murder a provost-marshal near by was slain in his bed-chamber. For such a town and district the detective police were the only effective missionaries. The hotel here is called the Brawner House; it has a bar in the nethermost cellar, and its patrons, carousing in that imperfect light, look like the denizens of some burglar's crib, talking robbery between their cups; its dining-room is dark and tumble-down, and the cuisine bears traces of Caffir origin; a barbecue is nothing to a dinner there. The Court House of Port Tobacco is the most superflous house in the place, except the church. It stands in the center of the town in a square, and the dwellings lie about it closely, as if to throttle justice. Five hundred people exist in Port Tobacco; life there reminds me, in connection with the slimy river and the adjacent swamps, of the great reptile period of the world, when iguanadons and pterodactyls and pleosauri ate each other.

Into this abstract of Gomorrah the few detectives went like angels who visited Lot. They pretended to be enquiring for friends, or to have business designs, and the first people they heard of were Harold and Atzerott. The latter had visited Port Tobacco three weeks before the murder, and intimated at that time his design of fleeing the country. But everybody denied having seen him subsequent to the crime.

Atzerott had been in town just prior to the crime. He had been living with a widow woman named Mrs. Wheeler, by whom he had several children, and she was immediately called upon by Major O'Bierne. He did not tell her what Atzerott had done, but vaguely hinted that he had committed some terrible crime, and that since he had done her wrong, she could vindicate both herself and justice by telling his whereabouts. The woman admitted that Atzerott had been her bane, but she loved him, and refused to betray him.

His trunk was found in her garret, and in it the key to his paint shop in Port Tobacco. The latter was fruitlessly searched, but the probable whereabouts of Atzerott in Mongomery county obtained, and Major O'Bierne telegraphing there immediately, the desperate fellow was found and locked up. A man named Crangle who had succeeded Atzerott in Mrs. Wheeler's pliable affections, was arrested at once and put in jail. A number of disloyal people were indicated or "spotted" as in no wise angry at the President's taking off, and for all such a provost prison was established.

A few miles from Port Tobacco dwelt a solitary woman, who, when questioned, said that for many nights she had heard, after she had retired to bed, a man enter her cellar and lie there all night, departing before dawn. Major O'Bierne and the detectives ordered her to place a lamp in her window the next night she heard him enter, and at dark they established a cordon of armed officers around the place. At midnight punctually she exhibited the light, when the officers broke into the house and thoroughly searched it, without result. Yet the woman positively asserted that she had heard the man enter.

It was afterward found that she was of diseased mind.

By this time the military had come up in considerable numbers, and Major
O'Bierne was enabled to confer with Major Wait, of the Eighth Illinois.


The major had pushed on Monday night to Leonardstown, and pretty well overhauled that locality.

It was at this time that preparations were made to hunt the swamps around Chapmantown, Beantown, and Allen's Fresh. Booth had been entirely lost since his departure from Mudd's house, and it was believed that he had either pushed on for the Potomac or taken to the swamps. The officers sagaciously determined to follow him to the one and to explore the other.

The swamps tributary to the various branches of the Wicomico river, of which the chief feeder is Allen's creek, bear various names, such as Jordan's swamp, Atchall's swamp, and Scrub swamp. There are dense growths of dogwood, gum, and beech, planted in sluices of water and bog; and their width varies from a half mile to four miles, while their length is upwards of sixteen miles. Frequent deep ponds dot this wilderness place, with here and there a stretch of dry soil, but no human being inhabits the malarious extent; even a hunted murderer would shrink from hiding there. Serpents and slimy lizards are the only denizens; sometimes the coon takes refuge in this desert from the hounds, and in the soil mud a thousand odorous muskrats delve, with now and then a tremorous otter. But not even the hunted negro dares to fathom the treacherous clay, nor make himself a fellow of the slimy reptiles which reign absolute in this terrible solitude. Here the soldiers prepared to seek for the President's assassin, and no search of the kind has ever been so thorough and patient. The Shawnee, in his strong hold of despair in the heart of Okeefeuokee, would scarcely have changed homes with Wilkes Booth and David Harold, hiding in this inhuman country.

The military forces deputed to pursue the fugitives were seven hundred men of the Eighth Illinois cavalry, six hundred men of the Twenty-second Colored troops, and one hundred men of the Sixteenth New York. These swept the swamps by detachments, the mass of them dismounted, with cavalry at the belts of clearing, interspersed with detectives at frequent intervals in the rear. They first formed a strong picket cordon entirely around the swamps, and then, drawn up in two orders of battle, advanced boldly into the bogs by two lines of march. One party swept the swamps longitudinally, the other pushed straight across their smallest diameter.

A similar march has not been made during the war; the soldiers were only a few paces apart, and in steady order they took the ground as it came, now plunging to their arm-pits in foul sluices of gangrened water, now hopelessly submerged in slime, now attacked by Regions of wood ticks, now tempting some unfaithful log or greenishly solid morass, and plunging to the tip of the skull in poison stagnation; the tree boughs rent their uniforms; they came out upon dry land, many of them without a rag of garment scratched, and gashed, and spent, repugnant to themselves, and disgusting to those who saw them; but not one trace of Booth or Harold was any where found. Wherever they might be, the swamps did not contain them.

While all this was going on, a force started from Point Lookout, and swept the narrow necks of Saint Mary's quite up to Medley's Neck. To complete the search in this part of the country, Colonel Wells and Major O'Bierne started with a force of cavalry and infantry for Chappel Point; they took the entire peninsula as before, and marched in close skirmish line across it, but without finding anything of note. The matter of inclosing a house was by cavalry advances, which held all the avenues till mounted detectives came up. Many strange and ludicrous adventures occured on each of these expeditions. While the forces were going up Cobb's neck, there was a counter force coming down from Allen's Fresh.

Major O'Bierne started for Leonardstown with his detective force, and played off Laverty as Booth, and Hoey as Harold. These two advanced to farm-houses and gave their assumed names, asking at the same time for assistance and shelter. They were generally avoided, except by one man named Claggert, who told them they might hide in the woods behind his house. When Claggert was arrested, however he stated that he meant to hide them only to give them up. While on this adventure, a man who had heard of the reward came very near shooting Laverty. The ruse now became hazardous and the detectives resumed their real characters.

I have not time to go into the detail of this long and excellent hunt. My letter of yesterday described how the detectives of Mr. Young and Marshal Murray examined the negro Swan, and traced Booth to the house of Sam Coxe, the richest rebel in Charles county. There is a gap in the evidence between the arrival of Booth at this place and his crossing the Potomac above Swan Point, in a stolen or purposely-provided canoe. But as Coxe's house is only ten miles from the river, it is possible that he made the passage of the intermediate country undiscovered.

One Mills, a rebel mail-carrier, also arrested, saw Booth and Harold lurking along the river bank on Friday; he referred Major O'Bierne to one Claggert, a rebel, as having seen them also; but Claggert held his tongue, and went to jail. On Saturday night, Major O'Bierne, thus assured, also crossed the Potomac with his detectives to Boon's farm, where the fugitives had landed. While collecting information here a gunboat swung up the stream, and threatened to fire on the party.

It was now night, and all the party worn to the ground with long travel and want of sleep. Lieutenant Laverty's men went a short distance down the country and gave up, but Major O'Bierne, with a single man, pushed all night to King George's court-house, and next day, Sunday, re-embarked for Chappell's Point. Hence he telegraphed his information, and asked permission to pursue, promising to catch the assassins before they reached Port Royal.

This the department refused. Colonel Baker's men were delegated to make the pursuit with the able Lieutenant Doherty, and. O'Bierne, who was the most active and successful spirit in the chase, returned to Washington, cheerful and contented.

At Mrs. Burratt's Washington house, at the Pennsylvania Hotel, Washington, and at Surrattsville, the Booth plot was almost entirely arranged. These three places will be relics of conspiracy forever.

Harold said to Lieutenant Doherty, after the latter had dragged him from the barn.

"Who's that man in there? It can't be Booth; he told me his name was
Loyd."


He further said that he had begged food for Booth from house to house while the latter hid in the woods.

The confederate captain, Willie Jett, who had given Booth a lift behind
his saddle from Port Royal to Garrett's farm, was then courting a Miss
Goldmann at Bowling Green; his traveling companions were Lieutenants
Ruggles and Burbridge.


Payne, the assassin of the Sewards, was arrested by Officers, Sampson, of the sub-treasury, and Devoe, acting under General Alcott. The latter had besides, Officers Marsh and Clancy (a stenographer).

The reward for the capture of Booth will be distributed between very many men. The negro, Swan, will get as much of it, as he deserves. It amounts to about eighty thousand dollars, but the War Department may increase it at discretion. The entire rewards amount to a hundred and sixty odd thousand. Major O'Bierne should get a large part of it as well.

This story which I must close abruptly, deserves to be re-written, with all its accessory endeavours. What I have said is in skeleton merely, and far from exhaustive.

COULDN'T LOCATE HIS BIRTHPLACE

While the celebrated artist, Hicks, was engaged in painting Mr. Lincoln's portrait, just after the former's first nomination for the Presidency, he asked the great statesman if he could point out the precise spot where he was born.
Lincoln thought the matter over for a day or two, and then gave the artist the following memorandum:
"Springfield, Ill., June 14, 1860
"I was born February 12, 1809, in then Hardin county, Kentucky, at a point within the now county of Larue, a mile or a mile and a half from where Rodgen's mill now is. My parents being dead, and my own memory not serving, I know no means of identifying the precise locality. It was on Nolen Creek.
"A. LINCOLN."

ONLY ONE LIFE TO LIVE

A young man living in Kentucky had been enticed into the rebel army. After a few months he became disgusted, and managed to make his way back home. Soon after his arrival, the Union officer in command of the military stationed in the town had him arrested as a rebel spy, and, after a military trial he was condemned to be hanged.
President Lincoln was seen by one of his friends from Kentucky, who explained his errand and asked for mercy. "Oh, yes, I understand; some one has been crying, and worked upon your feelings, and you have come here to work on mine."
His friend then went more into detail, and assured him of his belief in the truth of the story. After some deliberation, Mr. Lincoln, evidently scarcely more than half convinced, but still preferring to err on the side of mercy, replied:
"If a man had more than one life, I think a little hanging would not hurt this one; but after he is once dead we cannot bring him back, no matter how sorry we may be; so the boy shall be pardoned."
And a reprieve was given on the spot.

Killing Lincoln : The Life, Crime, Capture of the Killer - 5

A SOLUTION OF THE CONSPIRACY
Washington, May 2.

Justice and fame are equally and simultaneously satisfied. The President is not yet in his sarcophagus, but all the conspirators against his life, with a minor exception or two, are in their prison cells waiting for the halter.

The dark and bloody plot against a good ruler's life is now so fully unraveled that I may make it plain to you. There is nothing to be gained by further waiting; the trials are proceeding; the evidence is mountain high. Within a week the national scaffold will have done its work, and be laid away forever. This prompt and necessary justice will signal the last public assassination in America. Borgia, and Medici, and Brinvilliers, have left no descendants on this side of the world.

The conspiracy was both the greatest and the smallest of our cycle. Narrowed in execution to a few, it was understood and connived at by a multitude. One man was its head and heart; its accessories were so numerous that the trouble is not whom to suspect, but whom not accuse. Damning as the result must be to the character of our race, it must be admitted, in the light of facts, that Americans are as secretive and as skillful plotters as any people in the world. The Rye House plot, never fully understood; the many schemes of Mazzini, never fastened upon him sufficiently well for implication, yield in extent, darkness and intricacy, to the republican plot against the President's life and those of his counselors. The police operations prove that the late murder as not a spasmodic and fitful crime, but long premeditated, and carried to consummation with as much cohesion and resolution as the murder of Allessandro de Medici or Henri Quatre.

I have been accused of cannonizing Booth. Much as I denounce and deprecate his crime—holding him to be worthy of all execration, and so seeped in blood that the excuses of a century will fail to lift him out of the atmosphere of common felons—I still, at every new developement, stand farther back in surprise and terror at the wonderful resources and extraordinary influence of one whom I had learned to consider a mere Thespian, full of sound, fury, and assertion.

Strange and anomalous as the facts may seem, John Wilkes Booth was the sole projector of the plot against the President which culminated in the taking of that good man's life. He had rolled under his tongue the sweet paragraphs of Shakspeare refering to Brutus, as had his father so well, that the old man named one son Junius Brutus, and the other John Wilkes, after the wild English agitator, until it became his ambition, like the wicked Lorenzino de Medici, to stake his life upon one stroke for fame, the murder of a ruler obnoxious to the South.

That Wilkes Booth was a southern man from the first may be accounted for upon grounds, of interest as well as of sympathy. It is insidious to find no higher incentive than appreciation, but on the stage this is the first and last motive; and as Edwin Booth made his success in the North and remained steadfast, Wilkes Booth was most truly applauded in the South, and became rebel. A false emotion of gratitude, as well as an impulse of mingled waywardness and gratitude, set John Wilkes's face from the first toward the North, and he burned to make his name a part of history, cried into fame by the applauses of the South.

He hung to his bloody suggestion with dogged inflexibility, maintaining only one axiom above all the rest—that whatever minor parts might be enacted—Casca, Cassius, or what not—he was to be the dramatic Brutus, excepting that assassin's negativeness. In other words, the idea was to be his own, as well us the crowning blow.

Booth shrank at first from murder, until another and less dangerous resolution failed. This was no less than the capture of the President's body, and its detention or transportation to the South. I do not rely on this assertion upon his sealed letter, where he avows it; there has been found upon a street within the city limits, a house belonging to one Mrs. Greene; mined and furnished with underground apartments, manacles and all the accessories to private imprisonment. Here the President, and as many as could be gagged and conveyed away with him, were to be concealed in the event of failure to run them into the confederacy. Owing to his failure to group around him as many men as he desired, Booth abandoned the project of kidnapping; but the house was discovered last week, as represented, ready to be blown up at a moment's notice.

It was at this time that Booth devised his triumphant route through the South. The dramatic element seems to have been never lacking in his design, and with all his base purposes he never failed to consider some subsequent notoriety to be enjoyed. He therefore shipped, before the end of 1864, his theatrical wardrobe from Canada to Nassau. After the commission of his crime he intended to reclaim it, and "star" through the South, drawing money as much by his crime as his abilities.

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. His vanity found it easier to compound with the second alternative than the first.

Here began the first resolve, which, in its mere animal estate, we may name courage. Booth found that a tragedy in real life could no more be enacted without greasy-faced and knock-kneed supernumeraries than upon the mimic stage. Your "First Citizen," who swings a stave for Marc Antony, and drinks hard porter behind the flies is very like the bravo of real life, who murders between his cocktails at the nearest bar. Wilkes Booth had passed the ordeal of a garlicky green-room, and did not shrink from the broader and ranker green-room of real life. He assembled around him, one by one, the cut-throats at whom his soul would have revolted, except that he had become, by resolve, a cut-throat in himself.

About this time certain gentlemen in Canada began to be unenviably known. I abstain from giving their names, because unaware of how far they seconded this crime, if at all. But they seconded as infamous things, such as cowardly raids from neutral territory into the states, bank robbings, lake pirating, city burning, counterfeiting, railway sundering, and the importation of yellow fever into peaceful and unoffending communities. I make no charges against those whom I do not know, but simply say that the confederate agents, Jacob Tompson, Larry McDonald, Clement Clay, and some others, had already accomplished enough villainy to make Wilkes Booth, on the first of the present year, believe that he had but to seek an interview with them.

He visited the provinces once certainly, and three times it is believed, stopping in Montreal at St. Lawrence Hall, and banking four hundred and fifty-five dollars odd at the Ontario bank. This was his own money. I have myself seen his bank-book with the single entry of this amount. It was found in the room of Atzerott, at Kirkwood's Hotel. 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. So Beale took his, raiding on the great lakes. So Kennedy took his, on a midnight bonfire-tramp into the metropolis. So took the St. Albans raiders their lives in their palms, dashing into a peaceful town. And if these agents entertained Wilkes Booth's suggestion at all they plainly told him that he carried his life in his dagger's edge, and could expect from them neither aid nor exculpation.

Some one or all of these agents furnished Booth with a murderer. The fellow Wood or Payne, who stabbed Mr. Seward and was caught at Mrs. Surratt's house in Washington. He was one of three Kentucky brothers, all outlaws, and had himself, it is believed, accompanied one of his brothers, who is known to have been at St. Albans on the day of the bank-delivery. This Payne, besides being positively identified as the assassin of the Sewards, had no friends nor haunts in Washington. He was simply a dispatched murderer, and after the night of the crime, struck northward of the frontier, instead of southward in the company of Booth. The proof, of this will follow in the course of the article.

While I assert that the Canadian agents knew Booth and patted his back, calling him, like Macbeth, the "prince of cut-throats," I am equally certain that Booth's project was unknown in Richmond. No word, nor written line, no clue of any sort has been found attaching Booth to the confederate authorities. The most that can be urged to meet preposterous claims of this sort is, that out of the rebellion grew the murder; which is like attributing the measles to the creation of man. But McDonald and his party had money at discretion, and under their control the vilest fellows on the continent. Their personal influence over those errant ones amounted to omnipotence. Most of the latter were young and sanguine people, like Beale and Booth; their plots were made up at St. Catharine's, Toronto, and Montreal, and they have maintained since the war began, rebel mail routes between Canada and Richmond, leading directly passed Washington.

If Booth received no positive instructions, he was at any rate adjudged a man likely to be of use, and therefore introduced to the rebel agencies in and around Washington. Doubtless by direct letter, or verbal instruction, he received a password to the house of Mrs. Surratt.

Half applauded, half rebuffed by the rebel agents in Canada, Booth's impressions of his visit were just those which would whet him soonest for the tragedy. His vanity had been fed by the assurance that success depended upon himself alone, and that as he had the responsibility he would absorb the fame; and the method of correspondence was of that dark and mysterious shape which powerfully operated upon his dramatic temperament.

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 Cæsar 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. He had fought often on the boards, and seen men die in well-imitated horror, with flowing blood upon his keen sword's edge, and the strong stride of mimic victory with which he flourished his weapon at the closing of the curtain. He embraced conspiracy like an old diplomatist, and found in the woman and the spot subjects for emulation.

Southeast of Washington stretches a tapering peninsula, composed of four fertile counties, which at the remote tip make Point Lookout, and do not contain any town within them of more than a few hundred inhabitants. Tobacco has ruined the land of these, and slavery has ruined the people. Yet in the beginning they were of that splendid stock of Calvert and Lord Baltimore, but retain to-day only the religion of the peaceful founder. I mention it is an exceptional and remarkable fact, that every conspirator in custody is by education a Catholic. These are our most loyal citizens elsewhere, but the western shore of Maryland is a noxious and pestilential place for patriotism. The county immediately outside of the District of Columbia, to the south, is named Prince Gorgia's and the pleasantest village of this county, close to Washington, is called Surrattsville. This consists of a few cabins at a cross-road, surrounding a fine old hotel, the master whereof, giving the settlement his name, left the property to his wife, who for a long time carried it on with indifferent success. Having a son and several daughters, she moved to Washington soon after the beginning of the war and let the tavern to a trusty friend—one John Lloyd. Surrattsville has gained nothing in patronage or business from the war, except that it became at an early date, a rebel postoffice. The great secret mail from Matthias Creek, Virginia, to Port Tobacco, struck Surrattsville, and thence headed off to the east to Washington, going meanderingly north. Of this poet route Mrs. Surratt was a manageress; and John Lloyd, when he rented her hotel, assumed the responsibility of looking out for the mail, as well the duty of making Mrs. Surratt at home when she chose to visit him.

So Surrattsville only ten miles from Washington, has been throughout the war a sect of conspiracy. It was like a suburb of Richmond, reaching quite up to the rival capital; and though the few Unionists on the peninsula knew its reputation well enough, nothing of the sort came out until the murder.

Treason never found a better agent than Mrs. Surratt. She is a large, masculine, self-possessed female, mistress of her house, and as lithe a rebel as Belle Boyd or Mrs. Greenhough. She has not the flippantry and menace of the first, nor the social power of the second; but the rebellion has found no fitter agent.

At her country tavern and Washington home Booth was made welcome, and there began the muttered murder against the nation and mankind.

The acquaintance of Mrs. Surratt in Lower Maryland undoubtedly suggested to Booth the route of escape, and made him known to his subsequent accomplices. Last fall he visited the entire region, as far as Leonardstown, in St. Mary's county, professing to be in search of land but really hunting up confederates upon whom he could depend. At this time he bought a map, a fellow to which I have seen among Atzerott's effects, published at Buffalo for the rebel government, and marking at hap-hazard all the Maryland villages, but without tracing the highroads at all. The absence of these roads, it will be seen hereafter, very nearly misled Booth during his crippled flight.

It could not but have struck Booth that this isolated part of Maryland ignorant and rebel to the brim, without telegraph or railways, or direct stage routes, belted with swamps and broken by dense timber, afforded extraordinary opportunities for shelter and escape. Only the coast survey had any adequate map of it; it was ultima thule to all intents, and treason might subsist in welcome upon it for a thousand years.

When Booth cast around him for assistance, he naturally selected those men whom he could control. The first that recommended himself was one Harold, a youth of inane and plastic character, carried away by the example of an actor, and full of execrable quotations, going to show that he was an imitator of the master spirit both in text and admiration. This Harold was a gunner, and therefore versed in arms; he had traversed the whole lower portion of Maryland, and was therefore a geographer as well as a tool. His friends lived at every farmhouse between Washington and Leonardsville, and he was respectably enough connected, so as to make his association creditable as well as useful.

Harold, whose picture I have seen, is a dull-faced, shallow boy, smooth-haired, and provincial; he had no money nor employment, except that he clerked for a druggist a while, until he knew Wilkes Booth, who looked at him only once, and bought his soul for a smile. Harold was infatuated by Booth as a woman by a soldier. He copied his gait and tone, adopted his opinions, and was unhappy out of his society. Booth gave him money, mysteriously obtained, and together they made the acquaintance of young John Surratt, son of the conspiratress.

Young Surratt does not appear to have been a puissant spirit in the scheme; indeed, all design and influence therein was absorbed by Mrs. Surratt and Booth. The latter was the head and heart of the plot; Mrs. Surratt was his anchor, and the rest of the boys were disciples to Iscariot and Jezebel. John Surratt, a youth of strong Southern physiognomy, beardless and lanky, knew of the murder and connived at it. "Sam" Arnold and one McLaughlin were to have been parties to it, but backed out in the end. They all relied upon Mrs. Surratt, and took their "cues" from Wilkes Booth.

The conspiracy had its own time and kept its own counsel. Murder except among the principals, was seldom mentioned except by genteel implication. But they all publicly agreed that Mr. Lincoln ought to be shot, and that the North was a race of fratricides. Much was said of Brutus, and Booth repeated heroic passages to the delight of Harold, who learned them also, and wondered if he was not born to greatness.

In this growing darkness, where all rehearsed cold-hearted murder, Wilkes Booth grew great of stature. He had found a purpose consonant with his evil nature and bad influence over weak men; so he grew moodier, more vigilant, more plausible. By mien and temperament he was born to handle a stiletto. We have no face so markedly Italian; it would stand for Caesar Borgia any day in the year. All the rest were swayed or persuaded by Booth; his schemes were three in order:

1st. To kidnap the President and Cabinet, and run them South or blow them up.

2d. Kidnapping failed, to murder the President and the rest and seek shelter in the confederate capital.

3d. The rebellion failed, to be its avenger, and throw the country into consternation, while he escaped by the unfrequented parts of Maryland.

When this last resolution had been made, the plot was both contracted and extended. There were made two distinct circles of confidants—those aware of the meditated murder, and those who might shrink from murder, though willing accessories for a lesser object. Two colleagues for blood were at once accepted—Payne and Atzerott.

The former I have sketched; he is believed to have visited Washington once before, at Booth's citation; for the murder was at first fixed for the day of inauguration. Atzerott was a fellow of German descent, who had led a desperate life at Port Tobacco, where he was a house-painter. He had been a blockade-runner across the Potomac, and a mail-carrier. When Booth and Mrs. Surratt broke the design to him, with a suggestion that there was wealth in it, he embraced the offer at once, and bought a dirk and pistol. Payne also came from the North to Washington, and, as fate would have it, the President was announced to appear at Ford's theater in public. There the resolve of blood was reduced to a definite moment.

On the night before the crime Booth found on whom he could rely. John Surratt was sent northward by his mother on Thursday. Sam Arnold and McLaughlin, each of whom was to kill a cabinet officer, grew pigeon-livered and ran away. Harold true to his partiality, lingered around Booth to the end; Atzerott went so far as to take his knife and pistol to Kirkwood's, where President Johnson was stopping, and hid them under the bed. But either his courage failed, or a trifling accident deranged his plan. But Payne, a professional murderer, stood "game," and fought his way over prostrate figures to his sick victim's bed. There was great confusion and terror among the tacit and rash conspirators on Thursday night. They had looked upon the plot as of a melodrama, and found to their horror that John Wilkes Booth meant to do murder.

Six weeks before the murder, young John Surratt had taken two splendid repeating carbines to Surrattville and told John Lloyd to secret them.

The latter made a hole in the wainscotting and suspended them from strings, so that they fell within the plastered wall of the room below. On the very afternoon of the murder, Mrs. Surratt was driven to Surrattsville, and she told John Lloyd to have the carbines ready because they would be called for that night. Harold was made quartermaster, and hired the horses. He and Atzerott were mounted between 8 o'clock and the time of the murder, and riding about the streets together.

The whole party was prepared for a long ride, as their spurs and gauntlets show. It may have been their design to ride in company to the Lower Potomac, and by their numbers exact subsistence and transportation; but all edifices of murder lack a corner stone. We only know that Booth ate and talked well during the day; that he never seemed so deeply involved in 'oil,' and that there is a hiatus between his supper here and his appearance at Ford's theater.

Lloyd, I may interpolate, ordered his wife a few days before the murder to go on a visit to Allen's Fresh. She says she does not know why she was so sent away, but swears that it is so. Harold, three weeks before the murder, visited Port Tobacco, and said that the next time the boys heard of him he would be in Spain; he added that with Spain there was no extradition treaty. He said at Surrattsville that he meant to make a barrel of money, or his neck would stretch.

Atzerott said that if he ever came to Port Tobacco again he would be rich enough to buy the whole place.

Wilkes Booth told a friend to go to Ford's on Friday night and see the best acting in the world.

At Ford's theater, on Friday night, there were many standers in the neighborhood of the door, and along the dress circle in the direction of the private box where the President sat.

The play went on pleasantly, though Mr. Wilkes Booth an observer of the audience, visited the stage and took note of the positions. His alleged associate, the stage carpenter, then received quiet orders to clear the passage by the wings from the prompter's post to the stage door. All this time, Mr. Lincoln, in his family circle, unconscious of the death that crowded fast upon him, watched the pleasantry and smiled and felt heartful of gentleness.

Suddenly there was a murmur near the audience door, as of a man speaking above his bound. He said:

"Nine o'clock and forty-five minutes!"

These words were reiterated from mouth to mouth until they passed the theater door, and were heard upon the sidewalk.

Directly a voice cried, in the same slightly-raised monotone:

"Nine o'clock and fifty minutes!"

This also passed from man to man, until it touched the street like a shudder.

"Nine o'clock and fifty-five minutes!" said the same relentless voice, after the next interval, each of which narrowed to a lesser span the life of the good President.

Ten o'clock here sounded, and conspiring echo said in reverberation:

"Ten o'clock!"

So like a creeping thing, from lip to lip, went:

"Ten o'clock and five minutes."

(An interval.)

"Ten o'clock and ten minutes!"

At this instant Wilkes Booth appeared in the door of the theater, and the men who had repeated the time so faithfully and so ominously scattered at his coming, as at some warning phantom. Fifteen minutes afterwards the telegraph wires were cut.

All this is so dramatic that I fear to excite a laugh when I write it.
But it is true and proven, and I do not say it but report it.


All evil deeds go wrong. While the click of the pistol, taking the President's life, went like a pang through the theater, Payne was spilling blood in Mr. Seward's house from threshold to sick chamber. But Booth's broken leg delayed him or made him lose his general calmness and he and Harold left Payne no to his fate.

I have not adverted to the hole bored with a gimlet in the entry door of Mr. Lincoln's box, and cut out with a penknife. The theory that the pistol-ball of Booth passed through this hole is exploded. And the stage carpenter may have to answer for this little orifice with all his neck. For when Booth leaped from the box he strode straight across the stage by the footlights, reaching the prompter's post, which is immediately behind that private box opposite Mr. Lincoln. From this box to the stage door in the rear, the passage-way leads behind the ends of the scenes, and if generally either closest up by one or more withdrawn scenes, or so narrow that only by doubling and turning sidewise can one pass along. On this fearful night, however, the scenes were so adjusted to the murderer's design that he had a free aisle from the foot of the stage to the exit door.

Within fifteen minutes after the murder the wires were severed entirely around the city, excepting only a secret wire for government uses, which leads to Old Point. I am told that by this wire the government reached the fortifications around Washington, first telegraphing all the way to Old Point, and then back to the outlying forts. This information comes to me from so many creditable channels that I must concede it.

Payne, having, as he thought, made an end of Mr. Seward—which would have been the case but for Robinson, the nurse—mounted his horse, and attempted to find. Booth. But the town was in alarm, and he galloped at once for the open country, taking as he imagined, the proper road for the East Branch. He rode at a killing pace, and when near Fort Lincoln, on the Baltimore pike, his horse threw him headlong. Afoot and bewildered, he resolved to return to the city, whose lights he could plainly see; but before doing so ho concealed himself some time, and made some almost absurd efforts to disguise himself. Cutting a cross section from the woolen undershirt which covered his muscular arm, he made a rude cap of it, and threw away his bloody coat. This has since been found in the woods, and blood has been found also on his bosom and sleeves. He also spattered himself plentifully with mud and clay, and, taking an abandoned pick from the deserted intrenchments near by, he struck at once for Washington.

By the providence which always attends murder, he reached Mrs. Surratt's door just as the officers of the government were arresting her. They seized Payne at once, who had an awkward lie to urge in his defense—that he had come there to dig a trench. That night he dug a trench deep and broad enough for both of them to lie in forever. They washed his hands, and found them soft and womanish; his pockets contained tooth and nail brushes and a delicate pocket knife. All this apparel consorted ill with his assumed character. He is, without doubt, Mr. Seward's attempted murderer.

Coarse, and hard, and calm, Mrs. Surratt shut up her house after the murder, and waited with her daughters till the officers came. She was imperturbable, and rebuked her girls for weeping, and would have gone to jail like a statue, but that in her extremity, Payne knocked at her door. He had come, he said, to dig a ditch for Mrs. Surratt, whom he very well knew. But Mrs. Surratt protested that she had ever seen the man at all, and had no ditch to clean.

"How fortunate, girls," she said, "that these officers are here; this man might have murdered us all."

Her effrontery stamps her as worthy of companionship with Booth. Payne has been identified by a lodger of Mrs. Surratt's, as having twice visited the house under the name of Wood. The girls will render valuable testimony in the trial. If John Surratt were in custody the links would be complete.

Atzerott had a room almost directly over Vice-President Johnson's. He had all the materials to do murder, but lost spirit or opportunity. He ran away so hastily that all his arms and baggage were discovered; a tremendous bowie-knife and a Colt's cavalry revolver were found between the mattresses of his bed. Booth's coat was also found there, showing conspired flight in company, and in it three boxes of cartridges, a map of Maryland, gauntlet for riding, a spur and a handkerchief marked with the name of Booth's mother—a mother's souvenir for a murderer's pocket!

Atzerott fled alone, and was found at the house of his uncle in Montgomery county. I do not know that any instrument of murder has ever made me thrill as when I drew this terrible bowie-knife from its sheath. Major O'Bierne, of New-York, was the instigator of Atzerott's discovery and arrest.

I come now to the ride out of the city by the chief assassin and his dupe. Harold met Booth immediately after the crime in the next street, and they rode at a gallop past the Patent Office and over Capitol Hill.

As they crossed the Eastern branch at Uniontown, Booth gave his proper name to the officer at the bridge. This, which would seem to have been foolish, was, in reality, very shrewd. The officers believed that one of Booth's accomplices had given this name in order to put them out of the real Booth's track. So they made efforts elsewhere, and so Booth got a start. At midnight, precisely, the two horsemen stopped at Surrattsville, Booth remaining on his nag while Harold descended and knocked lustily at the door. Lloyd, the landlord, came down at once, when Harold pushed past him into the bar, and obtained a bottle of whiskey, some of which he gave to Booth immediately. While Booth was drinking, Harold went up stairs and brought down one of the carbines. Lloyd started to get the other, but Harold said:

"We don't want it; Booth has broken his leg and can't carry it."

So the second carbine remained in the hall, where the officers afterward found it.

As the two horsemen started to go off, Booth cried out to Lloyd:

"Do you want to hear some news?"

"I don't care much about it," cried Lloyd, by his own account.

"We have murdered," said Booth, "the President and Secretary of State!"

And with this horrible confession, Booth and Harold dashed away in the midnight, across Prince George's county.

On Saturday, before sunrise, Booth and Harold, who had ridden all night without stopping elsewhere, reached the house of Dr. Mudd, three miles from Bryantown. They contracted with him for twenty-five dollars in greenbacks to set the broken leg. Harold, who knew Dr. Mudd, introduced Booth under another name, and stated that he had fallen from his horse during the night. The doctor remarked of Booth that he draped the lower part of his face while the leg was being set; he was silent, and in pain. Having no splits in the house, they split up an old-fashioned wooden band-box and prepared them. The doctor was assisted by an Englishman, who at the same time began to hew out a pair of crutches. The inferior bone of the left leg was broken vertically across, and because vertically it did not yield when the crippled man walked upon it.

The riding boot of Booth had to be cut from his foot; within were the words "J. Wilkes." The doctor says he did not notice these, but that visual defect may cost him his neck. The two men waited around the house all day, but toward evening they slipped their horses from the stable and rode away in the direction of Allen's Fresh.

Below Bryantown run certain deep and slimy swamps, along the belt of these Booth and Harold picked up a negro named Swan, who volunteered to show them the road for two dollars; they gave him five more to show them the route to Allen's Fresh, but really wished, as their actions intimated, to gain the house of one Sam. Coxe, a notorious rebel, and probably well advised of the plot. They reached the house at midnight. It is a fine dwelling, one of the best in Maryland. And after hallooing for some time, Coxe came down to the door himself. As soon as he opened it and beheld who the strangers were, he instantly blew out a candle he held in his hand, and without a word pulled them into the house, the negro remaining in the yard. The confederates remained in Coxe's house till 4 A. M., during which time, the negro saw them drink and eat heartily; but when they reappeared they spoke in a loud tone, so that Swan could hear them, against the hospitality of Coxe. All this was meant to influence the darkey; but their motives were as apparent as their words. He conducted them three miles further on, when they told him that now they knew the way, and giving him five dollars more—making twelve in all—told him to go back.

But when the negro, in the dusk of the morning, looked after them as he receded, he saw that both horses' heads were turned once more toward Coxe's, and it was this man, doubtless, who harbored the fugitives from Sunday to Thursday, aided, possibly, by such neighbors as the Wilsons and Adamses.

At the point where Booth crossed the Potomac the shores are very shallow, and one must wade out some distance to where a boat will float. A white man came up here with a canoe on Friday, and tied it by a stone anchor. Between seven and eight o'clock it disappeared, and in the afternoon some men at work in Virginia, saw Booth and Harold land, tie the boat's rope to a stone, and fling it ashore, and strike at once across a ploughed field for King George Court House. Many folks entertained them without doubt, but we positively hear of them next at Port Royal Ferry, and then at Garrett's farm.

NIAGARA FALLS - written by Abraham Lincoln

The following article on Niagara Falls, in Mr. Lincoln's handwriting, was found among his papers after his death:

"Niagara Falls! By what mysterious power is it that millions and millions are drawn from all parts of the world to gaze upon Niagara Falls? There is no mystery about the thing itself. Every effect is just as any intelligent man, knowing the causes, would anticipate without seeing it. If the water moving onward in a great river reaches a point where there is a perpendicular jog of a hundred feet in descent in the bottom of the river, it is plain the water will have a violent and continuous plunge at that point. It is also plain, the water, thus plunging, will foam and roar, and send up a mist continuously, in which last, during sunshine, there will be perpetual rainbows. The mere physical of Niagara Falls is only this.

Yet this is really a very small part of that world's wonder. Its power to excite reflection and emotion is its great charm. The geologist will demonstrate that the plunge, or fall, was once at Lake Ontario, and has worn its way back to its present position; he will ascertain how fast it is wearing now, and so get a basis for determining how long it has been wearing back from Lake Ontario, and finally demonstrate by it that this world is at least fourteen thousand years old. A philosopher of a slightly different turn will say, 'Niagara Falls is only the lip of the basin out of which pours all the surplus water which rains down on two or three hundred thousand square miles of the earth's surface.' He will estimate with approximate accuracy that five hundred thousand tons of water fall with their full weight a distance of a hundred feet each minute—thus exerting a force equal to the lifting of the same weight, through the same space, in the same time.

"But still there is more. It calls up the indefinite past. When Columbus first sought this continent—when Christ suffered on the cross—when Moses led Israel through the Red Sea—nay, even when Adam first came from the hand of his Maker; then, as now, Niagara was roaring here. The eyes of that species of extinct giants whose bones fill the mounds of America have gazed on Niagara, as ours do now. Contemporary with the first race of men, and older than the first man, Niagara is strong and fresh to-day as ten thousand years ago. The Mammoth and Mastodon, so long dead that fragments of their monstrous bones alone testify that they ever lived, have gazed on Niagara—in that long, long time never still for a single moment (never dried), never froze, never slept, never rested."