On the Track of Assassin John Wilkes Booth

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On the Track of Assassin John Wilkes Booth
A Washington, D.C.-area crime-and-history tour.

By Robert Allen


	The President's Box in Ford's theatre has been restored to look as it did on April 14, 1865—the night Booth assassinated Lincoln.

There's a high bluff near Pope's Creek. A windswept spot, it sits on the Maryland side of the Potomac River. When I go there and look down at the water, I think of something others usually don't. Down below, John Wilkes Booth, President Abraham Lincoln's killer, secretly crossed over into Virginia the night of April 20, 1865—six days after committing the crime for which he'll always be remembered and not far ahead of what was once the largest manhunt on record.

Today, history organizations—most notably the Smithsonian and the Maryland-based Surratt Society—offer all-day bus tours that put the curious on Booth's trail, the flight that followed America's most spectacular murder. The buses take history fans to spots around the D.C. area like this one beside the Potomac. Entertaining as well as educational, the day trips are so popular they are perpetual sell-outs.

"I hoped for no private gain. I knew no private wrong. I struck for my country and that alone."

If you're interested, you don't have to wait for the bus. Responding to public demand, the Surratt Society and others now publish detailed maps and guidebooks allowing Historic Travelers to lay out automobile "escape route tours" of their own. Starting at the "scene of the crime"—Ford's Theater in downtown Washington, D.C.—they're steered through southern Maryland and northeast Virginia and reacquainted with a story many young people have never heard and others have forgotten.

Years ago, junior high and grade school history books vivified the basic facts of the Lincoln assassination for most of us. It was the end of the Civil War, the night of Good Friday, April 14th, 1865, just five days after Confederate General Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox. The 16th President was murdered at Ford's Theater by Booth, a popular 26-year-old Maryland-born actor, a man who had become a Southern rights fanatic and rogue Confederate agent.

Many of us also read about Mudd, the unlucky Maryland doctor accused of helping Booth flee justice, and of several others punished for having a hand in the crime. But rarely did anybody hear details of Booth's 12-day run from the law, how Rebel agents and Southern sympathizers passed him around like a hot potato, how he made it across the Potomac or how he died outside a Virginia tobacco barn. Now, taking the bus tour or a car tour of your own, America's longest running murder mystery is brought to an interesting finish.

Ford's Theater still stands at 511 10th St., N.W., in Washington. It has been restored by the National Park Service and is occasionally used for performances. But most days of the week it's filled with visitors who come to hear Rangers give scheduled lectures on the assassination and to look at the spot where the deed was done. In the basement is a visitors center. There on display is Booth's pocket diary—a 19th-century "day minder." During his flight he made notes in it, justifying what he'd done and moaning about his circumstances.

"I struck boldly, and not as the papers say," Booth wrote in it after reading newspaper accounts depicting him as a coward. "I walked with a firm step through a thousand of his friends; was stopped but pushed on...I hoped for no private gain. I knew no private wrong. I struck for my country and that alone."

The President's Box at Ford's, where Booth used a .44 caliber derringer to dispatch Lincoln, is restored to look as it did April 14, 1865. It's trimmed with several American flags, bunting and a portrait of George Washington. The night of the crime, around 10:15, Booth charmed his way past Lincoln's valet Charles Forbes, entered the narrow corridor leading to the unguarded box and shot the President in the back of the head. After using a hunting knife to cut up Major Henry Rathbone, another box occupant, he leapt to the stage, interrupting a performance of the hackneyed English comedy "Our American Cousin." Any other time, the 12-foot jump would have been a routine theater stunt for the lithe, acrobatic actor. That night, it ended with Booth fracturing his shin bone.

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Bob Allen, a freelance journalist and author, frequently narrates the Surratt society's 12-hour bus tours of the escape route and is working on a book on John Wilkes Booth.