Related Guides

Popular Cities in District of Columbia

Online Favorites

Travel Resources

ShoulderSeason

Special Issues

Photo Galleries

Screensavers
share this article del.icio.us DIGG Facebook StumbleUpon

From Primedia Publications
Page:
1 2 3 

On the Track of Assassin John Wilkes Booth (cont.)
The great escape comes to a fatal end.
After leaving Mudd's, Booth and Herold quickly got lost in the murky Zekiah Swamp, a spot that attracted escaped Confederate prisoners and other wartime desperados. Sometime around midnight, April 15th-16th, they ended up at Rich Hill, the home of Samuel Cox. The old Cox place, now a private residence, is southwest of Bryantown off Route 301, near the community of Bel Alton. Cox was an influential and staunchly pro-Southern Charles County resident. He sent Booth and Herold to a nearby pine thicket where they hid for days, waiting on help from Cox's foster brother Thomas A. Jones, a Confederate agent and blockade runner. It would be Jones who would provide the rowboat that carried them across the Potomac below the bluffs near Pope's Creek, a spot called Dent's Meadow.

Herold mistakenly rowed the boat Jones gave them north up the mouth of Nanjemoy Creek, still Maryland territory, landing them near the home of a Colonel John Hughes. It took them another day of hiding and another night of paddling to reach Virginia where they hoped to cross paths with sympathetic ex-Confederates. But sympathy, help, and luck were in short supply.



He ranted for two hours, saying, among other things, "Tell Mother I died for my country."
The end came for Booth the night of April 26, just a few days short of his 27th birthday. Hiding with Herold in a tobacco barn on the farm of a Richard Garrett—south of the Rappahannock River and the picturesque town of Port Royal, some 70 modern road miles from Ford's Theater—they were surrounded by troops of the 16th New York Cavalry. Herold came out and surrendered. Booth did not. The troopers, under orders to take the killer alive, set the barn afire, hoping to drive him out. Then a shot was heard. Cavalrymen dragged Booth's body from the barn and laid it on the porch of the Garrett farmhouse. One soldier, Boston Corbett, confessed to violating orders and gunning down Booth through a crack in the barn wall.

The bullet passed through Booth's neck, paralyzing him. Lying on Garrett's porch, he asked soldiers to hold up his hands so he could see them. He ranted for two hours, saying, among other things "Tell Mother I died for my country." Then he passed away, taking with him answers to a lot of fascinating questions. A marker along the northbound lane of U.S. Route 301, about three miles south of Bowling Green, Virginia, recalls what happened on the Garrett place, but the farm itself is gone.

A few more places figure into the story of the assassination and what happened to Booth and his co-conspirators. One is across the street from Ford's Theater. The Petersen House at 516 10th Street, N.W., is where Lincoln was carried after the shooting and where he died. It's maintained by the National Park Service and open to the public. Another is the site of a boarding house owned by Mary Surratt, the woman who also owned the tavern where Booth and Herold stopped on their flight out of town.

Mary Surratt's boarding house stands at 604 H Street, N.W., and is now a restaurant. But in the days leading up to the assassination, it was one place the conspirators met. Both Mrs. Surratt and Lewis Powell, Secretary of State Seward's assailant, were arrested there the night of April 17. Both ended up in Washington's old Arsenal penitentiary, as did everyone charged with having a part in the Lincoln murder plot—including Booth.

The Arsenal stood at the corner of 4th and P Street, S.W., in Washington. Immediately after an autopsy, Booth was secretly buried there under the exercise yard. Herold, Mrs. Surratt and Powell were taken there after their arrests, as were men named George Atzerodt, Samuel Arnold, Michael O'Laughlin, Edman Spangler, and, later, Dr. Mudd. All were tried there, in a third-floor room, by a nine-member military commission. All were convicted. Mrs. Surratt, Powell, Herold, and Atzerodt—charged, as part of the plot, with intending to murder Vice President Andrew Johnson—were hanged in the exercise yard July 7, 1865. The others—charged with aiding and abetting the rest—were given hard prison terms.

Three of the incarcerated men survived their sentencing. O'Laughlin died in prison, but Spangler, Arnold, and Mudd were pardoned by then President Andrew Johnson in 1869. Mudd, the best remembered, returned to the farm kept up today by his descendant Louise Arehart and tried to shun publicity. But the Arsenal, like the Garrett Farm, the scene of so much misery, went the way of all things. By bits, it was partially destroyed by fires and accidents through the late 19th century. Today, just one of its buildings remains. Sitting at the southern tip of what is now called Fort McNair, it's an officers quarters—said by some to be haunted by the spirit of hanged Mary Surratt.

It's been more than 130 years since America was stunned by the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. But the killing's place in history—as the first murder of a President - and its place in the annals of American crime—as the only Presidential assassination to-date conclusively proven to be the result of a plot involving many people—makes it a subject that's attracted mystery buffs and history lovers for decades. For these reasons it has continued to raise controversies, has generated more than a dozen interesting books and several bad movies, and is responsible for creating one of the few historical tours where even the most experienced guides will confess: both the story and the ride raise as many questions as they answer.
Page:
1 2 3 

Sponsored Results