Life, Crime, and Capture of John Wilkes Booth — The Assassin's Death (2)

In the interim Conger had also entered, and while the household and its invaders were thus in weird tableaux, a young man appeared, as if he had risen from the ground.

The muzzles of everybody turned upon him in a second; but, while he blanched, he did not lose loquacity.

"Father," he said, "we had better tell the truth about the matter.

Those men whom you seek, gentlemen, are in the barn, I know.

They went there to sleep."

Leaving one soldier to guard the old man--and the soldier was very glad of the job, as it relieved him of personal hazard in the approaching combat--all the rest, with cocked pistols at the young man's head, followed on to the barn.

It lay a hundred yards from the house, the front barndoor facing the west gable, and was an old and spacious structure, with floors only a trifle above the ground level.

The troops dismounted, were stationed at regular intervals around it, and ten yards distant at every point, four special guards placed to command the door and all with weapons in supple preparation, while Baker and Conger went direct to the portal.

It had a padlock upon it, and the key of this Baker secured at once.

In the interval of silence that ensued, the rustling of planks and straw was heard inside, as of persons rising from sleep.

At the same moment Baker hailed: "To the persons in this barn.

I have a proposal to make; we are about to send in to you the son of the man in whose custody you are found.

Either surrender to him your arms and then give yourselves up, or we'll set fire to the place.

We mean to take you both, or to have a bonfire and a shooting match."

No answer came to this of any kind.

The lad, John M. Garrett, who was in deadly fear, was here pushed through the door by a sudden opening of it, and immediately Lieutenant Baker locked the door on the outside.

The boy was heard to state his appeal in under tone.

Booth replied: "Damn you.

Get out of here.

You have betrayed me."

At the same time he placed his hand in his pocket as for a pistol.

A

remonstrance followed, but the boy slipped quickly over the reopened portal, reporting that his errand had failed, and that he dared not enter again.

All this time the candle brought from the house to the barn was burning close beside the two detectives, rendering it easy for any one within to have shot them dead.

This observed, the light was cautiously removed, and everybody took care to keep out of its reflection.

By this time the crisis of the position was at hand, the cavalry exhibited very variable inclinations, some to run away, others to shoot Booth without a summons, but all excited and fitfully silent.

At the house near by the female folks were seen collected in the doorway, and the necessities of the case provoked prompt conclusions.

The boy was placed at a remote point, and the summons repeated by Baker: "You must surrender inside there.

Give up your arms and appear.

There is no chance for escape.

We give you five minutes to make up your mind."

A bold, clarion reply came from within, so strong as to be heard at the house door: "Who are you, and what do you want with us?"

Baker again urged: "We want you to deliver up your arms and become our prisoners."

"But who are you?"

hallooed the same strong voice.

Baker.

--"That makes no difference.

We know who you are, and we want you.

We have here fifty men, armed with carbines and pistols.

You cannot escape."

There was a long pause, and then Booth said: "Captain, this is a hard case, I swear.

Perhaps I am being taken by my own friends."

No reply from the detectives.

Booth--"Well, give us a little time to consider."

[Illustration: Garrett's House, Where Booth Died--Sketched by W. N.

Walton, for "Harper's Weekly" for May 30th, 1865] Baker--"Very well.

Take time."

Here ensued a long and eventful pause.

What thronging memories it brought to Booth, we can only guess.

In this little interval he made the resolve to die.

But he was cool and steady to the end.

Baker, after a lapse, hailed for the last time.

"Well, we have waited long enough; surrender your arms and come out, or we'll fire the barn."

Booth answered thus: "I am but a cripple, a one-legged man.

Withdraw your forces one hundred yard from the door, and I will come.

Give me a chance for my life, captain.

I will never be taken alive."

Baker--"We did not come here to fight, but to capture you.

I say again, appear, or the barn shall be fired."

Then with a long breath, which could be heard outside, Booth cried in sudden calmness, still invisible, as were to him his enemies: "Well, then, my brave boys, prepare a stretcher for me."

There was a pause repeated, broken by low discussions within between Booth and his associate, the former saying, as if in answer to some remonstrance or appeal, "Get away from me.

You are a damned coward, and mean to leave me in my distress; but go, go.

I don't want you to stay.

I

won't have _you_ stay."

Then he shouted aloud: "There's a man inside who wants to surrender."

Baker--"Let him come, if he will bring his arms."

Here Harold, rattling at the door, said: "Let me out; open the door; I want to surrender."

Baker--"Hand out your arms, then."

Harold--"I have not got any."

Baker--"You are the man that carried the carbine yesterday; bring it out."

Harold--"I haven't got any."

This was said in a whining tone, and with an almost visible shiver.

Booth cried aloud, at this hesitation: "He hasn't got any arms; they are mine, and I have kept them."

Baker--"Well, he carried the carbine, and must bring it out."

Booth--"On the word and honor of a gentleman, he has no arms with him.

They are mine, and I have got them."

At this time Harold was quite up to the door, within whispering distance of Baker.

The latter told him to put out his hands to be handcuffed, at the same time drawing open the door a little distance.

Harold thrust forth his hands, when Baker, seizing him, jerked him into the night, and straightway delivered him over to a deputation of cavalrymen.

The fellow began to talk of his innocence and plead so noisily that Conger threatened to gag him unless he ceased.

Then Booth made his last appeal, in the same clear unbroken voice: "Captain, give me a chance.

Draw off your men and I will fight them singly.

I could have killed you six times to-night, but I believe you to be a brave man, and would not murder you.

Give a lame man a show."

It was too late for parley.

All this time Booth's voice had sounded from the middle of the barn.

Ere he ceased speaking, Colonel Conger, slipping around to the rear, drew some loose straws through a crack, and lit a match upon them.

They were dry and blazed up in an instant, carrying a sheet of smoke and flame through the parted planks, and heaving in a twinkling a world of light and heat upon the magazine within.

The blaze lit up the black recesses of the great barn till every wasp's nest and cobweb in the roof was luminous, flinging streaks of red and violet across the tumbled farm gear in the corner, plows, harrows, hoes, rakes, sugar mills, and making every separate grain in the high bin adjacent, gleam like a mote of precious gold.

They tinged the beams, the upright columns, the barricades, where clover and timothy, piled high, held toward the hot incendiary their separate straws for the funeral pile.

They bathed the murderer's retreat in beautiful illumination, and while in bold outline his figure stood revealed, they rose like an impenetrable wall to guard from sight the hated enemy who lit them.

Behind the blaze, with his eye to a crack, Conger saw Wilkes Booth standing upright upon a crutch.

He likens him at this instant to his brother Edwin, whom he says he so much resembled that he half believed, for the moment the whole pursuit to have been a mistake.

At the gleam of the fire Wilkes dropped his crutch, and, carbine in both hands, crept up to the spot to espy the incendiary and shoot him dead.

His eyes were lustrous like fever, and swelled and rolled in terrible beauty, while his teeth were fixed, and he wore the expression of one in the calmness before frenzy.

In vain he peered with vengeance in his look; the blaze that made him visible concealed his enemy.

A second he turned glaring at the fire, as if to leap upon it and extinguish it, but it had made such headway that this was a futile impulse and he dismissed it.

As calmly as upon the battlefield a veteran stands amidst the hail of ball and shell, and plunging iron, Booth turned at a man's stride, and pushed for the door, carbine in poise, and the last resolve of death, which we name despair, set on his high, bloodless forehead.

As so he dashed, intent to expire not unaccompanied, a disobedient sergeant at an eye-hole drew upon him the fatal bead.

The barn was all glorious with conflagration and in the beautiful ruin this outlawed man strode like all that, we know of wicked valor, stern in the face of death.

A shock, a shout, a gathering up of his splendid figure as if to overtip the stature God gave him, and John Wilkes Booth fell headlong to the floor, lying there in a heap, a little life remaining.

"He has shot himself!"

cried Baker, unaware of the source of the report, and rushing in, he grasped his arms to guard against any feint or strategy.

A moment convinced him that further struggle with the prone flesh was useless.

Booth did not move, nor breathe, nor gasp.

Conger and two sergeants now entered, and taking up the body, they bore it in haste from the advancing flame, and laid it without upon the grass, all fresh with heavenly dew.

"Water," cried Conger, "bring water."

When this was dashed into his face, he revived a moment and stirred his lips.

Baker put his ear close down, and heard him say: "Tell mother--and die--for my country."

They lifted him again, the fire encroaching in hotness upon them and placed him on the porch before the dwelling.

A mattrass was brought down, on which they placed him and propped his head, and gave him water and brandy.

The women of the household, joined meantime by another son, who had been found in one of the corn cribs, watching as he said, to see that Booth and Harold did not steal the horses, were nervous, but prompt to do the dying man all kindnesses, although waived sternly back by the detectives.

They dipped a rag in brandy and water, and this being put between Booth's teeth he sucked it greedily.

When he was able to articulate again, he muttered to Mr. Baker the same words, with an addenda.

"Tell mother I died for my country.

I

thought I did for the best."

Baker repeated this, saying at the same time "Booth, do I repeat it correctly."

Booth nodded his head.

By this time the grayness of dawn was approaching; moving figures inquisitively coming near were to be seen distinctly, and the cocks began to crow gutturally, though the barn was a hulk of blaze and ashes, sending toward the zenith a spiral line of dense smoke.

The women became importunate that the troops might be ordered to extinguish the fire, which was spreading toward their precious corn-cribs.

Not even death could banish the call of interest.

Soldiers were sent to put out the fire, and Booth, relieved of the bustle around him, drew near to death apace.

Twice he was heard to say, "kill me, kill me."

His lips often moved but could complete no appreciable sound.

He made once a motion which the quick eye of Conger understood to mean that his throat pained him.

Conger put his finger there, when the dying man attempted to cough, but only caused the blood at his perforated neck to flow more, lively.

He bled very little, although shot quite through, beneath and behind the ears, his collar being severed on both sides.

A soldier had been meanwhile despatched for a doctor, but the route and return were quite six miles, and the sinner was sinking fast.

Still the women made efforts to get to see him, but were always rebuffed, and all the brandy they could find was demanded by the assassin, who motioned for strong drink every two minutes.

He made frequent desires to be turned over, not by speech, but by gesture, and was alternately placed upon his back, belly and side.

His tremendous vitality evidenced itself almost miraculously.

Now and then, his heart would cease to throb, and his pulses would be as cold as a dead man's. Directly life would begin anew, the face would flush up effulgently, the eyes open and brighten, and soon relapsing, stillness re-asserted, would again be dispossessed by the same magnificent triumph of man over mortality.

Finally the fussy little doctor arrived, in time to be useless.

He probed the wound to see if the ball were not in it, and shook his head sagely, and talked learnedly.

Just at his coming Booth had asked to have his hands raised and shown him.

They were so paralyzed that he did not know their location.

When they were displayed he muttered, with a sad lethargy, "Useless, useless."

These were the last words he ever uttered.

As he began to die the sun rose and threw beams into all the tree-tops.

It was of a man's height when the struggle of death twitched and fingered in the fading bravo's face.

His jaw drew spasmodically and obliquely downward; his eyeballs rolled to-ward his feet, and began to swell; lividness, like a horrible shadow, fastened upon him, and, with a sort of gurgle and sudden check, he stretched his feet and threw his head back and gave up the ghost.

They sewed him up in a saddle blanket.

This was his shroud; too like a soldier's. Harold, meantime, had been tied to a tree, but was now released for the march.

Colonel Conger pushed on immediately for Washington; the cortege was to follow.

Booth's only arms were his carbine knife, and two revolvers.

They found about him bills of exchange, Canada money, and a diary.

A venerable old negro living in the vicinity had the misfortune to possess a horse.

This horse was a relic of former generations, and showed by his protruding ribs the general leanness of the land.

He moved in an eccentric amble, and when put upon his speed was generally run backward.

To this old negro's horse was harnessed a very shaky and absurd wagon, which rattled like approaching dissolution, and each part of it ran without any connection or correspondence with any other part.

It had no tail-board, and its shafts were sharp as famine; and into this mimicry of a vehicle the murderer was to be sent to the Potomac river, while the man he had murdered was moving in state across the mourning continent.

The old negro geared up his wagon by means of a set of fossil harness, and when it was backed to Garrett's porch, they laid within it the discolored corpse.

The corpse was tied with ropes around the legs and made fast to the wagon sides.

Harold's legs were tied to stirrups, and he was placed in the centre of four murderous looking cavalrymen.

The two sons of Garrett were also taken along, despite the sobs and petitions of the old folks and women, but the rebel captain who had given Booth a lift, got off amidst the night's agitations, and was not rearrested.

So moved the cavalcade of retribution, with death in its midst, along the road to Port Royal.

When the wagon started, Booth's wound till now scarcely dribbling, began to run anew.

It fell through the crack of the wagon, dripping upon the axle, and spotting the road with terrible wafers.

It stained the planks, and soaked the blankets; and the old negro, at a stoppage, dabbled his hands in it by mistake; he drew back instantly, with a shudder and stifled expletive, "Gor-r-r, dat'll never come off in de world; it's murderer's blood."

He wrung his hands, and looked imploringly at the officers, and shuddered again: "Gor-r-r, I wouldn't have dat on me fur tousand, tousand dollars."

The progress of the team was slow, with frequent danger of shipwreck altogether, but toward noon the cortege filed through Port Royal, where the citizens came out to ask the matter, and why a man's body, covered with sombre blankets, was going by with so great escort.

They were told that it was a wounded confederate, and so held their tongues.

The little ferry, again in requisition, took them over by squads, and they pushed from Port Conway to Bell Plain, which they reached in the middle of the afternoon.

All the way the blood dribbled from the corpse in a slow, incessant, sanguine exudation.

The old negro was niggardly dismissed with two paper dollars.

The dead man untied and cast upon the vessel's dock, steam gotten up in a little while, and the broad Potomac shores saw this skeleton ship flit by, as the bloody sun threw gashes and blots of unhealthy light along the silver surface.

All the way associate with the carcass, went Harold, shuddering in so grim companionship, and in the awakened fears of his own approaching.

ordeal, beyond which it loomed already, the gossamer fabric of a scaffold.

He tried to talk for his own exoneration, saying he had ridden, as was his wont, beyond the East Branch, and returning, found Booth wounded, who begged him to be his companion.

Of his crime he knew nothing, so help him God, &c. But nobody listened to him.

All interest of crime, courage, and retribution centered in the dead flesh at his feet.

At Washington, high and low turned out to look on Booth.

Only a few were permitted to see his corpse for purposes of recognition.

It was fairly preserved, though on one side of the face distorted, and looking blue like death, and wildly bandit-like, as if beaten by avenging winds.

Yesterday the Secretary of War, without instructions of any kind, committed to Colonel Lafayette C. Baker, of the secret service, the stark corpse of J. Wilkes Booth.

The secret service never fulfilled its volition more secretively.

"What have you done with the body?"

said I to Baker.

"That is known" he answered, "to only one man living besides myself.

It is gone.

I will not tell you where.

The only man who knows is sworn to silence.

Never till the great trumpeter comes shall the grave of Booth be discovered."

And this is true.

Last night, the 27th of April, a small row boat received the carcass of the murderer; two men were in it they carried the body off into the darkness, and out of that darkness it will never return.

In the darkness, like his great crime, may it remain forever, impalpable, invisible, nondescript, condemned to that worse than damnation,--annihilation.

The river-bottom may ooze about it laden with great shot and drowning manacles.

The earth may have opened to give it that silence and forgiveness which man will never give its memory.

The fishes may swim around it, or the daisies grow white above it; but we shall never know.

Mysterious, incomprehensible, unattainable, like the dim times through which we live and think upon as if we only dreamed them in perturbed fever, the assassin of a nation's head rests somewhere in the elements, and that is all; but if the indignant seas or the profaned turf shall ever vomit his corpse from their recesses, and it receive humane or Christian burial from some who do not recognize it, let the last words those decaying lips ever uttered be carved above them with a dagger, to tell the history of a young and once promising life--useless!

useless!

LETTER V.