POTOMAC PERIL
IT WAS APRIL 22, 1865—DAY 8 OF THE DESPERATE JOHN WILKES BOOTH MANHUNT ACROSS SOUTHERN MARYLAND IN THE WAKE OF PRESIDENT ABRAHAM LINCOLN’S ASSASSINATION.
Although the war in the Eastern Theater had essentially come to a close, Federal authorities feared that if Lincoln’s notorious killer managed to cross the Potomac River into Virginia, he would undoubtedly get friendlier treatment from the Confederate-leaning locals, making it that much more difficult to bring Booth to justice. All branches of the Union military had been brought into the chase, including vessels of the Potomac Flotilla, which had been so instrumental in keeping Washington, D.C., in Union control over four catastrophic years of war.
As the Civil War progressed, a number of privately owned vessels began working with the flotilla under contract. One was the ironhulled, propeller-class coal barge Black Diamond, 120 feet long and capable of carrying 200 tons of freight. Built in 1842 by Hogg & Delamater of New York, with a grasshoppertype engine, Black Diamond drew less than six feet of water—ideal for the coal canals that ran between New York and Pennsylvania and also, it proved, the Potomac River.
When received special orders from the Washington, D.C., Quartermaster Depot to join the flotilla on April 22,
