The Lincoln Assassination Encyclopedia

By Edward Steers and James L. Swanson

The definitive, illustrated A-to-Z reference by “one of the nation’s leading researchers on the Lincoln assassination” (NPR’s Morning Edition).

The first book of its kind, The Lincoln Assassination Encyclopedia is an indispensable guide to one of the most dramatic and fascinating events in our nation’s history: the murder of the sixteenth president of the United States. Written by Edward Steers, Jr., acclaimed author of Blood on the Moon and one of the world’s leading authorities on the subject, this thorough, highly readable resource includes:

• All the known persons, places, events, and conspiracies connected to the tragedy
• More than 150 period photographs and maps, many never before published
• The truth behind the hoaxes, myths, and legends surrounding the assassination
• A comprehensive narrative and timeline of events, and more

“In this encyclopedia of Lincoln’s assassination, Edward Steers, Jr., the foremost scholar of the assassination, has assembled knowledge of the subject scattered in documents and writings over a period of nearly a century and a half, organized it authoritatively and comprehensively, and written about it clearly.” —William Hanchett, author of Out of the Wilderness: The Life of Abraham Lincoln

Includes a foreword by James L. Swanson, New York Times-bestsellingauthor of Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Apr 23, 2010
• ISBN: 9780061987052

Book preview

A

Abbott, Dr. Ezra W. (1821–1907)

One of sixteen doctors who visited the Petersen house while Lincoln was dying. Dr. Abbott was the sixth physician on the scene, arriving shortly after Surgeon General Joseph K. Barnes and Assistant Surgeon General Charles H. Crane. Assisted by Dr. Albert F. A. King, Abbott kept a record of Lincoln’s pulse and respiration between the hours of 11:00 P.M. and 7:22 A.M., when Lincoln died. In all, Abbott recorded fifty readings of Lincoln’s pulse and twenty recordings of his respiration. His first record was made at 11:00 P.M., when he recorded a pulse of 44. Lincoln’s pulse ranged from a low of 42 at 11:15 P.M. to a high of 95 at 1:30 A.M. Abbott also recorded visits by Mary Lincoln and Robert Lincoln to Lincoln’s bedside. Mary Lincoln visited shortly after Vice President Andrew Johnson left at 1:30 A.M. and again at 3:00 A.M. She stayed in the room seated next to her husband for approximately twenty-five minutes on each visit. In the final hour before Lincoln died, five recordings were made, including notations that Lincoln’s expirations were prolonged and groaning and his respiration uneasy, choking and grunting. At 7:00 A.M., Abbott noted signs of imminent death, and at 7:22 A.M. he recorded the simple notation, death.

Sources: L. C. Baker, History of the United States Secret Service (Philadelphia: L. C. Baker, 1867), 467; Louis A. Warren, ed., Physicians at Lincoln’s Bedside, Lincoln Lore, no. 627, April 14, 1941; W. Emerson Reck, A. Lincoln: His Last 24 Hours (Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1987).

See also: King, Dr. Albert F. A.

Adams, Austin

Owner of a tavern located in Newport, Maryland, two and a half miles east of Allen’s Fresh and two miles north of the Wicomico River. Adams’s employee James Owens gave a lengthy statement to Colonel Henry H. Wells admitting to rowing two Confederate agents across the Potomac River on Sunday, April 17. Authorities mistakenly believed that Owens’s passengers were Booth and Herold, leading Secretary of War Stanton to authorize Lafayette Baker to send a troop of the 16th New York Cavalry after the two men. Although the two river passengers were not Booth and Herold, Owens’s statement led to Booth and Herold being cornered at the Garrett farm, where Booth was killed and Herold taken into custody.

Sources: Statement of James Owens, NARA, RG 94, M619, reel 458, frames 412–15, and Statement of Lieutenant S. P. Currier to Colonel George A. Foster, NARA, M-599, reel 4, frames 228–30.

See also: Owens, James

Aiken, Frederick Argyle (1837–1878)

Frederick Aiken, along with John W. Clampitt and U.S. senator Reverdy Johnson, served as defense counsel for Mary E. Surratt. At the time of her trial, Aiken and Clampitt were junior partners in Johnson’s law firm. Aiken was a twenty-eight-year-old Baltimore attorney when he joined the Union army, in which he served as an aide on the staff of Major General Winfield Scott Hancock.

Reverdy Johnson, the senior senator from Maryland, agreed to accept the case of Mary Surratt, but after an acrimonious confrontation with Major General Thomas M. Harris, a member of the military commission, Johnson withdrew into the background, leaving the defense of Mary Surratt in the hands of Aiken and Clampitt. Their defense was primarily based on showing that Mary Surratt was a woman of good character and that her accusers were lying in an effort to save their own necks. Following Mary Surratt’s conviction, Aiken, along with Clampitt, attempted to stay Mary Surratt’s execution by appealing to Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt, the chief prosecutor. Holt refused. Aiken and Clampitt then prepared a writ of habeas corpus using the argument that Mary Surratt was a civilian illegally tried by the military. They took their writ to Judge Andrew B. Wylie at ten o’clock on the morning of the execution (July 7). Wylie endorsed the writ and U.S. marshal David Gooding served the papers on Major General Winfield Scott Hancock, commander of the Middle Military District, in charge of the Washington Arsenal and prison. Hancock appeared in Wylie’s chambers at 11:30 A.M. and presented the judge with an executive order from President Andrew Johnson suspending the writ of habeas corpus in Mary Surratt’s case. Wylie was powerless to act. Aiken and his associate had exhausted all hope of saving their client.

Sources: Elizabeth Steger Trindal, Mary Surratt: An American Tragedy (Gretna, La.: Pelican, 1996).

See also: Habeas Corpus Surratt, Mary Elizabeth

Allen, William C.

Lieutenant William C. Allen was a member of the 151st New York Volunteer Infantry. Allen’s name first surfaced as a witness to the events at the Garrett farm in 1937, twenty-nine years after his death. His widow attended a Grand Army of the Republic convention in Madison, Wisconsin, where she stole the show with her claim that her husband told her that the man killed at Garrett’s farm was not Booth, but rather another man. None of the claims made by Mrs. Allen concerning Booth are supported by the known facts of her husband’s service record.

Allen served in the 151st New York Volunteer Infantry for three years as a private. He enlisted on August 27, 1862. He was promoted to sergeant on October 22, 1862, and to second lieutenant on February 18, 1865. He ended his service on June 26, 1865, having served thirty-four months.

In July 1864, Allen was captured at the Battle of Monocacy during Jubal Early’s abortive raid on Washington, D.C. He was taken to Libby Prison in Richmond, where he was exchanged on December 21, 1864, and returned to his regiment at Petersburg, Virginia, on March 4, 1865. The 151st served at Petersburg until it fell on April 2, and then chased Lee’s retreating army to Appomattox Court House, where it was present at the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia on April 9.

Following Lee’s surrender, the 151st New York marched seventy miles south to Danville, Virginia, arriving on April 27, the day after Booth died. While the 151st New York was enroute to Danville, however, Lieutenant Allen was several hundred miles to the north at his home in LeRoy, New York. On April 20, Allen applied for emergency leave to return home and visit his ailing father, who was seriously ill and dying. Leave was granted on April 22 and Allen headed north to New York. There is nothing in the record to indicate that Allen decided to detour from his trip to New York and join the search for Booth one hundred and seventy-five miles to the northeast.

It should be noted that Allen never claimed he was present at the capture of Booth or that he saw Booth’s body. All of the claims came from his widow twenty-nine years after his death. Her claims ran far afield, including the statement that her husband was in the Secret Service and worked for Lafayette C. Baker. She also claimed that her husband was a living image of Wilkes Booth, so much so that the newspapers of the day, needing a photograph of Booth, used a photograph of her husband taken only a week before…and printed it through the country captioned as the President’s assassin. The reproduction of photographs in newspapers did not exist in 1865, further challenging the veracity of Mrs. Allen.

Mrs. Allen’s story that her husband was present at Garrett’s farm and later claimed the body was not that of John Wilkes Booth can be dismissed as another assassination myth fabricated by the elderly widow of a veteran who once served his country honorably.

Sources: Steven G. Miller, Did Lieut. William C. Allen Witness the Shooting of John Wilkes Booth?, in Laurie Verge, ed., The Body in the Barn (Clinton, Md.: Surratt Society, 1993), 35–42.

See also: Kenzie, Wilson D.; Zisgen, Joseph; Bates, Finis L.

Allen’s Fresh

Allen’s Fresh was a small village located near the mouth of the Wicomico River in Charles County, Maryland. During the Civil War, it was a part of the Confederate mail line that ran between Richmond and various northern points on into Canada. It was situated approximately three miles due east of Huckleberry, the home of Thomas A. Jones, and five miles southeast of Rich Hill, the home of Samuel Cox.

While Jones looked after Booth and Herold in the pine thicket where they were hiding, Federal troops patrolled the area, making it impossible for Jones to send the two men safely across the Potomac River.

On Thursday, April 20, Jones rode to Allen’s Fresh, where he visited Colton’s store, a favorite drinking place for local farmers and Union soldiers. While in Colton’s store, the soldiers received a report that Booth and Herold were seen in St. Mary’s County several miles to the southeast. Jones watched as the Union troops rode away in the opposite direction from where Booth and Herold were hiding. Jones decided this was his best opportunity to put the two fugitives across the river. Leaving Allen’s Fresh, he went directly to Booth and Herold and led them to a point on the Potomac River just north of Pope’s Creek, where he put them in a rowboat and sent them on their way toward the Virginia shore.

Sources: Thomas A. Jones, J. Wilkes Booth: An Account of His Sojourn in Southern Maryland after the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, his Passage Across the Potomac, and his Death in Virginia (Chicago: Laird & Lee, 1893).

See also: Jones, Thomas Austin; mail line

American Knights, Order of

A paramilitary organization that was an outgrowth of the anti-Federal government Knights of the Golden Circle (KGC), formed by George Washington Lafayette Bickley in 1857. By the outbreak of the Civil War, the KGC had lost much of its membership and influence. In 1862, Emile Longuemare was sent to Missouri by Confederate president Jefferson Davis to organize a paramilitary organization in certain northern states for the purpose of overthrowing the Lincoln administration and opposing the civilian war effort in the North. Longuemare formed the American Knights (OAK), using the vestiges of the KGC as a base for the new organization. By 1864 the OAK had changed its name to the Sons of Liberty.

While the ostensible purpose of the OAK was to support the Democratic Party in the northern states, the real purpose was to organize a clandestine paramilitary force to act against the Federal government and Union army. Chapters were organized within townships and followed strict rules of secrecy relying solely on verbal orders. The Knights engaged in a wide range of activity that included encouraging Union soldiers to desert, passing intelligence to the Confederacy, recruiting men for the Confederate army, supplying arms and ammunition to the Confederacy, and providing support to Confederate military raids into the North. The New York City draft riots, which occurred in July 1863, are believed by some historians to have been instigated by the OAK.

The organization operated mainly in Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, and Ohio. In 1861, Cipriano Ferrandini, a Baltimore member of the former Knights of the Golden Circle, headed a plot to assassinate president-elect Lincoln during his stopover in Baltimore while on his way to Washington for his inaugural. The plot was uncovered simultaneously by Allan Pinkerton and the New York City Police Department. Lincoln changed his itinerary at the last minute, passing through Baltimore nine hours ahead of schedule and thus foiling the plot.

While most historians believe the Knights, along with the other clandestine organizations, were a serious threat to the North, historian Frank L. Klement views the OAK along with the KGC and Sons of Liberty as paper-based organizations devised by Republicans to discredit the Democratic Party. Although all three organizations are credited with far more success than they deserve, they were real, and played a role in various subversive activities in the North.

Sources: William A. Tidwell, James O. Hall, and David W. Gaddy, Come Retribution (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1988); Frank L. Klement, Lincoln’s Critics: The Copperheads of the North (Shippensburg, Pa.: White Mane, 1999).

See also: Baltimore Plot; Ferrandini, Cipriano; Knights of the Golden Circle; Sons of Liberty.

Anacostia River

See Eastern Branch, Potomac River

Anderson, Mary Jane

A witness called by the prosecution to testify at the conspiracy trial. She is identified in the trial transcript as colored. Mary Jane Anderson claimed to know John Wilkes Booth by sight. She lived in a small house located on Baptist Alley in the rear of Ford’s Theatre. Anderson claimed to have witnessed the events that took place in the rear of the theater on April 14. She told the military tribunal that she saw Booth during the morning at his stable behind the theater, and again between two and three o’clock in the afternoon talking to a (unidentified) lady. She told of standing at her gate and looking right wishful at him. Later that same night she heard a horse clattering up the alley. She recognized the man leading the horse as Booth. Booth arrived at the rear door, where he called out four times for Ned (Edman Spangler). Anderson said three different men handled Booth’s horse while he was inside the theater: James L. Maddox (Ford’s property manager), Spangler, and a third, unidentified man (Peanut John Burroughs). She fixed the time from when Booth arrived at the rear of the theater until he burst through the door after shooting Lincoln to just under one hour. Her testimony was used by the prosecution to link Spangler directly to Booth and thereby to his conspiracy.

Sources: Testimony of Mary Jane Anderson in Ben Perley Poore, The Conspiracy Trial for the Murder of the President, 3 vols. (New York: Arno, 1972), vol. 1, 235–40.

See also: Maddox, James L.; Burroughs, John

Anderson Cottage

See Soldiers’ Home

Antonelli, Cardinal Giacomo

Author’s collection

The secretary of state for the Papal States in Italy, Cardinal Antonelli worked closely with Rufus King, the U.S. emissary to the Papal States, in arranging John H. Surratt’s arrest and extradition to the United States. At the time of Lincoln’s assassination, Surratt was in Elmira, New York, scouting the Union prison there for the Confederate head of operations in Canada, Brigadier General Edwin Grey Lee. Following Lincoln’s assassination, Surratt had made his way to Canada and, with the help of agents there, to Italy, where he enlisted in the Papal Zouaves under the alias John Watson. He was discovered by a former schoolmate named Henri Beaumont de Sainte-Marie, who informed King, who in turn informed Secretary of State William Seward of Surratt’s whereabouts. Although the United States and the Papal States had no extradition treaty, Cardinal Antonelli, acting on behalf of Pope Pius IX, agreed to honor the U.S. request for Surratt’s extradition. Antonelli ordered the arrest of Surratt pending a formal request from the United States. Surratt was arrested in Veroli, Italy, and while in transit to Rome escaped his guards and made his way aboard a freighter to Alexandria, Egypt, where he was arrested a second time and returned to the United States.

A certain amount of intrigue surrounded the agreement to arrest and extradite Surratt to the United States. The Papal States were under threat of dissolution by the Italian unification forces. If this occurred the pope would need asylum, and a request was made of the United States. U.S. naval ships were sent to Italy ready to pick up Pope Pius IX and his entourage and bring them to the United States. Antonelli negotiated the arrangement whereby Surratt would be turned over to U.S. authorities in exchange for asylum. A treaty was eventually signed establishing the Vatican as a separate authority known today as the Vatican.

Sources: Alfred Isacsson, The Travels, Arrest, and Trial of John H. Surratt (Middletown, N.Y.: Vestigium, 2003); Louis J. Wiechmann, A True History of the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln and of the Conspiracy of 1865, ed. Floyd E. Risvold (New York: Knopf, 1975).

See also: Surratt, John Harrison, Jr.

Apostate, The

A play performed at Ford’s Theatre on the night of March 18, 1865, as a benefit performance for the famous actor John McCullough. John Wilkes Booth played the leading part, Pescara, a bloody villain of the deepest red. The Apostate was Booth’s last performance. His last paid performance had occurred ten months earlier on May 28, 1864, at the Boston Museum, where he starred in The Corsican Brothers.

Booth gave several tickets to John Surratt, inviting him and his friends to see the play. Surratt, Louis Wiechmann, George Atzerodt, David Herold, and John Holahan, a boarder at the Surratt Tavern, attended the theater as Booth’s guest.

The performance occurred the day after the abortive attempt to capture Lincoln on his return to the White House following his scheduled visit to the Campbell Hospital in northeast Washington. Lincoln canceled his visit at the last minute, thereby avoiding the attempt at his capture.

Lincoln Museum, Fort Wayne, Indiana

Sources: George J. Olszewski, Historic Structures Report: Restoration of Ford’s Theatre (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1963); William A. Tidwell, James O. Hall, and David W. Gaddy, Come Retribution (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1988).

Apotheosis

Apotheosis is the elevation of a person to a divine status, which is what happened to the nation’s image of Lincoln soon after his murder. Henry Ward Beecher, along with dozens of his fellow preachers, drew parallels between Lincoln and Moses in a sermon given the day after Lincoln’s death. Printmakers rushed their art to market with depictions of Lincoln ascending to heaven and into the arms of an angelic George Washington: the Father of the Country receiving the Savior of the Country. The deification of Lincoln soon replaced the common-man image. There were those, however, who dissented from this saintly view of Lincoln. One of the more vehement Lincoln haters was Lyon G. Tyler, son of former president John Tyler. Lyon Tyler wrote scathing commentary describing Lincoln’s apotheosis as the most amazing climbing vine in the garden of history.

Sources: Harold Holzer, Gabor S. Boritt, and Mark E. Neely, Jr., The Lincoln Image (New York: Scribner’s, 1984); Merrill D. Peterson, Lincoln in American Memory (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); Lyon G. Tyler, An Open Letter, in Confederate Leaders and Other Citizens Request the House of Delegates to Repeal the Resolution of Respect to Abraham Lincoln, the Barbarian (Matthews Courthouse, Va.: Privately Printed, 1928).

Arnold, Samuel Bland (1834–1906)

Library of Congress

Samuel Arnold was a member of John Wilkes Booth’s original conspiracy to capture Abraham Lincoln, and one of eight individuals charged with Lincoln’s murder and tried by military tribunal. Arnold was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment at Fort Jefferson, Dry Tortugas, Florida. He was pardoned in March 1869 and returned to his home in Baltimore.

Booth recruited Arnold into his capture conspiracy during the second week of August 1864. The two had been schoolmates at St. Timothy’s Hall in Catonsville, Maryland, in the early 1850s. Arnold lived for a time in a suburb of Baltimore known as Hookstown, located along the present-day Reisterstown Road in northwest Baltimore, bordering on the present-day Pimlico Racetrack. He enlisted in Company C, First Maryland Infantry in 1861. Following the First Battle of Bull Run in July 1861, Arnold became ill and was discharged as no longer fit for service. He returned to Baltimore, where he convalesced at his parents’ home. Fully recovered, he made his way south again and joined his older brother in Augusta, Georgia, in the Nitre and Mining Bureau, collecting nitre for making gunpowder. In 1864, Arnold returned to Baltimore after learning that his mother was critically ill.

Booth recruited Arnold and another Baltimorean and childhood chum, Michael O’Laughlen, as his first recruits at Barnum’s City Hotel in Baltimore. Years later Arnold recalled the meeting:

I called upon him and was kindly received as an old schoolmate and invited to his room. We conversed together, seated by a table smoking a cigar, of past hours of youth, and the present war, said he had heard I had been south, etc., when a tap at the door was given and O’Laughlen was ushered into the room. O’Laughlen was also a former acquaintance of Booth’s from boyhood up, so he informed me. I was introduced to him and this was my first acquaintance with O’Laughlen.

After a few minutes of conversation and several glasses of wine, Booth came to the point of his meeting: Booth then spoke of the abduction or kidnapping of the President, saying if such could be accomplished and the President taken to Richmond and held as a hostage, he thought it would bring about an exchange of prisoners.

Samuel Arnold was particularly beguiled by Booth’s charm. Reflecting back on their meeting, Arnold wrote in his memoir: I found Booth possessed of wonderful power in conversation and became perfectly infatuated with his social manners and bearing. Arnold would justify their decision to capture Lincoln as an act of honorable purpose, humanity and patriotism.

Frustrated with Booth, Arnold challenged him during a meeting on March 15, 1865, at Lichau’s restaurant in Washington, telling Booth his plan to kidnap Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre was totally impractical. The two argued in a threatening manner but soon calmed down and made amends. Two days later, the group reconvened at Booth’s request to work out a plan to capture Lincoln on his return trip from Campbell Hospital, where he was scheduled to visit wounded soldiers. The plot fell through when Lincoln canceled his visit at the last minute, remaining in Washington. Frustrated at Booth’s failure to carry through with a successful capture of Lincoln, Arnold took a job as a clerk in John W. Wharton’s store located at Fort Monroe, Virginia, two weeks before the assassination. Arnold was still working in Wharton’s store on the night of the assassination.

Early on the morning following the assassination, government detectives searched Booth’s room at the National Hotel in Washington. Among several items found in Booth’s trunk was a letter addressed to Booth, which was signed Sam and carried the address Hookstown. The letter contained a critical piece of evidence apparently linking Booth to the Confederacy, go and see how it will be taken in R—d. Neither Sam nor Hookstown registered with the detectives in Washington at the time of the letter’s discovery.

Early Saturday morning, following Lincoln’s murder, Voltaire Randall, one of Maryland provost marshal James McPhail’s detectives, informed McPhail that Samuel Arnold and John Wilkes Booth were childhood friends. Arnold, a former Confederate soldier, had registered with McPhail’s office on his return to Baltimore following his muster out as a Confederate soldier. He listed Hookstown as his place of residence. McPhail sent Randall and a second detective, Eaton Horner, to Hookstown after Arnold. McPhail then telegraphed the War Department in Washington: Sir: Samuel Arnold and Michael O’Laughlen, two of the intimate associates of J. Wilkes Booth, are said to be in Washington. Their arrest may prove advantageous.

On reaching Hookstown, Randall and Horner learned from a colored woman that Arnold had taken a job at Fort Monroe in Virginia. The two detectives set out for Fort Monroe on Sunday evening and reached the fort the next morning and found Arnold. Under questioning, Arnold talked freely. He admitted to being a party to a plot to capture Lincoln but said he had withdrawn from the plot several weeks earlier. At one point, he told the detectives about a Dr. Mudd of Charles County, Maryland, who was intimate with Booth. Arnold said that Booth had visited Charles County in November 1864, carrying letters of introduction from a Confederate agent in Canada to Dr. Samuel Mudd and Dr. William Queen. Arnold pointed a finger at Samuel Mudd even before Mudd was a suspect.

Found guilty of aiding and abeting Booth, Arnold, along with Michael O’Laughlen and Samuel Mudd, was sentenced to life in prison. He was originally scheduled to serve in the Federal penitentiary in Albany, New York, but Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton changed the prison to the military’s Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas off the Florida Gulf coast. In March 1869, President Andrew Johnson issued a full pardon to Mudd. Three weeks later, Johnson issued pardons freeing both Arnold and Spangler. Arnold returned to Baltimore, where his father operated a bakery and confectionery store at his residence on Fayette Street. In 1894 Arnold was employed as a butcher at Fells Point in Baltimore. By 1902 he was living in Friendship, Maryland, at the home of a close friend, Mrs. Ann Garner, whom he described as a second mother. The Garner home provided a safe haven for the reclusive Arnold.

Sometime during the 1890s Arnold decided to record a memoir of his relationship with Booth and the conspiracy to capture Lincoln. His intention was to have the document published after his death in an effort to sway public opinion in his favor. His request was thwarted, however, when, in 1902, another man whose name was Samuel Arnold died. Several newspapers, assuming it was the Booth conspirator, wrote lengthy obituaries, which gave Arnold an opportunity to see just how he would be portrayed by the press after his real death. Accounts of his role with Booth were unflattering. Angered by what he read, Arnold agreed to allow the Baltimore American to publish his memoir; he believed it would vindicate him. The manuscript was published in serial form from December 2 to 20, 1902. As might be expected, Arnold’s story was self-serving and filled with righteous indignation. In 1943 the original manuscript was published in a limited edition of 199 copies by an antiquarian book dealer who had purchased the memoir, and in 1995 the memoir was republished by Heritage Books.

Four years after publication, Arnold became seriously ill and in June 1906, he moved into the Baltimore home of his sister-in-law, where he died on September 21, 1906, at the age of seventy-two. He is buried in Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore, where Michael O’Laughlen and John Wilkes Booth are also buried. Of the original ten conspirators, Arnold was survived only by John Surratt, who would live for another ten years before dying in 1916, the last of the conspirators tried for Lincoln’s murder.

Sources: Pep Martin, The Hookstown Connection, Surratt Courier 5, no. 7 (July 1980); Samuel Bland Arnold, Memoirs of a Lincoln Conspirator, ed. Michael W. Kauffman (Bowie, Md.: Heritage, 1995).

See also: Horner, Eaton; Sam Letter

Artman, Enos R. (1838–1912)

Artman was a major in the 213th Pennsylvania Volunteers commanding the First Delaware Cavalry, stationed at Monocacy Junction near Frederick, Maryland, at the time of the assassination. Artman received information from an army undercover informant, James W. Purdom, that a suspicious character named Andrew Atwood (George Atzerodt) spoke knowingly of the assassination. Atwood was staying at the Germantown, Maryland, home of a man named Hartman Richter. At first, Artman did not act on the information, but reconsidering the situation ordered Captain Solomon Townsend to send a party of troopers to check out Purdom’s information. Townsend ordered Sergeant Zachariah Gemmill to pick six troopers and go to Richter’s house and investigate the situation. Gemmill and his men arrested Atzerodt and Richter around 4:00 A.M. on Thursday, April 20. Major Artman was awarded $1,250 of the reward money for his actions leading to Atzerodt’s capture.

Sources: Statement of E. R. Artman, NARA, M619, reel 456, frames 146–48.

See also: Atzerodt, George Andrew; Gemmill, Zachariah

Ashmun, George (1804–1870)

A Massachusetts politician who served in the Thirtieth Congress with Abraham Lincoln (1847–1849). Like Lincoln, Ashmun was a Whig. He was chairman of the Republican Party in 1860 and visited Lincoln in Springfield, Illinois, to notify him of his nomination as the party’s candidate for president. As a lawyer, Ashmun became involved in the seamy and unscrupulous contraband cotton trade, representing clients seeking to profit from captured Confederate cotton.

Ashmun visited Lincoln with one of his clients on the evening of April 14, 1865, for the purpose of gaining a favor in the cotton trade. Lincoln excused himself from meeting with Ashmun and his friend but agreed to see them the following morning. He penned a brief note that read, Allow Mr. Ashmun & friend to come in at 9:00 A.M. tomorrow. It was Lincoln’s last piece of writing before his assassination a few hours later.

Sources: Mark E. Neely, Jr., The Abraham Lincoln Encyclopedia (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982).

Assassination

A term derived from the Arabic word hashshashin, which refers to users of hashish, a narcotic drug extracted from the hemp plant. The Hashshashin were a Mohammedan sect of assassins, founded circa 1090 by Hasan-I Sabbah, which existed during the Crusades. Its members ritualistically drank extracts of hashish before they attempted to assassinate Christians who had invaded their territory.

Lincoln did not consider assassination a serious threat even though he was made aware of a plot to kill him in Baltimore in 1861. Secretary of State William Seward summed up the current belief when he wrote in 1862, Assassination is not an American practice or habit, and one so vicious and so desperate cannot be engrafted into our political system. Seward felt so certain about his views that he pointed out, The President…occupies a country house near Soldiers’ Home…He goes to and from that place on horseback, night and morning, unguarded.

Cipriano Ferrandini, a member of the Knights of the Golden Circle in Baltimore, planned to assassinate president-elect Lincoln when he stopped over in Baltimore on his way to Washington for his inauguration. The plot was foiled when Lincoln learned of the plot and altered his schedule, passing through Baltimore nine hours earlier than planned.

Luke P. Blackburn, a Kentucky physician and member of the Confederates’ Canadian operation, proposed to kill Lincoln by infecting him with yellow fever. Blackburn purchased several expensive shirts, which had been exposed to clothing taken from several victims who died of yellow fever. Blackburn intended to deliver the shirts as a gift, thereby exposing Lincoln to the dreaded disease. The plot failed when Blackburn’s agent declined to deliver the shirts. Unknown to medicine at the time, yellow fever was not an infectious disease.

Lincoln’s private secretary John Hay wrote of Lincoln keeping a bundle of around one hundred letters containing death threats. Hay wrote that Lincoln kept the letters tied with a ribbon in one of the pigeonholes in his White House desk.

Sources: Harold Holzer, ed., Dear Mr. Lincoln: Letters to the President (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1993), 20–21. Edward Steers, Jr. Blood on the Moon (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001), 16-26.

See also: Blackburn, Luke Pryor; Ferrandini, Cipriano

Atwood, Andrew

See Atzerodt, George Andrew

Atzerodt, George Andrew (1835–1865)

Library of Congress

George Atzerodt was one of nine individuals charged by the government as a conspirator with John Wilkes Booth. Tried before a military tribunal, Atzerodt was found guilty and sentenced to death. Atzerodt, Lewis Powell, Mary Surratt, and David Herold were hanged at the Washington Arsenal on July 7, 1865.

Atzerodt was born in Thuringen, Germany, and immigrated with his parents to the small village of Germantown in Montgomery County, Maryland in 1844. Atzerodt and his brother, John C. Atzerodt, located in Port Tobacco, Charles County, Maryland, in March 1857. There they opened a carriage business, George working as a carriage painter.

Recruited in January 1865 by Thomas Harbin and John H. Surratt, Jr., as a member of Booth’s conspiracy to capture Lincoln, Atzerodt was an important asset because of his experience in ferrying Confederate agents and contraband across the Potomac River between Maryland and Virginia. During the four years of war Atzerodt was never arrested as a result of his illegal activities on the river.

When Booth’s capture conspiracy was converted to assassination, Atzerodt was assigned the task of killing Vice President Andrew Johnson. On the night of April 14, 1865, Johnson was boarding at the Kirkwood House, located at Twelfth and Pennsylvania Avenue, three blocks from Ford’s Theatre.

Atzerodt had taken a room at the Kirkwood House on the morning of April 14 in anticipation of assassinating Johnson. At the assigned hour, Atzerodt walked into the bar of the Kirkwood and ordered a drink. Unable to carry out his assignment, he fled the scene and wandered the neighborhood around Ford’s Theatre. Frightened by the commotion in the area, Atzerodt boarded a horse-drawn trolley car to the Navy Yard in southeast Washington, where he attempted to secure lodging in the room of a former acquaintance. Unsuccessful, Atzerodt rode the trolley back into the city and took a room at the Kimmel House (also known as the Pennsylvania House).

At approximately 6:00 A.M., Atzerodt left the hotel and walked to Georgetown, where he pawned his Colt revolver for ten dollars. After breakfasting with Lucinda Metz, an old acquaintance in Georgetown, Atzerodt boarded the stage for Rockville, Maryland. Reaching the military roadblock set up at the juncture of High Street (now Wisconsin Avenue) and Military Road, Atzerodt left the stage and made his way to the picket post where the military was screening the long line of persons attempting to leave Georgetown and enter Maryland.

Atzerodt bought drinks of hard cider for several of the soldiers at the roadblock. He then talked a farmer from Montgomery County, William Gaither, into giving him a ride in his wagon to Gaithersburg, just north of Rockville. Having successfully passed the army pickets, Atzerodt rode to Gaithersburg, where he left Gaither and walked several miles to the Clopper Mill near Germantown, where he spent the night with the mill operator. Easter Sunday saw Atzerodt invited to share dinner at the house of a Germantown farmer named Hezekiah Metz. During dinner the conversation turned to the assassination. Following the noon dinner, Atzerodt walked a short distance to the home of his cousin, Hartman Richter, where he remained until his capture early on the morning of April 20.

The arresting soldiers received a tip from another local farmer, James W. Purdom, who worked as an undercover Union army informant. Purdom learned from one of the dinner guests that Atzerodt talked freely about events surrounding the assassination. Purdom passed the information along to one of his army contacts, who reported the information to his superior officer. A search party was sent to Richter’s house, where Atzerodt was arrested. He was taken to Washington and placed in the hold of the monitor USS Saugus, where he was interrogated before being transferred to a cell in the Old Federal Penitentiary at the Washington Arsenal.

While imprisoned on the USS Saugus, Maryland provost marshal James L. McPhail and John L. Smith visited Atzerodt at Atzerodt’s request. Atzerodt gave a lengthy statement implicating both Samuel Mudd and Mary Surratt in Booth’s conspiracy. The statement disappeared, only to be discovered among the papers of Atzerodt’s attorney, William E. Doster, in 1979 by Joan L. Chaconas, former president of the Lincoln Group of D.C. and the Surratt Society.

Sources: William A. Tidwell, James O. Hall, and David W. Gaddy, Come Retribution (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1988); Edward Steers, Jr., and James O. Hall, The Escape and Capture of George A. Atzerodt (Clinton, Md.: Surratt Society, 1980).

See also: Gemmill, Zachariah; Lost Confession; Purdom, James W.

Atzerodt, John

Older brother of George Atzerodt. John, along with George, operated a carriage business in Port Tobacco, Charles County, Maryland, prior to the Civil War. When war came, John left Port Tobacco and the carriage business and applied for a job as a detective on the staff of Maryland provost marshal James L. McPhail, whose office was in Baltimore. Following Lincoln’s assassination, John Atzerodt was on an assignment in Charles County. Learning that his brother was a suspect and had been arrested and imprisoned aboard the USS Saugus, John wired McPhail that his brother was known to frequent the Richter farm and suggested McPhail send detectives there to look for George. By the time McPhail’s men reached the farm, George was already in custody and on his way to Washington. The detectives had missed capturing him by only a few hours.

Sources: Edward Steers, Jr., Blood on the Moon (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001), 167–69; James L. Swanson, Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer (New York: Harper Perennial, 2007), 219–21.

Atzerodt Lost Confession

See Lost Confession

Augur, Christopher Columbus (1821–1898)

Commanded the 22nd Army Corps (defenses of Washington, D.C.) at the time of Lincoln’s assassination. Acting on information supplied by stable manager John Fletcher shortly after midnight (April 15), Augur ordered members of the 13th New York Cavalry to Southern Maryland in search of Booth. In just twelve hours after the assassination, his troopers arrived in Bryantown within five miles of Booth and Herold, who were holed up at Dr. Samuel Mudd’s house.

Augur began the Civil War as commandant of cadets at West Point and after a few months was appointed a brigadier general of volunteers. He was given command of Franz Sigel’s division in the Fifth Army Corps and severely wounded at Cedar Mountain. He was brevetted major general and assigned to command the left wing of Major General Nathaniel P. Banks’s Army of the Gulf at the siege of Port Hudson in 1863. Following the subsequent Red River Campaign in Louisiana under Banks, Augur was given command of the 22nd Army Corps, maintaining the defenses of Washington until the end of the war.

Author’s collection

The one-eyed horse used by Lewis Powell with the saddle of George Atzerodt on his back was found wandering east of the Capitol and brought to the stables of the 22nd Army Corps next to Augur’s headquarters around midnight on April 14. Identification of the saddle was made by Fletcher, manager of the stable where David Herold had rented his horse on April 14. Fletcher knew both Atzerodt and Herold and linked them together as friends. Fletcher told the detectives that Herold had passed over the Navy Yard Bridge sometime around 11:00 P.M., and that he was preceded by another man, presumably Atzerodt. Fletcher had no way of knowing the first man was Booth. This resulted in Augur sending a cavalry troop into Southern Maryland in the early hours of Saturday morning. Augur died on January 16, 1898, and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Sources: Ezra J. Warner, Generals in Blue (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1964); William A. Tidwell, James O. Hall, and David W. Gaddy, Come Retribution (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1988).

See also: Fletcher, John

Autopsy, Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln’s body was brought back to the White House from the Petersen house and carried to one of the two guest rooms on the second floor. The room was located diagonally across from Mary Lincoln’s bedroom, where the first lady lay in bed wailing in anguish. Two army surgeons, Drs. Joseph Janvier Woodward and Edward Curtis, performed the autopsy. Present were doctors Joseph K. Barnes, surgeon general; Charles H. Crane, assistant surgeon general; Charles Taft; Robert King Stone, family physician; and Assistant Surgeon William M. Notson; as well as Assistant Quartermaster General Daniel Rucker, whose men had escorted the body from the Petersen house to the White House.

The top of the skull was removed along with the brain so that the path of the bullet could be determined. Conflicting reports exist as to the actual path of the bullet. All agreed that the bullet entered the skull to the left of the middle line, and below the line with the ear. At this point, the surgeons performing the autopsy stated that the bullet traveled through the left side of the brain, lodging behind the left eye. Barnes later testified that the bullet traversed diagonally through the brain, lodging behind the right eye. Later statements by the doctors were in disagreement as to which pupil was dilated and which was normal. Since this critical testimony is in conflict, it is impossible to know for certain the path of the bullet. However, because the president was sitting in a high-back rocking chair to the extreme left of the box, the only way he could have been shot in the lower left side of the back of the skull is if he turned his head to the left and was looking down into the orchestra area. If this were the case, as some eyewitnesses claimed, then the bullet would have traveled from left to right, lodging behind the right eye and not the left.

In an article published on June 17, 1865, in the journal Lancet by T. Longmore, professor of medical surgery at the Army Medical School, the bullet passed obliquely across, from left to right, through the brain substance to the anterior lobe of the right hemisphere, in which it lodged, immediately over the right orbit.

The brain was weighed and found not to be above the average weight for a man of Lincoln’s size. Following the autopsy, Dr. Charles D. Brown, of the firm of Brown & Alexander, embalmed the body.

The lead ball along with bone fragments were saved and deposited with the Army Medical Museum, where they reside on display today along with the Nélaton probe used to examine the path of the bullet.

Sources: Dorothy Meserve Kunhardt and Philip B. Kunhardt, Jr., Twenty Days (New York: Harper & Row, 1965); John K. Lattimer, Kennedy and Lincoln: Medical and Ballistic Comparisons of Their Assassinations (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980); The Medical and Surgical History of the War of Rebellion, 1861–65, 4 vols. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1870); T. Longmore, Note on Some of the Injuries Sustained by the Late President of the United States, Lancet, June 17, 1865, 649.

Autopsy, John Wilkes Booth

Booth’s body was transported from the Garrett farmhouse to Belle Plain, Virginia, where it was carried aboard the steamship John S. Ide to the Washington Navy Yard. Here it was transferred to the monitor USS Montauk, where it was placed on a carpenter’s table located beneath a large canvas tent shading it from the sun. It was kept under a military guard until the next morning, when Surgeon General Joseph K. Barnes and his party arrived. Stanton and Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles jointly drafted a letter to Admiral Augustus Fox, commandant of the Navy Yard, under whose jurisdiction the body was now being held. Fox had asked Stanton what should be done with the corpse. Stanton replied:

You will permit Surgeon General Barnes and his assistant, accompanied by Judge Advocate Genl Holt, Hon. John A. Bingham, Special Judge Advocate, Major [Thomas] Eckert, Wm. G. Moore, Clerk of the War Department, Col. L. C. Baker, Lieut. [Luther] Baker, Lieut. Col. Conger, Chas. Dawson, J. L. Smith, [Alexander] Gardiner (photographer) + assistant, to go on board the Montauk, and see the body of John Wilkes Booth.

Immediately after the Surgeon General has made his autopsy, you will have the body placed in a strong box, and deliver it to the charge of Col. Baker—the box being carefully sealed.

At the trial of the conspirators held one month later, Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt questioned Barnes as to the identification of the body. Barnes told the court about a distinctive scar on Booth’s neck. The scar had resulted from an operation performed by Dr. John Frederick May of Washington.

Booth had developed a bothersome lump on his neck on the left rear side approximately three inches below the base of the skull; it was apparently an annoyance as well as a small disfigurement. Booth sought medical advice in the summer of 1863. May examined the lump and declared it a fibroid tumor. May told Booth it should be removed and Booth consented. The minor operation resulted in a fine linear incision, which May cautioned Booth to protect so that it could heal properly. A few days after the removal Booth returned to May. The incision had been torn open by Booth’s co-star, Charlotte Cushman, during a theatrical performance. Miss Cushman had thrown her arms around Booth’s neck and hugged him so vigorously during the play that she tore the incision open. As a result, when the wound healed it left a large, circular mark whose new tissue gave the appearance of a burn scar. The new scar was described as a broad, ugly-looking scar, produced by the granulating process. The scar took on a marked appearance that served as an identifying characteristic.

Surratt House Museum, James O. Hall Research Center

Following May’s examination of Booth’s body on board the Montauk, Barnes and Woodward performed an autopsy, removing two cervical vertebrae and the damaged spinal cord from the neck. The path of the bullet was determined and the vertebrae and spinal cord were taken by Dr. Woodward to the Army Medical Museum as specimens. Barnes wrote a report of the autopsy that was submitted to Stanton the same day, April 27, 1865. In his report Barnes stated:

The left leg and foot were encased in an appliance of splints and bandages, upon the removal of which, a fracture of the fibula 3 inches above the ankle joint, accompanied by considerable ecchymosis, was discovered.

The cause of death was a gun shot wound in the neck—the ball entering just behind the sterno-cleido muscle—2-½ inches above the clavicle—passing through the bony bridge of fourth and fifth cervical vertebrae—severing the spinal cord and passing out through the body of the sterno-cleido of right side, three inches above the clavicle.

Paralysis of the entire body was immediate, and all the horrors of consciousness of suffering and death must have been present to the assassin during the two hours he lingered.

The last paragraph has less to do with objective medical observation and was probably added by Barnes to indicate to Stanton that Booth did not die easily or without the horrors of…suffering and death.

Of all of the physical evidence associated with Booth’s body, the scar left by Dr. May’s surgery (and the denture work performed by Dr. William Merrill) clearly identified the body as matching the same physical characteristics of John Wilkes Booth. But there is one physical piece of evidence that was used for positive identification—the initials J. W. B., which occurred as a tattoo made with India ink. These initials were located on the back of the left hand in the crotch formed by the thumb and index finger. The most compelling evidence that such an identifying tattoo existed is found in the writings of Booth’s older sister Asia: across the back of one [of his hands] he had clumsily marked, when a little boy, his initials in India ink.

Following the examination and autopsy, the remains were sewn up in the same army blanket in which it had been placed at the Garrett farm. The body was then taken ashore at the Washington Arsenal. While rumors abounded at the time that the body was weighted and dropped overboard into a remote part of the Potomac River, it was taken to the arsenal.

A wooden box used to ship rifled muskets was used as a coffin. The box containing Booth’s body was buried beneath the floor of a room in the arsenal that had been used to store ordnance. Both Lafayette Baker and Thomas Eckert were present at the burial and later testified to the event. After the body was buried, the floor was replaced and the heavy door to the building locked tightly and the key turned over to Stanton.

Sources: Laurie Verge, ed., The Body in the Barn (Clinton: Surratt Society, 1993); John Frederick May, The Mark of the Scalpel (Washington, D.C.: Columbia Historical Society, 1910); Terry Alford, ed., John Wilkes Booth: A Sister’s Memoir by Asia Booth Clarke (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1996), 45; Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, 1861–65, 4 vols. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1875), vol. 4, 452.

See also: May, John Frederick

B

Baden, Joseph

A Confederate agent from King George County, Virginia, who worked for agent Thomas Harbin. When Booth and Herold reached the Virginia shore following their crossing of the Potomac River on the night of April 23, they arrived at the home of Mrs. Elizabeth Quesenberry, located at the mouth of Machodoc Creek. Quesenberry, a Confederate sympathizer and working with Confederate agents in the area, sent for Thomas Harbin and Joseph Baden, who turned the two fugitives over to William Bryant with instructions to take the pair to Dr. Richard Stuart’s home, known as Cleydael.

Harbin and Baden had been in Charles County allegedly waiting for Booth with the captured Lincoln. When word arrived that Booth had murdered Lincoln, Harbin and Baden crossed the river to King George County, Virginia, on Sunday, April 16. Union officials searching the area mistakenly believed the two men were Booth and Herold and notified Secretary of War Stanton that the two men had crossed the Potomac. Union troops laying over at Allen’s Fresh left the area, allowing Thomas Jones the opportunity to send Booth and Herold across the river to Virginia.

Sources: Thomas Jones, J. Wilkes Booth (Chicago: Laird & Lee, 1893); William A. Tidwell, James O. Hall, and David W. Gaddy, Come Retribution (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1988).

See also: Stuart, Dr. Richard Henry; Quesenberry, Elizabeth

Bainbridge, Absalom Ruggles (1847–1902)

Absalom Bainbridge, a seventeen-year-old private, served in Company B, Third Virginia Cavalry, before joining John Singleton Mosby’s battalion of Rangers in March 1865 on detached service. On the morning of April 24, 1865, Bainbridge, along with Private Willie Jett and Lieutenant Mortimer Bainbridge Ruggles (Bainbridge’s cousin), also of Mosby’s Rangers, arrived at Port Conway on the Rappahannock River on their way to Caroline County following disbandment of Mosby’s command. At Port Conway they came upon Booth and Herold, who were waiting for the ferry to carry them across the river to the village of Port Royal.

David Herold greeted the three Confederate soldiers while Booth stayed in the background. Herold told the soldiers that he and his injured brother, James W. Boyd, were heading south and asked if they could ride along with them. Neither Booth nor Herold had a horse. After several minutes Herold admitted who they were. Years later, Ruggles acknowledged in a magazine article that he had heard that Lincoln had been assassinated and that John Wilkes Booth was the assassin.

After some discussion, the three Confederate soldiers accompanied Booth and Herold across the river and subsequently found lodging for them at the home of Richard Garrett, a tobacco farmer who lived midway between Port Royal and Bowling Green, Virginia.

Sources: William A. Tidwell, James O. Hall, and David W. Gaddy, Come Retribution (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1988).

See also: Jett, William Storck Willie Ruggles, Mortimer Bainbridge

Baker, Lafayette C. (1826–1868)

Lafayette C. Baker served as head of the National Detective Police (NDP) during the Civil War. He was in overall charge of the Union force that cornered Booth and Herold at the Garrett farm near Bowling Green, Virginia. For his services, Baker received $3,750 of the reward money offered for Booth’s capture, dead or alive.

Baker began the war as a spy working for Lieutenant General Winfield Scott, who was in command of all Federal forces (sixteen thousand men) at the outbreak of hostilities. It was at this time that Baker visited both Richmond and Manassas, Virginia, as an undercover agent gathering information for Scott. Shortly after returning to Washington he was appointed a special provost marshal with police authority.

During the first ten months of the war, internal security fell under the State Department, led by Secretary of State William H. Seward. In February 1862, it was transferred to the War Department, under Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. Under Stanton, Baker was appointed colonel of the First District of Columbia Cavalry in March 1862, and retained that command nominally throughout the war. Baker personally selected Lieutenant Colonel Everton J. Conger to undertake field command of the regiment while Baker remained in Washington carrying out his duties from his office. In the fall of 1862, Stanton created a special investigative unit within the War Department and appointed Baker as its head. The unit became known as the National Detective Police, which has frequently been mislabeled as the U.S. Secret Service. Baker first referred to himself as chief of the Secret Service in his memoir in 1867. The designation stuck. The National Detective Police was really a local agency and not national.

Baker quickly developed an unsavory reputation as a result of his dealings with fraud among government employees and contractors and subversive types known as Copperheads as well as pro-Confederate activists in Washington and Maryland. He was criticized for his police-state tactics, which his enemies claimed he used in his investigations into corruption. As was the case with his superior, Edwin M. Stanton, a great deal of the criticism of Baker fell into the category of misinformation generated by enemies.

Overall, Baker proved to be an effective operative especially in counterespionage activities. While his arrests contributed heavily to the prison rolls in Washington, the great majority of those arrested were pro-Confederate operatives who actively engaged in disloyal practices. What seems strange in hindsight is that the majority of these subversives were soon released from prison on simply their taking the oath of allegiance, after which they returned to their disloyal practices.

Following Abraham Lincoln’s assassination on April 14, 1865, Baker was instrumental in the capture of John Wilkes Booth and his accomplice, David Herold. As Booth and Herold made their way through Southern Maryland and across the Potomac River into Virginia, several law enforcement agencies were hard at work trying to capture them, but without success. For ten days Booth and Herold had managed to elude the hundreds of detectives and law enforcement officers searching for them. Then, on Monday, April 24, the government received a lucky break. Baker was in the War Department telegraph office when a telegram arrived from the military station at Chapel Point in Southern Maryland stating that two unidentified men had crossed the Potomac River on Sunday, April 16. The men were later identified as Thomas Harbin and Joseph Baden, two Confederate agents. Erroneously believing Harbin and Baden to be Booth and Herold, Baker received permission from Stanton to send a cavalry troop in pursuit. Baker chose Lieutenant Colonel Everton Conger and his cousin, Luther B. Baker, both agents working for Baker, and twenty-six men from the 16th New York Cavalry. Two days later the cavalry troop caught up with Booth and Herold at the farm of Richard Garrett near Bowling Green, Virginia, where they killed Booth and captured Herold.

Sharing in the reward and the glory, Baker retired from his post as head of the National Detective Police and returned to his home in Philadelphia, where he died in 1868 at the age of forty-two. The NDP detectives working under Baker either left the service and returned to civilian life or became part of the new Secret Service agency created on July 2, 1865, as part of the U. S. Treasury Department. Because of Baker’s habit of embellishing his role in various undercover activities, it is difficult to separate fact from fiction when reading his personal account of the various activities he was involved in.

Sources: Edwin C. Fishel, The Secret War for the Union (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996).

See also: National Detective Police

Baker, Luther Byron (1830–1896)

Luther B. Baker was the junior officer assigned to the cavalry contingent that tracked John Wilkes Booth and David Herold to the Garrett farm. He was a cousin of Lafayette Baker and a member of the National Detective Police, which Baker commanded. Lafayette Baker assigned his cousin Luther and Lieutenant Colonel Everton Conger, both members of the NDP, to accompany twenty-six troopers of the 16th New York Cavalry under command of Lieutenant Edward P. Doherty in the pursuit of Booth. Lafayette Baker had to request a cavalry unit through Stanton since his own command was no longer in service. Baker said to his cousin Luther Baker, Lieutenant, we have got a sure thing. He was right. It took another forty-eight hours to track down Booth and Herold, but in the end, Baker could claim credit for their capture.

Following Booth’s death at the Garrett farm on the morning of April 26, 1865, Luther Baker accompanied the body back to Washington ahead of the troop of cavalry that captured him. On arriving back in Washington, Booth’s body was transferred to the USS Montauk. Luther Baker carried a small carte-de-visite photograph of Booth with him and used it to help identify the corpse at the Garrett farm. Luther Baker, along with those at the Garrett farm, never had any doubt that the man killed in the tobacco barn was Booth.

For several years after the war, Luther Baker traveled the lecture circuit telling of the search and capture of Booth and Herold. He prepared a composite photograph, which included a picture of him seated on his horse Buckskin, and pictures of Lincoln and of Booth, which he sold at his lectures to raise money.

Sources: George S. Bryan, The Great American Myth (New York: Carrick & Evans, 1940); William Hanchett, The Lincoln Murder Conspiracies (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983).

See also: Baker, Lafayette C.; Conger, Everton Judson; Doherty, Edward Paul

Balsiger, David, and Charles E. Sellier, Jr.

Writers and producers who published a book titled The Lincoln Conspiracy and produced a movie of the same title. The book and movie were based on the alleged missing pages from Booth’s diary and the files of ficticious Secret Service agent Andrew Potter. The theme of The Lincoln Conspiracy centers on Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton’s supposed complicity with other powerful politicians and financiers in planning Lincoln’s assassination. The second pillar of the book and movie is based on Booth escaping capture at the Garrett farm, leaving an innocent surrogate in his place. When the plotters of Lincoln’s death discover they have killed the wrong man, a massive cover-up takes place in which Americans are duped and never learn of the horrific plot, that is, until Balsiger and Sellier expose it in their book and film.

The story is an old one that first emerged in 1937 with the publishing of Why Was Lincoln Murdered? by Otto Eisenschiml. As with most fabricated conspiracies, it is the internal evidence that exposes the plot as a fabrication. Wrong names, wrong dates, wrong places are part of the many inconsistencies that expose the Stanton did it and Booth escaped theories as false.

Sources: William Hanchett, The Lincoln Murder Conspiracies (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983), 226–33.

See also: Missing Pages, John Wilkes Booth’s Diary

Baltimore, Maryland

At the time of Lincoln’s assassination, Baltimore was a major seaport and thriving metropolis with strong ties to the Confederacy. Because of the Chesapeake Bay’s inland dimension, Baltimore was two hundred miles closer to the major cities that lay to the west. With the coming of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad in 1828, the city became even closer to western markets. Baltimore’s importance as a commercial center with a major port linked her economically, and emotionally, with the southern states. By 1860, her population stood at 200,000. Of these, approximately 50,000 were free blacks, the largest number of free blacks of any city in the nation. When the Federal government finally accepted blacks into the military, Baltimore’s black population contributed six regiments to the U.S. Colored Troops.

Baltimore had several connections with the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. The Booth family owned a home