IV. THE GREAT TRAGEDY
Our story here has to do only with episodes that compose the personal interest of Lincoln and does not take into consideration the usual public or political affairs that build up his historical character and national service. But the tragedy of his martyrdom has many important points of interest relating to the interpretation of his personal life. The Book of Fate opens only upon the past and we call it history, but it is the “light of experience” for social reason and the moral law.
On the evening of April 14, 1865, a happy party of distinguished friends were gathered for dinner with President Lincoln at the White House. Mrs. Lincoln, being the manager of social affairs, made up a theatre party to see Laura Keene play “Our American Cousin” at Ford’s Theatre. In the party were General Grant and his wife, and Governor Oglesby of Illinois. The box for the party having been procured in the morning, the manager of the theatre announced in the afternoon papers that the President and the Hero of Appomattox would be present at the farewell benefit performance of Miss Keene.
The house was filled, but the President came late, as Mr. and Mrs. Grant had decided to take the train that evening for the West, and Mrs. Lincoln had to rearrange the plans for her party, so as to include Major Rathburn and his stepsister, Miss Harris, daughter of Senator Harris of New York. The President desired to give up going, but, on being told how disappointed the public would be, he yielded to the persuasion and went.
They arrived about the middle of the first act and were received with loud applause, the people standing as the band played “Hail to the Chief.”
One can hardly refrain from pausing, as this scene comes before the mind, to wonder if the log-cabin boy had beheld this scene in a prophetic dream how extravagant and impossible it would have seemed.
On reaching the box, the President took a large arm-chair in front, with Mrs. Lincoln by his side on the right.
After they were seated, the interrupted play was resumed.
It was about the middle of the third act, the time 10.20, when the audience was startled by a shot, and immediately the shout, “Sic semper tyrannis” (so ever to tyrants). Next came the piercing shriek of Mrs. Lincoln, then a well-known actor, John Wilkes Booth, was seen to swing out over the box and fall heavily upon the stage.
The horrified people arose with cries of alarm and all was confusion, so that witnesses from the audience could see no more, and they poured forth into the streets with the dreadful news that the President had been shot.
Booth had desired to make the assassination as spectacular and sensational as possible. He prepared himself, just before the terrible deed, with a heavy drink of whisky in the nearby saloon. Going into the theatre from the front, he passed along the wall to the passageway leading to the box. He took out a visiting card and went up to the President’s messenger, who was sitting just outside. Presenting the card, he passed through the door into the aisle back of the box, closing and barring the door after him. Slipping in just behind the President, he aimed the pistol at the back of his victim’s head and fired the shot.
Some testify that his first words were “Revenge for the South.”
As the assassin swung himself over to take the twelve-foot leap to the stage, Major Rathburn of the party tried to catch him, and so received a severe wound on the hand from a dagger. An American flag draped the front of the stage, and in this Booth’s spur caught, throwing him so as to fracture his left leg, and which actually resulted in being the cause of his capture. This flag has thus been called the “mute avenger of its Nation’s Chief.”
Excited crowds were nothing new in Washington, but witnesses declare they never saw such insane despair as that with which the people expressed their grief. Shouting, frenzied men and women ran aimlessly here and there in a chaos of ungovernable disorder.
People could hardly believe that the hideous deed had been done by John Wilkes Booth, whose rising fame as a tragedian was only surpassed by his famous brother and father. But he had been recognized by Laura Keene, as with quick thought she grasped a glass of water and ran to the President’s box. She seemed to be almost the first to understand, and to reach the martyr’s side with help for him. She held his head in her lap while the doctors were examining the wound. Her silk dress stained with his blood is still kept with the sacred relics at his tomb in Springfield, Illinois.
The picture of that box party cannot be surpassed by anything ever set up in the romantic imagination. At the death-moment it contained five persons. One of them was the greatest man of his time, just emerging as victor in one of the most consequential struggles of all human history. The death blow was upon him from a type of man as utterly his opposite in everything making the form of man that anyone can conceive. He was of the most illustrious family of actors in his time, handsome, a fashionable beau, and a moral degenerate,—the most courted idler of the social show. For his deed he was destined in a few weeks to die the death of a beaten dog in a filthy stable. But no less in direful tragedy was the fate of the betrothed lovers, Major Rathburn and his stepsister, Miss Harris, who were the guests in that ghastly social hour. A few months later the young man went insane, killed his sweetheart and died in a madhouse.
Lincoln was still alive but unconscious when responsible persons, in a few minutes, came into control. He was carried across the street to the nearest room where he could be made as comfortable as possible. The doctors had no hope that he would ever return to consciousness. The surgeons and the nearest official friends were all that were allowed to remain in the little room with him. The pale light of a single gas jet flickered down over him. Secretary Stanton stood against the wall writing telegrams that told how the battle was going, and giving orders needed to keep the peace of that dark hour. At seven-twenty-two the next morning Lincoln’s heart ceased to beat and one of the greatest characters of history had passed from life.
Mr. Stanton closed the martyr’s eyes, drew the sheet over his face, and said, “Now he belongs to the Ages.”