When I left, the President was still alive, breathing heavily and regularly, though, of course, quite unconscious. About eight o'clock I was awakened by a rapping on a lower window. It was Colonel Pelouze, of the adjutant-general's office, and he said:
"Mr. Dana, the President is dead, and Mr. Stanton directs you to arrest Jacob Thompson."
The order was sent to Portland, but Thompson couldn't be found there. He had taken the Canadian route to Halifax.
The whole machinery of the War Department was now employed in the effort to secure the murderer of the President and his accomplices. As soon as I had recovered from the first shock of Mr. Lincoln's death, I remembered that in the previous November I had received from General Dix the following letter:
Headquarters, Department of the East,
New York City, November 17, 1864.
C. A. Dana, Esq.
My dear Sir: The inclosed was picked up in a Third Avenue railroad car. I should have thought the whole thing got up for the Sunday Mercury but for the genuine letter from St. Louis in a female hand. The Charles Selby is obviously a manufacture. The party who dropped the letter was heard to say he would start for Washington Friday night. He is of medium size, has black hair and whiskers, but the latter are believed to be a disguise. He had disappeared before the letter was picked up and examined.
Yours truly, John A. Dix.