Between the Lines: Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After

by Henry Bascom Smith

Write me to Baltimore, as I expect to be in about Wednesday or Thursday, or, if you can possibly come on, I will Tuesday meet you in Baltimore at B——. Ever I subscribe myself,

Your friend,
Sam.

Notwithstanding the opprobrium attaching to the name, Arnold, in American history, I have always looked upon this Arnold with some feelings of pity.

The following account of Paine's arrest is borrowed from Mr. Osborn H. Oldroyd's "Assassination of Abraham Lincoln":

The doorbell of Mrs. Surratt's house, No. 541 (now No. 604) H Street, N. W., was rung by Major H. W. Smith, in company with other officers, about eleven o'clock Monday night, the 17th. When the bell rang, Mrs. Surratt appeared at the window and said: "Is that you, Mr. Kirby"? The reply was that it was not Mr. Kirby, and to open the door. She opened the door, and was asked: "Are you Mrs. Surratt?" She said: "I am the widow of John H. Surratt." The officer added, "And the mother of John H. Surratt, Jr.?" She replied: "I am." Major Smith said: "I come to arrest you and all in your house, and take you for examination to General Augur's headquarters." No inquiry whatever was made as to the cause of arrest. Mr. R. C. Morgan, in the service of the War Department, made his appearance at the Surratt house a few minutes later, sent under orders to superintend the seizure of papers and the arrest of the inmates. While the officers were in the house a knock and ring were heard at the door, and Mr. Morgan and Captain Wermerskirch stepped forward and opened the door, and Lewis Payne stepped in with a pickax over his shoulder, dressed in a gray coat and vest and black trousers. As he had left his hat in the house of Secretary Seward, he had made one out of the sleeve of a shirt or the leg of a drawers, pulling it over his head like a turban. He said he wished to see Mrs. Surratt, and when asked what he came that time of night for, he replied he came to dig a gutter, as Mrs. Surratt had sent for him in the morning. When asked where he boarded, he said he had no boarding house, that he was a poor man, who got his living with the pick. Mr. Morgan asked him why he came at that hour of the night to go to work? He said he simply called to find out what time he should go to work in the morning. When asked if he had any previous acquaintance with Mrs Surratt, he answered, "No," but said that she knew he was working around the neighborhood and was a poor man, and came to him. He gave his age as twenty, and was from Fauquier County, Virginia, and pulled out an oath of allegiance, and on it was "Lewis Payne, Fauquier County, Virginia." Mrs. Surratt was asked whether she knew him, and she declared in the presence of Payne, holding up her hands: "Before God, I have never seen that man before; I have not hired him; I do not know anything about him." Mrs. Surratt said to Mr. Morgan: "I am so glad you officers came here to-night, for this man came here with a pickax to kill us."

From Mrs. Surratt's house Payne was taken to the provost marshal's office. Mrs. Surratt was informed that the carriage was ready to take her to the provost marshal's office, and she, with her daughter Annie, Miss Honora Fitzpatrick, and Miss Olivia Jenkins (the latter two boarded at the house), were driven away.

The telegram received on Saturday morning the 15th, giving a description of the person who tried to kill Secretary Seward, was quite accurate, considering it was made by persons under great excitement. The oath of allegiance which Paine pulled out of his pocket when arrested, was the document issued from our office. He had erased, however, the restriction which ordered that he was to "go north of Philadelphia and remain during the war."

Before telling of what I did after discovering Paine to be the person I had released on March 14th, I want you to read the account Mr. Oldroyd gives of his clumsily brutal attack on Secretary Seward:

"Lewis Payne (his real name was Lewis Thornton Powell), boarded at the Horndon House, corner Ninth and F Streets, where the Loan and Trust Building now stands, for two weeks, leaving there on the afternoon of April 14th. He paid his bill at four o'clock, and requested dinner before the regular time, and it was served to him.

Very little is known of his whereabouts from that time until 10 P. M., when he rang the bell of the Seward mansion, which stood on the ground now occupied by the Lafayette Opera House.