In Washington it was a day of deep peace and thankfulness. Grant had arrived that morning, and, going to the Executive Mansion, had met the cabinet, Friday being their regular day for assembling. He expressed some anxiety as to the news from Sherman which he was expecting hourly. The President answered him in that singular vein of poetic mysticism which, though constantly held in check by his strong common sense, formed such a remarkable element in his character. He assured Grant that the news would come soon and come favorably, for he had last night had his usual dream which preceded great events. He seemed to be, he said, in a singular and indescribable vessel, but always the same, moving with great rapidity toward a dark and indefinite shore; he had had this dream before Antietam, Murfreesboro, Gettysburg, and Vicksburg. The cabinet were greatly impressed by this story; but Grant, most matter-of-fact of created beings, made the characteristic response that "Murfreesboro was no victory, and had no important results." The President did not argue this point with him, but repeated that Sherman would beat or had beaten Johnston; that his dream must relate to that, since he knew of no other important event likely at present to occur.
Questions of trade between the States, and of various phases of reconstruction, occupied the cabinet on this last day of Lincoln's firm and tolerant rule. The President spoke at some length, disclosing his hope that much could be done to reanimate the States and get their governments in successful operation before Congress came together. He was anxious to close the period of strife without over-much discussion. Particularly did he desire to avoid the shedding of blood, or any vindictiveness of punishment. "No one need expect that he would take any part in hanging or killing these men, even the worst of them." "Enough lives have been sacrificed," he exclaimed; "we must extinguish our resentments if we expect harmony and union." He did not wish the autonomy nor the individuality of the States disturbed; and he closed the session by commending the whole subject to the most careful consideration of his advisers. It was, he said, the great question pending—they must now begin to act in the interest of peace. Such were the last words that Lincoln spoke to his cabinet. They dispersed with these sentences of clemency and good will in their ears, never again to meet under his wise and benignant chairmanship. He had told them that morning a strange story, which made some demand upon their faith, but the circumstances under which they were next to come together were beyond the scope of the wildest fancy.
The day was one of unusual enjoyment to Mr. Lincoln. His son Robert had returned from the field with General Grant, and the President spent an hour with the young captain in delighted conversation over the campaign. He denied himself generally to the throng of visitors, admitting only a few friends. In the afternoon he went for a long drive with Mrs. Lincoln. His mood, as it had been all day, was singularly happy and tender. He talked much of the past and future; after four years of trouble and tumult he looked forward to four years of comparative quiet and normal work; after that he expected to go back to Illinois and practise law again. He was never simpler or gentler than on this day of unprecedented triumph; his heart overflowed with sentiments of gratitude to Heaven, which took the shape, usual to generous natures, of love and kindness to all men.
From the very beginning of his presidency, Mr. Lincoln had been constantly subject to the threats of his enemies. His mail was infested with brutal and vulgar menace, and warnings of all sorts came to him from zealous or nervous friends. Most of these communications received no notice. In cases where there seemed a ground for inquiry, it was made, as carefully as possible, by the President's private secretary, or by the War Department; but always without substantial result. Warnings that appeared most definite, when examined, proved too vague and confused for further attention. The President was too intelligent not to know that he was in some danger. Madmen frequently made their way to the very door of the executive office, and sometimes into Mr. Lincoln's presence. But he had himself so sane a mind, and a heart so kindly, even to his enemies, that it was hard for him to believe in political hatred so deadly as to lead to murder.
He knew, indeed, that incitements to murder him were not uncommon in the South, but as is the habit of men constitutionally brave, he considered the possibilities of danger remote, and positively refused to torment himself with precautions for his own safety; summing the matter up by saying that both friends and strangers must have daily access to him; that his life was therefore in reach of any one, sane or mad, who was ready to murder and be hanged for it; and that he could not possibly guard against all danger unless he shut himself up in an iron box, in which condition he could scarcely perform the duties of a President. He therefore went in and out before the people, always unarmed, generally unattended. He received hundreds of visitors in a day, his breast bare to pistol or knife. He walked at midnight, with a single secretary, or alone, from the Executive Mansion to the War Department and back. He rode through the lonely roads of an uninhabited suburb from the White House to the Soldiers' Home in the dusk of the evening, and returned to his work in the morning before the town was astir. He was greatly annoyed when it was decided that there must be a guard at the Executive Mansion, and that a squad of cavalry must accompany him on his daily drive; but he was always reasonable, and yielded to the best judgment of others.
Four years of threats and boastings that were unfounded, and of plots that came to nothing, thus passed away; but precisely at the time when the triumph of the nation seemed assured, and a feeling of peace and security was diffused over the country, one of the conspiracies, apparently no more important than the others, ripened in the sudden heat of hatred and despair. A little band of malignant secessionists, consisting of John Wilkes Booth, an actor of a family of famous players; Lewis Powell, alias Payne, a disbanded rebel soldier from Florida; George Atzerodt, formerly a coachmaker, but more recently a spy and blockade-runner of the Potomac; David E. Herold, a young druggist's clerk; Samuel Arnold and Michael O'Laughlin, Maryland secessionists and Confederate soldiers; and John H. Surratt, had their ordinary rendezvous at the house of Mrs. Mary E. Surratt, the widowed mother of the last named, formerly a woman of some property in Maryland, but reduced by reverses to keeping a small boarding-house in Washington.
Booth was the leader of the little coterie. He was a young man of twenty-six, strikingly handsome, with that ease and grace of manner which came to him of right from his theatrical ancestors. He had played for several seasons with only indifferent success, his value as an actor lying rather in his romantic beauty of person than in any talent or industry he possessed. He was a fanatical secessionist, and had imbibed at Richmond and other Southern cities where he played a furious spirit of partizanship against Lincoln and the Union party. After the reëlection of Mr. Lincoln, he visited Canada, consorted with the rebel emissaries there, and—whether or not at their instigation cannot certainly be said—conceived a scheme to capture the President and take him to Richmond. He passed a great part of the autumn and winter pursuing this fantastic enterprise, seeming to be always well supplied with money; but the winter wore away, and nothing was accomplished. On March 4 he was at the Capitol, and created a disturbance by trying to force his way through the line of policemen who guarded the passage through which the President walked to the east front of the building. His intentions at this time are not known; he afterward said he lost an excellent chance of killing the President that day.
His ascendancy over his fellow-conspirators seems to have been complete. After the surrender of Lee, in an access of malice and rage akin to madness he called them together and assigned each his part in the new crime which had risen in his mind out of the abandoned abduction scheme. This plan was as brief and simple as it was horrible. Powell, alias Payne, the stalwart, brutal, simple-minded boy from Florida, was to murder Seward; Atzerodt, the comic villain of the drama, was assigned to remove Andrew Johnson; Booth reserved for himself the most conspicuous rôle of the tragedy. It was Herold's duty to attend him as page and aid him in his escape. Minor parts were given to stage-carpenters and other hangers-on, who probably did not understand what it all meant. Herold, Atzerodt, and Surratt had previously deposited at a tavern at Surrattsville, Maryland, owned by Mrs. Surratt, but kept by a man named Lloyd, a quantity of arms and materials to be used in the abduction scheme. Mrs. Surratt, being at the tavern on the eleventh, warned Lloyd to have the "shooting-irons" in readiness, and, visiting the place again on the fourteenth, told him they would probably be called for that night.
The preparations for the final blow were made with feverish haste. It was only about noon of the fourteenth that Booth learned that the President was to go to Ford's Theater that night to see the play "Our American Cousin." It has always been a matter of surprise in Europe that he should have been at a place of amusement on Good Friday; but the day was not kept sacred in America, except by the members of certain churches. The President was fond of the theater. It was one of his few means of recreation. Besides, the town was thronged with soldiers and officers, all eager to see him; by appearing in public he would gratify many people whom he could not otherwise meet. Mrs. Lincoln had asked General and Mrs. Grant to accompany her; they had accepted, and the announcement that they would be present had been made in the evening papers; but they changed their plans, and went north by an afternoon train. Mrs. Lincoln then invited in their stead Miss Harris and Major Rathbone, the daughter and the stepson of Senator Ira Harris. Being detained by visitors, the play had made some progress when the President appeared. The band struck up "Hail to the Chief," the actors ceased playing, the audience rose, cheering tumultuously, the President bowed in acknowledgment, and the play went on.
From the moment he learned of the President's intention, Booth's every action was alert and energetic. He and his confederates were seen on horseback in every part of the city. He had a hurried conference with Mrs. Surratt before she started for Lloyd's tavern. He intrusted to an actor named Matthews a carefully prepared statement of his reasons for committing the murder, which he charged him to give to the publisher of the "National Intelligencer," but which Matthews, in the terror and dismay of the night, burned without showing to any one. Booth was perfectly at home in Ford's Theater. Either by himself, or with the aid of friends, he arranged his whole plan of attack and escape during the afternoon. He counted upon address and audacity to gain access to the small passage behind the President's box. Once there, he guarded against interference by an arrangement of a wooden bar to be fastened by a simple mortise in the angle of the wall and the door by which he had entered, so that the door could not be opened from without. He even provided for the contingency of not gaining entrance to the box by boring a hole in its door, through which he might either observe the occupants, or take aim and shoot. He hired at a livery-stable a small, fleet horse.