Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer

On April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth wakes up “hungover and depressed” (9). Booth is a popular and celebrated actor from a well-known family. He goes to Ford’s Theatre to pick up his mail. That morning, the theater had received a note from the president’s messenger that the First Family was planning on attending their show of the comedy Our American Cousin that evening. When Booth arrives at the theater, he hears the news and begins to set his plan in motion.

That same day, President Abraham Lincoln is having a very good day. He saw his son, Robert, who had recently returned from witnessing the surrender at Appomattox and met with the Cabinet. The president also received a good omen in the form of a recurring dream that “he had preceding nearly every great and important event of the War” (14). He plans to finish his work by three o’clock so he can meet with his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln.

The owner of Ford’s Theatre, Henry Clay Ford, puts notices in the newspapers that President Lincoln is planning on attending the play that evening to help spur ticket sales. His brother, James Ford, gets American flags with which to decorate the president’s box, and on his way back he runs into Booth.

Booth is in the midst of his preparations for that evening. He picks up a rented horse. Then, he writes a letter at the National Hotel and gives it to a fellow actor, John Matthews, telling him to make sure it is published in the National Intelligencer newspaper. Booth sees General Grant and his family leaving town and is annoyed, wondering if it means the president will not be attending the play after all, as they were to go together. Then, Booth goes to Kirkwood House, where he leaves a note for Vice President Jackson that reads “Don’t wish to disturb you. Are you at home?” (19). Next, he goes to a boardinghouse at 541 H Street to meet with Mary Surrat, mother of his friend John Surrat, to whom he gives a package to be delivered at a tavern in Surrattsville, Maryland. Booth stables his horse at Ford’s Theatre. He then returns to his hotel and picks up a .44-caliber handgun and a Bowie knife. Around seven o’clock, he leaves the hotel.

Mary Surrat arrives in Surrattsville, and she gives the package, which contains Booth’s field glasses, or binoculars, to John Lloyd. She returns to Washington. Lloyd gets out two rifles Surratt’s son had previously hidden in the tavern and puts them in his room, and then goes to sleep.

That evening, Booth meets with his co-conspirators at Herndon House in Washington. Since at least 1864, Booth had been working on a plan to kidnap President Lincoln to “hold him as a hostage for the Confederacy, and turn the tide of the war” (23). Booth and his co-conspirators had come close, in March 1865, but their intelligence was wrong and they weren’t able to grab the president. After the retreat of the Confederacy, Booth decided to escalate the plan. On April 14, 1865, he tells the co-conspirators present, Lewis Powell, David Herold, and George Atzerodt, that they would be killing President Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson, and Secretary of State William Seward. Atzerodt was tasked with killing Johnson. Powell, guided by Herold, would kill Seward. And Booth would kill Lincoln. Atzerodt tries to back out, but Booth had already signed Atzerodt’s name to the letter he had given to Matthews to be printed in the paper the next day referencing their plans.

That afternoon, Lincoln tells his wife that he wants to improve their relationship and they talk about the future. That evening, they pick up Major Henry Rathbone and his fiancée Clara Harris, the daughter of a senator, and they go to Ford’s Theatre together. They arrive at the theater around 8:30 pm and the crowd cheers President Lincoln’s entrance, halting the play, which had already started. The band plays “Hail to the Chief.”