Death Stories: The George Mummy, Part 2

Go to the beginning of this story.

Thou cam'st on earth to make the earth my Hell.
A grievous burden was thy Birth to me,
Tetchy and wayward was thy Infancy.
Thy School-days frightful, desp'rate, wild, and furious,
Thy prime of Manhood daring, bold, and venturous:
Thy Age confirmed, proud, subtle, sly, and bloody,
More mild, but yet more harmful; Kind in hatred.
Bloody thou art, bloody will be thy end:
Shame serves thy life, and doth thy death attend.
 William Shakespeare

John Wilkes Booth may have been the most popular actor in America in 1865.  He came from a family of actors, but at age 26 he had already surpassed his famous father and brother in popularity.  One newspaper called him "the most handsome man on the American stage."  He received a hundred love letters a week.  His annual income was about $20,000, fifty times that of an average working man.  He was sexy and charismatic, and his reviewers usually alluded to his "flashing black eyes."  His signature role was the demonic Richard III.

Richard:
Why, I can smile, and murder whiles I smile,
And cry 'Content' to that which grieves my heart,
And wet my cheeks with artificial tears,
And frame my face to all occasions.
I can add colours to the chameleon,
Change shapes with Proteus for advantages,
And set the murderous Machiavel to school.
 William Shakespeare

Offstage, Booth was a romantic who gave himself to torrid affairs, extravagant drinking, and losing causes.  As a boy in military school, he had taken part in an armed insurrection against his cruel masters--and was successful in having the school's draconian policies softened.  Although he spent the Civil War years in the North, he loudly supported the Southern cause.  When Abraham Lincoln, an avid theater-goer, saw Booth in a play and asked to meet with him, Booth refused; he hated what Lincoln stood for.  Preaching the Southern cause in the North was risky, but Booth's popularity and family connections protected him.  Some if his colleagues had the impression his support for the South was more pose than reality.  "He was so infected and unbalanced by his profession that the world seemed to him to be a stage on which men and women were acting, living, their parts," wrote his contemporary Joel Chandler Harris.
Sometime during the War, Booth became involved in a conspiracy.  At first, the idea was to kidnap President Lincoln and several other top government officials and use them to force an exchange, freeing Southern prisoners of war.  In the waning days of the War, this plan seemed the only way to reverse the South's declining fortunes.  But the plan fell apart.  In the end, Booth decided the only way to salvage things was to kill Lincoln instead.

from "The Death of Abraham Lincoln"
Walt Whitman
1879

 I remember where I was stopping at the time, the season being advanced, there were many lilacs in full bloom. By one of those caprices that enter and give tinge to events without being at all a part of them, I find myself always reminded of the great tragedy of that day by the sight and odor of these blossoms. It never fails. 

 The popular afternoon paper of Washington, the little "Evening Star," had spatter'd all over its third page, divided among the advertisements in a sensational manner, in a hundred different places, "The President and his Lady will be at the Theatre this evening…." (Lincoln was fond of the theatre. I have myself seen him there several times. I remember thinking how funny it was that he, in some respects the leading actor in the stormiest drama known to real history's stage through centuries, should sit there and be so completely interested and absorb'd in those human jack-straws, moving about with their silly little gestures, foreign spirit, and flatulent text.) 

 On this occasion the theatre was crowded, many ladies in rich and gay costumes, officers in their uniforms, many well-known citizens, young folks, the usual clusters of gas-lights, the usual magnetism of so many people, cheerful, with perfumes, music of violins and flutes—(and over all, and saturating all, that vast, vague wonder, Victory, the nation's victory, the triumph of the Union, filling the air, the thought, the sense, with exhilaration more than all music and perfumes.) 

 The President came betimes, and, with his wife, witness'd the play from the large stage-boxes of the second tier, two thrown into one, and profusely drap'd with the national flag. The acts and scenes of the piece—one of those singularly written compositions which have at least the merit of giving entire relief to an audience engaged in mental action or business excitements and cares during the day, as it makes not the slightest call on either the moral, emotional, esthetic, or spiritual nature—a piece, ("Our American Cousin,") in which, among other characters, so call'd, a Yankee, certainly such a one as was never seen, or the least like it ever seen, in North America, is introduced in England, with a varied fol-de-rol of talk, plot, scenery, and such phantasmagoria as goes to make up a modern popular drama—had progress'd through perhaps a couple of its acts, when in the midst of this comedy, or non-such, or whatever it is to be call'd, and to offset it, or finish it out, as if in Nature's and the great Muse's mockery of those poor mimes, came interpolated that scene, not really or exactly to be described at all, (for on the many hundreds who were there it seems to this hour to have left a passing blur, a dream, a blotch)—and yet partially to be described as I now proceed to give it. There is a scene in the play representing a modern parlor in which two unprecedented English ladies are inform'd by the impossible Yankee that he is not a man of fortune, and therefore undesirable for marriage-catching purposes; after which, the comments being finish'd, the dramatic trio make exit, leaving the stage clear for a moment. At this period came the murder of Abraham Lincoln.

As Lincoln watched a play that evening, Booth walked into Ford's Theater, where he had worked as an actor many times before, and where his presence aroused no suspicion.  Lincoln's bodyguard stepped away from his post to watch the play.  Booth slipped into the private box where Lincoln sat.  He shot Lincoln behind the ear, the bullet sluicing diagonally through the President's brain before lodging.  Booth tossed his derringer aside and drew a knife, which he used to wound the soldier sitting beside Lincoln. 
Then he leapt from the box to the stage fourteen feet below.  As he leapt, the spur of his boot caught in the American flag that draped the front of the box.  He crashed to the stage, breaking his leg.  The sound of his gunshot had been swallowed in the audience's chatter.  When Booth made his clumsy appearance on stage, every person in the theater recognized him.  There was applause, mixed with murmurs of confusion.  Booth shouted, "Sic semper tyrannus!" -- "such always to tyrants!" -- and fled.

Great as all its manifold train, circling round it, and stretching into the future for many a century, in the politics, history, art, &c., of the New World, in point of fact the main thing, the actual murder, transpired with the quiet and simplicity of any commonest occurrence—the bursting of a bud or pod in the growth of vegetation, for instance. Through the general hum following the stage pause, with the change of positions, came the muffled sound of a pistol-shot, which not one-hundredth part of the audience heard at the time—and yet a moment's hush—somehow, surely, a vague startled thrill—and then, through the ornamented, draperied, starr'd and striped space-way of the President's box, a sudden figure, a man, raises himself with hands and feet, stands a moment on the railing, leaps below to the stage, (a distance of perhaps fourteen or fifteen feet,) falls out of position, catching his boot-heel in the copious drapery, (the American flag,) falls on one knee, quickly recovers himself, rises as if nothing had happen'd, (he really sprains his ankle, but unfelt then)—and so the figure, Booth, the murderer, dress'd in plain black broadcloth, bare-headed, with full, glossy, raven hair, and his eyes like some mad animal's flashing with light and resolution, yet with a certain strange calmness, holds aloft in one hand a large knife—walks along not much back from the footlights—turns fully toward the audience his face of statuesque beauty, lit by those basilisk eyes, flashing with desperation, perhaps insanity—launches out in a firm and steady voice the words Sic semper tyrannis—and then walks with neither slow nor very rapid pace diagonally across to the back of the stage, and disappears. (Had not all this terrible scene—making the mimic ones preposterous—had it not all been rehears'd, in blank, by Booth, beforehand?) 

 A moment's hush—a scream—the cry of murder—Mrs. Lincoln leaning out of the box, with ashy cheeks and lips, with involuntary cry, pointing to the retreating figure, He has kill'd the President. And still a moment's strange, incredulous suspense—and then the deluge!—then that mixture of horror, noises, uncertainty—(the sound, somewhere back, of a horse's hoofs clattering with speed)—the people burst through chairs and railings, and break them up—there is inextricable confusion and terror—women faint—quite feeble persons fall, and are trampl'd on—many cries of agony are heard—the broad stage suddenly fills to suffocation with a dense and motley crowd, like some horrible carnival—the audience rush generally upon it, at least the strong men do—the actors and actresses are all there in their play-costumes and painted faces, with mortal fright showing through the rouge—the screams and calls, confused talk—redoubled, trebled—two or three manage to pass up water from the stage to the President's box—others try to clamber up—&c., &c. 

 In the midst of all this, the soldiers of the President's guard, with others, suddenly drawn to the scene, burst in—(some two hundred altogether)—they storm the house, through all the tiers, especially the upper ones, inflam'd with fury, literally charging the audience with fix'd bayonets, muskets and pistols, snouting Clear out! clear out! you sons of——…. Such the wild scene, or a suggestion of it rather, inside the play-house that night. 

 Outside, too, in the atmosphere of shock and craze, crowds of people, fill'd with frenzy, ready to seize any outlet for it, come near committing murder several times on innocent individuals. One such case was especially exciting. The infuriated crowd, through some chance, got started against one man, either for words he utter'd, or perhaps without any cause at all, and were proceeding at once to actually hang him on a neighboring lamp-post, when he was rescued by a few heroic policemen, who placed him in their midst, and fought their way slowly and amid great peril toward the station house. It was a fitting episode of the whole affair. The crowd rushing and eddying to and fro—the night, the yells, the pale faces, many frighten'd people trying in vain to extricate themselves—the attack'd man, not yet freed from the jaws of death, looking like a corpse—the silent, resolute, half-dozen policemen, with no weapons but their little clubs, yet stern and steady through all those eddying swarms—made a fitting side-scene to the grand tragedy of the murder. They gain'd the station house with the protected man, whom they placed in security for the night, and discharged him in the morning.

Until the moment of his death, Lincoln was the most unpopular president in American history, reviled in the South as a dictator and lampooned in the North for his intention to preserve the defeated South.  Almost overnight, the martyred Lincoln, the first American President to be assassinated, became a symbol of integrity, a sort of political saint.  At the same time, Booth, the country's most popular actor, suddenly became its most notorious criminal.  Whole families of Booths changed their surnames; fans ripped his photo from their scrapbooks.
The government launched an investigation.  Eight people were eventually convicted in the conspiracy to assassinate Lincoln and other Northern leaders; four were executed, including Mary Surratt, the first woman legally executed in the United States.  Even conservative historians soon came to believe the conspiracy was broader, and perhaps included government officials who were never indicted; Secretary of War Edwin Stanton is often mentioned.  Booth had escaped, and the government immediately arranged a reward for his capture.  Twelve days after the assassination, soldiers tracked Booth to a tobacco shed on the Garrett farm in Virginia.  Booth refused to surrender.  When he raised his gun to fire on soldiers, a sergeant named Boston Corbett dropped him with a single shot which took him in the back of the neck--two inches from the location of Lincoln's fatal wound.  He was buried under the stone floor of a military prison.  Four years later, his family managed to have his body exhumed and transferred to the family plot in Baltimore's Greenmount Cemetery.

Richard:
For many lives stand between me and home:
And I,--like one lost in a thorny wood,
That rends the thorns and is rent with the thorns,
Seeking a way and straying from the way;
Not knowing how to find the open air,
But toiling desperately to find it out,--
Torment myself to catch the English crown.
 William Shakespeare

That's the official ending of the story.  Alternate stories of Booth's fate cropped up almost immediately, partly because of suspicious loose ends in the Lincoln assassination—pages missing from Booth's diary, Booth's calling card left for Vice-President Andrew Johnson the day of the assassination, General Grant mysteriously canceling his plan to see the play with Lincoln that night.  Dr. Frederick May, who had once cut a tumor from Booth's neck, remarked on first seeing the official corpse that it looked nothing like Booth. But he changed his mind when he saw the familiar surgical scar.  The central premise of the alternate stories is that Booth escaped while another man was killed in his place, and highly-placed conspirators covered up the switch.