Killing Lincoln - Bill O'Reilly [82]
Only one man is bold enough to give chase. Set carpenter Jake Ritterspaugh and Booth reach the stage door at the very same time. Booth thrusts the knife blade at him. Ritterspaugh leaps back. And in that instant, Booth is gone, squeezing through the door and hauling himself up into the saddle.
Rather than give Peanut John the shiny nickel the boy had hoped for, Booth kicks him hard and bludgeons him with the butt of his knife.
“He kicked me! He kicked me!” the boy moans, falling to the ground.
At the same instant, yet another spontaneous torchlight parade blocks Booth’s getaway on Tenth Street. He swerves into the alley, spurs his horse down the cobblestones dividing two large brick buildings, and then turns onto F Street, completely avoiding the procession.
In an instant, John Wilkes Booth disappears into the night.
Editorial illustrations depicting the assassination of President Lincoln
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1865
WASHINGTON, D.C.
10:20 P.M.
Booth slows the mare to a walk. Word is already spreading through Washington that the president has been shot. The news is shouted, breathlessly exclaimed, passed from citizen to citizen, bonfire to bonfire. People aren’t racing away from Ford’s, they’re racing to Ford’s, to see for themselves if these wild rumors are true. Victory marches turn into mobs of the curious and scared, determined to fight their way to the theater.
When a drunk shouts into the night, “I’m glad it happened!” a furious mob beats and kicks him unconscious, tearing off his clothes, and hauls his limp body to a lamppost for a lynching. Ironically, he will be rescued by the Union cavalry.
Now another troop of cavalry is summoned to Ford’s and plunges recklessly through the throngs assembling outside. Inside, the crowd surges toward the stage, trapping small children in its midst, chanting all the while that Booth must be lynched. Laura Keene has the presence of mind to march to center stage and cry out for calm and sanity, but her words go unheeded. The crush against the stage is made worse as the news explodes into the street in front of Ford’s Theatre. Passersby rush inside to see for themselves, some of them hoping that Booth is still trapped inside but most just wanting a glimpse of the injured president.
Across town at Grover’s Theatre, the patriotic celebration is in full swing. A young boy is reciting a poem when a man bursts into the theater and shouts that the president has been shot. As the crowd reacts in horror, a young soldier stands and yells for everyone to sit still. “It’s a ruse of the pickpockets,” he says, explaining that thieves spread such disinformation to fleece the crowd as people rush for the exit.
The six hundred theatergoers take their seats once again. The boy onstage exits, his poetry reading complete. But he is back just seconds later, struggling to control his voice as he shares the horrific news that President Lincoln has, indeed, been shot. Tad Lincoln, the president’s twelve-year-old son, is in the audience with a White House staffer. Stunned, he returns to the White House, where he collapses into the arms of the doorkeeper, shouting, “They’ve killed Papa dead! They’ve killed Papa dead.”
Soon more bad news begins to spread: Secretary Seward has been assaulted in his bed.
At Rullman’s Hotel, on Pennsylvania Avenue, the bartender shouts out the mournful news that Lincoln has been shot. Mike O’Laughlen, the would-be conspirator who stalked the Grants last night, drinks in the corner. He is drunk again but still coherent enough to know in an instant that Booth is the killer—and that he must get out of town before someone implicates him, too.
In front of the Willard Hotel, the stable foreman John Fletcher is still seething that David Herold hasn’t return the roan he rented earlier. At that very moment, Herold trots past. “You get off that horse now!” Fletcher cries, springing out into the street and grabbing