Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [480]
Fanny’s screams brought her brother Gus into the room as Powell advanced again upon Seward, who had been knocked to the floor by the force of the blows. Gus and the injured Robinson managed to pull Powell away, but not before he struck Robinson again and slashed Gus on the forehead and the right hand. When Gus ran for his pistol, Powell bolted down the stairs, stabbing Emerick Hansell, the young State Department messenger, in the back before he bolted out the door and fled through the city streets.
The clamor had roused the entire household. Anna sent the servant to fetch Dr. Verdi, while Private Robinson, though bleeding from his head and shoulders, lifted Seward onto the bed and instructed Fanny about “staunching the blood with clothes & water.” Still fearing that another assassin might be hiding in the house, Frances and Anna checked the attic while Fanny searched the rooms on the parlor floor.
Dr. Verdi would never forget his first sight of Seward that night. “He looked like an exsanguinated corpse. In approaching him my feet went deep in blood. Blood was streaming from an extensive gash in his swollen cheek; the cheek was now laid open.” So “frightful” was the wound and “so great was the loss of blood” that Verdi assumed the jugular vein must have been cut. Miraculously, it was not. Further examination revealed that the knife had been deflected by the metal contraption holding Seward’s broken jaw in place. In bizarre fashion, the carriage accident had saved his life.
“I had hardly sponged his face from the bloody stains and replaced the flap,” Verdi recalled, “when Mrs. Seward, with an intense look, called me to her. ‘Come and see Frederick,’ said she.” Not understanding, he followed Frances to the next room, where he “found Frederick bleeding profusely from the head.” Fred’s appearance was so “ghastly” and his wounds so large that Verdi feared he would not live, but with the application of “cold water pledgets,” he was able to stanch the bleeding temporarily.
Once Fred was stabilized, Frances drew Dr. Verdi into another room on the same floor. “For Heaven’s sake, Mrs. Seward,” asked the befuddled doctor, “what does all this mean?” Verdi found Gus lying on the bed with stab wounds on his hand and forehead, but assured Frances that he would recover. Frances barely had time to absorb these words of comfort before entreating Dr. Verdi to see Private Robinson. “I ceased wondering,” Verdi recalled, “my mind became as if paralyzed; mechanically I followed her and examined Mr. Robinson. He had four or five cuts on his shoulders.”
“Any more?” Verdi asked, though not imagining the carnage could go on. “Yes,” Frances answered, “one more.” She led him to Mr. Hansell, “piteously groaning on the bed.” Stripping off the young man’s clothes, Verdi “found a deep gash just above the small of the back, near the spine.”
“And all this,” Verdi thought, “the work of one man—yes, of one man!”
IN PREPARING FOR the attack on the vice president, George Atzerodt had taken a room at the Kirkwood Hotel, where Johnson was staying. At 10:15, he was supposed to ring the bell of Suite 68, enter the room by force, find his target, and murder him. When first informed that the original plan to kidnap the president had shifted to a triple assassination, he had balked. “I won’t do it,” he had insisted. “I enlisted to abduct the President of the United States, not to kill.” He had eventually agreed to help, but fifteen minutes before the appointed moment, seated at the bar of the Kirkwood House, he changed his mind, left the hotel, and never returned.
JOHN WILKES BOOTH had left little to chance in his plot to kill the president. Though already well acquainted with the layout of Ford’s Theatre, Booth had attended a dress rehearsal the day before to better rehearse his scheme for shooting Lincoln in the state box and then escaping into the alley beside the