Manhunt by James L. Swanson

he did not answer. She touched him; he did not stir. “Father … father!” she shouted into his right ear from just a few inches away. Lincoln did not react. Now frantic, Mary moved closer and tried to push his body into a more upright position. The muscles in his neck, shoulders, chest, and arms, all limp, offered no resistance. Lincoln had no visible wounds. There was no blood on his face or neck. His white linen shirt was unstained. Her touch left no wet, red spots upon her hands. But her loving hands had overlooked the back of his head. Mary Lincoln, terrified, uncomprehending, and by now nearly hysterical, clutched her husband’s body and supported it in a sitting position in the chair.
    Clara Harris lifted her eyes from the stage below and looked back into the box. She beheld Rathbone, wild-eyed, staggering, and clutching his upper left arm with his right hand. He could not suppress the copious flow of blood that flooded over his hand, and dripped on the luxurious Turkish carpet. Booth had struck him hard, and the knife had penetrated deep. Clara, who had seen the whole thing, never forgot the forceful swing of Booth’s “practiced and powerful arm.” Superficially, Rathbone’s wound appeared small—just a narrow puncture of the skin near the elbow, no more than about one and a half inches wide, mimicking the dimensions of the blade. But the knife had sliced deep inside the major’s raised, parrying arm, parallel to the bone, and nearly to the shoulder, cutting an artery, nerves, and veins. Most of the damage was beneath the skin. Clara rushed to attend to her fiance’s wound.
    Down in the audience, more than fifteen hundred people went wild. Some playgoers climbed to the stage, looked up to the box, and shouted desperate queries to its occupants. “What has happened?” “Is the president alive?” Throughout the theatre hundreds of people turned to friends, spouses, and total strangers, all repeating the same questions: “Has the president been shot?” “Who was that man onstage?” “Was that a knife?” “What did he say?” Some women fainted. Innumerable, half-crazed voices cried out from all corners of the theatre in a frightening chorus of vengeance: “Kill the murderer!”; “Hang him!”; “Shoot him!”;Cut his heart out!”; “Catch him!”; “Don’t let him escape!” None of them realized that the assassin was already out the back door, safe from the reach of their vigilante howls. Like a violent spring storm, the climate inside Ford’s became dark, ugly, and menacing. Under the dim glow of the hissing gaslights, people pushed one another to get to the stage. Others, in a panic to flee, shoved men, women, and children out of the aisles. The voices grew louder until nearly all fifteen hundred of them came together to create an angry roar. This was a mob.
    Other voices, these pleading for assistance, not roaring for vengeance, arose from the mob. “Water!” “Has anyone any stimulants?” “Stand back!” “Give him air!” “Is there a doctor in the house?”
    In the dress circle, sitting just a few yards from the door to the president’s box, Charles Leale jumped up from his seat. Disregarding the aisles and customary route to the box, he raced there in a direct line, and, like a hurdler gone haywire, staggered and half vaulted over the cane-bottomed chairs obstructing his path as he shouldered his way past dazed playgoers. He joined a number of other men who were trying to get inside the box. But the door was locked.
    Inside, Major Rathbone walked toward the sound of the beating fists. The men were pounding on the door like it was a drumhead, but their fists and shoulders could not break it open. They shouted to the occupants, if any of them were still alive, to unlock the door. Rathbone staggered forward, already feeling the effects of