Manhunt by James L. Swanson Page A

blood loss and shock. He cupped the hand of his good arm under the wooden music stand that Booth used to bar the door, and tried to pull it up. It wouldn’t budge. He tried harder, then realized that the harder the men on the other side pushed, the more effective Booth’s device became. It was too thick to snap, so every push created a tighter seal between the door panel and the head of the bar. “For God’s sake open the door,” the voices pleaded. Rathbone shouted through the door to stop pushing—the door was barred. The men obeyed Rathbone’s order and stepped back. Weakening rapidly, Rathbone pulled up with his remaining strength. The music stand popped free and nearly a dozen men rushed inside.
    Dr. Leale, not in uniform, announced his rank and profession and stepped ahead of them. Immediately he saw all four occupants. Like an officer under enemy fire, he needed to regain his composure. “Halt!” he commanded himself silently. Do not panic. “Be calm,” he chided himself. Do your duty. Major Rathbone, standing between Leale and Lincoln, beseeched the doctor to treat him first, and as proof of his injury, he ostentatiously used his right hand to hold up his wounded left arm. Leale lifted Rathbone’s chin, peered into his eyes, and, when “an almost instantaneous glance revealed the fact that he was in no immediate danger,” ignored the emotional major and rushed to the president’s side.
    Leale approached Mary Lincoln and introduced himself as a United States Army surgeon. Wordlessly, she thrust out her hand, and he grasped it tightly. Then she unleashed a torrent of pitiful pleas: “Oh, Doctor, is he dead? Can he recover? Will you take charge of him? Do what you can for him. Oh, my dear husband.” The doctor assured the first lady that he would do everything possible for her husband. As Mary wept bitterly, Leale released her hand and began his examination.
    Lincoln looked dead. His eyes were closed, he was unconscious, and his head had fallen forward. Leale concluded, from Lincoln’s “crouched-down sitting posture,” that if Mary had not held his body upright in the rocking chair, the president would have already tumbled to the floor. Leale took Lincoln’s right radial pulse, but felt no movement of the artery. Just to be sure, Leale and others lifted Lincoln from the rocker and laid him in a recumbent position on the floor. While Leale held the president’s head and shoulders, one of his hands felt a wet spot, invisible to the eye, on the left shoulder of Lincoln’s black frock coat. It was a clot of blood. Leale, remembering Booth’s flashing dagger onstage and noting Rathbone’s severely bleeding wound, assumed that Lincoln had been stabbed. Leale called for a knife. He brought no surgeon’s tools to a social night at the theatre. If Lincoln had been stabbed, how could he suture the wounds without needles and thread? By now several menhad joined Rathbone in the box, and hands began fishing wildly in pants pockets until William Kent, a government employee, produced a pocketknife. Leale removed Lincoln’s custom-made, black wool frock coat, trimmed at the collar, lapels, and cuffs with grosgrain piping. The box was too dimly lit to read the tailor’s label sewn inside the collar—Brooks Brothers, New York—or to admire the black silk lining embossed with a large American eagle, a shield of stars and stripes, and the motto “One Country, One Destiny.” Leale cut open Lincoln’s collar, shirt, and coat to examine him for knife wounds. There were none. Then Leale lifted each of the president’s eyelids, studied the pupils, and reeled in dismay: it was a brain injury. Leale separated his fingers, weaved both of his hands gently through Lincoln’s hair, and as he worked them thoroughly around the head, he discovered that the hair was matted with blood. Leale’s fingers probed