The Day Lincoln Was Shot by Jim Bishop Page B

bedroom by Mrs. Surratt and a young boarder, Miss Honora Fitzpatrick. On the ground floor—or basement—was another sitting room, a dining room, and a kitchen.
    Little evidence remains of this first attempt to kidnap President Lincoln. On the weekend prior to the Wednesday of the attempt (January 18) Herold was sent to southern Maryland to arrange for relays of horses. Atzerodt was in Port Tobacco inquiring about leasing a flatboat large enough “to float ten or twelve people and a carriage.”
    The mechanics of the kidnapping appear to have been that Surratt would be detailed to shut off the master gas valve, under the stage of Ford’s Theatre, at a signal. This would extinguish every light in the theater. He was then to come up onstage in the dark and wait, as Booth, in Boxes 7 and 8, forced the President at gunpoint to submit to gag and ropes. The actor would lower the President over the façade of the box eleven feet to the stage, then lower himself to the stage. The two men would hustle the President offstage, out the rear door, where a covered wagon would be waiting in the alley. There would be some confusion in the dark theater, among actors as well as patrons, and Booth counted on this to assist, not to hinder him. The President would be placed in the back of the wagon, trussed, and Surratt would drive the wagon out of the alley with Booth riding single-mount behind the wagon.
    On the far side of the Navy Yard Bridge, they would pick up the first of Herold’s team relays, and head for Port Tobacco, twenty-nine miles away. By the time Atzerodt had ferried the party across the Potomac to Mathias Point, the whole country would know of their glorious deed and the people of Virginia would assist them through the battle lines to Richmond.
    Arnold and O’Laughlin were not part of this attempt. As punishment for not showing sufficient enthusiasm, Booth proceeded without them. At 7 P.M. on January 18, the plotters were ready.
    President Lincoln did not attend the theater that night. No reason was given. The management of the theater expected him because the partition between Boxes 7 and 8 was taken down in the afternoon and the President’s favorite rocker was placed in the part of the box closest to the dress circle.
    The disappointment was almost too much for Booth and his little band to bear. The following morning, they scattered like minnows. Booth fled to New York. Surratt went south to the protection of the Confederacy. Herold hurried back to his mother and his seven sisters. Atzerodt took a job in Port Tobacco.
    In early February, the band took slight heart. There had been no arrests, no apparent shadowing. John Wilkes Booth enlisted the final member of the conspirators. In a way, this man was the best because he could be relied upon to kill on order. His name was Lewis Powell and he was a native of Florida. He had changed his name to Lewis Paine, and he would be known by this name until he died.
    Lewis Paine was big and strong and silent and stupid. He had thick jet hair, a clean, handsome face, and the muscles of a circus strong man.
    In the South, he had seen John Wilkes Booth on the stage once. Afterward, he had been taken backstage to meet the star, and Lewis Paine never forgot the courtly manners, the gracious attitudes, the born-to-rule air. Later, Lewis went off to war with his brothers and he developed into a most efficient soldier. His quiet boast was that he had never wounded a Union soldier. He killed—or missed. His greatest shieldagainst the moral strains of war was his stupidity, which kept him doing the work he was ordered to do, while preventing him from pondering on it. With no boastfulness, he displayed a skull which he used as an ash receiver and said that it was the head of a Union soldier whom he had killed.
    Paine fought hard and well in the Peninsula Campaign, at Antietam, Chancellorsville, had two brothers killed at Murfreesboro, fought again at Gettysburg,