what was booth going to do if he kidnapped lincoln and seward
It is well known that on Expert Friday, April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth fatally shot Abraham Lincoln. What is less well known is that this was probably not the first attempt fabricated by Berth and his gang against Lincoln. Most notable was an attempted kidnapping in mid-March.
It was nigh March 17 that Booth and his primary co-conspirator, John H. Surratt, Jr., received give-and-take that Lincoln was planning to nourish a production of the play Still Waters Run Deep at Campbell Hospital virtually the Old Soldier'southward Home on the Seventh Street Road at the outskirts of Washington. Unlike Ford's Theatre, this was a pretty expert spot for a kidnapping because the road was relatively isolated and close to Maryland. Although the conspirators only received word virtually three-quarters of an hour prior to the appointed time, Surratt after recounted that, "so perfect was our communication that nosotros were instantly in our saddles on the fashion to the hospital." The "we" to whom Surratt refers was the inner circle of conspirators – Berth, Surratt, Lewis Powell alias Paine, George Atzerodt, and David Herold. They met up in front of Mrs. Surratt'due south boardinghouse in Washington, and all merely Herold galloped off towards Campbell Infirmary at near two o'clock. Herold was dispatched to pick up Booth's buggy and head for Surrattsville, carrying with him an armory of weapons that Berth had nerveless.
According to Atzerodt, "[t]he plan was to seize the autobus of the President, Surratt to jump on the box, as he was considered the all-time driver, and make for 'T.B.' [the name of a small town in southern Maryland at present known equally Brandywine] by mode of Long Old Fields, to the Potomac river in the vicinity of Nanjemoy Creek, where they had a boat waiting with men to carry over the party." Somewhere en route they would meet up with Herold and switch to Booth's buggy, which was well equipped with food and firepower. Thus, it was John Surratt who was chosen every bit the man to actually commandeer the President's carriage, and to drive the President to a boat that he had purchased with Atzerodt'south help and Booth's coin back in January. Meanwhile, Mrs. Surratt sat abode weeping, and skipped dinner.
The efforts of the conspirators were in vain. Either their intelligence was faulty or at the terminal minute Lincoln inverse his plans. Either manner, he did not attend the play at Campbell Hospital. The conspirators feared that a last infinitesimal change in plans meant that the Federals were on to them. According to Surratt'south friend and roommate, Louis Weichmann, a frightened Surratt flare-up into their room at Mrs. Surratt's effectually half past 6 that dark, booted and spurred and armed with a Sharp's iv-barreled revolver. "Weichmann, my prospects are gone; my hopes blasted," he said. Ten minutes later Powell rushed into the room, his face flushed with excitement. When Powell pulled up his waistcoat, Weichmann noticed a large revolver on his hip. Berth came in adjacent, and marched about the room two or three times flicking the riding crop in his hand. At a bespeak from Berth, the three men went upward to the attic to confer. Then they left the business firm.
Meanwhile, "Herold hung around the [Surrattsville] tavern for a while but nobody showed up with Lincoln a prisoner." So Herold headed towards T.B., where he arrived at the hotel of John C. Thompson about eight o'clock that night. Herold needed help hauling a body into the barroom. This was Booth's trunk, heavy with two carbines, a couple of double-barrel shotguns, a pistol, a knife, a sword, rope and a wrench. Herold claimed he was going duck hunting. He asked whether John Surratt had come up by, and allow it be known that Surratt was expected. The next forenoon, nearly probable March 18, Herold had breakfast, shot off his pistols into the air, then started back towards Surrattsville.
Surratt and Atzerodt had fled Washington and were headed towards T.B. to find Herold. The iii met upwards on the road between T.B. and Surrattsville. Co-ordinate to the testimony of John M. Lloyd, Mrs. Surratt'southward tenant at Surratt's Tavern, the three men came in, took a drink, and started playing cards. Then Surratt chosen Lloyd into the front parlor, where he had Berth'south carbines laid out on the sofa, along with a cartridge box, coiled rope and a monkey wrench. The monkey wrench was to be used to remove the wheels from Lincoln's carriage, so that it could be more easily ferried across the Potomac, and the rope was to be stretched across the route to break the pursuit of whatsoever cavalry that might follow.
Surratt insisted that Lloyd hide the carbines in the house. Lloyd claims he objected and had to exist persuaded by Surratt, merely more than likely he was a willing participant. Surratt, who had grown upwardly in that house, knew just the place. He led Lloyd upstairs with the carbines to a sealed attic off the storeroom where the butt ends of the ceiling joists higher up the dining room were exposed above the attached kitchen. Surratt slipped the carbines between the joists. In that location they stayed, until about midnight on the night of the assassination, when Booth and Herold came to call for them. One of these aforementioned carbines was in Booth's hands when he was shot by Boston Corbett at Garrett'south befouled in Maryland.
His work done, Surratt headed back to Washington, arriving in time to use two guest passes to Ford's Theatre, signed by John Wilkes Booth. Surratt invited Weichmann to accompany him. They met up with Atzerodt, Herold, and a fellow lodger named Holohan, at the theatre. On that celebrated dark they witnessed Booth's terminal performance. Booth played Pescara, Duke of Alva, in The Backslider. In the words of the New York Times, Pescara "fills the centre of the flick, dealing out destruction to all who cross his path, gloating over the contrivance of new cruelties, and reveling in the accumulation of horrors which form the substance of the play." Years later, Weichmann claimed that he was notwithstanding haunted past the "malevolent expression of [Berth'south] distorted eyebrow, the fierce glare and ugly whorl of his eyes, which seemed ready to outburst from their sockets as he seized his victim by the hair and, placing her on the wheel, exclaimed, 'Now behold Pescara's masterpiece!'" Powerful though it was, Booth's side by side fourth dimension on that phase would be even more dramatic.
©2015 Michael Schein, all rights reserved. Adapted from Michael Schein's forthcoming book, John Surratt: The Lincoln Assassin Who Got Away (History Publishing Co., release April fourteen, 2015).
Sources: Louis J. Weichmann, A True History of the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the Conspiracy of 1865 (Floyd Risvold, ed., Alfred A. Knopf, NY 1975); "The Rockville Lecture" (Dec. six, 1870), reprinted in, Weichmann, ibid., pp.428-40; Trial of John H. Surratt in the Criminal Court for the District of Columbia, (Washington: French & Richardson; Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co. 1867); Surratt Society, Lincoln Assassination from the Pages of the Surratt Courier, James O. Hall, "Hiding the Shooting Irons" (March 1986); Surratt Lodge, Lincoln Bump-off from the Pages of the Surratt Courier, "Atzerodt National Intelligencer Statement" (July 9, 1865); A Biography of John Surratt by Alfred Isacsson, O.Carm. - A Dissertation to Faculty of Grad Schoolhouse of Arts & Sciences of Saint Bonaventure University for MA degree (July 1957, Saint Bonaventure, NY); James L. Swanson, Manhunt: the 12-Solar day Chase for Lincoln's Killer (HarperCollins 2007); New York Times, Mr. [Edwin] Berth equally Pescara, http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive- gratis/pdf?res=F60C15FC3A5C15738DDDA80B94D9405B8584F0D3 (accessed Dec. 6, 2013).
Source: https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/158617
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