For a long time I have devoted my energies, my time and money, to the accomplishment of a certain end. I have been disappointed. The moment has arrived when I must change my plans. Many will blame me for what I am about to do, but posterity, I am sure, will justify me.
From a letter to the National Intelligencer, given by John Wilkes Booth to John Matthews on April 14, 1865, but never mailed
By mid-1863, as the tide of the Civil War began to turn toward the North, the celebrated actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth grew increasingly agitated. He began to hatch a plan: He would kidnap the hated President Abraham Lincoln and smuggle him across the Potomac River and south to Richmond, Virginia. There, Lincoln would be held until the federal government agreed to release thousands of Confederate prisoners of war. The Union Army had ended its policy of exchanging captured soldiers the previous year, partially in response to the Confederacy's refusal to release captured black soldiers.
Portraits of Conspirators in President Lincoln's Assassination
In August 1864, Booth told Samuel Arnold, an old friend from Baltimore, Maryland, of his plan to apprehend Lincoln during one of the president's frequent trips to the Soldier's Home, a veterans' residence just outside Washington. The president was largely unprotected in those days; although Lincoln had an informal "bodyguard" unit of Union soldiers, almost anyone could obtain an audience with him at the White House. Arnold and another friend, Mike O'Laughlen, agreed to participate in Booth's scheme.
That October, Booth traveled to Montreal, Canada, where he apparently met with Confederate operatives, including the blockade runner Patrick Martin. Martin gave him a letter of introduction to Dr. William Queen from Charles County in southern Maryland, a region through which Booth planned to pass with his hostage on the way to Virginia. Booth traveled to Charles County in November and again in December, making the acquaintance not only of Queen but of Dr. Samuel A. Mudd. As an initial pretense, Booth told both men he was interested in buying real estate in the area. While with Mudd, Booth met another man, Thomas Harbin. Harbin's brother-in-law, Thomas A. Jones, was a notorious Confederate blockade runner who had been arrested by the Union Army in 1861 but continued to shuttle mail (and people) across the Potomac upon his release.
By that time, Lincoln had been reelected, and Booth was increasingly convinced of the righteousness--and the necessity--of his plan. In Washington, he set about arranging horse and buggy transport, renting a stable near Ford's Theatre. Mudd introduced Booth to John Surratt Jr., whose mother Mary Surratt owned a boardinghouse in Washington and a tavern 10 miles south of the city, which was known as a Confederate safe house. With John Surratt, Booth would assemble a motley crew of conspirators, including David Herold, George Atzerodt and Lewis Powell. In January 1865, Booth told Arnold and O'Laughlen that he had changed his mind about the Soldier's Home, and suggested Ford's Theatre, which Booth knew well and where Lincoln often attended plays, as a possible site for the abduction.
By this time, Booth was traveling frequently and performing only sporadically, and he had gone into debt to finance the kidnapping operation. On March 15, less than two weeks after Lincoln's second inaugural, Booth met with John Surratt, Herold, Powell, Atzerodt, Arnold and O'Laughlen in a private room at Gautier's Restaurant, where he outlined his current plan to seize Lincoln at Ford's Theatre. Arnold challenged Booth, pointing out (correctly) that the Union Army had resumed the prisoner exchange in mid-January. Booth maintained that Lincoln was still a valuable hostage for the Confederate cause. Two days later, on March 17, Booth notified Arnold and O'Laughlen that the president was attending a play that day at Campbell Hospital, just outside Washington and on the route towards the Soldier's Home. He and his men waited in their assigned places, but the president's carriage never appeared. In fact, Lincoln was attending a ceremony that day in Booth's own temporary home in Washington, the National Hotel.
On April 3, Confederate forces evacuated Richmond, destroying the leading symbol of Southern strength. Booth returned to Washington and the National on April 9, and the next day read more distressing news in the papers: Robert E. Lee had surrendered his troops to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox. As celebration began in Washington, Booth sank into despair. Kidnapping would no longer suffice; more drastic action was necessary.
On the morning of April 14, Booth learned that President and Mrs. Lincoln had accepted an invitation to that evening's production of Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre. He swung into action, assembling Powell, Herold and Atzerodt at the Herndon House, around the corner from Ford's, around eight o'clock that evening. (John Surratt was in New York, and Arnold and O'Laughlen were no longer involved.) Booth laid out the plan: Around 10 o'clock, while Booth slipped to the presidential box and put a bullet in the president's head, Powell would kill Secretary of State William H. Seward at his home, while Atzerodt would kill Vice President Andrew Johnson in his room at the Kirkwood Hotel. Herold would lead Powell out of the city, where they would all meet and escape on horseback to Virginia. Booth adjourned the meeting, and he and his co-conspirators headed into the night to carry out their bloody tasks.
