George Atzerodt – The Intelligent Collector Magazine

John Wilkes Booth’s heinous act took away more than a beloved president

A wanted poster for co-conspirators John Wilkes Booth, Mary Surratt, David Herold sold for $47,800 at a May 2011 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

At some point when John Wilkes Booth was planning to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln, he must have decided that it would be more impactful to decapitate the primary leadership of the North and expand the hit list to include Vice President Andrew Johnson, Secretary of State William Seward and, perhaps, even General Ulysses S. Grant. After all, they were in Washington, D.C., and unprotected. It was a desperate move, but it might bolster the morale of the South. In the end, it failed because of a series of unrelated circumstances.

General Grant had declined the invitation of the president to attend a theater show because there was an eagerness to return home and resume normal life. However, that would still leave Secretary Seward, who was at home recuperating from a serious carriage accident that required medical attention. Vice President Johnson had already booked a room that night in the Kirkwood Hotel. Both men would be relatively easy targets for Booth’s co-conspirators.

Lewis Powell, the man assigned to kill Seward, had a clever plan to act like a delivery boy bringing medicine, enter the house and shoot the bedridden Seward. He did manage to stab Seward in the throat, but a metal splint on his jaw deflected most of the blows. Powell ran from the house, was easily captured and later hanged. The other conspirator, George Atzerodt, managed to book a room at the Kirkwood Hotel, but started drinking at the hotel bar, lost his nerve and fled. He was also captured and hanged. That only left Lincoln, and Booth shot him in the theater as he watched “Our American Cousin” with Mary by his side.

The date was April 14, 1865. The location was Ford’s Theatre.

Lincoln had won the 1860 presidential election by defeating three opponents. One was Senator Stephen A. Douglas, a Democrat from Kentucky who had helped Lincoln gain national prominence through a series of high-profile debates regarding slavery. (Douglas, coincidentally, died just two months after Lincoln was inaugurated). A second Democratic opponent was John C. Breckinridge – the incumbent vice president for James Buchanan. The third – John Bell – was the Tennessee Senator who ran as the candidate for the Constitutional Union Party, a group that was neutral on slavery but adamant that the Constitution be upheld. Lincoln’s 180 electoral votes were more than the other three combined.

Now it was four years later and President Lincoln was struggling to barely hang on. In June 1864, the prospects for the Union Army were equally dim. General Grant was bogged down in Virginia, General William Tecumseh Sherman was stalled before Atlanta and heavy casualties were shocking people back home. There was even talk about suspending or postponing the election due to the national crisis. But, as President Lincoln pointed out, “We cannot have free government without elections. If this rebellion forces us to forego a national election, it will appear we’re conquered and ruin us.”

We all now know that the 1864 election did go ahead as planned. It was the first time any nation held a general election during a major domestic war.

However, President Lincoln took a pounding in the press. Horace Greeley, founder-editor of the New-York Tribune, claimed “Mr. Lincoln is already beaten!” The influential James Gordon Bennett, founder-publisher of the New York Herald, was more direct: “Lincoln is a joke!” Some wanted to run Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase and some were clamoring for General Grant. Even Thurlow Weed, Lincoln’s advisor, told him his re-election was hopeless.

Just when it seemed that Lincoln had reconciled himself to defeat, military actions started to slowly improve. Admiral David Farragut (who was the first rear admiral, first vice admiral and first full admiral in the U.S. Navy) won a great victory at the Battle of Mobile Bay (admonishing his men to “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead”). General Sherman took Atlanta and began his famous “March to the Sea,” which culminated in the burning of Charleston, S.C., where the war had begun. Meanwhile, General Philip Sheridan was routing Southern troops in the valleys of Virginia and then devastating the surrounding areas.

Virtually all of Lincoln’s critics were muffled by these turns of events.

Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson won the 1864 election and the Civil War in 1865. But, the country’s troubles were not over. After Lincoln was assassinated, Vice President Johnson became president and was unable to work with the Republican Congress, which had devised a trap to impeach him. He was acquitted, but lost any hope for governing. He went home a chastened man.

In 1875, he did manage to get re-elected to the U.S. Senate … the only man to do so (up to 2020).

John Wilkes Booth did much more damage than just assassinating a president. By killing Lincoln, he eliminated possibly the only man who could have restored harmony, implemented reconstruction and unified us as our founding documents intended.

Nearly 160 years later, we are still waiting for another messiah.

Intelligent Collector blogger JIM O’NEAL is an avid collector and history buff. He is president and CEO of Frito-Lay International [retired] and earlier served as chair and CEO of PepsiCo Restaurants International [KFC Pizza Hut and Taco Bell].

Johnson’s Battles with Congress Strengthened Office of the President

This sepia-toned photograph of Andrew Johnson, signed as president, sold for $3,346 at a June 2010 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

On the night President Abraham Lincoln was shot, John Wilkes Booth and his little band of assassins had also planned to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward. Booth’s fantasy theory was that decapitating the North’s leadership would cause enough chaos to bring the Civil War to an end. Seward survived a brutal stabbing and Johnson’s assigned assassin, George Atzerodt, got cold feet at the last minute. Johnson had gone to bed at the Kirkwood hotel unharmed.

Awakened by a friend, Johnson rushed to Lincoln’s bedside until the president was declared dead. Johnson then returned to the hotel, where he was sworn in as the 17th president by Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase. The members of his Cabinet assembled in the hotel parlor, where he told them: “I feel incompetent to perform duties so important and responsible as those which have been so unexpectedly thrown upon me.”

Despite Johnson’s humble tone, he was actually a fearless, even reckless, fighter for what he believed in. As a result, he became embroiled in the bitterest intra-governmental conflict the nation had ever seen. Like Lincoln, he favored a “mild reconstruction,” in effect turning state governments over to white citizens, with only the main leaders of the Confederacy excluded. However, the Radical Republican leaders demanded “radical reconstruction,” enfranchising former slaves and barring most former Confederates from government.

Initially, Republicans were pleased with Johnson, mistaking him as weak and easier to control than Lincoln. They were confident he would support their plans for severe treatment of the defeated South. “By the Gods! There will be no trouble now in running the government,” declared Senator Benjamin Wade of Ohio. Two years later, this same man, now president pro tempore of the Senate, was so confident the Senate had the votes to evict Johnson from the White House that he had already written an inaugural speech and chosen his Cabinet!

But now, by the time Congress finally met in December 1865, the former states of the Confederacy had elected governors and state legislators. And although they approved the 13th Amendment outlawing slavery, they had also passed “Black Codes” binding ex-slaves to working the land. In his first annual message to Congress, Johnson railed against this situation, warning Congress of the dire consequences. But Northern Republicans had no intention of welcoming back Democrats from states that had seceded. Instead, they passed new legislation to reinstate military governments throughput the South. Then they established the Freedmen’s Bureau to assist the 4 million freed slaves.

Johnson promptly vetoed everything Congress had passed.

Republicans were not strong enough to override a presidential veto until early 1867, when they passed into law even more harsh Reconstruction Acts, with military governments replacing civil governments set up by Southern Democrats. Johnson warned they were fostering hatred and creating a state of permanent unrest. Radical Republicans answered by slashing back at Johnson and passing the Tenure of Office Act. This total rebuke now forbade the president of the United States from removing ANY federal official without the express consent of the U.S. Senate.

This was tantamount to a declaration of war and Johnson answered by firing Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. The House quickly voted to impeach the president on 11 counts. The Senate trial lasted two months and the final tally was 35 guilty and 19 not guilty … one short of conviction. Johnson served out his term, but his political career was over. His fortitude in the face of overwhelming Congressional pressure strengthened the office of the president and helped preserve the separation of powers intended by the framers of the U.S. Constitution.

Not bad for a former illiterate tailor who never spent a single day in a formal schoolroom.

Lincoln’s Assassination Shows How Nation Has Survived Perilous Times

john-wilkes-booth-cabinet-card — An 1863 John Wilkes Booth cabinet card sold for $1,912 at a December 2007 auction.

By Jim O’Neal

John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln on Good Friday, April 14, 1865, at Ford’s Theatre while the Lincolns were enjoying the play “Our American Cousin.” A Confederate sympathizer, Booth was the younger brother of famed Shakespearian actor Edwin Booth and had become a popular actor himself. A meticulous planner, he had attended a rehearsal the day before and devised his escape plan.

There is a fascinating backstory to this tragedy that started on April 3 when news of the surrender of Richmond was received at the War Department. The telegraph operator had jumped to his feet, opened a window and shouted out “Richmond has fallen!” This extraordinary good news spread quickly and almost by magic the streets were filled with noisy, jubilant people. Among the talking, laughing and shouting, the local newspaper reported that “many wept like children.”

People were convinced that this long nightmare was nearly over. Generally, they were right, except for a series of dramatic events that could have altered the future in any number of possible ways.

It started the following day when Secretary of State William Henry Seward was critically injured in a carriage accident. He was with his son Fred, daughter Fanny and her friend Mary Titus. When the driver stopped to close a carriage door, the horses bolted and Seward jumped out to stop the runaway horses, caught his heel and landed violently on the pavement. After regaining consciousness, he was carried to his home severely injured.

Then on April 11, two days after Robert E. Lee’s surrender to Ulysses S. Grant, several thousand people gathered at the White House to hear Lincoln give a speech about returning the Southern states, extending suffrage to blacks and the benefits of school to all children. JWB was in the crowd and furiously declared, “Now, by God, I’ll put him through. That is the last speech he will ever give.”

Earlier, Booth had planned to kidnap Lincoln, but now he was determined to kill him, along with Vice President Andrew Johnson and Seward in a choreographed decapitation of the Union government. The triple assassination was set for 10:15 p.m. on Good Friday. His accomplice, George Atzerodt, was assigned to kill the VP and Lewis Powell was to kill Seward in his bed while he was recovering.

Only JWB was successful. Atzerodt lost his nerve, got drunk and left the Kirkwood hotel where the VP was in suite 68. Powell went on a rampage in Seward’s house, stabbing him three times in the throat and neck. A metal brace on his neck miraculously saved his life.

The world would now know the power of a single gunshot, yet for America this was a first. Never had a president been assassinated or even died during a war. As sorrow gradually spread throughout the nation, there remained one more haunting question: Would it all come undone and devolve into an endless conflict?

We know the answer now, but it was a perilous time for our troubled nation.

Intelligent Collector blogger JIM O’NEAL is an avid collector and history buff. He is President and CEO of Frito-Lay International [retired] and earlier served as Chairman and CEO of PepsiCo Restaurants International [KFC Pizza Hut and Taco Bell].