The Lincoln Deception Read Online Free

of nine army officers. The transcript should include the most complete information, incorporating evidence and argument from both sides. He took pride in reading Mr. Bingham’s fiery speeches, especially his closing address. With his soaring command of the language, Mr. Bingham roasted the contemptible criminals before him. Fraser imagined his friend’s eye flashing with righteous rage as he demanded the ultimate punishment.
    The assassination began to take shape in his mind as a planetary system with the charismatic Booth at its center. Raised in the border state of Maryland, Booth became devoted to the cause of the South even though the rest of his family was solidly pro-Union.
    In Booth’s planetary system, four conspirators revolved most closely around the actor. They were the ones who were in on the dirty work of the fateful night. First came Booth’s escort, the weaselly Davey Herold, a hunter and outdoorsman. Herold met Booth after the assassin slew Lincoln, then slashed an army officer sitting with the president, then leaped to the stage shouting, “Sic semper tyrannis!” (“Thus always to tyrants!”)—Virginia’s motto and Booth’s rationale for his butchery. For almost two weeks, Herold shepherded the assassin through southern Maryland and Virginia, concealing him from the thousands hunting him.
    Next was the furious monster who went by the name of Lewis Paine. Large and powerful, Paine was the only conspirator with battlefield experience. He tore the heart out of the family of Secretary of State Seward. Wielding a long, vicious knife, Paine ripped open Seward’s face and arm, stabbed a male nurse and one of Seward’s sons, and broke the skull of his other son. Leaving a home drenched with the blood of four ravaged men, Paine slid into the shadows of the Washington night, evading capture for three days.
    The third was the pathetic Atzerodt, a German immigrant. Sent to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson in his hotel room, the goateed waterman tried to stoke his courage with liquor but never even confronted his target. Atzerodt slunk off to Germantown, Maryland, where he was tracked down and arrested.
    The fourth conspirator close to Booth was the most unusual one, a widow fifteen years older than the others. Mrs. Mary Surratt was not part of the killing. In Andrew Johnson’s words, she “kept the nest that hatched the egg” of assassination. Photographs showed her as sternly handsome, framed in dark hair. Her boarding house in Northwest Washington was the physical heart of the plot, the rendezvous site for Booth, Atzerodt, Paine, and her son, John Harrison Surratt. The facilitator’s role was familiar for her. Until the autumn of 1864, her tavern in southern Maryland served as a depot for Confederate spies and blockade runners. Indeed, her son, John, though only twenty-one, was a Confederate courier for the last two years of the war, carrying messages for spymasters in Richmond. Mrs. Surratt also stashed rifles and whiskey for Booth for his flight through southern Maryland.
    Those four—Herold, Paine, Atzerodt, and Mrs. Surratt—were hanged after the military commission pronounced them guilty.
    Two other conspirators figured in Booth’s getaway. Ned Spangler held Booth’s horse at the theater while the actor shot the president. Dr. Samuel Mudd sheltered the assassin during his flight, treated his broken ankle, and lied about both when questioned.
    The last two conspirators—Samuel Arnold and Michael O’Laughlen—had the least connection to the fateful night. Both were part of Booth’s initial plan, hatched in the fall of 1864, to kidnap Lincoln and trade him for Confederate prisoners of war, or even to use Lincoln as a bargaining chip to end the war. When the kidnapping plot failed in mid-March 1865, it mutated into one to kill the president and other top Union officials. O’Laughlen was at the house of Secretary of