Killing Lincoln

Killing Kennedy

Bill O’Reilly

and

Martin Dugard

Henry Holt and Company

New York

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Table of Contents

KILLING LINCOLN

Dedication

A Note to Readers

Prologue

Part One - Total War

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Part Two - The Ides of Death

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Part Three - The Long Good Friday

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Part Four - The Chase

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty-One

Chapter Fifty-Two

Chapter Fifty-Three

Chapter Fifty-Four

Chapter Fifty-Five

Chapter Fifty-Six

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Chapter Sixty

Chapter Sixty-One

Chapter Sixty-Two

Afterword

Epilogue

Appendix - Re-Creation of Harper’s Weekly

Notes

Index

Copyright Page

KILLING KENNEDY

Dedication

A Note to Readers

Prologue

Part I: Cheating Death

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Part II: The Curtain Descends

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Part III: Evil Wins

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Afterword

Epilogue

Sources

Acknowledgments

Index

Copyright Page

About the Authors

Killing Lincoln

The Shocking Assassination that Changed America Forever

Bill O’Reilly

and

Martin Dugard

For Makeda Wubneh,

who makes the world a better place

A NOTE TO READERS

The story you are about to read is true and truly shocking. It has been 150 years since the beginning of the Civil War, the bloodiest war in our nation’s history, a conflict so full of horror it is almost impossible to describe. The assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, only days after the end of the war, was a terrible tragedy. Much has been speculated about the events leading up to the murder and immediately afterward, but few people know what really happened.

Before historian Martin Dugard and I began writing this book, I thought I understood the facts and implications of the assassination. But even though I am a former teacher of history, I had no clue. The ferocious assassination plan itself still has elements that have not been clarified. This is a saga of courage, cowardice, and betrayal. There are layers of proven conspiracy and alleged conspiracy that will disturb you. You will learn much in these pages, and the experience, I believe, will advance your understanding of our country, and how Lincoln’s murder changed it forever.

This book is a departure from the contemporary nonfiction I have written for more than a decade and from the daily news analysis that I do on television. But the lessons you will learn within these pages are relevant to all our lives. For those of us who want to improve the United States and keep it the greatest nation in the world, we must be aware of the true heroes who have made the country great as well as the villains who have besmirched it.

Finally, this book is written as a thriller. But don’t let the style fool you. What you are about to read is unsanitized and uncompromising. It is a no spin American story, and I am proud of it.

BILL O’REILLY

April 3, 2011

Long Island, New York

PROLOGUE

SATURDAY, MARCH 4, 1865

WASHINGTON, D.C.

The man with six weeks to live is anxious.

He furls his brow, as he does countless times each day, and walks out of the Capitol Building, which is nearing completion. He is exhausted, almost numb.

Fifty thousand men and women stand in pouring rain and ankle-deep mud to watch Abraham Lincoln take the oath of office to begin his second term. His new vice president, Andrew Johnson, has just delivered a red-faced, drunken, twenty-minute ramble vilifying the South that has left the crowd squirming, embarrassed by Johnson’s inebriation.

So when Lincoln steps up to the podium and delivers an eloquent appeal for reunification, the spiritual message of his second inaugural address is all the more uplifting. “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations,” the president intones humbly.

Despite his exhaustion, Lincoln is charismatic. And momentarily energized.

Suddenly, the sun bursts through the clouds as he speaks, its light enveloping the tall and outwardly serene Lincoln. But 120 miles away in the Virginia railroad junction of Petersburg, any thought of serenity is a fantasy. The Confederate army, under the command of General Robert E. Lee, has been pinned inside the city for more than 250 days by Union forces under the command of General Ulysses S. Grant. Though living in trenches and reduced to eating rats and raw bacon, Lee’s men will not surrender. Instead, Lee is making plans to slip out of Petersburg and escape south to the Carolinas. If he succeeds, Lincoln’s prayer for a reunified United States of America may never be answered. America will continue to be divided into a North and a South, a United States of America and a Confederate States of America.

Lincoln’s inaugural speech is a performance worthy of a great dramatic actor. And indeed, one of America’s most famous thespians stands just a few feet away as Lincoln raises his right hand. John Wilkes Booth is galvanized by the president’s words—though not in the way Lincoln intends.

Booth, twenty-six, raised in Maryland, is an exceptional young man. Blessed with a rakish smile and a debonair gaze, he is handsome, brilliant, witty, charismatic, tender, and able to bed almost any woman he wants—and he has bedded quite a few. It’s no wonder that the actor has known success on the Broadway stage.

His fiancee stands at his side, a sensual young woman whose senator father has no idea that his daughter is secretly engaged to a man of Booth’s lowly theatrical calling. Lucy Hale and John Wilkes Booth are a beautiful young couple quite used to the adoration of high society and the opposite sex. Yet not even she knows that Booth is a Confederate sympathizer, one who nurses a pathological hatred for Lincoln and the North. Lucy has no idea that her lover has assembled a crack team of conspirators to help him bring down the president. They have guns, financing, and a precise plan. At this point, patience is their watchword.

Standing in the cold Washington drizzle in the shadow of the Capitol dome, Booth feels nothing but hot rage and injustice. The actor is impulsive and prone to the melodramatic. Just before Lincoln’s speech, as the president stepped out onto the East Portico, Booth’s carefully crafted conspiracy was instantly forgotten.

John Wilkes Booth: celebrity, Confederate sympathizer, assassin

Though he had no gun or knife, Booth lunged at Lincoln. An officer from Washington’s Metropolitan Police, a force known to be heavily infiltrated by Confederate sympathizers, grabbed him hard by the arm and pulled him back. Booth struggles, which only made Officer John William Westfall grasp him tighter. Like everyone else in the city, Westfall is well aware that there are plots against Lincoln’s life. Some say it’s not a matter of if but when the president will die. Yet rather than arrest Booth, or even pull him aside for questioning, Westfall accepted Booth’s excuse that he merely stumbled. Arresting a celebrity like Booth might have caused the policeman problems.

But Booth is definitely not finished. He seethes as he listens to Lincoln’s speech. The grace and poetry of the words ignite his rage. The sight of so many black faces beaming up at Lincoln from the crowd makes him want to vomit. No, Booth is most definitely not finished. If anything, his determination to knock Lincoln off his “throne” becomes more intense.

Lincoln isn’t finished, either. The president has epic plans for his second term in office. It will take every one of those four years, and maybe longer, to heal the war-torn nation. Healing is Lincoln’s one overriding ambition, and he will use every last bit of his trademark determination to see it realized. Nothing must stand in his way.

But evil knows no boundaries. And it is a most powerful evil that is now bearing down on Abraham Lincoln.

Part One

TOTAL WAR

Lincoln with Union troops at Antietam

CHAPTER ONE

SATURDAY, APRIL 1, 1865

CITY POINT, VIRGINIA

The man with fourteen days to live is himself witnessing death.

Lincoln (he prefers to go by just his last name. No one calls him “Abe,” which he loathes. Few call him “Mr. President.” His wife actually calls him “Mr. Lincoln,” and his two personal secretaries playfully refer to him as “the Tycoon”) paces the upper deck of the steamboat River Queen, his face lit now and again by distant artillery. The night air smells of the early spring, damp with a hint of floral fragrance. The River Queen is docked at City Point, a bustling Virginia port that was infiltrated by Confederate spies last August. Yet Lincoln strides purposefully back and forth, unprotected and unafraid, as vulnerable as a man can be to sniper fire, the bombardment serving as the perfect distraction from his considerable worries. When will this war ever end?

As one Confederate soldier will put it, “the rolling thunder of the heavy metal” began at nine P.M. Once the big guns destroy the Confederate defenses around Petersburg, the Union army—Lincoln’s army—will swarm from their positions and race across no-man’s-land into the enemy trenches, hell-bent on capturing the city that has eluded them for ten long months.

What happens after that is anyone’s guess.

In a best-case scenario, Lincoln’s general in chief, Ulysses S. Grant, will trap Confederate general Robert E. Lee and his army inside Petersburg, forcing their surrender. This is a long shot. But if it happens, the four-year-old American Civil War will be over, and the United States will be divided no more. And this is why Abraham Lincoln is watching the battlefield.

Federal supply boats in the harbor of City Point, Virginia, 1865

But Marse Robert—“master” as rendered in southern parlance—has proven himself a formidable opponent time and again. Lee plans to escape and sprint for the North Carolina border to link up with another large rebel force. Lee boasts that his Army of Northern Virginia can hold out forever in the Blue Ridge Mountains, where his men will conceal themselves among the ridges and thickets. There are even bold whispers among the hardcore Confederates about shedding their gray uniforms for plain civilian clothing as they sink undercover to fight guerrilla-style. The Civil War will then drag on for years, a nightmare that torments the president.

Lincoln knows that many citizens of the North have lost their stomach for this war, with its modern technology like repeating rifles and long-range artillery that have brought about staggering losses of life. Anti-Lincoln protests have become more common than the battles themselves. Lee’s escape could guarantee that the northern states rise up and demand that Lincoln fight no more. The Confederates, by default, will win, making the chances of future reunification virtually nonexistent.

Nothing scares Lincoln more. He is so eager to see America healed that he has instructed Grant to offer Lee the most lenient surrender terms possible. There will be no punishment of Confederate soldiers. No confiscation of their horses or personal effects. Just the promise of a hasty return to their families, farms, and stores, where they can once again work in peace.

In his youth on the western frontier, Lincoln was famous for his amazing feats of strength. He once lifted an entire keg of whiskey off the ground, drank from the bung, and then, being a teetotaler, spit the whiskey right back out. An eyewitness swore he saw Lincoln drag a thousand-pound box of stones all by himself. So astonishing was his physique that another man unabashedly described young Abraham Lincoln as “a cross between Venus and Hercules.”

But now Lincoln’s youth has aged into a landscape of fissures and contours, his forehead and sunken cheeks a road map of despair and brooding. Lincoln’s strength, however, is still there, manifested in his passionate belief that the nation must and can be healed. He alone has the power to get it done, if fate will allow him.

Lincoln’s top advisers tell him assassination is not the American way, but he knows he’s a candidate for martyrdom. His guts churn as he stares out into the night and rehashes and second-guesses his thoughts and actions and plans. Last August, Confederate spies had killed forty-three people at City Point by exploding an ammunition barge. Now, at a rail-thin six foot four, with a bearded chin and a nose only a caricaturist could love, Lincoln’s unmistakable silhouette makes him an easy target, should spies once again lurk nearby. But Lincoln is not afraid. He is a man of faith. God will guide him one way or another.

On this night Lincoln calms himself with blunt reality: right now, the most important thing is for Grant to defeat Lee. Surrounded by darkness, alone in the cold, he knows that Grant surrounding Lee and crushing the will of the Confederate army is all that matters.

Lincoln heads to bed long after midnight, once the shelling stops and the night is quiet enough to allow him some peace. He walks belowdecks to his stateroom. He lies down. As so often happens when he stretches out his frame in a normal-sized bed, his feet hang over the end, so he sleeps diagonally.

Lincoln is normally an insomniac on the eve of battle, but he is so tired from the mental strain of what has passed and what is still to come that he falls into a deep dream state. What he sees is so vivid and painful that when he tells his wife and friends about it, ten days later, the description shocks them beyond words.

The dream finally ends as day breaks. Lincoln stretches as he rises from bed, missing his wife back in Washington but also loving the thrill of being so close to the front. He enters a small bathroom, where he stands before a mirror and water basin to shave and wash his hands and face. Lincoln next dons his trademark black suit and scarfs a quick breakfast of hot coffee and a single hard-boiled egg, which he eats while reading a thicket of telegrams from his commanders, including Grant, and from politicians back in Washington.

Then Lincoln walks back up to the top deck of the River Queen and stares off into the distance. With a sigh, he recognizes that there is nothing more he can do right now.

It is April 2, 1865. The man with thirteen days left on earth is pacing.

CHAPTER TWO

SUNDAY, APRIL 2, 1865

PETERSBURG, VIRGINIA

There is no North versus South in Petersburg right now. Only Grant versus Lee—and Grant has the upper hand. Lee is the tall, rugged Virginian with the silver beard and regal air. Grant, forty-two, is sixteen years younger, a small, introspective man who possesses a fondness for cigars and a whisperer’s way with horses. For eleven long months they have tried to outwit one another. But as this Sunday morning descends further and further into chaos, it becomes almost impossible to remember the rationale that has defined their rivalry for so long.

At the heart of it all is Petersburg, a two-hundred-year-old city with rail lines spoking outward in five directions. The Confederate capital at Richmond lies twenty-three miles north—or, in the military definition, based upon the current location of Lee’s army, to the rear.

The standoff began last June, when Grant abruptly abandoned the battlefield at Cold Harbor and wheeled toward Petersburg. In what would go down as one of history’s greatest acts of stealth and logistics, Grant withdrew 115,000 men from their breastworks under cover of darkness and marched them south, crossed the James River without a single loss of life, and then pressed due west to Petersburg. The city was unprotected. A brisk Union attack would have taken the city within hours. It never happened.

Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant

Grant’s commanders dawdled. Lee raced in reinforcements. The Confederates dug in around Petersburg just in time, building the trenches and fortifications they would call home through the blazing heat of summer, the cool of autumn, and the snow and bitter freezing rain of the long Virginia winter.

Under normal circumstances, Grant’s next move would be to surround the city, cutting off those rail lines. He could then effect a proper siege, his encircled troops denying Lee’s army and the inhabitants of Petersburg all access to food, ammunition, and other supplies vital to life itself—or, in more graphic terms, Grant’s men would be the hangman’s noose choking the life out of Petersburg. Winning the siege would be as simple as cinching the noose tighter and tighter with each passing day, until the rebels died of starvation or surrendered, whichever came first.

But the stalemate at Petersburg is not a proper siege, even though the press is fond of calling it that. Grant has Lee pinned down on three sides but has not surrounded his entire force. The Appomattox River makes that impossible. Broad and deep, it flows through the heart of Petersburg. The Confederates control all land north of the river and use it as a natural barrier against Union attack from the rear. This allows resupply trains to chug down from Richmond on a regular basis, keeping the Confederates armed and fed.

In this way there is normalcy, allowing men like Lee to attend church on Sundays, as he would in peacetime. Or a young general like A. P. Hill to live on a nearby estate with his pregnant wife and two small daughters, enjoying parenthood and romance. The men on both sides of the trenches live in squalor and mud, enduring rats and deprivation. But there is order there, too, as they read their newspapers and letters from home and cook their meager breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

The Confederate lines are arranged in a jagged horseshoe, facing south—thirty—seven miles of trenches and fortifications in all. The outer edges of the horseshoe are two miles from the city center, under the commands of A. P. Hill on the Confederate right and John B. Gordon on the left. Both are among Lee’s favorite and most courageous generals, so it is natural that he has entrusted Petersburg’s defenses to them.

The cold, hard truth, however, is that Robert E. Lee’s dwindling army is reduced to just 50,000 men—only 35,000 of them ready to fight. String them out along thirty-seven miles and they are spread very thin indeed. But they are tough. Time and again over the past 293 days, Grant has attacked. And time and again, Lee’s men have held fast.

Lee cannot win at Petersburg. He knows this. Grant has almost four times as many soldiers and a thousand more cannon. The steam whistles of approaching trains have grown less and less frequent in the past few months, and Lee’s men have begun to starve. Confederate rations were once a pound of meal and a quarter pound of bacon a day, with an occasional tin of peas. Now such a meal would be considered a fantasy. “Starvation, literal starvation, was doing its deadly work. So depleted and poisoned was the blood of many of Lee’s men from insufficient and unsound food that a slight wound which would probably not have been reported at the beginning of the war would often cause blood poison, gangrene, and death,” one Confederate general will later write.

Many Confederate soldiers slide out of their trenches on moonless nights and sprint over to the Union lines to surrender—anything to fill their aching bellies. Those that remain are at their breaking point. The best Lee can hope for is to escape. For months and months, this has meant one of two options: abandon the city under cover of darkness and pull back toward Richmond or punch a hole in the Union lines and march south. In both cases, the goal is to reach the Carolinas and the waiting Confederate reinforcements.

On the afternoon of April 1, Grant removes the second option. At the decisive Battle of Five Forks, General Phil Sheridan and 45,000 men capture a pivotal crossing, cutting off the main road to North Carolina, handing General George Pickett his second disastrous loss of the war—the first coming at Gettysburg, and the infamous ill-fated charge that bears his name. Five Forks is the most lopsided Union victory of the war. More than 2,900 southern troops are lost.

It is long after dark when word of the great victory reaches Grant. He is sitting before a campfire, smoking one of the cigars he came to cherish long ago in the Mexican War. Without pausing, Grant pushes his advantage. He orders another attack along twelve miles of Confederate line. He hopes this will be the crushing blow, the one that will vanquish Lee and his army once and for all. His soldiers will attack just before dawn, but the artillery barrage will commence immediately. This is the bombardment Lincoln watches from eight miles away in City Point—the president well understanding that the massive barrage will cause devastating casualties and panic in the Confederate ranks.

The infantry opens fire at four A.M., per Grant’s orders, with a small diversionary attack to the east of Petersburg—cannon and musket fire mainly, just enough to distract the Confederates.

Forty-five minutes later, as soon there is enough light to see across to the enemy lines, Grant launches hell. Some 100,000 men pour into the Confederate trenches, screaming curses, throwing themselves on the overmatched rebels. The fighting is often hand to hand, and at such close range that the soldiers can clearly see and smell the men they’re killing. And, of course, they hear the screams of the dying.

The Union attack is divided into two waves. Just a few hours earlier, Major General John G. Parke was so sure that the assault would fail that he requested permission to call it off. But now Parke obeys orders and leads the bluecoats to the right flank. Major General Horatio Wright, employing a revolutionary wedge-shaped attack column, charges from the left flank. Wright is a West Point-trained engineer and will later have a hand in building the Brooklyn Bridge and completing the Washington Monument. He has spent months scrutinizing the Confederate defenses, searching for the perfect location to smash the rebels. Wright is far beyond ready for this day—and so are his men.

General Wright’s army shatters Lee’s right flank, spins around to obliterate A. P. Hill’s Third Corps, then makes a U-turn and marches on Petersburg—all within two hours. The attack is so well choreographed that many of his soldiers are literally miles in front of the main Union force. The first rays of morning sunshine have not even settled upon the Virginia countryside when, lacking leadership and orders, Wright’s army is stymied because no other Union divisions have stepped up to assist him. Wright’s army must stop its advance.

Meanwhile, Lee and his assistants, Generals Pete Longstreet and A. P. Hill, gape at Wright’s army from the front porch of Lee’s Confederate headquarters. They can see the destruction right in front of them. At first, as Longstreet will later write, “it was hardly light enough to distinguish the blue from the gray.” The three of them stand there, Lee with his wrap against the chill, as the sun rises high enough to confirm their worst fears: every soldier they can see wears blue.

A horrified A. P. Hill realizes that his army has been decimated. Lee faces the sobering fact that Union soldiers are just a few short steps from controlling the main road he plans to use for his personal retreat. Lee will be cut off if the bluecoats in the pasture continue their advance. The next logical step will be his own surrender.

Which is why, as he rushes back into the house and dresses quickly, Lee selects his finest gray uniform, a polished pair of riding boots, and then takes the unusual precaution of buckling a gleaming ceremonial sword around his waist—just in case he must offer it to his captors.

It is Sunday, and normally Lee would be riding his great gray gelding, Traveller, into Petersburg for services. Instead, he must accomplish three things immediately: the first is to escape back into the city; the second is to send orders to his generals, telling them to fall back to the city’s innermost defenses and hold until the last man or nightfall, whichever comes first. The third is to evacuate Petersburg and retreat back across the Petersburg bridges, wheel left, and race south toward the Carolinas.

There, Lee believes, he can regain the upper hand. The Confederate army is a nimble fighting force, at its best on open ground, able to feint and parry. Once he regains that open ground, Lee can keep Grant’s army off balance and gain the offensive.

If any of those three events do not take place, however, he will be forced to surrender—most likely before dusk.

Fortune, however, is smiling on Lee. Those Union soldiers have no idea that Marse Robert himself is right in front of them, for if they did, they would attack without ceasing. Lee is the most wanted man in America. The soldier who captures him will become a legend.

The Union scouts can clearly see the small artillery battery outside Lee’s headquarters, the Turnbull house, and assume that it is part of a much larger rebel force hiding out of sight. Too many times, on too many battlefields, soldiers who failed to observe such discretion have been shot through like Swiss cheese. Rather than rush forward, the Union scouts hesitate, looking fearfully at Lee’s headquarters.

Seizing the moment, Lee escapes. By nightfall, sword still buckled firmly around his waist, Lee crosses the Appomattox River and then orders his army to do the same.

The final chase has begun.

CHAPTER THREE

MONDAY, APRIL 3,1865

PETERSBURG, VIRGINIA

Lee’s retreat is unruly and time-consuming, despite the sense of urgency. So it is, more than eight hours after Lee ordered his army to pull out of Petersburg, that General U. S. Grant can still see long lines of Confederate troops marching across the Appomattox River to the relative safety of the opposite bank. The bridges are packed. A cannon barrage could kill hundreds instantly, and Grant’s batteries are certainly close enough to do the job. All he has to do is give the command. Yes, it would be slaughter, but there is still a war to be won. Killing those enemy soldiers makes perfect tactical sense.

But Grant hesitates.

The war’s end is in sight. Killing those husbands and fathers and sons will impede the nation’s healing. So now Grant, the man so often labeled a butcher, indulges in a rare act of military compassion and simply lets them go. He will soon come to regret it.

For now, his plan is to capture the Confederates, not to kill them. Grant has already taken plenty of prisoners. Even as he watches these rebels escape, Grant is scheming to find a way to capture even more.

The obvious strategy is to give chase, sending the Union army across the Appomattox in hot pursuit. Lee certainly expects that.

But Grant has something different in mind. He aims to get ahead of Lee and cut him off. He will allow the Confederates their unmolested thirty-six-hour, forty-mile slog down muddy roads to Amelia Court House, where the rebels believe food is waiting. He will let them unpack their rail cars and gulp rations to their hearts’ content. And he will even allow them to continue their march to the Carolinas—but only for a while. A few short miles after leaving Amelia Court House, Lee’s army will run headlong into a 100,000-man Union roadblock. This time there will be no river to guard Lee’s rear. Grant will slip that noose around the Confederate army, then yank on its neck until it can breathe no more.

Grant hands a courier the orders. Then he telegraphs President Lincoln at City Point, asking for a meeting. Long columns of rebels still clog the bridges, but the rest of Petersburg is completely empty, its homes shuttered, the civilians having long ago given them over to the soldiers, and soldiers from both sides are now racing across the countryside toward the inevitable but unknown point on the map where they will fight to the death in a last great battle. Abandoned parapets, tents, and cannons add to the eerie landscape. “There was not a soul to be seen, not even an animal in the streets,” Grant will later write. “There was absolutely no one there.”

The five-foot-eight General Grant, an introspective man whom Abraham Lincoln calls “the quietest little man” he’s ever met, has Petersburg completely to himself. He lights a cigar and basks in the still morning air, surrounded by the ruined city that eluded him for 293 miserable days.

He is Lee’s exact opposite: dark-haired and sloppy in dress. His friends call him Sam. “He had,” noted a friend from West Point, “a total absence of elegance.” But like Marse Robert, Grant possesses a savant’s aptitude for warfare—indeed, he is capable of little else. When the Civil War began he was a washed-up, barely employed West Point graduate who had been forced out of military service, done in by lonely western outposts and an inability to hold his liquor. It was only through luck and connections that Grant secured a commission in an Illinois regiment. But it was tactical brilliance, courage under fire, and steadfast leadership that saw him rise to the top.

General Grant, “Sam” to his friends

The one and only time he met Lee was during the Mexican War. Robert E. Lee was already a highly decorated war hero, while Grant was a lieutenant and company quartermaster. He despised being in charge of supplies, but it taught him invaluable lessons about logistics and the way an army could live off the land through foraging when cut off from its supply column. It was after one such scrounge in the Mexican countryside that the young Grant returned to headquarters in a dirty, unbuttoned uniform. The regal Lee, Virginian gentleman, was appalled when he caught sight of Grant and loudly chastised him for his appearance. It was an embarrassing rebuke, one the thin-skinned, deeply competitive Grant would never forget.

Lee isn’t the only Confederate general Grant knows from the Mexican War. James “Pete” Longstreet, now galloping toward Amelia Court House, is a close friend who served as Grant’s best man at his wedding. At Monterrey, Grant rode into battle alongside future Confederate president Jefferson Davis. There are scores of others. And while he’d known many at West Point, it was in Mexico that Grant learned how they fought under fire—their strengths, weaknesses, tendencies. As with the nuggets of information he’d learned as a quartermaster, Grant tucked these observations away and then made keen tactical use of them during the Civil War—just as he is doing right now, sitting alone in Petersburg, thinking of how to defeat Robert E. Lee once and for all.

Grant lights another cigar—a habit that will eventually kill him—and continues his wait for Lincoln. He hopes to hear about the battle for Richmond before the president arrives. Capturing Lee’s army is of the utmost importance, but both men also believe that a Confederacy without a capital is a doomsday scenario for the rebels. Delivering the news that Richmond has fallen will be a delightful way to kick off their meeting.

The sound of horseshoes on cobblestones echoes down the quiet street. It’s Lincoln. Once again the president has courted peril by traveling with just his eleven-year-old son, a lone bodyguard, and a handful of governmental officials. Lincoln knows that, historically, assassination is common during the final days of any war. The victors are jubilant, but the vanquished are furious, more than capable of venting their rage on the man they hold responsible for their defeat.

A single musket shot during that horseback ride from City Point could have ended Lincoln’s life. Despite his profound anxieties about all other aspects of the nation’s future, Lincoln chooses to shrug off the risk. At the edge of Petersburg he trots past “the houses of negroes,” in the words of one Union colonel, “and here and there a squalid family of poor whites”—but no one else. No one, at least, with enough guts to shoot the president. And while the former slaves grin broadly, the whites gaze down with “an air of lazy dislike,” disgusted that this tall, bearded man is once again their president.

Stepping down off his horse, Lincoln walks through the main gate of the house Grant has chosen for their meeting. He takes the walkway in long, eager strides, a smile suddenly stretching across his face, his deep fatigue vanishing at the sight of his favorite general. When he shakes Grant’s hand in congratulation, it is with great gusto. And Lincoln holds on to Grant for a very long time. The president appears so happy that Grant’s aides doubt he’s ever had a more carefree moment in his life.

The air is chilly. The two men sit on the veranda, taking no notice of the cold. They have become a team during the war. Or, as Lincoln puts it, “Grant is my man, and I am his.” One is tall and the other quite small. One is a storyteller, the other a listener. One is a politician; the other thinks that politics is a sordid form of show business. But both are men of action, and their conversation shows deep mutual respect.

Former slaves begin to fill the yard, drawn back into Petersburg by the news that Lincoln himself is somewhere in the city. They stand quietly in front of the house, watching as the general and the president proceed with their private talk. Lincoln is a hero to the slaves—“Father Abraham”—guiding them to the promised land with the Emancipation Proclamation.

Lincoln and Grant talk for ninety minutes, then shake hands good-bye. Their parting has a bittersweet feel, the two great men perhaps sensing that they are marching toward two vastly different destinies. Grant is off to finish an epic war and subsequently to become president himself. Lincoln is off to heal a nation, a noble goal he will not live to see realized.

Now, as the president looks on, Grant saddles up his charger and gallops off to join his army.

Before leaving himself, Lincoln shakes hands with some people in the crowd gathered in front of the meeting place. He then rides back to City Point, once again exposing himself to possible violence. The way is littered with hundreds of dead soldiers, their unburied bodies swollen by death and sometimes stripped bare by scavengers. Lincoln doesn’t look away, absorbing the sober knowledge that these men died because of him. Outrage about Lincoln’s pursuit of the war has many calling for his death—even in the North. “Let us also remind Lincoln, that Caesar had his Brutus,” one speaker cried at a New York rally. And even in Congress, one senator recently asked the simple question “How much more are we going to take?” before going on to allude to the possibility of Lincoln’s murder.

Lincoln endures all this because he must, just as he endures the slow trot through the battlefield. But there is a purpose to all he does, and upon his return to City Point he receives a great reward when he is handed the telegram informing him that Richmond has fallen. Confederate troops have abandoned the city to link up with Lee’s forces trying to get to the Carolinas.

“Thank God that I have lived to see this,” Lincoln cries. “It seems to me that I have been dreaming a horrid dream for four years, and now the nightmare is gone.”

But it’s not really gone. President Lincoln has just twelve days to live.

CHAPTER FOUR

TUESDAY, APRIL 4, 1865

NEWPORT, RHODE ISLAND

As blood flows in Virginia, wine flows in Rhode Island, far removed from the horrors of the Civil War. It is here that John Wilkes Booth has traveled by train for a romantic getaway with his fiancée. Since the Revolutionary War, Newport has been a retreat for high society, known for yachting and mansions and gaiety.

John Wilkes Booth is one of eight children born to his flamboyant actor father, Junius Brutus Booth, a rogue if there ever was one. Booth’s father abandoned his first wife and two children in England and fled to America with an eighteen-year-old London girl, who became Booth’s mother. Booth was often lost in the confusion of the chaotic household. His father and brother eclipsed him as actors, and his upbringing was hectic, to say the least. Now anger has become a way of life for him. Throughout his journey to Rhode Island he has been barraged by news of the southern demise. Northern newspapers are reporting that Richmond has fallen and that Confederate president Jefferson Davis and his entire cabinet fled the city just hours before Union troops entered. In cities like New York, Boston, and Washington, people are dancing in the streets as the rebel collapse appears to be imminent. It is becoming clear to Booth that he is a man with a destiny—the only man in America who can end the North’s oppression. Something drastic must be done to preserve slavery, the southern way of life, and the Confederacy itself. If Robert E. Lee can’t get the job done, then Booth will have to do it for him.

Booth’s hatred for Lincoln, and his deep belief in the institution of slavery, coalesced into a silent rage after the Emancipation Proclamation. It was only in August 1864, when a bacterial infection known as erysipelas sidelined him from the stage, that Booth began using his downtime to recruit a gang that would help him kidnap Lincoln. First he contacted his old friends Michael O’Laughlen and Samuel Arnold. They met at Barnum’s City Hotel in Baltimore, and after several drinks Booth asked them if they would join his conspiracy. Both men agreed. From there, Booth began adding others, selecting them based on expertise with weapons, physical fitness, and knowledge of southern Maryland’s back roads and waterways.

In October, Booth traveled to Montreal, where he met with agents of Jefferson Davis’s. The Confederate president had set aside more than $1 million in gold to pay for acts of espionage and intrigue against the Union and housed a portion of the money in Canada. Booth’s meeting with Davis’s men not only provided funding for his conspiracy, it forged a direct bond between himself and the Confederacy. He returned with a check for $1,500, along with a letter of introduction that would allow him to meet the more prominent southern sympathizers in Maryland, such as Samuel Mudd and John Surratt, who would become key players in his evil plan. Without their help, Booth’s chances of successfully smuggling Lincoln out of Washington and into the Deep South would have been nonexistent.

After recovering from his illness, Booth immersed himself deeper into the Confederate movement, traveling with a new circle of friends that considered the kidnapping of Lincoln to be of vital national importance. He met with secret agents and sympathizers in taverns, churches, and hotels throughout the Northeast and down through Maryland, always expanding his web of contacts, making his plans more concise and his chances of success that much greater. What started as an almost abstract hatred of Lincoln has now transformed itself into the actor’s life’s work.

Yet Booth is such a skilled actor and charismatic liar that no one outside the secessionist movement—not even his fiancée—has known the depth of his rage.

Until today.

Booth’s betrothed, Lucy Lambert Hale, is the daughter of John Parker Hale, a staunchly pro-war senator from New Hampshire. She is dark-haired and full-figured, with blue eyes that have ignited a spark in the heart of many a man. Like Booth, she is used to having her way with the opposite sex, attracting beaus with a methodical mix of flattery and teasing. But Lucy is no soft touch. She can quickly turn indifferent and even cruel toward her suitors if the mood strikes her.

Among those enraptured with Miss Hale is a future Supreme Court justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., now a twenty-four-year-old Union officer. Also John Hay, one of Lincoln’s personal secretaries. And, finally, none other than Robert Todd Lincoln, the president’s twenty-one-year-old son, also a Union officer. Despite her engagement to Booth, Lucy still keeps in touch with both Hay and young Lincoln, among many others.

Strikingly pretty, Lucy appeals to Booth’s vanity. When they are together, heads turn. The couple’s initial passion was enough to overcome societal obstacles—at least in their minds. By March 1865 their engagement isn’t much of a secret anymore, and they are even seen together at the second inaugural.

But in the past month, with Lucy possibly accompanying her father to Spain, and Booth secretly plotting against the president, their relationship has become strained. They have begun to quarrel. It doesn’t help that Booth flies into a jealous rage whenever Lucy so much as looks at another man. One night, in particular, he went mad at the sight of her dancing with Robert Lincoln. Whether or not this has anything to do with his pathological hatred for the president will never be determined.

Booth has told her nothing about the conspiracy or his part in it. She doesn’t know that his hiatus from the stage was extended by his maniacal commitment to kidnapping Lincoln. She doesn’t know about the secret trips to Montreal and New York to meet with other conspirators, nor about the hidden caches of guns or the buggy that Booth purchased specifically to ferry the kidnapped president out of Washington, nor about the money transfers that fund his entire operation. She doesn’t know that his head is filled with countless crazy scenarios concerning the Lincoln kidnapping. And she surely doesn’t realize that her beloved has a passion for New York City prostitutes and a sizzling young Boston teenager named Isabel Sumner, just seventeen years old. Lucy knows none of that. All she knows is that the man she loves is mysterious and passionate and fearless in the bedroom.

Perhaps, with all of Booth’s subterfuge, it is not surprising that their lovers’ getaway to Newport is turning into a fiasco.

Booth checked them into the Aquidneck House hotel, simply signing the register as “J. W. Booth and Lady.” He made no attempt whatsoever to pretend they are already married. It’s as if the couple is daring the innkeeper to question their propriety. There is no question that Booth is spoiling for a fight. He is sick of what he sees as the gross imbalance between the poverty of the war-torn South and the prosperity of the North. Other than the uniformed soldiers milling about the railway platforms, he saw no evidence, during the train ride from Washington to Newport, via Boston, that the war had touched the North in any way.

After checking into the hotel, he and Lucy walk the waterfront all morning. He wants to tell her about his plans, but the conspiracy is so vast and so deep that he would be a fool to sabotage it with a careless outburst. Instead, he rambles on about the fate of the Confederacy and about Lincoln, the despot. He’s shared his pro-southern leanings with Lucy in the past, but never to this extent. He rants endlessly about the fall of Richmond and the injustice of Lincoln having his way. Lucy knows her politics well, and she argues right back, until at some point in their walk along the picturesque harbor, with its sailboats and magnificent seaside homes, it becomes clear that they will never reach a common ground.

Toward evening, they stop their fighting and walk back to the Aquidneck House. Despite John Wilkes Booth’s many infidelities, Lucy Hale is the love of his life. She is the only anchor that might keep him from committing a heinous crime, effectively throwing his life away in the process. In her eyes he sees a happy future replete with marriage, children, and increased prosperity as he refocuses on his career. They can travel the world together, mingling with high society wherever they go, thanks to her father’s considerable connections. All he has to do is to choose that love over his insane desire to harm the president.

Booth tells the desk clerk that Lucy isn’t feeling well and that they will take their evening meal in the bedroom. Upstairs, there is ample time for lovemaking before their food is delivered. But the acts of intimacy that made this trip such an exotic idea have been undone by the news about Richmond. They will never make love again after tonight, and both of them sense it. Rather than spend the night together, Booth and Lucy pack their bags and catch the evening train back to Boston, where she leaves him to be with friends.

Booth is actually relieved. He has made his choice. Now no one stands in his way.

CHAPTER FIVE

TUESDAY, APRIL 4, 1865

AMELIA COURT HOUSE, VIRGINIA

As Booth and Lucy depart Newport long before their supper can be delivered, Robert E. Lee’s soldiers are marching forty long miles to dine on anything they can find, all the while looking over their shoulders, fearful that Grant and the Union army will catch them from behind.

Lee has an eight-hour head start after leaving Petersburg. He figures that if he can make it to Amelia Court House before Grant catches him, he and his men will be amply fed by the waiting 350,000 rations of smoked meat, bacon, biscuits, coffee, sugar, flour, and tea that are stockpiled there. Then, after that brief stop to fill their bellies, they will resume their march to North Carolina.

And march they must. Even though Jefferson Davis and his cabinet have already fled Richmond and traveled to the Carolinas on the very same rail line that is delivering the food to Lee’s forces, there is no chance of the army using the railway as an escape route. There simply isn’t enough time to load and transport all of Lee’s 30,000 men.

The day-and-a-half trudge to Amelia Court House begins optimistically enough, with Lee’s men happy to finally be away from Petersburg and looking forward to their first real meal in months. But forty miles on foot is a long way, and mile by mile the march turns into a death pageant. The line of retreating rebels and supply wagons stretches for twenty miles. The men are in wretched physical condition after months in the trenches. Their feet have lost their calluses and their muscles the firm tone they knew earlier in the war, when the Army of Northern Virginia was constantly on the march. Even worse, each painful step is a reminder that, of the two things vital to an army on the move—food and sleep—they lack one and have no chance of getting the other.

Lee’s army is in total disarray. There is no longer military discipline, or any attempt to enforce it. The men swear under their breaths, grumbling and swearing a thousand other oaths about wanting to go home and quit this crazy war. The loose columns of Confederate soldiers resemble a mob of hollow-eyed zombies instead of a highly skilled fighting force. The men “rumbled like persons in a dream,” one captain will later write. “It all seemed to me like a troubled vision. I was consumed by fever, and when I attempted to walk I staggered like a drunken man.”

The unlucky are barefoot, their leather boots and laces rotted away from the rains and mud of winter. Others wear ankle-high Confederate brogans with holes in the soles and uppers. The only men sporting new boots are those who stripped them off dead Union soldiers. The southerners resent it that everything the Union soldiers wear seems to be newer, better, and in limitless supply. A standing order has been issued for Confederate soldiers not to dress in confiscated woolen Union overcoats, but given a choice between being accidentally shot by a fellow southerner or surviving the bitter nightly chill, the rebels pick warmth every time. A glance up and down the retreat shows the long gray line speckled everywhere with blue.

Bellies rumble. No one sings. No one bawls orders. A Confederate officer later sets the scene: there is “no regular column, no regular pace. When a soldier became weary he fell out, ate his scanty rations—if indeed, he had any to eat—rested, rose, and resumed the march when the inclination dictated. There were not many words spoken. An indescribable sadness weighed upon us.”

It is even harder for the troops evacuating Richmond, on their way to link up with Lee at Amelia Court House. Many are not soldiers at all—they are sailors who burned their ships rather than let them fall into Union hands. Marching is new to them. Mere hours into the journey, many have fallen out of the ranks from blisters and exhaustion.

Making matters worse is the very real fear of Union troops launching a surprise attack. “The nervousness,” a Confederate major will remember, “resulting from this constant strain of starvation, fatigue and lack of sleep was a dangerous thing, sometimes producing lamentable results.” On several occasions bewildered Confederate troops open fire on one another, thinking they’re firing at Yankees. In another instance, a massive black stallion lashed to a wooden fence “reared back, pulling the rail out of the fence and dragging it after him full gallop down the road crowded with troops, mowing them down like the scythe of a war chariot.”

It’s no wonder that men begin to desert. Whenever and wherever the column pauses, men slip into the woods, never to return. The war is clearly over. No sense dying for nothing.

Lee has long craved the freedom of open ground, but now his objective is to retreat and regroup, not to fight. His strategy that his army “must endeavor to harass them if we cannot destroy them” depends upon motivated troops and favorable terrain. These are essential to any chance of Lee snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. But the fight will have to wait until they get food.

To lighten his army’s load and move faster, Lee orders that all unnecessary guns and wagons be left behind. The pack animals pulling them are hitched to more essential loads. A few days from now, as bone thin and weary as the soldiers themselves, these animals will be butchered to feed Lee’s men.

Everything about the retreat—starvation, poor morale, desertion—speaks of failure. And yet when messengers arrive saying that the Petersburg bridges were blown by his sappers once the last man was across, making it impossible for Grant to follow, Lee is optimistic. Even happy. He has escaped once again. “I have got my army safely out of its breastworks, and in order to follow me the enemy must abandon his lines and can derive no further benefits from his railroads or James River,” he notes with relief.

Grant’s army is sliding west en masse, racing to block the road, even as Lee feels relief in the morning air. Lee suspects this. But his confidence in his army and in his own generalship is such that he firmly believes he can defeat Grant on open ground.

Everything depends on getting to Amelia Court House. Without food Lee’s men cannot march. Without food they cannot fight. Without food, they might as well have surrendered in Petersburg.

Lee’s newfound optimism slowly filters down into the ranks. Against all odds, his men regain their confidence as the trenches of Petersburg recede further and further into memory and distance. By the time they reach Amelia Court House, on April 4, after almost two consecutive days on the march, electricity sizzles through the ranks. The men speak of hope and are confident of victory as they wonder where and when they will fight the Yankees once again.

It’s just before noon. The long hours in the saddle are hard on the fifty-eight-year-old general. Lee has long struggled with rheumatism and all its crippling agonies. Now it flares anew. Yet he presses on, knowing that any sign of personal weakness will be immediately noticed by his men. As much as any soldier, he looks forward to a good meal and a few hours of sleep. He can see the waiting railroad cars, neatly parked on a siding. He quietly gives the order to unload the food and distribute it in an organized fashion. The last thing Lee wants is for his army to give in to their hunger and rush the train. Composure and propriety are crucial for any effective fighting force.

The train doors are yanked open. Inside, great wooden crates are stacked floor to ceiling. Lee’s excited men hurriedly jerk the boxes down onto the ground and pry them open.

Then, horror!

This is what those boxes contain: 200 crates of ammunition, 164 cartons of artillery harnesses, and 96 carts to carry ammunition.

There is no food.

CHAPTER SIX

TUESDAY, APRIL 4, 1865

RICHMOND, VIRGINIA

While John Wilkes Booth is still in Newport, a hungry Robert E. Lee is in Amelia Court House, Ulysses S. Grant is racing to block Lee’s path, and Abraham Lincoln stands on the deck of USS Malvern as the warship chugs slowly and cautiously up the James River toward Richmond. The channel is choked with burning warships and the floating corpses of dead draft horses. Deadly anti-ship mines known as “torpedoes” bob on the surface, drifting with the current, ready to explode the instant they come into contact with a vessel. If just one torpedo bounces against the Malvern’s hull, ship and precious cargo alike will be reduced to fragments of varnished wood and human tissue.

Again Lincoln sets aside his concerns. For the Malvern is sailing into Richmond, of all places. The Confederate capital is now in Union hands. The president has waited an eternity for this moment. Lincoln can clearly see that Richmond—or what’s left of it—hardly resembles a genteel southern bastion. The sunken ships and torpedoes in the harbor tell only part of the story. Richmond is gone, burned to the ground. And it was not a Union artillery bombardment that did the job, but the people of Richmond themselves.

When it becomes too dangerous for the Malvern to go any farther, Lincoln is rowed to shore. “We passed so close to torpedoes that we could have put out our hands and touched them,” bodyguard William Crook will later write. His affection for Lincoln is enormous, and of all the bodyguards, Crook fusses most over the president, treating him like a child who must be protected.

It is Crook who is fearful, while Lincoln bursts with amazement and joy that this day has finally come. Finally, he steps from the barge and up onto the landing.

But what Lincoln sees now can only be described as appalling.

Richmond’s Confederate leaders have had months to prepare for the city’s eventual surrender. They had plenty of time to come up with a logical plan for a handover of power without loss of life. But such was their faith in Marse Robert that the people of Richmond thought that day would never come. When it did, they behaved like fools.

Their first reaction was to destroy the one thing that could make the Yankees lose control and vent their rage on the populace: whiskey. Union troops had gone on a drunken rampage after taking Columbia, South Carolina, two months earlier, and had then burned the city to the ground.

Out came the axes. Teams of men roamed through the city, hacking open barrel after barrel of fine sour mash. Thousands of gallons of spirits were poured into the gutters. But the citizens of Richmond were not about to see all that whiskey go to waste. Some got down on their hands and knees and lapped it from the gutter. Others filled their hats and boots. The streetlamps were black, because Richmond’s gas lines had been shut off to prevent explosions. Perfectly respectable men and women, in a moment of amazing distress, found a salve for their woes by falling to their knees and quenching their thirst with alcohol flowing in the gutter.

Many took more than just a drink. Everyone from escaped prisoners to indigent laborers and war deserters drank their share. Great drunken mobs soon roamed the city. Just as in Amelia Court House, food was first and foremost on everyone’s minds. The city had suffered such scarcity that “starvation balls” had replaced the standard debutante and charity galas. But black market profiteers had filled entire warehouses with staples like flour, coffee, sugar, and delicious smoked meats. And, of course, there were Robert E. Lee’s 350,000 missing rations, neatly stacked in a Richmond railway siding instead of being packed on the train that Lee expected in Amelia Court House.

Little did the general know that Confederate looters had stolen all the food.

The worst was still to come. Having destroyed and consumed a potential supply of alcohol for the Union army, Richmond’s city fathers now turned their attention to their most profitable commodity: tobacco. The rebel leadership knew that President Lincoln wanted to capture tobacco stores in order to sell them to England, thereby raising much-needed money for the nearly bankrupt U.S. Treasury.

In their panic, the city fathers ignored an obvious problem: lighting tinder-dry bales of tobacco on fire would also burn the great old wooden warehouses in which they were stacked.

Soon, spires of flame illuminated the entire city of Richmond. The warehouse flames spread to other buildings. The rivers of whiskey caught fire and inferno ensued.

The true nature of a firestorm involves not only flame but also wind and heat and crackling and popping and explosion, just like war. Soon residents mistakenly believed the Yankees were laying Richmond to waste with an artillery barrage.

And still things got worse.

The Confederate navy chose this moment to set the entire James River arsenal ablaze, preferring to destroy their ships and ammunition rather than see them fall into Union hands.

But the effect of this impulsive tactical decision was far worse than anything the northerners would have inflicted. Flaming steel particles were launched into the air as more than 100,000 artillery rounds exploded over the next four hours. Everything burned. Even the most respectable citizens were now penniless refugees, their homes smoldering ruins and Confederate money now mere scraps of paper. The dead and dying were everywhere, felled by the random whistling shells. The air smelled of wood smoke, gunpowder, and burning flesh. Hundreds of citizens lost their lives on that terrible night.

Richmond was a proud city and perhaps more distinctly American than even Washington, D.C. It could even be said that the United States of America was born in Richmond, for it was there, in 1775, in Richmond’s St. John’s Episcopal Church, that Patrick Henry looked out on a congregation that included George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and delivered the famous “Give me liberty or give me death” speech, which fomented American rebellion, the Revolutionary War, and independence itself. As the capital of Virginia since 1780, it was where Jefferson had served as governor; he’d also designed its capitol building. It was in Richmond that Jefferson and James Madison crafted the statute separating church and state that would later inform the First Amendment of the Constitution.

And now it was devastated by its own sons.

Soldiers of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia sowed land mines in their wake as they abandoned the city. Such was their haste that they forgot to remove the small rows of red flags denoting the narrow but safe path through the minefields, a mistake that saved hundreds of Union lives as soldiers entered the city.

Richmond was still in flames on the morning of April 3 when the Union troops, following those red flags, arrived. Brick facades and chimneys still stood, but wooden frames and roofs had been incinerated. “The barbarous south had consigned it to flames,” one Union officer wrote of Richmond. And even after a night of explosions, “the roar of bursting shells was terrific.” Smoldering ruins and the sporadic whistle of artillery greeted the Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth Corps of the Union army.

The instant the long blue line marched into town, the slaves of Richmond were free. They were stunned to see that the Twenty-fifth contained black soldiers from a new branch of the army known as the USCT—the United States Colored Troops.

Lieutenant Johnston Livingston de Peyster, a member of General Wetzel’s staff, galloped his horse straight to the capitol building. “I sprang from my horse,” he wrote proudly, and “rushed up to the roof.” In his hand was an American flag. Dashing to the flagpole, he hoisted the Stars and Stripes over Richmond. The capital was Confederate no more.

That particular flag was poignant for two reasons. It had thirty-six stars, a new number owing to Nevada’s recent admission to the Union. Per tradition, this new flag would not become official until the Fourth of July. It was the flag of the America to come—the postwar America, united and expanding. It was, in other words, the flag of Abraham Lincoln’s dreams.

So it is fitting when, eleven short days later, a thirty-six-star flag will be folded into a pillow and placed beneath Abraham Lincoln’s head after a gunman puts a bullet in his brain. But for now President Lincoln is alive and well, walking the ruined streets of the conquered Confederate capital.

CHAPTER SEVEN

TUESDAY, APRIL 4, 1865

RICHMOND, VIRGINIA

Abraham Lincoln has never fought in battle. During his short three-month enlistment during the Black Hawk War in 1832, he was, somewhat oddly, both a captain and a private—but never a fighter. He is a politician, and politicians are seldom given the chance to play the role of conquering hero. It could be said that General Grant deserved the honor more than President Lincoln, for it was his strategy and concentrated movements of manpower that brought down the Confederate government. But it is Lincoln’s war. It always has been. To Lincoln goes the honor of conquering hero—and the hatred of those who have been conquered.

No one knows this more than the freed slaves of Richmond. They throng to Lincoln’s side, so alarming the sailors who rowed him ashore that they form a protective ring around the president, using their bayonets to push the slaves away. The sailors maintain this ring around Lincoln as he marches through the city, even as his admiring entourage grows from mere dozens to hundreds.

The white citizens of Richmond, tight-lipped and hollow-eyed, take it all in. Abraham Lincoln is their enemy no more. As the citizens of Petersburg came to realize yesterday, he is something even more despicable: their president. These people never thought they’d see the day Abraham Lincoln would be strolling down the streets of Richmond as if it were his home. They make no move, no gesture, no cry, no sound to welcome him. “Every window was crowded with heads,” one sailor will remember. “But it was a silent crowd. There was something oppressive in those thousands of watchers without a sound, either of welcome or hatred. I think we would have welcomed a yell of defiance.”

Lincoln’s extraordinary height means that he towers over the crowd, providing an ideal moment for an outraged southerner to make an attempt on his life.

But no one takes a shot. No drunken, saddened, addled, enraged citizens of Richmond so much as attacks Lincoln with their fists. Instead, Lincoln receives the jubilant welcome of former slaves reveling in their first moments of freedom.

The president keeps walking until he is a mile from the wharf. Soon Lincoln finds himself on the corner of Twelfth and Clay Streets, staring at the former home of Jefferson Davis.

When first built, in 1818, the house was owned by the president of the Bank of Virginia, John Brockenbrough. But Brockenbrough is now long dead. A merchant by the name of Lewis Crenshaw owned the property when war broke out, and he had just added a third floor and redecorated the interior with all the “modern conveniences,” including gaslights and a flush toilet, when he was persuaded to sell it, furnished, to Richmond authorities for the generous sum of $43,000—in Confederate dollars, of course.

The authorities, in turn, rented it to the Confederate government, which was in need of an executive mansion. It was August 1861 when Jefferson Davis, his much younger second wife, Varina, and their three young children moved in. Now they have all fled, and Lincoln steps past the sentry boxes, grasps the wrought iron railing, and marches up the steps into the Confederate White House.

He is shown into a small room with floor-to-ceiling windows and crossed cavalry swords over the door. “This was President Davis’s office,” a housekeeper says respectfully.

Lincoln’s eyes roam over the elegant dark wood desk, which Davis had so thoughtfully tidied before running off two days earlier. “Then this must be President Davis’s chair,” he says with a grin, sinking into its burgundy padding. He crosses his legs and leans back.

That’s when the weight of the moment hits him. Lincoln asks for a glass of water, which is promptly delivered by Davis’s former butler—a slave—along with a bottle of whiskey.

Where Davis has gone, Lincoln does not know. He has no plans to hunt him down. Reunification, however painful it might be to southerners, is within Lincoln’s grasp. There will be no manhunt for the Confederate president, nor a trial for war crimes. As for the people of Richmond, many of whom actively conspired against Lincoln and the United States, Lincoln has ordered that the Union army command the citizenry with a gentle hand. Or, in Lincoln’s typically folksy parlance: “Let ’em up easy.”

He can afford to relax. Lincoln has Richmond. The Confederacy is doomed. All the president needs now is for Grant to finish the rest of the job, and then he can get to work. Lincoln still has miles to go before he sleeps.

CHAPTER EIGHT

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 5, 1865

AMELIA COURT HOUSE, VIRGINIA

NOON TO MIDNIGHT

Wave after wave of retreating Confederate soldiers arrive in Amelia Court House throughout the day of April 4. They have marched long and hard, yanked forward on an invisible rope by the promise of a long sleep and a full belly. But it was a lie, a broken promise, and a nightmare, all at once. Without food they have no hope. Like the sailors who quit the march from Richmond because their feet hurt, many Confederate soldiers now find their own way to surrender. Saying they are going into the woods to hunt for dinner, they simply walk away from the war. And they keep on walking until they reach their homes weeks and months later—or lie down to die as they desert, too weak to take another step.

Lee’s optimism has been replaced by the heavy pall of defeat. “His face was still calm, as it always was,” wrote one enlisted man. “But his carriage was no longer erect, as his soldiers had been used to seeing it. The troubles of these last days had already plowed great furrows in his forehead. His eyes were red as if with weeping, his cheeks sunken and haggard, his face colorless. No one who looked upon him then, as he stood there in full view of the disastrous end, can ever forget the intense agony written on his features.”

His hope rests on forage wagons now out scouring the countryside in search of food. He anxiously awaits their return, praying they will be overflowing with grains and smoked meats and leading calves and pigs to be slaughtered.

The wagons come back empty.

The countryside is bare. There are no rations for Lee and his men. The soldiers become frantic, eating anything they can find: cow hooves, tree bark, rancid raw bacon, and hog and cattle feed. Some have taken to secreting packhorses or mules away from the main group, then quietly slaughtering and eating them. Making matters worse, word now reaches Lee that Union cavalry intercepted a column of supply wagons that raced out of Richmond just before the fall. The wagons were burned and the teamsters taken prisoner.

Lee and his army are in the great noose of Grant’s making, which is squeezing tighter and tighter with every passing hour.

Lee must move before Grant finds him. His fallback plan is yet another forced march, this one to the city of Danville, where more than a million rations allegedly await. Danville, however, is a hundred miles south. As impossible as it is to think of marching an army that far on empty stomachs, it is Lee’s only hope.

Lee could surrender right then and there. But it isn’t in his character. He is willing to demand incredible sacrifice to avoid the disgrace of defeat.

A cold rain falls on the morning of April 5. Lee gives the order to move out. It is, in the minds of one Confederate, “the cruelest marching order the commanders had ever given the men in four years of fighting.” Units of infantry, cavalry, and artillery begin slogging down the road. Danville is a four-day march—if they have the energy to make it. “It is now,” one soldier writes in his diary, “a race of life or death.”

They get only seven miles before coming to a dead halt at a Union roadblock outside Jetersville. At first it appears to be no more than a small cavalry force. But a quick look through Lee’s field glasses tells him differently. Soldiers are digging trenches and fortifications along the road, building the berms and breastworks that will protect them from rebel bullets, and then fortifying them with fallen trees and fence rails.

Lee gallops Traveller to the front and assesses the situation. Part of him wants to make a bold statement by charging into the Union works in a last grand suicidal hurrah, but Lee’s army has followed him so loyally because of not only his brilliance but also his discretion. Sometimes knowing when not to fight is just as important to a general’s success as knowing how to fight.

And this is not a time to engage.

Lee quickly swings his army west in a grand loop toward the town of Paineville. The men don’t travel down one single road but follow a series of parallel arteries connecting the hamlets and burgs of rural Virginia. The countryside is rolling and open in some places, in some forested and in others swampy. Creeks and rivers overflowing their banks from the recent rains drench the troops at every crossing. On any other day, the Army of Northern Virginia might not have minded. But with so many miles to march, soaking shoes and socks will eventually mean the further agony of walking on blistered, frozen feet.

The topography favors an army lying in wait, ready to spring a surprise attack. But they are an army in flight, at the mercy of any force hidden in the woods. And, indeed, Union cavalry repeatedly harass the rear of Lee’s exhausted column. The horsemen are not bold or dumb enough to attack Lee’s main force, which outnumbers them by thousands. Instead they attack the defenseless supply wagons in a series of lightning-quick charges. On narrow, swampy roads, the Union cavalry burn more than 200 Confederate supply wagons, capture eleven battle flags, and take more than 600 prisoners, spreading confusion and panic.

Sensing disaster, Lee springs to the offensive, ordering cavalry under the command of his nephew Major General Fitzhugh Lee and Major General Thomas Rosser to catch and kill the Union cavalry before they can gallop back to the safety of their Jetersville line. In the running battle that follows, rebel cavalry kill 30 and wound another 150 near the resort town of Amelia Springs. If the Union needs proof that there is still fight in Lee’s army, it now has it.

Lee marches his men all day, and then all night. At a time when every fiber of their beings cries out for sleep and food, they press forward over muddy rutted roads, enduring rain and chill and the constant harassment of Union cavalry. The roads are shoulder to shoulder with exhausted men, starving pack animals, and wagons sinking up to their axles in the thick Virginia mud. Dead and dying mules and horses are shoved to the side of the road so as not to slow the march. Dead men litter the ground, too, and are just as quickly tossed to the shoulder—or merely stepped over. There is no time for proper burials. Nothing can slow the march to Danville.

Men drop their bedrolls because they lack the strength to carry them. Many more thrust their guns bayonet-first into the earth and leave them behind. On the rare occasions when the army stops to rest, men simply crumple to the ground and sleep. When it is time to march again, officers move from man to man, shaking them awake and ordering them to their feet. Some men refuse to rise and are left sleeping, soon to become Union prisoners. Others can’t rise because they’re simply too weak, in the early phases of dying from starvation. These men, too, are left behind. In this way, Lee’s army dwindles. The 30,000 who retreated from Petersburg just three days ago have been reduced by half. As the long night march takes a greater toll, even those hardy men stagger like drunks, and some lose the power of speech. And yet, when it comes time to fight, they will find a way to lift their rifle to their shoulder, aim at their target, and squeeze the trigger.

“My shoes are gone,” a veteran soldier laments during the march. “My clothes are almost gone. I’m weary, I’m sick, I’m hungry. My family has been killed or scattered, and may be wandering helpless and unprotected. I would die, yes I would die willingly, because I love my country. But if this war is ever over, I’ll be damned if I ever love another country.”

His is the voice of a South that wants no part of Lincoln and the United States of America—and for whom there can be no country but the Confederacy. Just as the Union officer in Richmond spoke of the “barbarous south,” so these soldiers and men like John Wilkes Booth view the North as an evil empire. This is the divisiveness Lincoln will face if he manages to win the war.

Now, in the darkness after midnight, a courier approaches the marching soldiers and hands Lee a captured Union message from Grant to his generals, giving orders to attack at first light.

But at last Lee gets good news, in the form of a report from his commissary general, I. M. St. John: 80,000 rations have been rushed to the town of Farmville, just nineteen miles away. Lee can be there in a day.

He swings his army toward Farmville. It is Lee’s final chance to keep the Confederate struggle alive.

CHAPTER NINE

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 5, 1865

JETERSVILLE, VIRGINIA

NIGHT

General Sam Grant is also on a midnight ride. The great hooves of his horse beat a tattoo on the bad roads and forest trails of central Virginia. Speed is of the essence. Scouts report that Lee is escaping, marching his men through the night in a bold attempt to reach rations at Farmville. From there it’s just a short march to High Bridge, a stone-and-wood structure wide enough to handle an army. Once Lee crosses and burns the bridge behind him, his escape will be complete, and the dreadful war will continue.

Tonight decides everything. Grant is so close to stopping Lee. So very close. Grant digs his spurs into his horse, named Jeff Davis after the Confederate president, in a gesture uncharacteristically vindictive of Grant, who is usually polite and respectful even to his enemies. Grant knows that he must ride hard. Lee must be captured now. And Grant must capture him personally.

As always, his battle plan is simple: Get in front of Lee. Block his path. How many times has he explained this to Generals Sheridan and Meade? Block Lee’s path, stop him in his tracks, then attack and crush the Army of Northern Virginia. So how is it that Lee came within spitting distance of the Jetersville roadblock and escaped?

It confounds Grant that his top generals are so terrified of Lee, holding back when they should rush in. The Union soldiers are better armed, better fed, and far more rested than Lee’s men. The generals must be relentless, pressing forward without ceasing until the war is won. But they are not.

So it is up to Grant to lead the way.

The culprit, Grant decides, is not General Phil Sheridan. He and the cavalry are more than doing their part, charging far and wide over the Virginia countryside, harassing Lee’s wagons and skirmishing with Confederate cavalry. Sheridan is Grant’s eyes and ears, sending scouts to track Lee’s movements and ensuring that Marse Robert doesn’t disappear into the Blue Ridge Mountains. Grant would be lost without Sheridan.

The same cannot be said of General George Meade. His force reached Jetersville at dusk on April 5, after a dreary day of pursuit. But rather than launch an immediate assault on Lee’s rear, as Grant ordered, Meade halted for the night, claiming that his men were too tired to fight.

Grant knows there’s more to it than that. The problem, in a nutshell, is the unspoken rivalry between infantry and cavalry—between the unglamorous and the swashbuckling. Meade’s refusal to fight is his way of pouting about the cavalry divisions sharing the roads with his men, slowing their march. “Behold, the whole of Merritt’s division of cavalry filing in from a side road and completely closing the way,” one of Meade’s aides wrote home. “That’s the way it is with those cavalry bucks: they bother and howl about infantry not being up to support them, and they are precisely the people who are always blocking the way … they are arrant boasters.

“To hear Sheridan’s staff talk, you would suppose ten-thousand mounted carbineers had crushed the entire Rebellion … . The plain truth is, they are useful and energetic fellows, but commit the error of thinking they can do everything and that no one else does anything.”

So Meade made his point by refusing to attack.

Sheridan was furious. “I wish you were here,” he wired Grant. “We can capture the Army of Northern Virginia if enough force be thrown to this point.”

Grant reads between the lines. Rather than wait until morning, and the chance that Meade will find another excuse for not fighting, he orders his staff to mount up for the sixteen-mile midnight ride to Jetersville. Never mind that it is a cold, pitch-black night. There is purpose in the journey. They travel carefully, lest they surprise Union troops and be mistakenly shot as southern scouts.

Grant is always one to keep his emotions in check. But as he guides his horse from the village of Nottoway Court House to Jetersville, from the sandy soils west of Petersburg to the quartz and red soil of the Blue Ridge foothills, Grant fears that Lee is on the verge of outfoxing him again.

Grant knows that the Confederates are beatable. His spies captured a note from one of Lee’s aides, detailing the poor morale and horrible conditions the Confederates are experiencing. Grant is also aware of the massive desertions. He has heard about the roads littered with rifles and bedrolls, abandoned wagons and broken horses. He knows that an astronomic number of Confederate men have been taken prisoner. But all this means nothing if he cannot get ahead of Lee and block the Confederate escape to the Carolinas. And not just that: he must win what he calls the “life and death struggle for Lee to get south to his provisions.”

Once a second-rate fighting force, the Union soldiers have gained remarkable strength since the assault on Petersburg. “Nothing seemed to fatigue them,” Grant marvels. “They were ready to move without rations and travel without rest until the end.” Unlike Lee’s bedraggled force, Grant’s men march with a bounce in their step. Bands play. Nobody straggles or falls out of ranks. They walk the unheard-of distance of thirty miles in one day.

Now Grant and the cavalry detail that guards his life walk their horses through a forest to Sheridan’s camp. Sentries cry out, ordering them to stop. Grant steps forward to show himself. Within seconds the sentries allow them to pass and usher Grant to Sheridan’s headquarters.

Grant speaks briefly with “Little Phil,” the short and fiery dynamo who makes no secret that he wants his cavalry “to be there at the death” of the Confederate insurrection. Then the two men saddle up and ride through the darkness to Meade’s headquarters in Jetersville. The lanky Pennsylvanian is in bed with what he claims to be a fever. Grant chalks it up to fear and orders Meade to get his army ready to attack.

Meade was a hero of Gettysburg, outwitting Lee on the battlefield despite having a reputation for being timid and temperamental. At forty-nine, the “Old Snapping Turtle” is the oldest and most experienced man in the room. Grant bears him a grudging respect, but respect isn’t enough right now. Grant needs a man who will press the attack, day and night, fresh or exhausted, ill or in good health.

Meade is not that man. He never has been. Furthermore, it is not merely a question of heart anymore but of logistics: it is simply impossible for Meade’s infantry to outrace Lee to Farmville. Marse Robert had a good head start, and Meade’s halt for the night only increased the distance. Grant now thinks of Lee, somewhere out there in the darkness, sitting tall astride Traveller, not letting his men stop their all-night march for any reason. Lee has cavalry, artillery, and infantry at his disposal, should it come to a fight.

It will take a fast and mobile fighting force to beat the rebels. In other words: Sheridan’s cavalry.

Grant delivers his orders.

There will be no more waiting, he decrees, proposing a pincer movement, Sheridan in front and Meade from the rear. At first light Meade’s infantry will chase and find Lee’s army, then harass them and slow their forward movement. Sheridan, meanwhile, will “put himself south of the enemy and follow him to his death.” In this way, the Confederate race to North Carolina will stop dead in its tracks. As Sheridan revels in the glory to come, Meade bites his tongue and accepts Grant’s decision. He has to.

There is nothing more Sam Grant can do. His midnight ride has produced exactly the results he was hoping for. Promptly at six A.M., the earth shakes with the clip-clop of thousands of hooves as Sheridan’s cavalry trot west in their quest to get in front of Lee. Meade’s army, meanwhile, marches north to get behind Lee, the two armies forming Grant’s lethal pincers.

Meade’s men march past Grant as he sits down at sunrise, lighting a cigar. Grant is confident. Finally, the Black Thursday of the Confederacy has arrived.

CHAPTER TEN

THURSDAY, APRIL 6, 1865

RICE’S STATION, VIRGINIA

DAWN

General Robert E. Lee has been up all night yet still looks crisp and composed as he rides, backlit by the rising sun, into Rice’s Station. The Army of Northern Virginia, looking for all the world like the most beaten-down fighting force in history, cheers as the beloved general glides past on Traveller. Marse Robert is stately and rugged, six feet tall and afraid of no man. He is almost asleep in the saddle, thanks to the all-night march. But his broad gray hat remains firmly in place as he acknowledges the adulation of his suffering men. Many don’t have shoes; those that do can put two fingers through the rotting leather soles. Half of Lee’s force has quit the war between Petersburg and this tiny depot, slinking into the woods to search for the slightest morsel of a meal and then not coming back. Those who remain are so crazed from lack of sleep and belly-hollowing hunger that their cheers resemble frantic drunken slurs.

Many are too weak even to shoulder a musket, but Lee knows that somehow they will fight when called to do so. The roads of central Virginia are now littered with the detritus of Lee’s retreating army: guns, blankets, broken wagons, artillery limbers, dead horses, and dead men.

It has now been four days since the Confederate army began retreating from Petersburg. The soldiers have endured the betrayal at Amelia Court House, where boxcars full of food had been stolen by Confederate scavengers. Still, Lee’s men marched on, nerves frazzled by the threat of Union attack, but never stopping for more than five or ten minutes to sleep in the mud and rain before resuming their march. The general understands their suffering. Still, he orders them to push on.

Now they see that he was right all along. For the Army of Northern Virginia has eluded the army of General Ulysses S. Grant. Better yet, there are rations waiting just a few miles away, in Farmville.

Which is why Lee’s crazed soldiers cheer him on this dawn as they march into Rice’s Station. Lee is all they believe in right now—not Confederate president Jefferson Davis, not the Army of Northern Virginia, not even terms like “states’ rights” or “pro-slavery,” which spurred many men to enlist in the Confederate cause. Now those things mean nothing. Only Marse Robert matters.

They would follow him into hell.

Ahead of General Lee is his trusted point man General Pete Longstreet. Behind Lee is the rear guard under the command of General John B. Gordon, the fearless Georgian. In between is a ten-mile-long supply column, supervised by General Richard “Fighting Dick” Anderson and General Richard Ewell, a veteran soldier with just one leg who oversees a scrappy band of bureaucrats, frontline veterans, and landlocked sailors who escaped from Richmond just days earlier.

The tiny hamlet of Rice’s Station is a crossroads. One way leads to the Carolinas and safety; the other direction leads back to Petersburg. Longstreet orders cannons pointed down the Petersburg road, to scare off any Union force that might be stalking them. The tired men dig trenches and earthworks to protect themselves from bullets. The woods serve as latrines, the newly dug trenches as beds. Longstreet’s mandate is to remain in Rice’s Station until Lee’s entire army has passed through. Only then will he and his men evacuate.

Incredibly, a bleary-eyed Robert E. Lee is reveling in the moment. The air is fresh, scrubbed clean by the night’s rain. Birds are singing to greet this fine spring morning. He knows that Farmville is less than an hour away, with its boxcars filled with smoked meat, cornmeal, and all the makings of a great military feast. Advance scouts have confirmed that the food is actually there this time. Looters have not touched it.

The plan is for Lee’s men to fill their empty bellies in Farmville this morning, then march over the great span known as High Bridge, which towers over the Appomattox River, separating central and western Virginia. Lee will order the bridge burned immediately after they cross, preventing the Union from following. The Carolinas will be reached in days.

Lee’s escape is so close.

But then grim news arrives. A flying column of Union cavalry galloped through Rice an hour ago. They are now ahead of the Confederates. Longstreet’s scouts report that 800 bluecoats on foot and on horseback are headed for High Bridge. Their goal, obviously, is to burn the bridge and close Lee’s escape route.

General Lee quietly ponders Longstreet’s information. He knows he has no way of stopping this Union advance.

For one of the few times in his adult life, Robert E. Lee is stymied.

Lee hears the thunder of approaching hooves. General Thomas Lafayette Rosser, a gregarious twenty-eight-year-old Texan, gallops his cavalry into Rice’s Station. Rosser’s classmate at West Point was the equally audacious George Armstrong Custer, now a Union general involved on the other side of this very fight.

Longstreet approaches Rosser and, warning him about the Union plan, screams, “Go after the bridge burners. Capture or destroy the detachment, even if it takes the last man of your command to do it.”

Rosser salutes, his face stolid. Only afterward does he grin, then bark the order. His cavalry, enlisted men and officers alike, gallop toward High Bridge. The quiet morning air explodes with noise as hundreds of hooves pound into the narrow dirt road.

When the war first broke out, Thomas Lafayette Rosser was so eager to take up arms for the Confederacy that he dropped out of West Point two weeks before graduation. Starting as a lieutenant, he distinguished himself at more than a dozen key battles, among them Manassas, Bull Run, and Gettysburg. Though wounded several times, Rosser never altered his daring approach to combat. In January 1865, as the Army of Northern Virginia huddled in its Petersburg defenses, Rosser selected 300 of his toughest riders for an impossible mission. They crossed the Allegheny Mountains in the dead of winter, seeking to destroy the Union infantry headquartered in the town of Beverly, West Virginia. Thunderstorms drenched them their second day on the march; then the temperature plummeted below zero, freezing their overcoats stiff. But those hardships actually helped Rosser, making the attack a complete surprise. The daring nighttime raid yielded 800 Union prisoners.

So Longstreet knows that Rosser is the sort of man who will not be afraid of the “kill or be killed” order. Rosser will not let him down.

After Rosser departs, there is nothing to do but wait. As Longstreet directs his men to strengthen their impromptu defenses in Rice’s Station, Lee can only wonder how long it will take the rest of his army and its wagon train to catch up. With every passing second, the danger of Grant’s scouts finding his army grows. Lee cannot let this happen. He must get over High Bridge by the end of the day.

Overcome with exhaustion, at last the fifty-eight-year-old general instructs his orderly to find someplace for him to nap. It is midmorning. Lee will close his eyes just long enough to feel rejuvenated. Then he will begin perhaps his last campaign. If he doesn’t get over High Bridge, Lee knows, he will be defeated.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THURSDAY, APRIL 6, 1865

FARMVILLE, VIRGINIA

MIDMORNING

The Union force racing to burn High Bridge consists of the Fourth Massachusetts Cavalry, the Fifty-fourth Pennsylvania Infantry, and the 123rd Ohio Infantry. The cavalry comprise 79 soldiers on horseback, who can fight either in the saddle or as dismounted foot soldiers. The two infantry regiments comprise almost 800 fighters who can wage war only on foot.

If the entire Union force were cavalry, the fearless General Rosser and his men would never catch them. A fast-walking soldier, even one on a mission of the utmost military importance, is obviously no match for a cavalry horse.

Colonel Francis Washburn of the Fourth Massachusetts knows this, which is why he orders his cavalry to gallop ahead of the foot soldiers. His men will burn the bridge while the infantry covers the rear.

High Bridge is an engineering marvel, considered by some to be the finest bridge in the world. The architects of the Brooklyn Bridge will steal liberally from its design. And yet High Bridge is situated not in one of the world’s great cities but in a quiet, wooded corner of Virginia. Made of stone and felled trees, it stretches a half mile, from the bluff outside Farmville marking the southern shore of the Appomattox River floodplain to the Prince Edward Court House bluff at the opposite end. Twenty 125-foot-tall brick columns support the wooden superstructure. That two great armies, at the most pivotal point in their histories, have descended upon High Bridge at the same time is one of those random acts of fate that so often decide a war.

As Colonel Washburn and his men ride within three miles of High Bridge, they are joined by Union general Theodore Read, who has undertaken a daring mission to warn Washburn that the Confederates are hot on his trail, and that a small force of rebels who have been at High Bridge for months are dug in around the span. Read has full authority to cancel Washburn’s mission if he thinks it too risky.

Washburn and Read hold a council of war at a hilltop plantation known as Chatham, roughly halfway between Rice’s Station and High Bridge. They can see the bridge in the distance, and the two earthen forts defending it. There are just a few dozen Confederates dug in at the bridge, but they have a clear field of fire. A direct frontal assault would leave Washburn’s men badly battered.

Another concern is that the ground between the Chatham plateau and High Bridge is a swampy morass of small creeks, sand, and hills, taking away any advantage of speed—and adding the very real potential of getting caught in a kill zone. Nevertheless, General Read orders Washburn to proceed to the bridge. Read will stay behind, with the infantry, to cover the cavalry’s rear. This is a gamble, and both of these brave officers know it—a gamble with their own lives and those of their men.

It is also a gamble that could end the war by sundown.

Washburn leads his cavalry toward High Bridge. He has a reputation for recklessness and impatient courage and shares the commonly held Union belief that the rebels are too demoralized to fight back. He will burn the bridge at any cost.

Washburn’s cavalry ride for an hour, taking in the countryside as they prepare for battle. But then, seemingly out of nowhere, they are ambushed by rebel cavalry. It is a scene out of Lexington and Concord, as Confederate sharpshooters take aim. Again and again, and without warning, rebel cavalry charge. Washburn, fearing nothing, gives chase. But it’s a clever trap, the rebels drawing the bluecoats in as they link up with the other Confederate force defending the bridge. Suddenly, Confederate artillery rains down on Washburn and his men, putting an instant halt to the Union pursuit. These cannonballs are the slap in the face that Washburn needs, making him realize that the rebels are hardly too demoralized to fight back. He also knows this: Colonel Francis Washburn of the Fourth Massachusetts is right now the one man in America who can end the Civil War this very day. He will go down in history. All he has to do is burn High Bridge.

Washburn is within a quarter mile of the bridge, his force largely intact. But then comes the crackle of gunfire from behind him. Three years of combat experience tells Washburn that he is in deep trouble; Confederate cavalrymen have found his infantry. High Bridge must wait.

The Fourth Massachusetts has been in the saddle since four A.M. It is now almost noon. The men are exhausted, as are their horses. The soldiers gallop their weary animals back across the floodplain, over the Sandy River and on up to the Chatham plateau. Men and horses are breathless from the race and the midday heat, the riders’ blue uniforms and gloved hands bathed in sweat. Their stomachs rumble from lack of food, and their lips are chapped from thirst. They expect only a minor battle, because the main Confederate force is still miles away. But that expectation turns out to be brutally wrong.

Some 1,200 Confederate horsemen wait to attack Washburn’s cavalry and infantry, which together number just slightly more than 800. Rebel horses and riders hold in a long line, awaiting the inevitable order to charge forth and crush the tiny Union force.

Colonel Washburn remains cool, surveying what could be a hopeless situation. Infantry is no match against the speed and agility of cavalry. His infantry lie on their bellies and peer across at Confederate cavalry. They have had no time to dig trenches or build fortifications, so hugging the ground is their only defense. Washburn is cut off from the rest of Grant’s army, with no hope of rescue. How can 79 Union riders possibly hold off 1,200 Confederate horsemen?

Washburn decides that his only hope is to be bold—a quality this Harvard man possesses in abundance.

After conferring with General Read, Washburn orders his cavalry to assemble. They are now on the brow of the hill, just out of rifle range, in columns of four. Washburn addresses the ranks. He barks out his plan, then reminds the infantry to get their butts up off the ground and follow right behind the Union riders to punch a hole through the rebel lines.

On Washburn’s command, the Fourth Massachusetts trot their mounts forward. While the Confederates purchased their own horses or brought them from home, the Union horses are government-issue. Each trooper has ridden mile upon mile with the same horse, in the same saddle. As they arrive at this fateful moment, animal and rider alike know each other’s moods and movements—the nudge of a knee, the gathering of the haunch muscles, the forward lean to intimate danger or the need for speed—so that they work as one.

Passing the infantry’s far right flank, Washburn’s cavalry wheels left. The colonel’s accent is Brahmin and his tone is fearless. The precision of his cavalry is something that Washburn takes for granted, for they have practiced time and again on the parade ground. And the show of force stuns the enemy. The Confederates see what is coming, even if they don’t believe it.

Counting Read and Washburn, there are now 80 Union horsemen. Outnumbered by more than fifteen to one, they shut out all thoughts of this being the last battle of their young lives. They ride hard. Their fate comes down to one simple word: “Charge!”

Washburn screams the command. Spurs dig into horses. Sabers clank as they are withdrawn from their sheaths. Some men fire their Spencer carbines as they gallop within rifle range, clutching the gun in their right hand and the reins in their left. Others wield pistols. Still others prefer the killing blade of a cavalry sword. The audacity of their charge and succeed-at-all-costs desperation ignites panic in the rebel army. The battlefield splits in two as Washburn’s men punch through the first wave of the rebel line. The Union charge at Chatham, for a brief instant, is a triumph.

But, stunningly, after the cavalry charges, Washburn’s infantry does not move. Not a muscle. Even as the Confederate defenses crumble, and as Washburn organizes his men for the secondary attack that will smash an escape route through the rebel lines, the foot soldiers are still on their bellies, sealing their own doom.

General Rosser senses exactly what’s happening. He doesn’t waste a second. The Texan yells for his Confederate cavalry to prepare for a counterattack.

The Confederate general James Dearing, just twenty-four years old, leads the way. Both sides race toward each other at top speed before pulling back on the reins in the center of the plain. The fight becomes a brutal test of courage and horsemanship. Men and horses wheel about the battlefield, fighting hand to hand, saddle to saddle. Each man wages his own individual battle with a ferocity only a life-and-death situation can bring. Bullets pierce eyes. Screams and curses fill the air. The grassy plain runs blood-red.

A rifle is too unwieldy in such tight quarters, so men use the butt end rather than the barrel. Pistols and sabers are even more lethal. “I have been many a day in hot fights,” the unflappable Rosser will marvel later, “but I never saw anything approaching that at High Bridge.”

Rosser’s gaze drifts over to the amazing sight of his enemy. Washburn, in the thick of the action, is a frenzied dervish, slaying everything in his path. Men fall and die all around as Washburn rides tall in the saddle, his saber slashing at any man who steps forward to challenge him.

Suddenly, the young Confederate general Dearing shoots the Union general Theodore Read, at point-blank pistol range. Read falls from his saddle to the ground. Seeing this, Colonel Washburn takes his revenge. He engages Dearing in an intense saber duel, brought to a sudden end when a Union soldier fires two bullets into Dearing’s chest. His sword falls to the ground, as does he.

Washburn is still sitting tall in the saddle—but not for long. As he turns his head, he is shot through the mouth at point-blank range. The bullet lodges in his lungs. His jaw hangs slack as blood pours from the hole in his face, down onto his sweaty, dusty blue uniform.

The force of the gunshot does not kill Washburn, nor even render him unconscious. It is, however, strong enough to knock him out of the saddle for the first time all day. As the colonel falls, a Confederate flails at his toppling body with a thirty-four-inch saber, burying the blade deep in Washburn’s skull. Incredibly, one day later, as a burial detail cleans the battlefield, Washburn will be found alive.

There are many, many casualties.

The Confederates lose 100 men.

The Union loses everyone.

Every single one of the 847 Union soldiers sent to burn High Bridge is either captured or killed. Those who try to fight their way out are slaughtered, one by one. The failure of the Union infantry to obey Washburn’s orders to attack sealed their fate.

Rosser leads his weary men back toward Rice’s Station, content in the knowledge that he has single-handedly saved the Confederacy.

Lee will now have his escape. Or at least it appears that way.

CHAPTER TWELVE

THURSDAY, APRIL 6, 1865

ON THE ROAD TO FARMVILLE, VIRGINIA

AFTERNOON

As the battle for High Bridge commences, Union general George Meade’s infantry finally finds the tail end of the Confederate column about ten miles away from the High Bridge fight. A hard rain falls. In the first of what will be many firefights on this day, small bands of Union soldiers begin shooting at the Confederate rear guard. The movement is like a ballet, with skirmishers pushing forward through the trees and craggy ground to engage the rebels. The instant they run out of ammunition, these skirmishers pull back and another group races forward to take their place. And all the while, other infantrymen capture artillery pieces, burn wagons, and force the rebels to turn and fight—and sometimes even dig in, separating them further from Lee’s main force.

Confederate general John Gordon’s force falls behind first. The ferocious Georgian understands that he is being cut off. In fact, Lee’s entire Confederate army is being separated. No longer is it a single force; it has been broken into four separate corps. Under normal conditions, the cavalry would plug these gaps or, at the very least, chase away the Union skirmishers, but the cavalry have their hands full at High Bridge.

Meanwhile, in Rice’s Station, Lee rises from his nap and assesses the situation. Hearing the ferocity of the firing from High Bridge, he assumes that the Union force is much bigger than the 800 men who galloped past him a few hours ago. If Lee had any cavalry at his disposal, they would act as his eyes and ears, scouting ahead and returning with the truth. But he doesn’t. Lee can only guess at what’s happening—and he guesses wrong.

Fearing that the Union general Sheridan has already leapfrogged out in front, Lee holds his entire corps in Rice’s Station. At a time when it is crucial to be on the move, Lee chooses to remain in place.

As Lee waits, Sheridan’s three divisions of cavalry are searching high and low for the Army of Northern Virginia. His three commanders are Generals George Armstrong Custer, Thomas Devin, and George Crook. Custer is the youngest and most aggressive, the blond-haired dynamo who roomed with Thomas Rosser at West Point. Custer has a flair for the dramatic. He is the sort of man who rides into battle wearing a flamboyant red kerchief around his neck and accompanied by a brass band.

That kind of display will make George Custer famous. Eleven years later, it will also kill him. As Sheridan holds back to plot strategy, it is Custer who leads the Union cavalry on their search-and-destroy mission against the Confederate column. At midmorning he discovers the heart of the column, perhaps six miles from High Bridge. Custer does not hesitate. His division attacks. But upon meeting resistance, the young general stalls, allowing another cavalry division to attack. In this way, Custer slowly works his way up the Confederate line, riding closer and closer to the very front, toward Sam Grant’s objective of getting out in front of Lee.

The pace is cruel. By noon Custer’s horses are thirsty and in need of rest. They stop at a small stream. Custer’s aide approaches, bringing news that scouts have found a gap in the Confederate line. Now Custer sets aside all thoughts of getting out in front of Lee. He excitedly gives the command to mount up. Without waiting for the other two divisions (a habit that will seal his doom at the Little Bighorn), his cavalry race toward the gap, hoping to drive a permanent wedge between the Confederate divisions.

General George Armstrong Custer

Custer succeeds. By two P.M. Custer’s division pours into the small town of Marshall’s Crossroads, where they are met by a lone artillery battalion. The Confederate cannons are no match for Custer’s horsemen. He captures the small force and sets the rebel guns ablaze. But then another Confederate force counterattacks, pushing Custer out of the town. The Confederates dig in immediately, knowing that more fighting is imminent. The rebels hope to hold on long enough for Lee’s main army to reinforce them.

George Custer, however, is not to be denied. He dismounts his men and orders them to assume an infantry posture. Then he scribbles a message to Crook and Devin, requesting help. Within an hour, their divisions are on the scene.

All afternoon, the three Union divisions initiate mounted and dismounted cavalry charges against the dug-in rebels. In the absence of artillery, the bluecoats boldly ride their horses up and over the Confederate breastworks. The Confederates cower in their trenches to avoid being trampled to death. The alternative is to run. Those who do are chased and cut down with sabers.

Even so, the rebels hold fast, repelling each and every charge. The general in charge, “Fighting Dick” Anderson, is a brilliant tactician, placing his limited resources in just the right place to repel the cavalry.

Finally, as daylight turns to evening, Custer assembles his men for one final charge. He orders the regimental band to play, hoping to strike fear in the enemy. Seeing the assembled cavalry, Confederate officers call an immediate retreat. Their goal is to reach Lee at Rice’s Station.

Custer and the Union cavalry ride fast and hard into Anderson’s lines before they can retreat. By now Sheridan has sent word, saying, “Go right through them. They’re demoralized as hell”—an order that the Union cavalry take to heart. Anderson’s Confederate corps breaks, the men dropping their weapons and running for their lives.

Of about 3,000 rebels, only 600 escape Custer. But the general is still not satisfied. He orders three Union cavalry divisions to give chase, cutting men down as they run. In a rare act of lenience, those who make it into the woods are allowed to live. Later they will be rounded up as prisoners of war. For now their confinement is the woods itself; those who try to fight their way out are promptly driven back inside.

More than 2,600 Confederates are captured, among them the one-legged General Richard Ewell. As he surrenders to Custer, he knows that a portion of his men are trapped on a grassy hillside a few miles up the road, above a swollen stream known as Sayler’s Creek. These men are spoiling for another fight, a battle that will go down as the most barbaric and ferocious of the entire war.

General George Custer has seen much ferocious fighting in his young life, but he has never seen anything like Sayler’s Creek.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THURSDAY, APRIL 6, 1865

SAYLER’S CREEK

LATE AFTERNOON

In 1865, the Sayler’s Creek area of central Virginia is a place of outstanding beauty. Verdant rolling hills compete with virgin forest to present a countryside that is uniquely American, a place where families can grow amid the splendors of nature. But the beauty of the area will soon be defiled by the ugliness of war. Grant’s Union army has finally arrived to confront Lee’s forces. Lee’s men are tired and hungry. Many have fought the north from the beginning, seeing action at Manassas, at Fredericksburg, and at Gettysburg. One group, in particular, the Stonewall Brigade, marched into battle under Stonewall Jackson, who, next to Lee, was the greatest of all southern generals. These same hardened fighters wept tears of grief when Jackson fell from his horse, the victim of friendly fire. Years of battle have reduced the numbers of the Stonewall Brigade from 6,000 soldiers to just a few hundred battle-tested veterans.

These men know the meaning of war. They also know the meaning, if not the precise military definition, of terms like “enfilade” and “field of fire” and “reverse-slope defense,” for they can execute them in their sleep. The Stonewall Brigade and the rest of Lee’s men, depleted as they are, are practiced experts at warfare.

Lee knows that his fighting force is splintered. Near a bucolic estate called Lockett’s Farm, the Jamestown Road crosses over Big Sayler’s Creek and Little Sayler’s Creek at a place called Double Bridges. There are, as the name implies, two narrow bridges. The wagons must all funnel into a narrow line and cross one at a time. Lee is miles away from his supply train and cannot protect it. His only hope is that the Union army will be too slow in catching up to the wagons.

Grant’s army is now in sight. The soldiers’ blue uniforms and the glint of their steel bayonets strike fear into the hearts of the teamsters, causing the wagons to attempt to cross Double Bridges two and three at a time. Wheels become tangled. Horses and mules balk in their traces, confused by the noise and smelling the panic. Their pace grows slower and slower, until one of the bridges actually collapses from the weight, and the Confederate advance comes to an abrupt halt.

Within minutes, the Union attacks. Sweeping down from the high ground, General Meade’s infantry pounces on the terrified Confederates, who abandon their wagons and race into the woods on foot.

The Confederate infantry waits a few hundred yards ahead of the chaos, watching. They stand shoulder to shoulder, their line of battle almost two miles wide. Thus are 4,000 of Lee’s troops poised to meet the Union attack.

Behind them, rebel wagons are burning on the double bridges above Sayler’s Creek. To the left of the Confederate force is the Appomattox River. Straight in front of them are thousands of advancing blue-clad Yankees. At first, the Confederate infantry line holds. But under withering artillery fire the men begin to fall back.

It is a mile-long retreat over open ground that offers almost no cover. The rebel infantry topple the wagons that have made it across the double bridges, using them as an impromptu breastworks, hiding behind a spoked wheel or a tilted axle. The sun cannot set quickly enough for these men. With 10,000 Union troops almost on top of them, darkness is the rebels’ only hope.

Night does not come soon enough, and the fight begins. Almost immediately, the Confederates take incredible losses. Artillery and bullets level any man who dares to stand still. Many soldiers quit the war right then and there, convinced that this endless wave of blue is unbeatable. They see the wagons afire, and hear the explosions of the ammunition inside, and know in an instant that of the three things a soldier needs to survive in wartime—bullets, sleep, and food—they have none.

Others, however, are more game. They abandon the cover of the wagons and begin to splash across Sayler’s Creek. They are rewarded.

Just as the North surges forward, hope arrives. It comes in the form of Robert E. Lee, who has spent the afternoon on horseback, trying to find his own army. He sits astride Traveller, looking down from a nearby ridgeline. “The disaster which had overtaken the army was in full view,” one of his officers will later write. “Teamsters with their teams and dangling traces, retreating infantry without guns, many without hats, a harmless mob, with massive columns of the enemy moving orderly on.”

This “harmless mob,” Lee realizes, is his own Army of Northern Virginia.

“My God,” says a horrified Lee, staring down at the columns of smoke and tongues of flames and stacks of bodies—so many that the ground along both branches of Sayler’s Creek is a carpet of gray and blue. “Has the army been dissolved?”

Two miles south of Lee’s viewpoint, and a half mile north of where General Custer still has a Confederate force pinned down, perhaps the most ferocious battle ever seen on American soil is unfolding.

“At three o’clock in the afternoon,” one Confederate soldier will remember, “we reached Sayler’s Creek, a small creek that at the time had overflowed its banks from the continuous rains of the past few days, giving the appearance of a small river. We halted a few minutes then waded across this stream and took our positions on the rising ground one hundred yards beyond.”

The hill is grassy, but the site of the Confederate stand is toward the back of the rise, under the cover of broom sedge and pine shrubs. Now the rebels hold the high ground. Any force attacking Lee’s army of almost 4,000 will have to expose themselves to fire while wading the four-foot-deep morass of Sayler’s Creek. If they get across safely, they will then have to fight their way uphill to the rebel positions.

“We threw ourselves prone upon the ground. Our battle line was long drawn out, exceedingly thin. Here we rested awaiting the attack, as the enemy had been following closely behind us,” a Confederate major will later chronicle.

At five-thirty, the Union artillery opens fire on the grassy hill, lobbing shells at the Confederate positions from just four hundred yards away. The rebels have no artillery of their own and cannot fire back. The screams of the wounded are soon drowned out by the whistle and explosion of shells. All the Confederates can do is hug the ground and pray as the Union gunners take “their artillery practice without let or hindrance.”

The shelling lasts twenty minutes. Under cover of that heavy fire, long blue lines of Union infantry wade the creek, separated into two battle lines, and slowly march up the hill. The Confederates are devastated by the precision artillery, but do not retreat. Instead, they lie flat on the ground, muskets pointed at the stream of blue uniforms picking their way up the grassy slope. A Confederate major steps boldly in front of the line and walks the entire length, exposing himself to fire as he reminds the rebels that no one is allowed to shoot until ordered to do so. He later recalls the instruction: “That when I said ‘ready’ they must all rise, kneeling on the right knee; that when I said ‘aim’ they must all aim about the knees of the advancing line; and that when I said ‘fire’ they must all fire together.”

Everything, as one officer notes, is as “still as the grave.” The advancing line of blue moves forward in a giant scrum, slowly ascending the hill. Some of the men wave white handkerchiefs, mocking the Confederates, jeering that they should surrender. But the rebels say nothing, letting the Union soldiers believe that the South is already beaten. The bluecoats refrain from charging, preferring to plod, letting the notion of surrender sink in, for the rebels surely know there is no way they can get off this hill alive.

“Ready!” comes the cry from the Confederate lines. They are low on ammunition and may get only a shot or two. Even then, reloading a musket takes time. Better to make each shot count.

“The men rose, all together, like a piece of mechanism, kneeling on their right knees and their faces set with an expression that meant—everything,” a Confederate officer will write.

On the cry of “Aim!” a line of horizontal musket barrels points directly at the blue wall. Then: “Fire!”

“I have never seen such an effect, physical and moral, produced by the utterance of one word,” marvels the Confederate major. “The enemy seemed to have been totally unprepared for it.”

The entire front row of Union soldiers falls in bloody chaos. The second line turns and runs down the hill.

This is Grant’s vaunted army, a force better rested, better fed, and better equipped than the half-dressed Confederates. And yet the bluecoats flee in terror, their white handkerchiefs littering the ground. It is a triumph, and in that instant the Confederate force is overcome by righteous indignation. The memory of that hard overnight march in the rain, the starvation, the delirious craziness born of exhaustion—all of it blends into a single moment of fury. The rebels leap to their feet and chase after the bluecoats. Down the hill they run, caps flying off, curses streaming from their mouths. Dead men are everywhere, on both sides, and the Confederates have to hop and jump over bodies. But the rebels never stop running.

The Union soldiers finally gather themselves. They stop, turn, and fire. Knowing they are outgunned, the Confederates retreat back to their positions, only to be surrounded as the Union force quickly counterattacks the hill.

And this time the bluecoats aren’t plodding. Union soldiers sprint up the hill, overrunning the Confederate positions. Out of ammunition, and heavily outnumbered, the Army of Northern Virginia still refuses to surrender. The fighting becomes hand to hand. Soldiers claw at each other, swinging fists, kicking. “The battle degenerated into a butchery and a confused melee of personal conflicts. I saw numbers of men kill each other with bayonets and the butts of muskets, and even bite each other’s throats and ears and noses, rolling on the ground like wild beasts,” one Confederate officer will write. “I had cautioned my men against wearing Yankee overcoats, especially in battle, but had not been able to enforce the order perfectly—and almost at my side I saw a young fellow of one of my companies jam the muzzle of his musket against the back of the head of his most intimate friend, clad in a Yankee overcoat, and blow his brains out.”

Although the battle is little remembered in history, witnesses will swear they have never seen more suffering, or a fight as desperate, as during the final moments of Sayler’s Creek.

And still it grows more vicious. None other than General George Armstrong Custer, who has been killing Confederates since breakfast, has broken off from his former position and races his cavalry through the pine thickets behind the rebel lines. His horsemen ride into the action behind him, sabers swinging. Custer is impervious to personal injury, his savagery today adding to his growing legend for fearlessness. Custer slashes his sword, showing no mercy. He spurs his men to do the same. Rebel troops on foot are cut to pieces by bullets and steel blades.

The Union artillerymen, not wanting to be left out, pull their guns to the edge of Sayler’s Creek and take aim into those stray bands of Confederate soldiers on the fringes of the fighting. Firing rounds of canister and grape—lethal small balls and bits of sharpened metal designed to maim and disfigure—the artillery adds to the chaos. On the ground, bodies missing heads, legs, and arms are sprawled in absurd contortions, a gruesome reminder of what close-quarter combat will yield.

Soon, one by one, the rebels raise their musket butts in the air as a signal of surrender. Union soldiers round up these men, whom they have fought so savagely for the previous hour. Then, shocked by the sunken eyes and gaunt Confederate faces, some of the bluecoats open their rucksacks and share their food.

The last rebels to surrender are the sailors and marines recently converted to infantry. Surrounded in a grove of trees, with no hope of escape, they lay down their rifles.

One Confederate corps has managed to escape from the confusion of Sayler’s Creek, and now it reaches General Lee at the top of the ridge. Seeing his forces trudging back toward him, Lee grabs a battle flag and holds it aloft. The Confederate Stars and Bars snaps in the wind, the flag’s bright red color a compass beacon guiding the weary surviving soldiers to safety. Union forces try to give chase but abandon the effort when the darkness makes it impossible to tell whether they are shooting at friend or foe.

A day that started so well for the Confederates at Rice’s Station, then saw triumph at High Bridge, is now finished. In the morning, Lee will continue his escape, but without 13 battle flags, 300 wagons, 70 ambulances, and almost 8,000 men, either killed or taken prisoner. Ten of Lee’s top officers are either dead or captured. Among the captured is his eldest son, Custis Lee.

The Union army, on the other hand, suffers 1,200 casualties. So fierce is the fighting, and so courageous the actions of the fighters, that 56 Union soldiers will receive the Congressional Medal of Honor for their actions on the field that day.

Night falls, and so ends what will come to be known as the Black Thursday of the Confederacy. Half of Lee’s army is gone. Except for General Longstreet, his remaining generals think the situation is hopeless. Lee continues to improvise, still looking for a way to save his army and get to the Carolinas. Yet even he is devastated. “A few more Sayler’s Creeks and it will all be over,” sighs Marse Robert.

But Lee cannot bring himself to utter the one word he dreads most: “surrender.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

FRIDAY, APRIL 7, 1865

CITY POINT, VIRGINIA

DAWN

Lincoln is desperate for news from the front. The time away from Washington was meant to be a working vacation, and it has clearly revived the president. The “incredible sadness” he has carried for so long is gone, replaced by “serene joy.” Mary Lincoln has joined her husband at City Point, bringing with her a small complement of guests from Washington. The mood in the nation’s capital has turned festive since the fall of Richmond. Mary and her guests plan to visit Richmond in the morning, as if the burned-out husk of a city has become a tourist attraction. Lincoln will stay behind on the riverboat and tend to the war. Still, he is glad for the company. He tells jokes and makes small talk, all the while wondering when the next telegram from General Grant will arrive.

Early on the morning of April 7, just hours after Sayler’s Creek, Lincoln receives the news for which he’s been waiting. Grant’s telegram states that Sheridan has ridden over the battlefield, counting Confederate dead and captured, particularly the many top Confederate generals now in Union custody. “If the thing is pressed,” Grant quotes Sheridan as saying, “I think Lee will surrender.”

Lincoln telegraphs his heartfelt reply: “Let the thing be pressed.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

PALM SUNDAY, APRIL 9, 1865

APPOMATTOX COURT HOUSE

The end has come. General Robert E. Lee rides forth from the Confederate lines, into the no-man’s-land separating his dwindling force from the vast Union forces. The Army of Northern Virginia is cornered in a sedate little village called Appomattox Court House—Lee’s 8,000 men surrounded on three sides by Grant’s 60,000. After escaping Sayler’s Creek the rebels reached Farmville, only to be attacked again and forced to flee before they could finish eating their rations. They raced across High Bridge, only to find that mortar wouldn’t burn. The Union army crossed right behind them. Grant was then able to get ahead and block Lee’s path to the Carolinas.

Lee’s final great hope for a breakout came the previous night. He had entrusted his toughest general, John Gordon from Georgia, with punching a hole in the Union lines. The attack began at five P.M. Three hours later, after Gordon encountered wave after never-ending wave of blue-clad soldiers—too many for his men to beat down—he sent word back to Lee that he had “fought my corps to a frazzle.”

In other words: Gordon could not break through.

Lee’s proud shoulders slumped as he received the news. “There is nothing left for me to do but go and see General Grant,” he said aloud. Lee was surrounded by his staff but was talking to himself. The man who had succeeded his entire life, excelling at everything and failing at nothing, was beaten. “I would rather die a thousand deaths,” he said.

Dressed in an impeccable formal gray uniform, polished black boots, and clean red sash, Lee now rides forth. A spectacular ceremonial sword is buckled around his waist. He expects to meet Grant once he crosses over into the Union lines, there to surrender his sword and be taken prisoner.

But before Grant’s soldiers march him off to the penitentiary, Lee plans to argue on behalf of his men, seeking the best possible terms of surrender for the Army of Northern Virginia. He has written to Grant repeatedly on this subject. Grant’s evasive replies have given little evidence as to which way he leans on the issue.

Lee and a small group of aides ride to a spot between the Union and Confederate lines. They halt their horses in the middle of the country lane and wait for Grant to meet them.

And they wait. And they wait some more. All the while it becomes more obvious that the Union forces are not just enjoying a quiet Sunday morning—cleaning rifles, filling cartridge cases, putting out the breakfast fires. No, they are preparing for battle. Lee can see it in the way the gun crews have unlimbered the cannons and howitzers and are now sighting them toward his lines. The big guns—those M1857 Napoleons—can drop a twelve-pound projectile on top of a man’s head from a mile away, and those howitzers can lob an eighteen-pound shell nearly as far. Looking at the Union lines, Lee sees dozens of these guns, capable of inflicting catastrophic damage.

If this is a display of force by Grant to hasten Lee’s surrender, it is working.

But Grant does not show himself. In fact, he is miles away, suffering from a severe migraine headache. Lee sits astride Traveller, painfully vulnerable to a sniper’s bullet despite his flag of truce. After about two hours with no response, Lee sees a Union soldier riding out. The soldier informs Lee that the attack will be launched in a few moments. For his own safety, Lee must return to the Confederate lines.

The boom of artillery breaks the morning quiet. Lee jots a quick note intended for Grant and hands it to an orderly, who gallops toward the Union lines under a white flag. He also requests that the attack be postponed until Grant can be located.

With the irrefutable logic of a man conditioned to follow orders, the Union colonel in charge tells Lee’s courier that he does not have the authority to halt the attack. It will go forward as planned.

As the courier gallops back to Lee, Union skirmishers march to the front and prepare to probe the Confederate lines for vulnerability.

Lee writes another letter to Grant, asking for “a suspension of the hostilities pending the adjustment of the terms of the surrender of this army.”

Even as fighting threatens to break out all around him, Lee is unruffled. He sits astride Traveller, whose flanks are flecked with mud, waiting for permission to surrender. But when the first wave of skirmishers is just a hundred yards away, Lee has no choice but to find safety. With a reluctant tug on Traveller’s reins, he turns back toward his men.

Moments later he is stopped. A Union courier tells Lee that his letter has not found Grant, but it has found General George Meade, whom Lee knew long before the war. Meade has ordered a sixty-minute truce, hoping that Grant can be located in the meantime.

Lee turns Traveller once again. He rides back toward the front and dismounts. It’s been four hours since he first sought the surrender meeting. The sun is now directly overhead. Lee sits on a pile of fence rails, in the meager shade of an apple tree bearing the first buds of spring. There, he writes yet another letter to Grant, hoping to impress upon the Union general the seriousness of his intentions. This, too, is sent off under a white flag through the Union lines. Finally, at twelve-fifteen, a lone Union officer and his Confederate escort arrive to see Lee. The officer, a colonel named Babcock, delivers a letter into Lee’s hands:

GENERAL R. E. LEE

COMMANDING C. S. ARMIES:

Your note of this date is of but this moment (11:50 a.m.) received. In consequence of my having passed from the Richmond and Lynchburg road to the Farmville and Richmond road, I am at this writing about four miles west of Walker’s church, and will push forward to the front for the purpose of meeting you. Notice sent on this road where you wish the interview to take place will meet me.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant

U. S. Grant

Lieutenant-General

With a mixture of sadness and relief, Lee and his three aides ride past the Union lines. These troops do not cheer him, as the Army of Northern Virginia is in the habit of doing. Instead, the Sunday afternoon is preternaturally quiet after so many days and years of war. There is no thunder of artillery or jingle of a cavalry limber. Just those miles-long lines of men in blue, staring up at Lee as he rides past, dressed so impeccably and riding so tall and straight-backed in the saddle. Not even his eyes give away his mourning, nor the dilemma that he has endured since Sayler’s Creek, when it became clear that his army was no longer able to acquit itself.

Per Grant’s letter, Lee sends his aide Colonel Charles Marshall up the road to find a meeting place. Marshall settles on a simple home. By a great twist of fate, the house belongs to a grocer named Wilmer McLean, who moved to Appomattox Court House to escape the war. A cannonball had landed in his fireplace during the first Battle of Bull Run, at the very start of the conflict. Fleeing to a quieter corner of Virginia was his way of protecting his family from harm.

But the Civil War once again finds Wilmer McLean. He and his family are asked to leave the house. Soon, Lee marches up the front steps and takes a seat in the parlor. Again, he waits.

At one-thirty, after a half hour, Lee hears a large group of horsemen galloping up to the house. Moments later, General U. S. Grant walks into the parlor. He wears a private’s uniform; it is missing a button. He has affixed shoulder boards bearing the three stars of a lieutenant general, but otherwise there is nothing elegant about the Union leader. He has been wearing the same clothes since Wednesday night, and they are now further spattered by mud from his thirty-five-mile ride this morning. “Grant,” Colonel Amos Webster, a member of the Union general’s staff, will later remember, “covered with mud in an old faded uniform, looked like a fly on a shoulder of beef.”

Removing his yellow cloth riding gloves, Grant steps forward and shakes Lee’s hand.

Almost twenty years earlier, during the Mexican War, he was a mere lieutenant when Lee was a major soon to be promoted to colonel. Grant well recalled how Lee had scolded him because of his slovenly appearance. While not a vindictive man, U. S. Grant does not suffer slights easily. He has an encyclopedic memory. Lee has only a minor recollection of meeting Grant prior to this moment in Wilmer McLean’s parlor, but Grant remembers every single word. So while Lee sits before him, proud but fallen, resplendent in his spotless uniform, Grant looks and smells like a soldier who could not care less about appearance or ceremony.

As the moment of surrender nears, however, Grant starts to feel a bit embarrassed by the prospect of asking one of history’s great generals to give up his army and has second thoughts about his dress. “General Lee was dressed in a full uniform which was entirely new,” he will later write in his memoirs, “and was wearing a sword of considerable value, very likely the sword that had been presented by the State of Virginia. At all events, it was an entirely different sword than the one that would ordinarily be worn in the field. In my rough traveling suit, the uniform of private with the straps of a lieutenant general, I must have contrasted very strangely with a man so handsomely dressed, six feet high and of faultless form. But this was not a matter that I thought of until afterwards.”

As Grant’s generals and staff—among them Custer and Sheridan—file into the room and stand to one side, Lee’s aides gather behind their leader.

Grant and Lee sit at a small wooden table. An area rug covers the floor beneath them. The room’s balance of power is tilted heavily toward the Union—Grant and his twelve to Lee and his two. Lee’s men are staff officers, neatly dressed and strangers to the battlefield. Grant’s men, on the other hand, include staff and top generals, men who have spent the last week on horseback, harassing Lee’s army. They are dressed for battle, swords clanking and spurs jangling, the heels of their cavalry boots echoing on the wooden floor. They can barely suppress smirks betraying their good fortune, for not only destroying Lee’s army but to be present at the moment of Marse Robert’s greatest humiliation. Sheridan, in particular, has great reason to be here. He believes that Lee’s request for a cease-fire and these negotiations are yet another clever attempt to help his army escape. A shipment of rations is waiting for Lee and his army at the local railway depot, and Sheridan is convinced that Lee means to use the food to get him one step closer to the Carolinas.

What Sheridan and General Custer know, but Lee does not, is that Union cavalry has already captured that station. The food is in Union hands. Even if Lee is lying, and somehow manages to escape, his army will never make it the final hundred miles to freedom on empty stomachs.

“I met you once before, General Lee,” Grant starts. His voice is calm, as if this moment is just a random occasion for small talk. “We were serving in Mexico, when you came over from General Scott’s headquarters to visit Garland’s brigade, to which I belonged. I have always remembered your appearance, and I think I should have recognized you anywhere.”

“Yes. I know I met you on that occasion,” Lee answers in the same casual tone as Grant, letting the reference sit between them, though certainly not apologizing. His face, in Grant’s estimation, is “impassable.” “I have often thought of it and tried to recollect how you looked, but I have never been able to recall a single feature,” Lee says.

The generals speak of Mexico, recalling long-ago names like Churubusco and Veracruz. Grant finds the conversation so pleasant that he momentarily forgets the reason for their meeting. Lee is the one to take the initiative.

“I suppose, General Grant, that the object of our present meeting is fully understood,” he says. “I asked to see you to ascertain upon what terms you would receive the surrender of my army.”

Grant calls for his order book, a thin volume of yellow paper with carbon sheets. He lights a cigar and stares at a page, composing the sequence of words that will most amicably end the war. A cloud of smoke hovers around his head. Lee does not smoke, and he watches as Grant, after waving a distracted hand in the air to shoo the cigar smoke away, writes out his terms in pen.

When he is finished, Grant hands the book over to Lee.

Marse Robert digests the words in silence. The terms are remarkable in their lenience. Lee will not even have to surrender his sword. The gist is simple: Put down your guns and go home. Let’s rebuild the nation together. This was President Lincoln’s vision, to which Grant subscribed.

As if to underscore this point, members of Grant’s staff tentatively ask Robert E. Lee for permission to go behind Confederate lines. They have old friends over there, friends they have seen only through the lens of a spyglass, across some great width of battlefield, these last four years.

Appomattox Court House, 1865: victorious Union soldiers in front of the courthouse

Lee grants permission.

There is little else to say. Lee is humiliated but also grateful that his enemies have granted such favorable terms. He will be able to return to his army with some good news. Grant and Lee rise simultaneously and shake hands. After years of battle, hardship, strategizing, and sleeping in one impromptu lodging after another, the two great warriors and the thousands of men in their armies can now go home.

As Lee rides back to his lines, the Army of Northern Virginia spontaneously gathers on both sides of the road. Lee fights back tears as his men call out to him. His dissolved army will soon turn over their guns and battle flags. This is their last chance to show their great love and respect for their leader. “Men,” he calls out to them, “we have fought this war together and I have done the best I can for you.”

Each group cheers as Lee rides past, only to give in to their sorrow and break down in sobs, “all along the route to his quarters.”

Meanwhile, the reconciliation is beginning. Confederate and Union officers are renewing old friendships. “They went over, had a pleasant time with their old friends, and brought some of them back with them when they returned,” Grant will write twenty years later, recalling that the McLean household became their de facto meeting place that night. The men swapped stories of their lives and remembrances of battles won and lost. “Here the officers of both armies came in great numbers, and seemed to enjoy the meeting as much as though they had been friends separated for a long time while fighting under the same flag.

“For the time being it looked very much as if all thought of the war had escaped their minds.”

But the war is not so easily forgotten by others. Unbeknownst to all those men who risked their lives to fight those great battles—men who deservedly savor the peace—plans are being hatched throughout the South to seek revenge for the Union victory.

Part Two

THE IDES OF DEATH

Lincoln’s most famous profile

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

MONDAY, APRIL 10, 1865

WASHINGTON, D.C.

NIGHT

It seems like the entire town is drunk. Lee’s Confederate army has surrendered. In the Union capital whiskey is chugged straight out of the bottle, church bells toll, pistols are fired into the air, fireworks explode, newsboys hawk final editions chock-full of details from Appomattox, brass bands play, church hymns are sung, thirty-five U.S. flags are hoisted, and army howitzers launch an astonishing five-hundred-gun salute, which shatters windows for miles around the city.

The war is done! After four long years, and more than 600,000 dead altogether, euphoria now floats through the air like an opiate.

Complete strangers clasp one another’s hands like long-lost friends. They rub shoulders in taverns, restaurants, cathouses, and the impromptu glow of blazing streetside bonfires. Revelers march from one place to the next, passing the flask, aimless and amazed. Sooner or later it becomes obvious that their passion needs a purpose—or, at the very least, a focus. The human mass snakes toward the White House, handheld torches lighting the way. The people of Washington, D.C., overcome by news of the war’s end, hope to glimpse their president on this historic night. Perhaps, if they are very lucky, he will give one of the speeches for which he has become so famous.

The nation’s capital is not yet the cosmopolitan city it will become. The streets are mostly dirt and mud. It is not uncommon for traffic to stop as farmers drive cattle to market. Open spaces have been military staging areas during the war, with the camp followers and soldiers’ businesses such a designation implies. The Tiber Creek and its adjacent canal are open sewers, a breeding ground for typhus, cholera, and dysentery. The vile stench is made worse by the Central Market’s butchers, fond of heaving freshly cleaved carcasses into the rancid waters each morning. This might not be a problem, were it not for the Tiber being located a stone’s throw from the Capitol Building, that beautiful unfinished idea that towers above the city like an allegory for the nation itself.

To Lincoln, the Capitol is the most important structure in Washington. During the war, even when resources were limited and manpower was desperately needed on the battlefields, he refused to halt construction. Its signature element, the dome, was fitted into place just over a year ago. Inside, scaffolding still climbs up the curved walls of the unfinished rotunda. Workmen mingle with the Union soldiers who have used the Capitol as a barracks, sleeping on the sandstone floors and waking each morning to the aroma of baking bread, thanks to the cadre of bakers in the basement turning out sixty thousand loaves each day for shipment to distant battlefields.

The Capitol was an obvious artillery target during the war, so the gas lamps atop the dome remained unlit for the duration. Now they blaze. The Capitol glows above the frenzied crowds like some great torch of freedom, a wondrous reminder that Lincoln’s common refrain of “the Union must go on” has, indeed, come to pass.

So it is fitting that on the night the Capitol dome is lit, the crowd of more than two thousand staggers to an unruly halt on the grass outside the White House’s front door, waiting for Lincoln to show himself from the windows of the second-floor residence. When Lincoln doesn’t appear right away, they cry out for him. At first it’s just a few random shouts. Then a consensus. Soon they roar as one: “Lincoln,” the people cry. “Speech.”

The crowd is crazy to touch President Lincoln, to see him, to hear his voice. They continue calling out to him, the chant getting louder until the sound is deafening.

But Lincoln is in no mood to speak. The president sends a messenger out to the people, letting them know he is not up to it tonight. That only makes the crowd cheer louder. Lincoln tries to mollify them by going to a window, pulling back a curtain, and waving. Upon seeing the president, the crowd explodes. Men hoist their caps and umbrellas and women wave their handkerchiefs.

Still, Lincoln does not give a speech.

The crowd doesn’t leave. He goes to the window a second time, hoping his appearance will send them on their way. To his utter amazement, twelve-year-old Tad Lincoln is now down on the grass with all those people, running through the crowd with a captured rebel battle flag. The people laugh good-naturedly at the stunned look on Lincoln’s face, then cheer him as he steps alone from the front door of the White House to retrieve his young boy. It will be impossible for him to escape without saying a word or two. Lincoln has no protection as he wades into the crowd to get Tad.

The president returns inside the White House, even as the folks remain in the front yard.

Lincoln, at heart, is a showman. He reappears at the second-floor window, smiling and holding up a hand in acknowledgment. “I am very greatly rejoiced to find that an occasion has occurred so pleasurable that the people cannot restrain themselves,” he jokes, knowing that the crowd will respond by cheering even louder.

They do.

The president is tired, having hardly been able to sleep, due to a series of dreadful nightmares and anxiety over the struggles still to come. He sees the bonfires and the lanterns, and basks in the ovation, feeling the fatigue slip away. He hears the hurrahs, along with again the single loud cry in unison of “Speech.”

Lincoln sighs inwardly. He has waited so long for this moment, and yet he must hold back. These words cannot be delivered impulsively. Nor can he hope to be bathed in applause after they are spoken.

The people need to hear the truth, even though that’s not what they want to hear. The crowd wants retribution, not reconciliation; they want grand and eloquent words. Inspirational words. Fortifying words. Even boastful words. They will tell their children’s children about the night after the war was won, the night they heard the great Abraham Lincoln frame the victory in the most beautiful and poetic way possible.

They wish, in other words, to witness history.

Lincoln would like to indulge them. But the sentiments are half-formed and the words not yet written. Instead of telling the crowd what’s on his mind—how the thrill about the war’s end that filled his heart just yesterday is being replaced by weariness at the prospect of the hard work to come—Lincoln smiles that easy grin for which he is so well known. If you want to hear a speech, Lincoln yells to the crowd, please come back tomorrow night.

There is no malice in his tone, no undercurrent of sarcasm born of the many years of public ridicule. The veteran politician works his audience with professional ease. His unamplified voice carries powerfully through the chill night air.

Spying the Navy Yard brass band taking shelter under the White House eaves, he calls out a request: “I always thought that ‘Dixie’ was one of the best tunes I ever heard. Our adversaries over the way, I know, have attempted to appropriate it. But I insist that yesterday we fairly captured it.

“It is now our property,” he informs the crowd, then directs the band to “favor us with a performance.”

As the musicians strike up the Confederate anthem, and the crowd sings and claps to that old familiar rhythm, Lincoln slips back into the White House and starts writing the last speech he will ever give.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

MONDAY, APRIL 10, 1865

WASHINGTON, D.C.

NIGHT

John Wilkes Booth picks up his gun.

One mile down Pennsylvania Avenue, so close he can almost hear the beloved strains of “Dixie” being belted out so heretically by a Yankee band, the twenty-six-year-old actor stands alone in a pistol range. The smell of gunpowder mixes with the fragrant pomade of his mustache. His feet are set slightly wider than shoulder width, his lean athletic torso is turned at a right angle to the bull’s-eye, and his right arm is extended in a line perfectly parallel with the floor. In his fist he cradles the sort of pint-sized pistol favored by ladies and cardsharps.

He fires.

Booth scrutinizes the target. Satisfied, he reloads his single-shot .44-caliber Deringer. His mood is a mixture of rage and despondence. Things have gone to hell since Lee surrendered. Richmond is gone, and with it the Confederate leadership. The “secesh” community—those southern secessionist sympathizers living a secret life in the nation’s capital—is in disarray. There’s no one to offer guidance to Booth and the other secret agents of the Confederacy.

At this point, there are at least four Confederate groups conspiring to harm the president. Two are plotting a kidnapping, one is planning to smuggle dress shirts infected with yellow fever into his dresser drawers, and another intends to blow up the White House.

Booth is part of a kidnapping conspiracy. He prefers the term “capture.” Kidnapping is a crime, but capturing an enemy during a time of war is morally correct. The Confederate government has strict rules governing its agents’ behavior. If Booth does indeed get the chance, he is allowed to capture the president, truss him like a pig, subject him to a torrent of verbal and mental harassment, and even punch him in the mouth, should the opportunity present itself. The one thing he is not allowed to do is engage in “black flag warfare.”

Or in a word: murder.

Booth wonders if the restriction against black flag warfare still applies. And, if not, what he should do about it. That’s why he’s at the range. He has a major decision to make. Shooting helps him think.

Booth fires again. The split-second bang fills him with power, drowning out the celebrations and focusing his mind. Again, he tamps in a ball and a percussion cap.

There is a darkness to Booth’s personality, born of the entitlement that comes with celebrity. He is a boaster and a liar, fond of embellishing stories to make himself sound daring and adventurous. He is cruel and mercurial. He is a bully, eager to punish those who don’t agree with his points of view. Outside of his love for his mother, Booth is capable of doing anything to satisfy his own urges.

Booth is also a white supremacist. His most closely guarded secret is that he has temporarily given up the profession of acting to fight for the pro-slavery movement. The abolition movement, in Booth’s mind, is the real cause of the Civil War, a serpent that must be crushed. Enslavement of blacks is part of the natural order, Booth believes, and central to the South’s economy. Blacks, he maintains, are third-class citizens who should spend their lives working for the white man. Not only does this life fulfill them, but they are begging for correction when they step out of line. “I have been through the whole south and have marked the happiness of master and man,” Booth writes. “I have seen the black man whipped. But only when he deserved much more than he received.”

As a teenager, Booth was traumatized when runaway slaves killed a schoolmate’s father. He is willing to swear an oath that this sort of violence will happen on a much larger scale if the South loses the war. Newly freed slaves will slaughter southern white men, rape their women and daughters, and instigate a bloodbath unlike any other in recorded history.

The only way to prevent that is to reinstate slavery by winning the Civil War.

It crushes Booth to think that the South has lost. He shuts the idea out of his mind. Lee’s surrender, Booth believes, was a gross error in judgment. Even the great Marse Robert is allowed an occasional lapse.

Booth takes solace in the 146,000 Confederate troops spread out from North Carolina to Texas that have refused to lay down their weapons. So long as those men are willing to fight, the Confederacy—and slavery—will live on.

And now, Booth will give them another reason to fight.

That he was born just south of the Mason-Dixon Line and nearly a northerner means nothing. Booth nurtures a deep hatred for his father and the nation’s father figure, Abraham Lincoln. Booth was jealous of his father, an accomplished actor who never acknowledged his young son’s talent. Booth’s paternal loathing has now been transferred to the president; it flared to full burn when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.

Booth could have enlisted in the war. But soldiering, even for the Confederate cause, is far too mundane for his flamboyant personality. He cares little about battles won or lost, or battlefields hundreds of miles from the fancy hotels he calls home. Booth is fighting the Civil War on his terms, using his talents, choreographing the action like a great director. The grand finale will be a moment straight from the stage, some stunning dramatic conclusion when antagonist and protagonist meet face-to-face, settling their differences once and for all. The antagonist, of course, will win.

That antagonist will be Booth.

And what could be more dramatic than kidnapping Lincoln?

The plan is for Booth to gag and bind him, then smuggle him out of Washington, D.C., into the hands of Confederate forces. The president of the United States will rot in a rat-infested dungeon until slavery has been reinstated. Booth will sit before him and deliver a furious monologue, accusing Lincoln of stupidity and self-importance. It doesn’t matter that Lincoln won’t be able to talk back; Booth has no interest in anything the president has to say.

Lincoln keeps a summer residence three miles outside Washington, at a place called the Soldiers’ Home. Seeking respite from the Washington humidity or just to get away from the office seekers and politicos permeating the White House year-round, the president escapes there alone on horseback most evenings. From George Washington onward, presidents of the United States have usually been comfortable traveling with an entourage. But Lincoln, who enjoys his solitude, has no patience for that.

The president thinks his getaways are secret, but men like Booth and the members of the Confederate Secret Service are always watching. Booth’s original mission, as defined by his southern handlers, was to capture Lincoln while he rode on the lonely country road to the Soldiers’ Home.

Booth tried and failed twice. Now he has a new plan, one that preys on Lincoln’s fondness for the theater. He will grab him in mid-performance, from the presidential box at a Washington playhouse.

The scheme, however, is so crazy, so downright impossible that none of his co-conspirators will go along with it.

One of them has even backed out completely and taken the train home. It is as if Booth has rehearsed and rehearsed for a major performance, only to have the production canceled moments before the curtain rises. He has poured thousands of dollars into the plan. Some of that money has come from his own pocket; most has been supplied by the Confederacy. And now the scheme will never come to pass.

Booth fires at the bull’s-eye.

The Deringer is less than six inches long, made of brass, with a two-inch barrel. It launches a single large-caliber ball instead of a bullet and is accurate only at close range. For this reason it is often called a “gentleman’s pistol”—small and easily concealed in a pocket or boot, the Deringer is ideal for ending an argument or extracting oneself from a dangerous predicament but wholly unsuited for the battlefield. Booth has purchased other weapons for his various plots, including the cache of revolvers and long-bladed daggers now hidden in his hotel room. But the Deringer with the chocolate-colored wooden grip is his personal favorite. It is not lost on him that the pistol’s primary traits—elegance, stealth, and the potential to produce mayhem—match those of its owner.

Booth is almost out of ammunition. He loads his gun for one last shot, still plotting his next course of action.

He is absolutely certain he can kidnap Lincoln.

But as Booth himself would utter while performing Hamlet, there’s the rub.

If the war is over, then kidnapping Lincoln is pointless.

Yet Lincoln is still the enemy. He always will be.

So if Booth is no longer a kidnapper, then how will he wage war? This is the question that has bothered him all night.

Booth fires his last shot, slides the Deringer into his pocket, and storms out the door, only to once again find the streets full of inebriated revelers. Outraged, he steps into a tavern and knocks back a drink. John Wilkes Booth thinks hard about what comes next. “Our cause being almost lost, something decisive and great must be done,” he tells himself.

Until now, Booth has taken orders from Confederate president Jefferson Davis, currently in hiding. It was Davis who, nearly a year ago, sent two agents to Montreal with a fund of $1 million in gold. That money funded various plots against Lincoln. But Davis is done, fleeing to North Carolina in a train filled with looted Confederate gold, most likely never to return. Booth alone must decide for himself what is wrong and what is right.

From this moment forward he will live and breathe and scheme in accordance with his brand-new identity, and his new mission. The time has come for black flag warfare.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

MONDAY, APRIL 10, 1865

WASHINGTON, D.C.

NIGHT

Booth’s Washington residence is the National Hotel, on the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and Sixth. Just around the corner is James Pumphrey’s stable, where he often rents a horse. The actor feels perfectly at home at Pumphrey’s, for the owner is also known to be a Confederate sympathizer. Now, well past eight, and with no streetlights beyond the city limits, the night is far too dark for a ride into the country. But a half-drunk Booth needs to get on a horse now—right now—and gallop through Washington, D.C., reassuring himself that he has a way out of the city after putting a bullet in Abraham Lincoln.

I am the man who will end Abraham Lincoln’s life. That thought motivates Booth as he walks. He returns to the idea over and over again. He is thrilled by the notion, not bothered in the least by his ability to make the mental jump from the passive violence of kidnapping to cold-blooded murder. I will kill the president of the United States.

Booth ruminates without remorse. Of course, killing a man is immoral. Even Booth knows that.

This is wartime. Killing the enemy is no more illegal than capturing him.

The actor thinks of Lincoln’s second inaugural and how he stood so close to Lincoln on that day. I could have shot him then, if I had wished.

Booth regrets the lost opportunity, then sets it aside. There will be another chance—and this time he will stand even closer, so close he can’t miss. So close he will see the life drain from Lincoln’s eyes.

It occurs to him that no American president has ever been assassinated. I will be the first man to ever kill a president. He is now even more dazzled by his own violent plan.

The United States is just three months shy of being eighty-nine years old. There are thirty-six states in the Union, thanks to Nevada’s recent admission. Lincoln is the sixteenth president. Two have passed away from illness while in office. None of them, as Booth well knows, has died by someone else’s hand. If successful in his assassination attempt, the actor will achieve the lasting recognition he has always craved.

For a nation founded by rebellion and torn open by a civil war, the citizens of the United States have been remarkably nonviolent when confronted with politicians they despise. Only one American president was the target of an assassin. And that was Andrew Jackson, the man whose politics sowed the seeds of Confederate rebellion thirty years earlier.

Jackson was leaving a funeral in the Capitol Building on January 30, 1835, when a British expatriate fired at him twice. Unfortunately for the mentally unbalanced Richard Lawrence, who believed himself to be the king of England, both his pistols misfired. The bullets never left the chamber. Congressman Davy Crockett wrestled Lawrence to the ground and disarmed him, even as Jackson beat the would-be assassin with his cane.

Jackson was also the first and only American president to suffer bodily harm at the hands of a citizen, when a sailor discharged from the navy for embezzlement punched Jackson at a public ceremony in 1833. Robert Randolph fled the scene. Jackson, ever the warrior, refused to press charges.

These are the only acts of presidential insurrection in the nation’s entire history. The American people are unique in that their considerable political passion is expressed at the ballot box, not through violence directed at their leaders, whom they can vote out of office. If judged only by this yardstick, the Democratic experiment undertaken by Americans four score and nine years ago seems to be working.

Maybe this is why Lincoln rides his horse alone through Washington or stands fearlessly on the top deck of a ship in a combat zone. The president tries to convince himself that assassination is not part of the American character, saying, “I can’t believe that anyone has shot, or will deliberately shoot at me with the purpose of killing me.”

A wider look at human history suggests otherwise. Tribal societies murdered their leaders long before the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamen was slain by his advisers in 1324 B.C. Stabbing and beating were the earliest methods of assassination. The Moabite king Eglon was disemboweled in his chambers, his girth so vast that the killer lost the knife in the folds of his fat. Over time, well-known historical figures such as Philip II of Macedon (the father of Alexander the Great) and perhaps even Alexander himself were assassinated. And politically motivated killing was not limited to Europe or the Middle East—records show that assassination had long been practiced in India, Africa, and China.

And then, of course, there was Julius Caesar, the victim of the most famous assassination in history. The Roman ruler was stabbed twenty-three times by members of the Roman Senate. Of the two stab wounds to his chest, one was the blow that killed him. The killing took place during a lunar cycle known as the ides, fulfilling a prophecy by a local soothsayer.

The truth is that Lincoln, despite what he says, secretly believes he will die in office. He is by far the most despised and reviled president in American history. His closest friend and security adviser, the barrel-chested Ward Hill Lamon, preaches regularly to Lincoln about the need for improved security measures. More tangibly, there is a packet nestled in a small cubby of Lincoln’s upright desk. It is marked, quite simply, “Assassination.” Inside are more than eighty death threats. Every morning, sitting in his office to conduct affairs of state, Lincoln’s eyes cannot help but see those letters. “God damn your god damned old hellfire god damned soul to hell,” reads one letter. “God damn you and your god damned family’s god damned hellfired god damned soul to hell.”

“The first one or two made me a little uncomfortable,” Lincoln has admitted to an artist who came to paint his portrait, “but they have ceased to give me any apprehension.

“I know I am in danger, but I am not going to worry over little things like these.”

Rather than dwell on death, Lincoln prefers to live life on his own terms. “If I am killed I can die but once,” he is fond of saying, “but to live in constant dread is to die over and over again.”

While the war still raged he told the writer Harriet Beecher Stowe, “Whichever way the war ends, I have the impression that I shall not last long after it is over.”

A small number of assassins are delusional or impulsive killers, but on the whole, the successful assassin stalks his target, planning every detail of the crime. This means knowing the victim’s habits, schedule, nuances, and security detail. Only then can the two most complex and dangerous tasks be successfully executed.

The first involves the shooting—and in 1865 it must be a shooting, because there is little likelihood of getting close enough to stab a major political figure. The assassin must figure out the when and where (a large crowd is ideal); determine how to get in and out of the building or ceremony; and choose the perfect weapon.

Second is the escape. A successful assassin is a murderer. A perfect assassination, however, means getting away from the scene of the murder without being caught. This is even more of a long shot than the crime itself. Plenty of men in those large crowds will want to play the hero. They will tackle and subdue the assailant without fear for their own lives. And even if an assassin eludes those crowds, he must escape the city in which it takes place, and then the country, until arriving at some foreign location of true refuge.

As Booth strolls to Pumphrey’s, he carries a map in his coat pocket showing the location of General Joe Johnston and his Confederate holdouts, who are hiding in North Carolina. Booth knows the map by heart. He can pinpoint the precise route Johnston must take to evade the Federal troops and reignite the war. To Booth, the map is much more than a detailed depiction of contours and boundaries. It is also a glimmer of hope, reminding him that the noble cause is alive and well, and why he must do what he must do.

His mind wanders to his buggy, of all things. Booth bought it to transport Lincoln after the kidnapping. Now it serves no purpose. Booth makes a mental note to put the buggy up for sale. But in an instant, his thoughts revert back to President Lincoln, who now has only five days to live.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

MONDAY, APRIL 10, 1865

WASHINGTON, D.C.

NIGHT

Booth turns onto C Street and then out of the cold, wet night into James Pumphrey’s stable. His clothes are damp. He smells of drink and tobacco. A quick glance around the stalls shows that most of the horses are already rented out for the evening. Pumphrey may be a Confederate sympathizer and a full-fledged member of the secessionist movement, but he has no qualms about making an honest buck off this night of Union celebration.

Pumphrey is an acquaintance of twenty-year-old John Surratt, the courier instrumental in ensuring that Booth’s operation is fully funded by the Confederacy. Surratt travels frequently between Canada, the South, New York City, and Washington, brokering deals for everything from guns to medicine. Like Booth, the young man is furious that the Confederacy has lost.

John Surratt is often hard to locate, but when Booth needs details about his whereabouts or simply wants to get a message to him, the task is as simple as walking to Sixth and H Streets, where his mother keeps a boardinghouse. Mary Surratt is an attractive widow in her early forties whose husband died from drink, forcing her to move to Washington from the Maryland countryside to make a living. Like her son, Mary is an active Confederate sympathizer who has been involved with spying and smuggling weapons.

Mary Surratt

She also runs a pro-Confederate tavern in the Maryland town of Surrattsville, where she and her late husband once owned a tobacco farm. The Maryland countryside is untouched by war and not occupied by Union troops.

Washington, D.C., with its Federal employees and Union loyalties, is a city whose citizens are all too prone to report any conversation that suggests pro-Confederate leanings, making it a dangerous place for people like Mary Surratt and John Wilkes Booth. Her boardinghouse and Pumphrey’s stable are two of the few places they can speak their minds. For Booth, a man who deeply enjoys doing just that, such locations are safe havens.

It would seem natural that Booth tell the others about his new plan. They might have insights into the best possible means of escape: roads under construction or in need of repair, overcrowded streets, bridges still under wartime guard—for the only way out of Washington, D.C., is on a boat or over a bridge.

The first exit is via the Georgetown Aqueduct, a mile and a half northwest of the White House. The second is Long Bridge, three blocks south of the White House. The third is Benning’s Bridge, on the east side of town. And the last one is the Navy Yard Bridge, on Eleventh Street.

But Booth has already made up his mind: the Navy Yard Bridge. The other three lead into Virginia, with its plethora of roadblocks and Union soldiers. But the Navy Yard Bridge will take him into the quiet backcountry of Maryland, home to smugglers and back roads. Friends like Mary Surratt and Dr. Samuel Mudd can offer their homes as way stations for a man on the run, storing weapons for him and providing a place to sleep and eat before getting back on the road. The only drawback is that sentries man the bridge and no traffic is allowed in or out of Washington after ten P.M.

Booth wants to see those sentries for himself. Tonight. Which is why he’s come for a horse. He doesn’t tell Pumphrey, just to be on the safe side. In the end it doesn’t matter: Booth’s favorite horse has already been rented.

Not the least bit discouraged, Booth walks up to Ford’s Theatre on Tenth Street. This converted Baptist church is Booth’s touchstone. After it was burned to the ground in 1862, owner John Ford rebuilt it as a “magnificent thespian temple,” replacing the pews with seats and transforming the deacons’ stalls into private boxes. Upon completion, Ford’s became the most state-of-the-art theater in D.C.

Booth performed one night at Ford’s in mid-March, but his theater appearances are few and far between these days. (If asked, he explains that he is taking a hiatus to dabble in the oil business.) He still, however, has his mail sent to Ford’s, and his buggy is parked in a space behind the theater that was specially created for him by a carpenter and sceneshifter named Ned Spangler. Booth uses Spangler often for such favors and odd jobs. Thirty-nine and described by friends as “a very good, efficient drudge,” the hard-drinking Spangler often sleeps in either the theater or a nearby stable. Despite the late hour, Booth knows he will find him at Ford’s.

Inside the theater, rehearsals are under way for a one-night-only performance of the farce Our American Cousin. Like most actors, Booth knows it well.

Booth finds Spangler backstage, befuddled, as usual. He asks the stagehand to clean up his carriage and find a buyer. Spangler is devastated—a great many hours of work have gone into modifying the theater’s storage space so that the carriage will fit. It’s a waste for Booth to sell the carriage, and Spangler tells him so.

“I have no further use for it,” Booth replies. “And anyway, I’ll soon be leaving town.” Booth will not say where he’s going, leaving Spangler even more befuddled.

The word “assassin” comes from “Hashshashin,” the name of a group of hit men who worked for Persian kings between the eighth and the fourteenth centuries. One of their jobs was to execute the Knights Templar, a legendary band of Christian warriors known for their cunning and ferocity in battle. Legend says that the reward for a successful execution was being able to visit a lush royal garden filled with milk, honey, hashish, and concubines.

None of those things await John Wilkes Booth. He is everything an effective assassin should be: methodical, passionate, determined, and an excellent strategist and planner. He is prone to depression, as many assassins are, but his ability to turn angst into rage makes him even more dangerous. He expects no reward for killing Lincoln, though infamy would be nice.

CHAPTER TWENTY

TUESDAY, APRIL 11, 1865

WASHINGTON, D.C.

EVENING

Lee’s surrender at Appomattox is just two days old, but events are moving so quickly that it might as well be two months.

The citizens of Washington have spent today sleeping off their celebratory hangover. Now, as evening falls, they again spill out into the streets and sip a drink or two. Just like that, the party starts all over. As it grows and becomes more rowdy, every guzzle and utterance has a hum, an anticipation: Abraham Lincoln is speaking tonight. Love him or hate him, the president of the United States is making a personal appearance at the White House, and everyone wants to see it.

And then, once again, the crowd is on the march. The spring air is thick with a warm mist as the sea of humanity parades down Pennsylvania Avenue. Thousands upon thousands are on their way to hear Lincoln speak, trampling the White House lawn and standing up to their ankles in the mud of once-manicured daffodil beds, pushing and straining against one another, climbing into trees, and even pressing up against the great building itself. All are desperate to be as close to Lincoln as possible. But hungover, dehydrated, and sullen, this is not the lighthearted crowd of the night before. It is something akin to a lynch mob, thirsty for Lincoln’s words, and yet ready to pass judgment on them.

And this is what the mob wants to hear: the South must be punished.

These men and women of the North, who have endured the loss of their sons, brothers, and husbands, want vengeance. They want the Confederate leaders and generals hanged, they want the South to pay war reparations, and they want Lincoln’s speech to be full of the same self-righteous indignation they feel so powerfully in their hearts.

Booth leans against a tall tree, using it as a buffer against the crowd. He is close enough that Lincoln will be a mere pistol shot away. With him are two co-conspirators. David Herold is a former pharmacy clerk who was born and raised in Washington, D.C. Like Booth, he possesses matinee-idol good looks. But he is more educated and rugged. Herold’s degree comes from Georgetown, and he is fond of spending his leisure time with a rifle in his hand, hunting animals. It was John Surratt who introduced the two, four months earlier. Since then, Herold has been an impassioned and committed member of Booth’s team.

The second co-conspirator is Lewis Powell—who also goes by the name Lewis Payne—a twenty-year-old who served as a Confederate soldier and spy before joining Booth’s cause. Like Herold, he has fallen under Booth’s spell.

The actor hasn’t told either man that the plan has changed from kidnapping to assassination. That can wait. He brought them along to hear the speech, hoping that some phrase or anticipated course of action will fill them with rage. Then, and only then, will Booth let them in on his new plan.

Soon Lincoln stands before an open second-story window, a scroll of paper in one hand. The president is wearing the same black garb he usually wears but no hat. He is somber. His speech is now written, and he is ready to give it.

Unseen by the crowd, Mary Lincoln shows her husband her support by standing next to him. She has invited Clara Harris, her dear friend and the daughter of a New York senator, to stand with her and witness this historical moment.

Outside, the mere sight of Lincoln elicits a prolonged ovation. The applause rolls on and on and on, continuing even as Lincoln tries to speak.

The crowd cannot possibly know the tremendous weight pressing down on Lincoln’s shoulders. Looking out into the audience, he prepares to tell them about the daunting task ahead and how the ability to trust the southern states to peacefully rejoin the Union will be as great a challenge to the nation as the war itself. Lincoln clearly sees the faces of the crowd, with their spontaneous smiles and unabashed joy, and prepares to deliver a speech that is anything but warmhearted. It is, in fact, a heavy, ponderous, de facto State of the Union address, specifically designed to undercut the revelry and prepare America for years of more pain and struggle.

The president begins gently. “We meet this evening not in sorrow, but in gladness of heart,” Lincoln says. He thanks General Grant and the army for their struggle, and promises to have a national day of celebration very soon, with a great parade through Washington.

Lincoln is one of the best speakers in America, if not the world. He can read the mood of a crowd and adjust the cadence and rhythm of his voice for maximum effect, coaxing whatever emotion or response is needed to hold the audience in the palm of his hand. Lincoln’s voice is clear, his pronunciation distinct. He understands the power of words and emphasizes certain phrases to make a lasting impression. The Gettysburg Address is perhaps the best example of Lincoln’s oratorical genius.

But tonight there is no theatricality. No tricks. Just cold, hard facts, delivered in a somber and even depressing monotone. The speech is so long and so unexciting that people in the audience begin shifting their feet and then lowering their heads and slipping away into the night, off to search for a real celebration. Booth stays, of course. He doesn’t want to miss a single word. He listens as Lincoln talks of extending suffrage to literate blacks and those who fought for the Union.

Booth seethes at the outrageous notion that slaves be considered equal citizens of the United States, able to own property, vote, run for elected office, and maybe even marry white women. Suffrage, as preposterous as it sounds, means a black man might someday become president of the United States. Booth cannot let this ever happen.

“That means nigger citizenship,” he hisses, pointing to the navy revolver on Powell’s hip. Fourteen inches long, with a pistol sight and a .36-caliber round, the Colt has more than enough pop to kill Lincoln from such close range. “Shoot him now,” Booth commands Powell. “Put a bullet in his head right this instant.”

Powell is a dangerous young man, with powerful shoulders and a psychotic temper. But he refuses to draw his weapon. He is terrified of offending Booth but even more afraid of this mob, which would surely tear him limb from limb.

Booth sizes up the situation. It would be easy enough to grab Powell’s gun and squeeze off a shot or two before the crowd overpowers him. But now is not the time to be impulsive. Booth certainly doesn’t tell this to Powell. Instead he lets Powell believe that he has let Booth down. Only when Powell believes that he has really and truly disappointed Booth will he begin thinking of ways to make it up to him. And that’s when Booth will tell him about his amazing new plan.

“I’ll put him through,” Booth sneers, planting another seed about assassination in the minds of Powell and Herold. “By God. I’ll put him through.”

Then Booth spins around and fights his way back out of the crowd. Twenty-four hours ago he was still thinking of ways to kidnap the president. Now he knows just where and how and when he will shoot Abraham Lincoln dead.

The date will be Thursday, April 13.

Or, as it was known back in Julius Caesar’s time, the ides.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

TUESDAY, APRIL 11, 1865

WASHINGTON, D.C.

NIGHT

“It seems strange how much there is in the Bible about dreams,” Lincoln says thoughtfully, basking in the afterglow of his speech. It is just after ten P.M. The people of Washington have moved their party elsewhere, and the White House lawn is nearly empty. Lincoln is having tea and cake in the Red Room with Mary, Senator James Harlan, and a few friends. Among them is Ward Hill Lamon, the close friend with the beer-barrel girth. Lamon, the United States marshal for the District of Columbia, has warned Lincoln for more than a year that someone, somewhere will try to kill him. The lawman listens to the president intently, with a veteran policeman’s heightened sense of foreboding, sifting and sorting through each word.

Lincoln continues: “There are, I think, some sixteen chapters in the Old Testament and four or five in the New in which dreams are mentioned … . If we believe the Bible, we must accept the fact that in the old days, God and his angels came to men in their sleep and made themselves known in dreams.”

Mary Lincoln smiles nervously at her husband. His melancholy tone has her fearing the worst. “Why? Do you believe in dreams?”

Yes, Lincoln believes in dreams, in dreams and in nightmares and in their power to haunt a man. Night is a time of terror for Abraham Lincoln. The bodyguards standing watch outside his bedroom hear him moan in his sleep as his worries and anxieties are unleashed by the darkness, when the distractions and the busyness of the day can no longer keep them at bay. Very often he cannot sleep at all. Lincoln collapsed from exhaustion just a month ago. He is pale, thirty-five pounds underweight, and walks with the hunched, painful gait of a man whose shoes are filled with pebbles. One look at the bags under his eyes and even hardened newspapermen write that he needs to conserve his energies—not just to heal the nation but to live out his second term. At fifty-six years old, Abraham Lincoln is spent.

There have been threats against Lincoln’s life ever since he was first elected.

Gift baskets laden with fruit were sent to the White House, mostly from addresses in the South. The apples and pears and peaches were very fresh—and very deadly, their insides injected with poison. Lincoln had the good sense to have them all tested before taking a chance and chomping down into a first fatal bite.

Then there was the Baltimore Plot, in 1861, in which a group known as the Knights of the Golden Circle planned to shoot Lincoln as he traveled to Washington for the inauguration. The plot was foiled, thanks to brilliant detective work by Pinkerton agents. In a strange twist, many newspapers mocked Lincoln for the way he eluded the assassins by wearing a cheap disguise as he snuck into Washington. His enemies made much of the deception, labeling Lincoln a coward and refusing to believe that such a plot existed in the first place. The president took the cheap shots to heart.

The Baltimore Plot taught Lincoln a powerful message about public perception. He adopted a veneer of unshakable courage from that day forward. Now he would never dream of traveling in disguise. He moves freely throughout Washington, D.C. Since 1862 he has enjoyed military protection beyond the walls of the White House, but it was only late in 1864, as the war wound down and the threats became more real, that Washington’s Metropolitan Police assigned a select group of officers armed with .38-caliber pistols to protect Lincoln on a more personal basis. Two remain at his side from eight A.M. to four P.M. Another stays with Lincoln until midnight, when a fourth man takes the graveyard shift, posting himself outside Lincoln’s bedroom or following the president through the White House on his insomniac nights.

The bodyguards are paid by the Department of the Interior, and their job description, strangely enough, specifically states that they are to protect the White House from vandals.

Protecting Lincoln is second on their list of priorities.

If he were the sort of man to worry about his personal safety, Lincoln wouldn’t allow such easy public access to the White House. There is no fence or gate blocking people from entering the White House at this time. The doorman is instructed to allow citizens to roam the first floor. Friends and strangers alike can congregate inside the building all day long, seeking political favors, stealing scraps of the curtains as keepsakes, or just peering in at the president while he works. Some petitioners even sleep on the floor in the hallways, hoping to gain a moment of Lincoln’s time.

Lincoln’s bright young secretary John Hay frets constantly about his boss’s safety. “The President is so accessible that any villain can feign business, and, while talking with him, draw a razor and cut his throat,” Hay worries aloud, “and some minutes might elapse after the murderer’s escape before we could discover what had been done.” Lincoln, however, reminds Hay that being president of the United States stipulates that he be a man of the people. “It would never do for a President to have guards with drawn sabers at his door, as if he were, or were assuming to be an emperor,” he reminds them.

Death is no stranger to Abraham Lincoln, and in that way it is less terrifying. The Lincolns’ three-year-old son Edward died of tuberculosis in 1850. In 1862, the Lincolns lost eleven-year-old Willie to a fever. Willie was a spirited child, fond of wrestling with his father and riding his pony on the White House lawn. Mary, who already suffered from a mental disorder that made her prone to severe mood swings, was emotionally destroyed by the loss of her boys. Even as Lincoln was mired in the war and dealing with his own grief, he devoted hours to tending to Mary and the silent downward spiral that seemed to define her daily existence. He indulged her by allowing her to spend lavishly, to the point of putting him deeply in debt, though he is by nature a very simple and frugal man. Also to please Mary, he accompanied her to a night at the theater or to a party when he would much rather conserve his energies by relaxing with a book at the White House. And while this indulgence has worked to some extent, and Mary Lincoln has gotten stronger over time, Lincoln of all people knows that she is one great tragedy away from losing her mind.

Normally, their history precludes Lincoln from talking about death with Mary present. But now, surrounded by friends and empowered by the confessional tone of that night’s speech, he can’t help himself.

“I had a dream the other night, which has haunted me since,” he admits soulfully.

“You frighten me,” Mary cries.

Lincoln will not be stopped. Ten days ago, he begins, “I went to bed late.”

Ten days ago he was in City Point, each man and woman in the room calculates. It was the night Lincoln stood alone on the top deck of the River Queen, watching Grant’s big guns blow the Confederate defenders of Petersburg to hell. “I had been waiting for important dispatches from the front. I could not have been long in bed when I fell into a slumber, for I was weary. I soon began to dream.”

In addition to being the consummate public speaker, Lincoln is also a master storyteller. No matter how heavy the weight of the world, he invests himself in a story, adjusting the tone and cadence of his voice and curling his lips into a smile as he weaves his tale, until the listener eventually leans in, desperate to hear more.

But now there is pain in his voice and not a hint of a smile. Lincoln isn’t telling a story but reliving an agony. “There seemed to be a deathlike stillness about me. Then I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping. I thought I left my bed and wandered downstairs. There the silence was broken by the same pitiful sobbing, but the mourners were invisible. I went from room to room. No living person was in sight, but the same mournful sounds of distress met me as I passed along. It was light in all the rooms. Every object was familiar to me. But where were all the people who were grieving as if their hearts would break? I was puzzled and alarmed. What could be the meaning of all this?”

Lincoln is lost in the world of that dream. Yet his audience, uncomfortable as it may feel, is breathless with anticipation. “Determined to find the cause of a state of things so mysterious and shocking, I kept on until I arrived in the East Room, which I entered. There I was met with a sickening surprise. Before me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards. And there were a throng of people, some gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose face was covered, others weeping pitifully. ‘Who is dead in the White House?’ I demanded of one of the soldiers. ‘The President,’ was the answer. ‘He was killed by an assassin.’ Then came a loud burst of grief from the crowd.”

Mary can’t take it anymore. “That is horrid,” she wails. “I wish you had not told it.”

Lincoln is pulled back to reality, no longer sound asleep on the River Queen but sitting with a somewhat shell-shocked gathering of dignitaries in the here and now. Young Clara Harris, in particular, looks traumatized. “Well it was only a dream, Mary,” he chides. “Let us say no more about it.”

A moment later, seeing the uneasiness in the room, Lincoln adds, “Don’t you see how it will all turn out? In this dream it was not me, but some other fellow that was killed.”

His words convince no one, especially not Mary.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 12, 1865

WASHINGTON, D.C.

MORNING

After a light breakfast and a night of restless sleep, Booth walks the streets of Washington, his mind filled with the disparate strands of an unfinished plan. The more he walks, the more it all comes together.

It is the morning after Lincoln’s speech and the third day since Lee’s surrender.

Booth frames every action through the prism of the dramatic, a trait that comes from being born and raised in an acting household. As he builds the assassination scheme in his head, layer by layer, everything from the location to its grandiosity is designed to make him the star performer in an epic scripted tale. His will be the biggest assassination plot ever, and his commanding performance will guarantee him an eternity of recognition.

He knows there will be an audience. By the morning after Lincoln’s speech Booth has decided to shoot the president inside a theater, the one place in the world where Booth feels most comfortable. Lincoln is known to attend the theater frequently. In fact, he has seen Booth perform—although Lincoln’s presence in the house so angered Booth that he delivered a notably poor performance.

So the theater it will be. Booth has performed at several playhouses in Washington. He knows their hallways and passages by heart. A less informed man might worry about being trapped inside a building with a limited number of exits, no windows, and a crowd of witnesses—many of them able-bodied men just back from the war. But not John Wilkes Booth.

His solitary walk takes him past many such soldiers. The army hasn’t been disbanded yet, so they remain in uniform. Even someone as athletic as Booth looks far less rugged than these men who have spent so much time in the open air, their bodies lean and hard from hours on the march. If he thought about it, their familiarity with weapons and hand-to-hand combat would terrify Booth, with his choreographed stage fights and peashooter pistol.

But Booth is not scared of these men. In fact, he wants to linger for a moment at center stage. With the stage lights shining down on his handsome features, clutching a dagger with “America, Land of the Free” inscribed on the blade, he plans to spend what will surely be the last seconds of his acting career making a political statement. “Sic semper tyrannis,” he will bellow in his most vibrant thespian delivery: Thus always to tyrants.

The dagger is useless as a stage prop. Booth has no specific plans to use it, knowing that if he fires a shot from a few feet away and it misses, there will be no chance to run at Lincoln and stab him. He has borrowed the idea from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, which he performed six months earlier on Broadway with his two actor brothers, both of whom he despises. Booth, ironically, played Marc Antony, a character whose life is spared from a potential assassin.

Those performances provided Booth with his inspiration about the ides. In Roman times it was a day of reckoning.

The ides are tomorrow.

Booth walks faster, energized by the awareness that he hasn’t much time.

He must find out whether Lincoln will be attending the theater tomorrow night and, if so, which one. He must find out which play is being performed, so that he can select just the right moment in the show for the execution—a moment with few actors on stage, if possible, so that when he stops to utter his immortal line there won’t be a crowd to tackle him. The details of his escape are still fuzzy, but the basic plan is to gallop out of Washington on horseback and disappear into the loving arms of the South, where friends and allies and even complete strangers who have heard of his daring deed will see that he makes it safely to Mexico.

But that’s not all.

There are rumors that General Grant will be in town. If he attends the theater with Lincoln, which is a very real possibility, Booth can kill the two most prominent architects of the South’s demise within seconds.

And yet Booth wants even more. He has been an agent of the Confederacy for a little less than a year and has had long conversations with the leaders of the Confederate Secret Service and men like John Surratt, discussing what must be done to topple the Union. He has, at his disposal, a small cadre of like-minded men prepared to do his bidding. He personally witnessed the northern crowd’s malice toward the South at Lincoln’s speech last night. Rather than just kill Lincoln and Grant, he now plans to do nothing less than undertake a top-down destruction of the government of the United States of America.

Vice President Andrew Johnson is an obvious target. He is first in line to the presidency, lives at a nearby hotel, and is completely unguarded. Like all Confederate sympathizers, Booth views the Tennessee politician as a turncoat for siding with Lincoln.

Secretary of State William H. Seward, whose oppressive policies toward the South have long made him a target of Confederate wrath, is on the list as well.

The deaths of Lincoln, Grant, Johnson, and Seward should be more than enough to cause anarchy.

To Lewis Powell, the former Confederate spy who watched Lincoln’s speech with Booth, will go the task of killing Secretary Seward, who, at age sixty-three, is currently bedridden, after a near-fatal carriage accident. He was traveling through Washington with his son Frederick and daughter Fanny when the horses bolted. While reaching for the reins to try to stop them, Seward caught the heel of one of his new shoes on the carriage step and was hurled from the cab, hitting the street so hard that bystanders thought he’d been killed. Secretary Seward has been confined to his bed for a week with severe injuries and is on an around-the-clock course of pain medication. Seward has trouble speaking; he has no chance of leaping from the bed to elude a surprise attack.

Vice President Andrew Johnson

Secretary of State William H. Seward

Powell’s job should be as simple as sneaking into the Seward home, shooting the sleeping secretary in bed, then galloping away to join Booth for a life of sunshine and easy living in Mexico.

For the job of killing Johnson, Booth selects a simpleton drifter named George Atzerodt, a German carriage repairer with a sallow complexion and a fondness for drink. To him will go the job of assassinating the vice president at the exact same moment Booth is killing Lincoln. Atzerodt, however, still thinks the plan is to kidnap Lincoln. He was brought into the plot for his encyclopedic knowledge of the smuggling routes from Washington, D.C., into the Deep South. Booth suspects that Atzerodt may be unwilling to go along with the new plan. Should that be the case, Booth has a foolproof plan in mind to blackmail Atzerodt into going along.

Booth has seen co-conspirators come and go since last August. Right now he has three: Powell, Atzerodt, and David Herold, the Georgetown graduate who also accompanied Booth on the night of Lincoln’s speech. One would imagine that each man would be assigned a murder victim. Logically, Herold’s job would be to kill Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, the man who trampled the Constitution by helping Lincoln suspend the writ of habeas corpus and did more than any other to treat the South like a bastard child. Stanton is the second-most-powerful man in Washington, but in the end no assassin is trained on him. Instead, Herold will act as the dim-witted Powell’s guide, leading his escape out of Washington in the dead of night.

Why was the secretary of war spared?

The answer may come from a shadowy figure named Lafayette Baker. Early in the war, Baker distinguished himself as a Union spy. Secretary of State William Seward hired him to investigate Confederate communications that were being routed through Maryland. Baker’s success in this role saw him promoted to the War Department, where Secretary of War Edwin Stanton gave him full power to create an organization known as the National Detective Police. This precursor to the Secret Service was a counterterrorism unit tasked with seeking out Confederate spy networks in Canada, New York, and Washington.

But Lafayette Baker was a shifty character, with loyalties undefined, except for his love of money and of himself, though not necessarily in that order. Secretary Stanton soon grew weary of him, so Baker returned to New York City. His movements during this time are murky, as befitting a man who thinks himself a spy, but one elaborate theory ties together his activities with those of John Wilkes Booth. This theory suggests that Baker worked as an agent for a Canadian outfit known as the J. J. Chaffey Company. Baker received payments totaling almost $150,000 from that firm, an unheard-of sum at the time. The J. J. Chaffey Company also paid John Wilkes Booth nearly $15,000 between August 24 and October 5, 1864. He was paid in gold, credited to the Bank of Montreal. In the same month the last payment was made to him, Booth traveled to Montreal to collect the money and rendezvous with John Surratt and other members of the Confederate Secret Service to plot the Lincoln issue.

Lafayette C. Baker

The common thread in the several mysterious payments and missives involving Baker and Booth is the mailing address 178^1/2 Water Street. This location, quite mysteriously, is referenced in several documents surrounding payments between the J. J. Chaffey Company, Baker, and Booth.

To this day, no one has discovered why the J. J. Chaffey Company paid Lafayette Baker and John Wilkes Booth for anything. A few clues exist, including a telegram sent on April 2, 1865, the very same day on which Lincoln stood atop the deck of the River Queen to watch the fall of Petersburg. A telegram was sent from 1781/2 Water Street to a company in Chicago. “J. W. Booth will ship oysters until Saturday 15th,” it reads, intimating that Booth, a man who never worked a day in his life in the shipping or the oyster business, was involved in some kind of project that was totally inappropriate for his skills. And yet no one has been able to conclusively determine what the telegram alluded to.

Lafayette Baker freely admitted that he had tapped Secretary of War Stanton’s telegraph lines, though he never explained why he did what he did. Baker would have known that if Lincoln were assassinated, ascension to the presidency could eventually fall to Stanton—the man who opposed Lincoln’s candidacy in 1860. The United States has had a succession plan in place since 1792, with the vice president replacing the fallen president, as when Zachary Taylor died in office and was succeeded by Millard Fillmore. If a more elaborate assassination plot were hatched, one that killed Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward along with President Lincoln, a skilled constitutional scholar like Edwin Stanton could attempt to manipulate the process in his favor—and perhaps even become president. This connection between Baker, Booth, and Stanton continues to intrigue and befuddle scholars. Why was Baker, a spy, paid an exorbitant amount for his services? And why did John Wilkes Booth secure a healthy payment from the same company?

Clues such as this point to Stanton’s involvement, but no concrete connection has ever been proven. Circumstantially, he was involved. Secretary Stanton employed Baker, who was in regular contact with Surratt and Booth. Some historians believe that Stanton fired Baker as a cover and that the two remained in close contact.

Or so the elaborate theory goes.

Whether or not that is true, Stanton will be the sole reason that Baker’s role in the dramatic events of April 1865 is hardly over.

Booth is satisfied that his plan is simple enough that the synchronized slayings will not tax the mental capacities of his underlings. Now all he needs to do is find Lincoln.

The odds of the Lincolns’ remaining in the White House on such an auspicious night of celebration are almost nonexistent. The president and Mrs. Lincoln are known to be fond of the theater and prone to making their public appearances in such a venue. They will be either there or at one of the many parties being held to celebrate the city’s Grand Illumination.

If it is to be an Illumination party, Booth will canvass the city’s notable residences for signs of a celebration. Once the president is located, the next step will be waiting for a moment when he is unguarded, whereupon Booth can use his celebrity to gain entrance and then shoot him.

If it is to be the theater, the obvious choices are either the Grover or Ford’s, both of which are staging lavish productions. Booth must reacquaint himself with their floor plans so that when the moment comes he can act without thinking.

Booth turns the corner onto Pennsylvania Avenue. First stop: Grover’s Theater. The assassination will be tomorrow.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 12, 1865

WASHINGTON, D.C.

AFTERNOON

Inside the White House, just a few blocks from where John Wilkes Booth is walking the streets, a beaming Mary Lincoln holds a slim leather-bound copy of Julius Caesar. She is in a good mood for a change, and the new book is certainly helping her disposition. The president will be thrilled by her purchase. This is most important to Mary Lincoln. Even in her lowest moods, she craves the attention and affection of her husband.

Lincoln’s fondness for all things Shakespeare is well known. While he enjoys lowbrow entertainment, like the comedian Barney Williams, who performs in blackface, he never misses the chance to attend a Shakespearean tragedy. During one two-month span in the winter of 1864, he saw Richard III, The Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, and, of course, Julius Caesar.

The actor playing all the lead roles was Edwin Booth, John’s older brother. In addition to his acting, he did the Lincolns an inadvertent favor by saving the life of their eldest son. When twenty-year-old Union officer Robert Todd Lincoln was shoved from a crowded railway platform into the path of an oncoming train, it was Edwin Booth who snatched him by the coat collar and pulled him back to safety. Robert never mentioned the incident to his father, but his commanding officer, Ulysses S. Grant, personally wrote a letter of thanks to the actor. Edwin’s brother’s reaction to this incident has never been determined—if he knew at all. This is the second remarkable coincidence linking Robert Todd Lincoln to John Wilkes Booth, the first being his infatuation with Lucy Hale, Booth’s fiancee.

Robert is due back in Washington any day, as is Grant. Lincoln’s spirits will soar at the sight of both men, but in the meantime Mary cannot wait to see his face light up when she presents him with Julius Caesar.

Lincoln is fond of two books more than any other: the Bible and Shakespeare’s collected works. Like his dog-eared Bible, Lincoln’s volume of Shakespeare has become frayed and worn over the years. This brand-new copy of Julius Caesar will certainly keep the president’s mood upbeat, which, in turn, will do wonders for Mary’s morale. Their euphorias and depressions are so closely intertwined that it’s hard to say which one’s emotional peaks and valleys influence the other more.

Lincoln is not at the White House right now. He’s taken a walk over to the War Department, where he sits on a comfortable sofa, hard at work on the business of healing the nation. His first test is immediate. The Virginia legislature is about to convene in Richmond. These are the same elected representatives who once voted to leave the Union. Now this “rebel legislature” will meet in the giant columned building designed by Thomas Jefferson, determined to rebuild the shattered state and return it to its former glory.

On the surface, this is a good thing. Lincoln himself urged the legislature to convene during a visit to Richmond the previous week, saying that “the prominent and influential men of their respective counties should come together and undo their own work.”

Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, the brilliant Ohio lawyer who is for whatever reason not on Booth’s list of targets, and in whose office Lincoln now sits, is strongly opposed. He tells Lincoln that to “place such powers in the Virginia legislature would be giving away the scepter of the conqueror, that it would transfer the result of the victory of our arms to the very legislature which four years before said, ‘give us war.’”

Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton

Lincoln disagrees. He is reluctant to see the United States Army turned into an occupying force, policing the actions of legislatures throughout the South. But he also realizes that by allowing Virginia’s lawmakers to meet without close Federal observation, he is setting a dangerous precedent. There would be nothing to stop other southern states from passing laws that conspire against the Federal government—in effect, keeping the Confederacy’s ideals alive.

Stanton and Lincoln were once sworn rivals, two opinionated and charismatic midwesterners who came to Washington with their own personal visions of what the country needed. They are physical opposites—Stanton’s stump to Lincoln’s beanpole. Stanton didn’t vote for Lincoln in 1860, but that didn’t stop the president from crossing party lines to name him secretary of war. Lincoln’s low wartime popularity was matched only by that of Stanton, who was relentless in his prosecution of any Union officer concealing Confederate sympathies. “He is the rock on the beach of our national ocean against which the breakers dash and roar, dash and roar without ceasing,” Lincoln once said of Stanton. “I do not see how he survives, why he is not crushed and torn to pieces. Without him I should be destroyed.”

As General Sam Grant glibly described Stanton: “He was an able constitutional lawyer and jurist, but the Constitution was not an impediment to him while the war lasted.”

Stanton, with a graying beard extending halfway down his chest, has the sort of strong-willed personality that terrifies timid souls. The Civil War may be over, but Lincoln has made it clear that the secretary of war will be instrumental in helping the country rebuild. He trusts Stanton’s counsel and uses him as a sounding board when tough decisions like this must be made. In many ways, Stanton does not behave as if he is subordinate to Lincoln. He expresses himself without fear of edit or censure, knowing that while Lincoln has strong opinions of his own, he is a good listener who can be swayed by a solid argument.

Now Stanton paces before the couch where Lincoln reclines, compiling his detailed argument against allowing the Virginia legislature to meet. He warns of the laws that might be passed, limiting the freedom of former slaves. He notes that the legislature has proven itself to be untrustworthy. And he reminds Lincoln that during his recent visit to Richmond the president made it clear that the Virginia lawmakers were being given only conditional authority—but that these same untrustworthy men are surely capable of ignoring those limits once they convene.

At last, Stanton explains his idea for temporary military governments in the southern states until order can be restored.

Lincoln doesn’t speak until Stanton finishes. Almost every single one of Stanton’s opinions runs contrary to Lincoln’s. Nonetheless, Lincoln hears Stanton out, then lets his thoughts percolate.

As Stanton looks on, Lincoln slowly rises off the couch and draws himself up to his full, towering height. He walks to the great oak desk near the window, where he silently composes a telegram withdrawing permission for the Virginia legislature to meet. For those representatives who have already traveled to Richmond for the session, he guarantees safe passage home.

Lincoln hands the telegram to Stanton, whose thick beard cannot hide his look of satisfaction after he finishes reading. Calling the wording “exactly right,” he hands the telegram to his clerk.

During the course of the Civil War, Lincoln’s use of telegrams—his “t-mail”—made him the first leader in world history to communicate immediately with his generals on the battlefield. He has sent, literally, thousands of these messages through the Department of War. This is his last.

On the walk back to the White House, Lincoln composes another sort of note in his head. It is to Mary, a simple invitation to go for a carriage ride on Friday afternoon. His words are playful and romantic, a reminder of the way things were before the war, and before the death of Willie. Their eldest son, Robert, is due home from the war any day. Surely, the cloud of melancholy that has hovered over the Lincolns is about to lift.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

THURSDAY, APRIL 13, 1865

WASHINGTON, D.C.

MORNING

The ides. As Booth takes the train to Baltimore, hoping to reenlist a former conspirator for that night’s expected executions, General Ulysses S. Grant and his wife, Julia, arrive in Washington at dawn. They have taken an overnight boat from City Point, Virginia. Grant is in no mood to be there. He is eager to push on to New Jersey to see their four children, but Secretary of War Stanton has specifically requested that the general visit the capital and handle a number of war-related issues. Grant’s plan is to get in and get out within twenty-four hours, with as little fuss as possible. With him are his aide Colonel Horace Porter and two sergeants to manage the Grants’ luggage.

Little does Grant know that an adoring Washington, D.C., is waiting to wrap its arms around him. “As we reached our destination that bright morning in our boat,” Julia later exclaimed, “every gun in and near Washington burst forth—and such a salvo!—all the bells rang out merry greetings, and the city was literally swathed in flags and bunting.”

If anything, Grant is even more beloved than the president right now. Strangers cheer the Grants’ open-air carriage on its way to the Willard Hotel, on the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and Fourteenth Street. As they pull up to the entrance, workers are on the roof, installing the gas jets that will spell out UNION for that evening’s Grand Illumination—a mass lighting of every candle, gas lamp, and firework in the city. Thousands upon thousands of people are now streaming into Washington to witness what will be an attempt to turn night into day as yet another celebration of war’s end.

Julia Grant

Grant, who has seen more than his share of fiery explosions, could not care less about the Illumination. Their journey has been an odyssey, and the Grants are exhausted. Since leaving Lee at Appomattox, Grant has endured two days of train derailments, another day waiting for a steamer in City Point, and then the dawn-to-dusk journey up the Potomac. But standing beside his beloved Julia revives Grant.

They have been a couple for more than twenty years and have endured many a long separation, thanks to the military life. It was Julia’s letters that sustained him during the Mexican War, when he was a homesick young lieutenant. And it was Julia who stood by her husband’s side during the 1850s, when he was discharged from the army and failed in a succession of businesses. They are happiest in each other’s company. Both are still young—he is not quite forty-three; she is thirty-nine. They have their whole lives in front of them. The sooner they can flee Washington, D.C., and get back to normal life, the better. And right now that means getting to their room, washing up, and letting the general race over to the War Department as quickly as possible.

There’s just one problem: the Grants don’t have a reservation at the Willard.

Grant has slept so many nights in impromptu battlefield lodgings procured on the fly by his staff that it never crossed his mind to send a telegram asking for a room. What he wants, he tells the flustered desk clerk, is a simple bedroom with an adjacent sitting room. It’s understood that Colonel Porter will need a room, too. The sergeants will bunk elsewhere.

The Willard Hotel is overbooked. Yet to allow the famous Ulysses S. Grant to take a room elsewhere would be an unthinkable loss of prestige.

Some way, somehow, rooms are instantly made available. Within minutes, Julia is unpacking their suitcases. Word about their location is already flying around Washington, and bundles of congratulatory telegrams and flowers soon flood the desk and bedroom. Julia will spend the afternoon reading each one, basking in the awareness that the man whose potential she had seen so long before, when he was just a quiet young lieutenant, has ascended from anonymity and disgrace to the level of great historical figure.

Not that General Grant cares. He just wants to get on with his business and get home. Within minutes, he and Porter meet in the lobby before the short walk to the War Department. It’s three blocks, just on the other side of the White House.

The two men step out onto Pennsylvania Avenue. At first the trek is easy, just two regular guys in uniform joining the sea of pedestrians, soldiers, and all those tourists pouring into the city for the Illumination. But Grant is hard to miss. Pictures of his bearded, expressionless face have been on the front pages of newspapers for more than a year. Soon the autograph seekers and the well-wishers, startled but elated by his presence, surround him. Porter tries to push them back, protecting his general in peacetime as he did in warfare. But he is just one man against many, and the diminutive Grant is swallowed by the mob. Porter pushes and elbows, grabbing Grant with one arm while shoving people back with the other. It’s a benevolent crowd, cheering for Grant even as they strain to touch him. But Porter knows a simple truth: this is a perfect opportunity for a disgruntled southerner to take a shot at Grant, then disappear in an instant.

Just when the situation begins to border on pandemonium, the Metropolitan Police come to their rescue. Grant and Porter are soon on their way again, this time inside a carriage, with a cavalry escort.

An introvert, Grant is pained by the attention and stares. Once inside the War Department, he hurries to formally conclude the logistics of war. Pen in hand and cigar clenched in his teeth, he tells the quartermaster general to stop ordering supplies and suspends the draft and further recruitment. With these orders, he saves the nation $4 million per day.

Though Grant hates public appearances, the city of Washington has planned the Grand Illumination celebration for this very night, specifically so he can be there. The Capitol dome will be lit, the Willard Hotel will illuminate the word UNION, and the governmental buildings are having a competition to see which can be the most brilliantly decorated. Stanton is fussing over the War Department’s display, which includes guns and flags as well as lights, while over at the Patent Office some five thousand candles will glow from every window. There will also be a massive fireworks display. And, of course, the bonfires that have blazed all week will still be burning bright. As intensely as Washington celebrated on Monday, Thursday night’s Grand Illumination will be even more monumental.

That afternoon, Grant meets with Lincoln at the White House. The last time they met was the day after Petersburg fell, on that veranda in the midst of that shattered city. There, Grant promised Lincoln that he would catch Lee and end the war. Now that Grant has fulfilled that promise, a grateful Lincoln offers his congratulations. He calls for a carriage. The two men ride around the crowded streets of Washington with the top down, shocking the flood of arriving visitors, who can’t believe that they are actually laying eyes on President Lincoln and General Grant. The ride is Lincoln’s way of giving Grant his moment in the sun after so many months of being second-guessed and labeled a butcher and of deflecting the glory showered upon him onto the man whose genius made it all possible.

It works. The two men are loudly cheered on every street corner.

When it is done, they make plans to meet again that night for the Illumination. They will be the center of attention, these two men who won the Civil War, watched by one and all.

Meanwhile, John Wilkes Booth and his band of assassins tend to their work of sharpening knives and cleaning their pistols, eager for their night of reckoning.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

THURSDAY, APRIL 13, 1865

WASHINGTON, D.C.

NIGHT

The four conspirators squeeze into room 6 at the Herndon House hotel, a few blocks from the White House. Booth, David Herold, Lewis Powell, and George Atzerodt lounge on the chairs and perch on the edge of the bed as Booth talks them through the plan. His recruiting trip to Baltimore was unsuccessful. He is too agitated to sit, so he paces as he thinks out loud. The wooden floor becomes a stage, and his oration a performance that takes him from stage left to stage right, then back to stage left again as he breaks down the plan. The parties outside are neither a distraction nor an offense, but a reminder of why they have gathered. Logically, each man knows that there must be plenty of Confederate sympathizers in Washington, huddled in their homes with jaws clenched as they endure the revelry. But right now the would-be assassins feel that they are the only ones who can right the grievous wrong.

Lewis Powell is the youngest and most experienced of the conspirators. He is a tall, powerfully built, and otherwise very handsome man—save for his face being deformed on one side, thanks to a mule’s kick. Unlike the others, Powell has actually killed a man, and may have enjoyed it very much. During the war the Floridian fought in several major battles, was wounded at Gettysburg, successfully escaped from a prisoner-of-war camp, and worked for the Confederate Secret Service. He is a solid horseman and quick with a knife. Thanks to his military training, Powell knows the value of reconnaissance. He prepped for his attack that morning by walking past Secretary of State Seward’s home on Madison Place, scoping out the best possible ways in and out of the building. He boldly struck up a conversation with Seward’s male nurse, just to make sure the secretary was indeed at home.

The reconnaissance is good news for Booth. He thus knows the location of two of the intended victims. Now it is his job to find Lincoln. An afternoon talking to stage managers had led to the inescapable conclusion that Lincoln is not going to the theater tonight. Booth, it seems, will not have his grand theatrical moment. Much to his dismay, it appears as if shooting Lincoln will be as mundane as putting a bullet into his brain on a crowded street during the Grand Illumination and then running like hell.

It finally dawns on one very drunk George Atzerodt that the plan has shifted from kidnapping to murder. The only reason he joined the conspiracy was that, in addition to running a small carriage-repair business in Port Tobacco, Maryland, he moonlights as a smuggler, ferrying mail, contraband, and people across the broad Potomac into Virginia. It is a hardscrabble and often dangerous existence. Atzerodt’s role in the kidnapping was to be an act of commerce, not rebellion. He was to be paid handsomely to smuggle the bound-and-gagged Lincoln into the hands of the Confederates.

But there is no longer a Confederacy, no longer a kidnapping plot, no longer a need for a boat, and certainly no longer a need for a smuggler—at least in Atzerodt’s mind. The thirty-year-old German immigrant slurs that he wants out.

Booth calmly springs his blackmail.

Booth cannot do without Atzerodt. His boat and his knowledge of the Potomac’s currents are vital to their escape. A massive manhunt will surely begin the instant Lincoln is killed. Federal officials will seal off Washington, D.C., and canvass the Maryland and Virginia countryside, but with Atzerodt’s guidance Booth and his men will rush through rural Maryland ahead of the search parties, cross the Potomac, and then follow smugglers’ routes south to Mexico.

Booth has rehearsed for this moment. He knows his lines and recites them with great drama.

“Then we will do it,” Booth says, nodding at Herold and Powell, never taking his eyes off the drunk German. “But what will come of you?”

And then, as if pulling the solution out of thin air: “You had better come along and get your horse.”

At the word “horse,” Atzerodt’s heart skips a beat. He’s trapped. Booth long ago suggested that the two men share horses from time to time. The horse a man rides is part of his identity. By sharing Booth’s favorite horse—which seemed like such a simple and thoughtful gesture on the actor’s part all those weeks ago—Atzerodt is now visibly connected to the assassination plot. Atzerodt has ridden Booth’s horse all over Washington and has even helped him sell a few animals; so there will be no shortage of witnesses.

Atzerodt sighs and nods his head. Murder it is. There is no way out for him.

The time has come. The four men stand, aware that they are about to commit the greatest crime in the history of the United States.

Before opening the door, Booth reminds them that their post-assassination rendezvous point is the road to Nanjemoy, on the Maryland side of the Potomac. Normally the sight of a lone horseman galloping out of Washington, D.C., long after dark would make the sentries guarding the bridges suspicious. But tonight is not a normal night. All those folks who’ve come into Washington for the Illumination will be making their way back home when it’s all done. Booth and his men will easily blend in with the same drunken bleating masses who are now making that wretched noise on the streets outside room 6.

If for some reason they can’t do the job tonight, they will remain in Washington and try again tomorrow.

Booth shakes hands with each man. They leave one at a time and go their separate ways.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

THURSDAY, APRIL 13, 1865

WASHINGTON, D.C.

NIGHT

There once was a fifth conspirator, the one Booth traveled to Baltimore to corral the day before. Mike O’Laughlen, a former Confederate soldier who grew up across the street from Booth, was one of the first men recruited by him last August. Just a month earlier the two men had lain in wait together for a certain carriage making its way down the lonely country road to the Soldiers’ Home, only to find that its occupant was a Supreme Court justice instead of the president.

Hiding in the tall grass along the side of the road, O’Laughlen had weighed the repercussions of actually kidnapping the president of the United States and realized that he would hang by the neck until dead if caught. He was actually relieved that the carriage belonged to Salmon P. Chase instead of Lincoln.

The twenty-four-year-old engraver returned to Baltimore and put the kidnapping plot behind him. He wanted a normal life. When Booth came calling a week later with an even more far-fetched plot to kidnap the president by handcuffing him at the theater and then lowering his body to the stage, O’Laughlen shook his head and told Booth to go away.

But Booth is nothing if not relentless. In Baltimore, he tried to convince O’Laughlen to rejoin the conspiracy. O’Laughlen told the actor he didn’t want any part of the killing. Yet the same day he apparently changed his mind, and he traveled to Washington a short time later. O’Laughlen started drinking the minute he arrived, bellying up to the bar at a place called Rullman’s until his behavior became erratic. Like Booth, who now prowls Washington in the desperate hope of finding Lincoln, O’Laughlen prowls the bustling thoroughfares, unsure of what to do next.

Meanwhile, General Sam Grant, whose idea of a stellar evening is chain-smoking cigars and sipping whiskey, would be very happy staying in for the evening. But as Julia points out, General and Mrs. Grant have not attended a party together for quite some time. Sitting in their room on this very special night, no matter how luxurious the accommodations, would be a waste. Julia shows her husband invitation after invitation to party after party. She is thrilled to be in the city but also eager to leave as soon as possible to rejoin their four children. Knowing that they have perhaps just this one night in Washington, Grant agrees that they should venture out.

Reluctantly, Grant leaves the hotel. They engage a carriage to take them to the home of Secretary of War Stanton, who is holding a gala celebration for War Department employees. Four brass bands serenade the partygoers from nearby Franklin Square, and a fireworks demonstration will cap the night.

Grant has been a target ever since he took command of Lincoln’s army. But even with all the people in the streets he is unafraid. The war is over.

The Grants arrive at Stanton’s home. A bodyguard stands at the top of the steps, one of the few the general has encountered in Washington. The Grants are greeted with a loud round of applause as they join the partygoers, but they are soon lost in the sea of other prominent faces. Grant gets a drink and settles in to endure the politicking and glad-handing soon to head his way.

But the Grants have been followed. Mike O’Laughlen, wearing a dark suit, marches up the front steps of Stanton’s house and tries to crash the party. The sergeant providing security brushes him off, telling the unwanted guest, “If you wish to see him, step out on the pavement, or the stone where the carriage stops.”

O’Laughlen disappears into the night, only to return later asking to see Secretary Stanton. Coincidentally, Stanton and Grant are both standing just a few feet away, watching the fireworks. There is still something of the conspirator in O’Laughlen, a willingness to take risks where others might not. He takes a bold gamble, blends in with the crowd, and slips undetected into the party, despite the security detail. He then goes one better by walking over and standing directly behind Stanton.

But Mike O’Laughlen does nothing to harm the secretary of war. Nor does he bother Grant. The fact is, he doesn’t know what Stanton looks like, and as a former Confederate soldier with a deep respect for rank, he is too nervous to speak with Grant.

Observers will later remember the drunk in the dark coat and suggest that his intentions were to kill the general and the secretary. Nothing could be further from the truth: the surprising fact is that O’Laughlen is actually here to warn them about Booth. But even after all those drinks, Mike O’Laughlen still can’t summon the courage. He thinks of the repercussions and how if he informs on Booth, his childhood friend will most surely reveal the story about the kidnapping attempt four weeks earlier. That admission would mean the same jail sentence—or even execution—for O’Laughlen as for Booth.

No. Nothing good can come of telling Stanton or Grant a single detail of the plot. Mike O’Laughlen disappears into the night and drinks himself blind.

Meanwhile, a crowd gathers in front of Stanton’s home. For all his attempts at avoiding the limelight, word of Grant’s location has spread throughout the city. Cries of “Speech!” rock the night air, his admirers thoroughly unaware that Grant is terrified of public speaking.

Stanton comes to the rescue. Never afraid of expressing himself, the secretary throws out a few bon mots to pacify his audience. Grant says nothing, but the combination of a small wave to the crowd and Stanton’s spontaneous words are enough to satiate Grant’s fans. Soon the sidewalks are bare.

On the other side of town, John Wilkes Booth steps back into the National Hotel, frustrated and tired from hours of walking bar to bar, party to party, searching for Lincoln. The Deringer rests all too heavily in his coat pocket, in its barrel the single unfired round that could have changed the course of history. There has been no news of any other assassinations, so he can only assume that his conspirators have also failed—and he is right. Herold, Atzerodt, and Powell were all unable to conquer their fears long enough to cross the line from fanatic to assassin.

Perhaps tomorrow.

One mile away, in his White House bedroom, Abraham Lincoln slumbers peacefully. A migraine has kept him in for the night.

Hopefully that will not be the case tomorrow evening, for the Lincolns have plans to attend the theater.

Part Three

THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY

The last known photograph of Lincoln, February 1865

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1865

WASHINGTON, D.C.

7:00 A.M.

It is Good Friday morning, the day on which Jesus Christ was crucified, died an agonizing death, and was quickly buried. All of this after he had been betrayed by Judas and scorned by a public that had lionized him just days before.

Abraham Lincoln is a religious man but not a churchgoer. He was born into a Christian home in the wilderness, where established churches were rare. His father and mother were staunch “hard-shell” Baptists, and at a young age he attended the Pigeon Creek Baptist Church. Lincoln’s church attendance became sporadic in his adult life. Nevertheless, he took comfort in reading the Bible on a daily basis and often used the words of God to make important points in his public pronouncements. Indeed, his faith has grown because of the war. But because Lincoln never attached himself to an organized religion as an adult, his ability to combine the secular and the religious in the way he goes about his life will later have everyone from atheists to humanists to Calvinists claiming that he is one of theirs. The truth is, Abraham Lincoln does believe in God and has relied on Scripture in overcoming all the challenges he has confronted.

Lincoln rises at seven A.M. Outside the White House, the Washington weather is a splendid, sunny fifty degrees. Dogwoods are blooming along the Potomac and the scent of spring lilacs carries on the morning breeze as the president throws his size 14 feet over the edge of the bed, slides them into a pair of battered slippers, pulls on an equally weathered robe, pushes open the rosewood bedroom door, says good morning to his night watchman, and walks down a second-floor hallway to the White House library. The quiet night at home has been good for his soul. Lincoln’s sleep was restful. All symptoms of his migraine have disappeared.

Petitioners sleeping in the White House hallway leap to their feet upon the sight of Lincoln. They have come seeking presidential favors—a pardon, a job, an appointment. The president is courteous but evasive at their shouted requests, eager to be alone in the quiet of the library. That strangers actually sleep on the White House floor is commonplace at the time. “The multitude, washed or unwashed, always has free egress and ingress” into the White House, an astonished visitor wrote earlier in Lincoln’s presidency.

The White House’s open-door policy ends today.

The president’s favorite chair is in the exact center of the room. He sits down and opens his Bible, not because it is Good Friday but because starting the day with Scripture is a lifelong custom. Glasses balanced on the end of his prominent nose, he reads a verse, then another, before setting the Good Book on a side table. He leans back in the chair to meditate, enjoying the only quiet and solitary moments he will know this day.

Lincoln traipses down the hall to his office. His desk is mahogany, with cubbies and shelves. Behind him is the willow-lined Potomac, seen clearly outside the window.

Secretaries John Nicolay and John Hay have laid the mail on the desk, having already removed the love letters Lincoln sometimes receives from young ladies, and the assassination letters more often sent by older men. Typically, the president gets almost three hundred letters a day, of which he reads only a half dozen, at most.

Lincoln skims the mail, then jots down a few notes. Each is signed “A. Lincoln” if it is of a more official nature, or just “Yours truly,” as in the case of his note to William Seward. The secretary of state continues to recover from his horrible accident, his jaw and shattered skull mending slowly. Now he lies in bed at home, a convenient stone’s throw across the street from the White House.

Breakfast is scheduled for eight o’clock. Lincoln finishes his brief business and enters a small room, where he grooms himself. Daily baths and showers are rare, even in the White House. Lincoln is eager to be downstairs, for his son Robert is just back from the war and will be joining him, twelve-year-old Tad, and Mary for breakfast. More importantly, Robert was in the room when Lee surrendered at Appomattox. Though Lincoln heard the story from Grant yesterday, he is keen to hear more about this landmark event. The war’s end is one topic he never gets tired of talking about.

Just twenty-one, with a thin mustache and a captain’s rank, Robert is still boyish, despite his time at the front. As Lincoln sips coffee and eats the single boiled egg that constitutes his daily breakfast, Robert describes “the stately elegant Lee” and Grant, “the small stooping shabby shy man in the muddy blue uniform, with no sword and no spurs.”

When Lincoln asks what it was like to be there, his son is breathless. “Oh, it was great!” the normally articulate Robert exclaims, unable to find a more expressive way to describe being present at one of the seminal moments in American history.

Robert hands Lincoln a portrait of Lee. The president lays it on the table, where it stares up at him. Lincoln tells his son that he truly believes the time of peace has come. He is unfazed by the small but bitter Confederate resistance that remains. His thoughts are far away from the likes of John Wilkes Booth.

Pressing business awaits Lincoln in his office, but he allows breakfast to stretch on for almost an hour. He can permit himself this luxury, with the war finally over. At last he stands, his body stooped, now just an inch or two less than the towering height of his youth. He is relaxed and happy, even though his severe weight loss makes him look like “a skeleton with clothes,” in the words of one friend.

Lincoln reminds Mary that they have a date for a carriage ride this afternoon. To Robert, he suggests that the time has come to remove the uniform, return to Harvard, and spend the next three years working on his law degree. “At the end of that time I hope we will be able to tell if you will make a good lawyer or not,” he concludes, sounding more serious than he feels. The words are a sign that he is mentally transitioning from the easy part of his day into those long office hours when, even with the war concluded, the weight of the world presses down on his shoulders.

By nine A.M., President Lincoln is sitting at his desk.

Every aspect of Lincoln’s early morning has the feel of a man putting his affairs in order: reading the Bible, jotting a few notes, arranging for a last carefree whirl around Washington with his loyal wife, and setting his son on a path that will ensure him a successful future. All of this is done unconsciously, of course, but it is notable.

Even if it is not mentioned on this day in the White House, the potential assassination of the president is a topic of discussion in and around Washington. The chattering class doesn’t know when it might occur, but many believe an attempt will come very soon.

“To those familiar with the city of Washington,” a member of his cavalry detail will later write, “it was not surprising that Lincoln was assassinated. The surprising thing to them was that it was so long delayed. It is probable that the only man in Washington who, if he thought upon the subject of all, did not think that Mr. Lincoln was in constant and imminent danger, was Mr. Lincoln himself.”

But today it is as if Lincoln subconsciously knows what is about to happen.

A mile down Pennsylvania Avenue, the man who does know what is about to happen is also setting his affairs in order.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1865

WASHINGTON, D.C.

9:00 A.M.

John Wilkes Booth walks slowly down the hotel corridor, momentarily at a loss for words. He has come to say good-bye to his beloved Lucy. He struggles to think of a way to break off their secret engagement and intimate that he might never see her again. Even though their relationship has been all but dead since Newport, of all the terrible things he must do today, what he is about to do next breaks his heart like no other.

The Hales are living in the National Hotel, on the corner of Pennsylvania and Sixth. Booth lives in the same hotel, room 228. Lucy does charity work for the Sanitation Committee and even rode to the front lines of nearby battlefields to visit the troops. It’s well known that her father wishes her to marry someone powerful and well connected. For Lucy to not only slink off to the room of an actor but also agree to marry him would enrage Senator Hale. So while the relationship has slowly become more public, she and Booth have kept their pending nuptials a secret.

It’s nine A.M. when Booth knocks on her door. He wears a ring she gave him as a keepsake. Booth has the eccentric habit of kissing the ring absentmindedly when out drinking with friends, and he does so now, as he nervously waits for her to answer. This will be the last time he’ll see her for quite a while—perhaps forever. Lucy’s father has been appointed ambassador to Spain, and the entire family will accompany him abroad. Booth plans to escape to Mexico after shooting Lincoln and then perhaps sail to Spain for a clandestine visit with Lucy if all goes well.

But how to say good-bye? How to make the next few moments as touching and romantic as any farewell should be, while also not letting her know he’s leaving and why?

Their relationship began in 1862. Booth became enchanted after glimpsing her in a crowd and sent Lucy an anonymous Valentine’s Day love letter. This was followed shortly afterward by another missive, revealing his identity. If its intended effect was to make twenty-one-year-old Lucy swoon, it worked. Booth was at the height of his fame and good looks, delighting women across the country with his performance as the male lead in a traveling production of Romeo and Juliet. One actress even tried to kill herself after he rebuffed her advances.

But Lucy Lambert Hale was not in the habit of throwing herself at men. So while Booth might have had the upper hand at the start, she made him work hard for her affection. The relationship simmered for two years, starting with flirtation and then blossoming into something more. The pair became intimate. When he was on the road, Booth was as faithful as a traveling thespian could be, which is to say that he made love to other women but considered them second to Lucy in his heart.

Booth is not the sort of man to mean it when he says, “I love you.” For the most part, women are the objects of his own gratification. But Lucy has long treated men the same way, holding them at arm’s length emotionally, basking in their charms, and then discarding them when someone newer and better comes along. In each other, Booth and Lucy met their match.

But they are also opposites in many ways. She comes from a more elite level of society, one that does not consider acting a gentlemanly career. She is an abolitionist, and he is most certainly not. He professes a heartfelt belief in the southern cause, while she is the daughter of a ferociously partisan northern senator. The engagement is doomed.

Booth has not seen Lucy since their ill-fated getaway to Newport. They haven’t so much as exchanged letters or passed each other in the hallway, even though they live in the same hotel. He has no idea how she will react to his visit.

A servant answers the door and ushers him inside the suite. Lucy appears a moment later, the unfinished business of their argument hanging between them. They both know that it’s over. Nothing more needs to be said, much to Booth’s relief. They make small talk, skirting the obvious issue. And then it is time to say good-bye. Before leaving, Booth asks Lucy for a photograph so that he might have something to remember her by.

She steps out of the room and returns with a small portrait of her face in profile. Her hair is pulled back off her forehead and her lips are creased in a Mona Lisa smile. Booth thanks Lucy and gives her a long last look. He then turns and walks out of the Hales’ suite, explaining breezily that he is off to get a shave, wondering if he will ever make it to Spain to see Lucy again.

Lucy Hale in the photograph she gave John Wilkes Booth

As he walks back down the hallway, the sound of the closing door still echoing in the corridor, he admires the picture and slips it into his breast pocket, next to the pictures of four other women who have enjoyed his charms. The life of a narcissist is often cluttered.

The pictures will remain in Booth’s pocket for the rest of his short life.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1865

WASHINGTON, D.C.

10:00 A.M.

Mary Lincoln has tickets for a play—and what a spectacular performance it will be. Grover’s Theatre is not only staging a lavish production of Aladdin, or The Wonderful Lamp but is adding a grand finale for this night only, during which the cast and audience will rise as one to sing patriotic songs written especially for the occasion. Everyone in Washington is talking about it.

But Mary is torn. Word has come from James Ford, the manager of Ford’s Theatre, that he is staging the wildly popular farce Our American Cousin. Tonight the legendary actress Laura Keene is celebrating her one thousandth performance in her signature role as Florence Trenchard. This milestone, Ford has politely suggested to Mary, is something not to be missed.

Keene, thirty-eight, is not only one of America’s most famous actresses but also very successful as a theater manager. In fact, she is the first woman in America to manage her own high-profile career and purchase a theater. That theater will later be renamed the Winter Garden, and it is still in existence today at a different location in New York City. Offstage, Laura Keene’s life is not so tidy—she pretends to be married to her business manager, but in truth she is secretly married to a convicted felon who has run off to Australia. During an extended tour of that faraway continent, Keene quarreled mightily with her costar, the equally vain Edwin Booth.

Laura Keene

But onstage Laura Keene is a force. The gimlet-eyed actress owes much of that success to Our American Cousin. At first she thought very little of the script, which places a country bumpkin in the upper class of British society. But then Keene changed her mind and bought worldwide rights. Debuting seven years earlier at Laura Keene’s Theatre on Broadway, it soon became the first blockbuster play in American history. It was performed in Chicago on the same night in May 1860 that Lincoln was confirmed as the Republican nominee for the presidency. Many of the play’s screwball terms, like “sockdologizing” and “Dundrearyisms” (named for the befuddled character Lord Dundreary), have become part of the cultural lexicon, and several spinoff plays featuring characters from the show have been written and performed.

Despite all that, ticket sales for this run of the play have been so sluggish that Ford’s will be nearly empty. But Mary Lincoln doesn’t mind. What matters most to her is that on this most patriotic of evenings, she and the president will celebrate their first visit to the theater since the war’s end by enjoying the quintessential American comedy, on a night that features one of America‘s—if not the world’s—most famous actresses.

Aladdin can wait.

The playbill for Our American Cousin from the night the Lincolns were in attendance, April 14, 1865

With this sudden and impulsive decision to attend one show and not the other, an eerie coincidence will unravel: thanks to the performance that took place in Chicago in 1860, Our American Cousin will bracket both the beginning and the end of the Lincoln administration.

Over breakfast a few hours earlier, Mary told the president that she wanted to go to Ford’s. Lincoln absentmindedly said he would take care of it.

Now, between appointments, Lincoln summons a messenger. He wants a message delivered to Ford’s Theatre, saying that he will be in attendance this evening if the state box is available. General Grant and his wife will be with him, as will Mary.

Abraham Lincoln is the undisputed leader of the world’s most ascendant nation, a country spanning three thousand miles and touching two oceans. During the war, he could send men off to die with a single command to his generals. He has freed the slaves. This is a man who has the power to do almost anything he wants. And tonight, if truth be told, he would prefer to see Aladdin.

Yet Lincoln would never dream of contradicting Mary’s wishes. His life is much easier when she is appeased. A volatile and opinionated woman whose intellect does not match her considerable capacity for rage, Mary Lincoln is short and round, wears her hair parted straight down the middle, and prefers to be called “Madame President,” which some believe is pretentious, to say the least. Mary’s rants about some person or situation that has angered her can sidetrack Lincoln’s day and drain him of precious energy, so he does all he can to make sure nothing upsets her unstable psyche.

But to be fair, Mary Lincoln has also suffered the deaths of two young sons during her twenty-two-year marriage. Lincoln dotes on her. A compassionate man, he tries more to ease the lingering pain than to merely keep the peace. Mary Lincoln is almost ten years younger than her husband, and they had an on-again, off-again courtship and even broke off their first engagement when Lincoln had cold feet about marrying her. Mary is from an affluent home, which afforded her an education that few American women enjoyed at the time. Lithe in her early twenties, Mary has put on considerable weight. And though she had many suitors as a young woman, few would now consider her to be good-looking. Nevertheless, Lincoln is enamored. The president considers Mary the love of his life. Some historians believe that because Lincoln lost his mother at the age of nine, he was drawn to women with maternal, protective instincts. Mary Lincoln certainly fits that description.

Mary Todd Lincoln

Lincoln is overdue at the War Department. He also has a cabinet meeting scheduled in just over an hour. He hurriedly steps out of the White House and walks over to see Stanton. Mary demands that he wear a shawl, and so he does, not caring in the slightest that the gray garment draped over his shoulders gives him a decidedly nonpresidential appearance.

Lincoln strolls into Stanton’s office unannounced, plops down on the couch, and casually mentions that he’s going to the theater that night. The words are designed to provoke a reaction—and they do.

Stanton frowns. His network of spies have told him of assassination rumors. Last night, during the Illumination party at his home, Stanton adamantly warned Grant away from going to the theater with the Lincolns. Stanton is no less stern with Lincoln. He thinks the president is a fool for ignoring the assassination rumors and argues that Lincoln is risking his life.

“At least bring a guard with you,” Stanton pleads, once it becomes obvious that Lincoln will not be dissuaded. That statement is the best evidence we have that Secretary of War Stanton did not wish Lincoln ill. If, as some conspiracy theorists believe, Stanton wished Lincoln dead, why would he want to provide him with protection?

The president is in a playful mood. “Stanton,” Lincoln says, “did you know that Eckert can break a poker over his arm?”

Major Thomas T. Eckert is the general superintendent of the Military Telegraph Corps. He once demonstrated the shoddy nature of the War Department’s fireplace irons by breaking the defective metal rods over his left forearm.

“Why do you ask such a question?” Stanton replies, mystified.

“Stanton, I have seen Eckert break five pokers, one after the other, over his arm, and I am thinking that he would be the kind of man who would go with me this evening. May I take him?”

“Major Eckert has a great deal of work to do. He can’t be spared.”

“Well, I will ask the major himself,” Lincoln responds.

But Eckert knows better than to cross Stanton. Despite a barrage of good-natured pleading by the president, Eckert says he cannot attend the theater that evening.

His business with Stanton concluded, Lincoln wraps his shawl tightly around his shoulders and marches back to the White House for his cabinet meeting.

CHAPTER THIRTY

FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1865

WASHINGTON, D.C.

10:30 A.M.

Lincoln’s messenger reaches Ford’s at 10:30 A.M. “The president of the United States would like to formally request the state box for this evening—if it is available,” the note reads.

The state box is available, James Ford immediately responds, barely containing his excitement. He races into the manager’s office to share the good news with his brother Harry and then barks the order for the stage carpenter to come see him right this instant.

Ford’s may be the city’s preeminent stage, but business has been extremely slow this week. The postwar jubilation means that Washington’s theatergoers are making merry on the streets, not penned together inside watching a show. In fact, Ford had been anticipating yet another dismal night. Our American Cousin is no match for the Grover’s Aladdin, which has been made all the more spectacular by the postshow victory rally, thus allowing audience members to watch a play and make merry. Ford can almost hear the actors’ words echoing off empty seats, and the punch lines that will receive a yawn instead of the guffaw a packed and energized theater so often guarantees. But now, with word that the president will be in the audience, the night should be a sellout.

Ford’s was originally known as the First Baptist Church of Washington. When the Baptists moved out, in 1861, James’s brother John purchased the building and turned it into a playhouse. When Ford’s Athenaeum was destroyed by fire in 1862, some said it was God’s will, because many churchgoers considered the theater to be the devil’s playground. But John Ford was undeterred. He not only rebuilt the great brick building; he reshaped it into the nation’s most modern theater.

Ford’s Theatre, 1865

Ford’s reopened to rave reviews in August 1863. The building is flanked on either side by taverns—the Greenback Saloon to the left and Taltavul’s Star Saloon to the right—so that theatergoers can pop next door for a drink at intermission. The outside of the theater itself features five decorative archways. Patrons enter through the center arch, leading directly into the ticket booth and lobby. The steps leading up from the street are granite. The unpaved streets are often muddy this time of year, so Ford has built a wooden ramp from the street into the lobby. This ensures that ladies won’t soil their evening wear when stepping out of their carriages.

Inside, three seating levels face the stage. Gas lamps light the auditorium until the curtain falls, when they are dimmed by a single backstage valve. The chairs are a simple straight-backed cane but, inside his special presidential box, Lincoln prefers to sit in the red horsehair-upholstered rocking chair that Ford’s reserves for his personal use.

Boxes on either side of the stage allow the more privileged patrons to look straight down onto the actors. The state box, where the Lincolns and Grants will sit this evening, is almost on the stage itself—so close that if Lincoln were to impulsively rise from his rocking chair and leap down into the actors’ midst, the distance traveled would be a mere nine feet.

The state box is actually two side-by-side boxes. When not being used by the president or some other national dignitary, they are available for sale to the general public and simply referred to as boxes 7 and 8. A pine partition divides them.

On nights when the Lincolns are in attendance, the partition is removed. Red, white, and blue bunting is draped over the railing and a portrait of George Washington faces out at the audience, designating that the president of the United States is in the house. Out of respect for the office, none of the other boxes are for sale when the Lincolns occupy the state box.

Now, with the news that this will be such a night, the first thing on James Ford’s mind is decorating the state box with the biggest and most spectacular American flag he can find. He remembers that the Treasury Department has such a flag. With governmental offices due to close at noon for the Good Friday observance, there’s little time to spare.

By sheer coincidence, John Wilkes Booth marches up those granite front steps at that very moment. Like many actors, he spends so much time on the road that he doesn’t have a permanent address. So Ford’s Opera House, as the theater is formally known, is his permanent mailing address.

As James Ford reacts to Lincoln’s request, an Our American Cousin rehearsal is taking place. The sound of dramatic voices wafts through the air. The show has been presented eight previous times at Ford’s, but Laura Keene isn’t taking any chances with cues or blocking. If this is to be her thousandth and, perhaps, final performance of this warhorse, she will see to it that the cast doesn’t flub a single line. This bent toward perfectionism is a Keene hallmark and a prime reason she has enjoyed such a successful career.

Booth’s mail is in the manager’s office. As he picks up a bundle of letters, stage carpenter James J. Gifford bounds into the room, curious as to why Ford wants to see him. When the theater manager shares the exciting news about the Lincolns, Clifford is ecstatic, but Booth pretends not to hear, instead staring straight down at his mail, acting as if he is studying the return addresses. He grins, though he does not mean to. He calms himself and makes small talk with Ford, then says his good-byes and wanders out into the sunlight. Booth sits on the front step, half-reading his mail and laughing aloud at his sudden good fortune.

Ford walks past, explaining that he is off to purchase bunting—and perhaps a thirty-six-star flag.

Until this moment, Booth has known what he wants to do and the means with which he will do it. But the exact details of the murder have so far eluded him.

Sitting on the front step of Ford’s Theatre on this Good Friday morning, he knows that he will kill Lincoln tonight and in this very theater. Booth has performed here often and is more familiar with its hidden backstage tunnels and doors than he is with the streets of Washington. The twofold challenge he now faces is the traditional assassin’s plight: find the most efficient path into the state box in order to shoot Abraham Lincoln and then find the perfect escape route from the theater.

The cast and crew at Ford’s treat Booth like family. His eccentricities are chalked up to his being a famous actor. The theatrical world is full of a hundred guys just as unpredictable and passionate, so nobody dreams that he has a burning desire to kill the president. So it is, as Booth rises to his feet and wanders back into the theater to plan the attack, that it never crosses anyone’s mind to ask what he’s doing. It’s just John being John.

The seats are all empty. The house lights are up. Onstage, the rehearsal is ending.

John Wilkes Booth prowls Ford’s Theatre alone, analyzing, scrutinizing, estimating. His journey takes him up the back stairs to the state box, where he steps inside and looks down at the stage. A music stand provides an unlikely burst of inspiration. He hefts it in his hand, nervous but elated, knowing how he will make use of it tonight. By the time he is done, Booth has come up with an audacious—and brilliant—plan of attack.

On Booth’s mind are these questions: Will he commit the perfect crime? And will he go down in history as a great man?

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1865

WASHINGTON, D.C.

11:00 A.M.

A hazy sun shines down on Washington’s empty streets. The city is so quiet it seems to be asleep. The Good Friday observance means that its citizens are temporarily done celebrating the war’s end. They are now in church or at home repenting, leaving the local merchants to lament the momentary loss of the booming business they’ve enjoyed the past few days.

Hundreds of miles to the south, in Fort Sumter, South Carolina, a massive celebration is about to take place, commemorating the raising of the Stars and Stripes. Major General Robert Anderson stands before forty-five hundred people as the very flag that was lowered there four years earlier, marking the beginning of the war, now climbs the flagpole. A minister offers a prayer of thanksgiving. The Union is reunited.

Back in Washington, General Grant walks to the White House, feeling conflicted. He was supposed to meet with Lincoln at nine A.M., but the president rescheduled for eleven so that Grant can attend the cabinet meeting. Now he feels obligated to attend the theater tonight with the Lincolns. But Julia Grant, who thinks Mary Lincoln is unstable and a gossip, has bluntly refused. When the theater invitation arrived from Mary Lincoln earlier that morning, Julia replied with a firm no, stating that the Grants would be leaving town that afternoon and noting, “We will not, therefore, be here to accompany the President and Mrs. Lincoln to the theatre.” She is, in fact, adamant that they catch the afternoon train out of Washington. Going to the theater with Mary Lincoln is out of the question.

General Grant is caught in the middle. Lincoln has become such an ally and dear friend that turning down his invitation seems rude. But displeasing his wife, who has endured many a sacrifice these past years, is equally daunting.

The two soldiers standing guard at the White House gate snap to attention as their general in chief arrives. Grant tosses them a return salute with the casual ease of a man who has done it thousands of times, never breaking stride as he continues on to the front door.

The doorman nods graciously as Grant steps inside, dressed in his soldier’s uniform, moving past the police bodyguard currently on duty and a rifle-bearing soldier also in dress uniform. Then it’s up the stairs to Lincoln’s second-floor office, where another soldier stands guard. Soon Grant is seated in Lincoln’s cabinet meeting, somewhat surprised by the loose way in which such matters are conducted. He assumed that Lincoln’s entire cabinet would be in attendance, particularly since there are so many pressing matters of state to discuss. But a quick glance around the room shows no sign of Secretary of War Stanton or Secretary of the Interior John P. Usher. Secretary of State William Seward, home recovering from his carriage accident, is represented by his son Frederick. And as Lincoln leans back in his chair along the south window, the half-filled room feels more like a collegiate debating club than a serious political gathering. Lincoln guides the dialogue, which jumps from elation at the war’s end to other topics and back, taking no notes as he soaks in the various opinions. His behavior is that of a first among equals rather than the ultimate decision maker.

The meeting is into its second hour as Grant is shown into the room, and his entrance injects a new vitality—just as Lincoln intended. The cabinet, to a man, is effusive in praise of the general and begs to hear details of the Appomattox surrender. Grant sets the scene, describing the quaint McLean farmhouse and the way he and Lee sat together to settle the country’s fate. He doesn’t go into great detail, and he makes a point of praising Lee. The cabinet members are struck by his modesty but clamor for more.

Lincoln tries to draw him out. “What terms did you make for the common soldiers?” the president asks, already knowing the answer.

“To go back to their homes and families, and they would not be molested, if they did nothing more.”

There is a point to Lincoln’s inviting Grant to this meeting, as evidenced by this new line of inquiry. Lincoln hopes for a certain pragmatic lenience toward the southern states, rather than a draconian punishment, as his vice president, Andrew Johnson, favors. Lincoln has not seen Johnson since his second inauguration. But Lincoln’s lenient plan for the South is not borne solely out of kindness nor with just the simple goal of healing the nation. The South’s bustling warm-water ports and agricultural strength will be a powerful supplement to the nation’s economy. With the nation mired in more than $2 billion of wartime debt, and with Union soldiers still owed back pay, extra sources of income are vitally needed.

Grant’s simple reply has the desired effect. Lincoln beams as the cabinet members nod their heads in agreement.

“And what of the current military situation?”

Grant says that he expects word from Sherman any minute, saying that General Joe Johnston has finally surrendered. This, too, is met with enthusiasm around the table.

Throughout the proceedings, Grant’s feeling of unease about that evening’s plans lingers. He makes up his mind to tell Lincoln that he will attend the theater. Doing otherwise would be ungracious and disrespectful. Julia will be furious, but eventually she will understand. And then, first thing in the morning, they can be on the train to New Jersey.

The cabinet meeting drags on. One o’clock rolls past. One-thirty.

A messenger arrives carrying a note for Grant. It’s from Julia and she’s not happy. Mrs. Grant wants her husband back at the Willard Hotel immediately, so that they can catch the 6:00 P.M. to Burlington, New Jersey.

General Grant’s decision has now been made for him. After months and years of men obeying his every order, he bows to an even greater authority than the president of the United States: his wife.

“I am sorry, Mr. President,” Grant says when the cabinet meeting ends, just after one-thirty. “It is certain that I will be on this afternoon’s train to Burlington. I regret that I cannot attend the theater.”

Lincoln tries to change Grant’s mind, telling him that the people of Washington will be at Ford’s to see him. But the situation is out of the general’s hands. Lincoln senses that and says good-bye to his dear friend.

The Grants will make their train. Julia is so eager to leave town that she has chosen the local, which takes thirteen long hours to reach Burlington. The faster option would be the seven-thirty express in the morning, but that would mean a night at the theater with the daft and unbalanced Mary Lincoln. Julia Grant’s mind is made up.

What Ulysses S. Grant does not know is that he will be returning to Washington by the same train within twenty-four hours.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1865

WASHINGTON, D.C.

2:00 P.M.

Two thousand years after the execution of Jesus, there are still many unanswered questions about who was directly responsible for his death and what happened in the aftermath. And so it is, on Good Friday 1865, that a series of bizarre occurrences will take place.

In the hours to come guards will inexplicably leave their posts, bridges that should be closed will miraculously be open, and telegrams alerting the army to begin a manhunt for Lincoln’s killer will not be sent—all happenings that have been tied to a murky conspiracy that most likely will never be uncovered. What we do know is that in these hours, John Wilkes Booth is putting the final touches on his murderous plan.

Booth is on an emotional roller coaster, his spirits rising and falling as he ponders the assassination and its consequences, all the while running down his checklist, completing the tasks that must be done for tonight. He is dressed in dashing fashion, with tight black pants, a tailored black coat, and a black hat. With those clothes and his broad black mustache, he couldn’t look more like a villain. The only thing he wears that isn’t black are his boots—they’re tan.

The first stop is Mary Surratt’s boardinghouse on H Street. She is walking out the door for a trip into the country to collect on an old debt, but Booth catches her just in time. He hands her a spyglass wrapped in brown paper and tied with a string, telling her to make sure that it doesn’t get wet or break. One of Surratt’s tenants, Louis Weichmann, is a soldier and government clerk whose job deals with the care and housing of prisoners of war. Weichmann senses that there’s something shady about Booth, having listened to his rants and spent enough time around the Surratts to discern the pro-Confederate leanings of the crowd. So he leans in to eavesdrop as Mary and Booth confer by the marble fireplace.

Mary catches him. She calmly orders Weichmann to leave her house at once and pick up a horse and buggy for her journey.

By the time Weichmann returns with the horse and buggy, Booth is gone, walking the five blocks to Herndon House, where Lewis Powell is lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling. He and Booth discuss the evening’s plan. The trick in killing Secretary of State Seward, Booth reminds him, isn’t the actual murder—Seward is still barely conscious and in great pain after his carriage accident. He is incapable of putting up any resistance.

No, the hard part will be getting in and out of Seward’s home. There is at least one male military nurse to protect the secretary, along with Seward’s wife and three of his children. In a worst-case scenario, Powell will have to kill them all, Booth says. Powell, mentally impaired since that long-ago mule kick to the head, says he has no problem with mass murder.

Then Booth is on the move again, headed for Pumphrey’s stable to arrange for his getaway horse. He prefers a small sorrel, but it’s already gone for the day. Instead, Booth rents a compact bay mare with a white star on her forehead. Pumphrey warns Booth that although the mare is just fourteen hands high, she’s extremely high-spirited. She mustn’t be tied to a post if he leaves her anywhere, because she’ll pull away and escape. Better to have someone hold her reins at all times.

The bay tries to bite Booth as the groom cinches the English saddle under her belly and adjusts her stirrups. To demonstrate her high spirits, the groom smacks the mare on the rump. She jumps and kicks, much to Booth’s delight.

Booth saddles up. He likes the horse with the black mane and tail, but the stirrups don’t feel right. The groom shortens them one notch and Booth is on his way, walking the mare up Sixth Street to Pennsylvania Avenue, where he jabs his spurs into her flanks so she’ll run. It’s a ludicrous idea. The street is jammed with pedestrians and carriages. Union soldiers, returning from the front, march in loose formation, dog-tired and in no mood for a horseman to romp through their ranks. But today Booth is above the law. He gallops the bay down Pennsylvania, ignoring the angry curses hurled in his mud-splattered wake.

Booth stops at Grover’s Theatre, where the marquee announces THE GORGEOUS PLAY OF ALADDIN, OR THE WONDERFUL LAMP. He doesn’t have any business there, but theaters are safe refuges no matter what city he’s visiting. Booth knows not only the insides of the building but also each nearby bar and restaurant, where he’s sure to see a friendly face. On a day like today, when his stomach is churning and he’s battling with all his might to stay calm and focused, nothing could be more natural than making his way to a theater, just to experience a few moments of calm reassurance. For the child of actors, raised on greasepaint and footlights, it’s like going home.

Against Pumphrey’s explicit direction, he ties the mare to a hitching post, then wanders up to Deery’s tavern and orders a bottle. Alone at the bar, nursing a brandy and water to the sounds of the clacking of billiard balls from the nearby table, he pauses to reflect on what he is about to do. Getting into the theater should be easy enough. Getting past the bodyguard at the door to the state box, however, might get bloody. And the odds of killing Lincoln and escaping are low. He accepts all that.

But what if nobody knows it’s him?

What if the euphoric triumph of shooting Lincoln is followed by the devastating letdown of anonymity—that is, until he reaches some safe refuge where he can shout his accomplishment to world and then parlay his infamy into some even greater glory. But what if no one believes him? What if John Wilkes Booth shoots the president and makes a clean getaway, only to be ignored when he tells everyone that he’s the man who did it?

This cannot be. Booth craves the limelight too much. He needs to make sure he’ll get immediate credit for such a bold and dramatic act.

Booth tosses a dollar onto the bar and walks downstairs to the Grover’s manager’s office. It’s empty. Sitting at the desk, Booth removes paper and an envelope from the pigeonholes. He then writes a letter to the editor of the National Intelligencer stating, in specific terms, what he is about to do.

He signs his name, then adds those of Powell, Atzerodt, and Herold. They are all members of the same company, in theatrical terms. They deserve some sort of billing—even if they might not want it.

After sealing the envelope, Booth steps outside. He is pleased to see that his feisty bay is still where he left her. A motley and dispirited group of Confederate prisoners is marching down the street as he saddles up. “Great God,” he moans, mortified by such a sad sight. “I no longer have a country.”

But seeing those downtrodden rebels is yet another reminder of why Booth has embraced violence. Thus fortified, Booth spies fellow actor John Matthews in front of the theater. Booth leans down from his horse to hand him the envelope and gives him specific instructions to mail it the next morning. However, hedging his bets in case things go bad, Booth says he wants the letter back if he finds Matthews before ten tomorrow morning.

It’s a petty and spiteful trick, designed to implicate Matthews, who will be onstage in the role of Richard Coyle during Our American Cousin. Booth had asked him to be part of the conspiracy and was turned down. The night after his aborted kidnapping attempt on the Soldiers’ Home road four weeks earlier, Booth even lounged on Matthews’s bed in a small boardinghouse across from Ford’s Theatre, trying to cajole the fellow actor to join him.

But Matthews continued to refuse. Now Booth is getting his revenge, implicating Matthews by association.

Matthews, completely unsuspecting, is distracted by an unusual sight. “Look,” he says to Booth. “Over there.”

Booth is stunned to see General and Mrs. Grant leaving town in an open carriage piled high with luggage. Julia is inside, with another female passenger, while the general sits up top, next to the coachman.

Booth trots after them, just to see for himself. He parades his horse past the carriage, turns around, and guides the bay back toward the Grants at a walk. He stares as the carriage passes, glaring at Sam Grant with such intensity that Julia will later recall quite vividly the crazed man who stared them down. It is only after the assassination that Mrs. Grant will realize who he was.

“I thought he was going to Ford’s tonight, with Lincoln,” Booth says to a stranger.

“Somebody said he’s going to Jersey,” the man responds, confirming Booth’s worst fears. Glumly, he realizes that one of his two primary targets will not be at Ford’s this evening. He wheels the horse around and heads for that theater.

Washington, D.C., is a relatively small city. All the locations associated with Booth’s activities throughout the week are situated close together. Mary Surratt’s boardinghouse is just a few blocks from the National Hotel, which is just a few blocks from Kirkwood House, where Vice President Johnson is staying, which is just a few blocks from the White House, which is right across the street from Secretary Seward’s home. The National, the White House, and Mary Surratt’s boardinghouse constitute the three corners of a broad triangle. Within that triangle are all the other locations. And in the very center is Ford’s Theatre, which is right across the alley from Herndon House, where Lewis Powell is now eating an early dinner of cold beef and potatoes before checking out.

The alley is known as Baptist Alley, due to Ford’s origins as a house of worship. A maid at Ford’s hears the sound of galloping hooves coming from the alley. When she looks outside, she sees a most unusual sight: the famous actor John Wilkes Booth racing a horse north up the alley from E Street, then galloping out the other end on F Street. He does this twice. The maid, Margaret Rozier, watches as Booth dismounts after the second dry run of his escape, not in a million years imagining what she has just witnessed. When he is done, Booth stops at Ford’s stage door, where he invites stagehands Jim Maddox and Ned Spangler to join him for a drink next door at Jim Ferguson’s Greenback Saloon.

As they come back outside after their drink, Booth mounts the bay and says hello to Jim Ferguson himself. Ferguson has heard about the Lincolns and is making plans to see Our American Cousin tonight. “She is a very nice horse,” Booth says, noting the way Ferguson admires her. “She can gallop and can almost kick me in the back.”

Booth prods her with his spurs and gallops back to the National Hotel, his errands complete. The energy whooshes out of him as the alcohol wears off and the brute realization of what he is about to do hits him hard. His face is so pale that the desk clerk inquires about his health.

Booth says he’s fine, orders a cup of tea, and heads upstairs to rest.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1865

WASHINGTON, D.C.

3:30 P.M.

“Crook,” Abraham Lincoln says to his bodyguard, “I believe there are men who want to take my life. And I have no doubt that they will do it.”

The two men are walking down Pennsylvania Avenue, on their way back to the War Department for their second meeting of the day. Lincoln wants a short session with Stanton to discuss the fate of a Confederate ringleader who very recently made the mistake of crossing the border from Canada back into the United States. Stanton is in favor of arresting the man, while Lincoln prefers to let him slip away to England on the morning steamer. As soon as Lincoln makes his point, he aims to hurry back to the White House for the carriage ride he promised Mary.

William Crook is fond of the president and deeply unsettled by the comments.

“Why do you think so, Mr. President?”

Crook steps forward as they come upon a group of angry drunks. He puts his body between theirs and Lincoln’s, thus clearing the way for the president’s safe passage. Crook’s actions, while brave, are unnecessary—if the drunks realize that the president of the United States is sharing the same sidewalk, they give no notice.

Lincoln waits until Crook is beside him again, then continues his train of thought. “Other men have been assassinated,” Lincoln says.

“I hope you are mistaken, Mr. President.”

“I have perfect confidence in those around me. In every one of you men. I know that no one could do it and escape alive,” Lincoln says. The two men walk in silence before he finishes his thought: “But if it is to be done, it is impossible to prevent it.”

At the War Department, Lincoln once again invites Stanton and telegraph chief Major Thomas Eckert, the man who can break fireplace pokers over his arms, to attend Our American Cousin that night. Both men turn him down once again. Lincoln is upset by their rejection, but he doesn’t show it outwardly. The only indication comes on the walk back to the White House, when he admits to Crook, “I do not want to go.” Lincoln says it like a man facing a death sentence.

Inside the White House, Lincoln is pulled into an unscheduled last-minute meeting that will delay his carriage ride. Lincoln hides his exasperation and dutifully meets with New Hampshire congressman Edward H. Rollins. But as soon as Rollins leaves, yet another petitioner begs a few minutes of Lincoln’s time. A weary Lincoln, all too aware that Mary will be most upset if he keeps her waiting much longer, gives former military aide Colonel William Coggeshall the benefit of a few moments.

Finally, Lincoln marches down the stairs and heads for the carriage. He notices a one-armed soldier standing off to one side of the hallway and overhears the young man tell another, “I would almost give my other hand if I could shake that of Lincoln.”

Lincoln can’t resist. “You shall do that and it shall cost you nothing, boy,” he exclaims, smiling broadly as he walks over and grasps the young man’s hand. He asks his name, that of his regiment, and in which battle he lost the arm.

Only then does Lincoln say his farewells and step outside. He finds Mary waiting at the carriage. She’s in a tentative mood—they’ve spent so little time alone in the past few months that being together, just the two of them, feels strange. She wonders if Lincoln might be more comfortable if they brought some friends along for the open-air ride. “I prefer to ride by ourselves today,” he insists. Lincoln helps her into the barouche and then is helped up from the gravel driveway to take his seat beside her. The four-wheeled horse-drawn carriage features two facing double seats for passengers and a retractable roof. The driver sits in a box seat up front. Lincoln opts to keep the roof open, then covers their laps with a blanket, even though the temperature is a warm sixty-eight degrees.

The war has been hard on their marriage. Mary is delighted beyond words to see that Lincoln is in a lighthearted mood. She gazes into her husband’s eyes and recognizes the man who once courted her.

“Dear Husband,” she laughs, “you startle me by your great cheerfulness. I have not seen you so happy since before Willie’s death.”

“And well I may feel so, Mary. I consider this day, the war has come to a close.” The president pauses. “We must both be more cheerful in the future—between the war and the loss of our darling Willie we have been very miserable.”

Coachman Francis Burns guides the elegant pair of black horses down G Street. The pace is a quick trot. Behind them ride two cavalry escorts, just for safety. The citizens of Washington are startled to see the Lincolns out on the town. They hear loud laughter from Mary as the barouche passes by and see a grin spread across the president’s face. When a group calls out to him as the carriage turns onto New Jersey Avenue, he doffs his trademark stovepipe hat in greeting.

Throughout the war, Lincoln has stayed in the moment, never allowing himself to dream of the future. But now he pours his heart out to Mary, talking about a proposed family trip to Palestine, for he is most curious about the Holy Land. And after he leaves office he wants the family to return to their roots in Illinois, where he will once again hang out his shingle as a country lawyer. The “Lincoln & Herndon” sign has never been taken down, at Lincoln’s specific request to his partner.

“Mary,” Lincoln says, “we have had a hard time of it since we came to Washington, but the war is over, and with God’s blessing we may hope for four years of peace and happiness, and then we will go back to Illinois and pass the rest of our lives in quiet. We have laid by some money, and during this term we will try to save up more.”

The carriage makes its way to the Navy Yard, where Lincoln steps on board USS Montauk. His intent is just a cursory peek at the storied ironclad, with its massive round turret constituting the deck’s superstructure. But soon its crew mobs Lincoln, and he is forced to politely excuse himself so that he can return to Mary. Unbeknownst to Lincoln, the Montauk will soon serve another purpose.

Lincoln offers a final salute to the many admirers as coachman Burns turns the carriage back toward the White House. It’s getting late, and the Lincolns have to be at the theater.

John Wilkes Booth is expecting them.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1865

WASHINGTON, D.C.

7:00 P.M.

William Crook stands guard outside Lincoln’s office door. The twenty-six-year-old policeman and presidential bodyguard has had a long day, having arrived at the White House at precisely eight A.M. His replacement was supposed to relieve him three hours ago, but John Parker, as always, is showing himself to be lazy and unaccountable. Crook is deeply attached to Lincoln and frets about his safety. How this drunken slob Parker was designated as the president’s bodyguard is a great mystery, but Crook knows that the president does not involve himself in such things.

After their carriage ride, the Lincolns eat dinner with their sons, and then Crook walks the president back to the War Department for a third time, to see if General Sherman has sent a telegraph stating the disposition of his troops in the South. Lincoln has become so addicted to the telegraph’s instant news from the front that he still can’t let go of the need for just one more bit of information, even though the prospect of another great battle is slim.

Then Crook walks back to the White House with Lincoln, his eyes constantly scanning the crowds for signs that someone means his employer harm. He remembers well the advice of Ward Hill Lamon, the walrus-mustached, self-appointed head of Lincoln’s security detail, that Lincoln should not go out at night, under any circumstances. “Especially to the theater,” Lamon had added.

But tonight, Lincoln is going to the theater—and it’s no secret. The afternoon papers printed news about him attending Our American Cousin with General Grant and their wives, almost as if daring every crackpot and schemer with an anti-North agenda to buy a ticket. Indeed, ticket sales have been brisk since the announcement, and—recent outpourings of affection notwithstanding—Lincoln’s status as the most hated man in America certainly means that not everyone at Ford’s will be there out of admiration for the president.

Lincoln, however, doesn’t see it like that. Even though Mary says the carriage ride gave her a headache that has her second-guessing the night out, the president feels obligated to go. He might feel differently if he hadn’t missed the Grand Illumination last night. That, plus the fact that the Grants aren’t going, makes Lincoln’s obligation all the more urgent—he knows his constituents will be deeply disappointed if both of America’s two most famous men fail to appear.

And then there’s the minor issue of disappointing the Grants’ last-minute replacements. Just when it seemed like everyone in Washington was terrified of attending the theater with the Lincolns, Mary found guests, the minor diplomat Major Henry Reed Rathbone and his fiancee (and stepsister) Clara Harris, who watched Lincoln’s speech with Mary three nights before. Mary is deeply fond of Clara, the full-figured daughter of Senator Ira Harris of New York. They enjoy an almost mother-daughter relationship. Just as important, Major Rathbone is a strapping young man who saw service during the war; he has the sort of physical presence Lincoln might need in a bodyguard, should such services be required.

The president doesn’t know either of them. When he received news that this unlikely couple would be their guests, he was enjoying a quiet dinner with Tad and Robert. Lincoln’s response was neither joy nor disappointment but merely a silent nod of acknowledgment.

William Crook is a straightforward cop, not one to search for conspiracies or malcontents where none exist. Yet the bodyguard in him wonders about the tall, athletic Rathbone and whether or not he poses a security risk. What better way to kill the president than shooting him in his own box during the play?

Finally, Crook hears feet thudding up the stairs. Parker ambles down the hallway, patting the bulge in his jacket to show that he is armed. He is a thirty-four-year-old former machinist from Frederick County, Virginia, and the father of three children. Parker served in the Union army for the first three months of the war, then mustered out to rejoin his family and took a job as a policeman in September 1861, becoming one of the first 150 men hired when Washington, D.C., formed its brand-new Metropolitan Police Department.

Throughout his employment, Parker’s one distinguishing trait has been an ability to manufacture controversy. He has been disciplined for, among other things, swearing at a grocer, swearing at a supervising officer, insulting a woman who had requested police protection, and being drunk and disorderly in a house of prostitution. At his trial, the madam testified that not only was Parker drunk and disorderly but that he had been living in the whorehouse for five weeks before the incident. Apparently, the authorities chose to ignore that testimony. The trial took place before a police board, rather than in the criminal courts. The board found no wrongdoing by Parker and quickly acquitted him.

And so Parker continued his questionable behavior. He appeared before the police board just two weeks later for sleeping on duty. Ninety days after that, another police board: this time for using profane language to a private citizen. Both charges were dismissed.

His innocence proven again and again, Parker had no qualms about putting his name into the pool when, late in 1864, the Metropolitan Police Department began providing White House bodyguards. It was prestigious duty and kept him from being drafted back into the army. Mary Lincoln herself wrote the letter exempting him from service. So far, the only blemish on Parker’s record while serving the president is a penchant for tardiness, as Crook knows all too well. So when Parker finally appears several hours late for his shift, Crook is upset but not surprised.

Crook briefs Parker on the day’s events, then explains that the presidential carriage will be stopping at Fourteenth and H to pick up Major Rathbone and Miss Harris. The presence of two additional passengers means that there will be no room for Parker. “You should leave fifteen minutes ahead of the president,” says Crook, pointing out that Parker will have to walk to Ford’s Theatre—and that he should arrive before the presidential party in order to provide security the instant they arrive.

As Crook finishes, Lincoln comes to his office door. A handful of last-minute appointments have come up, and he is eager to get them out of the way so he can enjoy the weekend.

“Good night, Mr. President,” Crook says.

He and the president have repeated this scene a hundred times, with Lincoln responding in kind.

Only this time it’s different.

“Good-bye, Crook,” Lincoln replies.

All the way home, that subtle difference nags at William Crook.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1865

WASHINGTON, D.C.

8:00 P.M.

As Lincoln is bidding farewell to William Crook, Booth is gobbling down a quick dinner in the National Hotel’s dining room. Food, sleep, and adrenaline have him feeling sober once more. Our American Cousin starts at eight, and his plan will go into action shortly after ten P.M. If all goes well, any residual effects of the afternoon’s alcohol will have worn off by then. In fact, Booth is feeling so good that he starts drinking again. What he is about to do is very grave, indeed. Liquid courage will make sure he doesn’t get stage fright and miss his cue.

That cue is simple: there is a moment in the third act when the actor Harry Hawk, playing the part of Asa Trenchard, is the only person on stage. He utters a line that never fails to make the audience convulse with laughter. “Don’t know the manners of good society, eh?” he says to the character of the busybody, Mrs. Mountchessington, who has insulted him before exiting the stage. “Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal—you sockdologizing old man-trap.”

The instant that the punch line hits home and the Ford’s audience explodes, Booth will kill Lincoln. If everything goes according to plan, he will already be concealed inside the state box. All he needs to do is pull out his Deringer and fire. Booth will toss the pistol aside after shooting Lincoln, then use his Bowie knife to battle his way out, if cornered.

His plan is to keep moving forward at all times—forward from the back wall of the box, forward to Lincoln’s rocking chair, forward up and over the railing and then down onto the stage, forward to the backstage door, forward to Maryland, and then forward all the way to Mexico, exile, and safety.

But Booth will stop for an instant in the midst of all that rapid movement. The actor in him cannot resist the chance to utter one last bold line from center stage. After leaping from the balcony Booth will stand tall and, in his best elocution, announce, “Sic semper tyrannis”: Thus always to tyrants.

The Latin phrase is meant to sound smart, the sort of profound parting words that will echo down the corridors of history. He has stolen it, truth be told, from the state of Virginia. It is the commonwealth’s motto.

No matter. The words are perfect.

Booth plans to have another last-minute rendezvous with his co-conspirators at eight P.M. He returns to his room and polishes his Deringer, then slips a single ball into the barrel. The gun goes into his pocket. Into his waistband goes the Bowie knife in its sheath. Outside he can hear Washington coming to life once again, with still more of the endless postwar parties, bonfires, and street corner sing-alongs that annoy him no end.

Booth packs a small bag with a makeup pencil, false beard, false mustache, wig, and a plaid muffler. As he is about to leave the hotel on his deadly errand, he realizes that his accomplices might be in need of firearms. So he slips a pair of revolvers into the bag. Their firepower far exceeds the Deringer’s.

And yet what Booth leaves behind is just as powerful: among the personal effects that authorities will later find are a broken comb, tobacco, embroidered slippers, and one very telling scrap of paper. On it are written the keys to top-secret coded Confederate messages that link him with Jefferson Davis’s office in Richmond and with the million-dollar gold fund in Montreal. Finally, Booth leaves behind a valise filled with damning evidence that implicates John Surratt and, by extension, his mother, Mary.

Booth could have destroyed these items, but such is his malevolence that if he is ever apprehended or killed, he wants everyone else to go down as well. He also wants to show the world that he, Booth, was the mastermind behind killing Abraham Lincoln.

He walks downstairs and slides his key across the front desk. “Are you going to Ford’s tonight?” he asks George W. Bunker, the clerk on duty.

“No,” comes the reply.

“You ought to go,” Booth says with a wink on his way out the door. “There is going to be some splendid acting.”

Booth laughs at his own joke as he steps into the night air. Washington is covered in a fine mist, giving the streetlights and the Capitol dome a ghostly appearance. Booth feels like he is viewing the city through frosted glass.

He trots his horse over to Ford’s. Once again he examines his escape route, then slides down from the saddle and ties the mare to a hitching post. He steps into a nearby tavern, where he runs into Ford’s orchestra director, William Withers Jr., who’s having a last quick drink before the eight P.M. curtain. They talk shop, the conversation veering toward mutual friends in the theater. Withers mentions Booth’s late father. When Booth suggests that he is the better actor of the two, Withers laughingly shoots back that Booth will never be as talented as his father.

Booth’s face hardens, but he manages a thin smile. Focusing his gaze on Withers, he utters the truest sentence he will ever speak: “When I leave the stage I will be the most talked about man in America.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1865

WASHINGTON, D.C.

8:05 P.M.

“Would you have us be late?” Mary Lincoln chides her husband, standing in his office doorway. Speaker of the House Schuyler Colfax dropped by a half hour ago and was immediately granted a few minutes of Lincoln’s time. But those few minutes have stretched into half an hour and, across town, the curtain has already risen on Our American Cousin. Making matters worse, the Lincolns still have to stop and pick up their theater guests. They’ll be lucky to arrive at Ford’s in time for the second act.

It is five minutes after eight. Mary wears a gray dress that shows her ample bosom and a matching bonnet. She is eager to get to the theater but tentative in her approach because Mr. Lincoln’s moods have been so unpredictable lately.

Once again, he has lost all track of time. Speaker Colfax stopped in to discuss the possibility of a special session of Congress. Colfax has plans to leave in the morning on a long trip to California but says he will cancel it if Lincoln calls the special session. Lincoln won’t hear of it. He tells Colfax to enjoy himself and to enlist the support of the western states in reuniting America.

As he makes to leave, Colfax pauses at the door. He is a true admirer of Lincoln’s. Colfax has heard rumors of violence against Lincoln and mentions how afraid he was when Lincoln visited Richmond a week earlier. “Why, if anyone else had been president and gone to Richmond, I would have been alarmed, too,” Lincoln chuckles. “But I was not scared about myself a bit.”

Lincoln asks Colfax if he has plans for the evening, and, if not, would he be interested in attending Our American Cousin? Colfax replies that although he is deeply honored by the invitation, he cannot go.

This marks a half dozen rejections for Lincoln today. First the Grants, then Stanton and Thomas Eckert, then his son Robert just a half hour earlier, and now the Speaker of the House.

Former Massachusetts congressman George Ashmun waits to see Lincoln as Colfax exits. But Mary’s pleas finally have an effect. It is time to leave for the theater. Lincoln hastily pulls a card from his jacket pocket and jots a small note inviting Ashmun to return at nine in the morning.

Finally, Lincoln walks downstairs and out onto the front porch, where the presidential carriage awaits.

The roof is now closed, which is a comfort on this misty night. Footman Charles Forbes helps Mary up the steps and into her seat as Lincoln says a few final words to Ashmun and Colfax, who have followed him outside. Suddenly, yet another caller steps out of the night, seeking a few moments of Lincoln’s time. The president hears the footsteps on the gravel and the familiar voice of former Illinois congressman Isaac Arnold yelling his name.

Lincoln is about to climb into the carriage, but he waits until Arnold is close enough that they can shake hands. Arnold was a staunch backer of Lincoln’s during the war’s darkest hours, and the resulting dip in the president’s popularity cost him his seat in the House. The least Lincoln can do is acknowledge him. He bends his head to listen as Arnold whispers a quiet petition in his ear.

Lincoln nods but refuses to give an immediate answer. “Excuse me now,” he begs. “I am going to the theater. Come see me in the morning.”

The Harris residence, at H and Fifteenth Streets, is almost right across the street from the White House, so the Lincolns have little time alone before picking up their guests. But in that short interval Lincoln turns lighthearted and happy, chatting excitedly about the night. Mary is delighted at her husband’s sudden jocularity and his ability to seemingly leave the burdens of the White House behind the instant they leave the grounds.

As the carriage threads the seven blocks to the theater, Rathbone, with his muttonchops and broad mustache, sits facing Lincoln, talking about his experiences in the war. Along the way, another impromptu victory parade on Pennsylvania Avenue slows their progress and makes them even later for the show. Once they finally approach Ford’s, they can smell and see the tar torches casting their ghostly yellow light on the front of the theater. The carriages of theatergoers line Tenth Street. A crowd of soldiers gathers, there to see Lincoln and Grant. A barker calls out, “This way to Ford’s!”

Driver Francis Burns steps down and walks the horses the final few feet to the theater, fearful that the commotion might cause them to bolt. The two cavalry escorts trailing the carriage wheel their horses back to their barracks, knowing that they will return and finish their guard duty once the show ends.

It is eight twenty-five when Lincoln steps through the front door of the theater. A young boy, in a moment he will remember for the rest of his life, shyly offers him a program. The president accepts it with a smile. Now rejoined by bodyguard John Parker, the Lincolns and their guests climb the stairs leading to their box. Onstage, the actors are more than aware that the audience is in a foul mood. Having bought tickets in hopes of seeing Lincoln and Grant, the theatergoers had monitored the state box, only to find that neither was in house.

So when Lincoln finally arrives, there is relief onstage. Laura Keene ad-libs a line that refers to Lincoln, making the audience turn toward the back of the theater in order to witness his appearance. William Withers, the orchestra director who had a drink with John Wilkes Booth less than an hour ago, immediately stops the show’s music and instructs the band to perform “Hail to the Chief.”

The audience members rise to their feet and cheer, making a noise that Withers can only describe as “breathtaking.” Lincoln does not seek out such adulation. Indeed, he has “an almost morbid dread” of causing a scene. But he works the crowd for full effect, allowing Rathbone and Harris to enter the state box first, followed by Mary. Then Lincoln strides forth so the crowd can see him. As patriotic cheering fills the house, he honors his constituents by standing at the edge of the box and bowing twice.

Only when the applause dies down does Lincoln ease into the rocking chair on the left side of the box. A curtain partially shields him from the audience, giving him privacy should he decide to nod off and take a nap. The crowd can see him only if he leans forward and pokes his head over the ledge; otherwise he is entirely invisible to everyone in the theater, except for those in the state box and the actors onstage.

Lincoln takes advantage of the privacy, reaching out for Mary’s hand and holding it lovingly. She blushes at such scandalous behavior. “What will Miss Harris make of my hanging on to you so?” she giggles to her husband.

“She will think nothing about it,” he replies, squeezing her hand but not letting go.

Behind Lincoln, a single door leads into the state box. On the other side of the door is a narrow unlit hallway. At the end of the hallway is yet another door. This is the only route to and from the state box, and it is John Parker’s job to pull up a chair and sit in front of this door, making sure that no one goes in or out.

But on the night of April 14, 1865, as Abraham Lincoln relaxes in his rocking chair and laughs out loud for the first time in months, John Parker gets thirsty. He is bored, and he can’t see the play. Taltavul’s saloon calls to him. Pushing his chair against the wall, he leaves the door to the state box unguarded and wanders outside. Footman Charles Forbes is taking a nap in the driver’s seat of Lincoln’s carriage, oblivious to the fog and drizzle.

“How about a little ale?” Parker asks, knowing that Forbes will be an eager drinking buddy. The two walk into Taltavul’s and make themselves comfortable. The show won’t be over for two more hours—plenty of time to have a couple beers and appear perfectly sober when the Lincolns need them again.

President Abraham Lincoln’s only bodyguard, a man with a careerlong history of inappropriate and negligent behavior, has left his post for the last time. Incredibly, he will never be punished for this gross dereliction of duty.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1865

WASHINGTON, D.C.

8:45 P.M.

Less than two hours to go.

John Wilkes Booth summarizes the final details with his co-conspirators as the Lincolns settle into their seats. Though Lewis Powell checked out of his hotel room hours earlier, the four men meet outside the Herndon House because of its close proximity to Ford’s. With the exception of Atzerodt, each man is on horseback. Though he has been drinking steadily on and off all day, Booth is thinking and acting clearly. None of the co-conspirators has any cause to doubt him.

First, and most important, Booth tells them, the precise time of the president’s assassination will be ten-fifteen P.M. Unlike the night before, when the assassination plans had a haphazard quality, tonight’s events are timed to the minute. Shows at Ford’s usually start promptly. If that’s the case, then Harry Hawk will be alone onstage, delivering his punch line, at precisely ten-fifteen.

Second, Booth tells them, the murders of Seward and Johnson must also take place at ten-fifteen. The precision is vital. There can be no advance warning or alarm to the intended targets. The attacks must be a complete surprise. Booth hopes to create the illusion that Washington, D.C., is a hotbed of assassins, resulting in the sort of mass chaos that will make it easier for him and his men to escape. With officials looking everywhere for the killers, on streets filled with bonfires and spontaneous parades and hordes of drunken revelers, blending in to the bedlam should be as simple as staying calm.

Next comes the list of assignments. The job of murdering of Secretary of State Seward will be a two-man affair, with Lewis Powell and David Herold now working together. Powell will be the man who actually walks up to the door, finds a way to enter the house, and commits the crime. The ruse that will get him in the door is a fake bottle of medication, which Powell will claim was sent by Seward’s physician.

Herold’s role is to assist in the getaway. He knows Washington’s back alleys and shortcuts and will guide Powell, who knows little about the city, to safety. During the murder, Herold must wait outside and hold their horses. Once Powell exits the house, the two men will gallop across town by a roundabout method in order to confuse anyone trying to give chase. Then they will leave town via the Navy Yard Bridge and rendezvous in the Maryland countryside.

As for George Atzerodt, he will act alone. Killing Vice President Andrew Johnson does not look to be a difficult task. Though Johnson is a vigorous man, he is known to be unguarded and alone most of the time. Atzerodt is to knock on the door of his hotel room and shoot him when he answers. Atzerodt will also escape Washington via the Navy Yard Bridge, then gallop into Maryland to meet up with the others. From there, Atzerodt’s familiarity with smugglers’ trails will allow him to guide the men into the Deep South.

Once the plans are finalized, Booth will head for Ford’s. There he will bide his time, making sure the theater’s entries and exits are unguarded, that the secret backstage passageways are clear, and that his horse is ready and waiting.

Booth clears his throat just before they ride off in their different directions. He tells them about the letter he wrote to the National Intelligencer, implicating all of them in this grand triple assassination. The message is clear: there is no going back. If the men object to Booth outing them, there is no historical record to show it.

Booth looks over his gang. These four unlikely men are about to change the course of history, just as surely as Grant or Lincoln or Lee or any of the hundreds of thousands of men who died during the Civil War. They are now ninety minutes away from becoming the most wanted men in all of the world.

He wishes them good luck, then spurs his horse and trots off to Ford’s.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1865

WASHINGTON, D.C.

9:30 P.M.

Booth guides his mare into the alley behind Ford’s. The night is quiet, save for the peals of laughter coming from inside the theater. He dismounts and shouts for Ned Spangler to come hold his horse. The sceneshifter appears at the back door, visibly distressed about the possibility of missing an all-important stage cue. Booth doesn’t care. He demands that Spangler come outside and secure the animal. The last thing Booth needs is for his escape to be thwarted by a runaway mare.

Spangler, completely unaware of the assassination plot, insists that he can’t do the job. Booth, ever persuasive, insists. The unshaven, heavy-lidded stagehand weakens but does not capitulate. His employment is contingent on moving the right scenes at the right time. He is willing to do anything for a great actor such as Booth—anything but lose his job. Leaving Booth in the alley, Spangler dashes back into the theater and returns with Joseph Burroughs, a young boy who does odd jobs at Ford’s and goes by the nickname “Peanut John.” Booth hands Peanut John the reins and demands that he remain at the back door, holding the horse, until he returns. The boy must not leave that spot for any reason.

Peanut John, hoping that Booth will give him a little something for the effort, agrees. He sits on the stone step and shivers in the damp night air, his fist clutched tightly around those reins.

Booth slides into the theater. The sound of the onstage actors speaking their lines fills the darkened backstage area. He speaks in a hush as he removes his riding gloves, making a show of saying hello to the cast and crew, most of whom he knows well. His eyes scrutinize the layout, memorizing the location of every stagehand and prop, not wanting anything to get in the way of his exit.

There is a tunnel beneath the stage, crossing from one side to the other. Booth checks to make sure that nothing clutters the passage. Nobody guesses for an instant that he is checking out escape routes. When he reaches the far side, Booth exits Ford’s through yet another backstage door. This one leads to an alley, which funnels down onto Tenth Street.

There’s no one there.

In one short dash through Ford’s Theatre, Booth has learned that his escape route is not blocked, that nobody is loitering in the alley who could potentially tackle him or otherwise stop him from getting away, and that the cast and crew think it’s the most normal thing in the world for him to stroll into and out of the theater.

And, indeed, no one questions why he’s there nor finds it even remotely suspicious.

Feeling very pleased with himself, Booth pops in Taltavul’s for a whiskey. He orders a whole bottle, then sits down at the bar. Incredibly, Lincoln’s bodyguard is sipping a large tankard of ale just a few feet away.

Booth smiles as he pours water into his whiskey, then raises the glass in a toast to himself.

What am I about to do? Can I really go through with this?

He pushes the doubts from his head. We are at war. This is not murder. You will become immortal.

At ten P.M. Booth double-checks to make sure John Parker is still drinking at the other end of the bar. Then, leaving the nearly full whiskey bottle on the bar, he softly lowers his glass and walks back to Ford’s.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1865

WASHINGTON, D.C.

10:00 P.M.

The third act is under way. Soon the play will be over, and Lincoln can get back to the White House. Meanwhile, the unheated state box has gotten chilly. Abraham Lincoln drops Mary’s hand as he rises to put on his overcoat, tailored in a black wool specially for his oversized frame by Brooks Brothers. The silk lining is decorated with an eagle clutching a banner in its beak. The words on the streamer are Lincoln’s unspoken manifesto, and every time he slips on the coat he is reminded of his mission. “One country, one destiny,” it reads, quite simply.

Sitting back down in the horsehair rocker, Lincoln shifts his gaze from the performers directly below him. He pushes back the privacy curtain, then leans forward over the railing to look down and to the left, at the audience.

Lincoln lets go of the curtain and returns his attention to Our American Cousin.

It is seven minutes after ten. At the exact same moment, John Wilkes Booth strolls through the front door of Ford’s—heart racing, whiskey on his breath, skin clammy to the touch. He is desperately trying to appear calm and cool. Always a man of manners, Booth takes off his hat and holds it with one hand. When ticket taker John Buckingham makes a joke of letting him in for free, “courtesy of the house,” Booth notices the bulge in Buckingham’s lip and asks if he has any extra tobacco. Like so many other minor theater employees, Buckingham is in awe of Booth’s celebrity. Not only does he hand over a small plug of tobacco, he also summons the courage to ask if he might introduce Booth to some close friends who happen to be at the show. “Later,” Booth promises with a wink.

Buckingham notes the deathly pallor on Booth’s face and how incredibly nervous the normally nonchalant actor seems to be. As Booth walks off, Buckingham’s fellow Ford’s employee Joseph Sessford points out that Booth has been in and out of the theater all day. “Wonder what he’s up to?” Sessford mutters to Buckingham. They watch as Booth climbs the staircase to the dress circle, which accesses the hallway to the state box. But neither man thinks Booth’s unusual behavior merits closer scrutiny. They watch him disappear up the stairs and then once again return their attention to the front door and to the patrons late in returning from intermission.

At the top of the stairs, Booth enters the dress circle lobby. He is now inside the darkened theater, standing directly behind the seats of the second-level audience. He hums softly to himself to calm his nerves. In hopes of increasing the theater’s capacity for this special performance, Ford’s management has placed extra chairs in this corridor, and now Booth walks past two Union officers sitting in those seats. They recognize the famous actor and then turn their focus back to the play. They make no move to stop him, because they have no reason to.

Booth approaches the door leading into the state box. It is attended by a White House messenger but not a pistol-packing bodyguard. He sees the chair where John Parker should be sitting and breathes a sigh of relief that the bodyguard is still in the saloon. Handing the messenger one of his calling cards, Booth steps through the doorway without a question.

In the theater below, a young girl who came to the theater hoping to see Lincoln has spent the night staring up at the state box, waiting for him to show his face. Now she is awed by the sight of John Wilkes Booth, the famous and dashing actor, standing in the shadows above her. At the same time, her heart leaps as Lincoln moves his gaze from the stage to the audience, once again poking his head out over the railing. Finally, with the play almost over, she has seen the president! She turns to the man next to her, Taltavul’s owner, Jim Ferguson, and grins at her good fortune.

She turns to get another glimpse of Booth, but by then he has already pushed through the door and now stands in the darkened hallway leading into the state box. He is completely alone. If he wants, he can go back out the door and get on with his life as if nothing has happened. The letter boasting of his deed has not yet been sent. Other than the other members of the conspiracy, no one will be the wiser. But if he walks forward down the hallway, then through the rear door of Lincoln’s box, his life will change forever.

Booth has a head full of whiskey and a heart full of hate. He thinks of the Confederate cause and Lincoln’s promise to give slaves the vote. And then Booth remembers that no one can put a stop to it but him. He is the one man who can, and will, make a difference. There will be no going back.

Earlier that day Booth spied a wooden music stand in the state box. He now jams it into the side of the door leading to the corridor. The music stand has become a dead bolt, and Booth double-checks to make sure it is lodged firmly against the wooden door frame. This seals the door shut from the inside. When he is done, the door might as well be locked, so perfect is his blockade. It’s impossible to push open from the other side. No one in the theater can get in to stop him.

Booth then creeps down the hallway. Booth’s second act of preparation that afternoon was using a pen knife to carve a very small peephole in the door of the state box. Now he looks through that hole to get a better view of the president.

As Booth already knows, the state box is shaped like a parallelogram. The walls to the left and right of Lincoln slant inward. Booth sees that Clara Harris and Major Rathbone sit along the wall to his far right, at an angle to the stage, and the Lincolns sit along the railing. The Lincolns look out directly onto the stage, while Clara and her beau must turn their heads slightly to the right to see the show—if they look directly forward they will be gazing at Mary and Abraham Lincoln in profile.

But it is not their view of Lincoln that matters. What matters is that Booth, through the peephole, is staring right at the back of Lincoln’s head. He can hear the players down below, knowing that in a few short lines Harry Hawk’s character Asa Trenchard will be alone, delivering his “sockdologizing old man-trap” line.

That line is Booth’s cue—and just ten seconds away.

Booth presses his black hat back down onto his head, then removes the loaded Deringer from his coat pocket and grasps it in his right fist. With his left hand, he slides the long, razor-sharp Bowie knife from its sheath.

Booth takes a deep breath and softly pushes the door open with his knife hand. The box is dimly lit from the footlights down below. He can see only faces. No one knows he’s there. He presses his body against the wall, careful to stay in the shadows while awaiting his cue. Abraham Lincoln’s head pokes over the top of his rocking chair, just four short feet in front of Booth; then once again he looks down and to the left, at the audience.

“You sockdologizing old man-trap” booms out through the theater.

The audience explodes in laughter.

CHAPTER FORTY

FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1865

WASHINGTON, D.C.

10:15 P.M.

A few blocks away, someone knocks hard on the front door of the “Old Clubhouse,” the home of Secretary of State William Seward. The three-story brick house facing Lafayette Park, across the street from the White House, took that name from its day as the headquarters of the elite Washington Club. Tragedy paid a visit to the building in 1859, when a congressman shot his mistress’s husband on a nearby lawn. The husband, Philip Barton Key, was a United States attorney and the son of Francis Scott Key, who wrote “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Key’s body was carried inside the club, where he passed away in a first-floor parlor.

That tragedy, however, will pale in comparison with what will happen in the next ten minutes.

There is another sharp knock, even though it’s been only a few seconds since the first one. This time the pounding is more insistent. Secretary Seward does not hear it, for he is sleeping upstairs, his medication causing him to drift between consciousness and unconsciousness. William Bell, a young black servant in a pressed white coat, hurries to the entryway.

“Yes, sir?” he asks, opening the door and seeing an unfamiliar face.

A handsome young man with long, thick hair stares back from the porch. He wears an expensive slouch hat and stands a couple inches over six feet. His jaw is awry on the left, as if it was badly broken and then healed improperly. “I have medicine from Dr. Verdi,” he says in an Alabama drawl, holding up a small vial.

“Yes, sir. I’ll take it to him,” Bell says, reaching for the bottle.

“It has to be delivered personally.”

Bell looks at him curiously. Secretary Seward’s physician had visited just an hour ago. Before leaving, he’d administered a sedative and insisted that there be no more visitors tonight. “Sir, I can’t let you go upstairs. I have strict orders—”

“You’re talking to a white man, boy. This medicine is for your master and, by God, you’re going to give it to him.”

When Bell protests further, Lewis Powell pushes past him, saying, “Out of my way, nigger. I’m going up.”

Bell simply doesn’t know how to stop the intruder.

Powell starts climbing the steps from the foyer to the living area. Bell is a step behind at all times, pleading forgiveness and politely asking that Powell tread more softly. The sound of the southerner’s heavy work boots on the wooden steps echoes through the house. “I’m sorry I talked rough to you,” Bell says sheepishly.

“That’s all right,” Powell sighs, pleased that the hardest part of the plot is behind him. He feared he wouldn’t gain access to the Seward home and would botch his part of the plan. The next step is locating Seward’s bedroom.

Out front, in the shadow of a tree across the street, David Herold holds their horses, prepared for the escape.

But now the secretary’s son Frederick stands at the top of the stairs in a dressing gown, blocking Powell’s path. He was in bed with his wife, but the sound of Powell’s boots woke him. Young Seward, fresh off a heady day that saw him represent his father at Lincoln’s cabinet meeting, demands to know Powell’s business.

Politely and deferentially, Powell holds up the medicine vial and swears that Dr. Verdi told him to deliver it to William Seward and William Seward only.

Seward takes one look at Powell and misjudges him as a simpleton. Rather than argue, he walks into his father’s bedroom to see if he is awake.

This is the break the assassin is looking for. Now he knows exactly which room belongs to the secretary of state. He grows excited, eager to get the job done as quickly as possible. He can feel the revolver stuffed inside his waistband.

Frederick Seward returns. “He’s sleeping. Give it to me.”

“I was ordered to give it to the secretary.”

“You cannot see Mr. Seward. I am his son and the assistant secretary of state. Go back and tell the doctor that I refused to let you go into the sickroom, because Mr. Seward was sleeping.”

“Very well, sir,” says Powell, handing Frederick the vial. “I will go.”

As Frederick Seward accepts the vial, Powell turns and takes three steps down the stairs. Suddenly he turns. He sprints back up to the landing, drawing a navy revolver. He levels the gun, curses, and pulls the trigger.

But the gun jams. Frederick Seward will later tell police he thought he was a dead man. Frederick cries out in fear and pain, throwing up his arms to defend himself. He has the advantage of standing one step higher than Powell but only for a second. The two men grapple as Powell leaps up onto the landing and then uses the butt of his gun to pistol-whip Frederick. Finally, Frederick Seward is knocked unconscious. His body makes a horrible thud as he collapses to the floor, his skull shattered in two places, gray brain matter trickling out through the gashes, blood streaming down his face.

“Murder, murder, murder!” cries William Bell from the ground floor. He sprints out the front door and into the night, screaming at the top of his lungs.

Across the street, David Herold holds the two getaway horses. Bell’s cries are sure to bring soldiers and police to the house within minutes. Suddenly, the long list of reasons why Herold wants to be part of the Lincoln conspiracy are forgotten. He panics. He ties Powell’s horse to a tree, spurs his own mount, and gallops down Fifteenth Street.

Back inside the Seward home, Lewis Powell isn’t done. He pounds on Frederick’s head without mercy, blood spattering the walls and his own hands and face. The beating is so savage that Powell’s pistol literally falls to pieces in his hands. Only then does he stand up straight and begin walking toward the secretary of state’s bedroom.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1865

WASHINGTON, D.C.

10:15 P.M.

The commotion in the hallway and the sound of a body dropping heavily to the hardwood floor have alerted twenty-year-old Fanny Seward to the intrusion. The daughter of the secretary of state is clad only in a nightdress and has been sitting at the foot of her father’s bed, trying to coax him to sleep. Also inside the room is Sergeant George Robinson, sent by the army to watch over Seward. Now Private Robinson pushes his full weight against the door, even as the assassin tries fight his way in. Soon Lewis Powell forces open the door and slashes at Robinson with his Bowie knife, cutting the soldier’s forehead to the bone and almost putting out an eye. As Robinson crumples to the ground, Fanny Seward places herself between Powell and her father. “Please don’t kill him,” she begs, terrified. “Please, please don’t kill him.”

Secretary Seward then awakens on the bed. Something about the word “kill” jars him from his slumber.

Powell punches Fanny Seward hard in the face, instantly knocking her unconscious. A split second later he is on the bed, plunging his knife downward into Seward’s neck and shoulders.

The room is pitch-black, save for the sliver of light from the open door. Powell’s first thrust misses, making a hollow thud as it slams into the headboard. Seward desperately tries to roll away from his attacker and squeeze down into the gap between the mattress and the wall.

He doesn’t succeed. Powell kneels over him, stabbing Seward again and again and again. The secretary wears a splint on his broken jaw, which, luckily, deflects the knife away from the jugular vein, but it does little to protect the rest of his skull. The right side of his face is sliced away from the bone and now hangs like a flap. Blood jets from three deep punctures in his neck, drenching his now-useless bandages, his nightdress, and the white bedsheets and spattering all over Powell’s torso.

The assassin is almost finished. Powell brings up his knife for one final killer blow. But at that exact moment, Seward’s son Augustus enters the room. He is thirty-nine, a decorated graduate of West Point and a career army officer. He has fought in the Mexican War, battled the Apache, and seen action in the Civil War. Never once has he been injured. But now, that changes. Powell leaps at August Seward, stabbing him seven times. In the midst of the attack, Private Robinson staggers to his feet and rejoins the fight. For his trouble, Robinson is stabbed four more times.

Powell is finally exhausted. Lying in front of him are four human beings, all of them still alive. But Powell doesn’t know that. He steps over Fanny’s limp body and races from the room, still clutching his knife. At that very moment, State Department messenger Emerick Hansell arrives at the Seward home on official business. He sees Powell, covered with blood, running down the steps and turns to flee for his life. But Powell catches him, stabbing the courier just above the fourth vertebrae. Powell is in such a hurry, fortunately, that he pulls the knife back out before it can go any deeper, thus sparing Hansell’s life.

“I’m mad! I’m mad!” Powell screams as he runs into the night, hoping to scare off anyone who might try to stop him.

He is, however, anything but mad. Powell is as lucid as he is powerful. He now turns all his focus to the getaway. With adrenaline coursing through his veins, his senses heightened, and his broad shoulders aching from fists rained down upon him in the fight, he hurls the blood-covered knife into the gutter. He then looks right and left into the darkness for David Herold and their getaway horses. Seeing nothing, he listens for a telltale clip-clop of approaching horseshoes.

“Murder! Murder!” William Bell cries from the porch, risking his life by chasing after Powell. Soldiers come running from a nearby sentry box. Powell sees his horse now, tied to the tree where Herold left it. Realizing he has been betrayed, Powell feels his heart sink. He knows that without Herold he will be lost on the streets of Washington. Still, he can’t very well just stand around. He needs to get moving. Powell unties the horse and mounts up. He has the good sense to wipe the blood and sweat from his face with a handkerchief. Then, instead of galloping away, he kicks his heels gently into the horse’s flanks and trots casually down Fifteenth Street, trailed all the while by William Bell and his shouts of “Murder!” But instead of stopping him, the unsuspecting soldiers ignore the black man and run right past Powell.

After a block and a half, Bell falls behind. He eventually returns to the Seward home, where four gravely injured men and one woman lie. Incredibly, they will all recover. But this horrific night will haunt them for the rest of their lives.

Lewis Powell trots his horse toward the darkness on the edge of town. There he hides in a field and wonders if he will ever find a way out of Washington. Powell’s thoughts then turn to President Lincoln and Vice President Johnson. They should be dead by now.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1865

WASHINGTON, D.C.

10:15 P.M.

As John Wilkes Booth tiptoes into the state box and Lewis Powell knocks on William Seward’s front door, George Atzerodt, the would-be assassin of Vice President Andrew Johnson, is drinking hard, late for his date with destiny.

If any man in Washington has incurred the wrath of the Confederacy, it is Johnson, the former governor of Tennessee, whom many southerners consider a rank traitor. Johnson’s bitter words are seldom compatible with Lincoln’s. So it is no surprise that his views on punishing the South stand in stark contrast to Lincoln’s lenience. “And what shall be done with the leaders of the rebel host? I know what I would do if I were president. I would arrest them as traitors, I would try them as traitors, and, by the Eternal, I would hang them as traitors,” Johnson shouted from the steps of the War Department as recently as Monday night.

Like Johnson, Atzerodt the carriage painter is staying at Kirkwood House, on the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and Twelfth Street, four blocks from the White House and just one block from Ford’s Theatre. He has passed the time aimlessly since his meeting with Booth and the other conspirators, drawing attention to himself through the simple act of trying not to draw attention to himself.

At nine-thirty he visits Naylor’s stable on E Street to pick up his horse. The owner knows George Atzerodt and his friend David Herold and does not care for either of them. Nevertheless, when a nervous, sweating Atzerodt asks if he’d like to get a drink, Naylor answers with a quick “Don’t mind if I do.” He is concerned about Herold, who rented a horse from him earlier that day and is long overdue. Naylor hopes that Atzerodt will disclose his friend’s location after a drink or two.

They leave Atzerodt’s mare and walk to the bar of the Union Hotel. Atzerodt, whom Naylor suspects has been drinking for some time, orders a stiff whiskey; Naylor chugs a tankard of ale. Atzerodt pays. They return to the stable after just one round, with Naylor none the wiser about Herold’s location.

“Your friend is staying out very late with his horse,” Naylor finally prods. Atzerodt has just handed him a five-dollar tip for boarding his horse.

“He’ll be back after a while,” Atzerodt glibly replies as he mounts the mare.

But Atzerodt is too wasted on alcohol to ride a straight line. He almost falls out of the saddle when the mare takes a sudden turn. On a hunch, Naylor decides to follow Atzerodt on foot. The trail, however, is only a block long. Atzerodt dismounts and ties the horse at a hitching post in front of Kirkwood House. Naylor waits across the street, just out of sight. When Atzerodt walks back out a few minutes later and trots the mare over toward Ford’s Theatre, Naylor gives up the surveillance and returns to his stable.

Andrew Johnson, meanwhile, is behaving very much like a man waiting to be summoned. He eats an early dinner alone. He turns down a last-minute invitation to attend Our American Cousin. His assistant is out for the night, and Johnson has no one to talk with. So he goes up to his room and lies down on his bed, fully clothed, as if some great incident is about to occur and he needs to be ready to spring into action on a moment’s notice. Johnson is a boorish man. Largely uneducated, he learned to read and write late in his life. A tailor by trade, he entered politics in his twenties and worked his way up to the Senate. He owes a lot to President Lincoln, who first appointed him the military governor of Tennessee and then chose him to run on the vice presidential ticket after Lincoln asked Hannibal Hamlin of Maine to step down. Hamlin was a hard-core northerner and Lincoln needed a southern presence on the ticket.

Up until this point, Johnson has had no power at all. He is simply a figurehead.

At ten-fifteen George Atzerodt is back inside Kirkwood House, getting thoroughly smashed in the bar. Truth be told, even more than when he tried to bow out a few days earlier, the German-born carriage painter wants no part of murder. A few floors above him, Johnson lies alone in his room. In his lifetime he will suffer the ignominy of impeachment and endure the moniker of “worst president in history.” Andrew Johnson will not, however, suffer the far worse fate of death at the hand of an assassin. For that, Johnson can thank the effects of alcohol, as a now very drunk George Atzerodt continues to raise his glass.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1865

WASHINGTON, D.C.

10:15 P.M.

John Wilkes Booth takes a bold step out of the shadows, Deringer clutched in his right fist and knife in his left. He extends his arm and aims for the back of Abraham Lincoln’s head. No one sees him. No one knows he is there.

Booth squeezes the trigger. Unlike the crazed Richard Lawrence, whose pistols misfired when he attempted to assassinate Andrew Jackson, Booth feels his gun kick. The ball launches down the barrel as the audience guffaws at the play. Abraham Lincoln has chosen this precise moment to lean forward and turn his head to the left for another long look down into the audience. A half second later, he would have been leaning so far forward that the ball would have missed his skull completely. But the president is not so lucky. The man who has worried and fretted and bullied America back from the brink of disaster, holding fast to his faith in the Union at a time when lesser men argued that it should be dissolved, feels a split second snap of pain—and then nothing at all.

“The ball entered through the occipital bone about one inch to the left of the median line and just above the left lateral sinus, which it opened,” the autopsy will read. “It then penetrated the dura matter, passed through the left posterior lobe of the cerebrum, entered the left lateral ventricle and lodged in the white matter of the cerebrum just above the anterior portion of the left corpus striatum.”

The president’s calvarium—or skullcap—will be removed with a saw. A surgeon will probe the exposed brain before slicing into it with a scalpel, using the path of coagulated blood to trace the trajectory of the ball. This will show that the ball entered behind the left ear and traveled diagonally across the brain, coming to rest above the right eye.

Yet the autopsy will be inconclusive. Four different doctors will examine the body. Each will have a different conclusion about what happened once the sphere of Britannia metal poked a neat round hole in Lincoln’s skull and then pushed fragments of that bone deep into Lincoln’s brain as it traveled precisely seven and a half inches before plowing to a stop in the dense gray matter.

At ten-fifteen on the night of April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln slumps forward in his rocking chair. Mary Lincoln, lost in the play until this very instant, stops laughing. Major Henry Reed Rathbone snaps his head around at the sound of gunfire—a sound he knows all too well from the battlefield. He’s had his back to the door, but in an instant he’s on his feet, striking a defensive pose.

John Wilkes Booth drops the Deringer and switches the knife to his right hand. Just in time, for Major Rathbone sets aside his own safety and vaults across the small space. Booth raises the knife to shoulder level and brings it down in a hacking motion. Rathbone throws his left arm up in a defensive reflex and instantly feels the knife cut straight down through skin and biceps to the bone.

Booth moves quickly. He steps to the front of the box, ignoring a stricken Mary Lincoln. “Freedom!” he bellows down to the audience, though in all the laughter and the growing confusion as to why the cast has added the sound of gunfire to the scene, his words are barely heard. Harry Hawk stands alone on stage, staring up at the state box with growing concern.

Booth hurls his body over the railing. Up until this point, he has performed every single aspect of the assassination perfectly. But now he misjudges the thickness of the massive United States flag decorating the front of the box. He means to hold on to the railing with one hand as he vaults, throwing his feet up and over the edge, then landing on the stage like a conquering hero.

This sort of leap is actually his specialty. Booth is famous among the theatrical community for his unrehearsed gymnastics, sometimes inserting jumps and drops into Shakespeare plays on a whim. During one memorable performance of Macbeth, his fall to the stage was several feet longer than the fall from the state box.

But Booth’s right spur gets tangled in the flag’s folds. Instead of a gallant two-footed landing on the stage, Booth topples heavily from the state box. He drops to the boards awkwardly, left foot and two hands braced in a bumbling attempt to catch his fall.

The fibula of Booth’s lower left leg, a small bone that bears little weight, snaps two inches above the ankle. The fracture is complete, dividing the bone into two neat pieces. If not for the tightness of Booth’s boot, which forms an immediate splint, the bone would poke through the skin.

Now Booth lies on the stage in front of a nearly packed house. His leg is broken. He holds a blood-smeared dagger in his right hand. The sound of gunfire has just ricocheted around Ford’s. Major Rathbone is bleeding profusely from a severe stab wound. And just above him, slumped forward as if very drunk or very asleep, the president of the United States is unconscious.

Yet still nobody knows what happened. James Ford steps out of the box office and thinks Booth is pulling some crazy stunt to get attention. Observers in the audience have heard the pop and are amazed by the sudden appearance of a famous matinee idol making a cameo on the stage right before their very eyes—perhaps adding some comical whimsy to this very special evening. Harry Hawk still holds center stage, his head turned toward Booth, wondering why in the world he would intrude on the performance.

Time stops for a second—but only one.

Then the assassin takes charge. “Booth dragged himself up on one knee,” Hawk will later remember, “and was slashing that long knife around him like one who was crazy. It was then, I am sure, I heard him say, ‘The South shall be free!’ I recognized Booth as he regained his feet and came toward me, waving his knife. I did not know what he had done or what his purpose might be. I did simply what any man would have done—I ran.”

Booth scurries to his feet and limps off the stage, “with a motion,” observes one spectator, “like the hopping of a bull frog.”

“Stop that man!” Major Rathbone screams from above.

“Won’t somebody please stop that man!” Clara Harris echoes.

“What is the matter?” cries a voice from the audience.

“The president has been shot!” she shouts back.

The reverie is shattered, and with it all the joy of Washington’s postwar celebration. The theater explodes in confusion. In an instant, the audience is on its feet. It is a scene of utter chaos, “a hell of all hells.” Men climb up and over the seats, some fleeing toward the exits while others race to the stage, hoping to climb up into the box and be part of the action. Women faint. Children are trapped in the panic. “Water!” some yell, tending to the collapsed.

A former congressman yells something far more pointed: “Hang the scoundrel!”

Meanwhile, Booth passes within inches of leading lady Laura Keene as he limps off the stage. William Withers, the orchestra leader with whom he had a drink just hours earlier, stands between Booth and the stage door. Withers is paralyzed with fear, but Booth assumes he is intentionally blocking the way and slashes at him, “the sharp blade ripping through the collar of my coat, penetrating my vest and under garments, and inflicting a flesh wound in my neck,” Withers will later testify.

Only one man is bold enough to give chase. Set carpenter Jake Ritterspaugh and Booth reach the stage door at the very same time. Booth thrusts the knife blade at him. Ritterspaugh leaps back. And in that instant, Booth is gone, squeezing through the door and hauling himself up into the saddle.

Rather than give Peanut John the shiny nickel the boy had hoped for, Booth kicks him hard and bludgeons him with the butt of his knife.

“He kicked me! He kicked me!” the boy moans, falling to the ground.

At the same instant, yet another spontaneous torchlight parade blocks Booth’s getaway on Tenth Street. He swerves into the alley, spurs his horse down the cobblestones dividing two large brick buildings, and then turns onto F Street, completely avoiding the procession.

In an instant, John Wilkes Booth disappears into the night.

Editorial illustrations depicting the assassination of President Lincoln

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1865

WASHINGTON, D.C.

10:20 P.M.

Booth slows the mare to a walk. Word is already spreading through Washington that the president has been shot. The news is shouted, breathlessly exclaimed, passed from citizen to citizen, bonfire to bonfire. People aren’t racing away from Ford’s, they’re racing to Ford’s, to see for themselves if these wild rumors are true. Victory marches turn into mobs of the curious and scared, determined to fight their way to the theater.

When a drunk shouts into the night, “I’m glad it happened!” a furious mob beats and kicks him unconscious, tearing off his clothes, and hauls his limp body to a lamppost for a lynching. Ironically, he will be rescued by the Union cavalry.

Now another troop of cavalry is summoned to Ford’s and plunges recklessly through the throngs assembling outside. Inside, the crowd surges toward the stage, trapping small children in its midst, chanting all the while that Booth must be lynched. Laura Keene has the presence of mind to march to center stage and cry out for calm and sanity, but her words go unheeded. The crush against the stage is made worse as the news explodes into the street in front of Ford’s Theatre. Passersby rush inside to see for themselves, some of them hoping that Booth is still trapped inside but most just wanting a glimpse of the injured president.

Across town at Grover’s Theatre, the patriotic celebration is in full swing. A young boy is reciting a poem when a man bursts into the theater and shouts that the president has been shot. As the crowd reacts in horror, a young soldier stands and yells for everyone to sit still. “It’s a ruse of the pickpockets,” he says, explaining that thieves spread such disinformation to fleece the crowd as people rush for the exit.

The six hundred theatergoers take their seats once again. The boy onstage exits, his poetry reading complete. But he is back just seconds later, struggling to control his voice as he shares the horrific news that President Lincoln has, indeed, been shot. Tad Lincoln, the president’s twelve-year-old son, is in the audience with a White House staffer. Stunned, he returns to the White House, where he collapses into the arms of the doorkeeper, shouting, “They’ve killed Papa dead! They’ve killed Papa dead.”

Soon more bad news begins to spread: Secretary Seward has been assaulted in his bed.

At Rullman’s Hotel, on Pennsylvania Avenue, the bartender shouts out the mournful news that Lincoln has been shot. Mike O’Laughlen, the would-be conspirator who stalked the Grants last night, drinks in the corner. He is drunk again but still coherent enough to know in an instant that Booth is the killer—and that he must get out of town before someone implicates him, too.

In front of the Willard Hotel, the stable foreman John Fletcher is still seething that David Herold hasn’t return the roan he rented earlier. At that very moment, Herold trots past. “You get off that horse now!” Fletcher cries, springing out into the street and grabbing for the bridle. But Herold spurs the horse and gallops away. Acting quickly, Fletcher sprints back to his stable, saddles a horse, and races after him.

In the midst of all this, a lone rider galloping away from the chaos at Ford’s would most certainly attract attention. So Booth guides the mare slowly up and down the streets and alleys of Washington, even as his veins course with adrenaline and euphoria, and pandemonium breaks out all around him. Despite his considerable celebrity, Booth blends in and proceeds unmolested through the streets. It is Friday night, after all, a time when Washington comes to life. There are plenty of men trotting horses through town. It’s only when Booth finally nears the end of his three-mile journey to the Navy Yard Bridge that his fears about being caught force him to spur the horse and ride hard to freedom.

It is ten forty-five when Booth pulls back on the reins once again and canters up to the wooden drawbridge by the Navy Yard—almost thirty long minutes since the Deringer did its deadly job. Booth approaches like a man confident that his path will go unblocked. “Where are you going, sir?” cries the military sentry. His name is Silas T. Cobb, and his long and boring shift will be over at midnight. He notices the lather on the horse’s flanks, a sign that it’s been ridden hard.

“Home. Down in Charles,” Booth replies.

“Didn’t you know, my friend, that it is against the laws to pass here after nine o’clock?” Cobb is required to challenge anyone entering or exiting Washington, but the truth of the matter is that the war has ended and with it the formal restrictions on crossing the bridge after curfew. He wants no trouble, just to finish his shift in peace and get a good night’s sleep.

“No,” lies Booth. He explains that he’s been waiting for the full moon to rise, so that he might navigate the darkened roads by night. And, indeed, a waning moon is rising at that very moment.

“I will pass you,” Cobb sighs. “But I don’t know I ought to.”

“Hell, I guess there’ll be no trouble about that,” Booth shoots back. Ignoring the rule that horses be walked across the bridge, he trots the mare into the night.

Booth is barely across the Potomac when David Herold approaches Silas T. Cobb. He gives his name as just “Smith.” Once again, after a brief discussion, Cobb lets him pass.

One more rider approaches Cobb that night. He is John Fletcher, the stable foreman who is following David Herold. Fletcher can clearly see Herold on the other side of the bridge, now disappearing into the Maryland night.

“You can cross,” Cobb tells him, “but my orders say I can’t let anyone back across the bridge until morning.”

The Maryland countryside, with its smugglers and spies and illicit operatives, is the last place John Fletcher wants to spend the night. He turns his horse’s reins back toward his stable, settling on the hope that Herold and the missing horse will one day make the mistake of riding back into Washington.

In fact, Fletcher will never see the horse again, for it will soon be shot dead, its body left to rot in the backwoods of Maryland—yet another victim of the most spectacular assassination conspiracy in the history of man.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1865

WASHINGTON, D.C.

10:20 P.M.

Lincoln’s life is slipping away. Mary Lincoln lays her head to the president’s breast as Major Rathbone uses his one good arm to yank the music stand from its notch in the doorway. Booth’s knife missed a major artery by just one-third of an inch. Otherwise Rathbone would now be dead.

The major swings open the outer door of the state box. Dozens of unruly theatergoers fill the dress circle and try to fight their way into the state box. “Doctors only!” Rathbone shouts as blood drips down his arm and pools on the floor. The truth is that the major needs medical attention, but all eyes are on Lincoln.

“I’m bleeding to death!” Rathbone shouts as a twenty-three-year-old doctor, Charles Leale, fights his way forward. Dr. Leale came to the theater solely because he wanted to see Lincoln in person. Now he is the first physician to come upon the crime scene. Leale reaches out a hand and lifts Rathbone’s chin so that he might look into his eyes and gauge his physical condition. Noting in an instant that Rathbone is quite obviously not bleeding to death, Dr. Leale turns his attention to Lincoln.

“Oh, Doctor,” sobs Mary Lincoln as Leale slowly removes her from her husband’s body. “Can he recover? Will you take charge of him?”

“I will do what I can,” Dr. Leale says calmly. With a nod to the crowd of men who have followed him into the box, the young doctor makes it clear that Mary must be removed. She is ushered to a couch on the other side of the box, next to Clara Harris, who begins stroking her hand.

Leale asks for a lamp and orders that no one else be admitted to the state box except for physicians. Then he stands in front of the rocking chair, facing Lincoln’s slumped head. He pushes the body upright, the head lolling back against the rocker. He can feel the slightest breath from Lincoln’s nose and mouth, but Leale is reluctant to touch the body without making a preliminary observation. One thing, however, is quite clear: Lincoln is not dead.

Dr. Leale can’t find any sign of injury. Onlookers light matches so that he can see better, and the call goes out for a lamp. The front of Lincoln’s body shows no sign of physical violence, and the forward slumping indicates that the attack must have come from behind. Yet there’s no visible entry wound or exit wound. If Dr. Leale didn’t know better, he would swear that Lincoln simply dozed off and will awaken any minute.

“Put him on the floor,” the doctor orders. Gently, ever so gently, Lincoln’s long torso is lifted by men standing on both sides of the rocking chair and then lowered to the carpet.

Based on Major Rathbone’s wounds, and the fact that he didn’t hear any gunshot during the performance, Leale deduces that Lincoln was stabbed. He rolls the president on one side and carefully searches for a puncture wound, his fingers slipping along the skin, probing for a telltale oozing of blood. But he feels nothing, and when he pulls his hands away, they’re completely clean.

He strips Lincoln to the waist and continues the search, cutting off the president’s white shirt with a pocketknife. But his skin is milky white and smooth, with no sign of any harm. Leale lifts Lincoln’s eyelids and examines the pupils. Finding clear evidence that the right eye’s optic nerve has somehow been cut, he decides to reexamine. Perhaps Lincoln was stabbed in the back of the skull. Head wounds are notorious bleeders, so such a wound is unlikely, but there has to be some explanation.

Dr. Leale, more befuddled by the mystery with each passing moment, runs his hands through Lincoln’s hair. This time they come back blood-red.

Alarmed, Leale examines the president’s head a second time. Beneath the thick hair, just above and behind the left ear, hides a small blood clot. It’s no bigger than the doctor’s pinkie, but when he pulls his finger away, the sensation is like a cork being removed from a bottle. Blood flows freely from the wound, and Lincoln’s chest suddenly rises and falls as pressure is taken from his brain.

Dr. Leale has been a practicing physician for all of two months, having just graduated from Bellevue Hospital Medical College. He wears an army uniform, as befitting a doctor who currently works in the Wounded Commissioned Officers’ Ward at the U.S. Army’s General Hospital in nearby Armory Square. The bulk of his medical education took place during the Civil War, so despite his short time as a practicing physician, he has seen more gunshot wounds than most doctors see in a lifetime. Yet he encountered those wounds in hospitals far removed from the battlefield, when the patients were in advanced stages of recovery. He has never performed the sort of critical life-saving procedures that take place immediately after an injury.

But now Dr. Leale somehow knows just what to do—and he does it well.

Working quickly, Leale straddles Lincoln’s chest and begins resuscitating the president, hoping to improve the flow of oxygen to the brain. He shoves two fingers down Lincoln’s throat and presses down on the back of the tongue, just in case food or drink is clogged in the esophagus. As he does so, two other doctors who were in the audience arrive on the scene. Though far more experienced, army surgeon Dr. Charles Sabin Taft and Dr. Albert King defer to Dr. Leale. When he asks them to stimulate the blood flow by manipulating Lincoln’s arms in an up-and-down, back-and-forth manner, they instantly kneel down and each take an arm. Leale, meanwhile, presses hard on Lincoln’s torso, trying to stimulate his heart.

Then, as Leale will one day tell an audience celebrating the one hundredth anniversary of Lincoln’s birth, he performs an act of great and urgent intimacy: “I leaned forcibly forward directly over his body, thorax to thorax, face to face, and several times drew in a long breath, then forcibly breathed directly into his mouth and nostrils, which expanded the lungs and improved his respirations.”

Dr. Leale lies atop Lincoln, his lips locked with Lincoln’s, offering what looks to be a lover’s kiss. The theater below is a madhouse. Men in the box around him look on, recognizing that Leale is performing a medical procedure, but struck by the awkward pose nonetheless.

Dr. Leale doesn’t care. Every bit of his energy is poured into accomplishing the impossible task of saving Lincoln. Finally, he knows in his heart that the procedure has worked. He will later recall, “After waiting a moment, I placed my ear over his thorax and found the action of the heart improving. I arose to the erect kneeling posture, then watched for a short time and saw that the president could continue independent breathing and that instant death would not occur. I then announced my diagnosis and prognosis.”

But Dr. Leale does not utter the hopeful words the onlookers wish to hear. They have seen the president breathe on his own. They know that his heart is functioning. Clearly, they think the president might survive.

Only Dr. Leale has seen the dull look in Lincoln’s pupils, a sure sign that his brain is no longer functioning. “His wound is mortal,” Leale announces softly. “It is impossible for him to recover.”

A soldier vomits. Men remove their caps. Mary Lincoln sits just a few feet away but is in too much shock to comprehend what’s been said. Someone hands Dr. Leale a dram of brandy and water, which he slowly dribbles into Lincoln’s mouth. The president’s prominent Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows.

The pandemonium in the theater, meanwhile, has not diminished. The frenzy and shouting are deafening. No one in the state box speaks as Dr. Leale works on Lincoln, but its list of occupants has grown larger and more absurd. With John Parker, Lincoln’s bodyguard, still strangely missing, no one is blocking access to the little room. To one side, on the couch, the distraught Mary Lincoln is being comforted by Clara Harris. Major Rathbone drips blood on the carpet, trying to stanch the flow by holding tight to the injured arm. There are three doctors, a half dozen soldiers, and a small army of theater patrons who have battled their way into the box. And then, almost absurdly, the actress Laura Keene forces her way into their midst and kneels at Lincoln’s side. She begs to be allowed to cradle Lincoln. Dr. Leale, somewhat stunned but knowing it can do no harm, agrees.

Keene lifts the president’s head into her lap and calmly strokes his face. Before becoming an actress she worked for a time as a restorer of old paintings, so she is more than familiar with the world of art and sculpture. She knows that this moment is Michelangelo’s Pietà come to life, with her as Mary and Lincoln as Christ. Surrounded on all sides by what can only be described as anarchy, Laura Keene nurtures the dying man. The war years have been hard on her—drink has made her face puffy, and the constant wartime barnstorming has done little to stop her slowly declining popularity. The chestnut-eyed actress with the long auburn hair knows that this moment will put her name in papers around the world, so there is more than a touch of self-indulgence in her actions. But Laura Keene is not maudlin or the slightest bit dramatic as Abraham Lincoln’s blood and brains soak into the lap of her dress. Like everyone else in the state box, she is stunned. Just a few minutes before, the president of the United States had been a vibrant and larger-than-life presence. Now everything has changed.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1865

WASHINGTON, D.C.

11:00 P.M.

The president of the United States cannot die on a dirty floor. No one knows how much longer he will live, but he must be moved. Dr. King suggests they move him to the White House, where he can pass the final moments of life in the comfort of his own bed. But Dr. Leale knows better than to attempt a bumpy carriage ride through Washington, D.C., particularly through panicked crowds that will necessitate the driver stopping and starting and turning quite suddenly. “He will be dead before we get there,” Leale says firmly.

The young doctor agrees, however, that Lincoln should be resting in a bed, not on the floor. Dr. Taft sends a soldier to scour nearby boarding-houses for an empty room. Four other young soldiers are ordered to lift Lincoln back into the rocking chair and carry the president out of the theater.

But Dr. Leale overrules Taft. The logistics of carrying a rocking chair containing a man with very long legs borders on the absurd. Just getting down to the lobby involves navigating sharp angles, a narrow corridor, two small doorways, and a flight of stairs. A stretcher would be ideal, but none is available. Leale orders the four soldiers to stop gawking and get to work. They will lock their hands beneath the president and form a sling. Two will lift the torso, while two will carry the legs. They will transport Lincoln headfirst. Leale will walk backward, cradling Lincoln’s head in his hands.

Laura Keene steps aside. She can’t help but marvel at Lincoln’s upper body, still possessing the lean musculature of the young wrestler renowned for feats of strength. The youthful power and appearance of his chest is in marked contrast to that famously weathered face. The only clue that this great body is actually dying is that his skin is pale and growing more so by the moment.

The four soldiers—John Corry, Jabes Griffiths, Bill Sample, and Jacob Soles of the Pennsylvania Light Artillery—now slip their hands under that torso and raise Lincoln to a sitting position. Dr. Leale, with help from the other two physicians, dresses the president in his frock coat and buttons it.

“Guards,” barks Leale. “Clear the passage.”

As if leading a processional, Laura Keene waits for the body to be lifted. She then marches out of the box, followed by the backward-walking Leale, the four soldiers, and Dr. King, who supports a shoulder, if only so he can remain a part of the action. Through the hallway, out into the dress circle, and down the stairs they travel. Mary Lincoln follows in their wake, stunned and shaky as she walks.

Their progress is slow, for two reasons. The first is that theatergoers block the way, desperate for a peek—desperate to be able to say they saw Lincoln’s corpse. The faithful make the sign of the cross and mumble a quiet prayer as Lincoln passes before their very eyes.

“Clear the way,” Leale barks. Soldiers in the crowd respond, jumping forth to push back the mob. It becomes a wrestling match. Chairs are destroyed. Punches are thrown. Noses are bloodied. A Union officer finally draws his sword and threatens to cut down any man standing in Lincoln’s path. This manages to quiet the crowd but only for an instant.

The second reason for the dawdling pace is that the bullet hole in Lincoln’s head is clotting at an amazing rate. When this happens, Lincoln appears to be in obvious discomfort from increased pressure against his brain. So despite the anarchy all around him, Dr. Leale orders the processional halted every few feet. Then he slips his forefinger into Lincoln’s skull to clear the hole, bringing forth even more blood but taking pressure off the president’s brain.

They finally reach the lobby but don’t know where to go next. By now, soldiers have found the partition usually used to divide the state box. At seven feet long and three inches thick, it makes a perfect stretcher for Abraham Lincoln. His body is shifted onto the board.

Dr. Leale and the other two surgeons decide they will carry Lincoln into Taltavul’s, right next door. A soldier is sent to clear the tavern. But he soon comes back with word that Lincoln will not be allowed inside—and for very good reason. Peter Taltavul is a patriot, a man who spent twenty-five years in the Marine Corps band. Of all the people in the crowd on this frenzied night, he is one of the few who has the foresight to understand the significance of the presidency and how the night’s events will one day be viewed. “Don’t bring him in here,” Taltavul tells the soldier. “It shouldn’t be said that the president of the United States died in a saloon.”

But where should they bring him?

Leale orders that Lincoln be lifted and carried to the row houses across the street. There is an enormous crowd in front of Ford’s. It will be almost impossible to clear a path through their midst, but it’s vital that Leale get Lincoln someplace warm and clean, immediately. The pine stretcher is lifted and Lincoln’s body is carried out into the cold, wet night, the procession lit by that murky yellow light from the tar torches. Lincoln’s carriage, with its magnificent team of black chargers, is parked a few feet away.

Then his bodyguards arrive. Not John Parker, for the instant he heard that Lincoln was shot he vanished into the night, continuing his villainy. No, it is the Union Light Guard, otherwise known as the Seventh Independent Company of Ohio Volunteer Cavalry, that gallops to the rescue. These are the men who have served as Lincoln’s bodyguards during his rides around the city and out to the Soldiers’ Home. They raced over from their stables next to the White House when they heard about the shooting. Rather than dismount, they work with other soldiers on the scene to make a double-wide corridor from one side of Tenth Street to the other. Leale and the men carrying Lincoln make their way down Ford’s granite front steps and onto the muddy road, still not knowing where they will finally be able to bring him but glad to be away from the chaos and frenzy of Ford’s.

Only more chaos awaits them in the street. The violent mob has swelled from dozens to hundreds in mere minutes, as people from all around Washington have sprinted to Ford’s Theatre. Many are drunk. All are confused. And no one is in charge.

“Bring him in here,” a voice shouts above the madness.

Henry S. Safford is a twenty-five-year-old War Department employee. He has toasted the Union victory every night since Monday, and tonight he was so worn out that he stayed in to rest. He was alone in his parlor, reading, when the streets below him exploded in confusion. When Safford stuck his head out the window to see what was happening, someone shouted the news that Lincoln had been shot. Safford raced downstairs and out into the crowd, but “finding it impossible to go further, as everyone acted crazy or mad,” he retreated back to the steps of the Federal-style brick row house in which he rents a room from a German tailor named William Petersen. Safford stood on the porch and watched in amazement as Lincoln’s failing body was conveyed out of Ford’s. He saw the confusion on Dr. Leale’s face as the contingent inched across Tenth Street, and witnessed the way Dr. Leale stopped every few feet and poked his finger into Lincoln’s skull to keep the blood flowing. He saw Leale lifting his own head and scanning the street front, searching for someplace to bring Lincoln.

Now Safford wants to help.

“Put him in here,” he shouts again.

Dr. Leale was actually aiming for the house next door, but a soldier had tried and found it locked. So they turn toward Safford. “This was done as quickly as the soldiers could make a pathway through the crowd,” a sketch artist will remember later. Just moments earlier he had been so enthralled with the happy crowd in front of Ford’s that he had impulsively grabbed a pad and begun drawing—“women with wide skirts and wearing large poke bonnets were as numerous as the men … . The scene was so unusual and inspiring.”

But now he is sketching a melee and the sad scene of “the prostrate form of an injured man.”

He will later say, “I recognized the lengthy form of the president by the flickering light of the torches, and one large gas lamp. The tarrying at the curb and the slow, careful manner in which he was carried across the street gave me ample time to make an accurate sketch. It was the most tragic and impressive scene I have ever witnessed.”

Leale and his stretcher bearers carry Lincoln up nine short, curved steps to the front door of the Petersen house. “Take us to your best room,” he orders Safford. And though he is hardly the man to be making that decision, Safford immediately realizes that his own second-floor room will not do. He guides the group down to the spacious room of George and Huldah Francis, but it is locked. Safford leads them deeper into the house, to a room that is clearly not Petersen’s finest—but that will have to do. He pushes open the door, which features a large glass window covered by a curtain, and sees that it is empty.

The room is that of William Clark, a twenty-three-year-old army clerk who is gone for the night. Clark is fastidious in his cleanliness, so at just under ten feet wide and eighteen feet long, furnished with four-poster bed, table, bureau, and chairs, the bedroom is a cramped though very neat space.

But Lincoln is much too big for the bed. Dr. Leale orders that the headboard be broken off, but it won’t break. Instead, the president is laid down diagonally on the red, white, and blue bedspread. The lumpy mattress is filled with corn husks. His head points toward the door and his feet toward the wall. Ironically, John Wilkes Booth often rented this very room during the previous summer. In fact, as recently as three weeks ago, Booth lolled on the very bed in which Lincoln is now dying.

Everyone leaves but the doctors and Mary Lincoln. She stares down at her husband, still wearing his boots, pants, and frock coat; there are two pillows under his head, and that bearded chin rests on his chest. Now and then he sighs involuntarily, giving her hope.

“Mrs. Lincoln, I must ask you to leave,” Dr. Leale says softly.

Mary is like a child, so forlorn that she lacks the will to protest as others make her decisions for her. The first lady steps out of William Clark’s rented room, into the long, dark hallway.

“Live,” she pleads to her husband before she leaves. “You must live.”

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

SATURDAY, APRIL 15, 1865

WASHINGTON, D.C.

MIDNIGHT TO DAWN

Dr. Leale strips Lincoln’s body. He, too, marvels at the definition of the muscles on the president’s chest, shoulders, and legs. This is clearly the body of a man who has led a vigorous life. Dr. Leale searches the body for signs of another wound but finds none. The area around Lincoln’s eyes and forehead is becoming swollen and black and blue, like a boxer’s face after a tough fight.

Moving down the long and slender frame, Leale is disturbed to feel that Lincoln’s feet are now icy to the touch, which he immediately treats by applying a mustard plaster to every inch of the front of Lincoln’s body, from shoulders down to ankles. “No drug or medicine in any form was administered to the president,” he will later note. “But the artificial heat and mustard plaster that I had applied warmed his cold body and stimulated his nerves.”

He then covers the president with a blanket as Dr. Taft begins the process of removing the ball from Lincoln’s head. Taft inserts his index finger into the wound and pronounces that the bullet has penetrated beyond the fingertip.

Meanwhile, Lincoln’s pockets are emptied and his belongings carefully cataloged: an Irish linen handkerchief with the embroidered letter A; money, both Confederate and U.S.; newspaper clippings; an ivory pocketknife; and a pair of gold-rimmed glasses whose broken frame the president had mended with string.

More brandy and water is poured between Lincoln’s lips. The Adam’s apple once again bobs during the first spoonful but not at all for the second. With great difficulty, the doctors gently turn Lincoln on his side so that the excess fluid will run from his mouth and not choke him.

Lincoln is battling to stay alive. This is quite clear to each doctor. A normal man would be dead by now.

The surgeon general of the army, Dr. Joseph Barnes, arrives and takes control of the scene. Barnes is closely followed by future surgeon general Charles H. Crane. Dr. Leale has been bold and aggressive these past few hours since the shooting. He now explains his course of action in great detail to two of the most powerful and well-regarded physicians in America. Both men agree with Leale’s assessment and treatment, much to the young physician’s relief.

The human brain is the most complex structure in all the world’s biology, a humming and whirring center of thought, speech, motor movement, memory, and thousands of other minute functions. It is protected on the outside by the skull and then by a layer of connective-tissue membranes that form a barrier between the hard bone of the cranium and the gelatinous, soft tissue of the brain itself. Lincoln’s brain, in which a Nélaton’s probe (a long, porcelain, pencil-like instrument) is now being inserted in hopes of finding the bullet, contains vivid memories of a youth spent on the wild American frontier. This brain dazzled with clarity and brilliance during great political debates. It struggled with war and the politics of being president, then devised and executed solutions to the epic problems of the times. It imagined stirring speeches that knit the country together, then made sure that the words, when spoken, were uttered with exactly the right cadence, enunciation, and pitch. It guided those long slender fingers as they signed the Emancipation Proclamation, giving four million slaves their freedom. Inside his brain, Lincoln imagined the notion of “One country, one destiny.” And this brain is also the reservoir of Lincoln’s nightmares—particularly the one in which, just two weeks earlier, he envisioned his own assassination.

Now, thanks to a single round metal ball no bigger than a marble, Lincoln’s brain is finished. He is brain-dead.

Dr. Leale realizes that he is no longer needed in that cramped bedroom. But he does not leave. Emotion supersedes professional decorum. Leale, like the others, can barely hold back his tears. He has noticed that Lincoln is visibly more comfortable when the wound is unclogged. So he sits next to Lincoln’s head and continues his solitary vigil, poking his finger into the blood clot every few minutes, making sure there’s not too much pressure on Lincoln’s brain.

A light rain is falling outside, but the crowd is eager for news and will not leave. In the room next door, Secretary of War Stanton has arrived and now takes charge, acting as interim president of the United States. Word of the assassination has brought a crowd of government officials to the Petersen house. The police investigation is beginning to take shape. It is clear that Booth shot Lincoln, and many believe that the actor also attacked Seward in his bed. Vice President Andrew Johnson, whose luck held when his assassin backed out, now stands in the next room, summoned after learning of Lincoln’s plight.

All the while, Dr. Leale maintains his vigil by the dim candlelight. The occupants of the bedroom change constantly, with clergymen and officials and family members stepping in for a moment to pay their respects. More than sixty-five persons will be allowed inside before the night is through. The most frequent presence is Mary Lincoln, who weeps and even falls to her knees by the bedside whenever she is allowed a few moments with her husband. Leale takes care to spread a clean white handkerchief over the bloody pillow whenever she is about to walk in, but the bleeding in Lincoln’s head never ceases, and before Mary Lincoln departs the handkerchief is often covered in blood and brain matter.

At three A.M., the scene is so grisly that Mary is no longer admitted.

The various doctors take turns recording Lincoln’s condition. His respiration is shallow and fast, coming twenty-four to twenty-seven times a minute. His pulse rises to sixty-four at five-forty A.M., and hovers at sixty just a few moments later. But by then Leale can barely feel it.

Another doctor makes notes on Lincoln’s condition:

“6:30—still failing and labored breathing.”

“6:40—expirations prolonged and groaning. A deep, softly sonorous cooing sound at the end of each expiration, audible to bystanders.”

“6:45—respiration uneasy, choking and grunting. Lower jaw relaxed. Mouth open. A minute without a breath. Face getting dark.”

“6:59—breathes again a little more at intervals.”

“7:00—still breathing at long pauses; symptoms of immediate dissolution.”

With the president’s death imminent, Mary Lincoln is once again admitted. Dr. Leale stands to make room. She sits in the chair next to Lincoln and then presses her face against her husband’s. “Love,” she says softly. “Speak to me.”

A “loud, unnatural noise,” in Dr. Leale’s description, barks up from Lincoln’s lungs. The sound is so grotesque that Mary collapses. As she is carried from the room she steals one last glimpse of her husband. She has known him since he was just a gangly country lawyer and has shared almost half her life with him. This will be the last time she sees him alive.

“I have given my husband to die,” she laments, wishing that it could have been her instead.

Dr. Leale can’t find a pulse. Lincoln’s breathing becomes guttural, then ceases altogether before starting again. The room fills with a small army of elected officials, all of whom wish to witness the historic moment of Lincoln’s death. Outside, it is dawn, and the crowds have grown even larger, with everyone waiting for a sliver of news.

In the bedroom, Robert Lincoln sobs loudly, unable to control his grief. He stands at the head of the bed and looks down at his father. Dr. Barnes sits in the chair, his finger on Lincoln’s carotid artery, seeking a pulse. Dr. Leale has moved to the other side of the bed and wedged himself against the wall. He once again holds Lincoln’s hand, simultaneously using his index finger to feel for a pulse on Lincoln’s wrist.

There is no death rattle. Lincoln draws his last breath at seven twenty-one. His heart beats for another fifteen seconds, then stops altogether at ten seconds past seven twenty-two A.M.

More than twenty men are packed into the bedroom. Nobody says a word for five long minutes. Dr. Barnes reaches into his vest pocket for a pair of silver coins, which he places over Lincoln’s eyes—one of which is now completely black and blue. Dr. Leale, meanwhile, folds the president’s arms across his chest and carefully smooths his hair.

He barely hears Secretary Stanton rumble, “Now he belongs to the ages.”

Sketch created at the deathbed of President Lincoln

Part Four

THE CHASE

John Wilkes Booth in portrait

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

SATURDAY, APRIL 15, 1865

MARYLAND COUNTRYSIDE

EARLY MORNING

John Wilkes Booth and David Herold, the most wanted men in the United States of America, have successfully fled into the Maryland countryside. They met up at the rendezvous spot in the dead of night. With no sign that Atzerodt or Powell managed to escape Washington, Booth and Herold pushed on with their flight, galloping their horses south, toward Virgina. However, Booth’s leg injury is so severe, and their horses so tired, that they were forced to find a place to rest. They are now hiding in the house of the eminent physician and Confederate sympathizer Dr. Samuel Mudd.

Somewhere in Washington, George Atzerodt and Lewis Powell are still on the loose.

The authorities don’t know any of that yet—no numbers, no identities, and no motives. But even before Lincoln breathed his last, they began the intricate process of unraveling the mystery of his death.

Investigators stumble upon Atzerodt’s trail first. After failing to carry out the assassination of Vice President Johnson, the carriage painter spent the night wandering aimlessly about Washington, getting thoroughly drunk in a number of bars and making sure to dispose of the knife he was supposed to use to kill the vice president. Other than plotting against the president of the United States, he has committed no crime. Atzerodt has a reputation for being dim, but he is canny enough to know that once he threw his knife into a gutter, the only obvious piece of evidence connecting him with the conspiracy was being seen publicly on Booth’s horse. It might take days for authorities to make that connection. If he maintains a low profile and keeps his wits about him, there is every chance that he can get out of Washington and get on with a normal life.

Atzerodt is all too aware that returning to his room at Kirkwood House would be a very stupid idea. So just before three A.M. he checks into the Pennsylvania House hotel, where he is assigned a double room. His roommate, at a time when Atzerodt needs to be as far away from the long arm of the law as possible, is a police lieutenant named W. R. Keim. The two men know each other from Atzerodt’s previous stays at the Pennsylvania House. They lie on their backs in the darkness and have a short conversation before falling asleep. Keim is stunned by the slaying of Lincoln. As drunk as he is, Atzerodt does an artful job of feigning sadness, saying that the whole Lincoln assassination is a terrible tragedy.

Lieutenant Keim never suspects a thing.

But events are already conspiring against Atzerodt. Even as he sleeps off his long, hard night of drinking and walking, detectives sent to protect Andrew Johnson are combing through Atzerodt’s belongings at Kirkwood House. A desk clerk remembers seeing a “villainous-looking” individual registered in room 126. Atzerodt took the only room key with him when he fled, so detectives have to break down the door to investigate. Quickly canvassing the empty room, they come up with the first solid leads about Lincoln’s murder. In the breast pocket of a dark coat hanging on a wall peg, they discover a ledger book from the Ontario Bank in Montreal. The name written inside the cover is that of John Wilkes Booth, whom scores of eyewitnesses have already identified as Lincoln’s killer. The book confirms the connection between Atzerodt and Booth.

A quick rifling of the bed produces a loaded revolver under the pillow and a Bowie knife hidden beneath the covers. And that is just the beginning. Room 126 soon becomes a treasure trove of evidence: a map of southern states, pistol rounds, a handkerchief embroidered with the name of Booth’s mother, and much more.

Investigators now have two suspects: Booth and Atzerodt. Warrants are issued for their arrests.

At the same time, an anonymous tip leads investigators to raid Mary Surratt’s boardinghouse on H Street in the dead of night. Nothing is found, but Surratt’s behavior is suspicious enough that detectives decide to keep an eye on her and the house. A similar anonymous tip leads police to room 228 at the National Hotel—Booth’s room—which is quickly ripped apart. Booth has left behind an abundance of clues—among them a business card bearing the name “J. Harrison Surratt” and a letter from former conspirator Samuel Arnold that implicates Michael O’Laughlen. More and more, it is becoming obvious that John Wilkes Booth did not act alone.

A few blocks away, detectives question Secretary of State Seward’s household staff, which adds two more nameless individuals to the list: the man who attacked Seward and his accomplice, who was seen waiting outside. This brings the number of conspirators to six: Booth, Atzerodt, O’Laughlen, Arnold, and Seward’s two unknown attackers. John Surratt becomes a suspect because police are watching his mother.

The detectives, thrilled at their brisk progress, are sure they will arrest each and every member of the conspiracy within a matter of days.

Meanwhile, Washington is in a state of shock. Flags are flown at half-mast. Vice President Andrew Johnson is sworn in as the seventeenth president of the United States. Secretary of State Seward is not dead, as is widely rumored. But he is very badly injured.

He will be in a coma through Saturday but will awaken on Easter Sunday. Gazing out the window, he will see the War Department’s flags at half-mast and immediately know what has happened. “The president is dead,” Seward will sigh.

When his nurse insists that this is not the case, Seward will hold his ground. “If he had been alive he would be the first to call on me,” he will say, “but he has not been here, nor has he sent to know how I am, and there’s the flag at half-mast.” Then he will turn his head from the window, tears streaming down his cheeks, their salt mingling with the blood of his still-fresh wounds.

But now it is still Saturday morning. Black crepe replaces the red, white, and blue bunting on government buildings. Liquor outlets are shut down so that angry Washingtonians don’t find yet another excuse to begin drinking and perhaps, in their drunken anger, start looting. Multiracial crowds gather in front of the Petersen house, grateful to merely be in the presence of the hallowed ground where Lincoln died. Just across the street, Ford’s Theatre has instantly gone from a Washington cultural hub to a pariah; the good fortune of having Lincoln attend Our American Cousin will soon put the theater out of business. The government will decree that the building may never again be used as a place of public amusement.

The cast of Our American Cousin is so afraid of being attacked by angry mobs that the actors and actresses lock themselves inside the theater after the shooting. One of their own, Harry Hawk, has already been taken into police custody for sharing the same stage as Booth.

Throughout the nation, as the news spreads, Abraham Lincoln’s worst fears are being realized. Outraged northerners mourn his loss and openly rant about revenge, while southerners rejoice in the death of the tyrannical man who wouldn’t give them the freedom to form their own nation. The Civil War, so close to being finally over, now seems on the verge of erupting once again.

Believing that catching Lincoln’s killer will help quell the unrest, Secretary of War Stanton spends Saturday expanding the search, making the hunt for Lincoln’s killers the biggest criminal dragnet in American history. Soldiers, cavalry, and every imaginable form of law enforcement throughout the northern states are called off every other task and ordered to devote all their energies to finding John Wilkes Booth and his band of killers. In the same manner that Grant attempted to besiege Petersburg by throwing a noose around the city, Stanton hopes to throw a giant rope around the Northeast, then slowly cinch the knot tighter until he squeezes out the killers. He also sends a telegram to New York City, recalling Lafayette Baker, his former spymaster and chief of security. The strange connection between Stanton and Baker now becomes even stronger.

Why does Stanton call for Baker, of all people?

As all this is going on, George Atzerodt wakes up at dawn on Saturday morning, still drunk after just two hours of sleep. He is somehow oblivious to the fact that people might be looking for him. Nor does he have any idea that the man who assaulted Secretary Seward, Lewis Powell, is also still stuck in Washington, hiding out in a cemetery after being thrown from his horse. Atzerodt knows he must get out of Washington, but first he needs money to fund his escape. He has no plan, and he is under no delusion that he will find a way to meet up with John Wilkes Booth; nor does he want to.

Atzerodt leaves the Pennsylvania House and walks across the city to nearby Georgetown, where he makes the unusual gesture of calling on an old girlfriend. He tells her he is going away for a while, as if she might somehow want to come along. And then as mysteriously as he appeared, Atzerodt leaves the home of Lucinda Metz and pawns his revolver for ten dollars at a nearby store. He uses the money to buy a stagecoach ticket into Maryland, taking public transportation at a time when all common sense cries out for a more inconspicuous means of escape.

But now fate is smiling upon George Atzerodt. Nobody stops the stagecoach as it rolls out of Washington and into Maryland. Even when the stage is halted and searched by Union soldiers miles outside the capital, nobody suspects that the simple-witted Atzerodt is capable of being resourceful enough to take part in the conspiracy. In fact, Atzerodt is so unassuming that the sergeant in charge of the soldiers actually shares a few glasses of cider with the conspirator.

In this way, George Atzerodt stumbles deeper and deeper into the countryside, on his way, he believes, to safety and freedom.

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

SATURDAY, APRIL 15, 1865

MARYLAND COUNTRYSIDE

NOON

John Wilkes Booth is miserable. Flat on his back on a bed in the country home of Confederate sympathizer Samuel Mudd, Booth screams in pain as the thirty-one-year-old doctor cuts off his boot and gently presses his fingers into the grossly swollen ankle. As if shattering his fibula while leaping to the stage wasn’t bad enough, Booth’s horse threw him during his thirty-mile midnight ride through Maryland, hurling his body into a rock. Booth is sore, hungover, exhausted, and experiencing a new and nagging anxiety: that of the hunted.

After the assassination, Booth and David Herold rode hard all night, stopping only at a small tavern owned by Mary Surratt to pick up some Spencer rifles she’d hidden for them. Herold was glib, boasting to the Confederate proprietor that they’d killed the president. But he also had his wits about him, buying a bottle of whiskey so Booth could enjoy a nip or two to dull the pain. Then they rode on, ten more hard miles on tree-lined country roads, for Booth every mile more painful than the last. It was the actor’s leg that made them detour to Mudd’s house. Otherwise they would have reached the Potomac River by sunrise. With any luck, they might have stolen a boat and made the crossing into Virginia immediately.

Dr. Samuel Mudd

Still, they’re close. Very close. By choosing to take shelter at Mudd’s rather than stay on the main road south to the Potomac, they have veered off the fastest possible route. But Mudd’s two-hundred-eighteen-acre estate is just north of Bryantown, south and east of Washington, and fully two-thirds of the way to the Potomac River.

Booth’s pants and jacket are now spattered with mud. His handsome face, so beloved by women everywhere, is unshaven and sallow. But more than anything else, John Wilkes Booth is helpless. Almost overnight he has become a shell of himself, as if assassinating Lincoln has robbed him of the fire in his belly, and the pain of his shattered leg has transformed him from daredevil to coward. He is now completely dependent upon David Herold to lead their escape into the South. At a time when Booth needs all his wiles and resources to complete the second half of the perfect assassination, he is too distraught and in too much agony to think straight.

Dr. Mudd says he’s going to splint the leg. Booth lies back and lets him, despite the knowledge that this means he will no longer be able to slip his foot into a stirrup. Now he must ride one-legged, half on and half off his horse—if he can ride at all.

Mudd finishes splinting the leg, then leaves Booth alone to get some rest. The actor is in an upstairs room, so if anyone comes looking, he won’t be found right away. He wraps a shawl around his neck and face to conceal his identity, and he has plans to shave his mustache. But otherwise, he does absolutely nothing to facilitate his escape. The pain is too great. It will take a miracle for Booth to travel even one mile farther.

He rolls over and closes his eyes, then falls into a deep sleep, sure that he is being hunted but completely unaware that more than a thousand men on horseback are within a few miles of his location—and that Lafayette Baker is now on the case.

CHAPTER FIFTY

SATURDAY-SUNDAY, APRIL 15-16, 1865

NEW YORK CITY

MORNING

Lafayette Baker is in his room at New York’s Astor House hotel when he hears that Lincoln has been shot. The disgraced spy, who was sent away from Washington for tapping Secretary Stanton’s telegraph lines, is not surprised. His first thought, as always, is of finding a way to spin this tragedy for his own personal gain. Baker loves glory and money. He understands in an instant that the man who finds Lincoln’s killer will know unparalleled wealth and fame. Baker longs to be that man.

It’s noon on Saturday when a telegram arrives from Stanton, summoning him to “come here immediately and find the murderer of our president.”

If Baker were an ordinary man and not prone to weaving elaborate myths about himself, that telegram would be a very straightforward call to battle. But Baker is so fond of half-truths and deception that it’s impossible to know if he is traveling to Washington as a sort of supersleuth, handpicked by Stanton to find Lincoln’s killers, or if he is traveling to Washington to find and kill Booth before the actor can detail Secretary Stanton’s role in the conspiracy. Whatever the case, at a time when Baker could have been anywhere in the world, Stanton knew exactly where to find the fired spy so that he could be summoned to the capital.

Lafayette Baker takes the overnight train to Washington, arriving at dawn. The city is in chaos, and he will later describe the looks on people’s faces as “inexpressible, bewildering horror and grief.” Baker travels immediately to the War Department, where he meets with Stanton. “They have killed the president. You must go to work. My whole dependence is upon you,” the secretary tells him. The entire detective forces of New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Boston have traveled to Washington and are devoting their considerable professional talents to finding the killers. But Stanton has just given Baker carte blanche to move in and take over the entire investigation.

One of Baker’s specialties is playing the part of the double agent. Even though there is evidence that Baker and Booth are somehow connected to each other through the 1781/2 Water Street, New York, address, Baker claims that he knows nothing about the case or about the suspects. His first act is to post a reward for $30,000 leading to the arrest and conviction of Lincoln’s killers. He also has photographs of John Surratt, David Herold, and John Wilkes Booth plastered all around town.

One of several reward posters for the capture of John Wilkes Booth

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

SATURDAY-SUNDAY, APRIL 15-16, 1865

MARYLAND COUNTRYSIDE

David Herold needs a buggy. It’s the most obvious solution to John Wilkes Booth’s plight. With a buggy they can travel quickly and in relative comfort. He asks Dr. Mudd to loan them his, but the doctor is reluctant; secretly harboring fugitives is one thing, but allowing the two most wanted men in America to ride through southern Maryland in his personal carriage would surely implicate Mudd and his wife in the conspiracy. Their hanging—for that is surely the fate awaiting any Lincoln conspirator—would leave their four young children orphans.

Instead, Mudd suggests that they ride into Bryantown to pick up some supplies and check on the latest news. With Booth still passed out upstairs, Herold agrees to the journey. But as they draw closer and closer to the small town, something in Herold’s gut tells him not to take the risk. A stranger like him will be too easily remembered by such a tight-knit community. He is riding Booth’s bay now, because it’s too spirited for the actor to control with his broken leg. Herold lets Mudd go on without him, then wheels the mare back to the doctor’s home.

Good thing. The United States cavalry now has Bryantown surrounded. They’re not only questioning all its citizens, they’re not letting anyone leave, either.

This is the sort of savvy, intuitive thinking that separates David Herold from the other members of Booth’s conspiracy. Atzerodt is dim. Powell is a thug. And Booth is emotional. But the twenty-two-year-old Herold, recruited to the conspiracy for his knowledge of Washington’s backstreets, is intelligent and resourceful. He was educated at Georgetown College, the finest such institution in the city. He is also an avid hunter, which gives him a full complement of the outdoor skills that Booth now requires to escape, the additional ability to improvise in dangerous situations, and an instinctive sixth sense about tracking—or, in this case, being tracked.

But now Herold is just as exhausted as Booth. He didn’t endure the same extreme adrenaline spike last night, if only because he didn’t kill anyone. But he experienced a definite and sustained rush as he galloped over the Navy Yard Bridge, then along the dangerous darkened roads of Maryland. He’s had time to think and to plan, and he knows that constant forward movement is the key to their survival. Otherwise, Herold has no doubt that the cavalry will be on their trail in no time.

Clearly, they cannot stay at Dr. Mudd’s any longer. Just before dusk, Herold rouses Booth and helps him down the stairs and up into the saddle. Herold guides them south through the countryside, aiming for the Zekiah Swamp, with its quicksand bogs and dense stands of oldgrowth hardwoods. The few trails that exist are almost impossible to see in the dark, and the pair are soon lost and frustrated. They turn back toward Mudd’s farm but remain out of sight, plotting their next move.

The next twelve hours bring an enduring awareness that they are neither safe nor welcome anywhere.

Easter Sunday dawns hard and bleak. Herold and Booth are camped in a stand of pines a quarter mile off the main road. A cold front is racing across Maryland, and they shiver in the damp swampy air, just a few short miles from the final obstacle to their escape into Virginia, the Potomac River. Booth isn’t wearing a boot on his injured leg, and his foot and ankle are in pain and quite cold from walking on swampy ground in the thin shoes he took from Mudd. Yet Herold doesn’t dare make a fire. Beside him, Booth is curled up in the fetal position, head resting on one hand. Each man clutches his revolver as a stiff wind bends the towering pines. The last sympathizer they visited, the wealthy owner of forty slaves in this still-lawless region, promised to send a man to ferry them across to safety. The rescue signal will be a soft whistle, a pause, and then another soft whistle.

So now they wait. Hour after brutally cold hour, they wonder who will deliver them from this hell. Booth says little, except to cry out in pain or mutter something about not being taken alive. He still has some fight in him. Now and then they hear the jangle of bridles from the nearby road. And all the while, a gnawing little voice in Herold’s gut tells him that they have been betrayed—that the whistle, when it comes, will be their only warning before United States cavalry confirm their position and ride in with guns blazing.

Late Sunday afternoon they hear the first whistle. Then a second. Confederate sympathizer Thomas Jones calls out to them in a low voice, announcing that he is walking into their camp.

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

MONDAY, APRIL 17, 1865

MARYLAND SWAMPS

There is nothing dashing or heroic about the man who has come to save the lives of Booth and Herold. Thomas Jones is a broken man, a forty-four-year-old smuggler who has done time in prison, outlived his wife, and lost his home. He now earns his living by transporting everyone from secret agents to diplomats across the Potomac River to the South. On average, he makes the crossing three times a night. He is so skilled that northern newspapers secretly enlisted his help to get their product into the South during the war. A favorite technique employed by the silver-haired and low-key Jones is to begin his first crossing just before dusk, when the angle of the sun makes it impossible for sentries on the opposite shore to see small craft on the water. It is a brazen and brilliant tactic. Clearly, if any man can get Booth and Herold to safety, it’s Thomas Jones.

On his first visit to the campsite he merely wanted to get a look at the men he would be helping, to see if they were mentally and physically capable of enduring what might be a very long wait until it is safe to cross.

His second visit comes one day later. It’s also the second day in the pine forest for Booth and Herold. They once again hear the whistle from the trees. Booth is even worse today, the pain in his leg so severe that he doesn’t do much more than whimper. Herold stands, carbine pointed toward the sound of approaching footsteps, until Jones finally appears in their thicket, his pockets overflowing with ham, butter, bread, and a flask of coffee. In his hands he holds the one thing Booth wants to see more than any other: newspapers.

Cavalry are combing the countryside, he cautions the killers, and he reminds them to be patient. It might take several days before things die down. No matter how cold it gets, no matter how extreme the conditions, they must be prepared to hunker down in the woods until the coast is clear. As soon as it is, he’ll let them know.

Booth argues that their lives are in danger and that they can’t stay here any longer. But the thunder of hoofbeats from the nearby road stops him short—it’s Union cavalry and far too close for comfort.

“You see, my friend,” Jones whispers. “You must wait.” He tells them to kill the horses, lest their whinnying give the killers away.

Prior to the assassination, Booth would have continued to argue and then done as he pleased. But now he quietly gives in. “I leave it all with you,” he says to Jones.

Jones departs quickly. His visits are uplifting to Booth and Herold, a welcome break from the monotony of sitting still for hours and hours out in the open. They don’t even dare build a shelter, for fear the noise will attract unwelcome attention. Jones doesn’t just bring food and newspapers; he also offers hope, his cool confidence suggesting that all will be well, just so long as they are patient.

With a sigh, Booth turns his attention to the newspapers. He reads about the extent of the search. But his melancholy soon turns to rage as he learns that his monumental actions are not being applauded. Far from it. He is being labeled a scoundrel and a coward for shooting Lincoln in the back. Washington newspapers assail him as the war’s ultimate villain and note that any “kindly feeling” toward the South or its sympathizers has disappeared, thanks to his actions. Booth’s achievement is described in the Richmond papers as “the most deplorable calamity, which has ever befallen the people of the United States.” And finally, the nation’s most staunchly anti-Lincoln paper, the National Intelligencer, is now crying out that Lincoln was a true American hero. The very newspaper that the actor had once hoped would print the letter explaining his actions is instead portraying him as an abomination.

Booth, overcome with despair, sets the papers aside. As is his new habit, he regales Herold with a monologue on the killings—regrets, desires, and misunderstandings. Then he takes out his diary and begins keeping a journal of their time in the wilderness. In it, he writes his reflections on killing Lincoln, just to make sure that his point of view is properly recorded for posterity. “I struck boldly and not as the papers say. I walked with a firm step through a thousand of his friends, was stopped, but pushed on,” Booth writes. “I can never repent it, though we hated to kill. Our country owed all her troubles to him, and God simply made men the instrument of his punishment.”

Booth writes and rants and writes some more. Then he sleeps. Then he awakens and writes some more. There’s nothing else to do with his time. So it is with the world’s two most wanted men, bored to tears in a Maryland swamp.

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

MONDAY, APRIL 17, 1865

MARY SURRATT’S BOARDINGHOUSE

NIGHT

Mary Surratt has been a suspect since the night Lincoln was shot. An anonymous tipster alerted Washington police that the boardinghouse on H Street was the hub of the conspiracy. Detectives questioned her at two o’clock that morning, even as Lincoln lay dying. The widow was forthcoming about the fact that John Wilkes Booth had paid her a visit just twelve hours earlier and that her son John had last been in Washington two weeks earlier. When a thorough search of the house turned up nothing, the police left. No arrest was made.

Now they are back. One of her boarders, Louis Weichmann, has volunteered volumes of information to the authorities about the comings and goings of Booth and the conspirators at Mary Surratt’s boardinghouse. This eyewitness information has confirmed not only that Booth is at the heart of the plan but that Mary Surratt is complicit.

It is well past midnight when police surround the house. She answers a knock at the door, thinking it is a friend. “Is this Mrs. Surratt’s house?” asks a detective.

“Yes.”

“Are you Mrs. Surratt?”

“I am the widow of John H. Surratt.”

“And the mother of John H. Surratt Jr.?”

“Yes.”

“Madam, I have come to arrest you.”

Three policemen step inside. Mary’s twenty-two-year-old daughter, Anna, is also taken into custody. Just before they are led outside, Mary asks permission to kneel in prayer. She is a devout Catholic and prays “the blessing of God upon me, as I do in all my actions.”

The house is quiet. Her words echo through the half-lighted rooms as the detectives awkwardly wait for Mary to finish praying and rise to her feet.

Then there’s another knock on the door.

When the detectives open it, they are shocked by the sight of a six-foot-two man with a pickax slung over his shoulder, wearing a shirtsleeve on his head like a stocking cap. His boots are coated with mud and he is unshaven. As he steps inside, they see that there appears to be blood on his sleeves. The detectives quickly close the door behind him.

Lewis Powell, starved and famished after three days of sleeping in the woods, instantly realizes he has made a grave error. “I guess I am mistaken,” he quickly tells the detectives, turning to leave.

The police send Mary and Anna Surratt out the door, where carriages wait to take them to jail. Then they focus their attention on the tall stranger with the pickax.

Powell gives his name as Lewis Payne and fabricates an elaborate story, saying that he has come to Mary Surratt’s at her behest, in order to dig a ditch for her in the morning. The police press him, asking about Powell’s address and place of employment. When he can’t answer in a satisfactory manner, they arrest him. At the police station he is stripsearched, and an unlikely collection of items, including cash, a compass, a pocketknife, and a newspaper clipping of Lincoln’s second inaugural address, are found in his pockets.

So far, all evidence points to “Payne’s” involvement in the assassination. His height and rugged build clearly match the description of Secretary Seward’s attacker. The police summon the young black servant who had given the description to the station. William Bell has been interrogated a number of times since the attacks, so as he is called back to the station once again his attitude is weary. The late hour does not help.

However, when a lineup of potential suspects is paraded into the room before him, Bell becomes instantly euphoric. He marches right up to Powell and presses his finger against the lips of the man who mocked him, insulted him with a racial slur, and very nearly killed his employer and several members of the family and staff. “He is the man,” Bell proclaims.

This is the last moment in Lewis Powell’s life when he is able to move his arms freely and walk without hearing the clank of chains. Manacles are placed on his wrists. A ball and chain will be attached to each ankle in the days to come, the unyielding iron cutting deeply into his flesh every time he takes a step. A canvas hood will soon be placed over his head, with only a small hole through which he can draw breath and eat.

And yet there is much worse to come for Lewis Powell.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

TUESDAY, APRIL 18, 1865

MARYLAND SWAMPS

DAY AND NIGHT

The military sweep through southern Maryland is ongoing and intense. Searches of towns and homes have turned up nothing, and it is clear that the time has come to scour more daunting terrain for Booth and Herold. A combined force of seven hundred Illinois cavalry, six hundred members of the Twenty-second Colored Troops, and one hundred men from the Sixteenth New York Cavalry Regiment now enter the wilderness of Maryland’s vast swamps.

“No human being inhabits this malarious extent” is how one journalist describes this region. “Even a hunted murderer would shrink from hiding there. Serpents and slimy lizards are the only living denizens … . Here the soldiers prepared to seek for the President’s assassins, and no search of the kind has ever been so thorough and patient.”

The method of searching the swamps is simple yet arduous. First, the troops assemble on the edge of bogs with names like Allen’s Creek, Scrub Swamp, and Atchall’s Swamp, standing at loose attention in the shade of a thick forest of beech, dogwood, and gum trees. Then they form two lines and march straight forward, from one side to the other. As absurd as it seems to the soldiers, marching headlong into cold mucky water, there is no other way of locating Booth and Herold. Incredibly, eighty-seven of these brave men will drown in their painstaking weeklong search for the killers.

“The soldiers were only a few paces apart,” the journalist reports, “and in steady order they took to the ground as it came, now plunging to their armpits in foul sluices of gangrened water, now hopelessly submerged in slime, now attacked by legions of wood ticks, now attempting some unfaithful log or greenishly solid morass, and plunging to the tip of the skull in poisonous stagnation. The tree boughs rent their uniforms. They came out upon dry land, many of them without a rag of garment, scratched and gnashed, and spent, repugnant to themselves, and disgusting to those who saw them.”

The soldiers detain anyone with anti-Union leanings. For many of the arrested, their only crime is either looking or behaving suspiciously. Taking them into custody is the best possible way to ensure that no suspect is overlooked.

Hundreds of these suspects soon fill Washington’s jails.

But not a single trace of Booth or Herold can be found anywhere.

Back in Washington, Lafayette Baker follows their progress. Since arriving in the capital two days earlier, Baker has distanced himself from the other investigators, “taking the usual detective measures, till then neglected,” of offering the reward, circulating photos of the suspects, and sending out a small army of handpicked detectives to scour the countryside. But he is hampered by the lack of railroads and telegraph lines through the rough and lawless countryside. There is, however, a telegraph line at Point Lookout, a former Union prisoner of war camp at the mouth of the Potomac River. To keep himself informed of all activities in the area, he dispatches a telegraph operator by steamship to that location and orders him to tap into the existing line.

Now, safe in the knowledge that he has established the broadest possible dragnet, Baker waits for that telegraph line to sing.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

TUESDAY, APRIL 18, 1865

MARYLAND COUNTRYSIDE

AFTERNOON

The moment Dr. Samuel Mudd has been dreading for two days comes while he is in the fields, working his crops. The cavalry unit galloping up his driveway is not there by accident. There are at least two dozen riders, not including his cousin George. It was George to whom Mudd confided that two strangers had spent the night of Lincoln’s assassination in his home. They spoke after Easter services, even as Booth and Herold were still very much in the vicinity. Mudd took pains to state that his life was in danger, should these two men ever come back. The story was a cover, intended to make it look as if he had no knowledge of the strangers’ identities. It was Mudd’s hope that George would act as an intermediary, alerting the police to the fact that his Good Samaritan cousin might just have “accidentally” aided the men who killed Lincoln.

George, however, is a devoted Union sympathizer. Instead of the police, George has brought the cavalry, with their rifles, sabers, and no-nonsense military bearing. The riders dismount. Lieutenant Alexander Lovett is in charge and quickly begins a line of questioning to determine exactly who and what Samuel Mudd saw that night.

Mudd is not a brave man and is quickly rattled. His lips turn blue, even as his face turns chalk white. The story he fabricated and rehearsed in his head so many times suddenly eludes him. Rather than present himself as eager for the “entire strangers” to be captured, Mudd is vague and contrary. He mentions that one stranger had a broken leg and that he had done the neighborly thing by splinting it before sending the men on their way. When Lovett asks him to repeat parts of the story, Mudd frequently contradicts his own version of events.

Lieutenant Lovett is positive that Samuel Mudd is lying. But he does not arrest him—not now, at least. He is determined to find evidence that will link Mudd to the two strangers. He bawls the order to mount up, and the cavalry trots back out to the main road.

Mudd, his heart beating in relief, can only wonder when they will return.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

THURSDAY, APRIL 20, 1865

MARYLAND COUNTRYSIDE

4:00 A.M.

George Atzerodt has chosen to escape via a northeast route, rather than push south like Booth and Herold. This takes him into a much more pro-Union territory, where the Lincoln assassination has people demanding vengeance on the perpetrators. On the surface, Atzerodt’s plan is an act of genius, allowing one of the most wanted men in America to literally hide in plain sight.

But the increasingly unbalanced George Atzerodt is not a genius. His escape is not a premeditated act of egress but a random wandering from home to home, accepting sanctuary and comfort wherever he can find it. He dawdles when he should be making continuous progress. After four days on the run he makes a critical mistake, boldly supporting Lincoln’s assassination while eating dinner with strangers. His statements quickly make their way to U.S. marshals.

Now, as Atzerodt takes refuge at a cousin’s house in the small community of Germantown, Maryland, twenty miles outside of Washington, a cavalry detachment knocks at the door. Entering the house, they find Atzerodt sharing a bed with two other men. “Get up and dress yourself,” a sergeant commands.

There is no fight, no attempt to pretend he shouldn’t be arrested. George Atzerodt goes meekly into custody, where he is soon fitted with wrist shackles, a ball and chain on his ankle, and a hood over his head, just like Lewis Powell.

Less than three months later, George Atzerodt—the twenty-nine-year-old drifter who stumbled into the conspiracy and stumbled right back out without harming a soul—hangs by the neck until dead.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

FRIDAY, APRIL 21, 1865

WASHINGTON, D.C.

7:00 A.M.

One week after the assassination, even as John Wilkes Booth is still alive and hiding in a Maryland swamp, the body of Abraham Lincoln is loaded aboard a special train for his return home to Illinois. General Ulysses S. Grant supervises the occasion. The body of Lincoln’s late son Willie rides along in a nearby casket. Abraham Lincoln once confided to Mary that he longed to be buried someplace quiet, and so it is that the president and his dear son are destined for Springfield’s Oak Ridge Cemetery.

But even after the burial, Lincoln’s body will never quite be at rest. In the next 150 years, Lincoln’s casket will be opened six times and moved from one crypt to another seventeen times. His body was so thoroughly embalmed that he was effectively mummified.

The funeral, which is quite different from the actual burial, of course, was held on Wednesday, April 19. Six hundred mourners were ushered into the East Room of the White House. Its walls were decorated in black, the mirrors all covered, and the room lit by candles. General Ulysses S. Grant sat alone nearest his dear departed friend, next to a cross of lilies. He wept.

Mary Lincoln is still so distraught that she will spend the next five weeks sobbing alone in her bedroom; she was notably absent from the list of recorded attendees. The sound of hammers pounding nails all night long on Tuesday, creating the seating risers for the funeral guests, sounded like the horrible ring of gunfire to her. Out of respect for her mourning and instability, President Andrew Johnson will not have the platforms torn down until after she moves out, on May 22.

The president’s funeral procession down Pennsylvania Avenue

Immediately after the funeral, Lincoln’s body was escorted by a military guard through the streets of Washington. One hundred thousand mourners lined the route to the Capitol, where the body was once again put on view for the public to pay their last respects.

And now, two days later, there is the matter of the train. In a trip that will re-create his journey to the White House five years earlier—though in the opposite direction—Lincoln’s special train will stop along the way in twelve cities and pass through 444 communities. In what will be called “the greatest funeral in the history of the United States,” thirty million people will take time from their busy lives to see this very special train before its great steel wheels finally slow to a halt in his beloved Springfield.

The unfortunate mementos of his assassination remain behind in Washington: the Deringer bullet and the Nélaton’s probe that pinpointed its location in his brain will soon be on display in a museum, as will the red horsehair rocker in which he was shot. He also leaves behind the messy unfinished business of healing the nation. And while Abraham Lincoln has gone home to finally get the rest he has so long deserved, that unfinished business will have to wait until his murderer is found.

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

FRIDAY, APRIL 21, 1865

MARYLAND COUNTRYSIDE

NOON

Samuel Mudd is not home when Lieutenant Lovett and the cavalry return. Lovett sends farmhand Thomas Davis to find him. Mudd is having lunch nearby and quickly returns to his farm to face Lovett.

The terror of their previous encounter returns. He knows that Lovett has spent the previous three days searching the area around his property for evidence. Mudd’s face once again turns a ghostly white. His nervousness is compounded as Lovett questions him again, probing Mudd’s story for discrepancies, half-truths, and outright lies.

This time Lovett does not ride away. Nor is he content to search the pastures and outer edges of the farm. No, this time he wants to go inside Mudd’s home and see precisely where these strangers slept. Lovett gives the order to search the house.

Mudd frantically gestures to his wife, Sarah, who walks quickly to him. He whispers in her ear, and she races into the house. The soldiers can hear her footsteps as she climbs the stairs to the second floor, then returns within just a moment. In her hands are two items: a razor and a boot. “I found these while dusting up three days ago,” she says as she hands them to Lovett.

Mudd explains that one of the strangers used the razor to shave off his mustache. The boot had come from the stranger with the broken leg.

Lovett presses Mudd on this point, asking him if he knew the man’s identity.

Mudd insists that he didn’t.

Lovett cradles the long riding boot in his hands. It has been slit down one side by Mudd, in order that he might pull it from Booth’s swollen leg to examine the wound.

Lovett asks if this is, indeed, the boot the stranger wore.

Mudd agrees.

Lovett presses Mudd again, verifying that the doctor had no knowledge of the stranger’s identity.

Mudd swears this to be truth.

And then Lovett shows Mudd the inside of the riding boot, which would have been clearly visible when Mudd was removing it from the stranger’s leg.

Mudd’s world collapses. His story is shattered in an instant.

For marked inside the boot, plain for all to see, is the name

“J. Wilkes.”

Dr. Samuel Mudd is under arrest.

And while Lieutenant Lovett has just made a key breakthrough in the race to find John Wilkes Booth and David Herold, the truth is that nobody in authority knows where they are.

Lafayette Baker, however, has a pretty good idea.

Baker keeps a host of coastal survey maps in his office at the War Department. With “that quick detective intuition amounting almost to inspiration,” in his own words, he knows that Booth’s escape options are limited. When news of the discovery of the abandoned riding boot makes its way back to Washington, Baker concludes that Booth cannot be traveling on horseback. And though traveling by water is more preferable, once Booth is flushed from the swamps—for that is surely where he is hiding—he won’t follow the Maryland coastline. There are too many deep rivers to cross, and he would be easily spotted. Lafayette Baker also deduces that Booth won’t head toward Richmond if he gets across the Potomac because that would lead him straight into Union lines.

Lafayette Baker is already convinced that John Wilkes Booth must aim for the mountains of Kentucky. “Being aware that nearly every rod of ground in Lower Maryland must have been repeatedly passed over by the great number of persons engaged in the search,” he will later write, “I finally decided, in my own mind, that Booth and Herold had crossed over the river into Virginia. The only possible way left open to escape was to take a southwestern course, in order to reach the mountains of Tennessee or Kentucky, where such aid could be secured as would insure their ultimate escape from the country.”

It’s as if he already knows Booth’s plan.

To get to Kentucky, Booth must cross the great breadth of Virginia, following almost the exact same path General Lee took in his escape from Petersburg. But he has no horse, which means traveling by water or on the main roads in a buggy, and he must cross treacherous territory to get south of Richmond.

Baker studies his maps, searching for the precise spot where Booth might cross the Potomac. His eyes zoom in on Port Tobacco. “If any place in the world is utterly given over to depravity, it is Port Tobacco,” he will quote a journalist as saying in his memoirs. “Five hundred people exist in Port Tobacco. Life there reminds me, in connection with the slimy river and the adjacent swamps, of the great reptile period of the world, when iguanodons and pterodactyls, and plesiosauri ate each other.”

Lafayette Baker is wrong—but not by much.

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

FRIDAY, APRIL 21, 1865

MARYLAND SWAMPS

NIGHT

Six days. Six long, cold, miserable days. That’s how long Booth and Herold have now been in the swamp, scratching at wood ticks, shivering under thin, damp wool blankets, and eating just the one meal a day provided by Thomas Jones. The silence has been almost complete, save for the times when Union warships on the Potomac fire their big guns to salute their fallen president.

The newspapers delivered daily by Jones continue to be a source of information and misery, as it becomes more and more clear that Booth’s actions have condemned him. Booth would rant about that injustice if he had the energy. The fact is, he and Herold long ago tired of speaking in a whisper. And even if they hadn’t, they have nothing to talk about.

The sizzle of happiness that accompanied killing Lincoln is long gone. Booth is a man accustomed to the finest things in life, and his miserable existence in the swamp has him longing for the tender flesh of Lucy Hale, a bottle of whiskey, a plate of oysters, and a warm bed.

Booth is just settling in for another night in the swamp when he hears the first whistle. Herold hears it, too, and is on his feet in an instant. Grabbing his rifle, Herold warily approaches the sound and returns with Jones. “The coast seems to be clear,” Jones tells them, his voice betraying the sense of urgency. “Let us make the attempt.”

Their camp is three miles from the river. Getting to the Potomac undetected means traveling down well-used public roads. Despite the darkness, they might run into a cavalry detail at any moment, but it is a chance they have to take.

Booth can’t walk, so Jones loans him his horse. Herold and Jones help Booth into the saddle. The actor clings precariously to the horse’s mane, desperate not to fall off.

Jones tells them to wait, then walks ahead to make sure the coast is clear. Only when he whistles that all is well do they follow. This is how they travel to the river, the ever vigilant Jones utilizing the smuggling skills he honed so well during the war to lead them to safety. Their pace is frustratingly slow to Booth, who wants to canter the horse as quickly as he can manage to the river, but Jones is taking no chances.

When they approach Jones’s house, Booth begs to be allowed inside for a moment of warmth. He badly wants to get to the river, but he is also addicted to creature comforts. After six days out in the cold, something as simple as standing before a roaring fireplace feels like a version of heaven. Jones won’t hear of it, reminding them that his servants are home and could possibly give them away. Instead, Jones walks inside and returns with hot food, reminding the two fugitives that this might be the last meal they eat for a while.

They press on to the river. Jones has hidden a twelve-foot-long boat at the water’s edge, tied to a large oak tree. The bank is steep, and Booth must be carried down the slope. But soon he sits in the stern, grasping an oar. Herold perches in the bow. The night is still dark, for the moon has not risen. A cold mist hovers on the surface of the wide and treacherous Potomac. Safety is just across the river in Virginia, where the citizens are solidly pro-Confederacy. It’s so close they can see it. But getting there means navigating unseen currents and tides that can force them far downriver—or even backward. The river is two miles wide at this point and constantly patrolled by Union warships. Some are merely heading into Washington’s Navy Yard after time at sea, while others are specifically hunting for two men in a small boat. It is common naval practice for ships to douse their running lights at night, all the better to thwart smugglers. Booth and Herold might actually run headlong into a ship without even seeing it in the total darkness.

“Keep to that,” Jones instructs Booth, lighting a small candle to illuminate Booth’s compass and pointing to the southwesterly heading. The actor has carried the compass since the assassination, just for a moment such as this. “It will bring you into Machodoc Creek. Mrs. Quesenberry lives near the mouth of this creek. If you tell her you come from me, I think she will take care of you.”

“God bless you, my dear friend,” says Booth. “Good-bye.”

They shove off. Jones turns his back and returns home, his work complete. No other man has risked as much, nor shown as much compassion for Booth and Herold, as Jones. He did not do it because he applauded the assassination—in fact, Jones is disgusted by Booth’s action. Rather, he helped the two men out of compassion for men in trouble and a last-ditch bout of loyalty to the Confederacy. His deeds will go unpunished. When his part in the conspiracy will be revealed later on, the testimony will come from a non-white resident of southern Maryland and thus will be ignored.

Booth and Herold, meanwhile, paddle hard for the opposite shore. That is: Herold paddles hard. Booth sits in the back and dangles his oar in the water under the pretense of steering.

Herold paddles for several hours against a daunting current, but they’re going the wrong way. Booth’s compass may be a prized possession, but it’s useless if not utilized properly.

Things go from bad to worse. The fugitives almost paddle headlong into the Juniper, a Federal gunboat. And yet if anyone on the deck of the eighty-footer sees them they don’t cry out.

Finally, they land, four miles upriver from where they departed, still in Maryland. Their escape is not going well. They are forced to hide themselves and their boat in the brush for yet another day.

And so, after one last, long twenty-four hours of hiding from the thousands of soldiers now combing the countryside looking for them, John Wilkes Booth and David Herold once again set out under cover of darkness rowing hard for Virginia. This time they make it.

Next stop: Kentucky.

CHAPTER SIXTY

MONDAY-TUESDAY, APRIL 24-25, 1865

VIRGINIA-MARYLAND BORDER

DAY

Samuel H. Beckwith is in Port Tobacco, the “Gomorrah,” in Lafayette Baker’s words, of Maryland. He is the telegraph operator specially detailed by Baker to keep the detective apprised of all actions in the Booth dragnet. Now he telegraphs a coded message back to Washington, stating that investigators have questioned local smugglers and learned that Booth and Herold have gone across the Potomac River.

The evidence is, in fact, erroneous. It refers to a group of men smuggled into Virginia on Easter Sunday, not Booth and Herold. Lafayette Baker immediately reacts, however, sending twenty-five members of the Sixteenth New York Cavalry by the steamship John S. Ide from Washington downriver to Belle Plain, Virginia. All of the men have volunteered for the mission. The senior officers are Baker’s cousin Lieutenant Luther Baker and Colonel Everton Conger, a twenty-nine-year-old, highly regarded veteran of the Civil War.

Lafayette Baker sees them off. “I want you to go to Virginia and get Booth,” he says and then puts his cousin in charge, despite the lower rank.

The Ide pushes back at two P.M., for a four-hour voyage. It arrives at the simple wharf and warehouse along the shore just after dark. The men immediately spur their horses down the main road of Belle Plain, Virginia, and then into the countryside, knocking on farmhouse doors and questioning the occupants. They stop any and all riders and carriages they encounter, pressing hard for clues as to Booth’s whereabouts.

But nobody has seen Booth or Herold—or, if they have, they’re not talking. By morning the cavalry squad is in Port Conway, more than ten miles inland from the Potomac. Exhausted, their horses wrung out from the long night, the soldiers are starting to feel as if this is just another futile lead. Conger has promised them all an equal share of the more than $200,000 in reward money awaiting those who capture Booth. This spurred them to ride all night, but now the prize seems unattainable. They are growing fearful that the Ide will return to Washington without them, leaving them to wait days for another ship.

During their trip south, Lieutenant Luther Baker made the rather wise decision to give the command back to Conger. “You have been over the ground,” he told the veteran.

Then, just as they are about to give up and go home, on the shores of the Rappahannock River, at a ferry crossing known as Port Royal, two men positively identify photographs of Booth and Herold. They passed through the previous day and were traveling with a small group of Confederate veterans.

By this time, the twenty-five cavalry soldiers are exhausted, “so haggard and wasted with travel that had to be kicked into intelligence before they could climb to their saddles,” Lieutenant Baker will later recall.

But climb into their saddles they do, for hours and hours of more searching.

At two o’clock in the morning, at a handsome whitewashed farm three hundred yards off the main road, they finally come to a halt. The ground is soft clay, so their horses’ hooves make no sound. The soldiers draw their carbines from their scabbards as Lieutenant Baker dismounts and opens the property’s main gate. He has no certain knowledge of anything nefarious. It is just a hunch.

Fanning out, the riders make a circle around the house and barn.

In a very few minutes, Lieutenant Baker’s hunch will make history.

CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 26, 1865

GARRETT FARM, VIRGINIA

DUSK TO DAWN

Until just a few hours ago, John Wilkes Booth was happier and more content than at any time since killing Lincoln. His broken leg notwithstanding, his three days in Virginia, with its pro-Confederate citizens and custom of hospitality, have made him think that escape is a likely possibility. He even disclosed his identity to a group of former southern soldiers he met along the road. To everyone else who’s asked, he’s a former soldier who was injured at Petersburg and is on his way home.

He’s spent the last day at the farmhouse of Richard Garrett, whose son John just returned home from the war. The Garretts do not know Booth’s true identity and believe his story about being a former soldier. He’s enjoyed hot meals and the chance to wash and sleep. But an hour before sunset came word that Federal cavalry were crossing the ferry over the Rappahannock River.

Booth reacted to the news with visible fear. The Garretts, seeing this, grew suspicious and insisted that both men leave. Booth and Herold refused, though not in a belligerent manner. Not knowing what to do and not wanting to create a problem with the two armed strangers, John Garrett sent them to sleep in the barn. Now Booth and Herold hide in a forty-eight-by-fifty-foot wooden structure, filled with hay and corn. Tobacco-curing equipment is stored inside, and thick cedar beams provide sturdy structural support. Worried that Booth and Herold plan to steal their horses and escape in the night, John and his brother William sleep outside the barn, armed with a pistol.

Booth doesn’t realize the Garrett brothers are outside guarding the barn; nor does he know that the cavalry is surrounding the house. All he is sure of is that at two A.M. the dogs begin barking. Then a terrified John Garrett steps into the barn and orders the men to give up their weapons. The building is surrounded, he tells them.

“Get out of here,” Booth cries, “or I will shoot you. You have betrayed me.”

Garrett flees, locking the barn door behind him. Booth and Herold are now trapped inside, with no idea how many men are out there. Then Herold says he wants out. He’s sick of this life and wants to go home. He’s done nothing wrong and wishes to proclaim his innocence.

“Captain,” Booth calls out, not knowing the proper rank to use. “There is a man here who very much wants to surrender.”

Then he turns to Herold in disgust: “Go away from me, damned coward.”

Herold exits through the main door, wrists first. He is immediately taken away and arrested by the soldiers.

Lieutenant Baker calls to Booth, telling him that the barn will be set on fire within moments unless Booth surrenders. “Well, Captain,” Booth cries out, his old sense of the dramatic now fully returned, “you may prepare a stretcher for me. Draw up your men. Throw open the door. Let’s have a fair fight.”

Then Booth hears the crackle of burning straw and smells the sickly sweet wood smoke of burning cedar. “One more stain on the old banner!” he yells, doing his best to sound fearless. No one quite knows what that statement means.

He looks across the barn and sees Lieutenant Baker opening the door. The actor hefts his loaded carbine, preparing to take aim.

Just as Abraham Lincoln felt a slight instant of pain and then nothing at all when Booth shot him, now Booth hears the crack of a rifle and feels a jolt in his neck, and then nothing. Sergeant Boston Corbett has fired a bullet and it slices through Booth’s spinal cord and paralyzes him from the neck down. John Wilkes Booth collapses to the floor of the barn, the flames now climbing higher and higher all around him.

Boston Corbett, in his own way, is as much a zealot as Booth. Only his passion is religion. Incredibly, years before, Corbett cut off his own testicles with a pair of scissors after experiencing a moment of lust. Booth has now been shot by a man very much like himself: a rebellious fanatic. Corbett actually disobeyed orders when taking aim at the actor. Baker and Conger pull John Wilkes Booth from the barn moments before it is completely engulfed in flames. The actor is still alive.

As with Lincoln, the decision is made not to transport him, for any movement will surely kill the actor. But he is dead by morning anyway. His limp body is hurled into the back of a garbage wagon.

The flight—and life—of John Wilkes Booth has come to an end. He is just twenty-six years old.

CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

FRIDAY, JULY 7, 1865

WASHINGTON, D.C.

DAWN

Two and a half months later, the rounding up of Lincoln’s killers has become a national pastime. Secretary of War Stanton has personally taken charge of identifying the larger conspiracy that has grown out of Booth’s single gunshot, pushing Lafayette Baker from the limelight. While some in the Confederate South now call Booth a martyr and hang pictures of him in their homes as they would for any family member, northerners are even more determined to see every last one of his co-conspirators found—and killed. The jails are full of men and women who have been trapped in the spider’s web of the Stanton investigation. Some have absolutely nothing to do with Lincoln’s death, like James Pumphrey, the Confederate-sympathizing owner of a stable, who spent a month behind bars. No one is immune from suspicion. Federal agents scour their list of suspects, making sure no one is overlooked. One missing suspect is twenty-one-year-old John Surratt, whose mother, Mary, provided Booth and his conspirators with weapons and lodging.

Mary herself sits inside the old Arsenal Penitentiary awaiting her fate. She’s been locked up since her arrest on April 17. The trial of all the co-conspirators, including Mary, began on May 10, and some 366 witnesses were called before it was over, seven weeks later. From the beginning, the public viewed all the conspirators as clearly criminals. Certainly the drunken George Atzerodt and the brutish thug who attacked the Sewards, Lewis Powell, look the part. But Mary Surratt is different. Standing five foot six, with a buxom figure and a pretty smile that captivates some of the journalists in attendance, Mary has initially engendered some sympathy, and many Americans wonder if her life should be spared.

But Mary’s physical appearance, like that of her co-conspirators, began to change as the trial stretched into its sixth and seventh weeks. She suffered severe cramping, excessive menstruating and constant urinating from a disease known as endometriosis. She was barely tended to by her captors, or given the freedom to properly care for herself. Her cell was called “barely habitable” by one eyewitness, and court proceedings were stopped on more than one occasion due to her condition.

The other conspirators underwent physical change for a very different reason. Stanton insisted they wear a thick padded hood over the heads. Extra cotton padding was placed over the lids, pressing hard against the eyeballs. There was just one hole, but it didn’t line up evenly with the mouth, making eating and breathing a challenge. Underneath the hoods the heat was intense, and the air stifling. All the sweating and the bloating of the skin from the heavy hoods conspired to make each conspirator look more and more swollen and rabid with each passing day. Over time they resembled not so much men, but crazed apparitions.

After deliberating for three days, the nine-member jury finds Mary Surratt, Lewis Powell, George Atzerodt, and David Herold guilty. They will be hanged. As for Dr. Samuel Mudd, Michael O’Laughlen, Ned Spangler, and Samuel Arnold, their punishment will be the remote penitentiary of Fort Jefferson in the Gulf of Mexico.

Guilty! Sentenced to hang (left column): Lewis Powell, David Herold, George Atzerodt, and Mary Surratt (not pictured). Sentenced to prison (right column): Samuel Arnold, Ned Spangler, Michael O’Laughlen, and Dr. Samuel Mudd (not pictured)

There is no one willing to speak up for the men who will hang. But Mary Surratt’s priest comes to her defense. So does her daughter, Anna—though not her missing son, John. Mary Surratt’s attorney frantically works to get an audience with President Andrew Johnson so that he might personally intervene on her behalf. Her supporters say she was just a lone woman trying to make ends meet by providing weapons for Booth and his conspiracy and point out that she didn’t pull the trigger and was nowhere near Ford’s Theatre.

There is hope. Not much, but a little. The other three sentenced to hang are all part of Booth’s inner circle. Not so with Mary Surratt. Although Johnson will not speak to him, her attorney continues to argue to the fringe of President Johnson’s outer circle, those who actively prevent him from speaking with the president, that her life should be spared.

Mary Surratt spends the night of July 6 in prayer, asking God to spare her life.

In the morning, she refuses breakfast, and even at ten A.M., when her visitors are told to leave so that her body can be prepared, Mary is still hoping. She wears a black dress and veil. Her ankles and wrists are manacled. And then she is marched out into a blazing summer sun. She looks up at the ten-foot-high gallows, newly built for the execution of her and the other conspirators. She sees the freshly dug graves beneath the gallows—the spot where her body will rest for all eternity.

Mary Surratt, Lewis Powell, George Atzerodt, and David Herold climb the gallows staircase. They are seated in chairs on the platform at the top. Their hands and arms are tied to their bodies—the men’s with ropes, Mary’s with white cloth. Their legs are tied together at the ankles and knees so that they won’t kick wildly after the hangman springs the door.

“Mrs. Surratt is innocent!” Powell cries out, just before a white cotton hood is placed over his head.

Outside the prison, Mary’s supporters gather. Time is short. But there is still hope. Soldiers stand atop the penitentiary walls, just in case a last-minute rider approaches with a pardon. Inside the penitentiary, one hundred civilians have won the right to watch Lincoln’s killers die. The muggy air is thick with anticipation.

All it takes is one word from President Johnson. Mary Surratt continues to pray.

“Please don’t let me fall,” she says to an executioner, getting vertigo as she looks down on the crowd from atop the tall, unstable gallows. He puts the white hood over her head, and then she stands alone, terrified that she might topple forward over the edge of the gallows before the pardon can arrive.

The death sentences are read in alphabetical order by General Winfield Scott Hancock, another old friend of Generals Grant and Lee from their days in Mexico.

Each trapdoor is held in place by a single post. At the bottom of the scaffold stand four hand-selected members of the armed forces. It is their job to kick away the posts on the signal from the hangman. Suddenly, that signal is given.

The trapdoors swing open. Mary Surratt, like the others, drops six feet in an instant. But unlike the others’, her neck does not break, and she does not die right away. The forty-two-year-old mother and widow, whose son would not come to her rescue out of fear for his own life, swings for five long minutes before her larynx is crushed and her body stops fighting for air.

Stanton lets the bodies dangle in the wind for twenty more minutes before pronouncing that he is satisfied. The corpses are buried in the hard prison yard.

Mary Surratt becomes the first and only woman ever hanged by the United States government.

AFTERWORD

The saga of Lincoln’s assassination went on long after he died. Indeed, it continues to this day, as historians and amateur sleuths alike debate a never-ending list of conspiracy theories.

The full truth may never be known.

As for the other key figures in the dramatic events of April 1865, their fates are now part of the historical record.

The body of John Wilkes Booth was returned to Washington on the John S. Ide. Booth’s dentist and his personal physician were both brought on board and testified that the body was that of Booth. It was photographed, and then the surgeon general, Joseph Barnes, who had tended to Lincoln in the president’s final hours, performed an autopsy while the ship was sailing. The cause of death was determined to be a “gunshot wound in the neck,” with the added notation that paralysis was immediate after Booth was shot, “and all the horrors of consciousness of suffering and death must have been present to the assassin during the two hours he lingered.”

Dr. Barnes removed the third, fourth, and fifth cervical vertebrae from Booth’s neck. These clearly showed the path of the bullet as it entered, then exited the body. The vertebrae are now housed at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, in the National Museum of Health and Medicine—although they are not on public display. Dr. Barnes then turned his completed autopsy over to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, who also took control of the photographs made of the corpse, and of Booth’s diary, which was handed to him by Lafayette C. Baker.

Curiously, the photographs soon disappeared. And when Baker was later called upon to verify that Booth’s diary actually belonged to the killer, he was astonished to see that “eighteen leaves,” or pages, had been cut from the journal—allegedly by Secretary Stanton. Neither the photographs nor the missing pages have ever been found, casting more suspicion on Stanton’s possible role in a conspiracy.

The secretary of war wished the Booth situation to be handled with as little public outcry as possible, and this meant forbidding a public funeral. On Stanton’s orders, Lafayette Baker staged a mock burial, wrapping the body in a horse blanket and publicly hurling it into the Potomac. However, this was just a ruse to conceal the body’s actual location. After the crowd on shore watched Baker dump a weighted object into the river, the ship traveled around a bend to the site of the old penitentiary, on the grounds of the Washington Arsenal. The assassin was buried in an anonymous grave beneath the prison’s dirt floor, his body concealed inside the gun box that served as his casket. When, two years later, the penitentiary was shuttered and leveled, Booth’s remains were moved to the family plot at Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore, where they remain to this day.

Despite all evidence that Booth is actually dead and was buried in the grave bearing his name, various legends have maintained that he escaped into the South and lived a long life. In December 2010, Booth’s descendants agreed to exhume the remains of Edwin Booth to see if DNA from his body is a match for the DNA in the vertebrae housed at Walter Reed. As the chief historian for the Navy Medical Department noted, “If it compares favorably, then that’s the end of the controversy. If it doesn’t match, you change American history.” As of this writing, the outcome of that investigation is still pending.

Mary Lincoln never recovered from Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. She insisted on wearing only the color black for the rest of her life. Mary lingered in the White House for several weeks after the shooting, then returned home to Illinois, where she spent her time answering the many letters of condolence she had received from around the world, and also lobbying Congress for a pension. This was granted in 1870, for the sum of $3,000 per year. However, just when it appeared that Mary was recovering from her considerable grief, in 1871 her eighteen-year-old son, Tad, died of a mysterious heart condition. This brought on a downward spiral of mental instability, dramatized in spending sprees, paranoia, and delusions—once she almost jumped out of a building after wrongly believing she saw flames consuming the structure. Her only remaining son, Robert, had her committed to a mental institution in 1875. She spent a year there, during which she engaged in a letter-writing campaign to the Chicago Tribune that so embarrassed Robert he had her released. Mary moved to the south of France for four years, living in exile in the town of Pau before returning to Springfield. She died in 1882, at the age of sixty-three. She is buried alongside her husband.

Robert Todd Lincoln went on to a stellar career as an attorney and then public official. He served as secretary of war from 1881 to 1885, during the James Garfield and Chester Arthur administrations, and served as U.S. minister to Great Britain from 1889 to 1893, under Benjamin Harrison. Although he was not present at Ford’s Theatre when his father was assassinated, he was an eyewitness to Garfield’s assassination in 1881 and nearby when President William McKinley was assassinated, in 1901.

John Wilkes Booth would have been enraged to know that Robert Lincoln and Lucy Lambert Hale spent the afternoon of Lincoln’s assassination together, studying Spanish. It’s possible that Lucy could have mentioned this upcoming appointment to the assassin during their final moments together that morning, fueling his jealousy. In the end, it doesn’t matter, because Lucy Lambert Hale will forever be linked with John Wilkes Booth.

Secretary Stanton, out of respect for her father’s position, refused to let her be called upon to testify at the trial. However, there were rumors that she was smuggled aboard the Ides to view Booth’s body and wept openly at the sight. This has never been confirmed. Regardless, the intimacy of their relationship soon became widespread knowledge in Washington, D.C., and she was only too happy to escape to Spain for the next five years while her father served as ambassador. Lucy and Robert Todd Lincoln continued to maintain a friendly relationship, but she chose to marry William Chandler in 1874. She bore one child, a son, at the age of forty-four. William Chandler went on to serve as secretary of the navy. Their grandson Theodore Chandler would become a highly decorated World War II navy admiral who was killed when kamikazes attacked his ship in the Pacific. Lucy Lambert Hale died of natural causes in 1915, at the age of seventy-four.

Robert Todd Lincoln died at his home in Vermont at the age of eighty-two, though not before being present for the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., in 1922. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Laura Keene would regret cradling Lincoln’s head in her lap that night in Ford’s Theatre. The assassination linked her troupe with the killing, and the attendant notoriety was hard on her already floundering career. The actress was eminently resourceful, however, and left America to barnstorm through England before returning in 1869 to manage the Chestnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia. She later took to lecturing on the fine arts and publishing a weekly art journal. Laura Keene died of tuberculosis on November 4, 1873, in Montclair, New Jersey. She was believed to be forty-seven, although she was often vague about her actual birthdate and may have been three years older.

Edwin Stanton did not live long after the death of Abraham Lincoln, and those years he did live were fraught with controversy. Stanton clashed repeatedly with President Andrew Johnson over the process of Reconstruction. Johnson’s vengeful policies toward the South were in direct contrast with what Lincoln had hoped for, and despite their earlier animosity toward each other, Stanton was keen to see Lincoln’s wishes put in place. Tensions between Stanton and Johnson got so bad that in 1868 the president fired Stanton as secretary of war and replaced him with Ulysses S. Grant. Stanton refused to leave the office and was vindicated when the Senate voted that Johnson’s actions were illegal. Johnson tried once again to replace Stanton, this time with General Lorenzo Thomas. Stanton barricaded himself in his office to avoid being removed. The Senate, which had openly clashed with Johnson over other key issues, now began impeachment hearings, stating that Johnson did not have the authority to remove the secretary of war. Though Johnson escaped removal from office by one vote in the Senate, Stanton was the clear winner in the case. He retired soon after the vote, only to be nominated as a justice to the Supreme Court by the newly elected president, Ulysses S. Grant. Edwin Stanton died before he could take the oath. The end came on Christmas Eve 1869; at the age of fifty-five, Stanton died from a sudden and very severe asthma attack. Did he have any part in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln? To this day, there are those who believe he did. But nothing has ever been proved.

Few men could have successfully followed Abraham Lincoln as president, but Andrew Johnson proved particularly inept. His Reconstruction policies were bitterly divisive, to the point that he warred openly with members of his own party. He dodged impeachment but was not reelected to office in 1868. Later in life, Johnson was reelected to the Senate, but soon afterward he died from a stroke, on July 31, 1875.

Lafayette Baker became an instant celebrity for finding Lincoln’s killer. The red-bearded detective wrote a best-selling memoir in 1867, History of the United States Secret Service. In the book, he detailed his role in finding John Wilkes Booth. Several of his claims, including that he’d handed Booth’s diary to Edwin Stanton, led to a congressional investigation into his role in the disappearance of the diary. Soldiers had given Baker the diary upon returning to Washington with Booth’s body. Baker then gave it to Stanton, who locked it in a safe for almost two years, never telling investigators that he had the crucial piece of evidence in his possession. The publication of Baker’s memoir provoked a great public demand for Stanton to produce the diary. He did so reluctantly, but eighteen pages were missing. The secretary of war denied being responsible for excising the pages. The investigation ended without a formal placement of blame.

In 1960, a controversial amateur historian named Ray Neff came upon a description of the Lincoln assassination in a copy of Colburn’s United Service Magazine, a British military journal. The article was dated February 5, 1868. Lafayette Baker was the author. Neff claims to have deciphered a coded message from Baker within the story. The substitution code revealed a message that reads thus: “It was on the 10th of April, 1865, when I first knew that the plan was in action. I did not know the identity of the assassin, but I knew most all else when I approached Edwin Stanton about it. He at once acted surprised and disbelieving. Later he said: ‘You are a party to it, too.’”

Baker, decoded by Neff, goes on to add: “There were at least eleven members of Congress involved in the plot, no less than twenty Army officers, three Naval officers, and at least twenty-four civilians, of which one was a governor of a loyal state. Five were bankers of great repute, three were nationally known newspapermen, and eleven were industrialists of great repute and wealth. Eighty-five thousand dollars were contributed by the named persons to pay for the deed. Only eight persons knew the details of the plot and the identity of others. I fear for my life.”

There is no consensus about whether Neff’s hidden message is authentic. What we do know for sure is that Stanton did not hesitate to ask the previously disgraced Baker to lead the Booth investigation—this at a time when the secretary of war had every single detective in the nation at his disposal—and that Baker magically pinpointed Booth’s actual location when the thousands of soldiers and detectives combing the woods and swamps could not.

It should be noted that Neff’s hypothesis and his entire body of work have been repudiated and dismissed by the vast majority of trained historians and assassination scholars. Civil War Times, which originally published his findings about the cipher messages, later denounced him. Once Neff became involved with the movie The Lincoln Conspiracy and began promoting bizarre theories about Booth’s escape and a later second life in India, he became even more ostracized from mainstream scholars.

The fact remains, however, that Stanton’s withholding of Booth’s diary was suspicious, as is the subject of the eighteen missing pages. No one has adequately explained this behavior, thus allowing some conspiracy theorists to continue to wonder if he had a larger role in Lincoln’s assassination.

Baker became increasingly paranoid after the congressional investigation, certain that he would be murdered. And he was right! Just eighteen months after the investigation, he was found dead in his home in Philadelphia. While Baker was at first believed to have died from meningitis, evidence now points to a slow and systematic death by poisoning. Again, this evidence comes from Ray Neff. The Indiana State University professor used an atomic absorption spectrophotometer to analyze strands of Baker’s hair. The results showed that arsenic had been slowly introduced into his system during the last months of his life. Comparing the rising levels of arsenic with diary entries made by Baker’s wife, Neff noted a correlation with visits from Wally Pollack, Baker’s brother-in-law, who was in the habit of bringing imported German beer to Baker’s house whenever he came calling. Pollack, not incidentally, also worked under Secretary Stanton as a War Department employee. The suspicion is that Pollack poisoned Baker by mixing small amounts of arsenic into the beer. Whether or not he acted alone is a matter of conjecture.

Abraham Lincoln’s irresponsible bodyguard John Parker never presented himself for duty or tried to help in any way on the night of the assassination. Incredibly, Parker was not held accountable for shirking his duties. In fact, the first time he was seen after the assassination was when he showed up at a Washington police station the next morning in the company of a known prostitute. Formal police charges of dereliction of duty were pressed against Parker, but once again he was acquitted. Three years later, after many attempts to remove him from the police department, Parker was finally booted for “gross neglect of duty.” He went on to work as a carpenter and machinist. He died of pneumonia on June 28, 1890, at the age of sixty.

Lincoln’s responsible bodyguard William Crook had a more esteemed career, working in the White House for more than fifty years—a time that spanned administrations from Abraham Lincoln’s to Woodrow Wilson’s. However, it was his relationship with Lincoln that he treasured most, and his 1910 memoirs provide a vivid insight into the journey to Richmond and the events of April 14. Critics have accused Crook of padding his own part, but the book makes for compelling reading. William Crook died in 1915 from pneumonia, at the age of seventy-seven. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, in a service attended by President Wilson.

After the war, Robert E. Lee applied for a pardon for his acts against the United States. Secretary of State William H. Seward did not file the pardon but instead gave it to a friend as a souvenir. The document wasn’t discovered for more than one hundred years. President Gerald R. Ford officially reinstated Lee as a U.S. citizen in 1975.

Marse Robert was buried not at his beloved Virginia home, Arlington, which was confiscated during the war and redesignated as a U.S. military cemetery, but at Washington and Lee University, in Lexington, Virginia. He died on Columbus Day 1870, at the age of sixty-three.

Lee’s counterpart on the Union side, General Ulysses S. Grant, had an admirable career after the war ended. He remained in the army, helping to implement Reconstruction policies that guaranteed the black vote. He saw his popularity soar in the North. Elected president in 1868, he served two terms in office. Grant’s later years were filled with travel and, later, financial upheaval. After losing his entire fortune to bad investments in the early 1880s, he sat down to, with the help of editor Mark Twain, write his memoirs. Considered by many to be one of the best military autobiographies in history, Grant’s life story was a best seller. Royalties from the book guaranteed his family a comfortable life long after he died of throat cancer, on July 23, 1885.

The question “Who is buried in Grant’s tomb?” seems an obvious one, for Ulysses S. Grant is buried in this enormous mausoleum in New York’s Riverside Park. However, so is Julia Grant. She died on December 14, 1902, at the age of seventy-six, and now lies alongside her husband.

After being discovered alive on the battlefield that day after the battle for High Bridge, Colonel Francis Washburn was immediately transported to a field hospital, then home to Massachusetts, where he died one week after Lincoln did. Coincidentally, he passed away on the exact same day as the Confederacy’s General James Dearing, his opposite on the field of battle. They were the last two casualties of High Bridge.

Two officers present at Sayler’s Creek, General James “Pete” Longstreet and General George Armstrong Custer, followed remarkably different paths after the Civil War. Longstreet’s longtime friendship with Grant figured prominently in his embrace of pro-Union Reconstruction efforts, much to the chagrin of diehard rebels, who soon began an active series of revisionist attacks on the great southern general, attempting somewhat successfully to impugn his reputation as a leader and paint him as a coward. By the time Longstreet died, in 1904, at the age of eighty-two, he had served as a diplomat, a civil servant, and a U.S. marshal. A house fire consumed all of his Civil War memorabilia, leaving almost no legacy other than his autobiography to set his wartime record straight.

General Custer continued to fight, using the same aggressive, impulsive tactics that served him so successfully at Sayler’s Creek. In his time he would become far better known for his battles on America’s western frontier and for his friendships with other larger-than-life figures, such as Buffalo Bill Cody. In June 1876, Custer and his Seventh Cavalry were sent to Montana to force Sioux and Cheyenne Indians back to their reservations. On the morning of June 25, his scouts reported that a small band of warriors were camped along the Little Bighorn River. Behaving in much the same fashion as he did at Sayler’s Creek, Custer split his cavalry into three columns and attacked without making a preliminary study of the terrain.

The results were disastrous. Custer and his men were soon cut off, surrounded by a vastly superior force of Oglala Sioux under the legendary warrior Crazy Horse. Custer ordered his men to shoot their horses and stack the bodies to shield them from incoming rifle fire, but within an hour every last man was dead. When the Battle of the Little Bighorn was over, the bodies of the slain soldiers were stripped and mutilated, thanks to an Indian belief that the soul of a mutilated body would wander the earth without rest for eternity. Scalps were taken, stomachs slit open, eardrums punctured, and genitals dismembered. In the case of Custer’s brother Tom, who had won his second of two congressional Medals of Honor at Sayler’s Creek, his heart was cut out and eaten. Another brother, twenty-seven-year-old Boston, was also killed and scalped.

Strangely, the only body left unmutilated was that of George Armstrong Custer. When U.S. soldiers later came upon the battlefield, they described Custer’s face as being a mask of calm. A round .45-caliber bullet hole in his left temple and another just below his heart were the only signs of violence—and point to the likelihood that he was killed by a long-range rifle shot.

Initially, Custer was buried in a shallow grave on the battlefield, next to his brother Tom. News of the devastating defeat was quickly conveyed to Fort McPherson, Nebraska, then on to Washington, D.C., by telegraph. Ironically, word of Custer’s defeat arrived in the nation’s capital on July 4, 1876—America’s first centennial. In its own way, the death of Custer was as traumatizing as that of Lincoln, emboldening the United States Army to seek revenge against the Indians in the same way Lincoln’s assassination had northerners seeking revenge against the South. Custer was just thirty-six when he died. His body was later relocated from the Little Bighorn and buried at the United States Military Academy at West Point.

William Seward would live just seven more years after being attacked in his own bed on the night of Lincoln’s assassination, but in that time he would undertake an activity that would leave an even longerlasting legacy than the heinous attack. In 1867, while still serving as secretary of state and still bearing the disfiguring facial scars of the knife attack, he purchased Alaska for the United States. What soon became known as “Seward’s Folly” would later be seen as a huge asset when silver and gold and oil were discovered in the new territory. Seward died on October 10, 1872. He was seventy-one.

Major Henry Reed Rathbone, present in the box on the night Lincoln was shot, later married his date from that evening, Clara Harris. Unfortunately for Harris, Rathbone later went insane and killed her with a knife. He was institutionalized for the remainder of his life.

Boston Corbett, the man who shot John Wilkes Booth, received a handsome reward for the killing, even though he’d disobeyed orders. He left the military soon afterward, first working as a hatter, then serving as assistant doorman for the Kansas state legislature. It appears that the mercury used in making hats, which was well known for causing insanity (giving rise to the term “mad as a hatter”), caused him to become mentally unstable. In 1887 he, too, was sent to an insane asylum, after brandishing a revolver in the legislature. He escaped, then moved north to Minnesota, where he died in the Great Hinckley Fire of 1894. He was sixty-two.

Dr. Samuel Mudd, Samuel Arnold, and Michael O’Laughlen were all given life sentences for their roles in the assassination conspiracy. Ned Spangler, the besotted sceneshifter, received a six-year sentence. All were sent to the Dry Tortugas, a baking-hot group of islands west of the Florida Keys. Their jailers, black Union soldiers, had complete power over the daily movements of these white supremacists. O’Laughlen died of fever while in prison, at the age of twenty-seven. Spangler, Mudd, and Arnold were pardoned in 1869 by Andrew Johnson and lived out their days as law-abiding citizens.

The man who helped John Wilkes Booth and David Herold escape into Virginia, Thomas Jones, was circumspect about his role in the assassination for many years. He was taken into custody shortly after Booth was killed and spent seven weeks in the Old Capital Prison before being released. Even though he became a justice of the peace after the war, the tight-lipped former member of the Confederate Secret Service was ever after wary of persecution for aiding John Wilkes Booth and David Herold. That changed in 1893, when he wrote a 126-page book telling his side of the events. Jones died on March 5, 1895, at the age of seventy-four.

Perhaps the most shadowy figure in the Lincoln conspiracy, John Surratt, Mary Surratt’s son, could have been instrumental in reducing his mother’s sentence by showing that her part in the assassination was that of passive support instead of active participation. But rather than give the testimony that might have spared her life, John Surratt fled to Montreal, Canada, immediately after the assassination, where he followed the news of his mother’s trial and execution. Surratt then fled to England under an assumed name and later continued on to the Vatican, where he served in the Papal Zouaves. He was discovered and arrested but escaped. Another international search for Surratt soon found him in Alexandria, Egypt. Arrested again, he was brought back to the United States to appear before a judge. Amazingly, the jury deadlocked on his involvement. John Surratt was free to go. He died in 1916 at the age of seventy-two.

Mary Surratt’s body was reburied in the Catholic cemetery at Mount Olivet in Washington, D.C., where it remains to this day. The petition to spare Mary’s life never got to President Andrew Johnson; his assistant Preston King kept the information away from Johnson. But apparently that action preyed on King’s conscience. A few months later, King tied a bag of bullets around his neck and leapt from a ferryboat in New York’s harbor; he was never seen again. He was fifty-nine years old.

EPILOGUE

The last days of Abraham Lincoln’s life included perhaps the most dramatic events in the nation’s history. It is eerie that Abraham Lincoln found much solace in the play Julius Caesar, by William Shakespeare, given that the two great men met their ends in the same way. Caesar was betrayed by his countrymen, as was Lincoln. Both men died within months of their fifty-sixth birthday, before they could complete their life’s work. Just as the story of Julius Caesar has been told and retold for centuries, the tragedy that befell Lincoln should be known by every American. His life and death continue to shape us as a people, even today. America is a great country, but like every other nation on earth it is influenced by evil. John Wilkes Booth epitomizes the evil that can harm us, even as President Abraham Lincoln represents the good that can make us stronger.

Appendix

RE-CREATION OF HARPER’S WEEKLY

The April 29, 1865, edition of Harper’s Weekly was entirely devoted to the assassination and death of Abraham Lincoln. The edition went to the printers just hours after word reached Washington that John Wilkes Booth had been located and shot dead. This gives the writers’ words an urgency and heartfelt emotion that allow modern readers to gain a very real sense of how the nation was reacting to Lincoln’s death. On the day that it came out, Lincoln’s funeral train was traveling from Cleveland to Columbus, Ohio, and the trial of the conspirators had not yet begun. The nation was still very much at a loss over how to deal with this national tragedy. Here we reprint the entire text of the article “The Murder of the President” as it appeared in that edition.

THE MURDER OF THE PRESIDENT.

The Fourteenth of April is a dark day in our country’s calendar. On that day four years ago the national flag was for the first time lowered at the bidding of traitors. Upon that day, after a desperate conflict with treason for four long, weary years—a conflict in which the nation had so far triumphed that she breathed again in the joyous prospect of coming peace—her chosen leader was stricken down by the foul hand of the cowardly assassin. Exultation that had known no bounds was exchanged for boundless grief. The record upon which had been inscribed all sorts of violence possible to the most malignant treason that ever sought to poison a nation’s heart had been almost written full. But not quite full. Murder had run out its category of possible degrees against helpless loyalists in the South, against women and children whose houses had been burned down over their heads, and against our unfortunate prisoners, who had been tortured and literally starved to death. But there still remained one victim for its last rude stroke—one victim for whom, it was whispered in rebel journals South and North, there was still reserved the dagger of a BRUTUS. Beaten on every field of recognized warfare, treason outdid its very self, and killed our President.

The man who lent himself to traitors for this vile purpose was JOHN WILKES BOOTH, who sold himself, it may be, partly for the pieces of silver, but chiefly for the infamous notoriety attaching to such an act. There was an ancient villain who deliberately purposed to perpetuate the memory of his name among men by an act of awful sacrilege—a sacrilege so striking as never to be forgotten—and he burned the temple of the Ephesian Diana. EROSTRATUS gained his end, and has been remembered accordingly. A memory far more detestable is in store for JOHN WILKES BOOTH, who dared, by the commission of an infinitely greater sacrilege, to bring a whole people to tears.

He was the third son born in America of the eminent English tragedian JUNIUS BRUTUS BOOTH. There were three brothers, JUNIUS BRUTUS, Jun., EDWIN, and JOHN WILKES, all of whom inherited a predilection for the stage. EDWIN, however, is the only one of these who has attained a very eminent position as an actor, and he is probably surpassed by no living man. In justice to him it is proper here to state that he is true and loyal, and exacts our sincerest sympathy. The elder BOOTH, father of these three actors, died thirteen years ago. He passed the quieter portion of his life upon his farm, in Harford County, some thirty miles from Baltimore. JOHN WILKES BOOTH, the murderer, was born in 1839, and is now only twenty-six years of age. He went upon the stage at the early age of seventeen, simply as JOHN WILKES. As stock actor he gained a fair reputation, and afterward assuming his full name, he began a more ambitious career. But, partly on account of his dissolute habits, he never achieved a marked success. He performed chiefly in the South and West. He has appeared but few times before a New York audience. In person he bears considerable resemblance to his father. His eyes are dark and large; his hair of the same color, inclined to curl; his features finely molded; his form tall, and his address pleasing. He abandoned his profession recently on account of a bronchial affection. It is said that he has frequently threatened to kill President LINCOLN. His companions have been violent Secessionists, and there are doubtless many others involved to a greater or less degree in his crime. The attempt to assassinate Secretary SEWARD was made probably by an accomplice. It is supposed that Secretary STANTON and ANDREW JOHNSON were to have been added to the list of victims. The latter, at least, received on Friday a card from BOOTH, but was not at home.

Those who were acquainted with BOOTH’S movements on the fatal Friday say that his manner was restless. He knew that the President and his party intended to be present at Ford’s Theatre in the evening. He asked an acquaintance if he should attend the performance, remarking that if he did he would see some unusually fine acting. It was the general expectation that General GRANT would form one of the President’s party, and there are many who suppose that a blow was intended for him as well as the President. The latter had passed the day in the usual manner. In the morning his son, Capt. ROBERT LINCOLN, breakfasted with him.—The Captain had just returned from the capitulation of ROBERT E. LEE, and the President listened with great interest to his narration of the detailed circumstances. After breakfast he conversed for an hour with Speaker COLFAX about his future policy as to the rebellion which he was about to submit to his Cabinet. At 11 o‘clock the Cabinet met. Both the President and General GRANT were present. Having spent the afternoon with Governor OGLESBY, Senator YATES, and other leading citizens of his State, he went to the theatre in the evening with Mrs. LINCOLN, in order to unite in the general expression of popular joy for our late victories. The party consisted of Mrs. Senator HARRIS and daughter, and Major HENRY RATHBONE, Of Albany. They arrived at ten minutes before nine o’clock, and occupied a private box over-looking the stage. The play for the evening was The American Cousin.

BOOTH came upon his errand at about 10 o’clock. He left his horse in charge at the rear of the theatre, and made his way to the President’s box. This box is a double one, in the second tier at the left of the stage. When occupied by the Presidential party the separating partition is removed, and the two boxes are thus thrown into one. We give an accurate plan of the box here.—According to Major RATHBONE’S statement, the assassin must have made his preparations in the most deliberate manner beforehand. Of this fact there are at least four proofs, as we shall see: Stealthily approaching the dark passageway leading to the box, BOOTH, after having effected an entrance, closed the hall door, and then, taking a piece of board which he had prepared for the occasion, placed one end of it in an indentation excavated in the wall, about four feet from the floor, and the other against the moulding of the door-panel a few inches higher. He thus made it impossible for any one to enter from without; and securing himself against intrusion in that direction, he proceeded to the doors of the box. There were two of those. Here also the villain had carefully provided before hand the means by which he might, unnoticed himself, observe the position of the parties inside. With a gimlet, or small bit, he had bored a hole in the door-panel, which he afterward reamed out with his knife, so as to leave it a little larger than a buck-shot on the inside, while on the other side it was sufficiently large to give his eye a wide range. To secure against the doors being locked (they both had spring-locks), he had loosened the screws with which the bolt-hasps were fastened. In regard to the next stage of BOOTH’S movements there is some degree of uncertainty. He had been noticed as he passed through the dress-circle by a Mr. FERGUSON, who was sitting on the opposite side of the theatre. This man knew BOOTH, and recognized him. He had been talking with him a short time before. FERGUSON states that when BOOTH reached the door of the corridor leading from the dress-circle to the boxes he halted, “took off his hat, and, holding it in his left hand, leaned against the wall behind him.” After remaining thus for the space of half a minute, “he stepped down one step, put his hand on the door of the little corridor leading to the box, bent his knee against it,” when the door opened and BOOTH entered. After his entrance to the corridor he was of course invisible to FERGUSON, and, before the fatal shot, was probably seen by no one but the sentry at the door of the corridor. The latter he is said to have passed on the plea that the President had sent for him. What passed before the shot is only conjecturable. He made his observations, doubtless, through the aperture in the door provided for that purpose. And here we come upon another proof of a deliberately-prepared plan. The very seats in the box had been arranged to suit his purpose, either by himself or, as is more likely, by some attache of the theatre in complicity with him. The President sat in the left-hand corner of the box, nearest the audience, in an easy armchair. Next to him, on the right, sat Mrs. LINCOLN, Some distance to the right of both Miss HARRIS was seated, with Major RATHBONE at her left and a little in the rear of Mrs. LINCOLN. BOOTH rapidly surveyed the situation. The play had reached the second scene of the third act. Mrs. LINCOLN, intent on the play, was leaning forward, with one hand resting on her husband’s knee. The President was leaning upon one hand, and with the other was adjusting a portion of the drapery, his face wearing a pleasant smile as it was partially turned to the audience. As to the act of assassination, there are two conflicting statements. According to one, BOOTH fired through the door at the left, which was closed. But this seems to have been unnecessary; and it is far more probable that he entered rapidly through the door at the right, and the next moment fired. The ball entered just behind the President’s left ear, and though not producing instantaneous death completely obliterated all consciousness.

Major RATHBONE hearing the report, saw the assassin about six feet distant from the President, and encountered him; but BOOTH shook off his grasp. The latter had dropped his weapon—an ordinary pocket-pistol—and had drawn a long glittering knife, with which he inflicted a wound upon the Major; and then, resting his left hand upon the railing, vaulted over easily to the stage, eight or nine feet below. As he passed between the folds of the flag decorating the box, his spur, which he wore on the right heel, caught the drapery and brought it down. He crouched as he fell, falling upon one knee, but quickly gained an up-right position, and staggered in a theatrical manner across the stage, brandishing his knife, and shouting, “Sic semper tyrannis!” He made his exit by the “tormentor” on the opposite side of the stage, passing MISS KEENE as he went out. The villain succeeded in making his escape without arrest. In this he was probably assisted by accomplices and by MOSBY’S guerillas.

The President was immediately removed to the house of Mr. PETERSON, opposite the theatre, where he died at twenty-two minutes past seven the next morning, never having recovered his consciousness since the fatal shot. In his last hours he was attended by his wife and his son ROBERT, and prominent members of his Cabinet. His death has plunged the nation into deepest mourning, but his spirit still animates the people for whom he died.

A DIRGE.

LOWER the starry flag Amid a sovereign people’s lamentation For him the honored ruler of the nation;

Lower the starry flag!

Let the great bells be toll’d Slowly and mournfully in every steeple, Let them make known the sorrow of the people;

Let the great bells be toll’d!

Lower the starry flag, And let the solemn, sorrowing anthem, pealing, Sound from the carven choir to fretted ceiling; Lower the starry flag!

Let the great bells be toll’d,

And let the mournful organ music, rolling, Tune with the bells in every steeple tolling;

Let the great bells be toll’d!

Lower the starry flag;

The nation’s honored chief in death is sleeping, And for our loss our eyes are wet with weeping; Lower the starry flag!

Let the great bells be toll’d;

His honest, manly heart has ceased its beating, His lips no more shall speak the kindly greeting;

Let the great bells be toll’d!

Lower the starry flag;

No more shall sound his voice ‘in scorn of error, Filling the traitor’s heart with fear and terror; Lower the starry flag!

Let the great bells be toll’d;

He reverenced the gift which God has given, Freedom to all, the priceless boon of Heaven, Let the great bells be toll’d!

Lower the starry flag;

Hit dearest hopes were wedded with’ the nation, He valued more than all the land’s salvation;

Lower the starry flag!

Let the great bells be toll’d;

His name shall live on History’s brightest pages, His voice shall sound through Time’s remotest ages; Let the great bells be toll’d!

A NATION’S GRIEF.

AH! Grief doth follow fast on Victory! The victors’ shout is lost in silence, deep—Too deep for our poor human utterance. The jubilant flags that only yesterday Were the bright heralds of a nation’s gain, Now droop at half-mast for her woeful loss. Our foremost Hero fallen, sore at heart we lie Prostrate, in tears, at our dear Lincoln’s grave!

The dust of our great Leader, kissed to rest, And folded to our hearts, is there inurned, Beyond the breath of scandal, in sweet peace. Wounded with his wound, our hearts receive The mantle of his spirit as it flies.

His words remain to us our sacred Law: Do we not hear them from the Capitol?—

“Malice toward none, with charity for all!”

The blow at Sumter touched us not so much With grief, or awe of treason, as this last—This cruelest thrust of all at his dear head, Which with spent rage the baffled serpent aimed. It is the world’s old story, told again,

That they who bruise the serpent’s venomed head Must bear, even as Christ did, its last foul sting, Taking the Savior’s Passion with His Crown!

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphans; to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.“—Last Words of President Lincoln’s Second Inaugural.

HARPER’S WEEKLY.

SATURDAY,

APRIL 29,1865.

Abraham Lincoln.

GREATER love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. ABRAHAM LINCOLN has done that. He has sealed his service to his country by the last sacrifice. On the day that commemorates the great sorrow which Christendom reveres, the man who had no thought, no wish, no hope but the salvation of his country, laid down his life. Yet how many and many a heart that throbbed with inexpressible grief as the tragedy was told would gladly have been stilled forever if his might have beat on. So wise and good, so loved and trusted, his death is a personal blow to every faithful American household; nor will any life be a more cherished tradition, nor any name be longer and more tenderly beloved by this nation, than those of ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

On the 22d of February, 1861, as he raised the American flag over Independence Hall, in Philadelphia, he spoke of the sentiment in the Declaration of Independence which gave liberty not only to this country, but, “I hope,” he said, “to the world for all future time.” Then, with a solemnity which the menacing future justified, and with a significance which subsequent events revealed, he added, “But if this country can not be saved without giving up that principle, I was about to say I would rather be assassinated upon this spot than surrender it.” The country has been saved by cleaving to that principle, and he has been assassinated for not surrendering it.

Called to the chief conduct of public affairs at a time of the greatest peril, he came almost unknown, but he brought to his great office a finer comprehension of the condition of the country than the most noted statesmen of all parties, and that sure instinct of the wiser popular will which made him the best of all leaders for a people about to maintain their own government in a civil war. Himself a child of the people, he lived and died their friend. His heart beat responsive to theirs. He knew their wants, their character, their powers, and knowing their will often better than they knew it themselves, he executed it with the certainty of their speedy approval. No American statesman ever believed more heartily than he the necessary truth of the fundamental American principle of absolute equality before the laws, or trusted with ampler confidence the American system of government. But he loved liberty too sincerely for passion or declamation. It was the strong, sturdy, Anglo-Saxon affection, not the Celtic frenzy.

With an infinite patience, and a dauntless tenacity, he was a man of profound principles but of no theories. This, with his insight and intuitive appreciation of the possibilities of every case, made him a consummate practical statesman. He saw farther and deeper than others because he saw that in the troubled time upon which he was cast little could be wholly seen. Experience so vindicated his patriotic sagacity that he acquired a curious ascendency in the public confidence; so that if good men differed from his opinion they were inclined to doubt their own. Principle was fixed as a star, hut policy must be swayed by the current. While many would have dared the fierce fury of the gale and have sunk the ship at once, he knew that there was a time to stretch every inch of canvas and a time to lay to. He was not afraid of “drifting.” In statesmanship prudence counts for more than daring. Thus it happened that some who urged him at the beginning of the war to the boldest measures, and excused what they called his practical faithlessness by his probable weakness, lived to feel the marrow of their bones melt with fear, and to beg him to solicit terms that would have destroyed the nation. But wiser than passion, more faithful than fury, serene in his devotion to the equal rights of men without which he knew there could hence-forth be no peace in this country, he tranquilly persisted, enduring the impatience of what seemed to some his painful delays and to others his lawless haste; and so, trusting God and his own true heart, he fulfilled his great task so well that he died more tenderly lamented than any ruler in history.

His political career, from his entrance into the Illinois Legislature to his last speech upon the Louisiana plan of reconstruction, is calmly consistent both in the lofty humanity of its aim and the good sense of its method, and our condition is the justification of his life. For the most malignant party opposition in our history crumbled before his spotless fidelity; and in his death it is not a party that loses a head, but a country that deplores a father. The good sense, the good humor, the good heart of ABRAHAM LINCOLN gradually united the Democracy that despised the “sentimentality of abolitionism,” and the abolitionism that abhorred the sneering inhumanity of “Democracy,” in a practical patriotism that has saved the country.

No one who personally knew him but will now feel that the deep, furrowed sadness of his face seemed to forecast his fate. The genial gentleness of his manner, his homely simplicity, the cheerful humor that never failed are now seen to have been but the tender light that played around the rugged heights of his strong and noble nature. It is small consolation that he dies at the moment of the war when he could best be spared, for no nation is ever ready for the loss of such a friend. But it is something to remember that he lived to see the slow day breaking. Like Moses he had marched with us through the wilderness. From the height of patriotic vision he beheld the golden fields of the future waving in peace and plenty out of sight. He beheld and blessed God, but was not to enter in. And we with bowed heads and aching hearts move forward to the promised land.

President Johnson.

No President has entered upon the duties of his office under circumstances so painful as those which surround ANDREW JOHNSON. The pause between the death of Mr. LINCOLN and the indication of the probable course of his successor is profoundly solemn. But there can be but one emotion in every true American heart, and that is, the most inflexible determination to support President JOHNSON, who is now the lawful head of a great nation emerging from terrible civil war, and entering upon the solemn duty of pacification.

ANDREW JOHNSON, like his predecessor, is emphatically a man of the people. He has been for many years in public life, and when the war began he was universally hailed as one of the truest and sturdiest of patriots. His former political association with the leaders of the Southern policy, his position as a Senator from a most important border State, indicated him to the conspirators as an invaluable ally, if he could be seduced to treason. If we are not misinformed, JOHN C. BRECKINRIDGE undertook this task; and how he failed—how ANDREW JOHNSON upon the floor of the Senate denounced treason and traitors—is already historical. From that moment he was one of the firmest friends of the Government, and most ardent supporters of the late Administration. His relations with Mr. LINCOLN were peculiarly friendly; and when the news of ROSECRANS’s victory at Mill Spring reached the President at midnight, he immediately sent his secretary to tell the good news to Mr. JOHNSON.

He was appointed Military Governor of Tennessee upon the national occupation of that State, and for three years he has stood in that exposed point at the front, a faithful sentry. Formerly a slaveholder, and familiar with the public opinion of the border, he early saw the necessity of the emancipation war policy; and although in his addresses at the beginning of the war he spoke of it as still uncertain and prospective, his views ripened with those of the country, and when the policy was declared he supported it with the sincerity of earnest conviction.

His provisional administration of government in Tennessee, which was for some time debatable ground, was firm and faithful. By the necessity of the case he was the object of the envenomed hostility of the rebels and the bitterest opposition of the enemies of the Administration. The most serious charge of his exercise of arbitrary power was the severe oath as a qualification for voting which Governor JOHNSON approved before the Presidential election. When the remonstrants appealed to President LINCOLN, he replied that he was very sure Governor JOHNSON would do what was necessary and right. And while the opposition at the North was still loudly denouncing, JEFFERSON DAVIS, in one of his furious speeches in Georgia, after the fall of Atlanta, declared that there were thirty thousand men in Tennessee eager to take up arms the moment the rebel army appeared in the State. It was to prevent those thirty thousand from doing by their votes what they were ready to do by their arms that the oath was imposed. JEFFERSON DAVIS furnished the amplest justification for the action of Governor JOHNSON. President LINCOLN was reproached for the too conciliatory character of his “Border State policy.” Let it not be forgotten that at the time when he was thought to be too much influenced by it he appointed Mr. JOHNSON Governor of Tennessee. That Governor JOHNSON’S course in the State was ape proved by the unconditional loyal men there is shown by the adoption of the new free constitution and the opening of the new era under the administration of Governor BROWNLOW.

Of a more ardent temperament than Mr. LINCOLN, whose passionless patience was sublime, Mr. JOHNSON has had a much sharper personal experience of the atrocious spirit of this rebellion. He has seen and felt the horrors of which we have only heard. The great guilt of treason is vividly present to his mind and memory, and his feeling toward the leaders who are morally responsible for this wasting war is one of stern hostility.

But the Governor of Tennessee in a most critical period of civil war is now President of the United States at a time when the war in the field is ending and the peace of a whole country is to be secured. What is the great truth that confronts him at the opening of his new career? It is that the policy of his predecessor had been so approved by the mind and heart of the country, had so disarmed hostility and melted prejudice, that the spirit of that policy has almost the sanctity of prescription.

That President JOHNSON will so regard it we have the fullest confidence. That what every loyal man sees, so strong and devoted a patriot as he will fail to see, is not credible. That the successor of ABRAHAM LINCOLN will adopt a policy of vengeance is impossible. Of the leading traitors, as he said a fortnight since, he holds that the punishment should be that which the Constitution imposes. “And on the other hand,” he added, “to the people who have been deluded and misled I would extend leniency and humanity, and an invitation to return to the allegiance they owe to the country.” These are not the words of passion, but of humanity and justice. They express what is doubtless the conviction of the great multitude of loyal citizens of the country. With a modest appeal for the counsel and assistance of the gentlemen who were the advisers of Mr. LINCOLN, and with calm reliance upon God and the people, he addresses himself to his vast responsibilities amidst the hopes and prayers and confidence of his country.

Mr. Seward.

THE bloody assault upon Secretary SEWARD, a “chivalric” blow struck at a man of sixty-five lying in his bed with a broken arm, has shown the country how precious to it is the life of a man who has been bitterly traduced by many of his former political friends since the war began. Before the shot was fired at Sumter, Mr SEWARD tried by some form of negotiation to prevent the outbreak of civil war. He was then—does Mr. HORACE GREELEY remember?—assailed with insinuations of treachery. Will Mr. HORACE GREELEY inform us how it was treacherous to try to prevent the war by negotiation with intending rebels, if, while the war was raging, it was patriotic to urge negotiation with rebels in arms? Will he also tell us whether it was more disloyal to the Union to recognize American citizens not yet in rebellion, or after they had slain thousands and thousands of brave men in blood and torture to call them “eminent Confederates?” Will he teach us why Mr. SEWARD was to be held up to public suspicion because he communicated with Judge CAMPBELL and recommended Mr. HARVEY as Minister to Portugal, while Mr. GREELEY calls one of the basest panders to this scourging war, a man who does his fighting by sending criminals from Canada to burn down theatres and hotels in New York full of women and children, “a distinguished American” of the other party in our civil war?

For four years Mr. SEWARD, as Secretary of State, has defended this country from one of the most constantly threatening perils, that of foreign war. His name in England is not beloved. But seconded by his faithful lieutenant, Mr. ADAMS, he has maintained there the honor of the American name, and persistently asserted the undiminished sovereignty of the Government of the United States. In France, with the cool, clear, upright man who so fitly represented the simplicity and honesty of a popular Government, he has managed our relations with a skill that has protected us from most serious complications in Mexico. Engaged with the most unscrupulous and secret of modern diplomatists, Louis NAPOLEON, he has with admirable delicacy of skill prevented his interference in our domestic affairs. His dispatches have been free from bluster or timidity. They all show, what his life illustrates, a perfect serenity of faith in the final success of free institutions and the strength of a popular Government.

Like every man in the country, Mr. SEWARD has been taught by the war. None of us are the same. The views of every man have been modified. The course of some organs of public opinion—of the New York Tribune, for instance—is wonderful and incredible to contemplate. There have been times when Mr. SEWARD was thought by some to be a positive hindrance to the war, a nightmare in the Cabinet. The Senate, with questionable friendship to the country, upon one occasion is understood to have asked his removal. But the President could ill spare so calm a counselor and so adroit a statesman. That they often differed is beyond dispute, but the President knew the sagacity and experience of the Secretary, and the Secretary said the President was the best man he ever knew.

Such was the confidence and mutual respect of the relation between them that the country will regard Mr. SEWARD’S continuance in the Cabinet as a sign of the perpetuity of the spirit of President LINCOLN’S policy. Meanwhile, that he and his son, the able and courteous Assistant Secretary, lie grievously smitten by the blow that wrings the heart of the nation, a tender solicitude will wait upon their recovery. WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD has too faithfully and conspicuously served human liberty not to have earned a blow from the assassin hand of slavery. The younger generation of American citizens who, in their first manhood, followed his bugle-call into the ranks of those who strove against the infamous power whose dying throes have struck life from the President and joy from a triumphing nation, will not forget how valiant and beneficent his service has been, nor suffer the name so identified with the truest political instruction of this country to be long obscured by the clouds of calumny.

GREAT PAN IS DEAD.

THE New York Tribune, in a late issue, after reprinting the infamous rebel offer of a reward of a million of dollars for the assassination of Mr. LINCOLN, Mr. JOHNSON, and Mr. SEWARD, says: “such facts and the corresponding editorials of the rebel journals countenance the popular presumption that the late murderous outrages in Washington were incidents of a comprehensive plot whereto the rebel leaders were privy. The burglarious raid on St. Albans, the attempts simultaneously to fire our great hotels, and other acts wholly out of the pale of civilized warfare, tend to strengthen this conviction.”

In the next column the Editor speaks of the men who plotted the raid and the arson as “certain distinguished Americans” of the other “party to our civil war.”

Does not the editor of the Tribune see that nothing can more profoundly demoralize the public mind than to call the men who plot arson and massacre “distinguished Americans?” ABRAHAM LINCOLN and GEORGE WASHINGTON were distinguished Americans. Has the editor no other epithets for GEORGE N. SANDERS and JACOB THOMPSON and CLEMENT C. CLAY? Is there no such thing as crime? Are there no criminals? Is the assassin of the President a man impelled by “the conflict of ideas” to a mistaken act? Is there no treason? Are there no traitors? Does the editor of the Tribune really suppose that because it is not the wish nor the duty of the American people to visit the penalty of treason upon every man at the South who has been in rebellion, it is therefore the duty of wise and honest men to invite JEFFERSON DAVIS and WIGFALL into the Senate of the United States, or ROBERT E. LEE, BEAUREGARD, and JOE JOHNSTON into the army?

The Editor of the Tribune may bow down to the ground and grovel before “eminent Confederates;” but it is not from them that the pacification of the South is to proceed. The first step in peace is to emancipate the people of the South from their servile dependence upon the class of “gentlemen” which has first deluded and then ruined them. How can it be done if we affect that respect which no honest man can feel? If there is one suffering Union man in Alabama who has been outlawed and hunted and starved, who has lain all day cowering in swamps and woods, and at night has stolen out and crept for food to the faithful slaves upon the plantations—who has seen his house destroyed, his children murdered, his wife dishonored—who has endured every extremity of suffering, and still believed in God and the flag of his country—and who now, following WILSON’s liberating march, has come safely to our lines at Mobile—if there be one such man, who knows that his cruel agony and the waste and desolation of his land have come from “the leaders” of his section, and sees that when they are worsted in battle it is the Editor of the New York Tribune who hastens to fall prostrate before the meanest of them and salute them as “distinguished Americans” and “eminent Confederates,” it is easy to believe that such a man should be overwhelmed with dismay as he contemplates the hopeless postponement of pacification which such a spectacle reveals.

Exactly that base subservience to the arrogance of a slaveholding class which has enabled that class to seduce and betray the people of their States is reproduced in the tone of the editor of the Tribune when speaking of it. Is JEFFERSON DAVIS a distinguished American?”

Is he any more so than AARON BURR and BENEDICT ARNOLD?

No men despise such fawning more than those it is intended to propitiate. It is not by such men as JACOB THOMPSON and CLEMENT C. CLAY and HUNTER and BENJAMIN and SEMMES, it is by men unknown and poor, by men who have seen what comes of following the counsels of the “leaders,” by men who have been tried by blood and fire in this sharp war that peace is to come out of the South. The men whom the editor of the Tribune calls by names that justly belong only to our best and dearest are the assassins of the nation and of human liberty. They would have wrought upon the nation the same crime that was done upon the President. They would have murdered the country in its own innocent blood. Not from them conies regeneration and peace. Let them fly.

But from the longabused, the blinded, the down-trodden, the forgotten, the despised—from the real people of the South, whom riches and ease and luxury and cultivation and idleness and, all worldly gifts and graces sitting in high places, drugged with sophistries, and seduced with blandishments, and threatened with terrors, and besotted with prejudice, and degraded with ignorance, and ground into slavery—these, all of them, white and black as God made them, are the seed of the new South, long pressed into the ground, and now about to sprout and grow and blossom jubilantly with peace and prosperity. Old things have passed away. The Editor of the Tribune is still flattering the priests whose power has gone. Great Pan is dead. Why should one of the earliest Christians swing incense before him?

THE FLAG ON SUMTER.

THE old flag floats again on Sumter! Four years ago it was the hope, the prayer, the vow of the American people. Today the vow is fulfilled. The hand of him who defended it against the assault of treason, of him who saluted it sadly as he marched his little band away, now, with all the strength of an aroused and regenerated nation supporting him, raises it once more to its place, and the stars that have still shone on undimmed in our hearts now shine tranquilly in triumph, and salute the earth and sky with the benediction of peace.

To be called to be the orator of a nation upon such a day was an honor which might have oppressed any man. To have spoken for the nation at such a moment, worthily, adequately, grandly, is the glory of one man. It will not be questioned that Mr. BEECHER did so. His oration is of the noblest spirit and the loftiest eloquence. It is in the highest degree picturesque and powerful. Certainly it was peculiarly fit that a man, fully inspired by the eternal truth that has achieved the victory, should hail, in the name of equal liberty, the opening of the era which is to secure it.

Even amidst the wail of our sorrow its voice will be heard and its tone will satisfy. Even in our heart’s grief we can feel the solemn thrill of triumph that the flag which fell in weakness is raised in glory and power.

THE FOLLY OF CRIME.

EVERY stupendous crime is an enormous blunder. The blow that has shocked the nation exasperates it, and in killing ABRAHAM LINCOLN the rebels have murdered their best friend. His death can not change the event of the war. It has only united the loyal people of the country more closely than ever, and disposed them to a less lenient policy toward the rebellion. Whatever the intention or hope of the murder, whether it were the result of a matured plot or the act of a band of ruffians, whether it were dictated by the rebel chiefs or offered to their cause as a voluntary assistance by the hand that struck the blow, the effect is the same—a more intense and inflexible vow of the nation that the rebellion shall be suppressed and its cause exterminated.

There is no crime so abhorrent to the world as the assassination of a public man. Even when he is unworthy, the method of his death at once ameliorates the impression of his life. But when he is a good and wise man, when he is spotless and beloved, the infamy is too monstrous for words. There is but one assassin whom history mentions with toleration and even applause, and that is CHARLOTTE CORDAY. But her act was a mistake. It ended the life of a monster, but it did not help the people, and she who might have lived to succor and save some victim of MARAT, became, after his death, MARAT’S victim. All other assassins, too, have more harmed their cause than helped it. Their pleas of justification are always confounded by the event. That plea, where it has any dignity whatever, is the riddance of the world of a bad or dangerous man whose life can not be legally taken. It is to punish a despot—to bring low a tyrant. But the heart recoils whatever the excuse, the instinct of mankind curses the assassin.

In our own grievous affliction there is one lesson which those who directly address public opinion would do well to consider. Party malignity in the Free States during the war has not scrupled to defame the character of Mr. LINCOLN. He has been denounced as a despot, as a usurper, as a man who arbitrarily annulled the Constitution, as a magistrate under whose administration all the securities of liberty, property, and even life, were deliberately disregarded and imperiled. Political hostility has been inflamed into hate by the assertion that he was responsible for the war, and that he had opened all the yawning graves and tumbled the bloody victims in. This has been done directly and indirectly, openly and cunningly. In a time of necessarily profound and painful excitement, to carry a party point, the political opponents of Mr. LINCOLN have said or insinuated or implied that he had superseded the laws and had made himself an autocrat. If any dangerous plot has been exposed, these organs of public opinion had sneered at it as an invention of the Administration. If theatres and hotels full of men, women, and children were to be wantonly fired, the friends of the Administration were accused of cooking up an excitement. If bloody riots and massacres occurred, they were extenuated, and called “risings of the people,” as if in justifiable vengeance, and as if the oppression of the Government had brought them upon itself.

This appeal has been made in various ways and in different degrees. A great convention intimated that there was danger that the elections would be overborne by Administration bayonets. Judge COMSTOCK, formerly of the Court of Appeals in this State, addressing a crowd in Union Square, declared that if a candidate for the Presidency should be defrauded of his election by military interference he would be borne into the White House by the hands of the people. Of the Administration thus accused of the basest conceivable crimes ABRAHAM LINCOLN was the head. If there were a military despotism in the country, as was declared, he was the despot. If there were a tyranny, he was the tyrant.

Is it surprising that somebody should have believed all this, that somebody should have said, if there is a tyranny it can not be very criminal to slay the tyrant, and that working himself up to the due frenzy he should strike the blow? When it was struck, when those kind eyes that never looked sternly upon a human being closed forever, and the assassin sprang forward and cried, Sic semper tyrannis, was it not a ghastly commentary upon those who had not scrupled to teach that he was a tyrant who had annulled the law?

The lesson is terrible. Let us hope that even party-spirit may be tempered by this result of its natural consequence.

A SUGGESTION FOR A MONUMENT.

IT is very possible that the great affection of the people of the United States for their late President will lead to a general desire to erect some national monument to his memory. Should this be so, there is one suggestion which will doubtless occur to many besides ourselves. It is that no mere marble column or memorial pile shall be reared, but that the heart-offerings of the people shall be devoted to the erection of a military hospital, to be called the LINCOLN HOSPITAL, for soldiers and sailors—a a retreat for the wounded and permanently invalid veterans of the war.

When, in the happier days that are coming, the wards shall be relieved of the lingering monuments of the contest, the foundation would remain for the public benefit. The soldiers and sailors had no more tender and faithful friend than ABRAHAM LINCOLN. He never forgot them; nor did he fail always to pay to them in his public addresses the homage which his heart constantly cherished. To a man of his broad and generous humanity no monument could be so appropriate as a Hospital.

DOMESTIC INTELLIGENCE. OUR SUCCESSES IN NORTH CAROLINA.

GENERAL STONEMAN captured Salisbury, North Carolina, on the 12th inst., securing 1165 prisoners, 19 pieces of artillery, 1000 smallarms, and eight Stands of colors. The plunder found there was enormous, embracing 1,000,000 rounds of ammunition, 1000 shells, 60,000 pounds of powder, 75,000 suits of clothing, 35,000 army blankets, with large quantities of bacon, salt, sugar, rice, wheat, and 7000 bales of cotton. All that was not immediately available was destroyed. Stoneman’s raid in East Tennessee and North Carolina has been one of the most important and destructive of the war. He has burned half a hundred important bridges, destroyed about 100 miles of track, captured trains, burned depots, and played the mischief generally with secesh property.

0. Dark Corridor leading from the Dress Circle to Box.—H. Entrance to Corridor. I. The bar used by Booth to prevent entrance from without.—J. Dress Circle.—K. The Parquette.—L. The Foot-lights.—M. The Stage.—F. Open door to the President’s Box.—G. Closed door.—N. Place where Booth vaulted over to the Stage below

PLAN OF THE BOX OCCUPIED BY PRESIDENT LINCOLN AT FORD’S THEATER, APRIL 14, 1865

The next day after the capture of Salisbury, Sherman occupied Raleigh, with but little resistance. Governor Vance was taken by our cavalry on the same day. It is said that he was deputed by Johnston to surrender the State, but the power was afterward withdrawn. It is reported that Jeff Davis had joined Johnston at Hillsborough, and was still with him,

CAPTURE OF MOBILE.

Mobile was captured by the national forces on the 12th of April.

On the 20th of March the Sixteenth Corps, under General A. J. Smith, left Dauphin on twenty transports, accompanied by gun-boats, and proceeded up an arm of Mobile Bay to the mouth of Fish River, where the troops were landed at Dauley’s Mills. The Thirteenth Corps, under General Granger, left Fort Morgan, and on the 21st of March went into camp on the left of Smith, resting its left wing on Mobile Bay. Three days afterward this corps was followed by General Knipe with 6000 cavalry. On the 25th the Federal line was pushed forward so as to extend from Alabama City on the bay to Deer Park. The first point of attack was Spanish Fort, which is directly opposite Mobile, and is the latest built and strongest of the defenses of that city. It guards the eastern channel of the bay. On the 27th the bombardment commenced. In the mean time the Monitors and gunboats were laboring hard to overcome the obstructions. They had succeeded so far that the Monitors Milwaukee, Winnebago, Kickapoo, and the Monitor ram Osage moved in line to attack at 3 P.M. An hour afterward a torpedo exploded. under the Milwaukee, and she immediately filled and sunk in eleven feet of water. There were no casualties. There was steady firing all night and the next day. At about 2 o’clock P.M. on the 29th a torpedo struck the port bow of the Osage and exploded, tearing away the plating and timbers, killing two men and wounding several others.

We give on page 268 an engraving illustrating the nature of the torpedoes found in the Bay. Those given in the sketch are those with the mushroomshaped anchor. The slightest pressure causes explosion.

On the 8th of April an extraordinary force was brought to bear upon Spanish Fort. Twenty-two Parrott guns were got within half a mile of the work, while other powerful batteries were still nearer. Two gunboats joined in the tremendous cannonade. The result was that the fort surrendered a little after midnight. Fort Alexandria followed, and the guns of these two were turned against Forts Tracy and Huger, in the harbor, at the mouth of the Blakely and Appalachee rivers. But these had already been abandoned. The Monitors then went busily to work removing torpedoes, and ran up to within shelling distance of the city.

Shortly after the capture of Spanish Fort, intelligence of the capture and the fall of Richmond was read to the troops, in connection with orders to attack Fort Blakely. Several batteries of artillery, and large quantities of ammunition were taken with the fort, besides 2400 prisoners. Our loss in the whole affair was much less than 2000 killed and wounded, and none missing.

Seven hundred prisoners were taken with Spanish Fort. Mobile was occupied by the national forces on the 12th. In the mean time General Wilson, with a formidable force of cavalry, had swept through the State of Alabama. He left Eastport about the 20th of March, and advanced in two columns, each of which, at about the same time, fought Forrest’s cavalry, one at Marion and the other at Plantersville, which were respectively situated about 20 miles northwest and northeast of Selma. On the afternoon of April 2 Selma was captured, with 22 guns, and all the immense Government works, arsenals, rolling-mills, and foundries at that place were destroyed. It is probable that Montgomery was also captured, but later than the capture of Selma we have no details.

MOURNING IN RICHMOND.

Roger A. Pryor stated in Petersburg that he believed Mr. Lincoln indispensable to the restoration of peace, and regretted his death more than any military mishap of the south. He and the Mayor placed themselves at the head of a movement for a town meeting to deplore the loss on both private and public grounds. General Robert E. Lee at first refused to hear the details of the murder. A Mr. Suite and another gentleman waited upon him on Sunday night with the particulars. He said that when he dispossessed himself of the command of the rebel forces he kept in mind President Lincoln’s benignity, and surrendered as much to the latter’s goodness as to Grant’s artillery.

The General said that he regretted Mr. Lincoln’s death as much as any man in the North, and believed him to be the epitome of magnanimity and good faith.

ARREST OF SEWARD’S ASSASSIN.

A man was arrested on the 18th in Baltimore who is supposed to have been the assassin of Secretary Seward. He was recognized as such by the negro servant and Miss Fanny Seward.

FOREIGN NEWS. THE REBEL RAM “STONEWALL.”

The rebel ram Stonewall left Lisbon, Portugal, on the 28th of March, having been ordered away by the Portuguese authorities. The national steamers Niagara and Sacramento were forbidden to leave until twenty-four hours should have elapsed. These two vessels, about four hours after the Stonewall left, weighed anchor and moved toward the bar. The commander of the Belem Tower then fired upon them, considerably injuring the Niagara. The captains stated that they were only changing their anchorageground, and our consul at Lisbon has demanded that the Governor of Belem Tower should be removed, which demand has been conceded.

NOTES

From a research standpoint, the events before, during, and after the Lincoln assassination were ideal. The many articles and eyewitness accounts were laden with an astounding amount of information. The following list of books, websites, and other archived information reflects the main research sources for this book. It bears mentioning that visits to the Sayler’s Creek Battlefield, High Bridge, Appomattox Court House, Ford’s Theatre, and the various historical sites along John Wilkes Booth’s escape route will add immeasurably to the reader’s understanding of all that came to pass in April 1865.

Part One: TOTAL WAR

The siege of Petersburg and Lee’s subsequent flight across the Virginia countryside are all very well documented. Some of the most fascinating insights came from the soldiers and generals who were there, many of whom wrote their memoirs and recollections years later. In reading them, one is transported back to that moment in time. The accounts of Sayler’s Creek and the Battle of High Bridge, in particular, are vivid portrayals of courage under fire. What follows is a brief list of the books used in our research; thanks to the magic of Google’s online books, many of the older titles can be easily accessed: Red, White and Blue Badge: Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers, by Penrose G. Mark; Confederate Veteran, by S. A. Cunningham; Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, by Robert Underwood Johnson; Pickett and His Men, by La Salle Corbett Pickett; Lee’s Last Retreat: The Flight to Appomattox, by William Marvel; Four Years Under Marse Robert, by Robert Stiles; General Lee: A Biography of Robert E. Lee, by Fitzhugh Lee; Military Memoirs of a Confederate, by Edward Porter Alexander; Meade’s

Headquarters, 1863-1865, by Theodore Lyman; Grant, by Jean Edward Smith; Lee, by Douglas Southall Freeman; Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, by Ulysses S. Grant; From Manassas to Appomattox: The Personal Memoirs of James Longstreet, by James Longstreet; Lee’s Lieutenants: A Study in Command, by Douglas Southall Freeman and Stephen W. Sears; Tom Custer: Ride to Glory, by Carl F. Day; The Military Annals of Lancaster, Massachusetts, by Henry Steadman Norse; Biography of Francis P. Washburn, by Michael K. Sorenson; and The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, by General Philip Henry Sheridan. The Virginia Military Institute’s online archive [http://www.vmi.edu/archives.aspx?id=3945) offers links to several more firsthand letters. In addition, the very excellent Atlas of the Civil War, by James M. McPherson, was always within arm’s reach during the writing process; it shows in great detail the battle maps and movements of two great armies.

Part Two: THE IDES OF DEATH

Writing about the chaotic final days of Lincoln’s life meant accessing all manner of research, from online documents (such as the New York Times‘s findings about Lincoln’s Baptist upbringing) to websites devoted to the Lincoln White House (in particular, www.mrlincolnswhitehouse.org provided a treasure trove of information about everything from floor layouts to daily life, very often told in first-person accounts). The number of websites and easily accessed online articles is endless, and hundreds were scrutinized during the writing of this book.

The reader searching for an overview of April 1865 is encouraged to read the aptly named April 1865, by Jay Winik, which frames the events quite well. Other books of note: “They Have Killed Papa Dead,”by Anthony S. Pitch, and American Brutus, by Michael W. Kauffman; Team of Rivals, by Doris Kearns Goodwin; Lincoln’s Last Month, by William C. Harris; Lincoln’s Body Guard: The Union Light Guard of Ohio, by Robert McBride; and Blood on the Moon: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, by Edward Steers. For a compelling history of Washington, D.C., itself, the reader is encouraged to find a copy of Washington Schlepped Here, by Christopher Buckley.

Part Three: THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY

For an hour-by-hour description of April 15, 1865, see the excellent A. Lincoln: His Last 24 Hours, by W. Emerson Reck; The Day Lincoln Was

Shot, by Jim Bishop; Lincoln’s Last Hours, by Charles Augustus Leale; and Abraham Lincoln, by Carl Sandburg.

Of great interest are titles that offer conflicting viewpoints of the assassination, the motivations, and the people involved. Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of researching the Lincoln assassination was poring over the many very good books dedicated to this topic and the shock of discovering that many disagree completely with one another. Dark Union, by Leonard Guttridge and Ray Neff, and Spies, Traitors, and Moles, by Peter Kross are two of the more controversial titles.

For information on Mary Surratt, see Assassin’s Accomplice, by Kate Clifford Larson.

Part Four: THE CHASE

The search for Lincoln’s killers and their subsequent trial was vividly portrayed in Kauffman’s American Brutus and James L. Swanson’s Manhunt. Potomac Diary, by Richtmyer Hubbell, provides fascinating insights into the mood in Washington. History of the United States Secret Service, by Lafayette Baker, is a rather verbose and self-aggrandizing account of Baker’s exploits. Also of note: Beware the People Weeping, by Thomas Reed Turner; Lincoln Legends, by Edward Steers; Right or Wrong, God Judge Me: The Writings of John Wilkes Booth, by John Wilkes Booth; The Life of Dr. Samuel A. Mudd, by Samuel A. Mudd; and Lincoln’s Assassins, by Roy Z. Chamlee

The arguments of Special Judge Advocate John A. Bingham can be found in Trial of the Conspirators for the Assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, by John Armor Bingham. Testimony can be found at http://www.surratt.org/documents/Bplact02.pdf*.

INDEX

The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages of your eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.

Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations.

abolition movement

Aladdin, or The Wonderful Lamp (play)

Alaska

Alexander the Great

Amelia Court House

Anderson, Richard “Fighting Dick,”

Anderson, Robert

Antietam

Appomattox Court House, Lee’s

surrender at

Appomattox River

Army of Northern Virginia

last days of war

surrender of

Arnold, Isaac

Arnold, Samuel

trial and sentence of

Arsenal Penitentiary

Arthur, Chester

Ashmun, George

assassination, human history of

assassination conspiracy

against Johnson

against Lincoln

against Seward

Booth approaches state box

Booth arrives at Ford’s Theatre

Booth escapes

death of Lincoln

escape route

hanging of co-conspirators

hideout in Maryland

imprisonment of co-conspirators

Lincoln shot

Lincoln’s last hours after shooting

newspapers on

planning of

search for conspirators

Stanton and

trial and sentencing of co-conspirators

see also specific conspirators

Atzerodt, George

arrest of

escape of

failure to assassinate Johnson

hanging of

role in assassination plot

trial of

Baker, Lafayette C.

Booth investigation

death of

as double agent

life after Booth’s death

Baker, Luther

Baltimore

Baltimore Plot

Baptist Alley

Barnes, Joseph

Bell, William

Belle Plain, Virginia

Benning’s Bridge

Bible

black flag warfare

Black Hawk War

blacks

suffrage

as Union soldiers

see also slavery

Black Thursday

Booth, Edwin

Booth, John Wilkes

acting career

approaches state box

arrives at Ford’s Theatre

autopsy and photographs of

broken leg of

burial of

capture of

celebrity of

childhood of

crosses Potomac River

death of

diary of

end of war and

engagement to Lucy Hale

escape of

guns of

hatred for Lincoln

horse of

infamy

kidnap plot

leap onstage after shooting

Lincoln shot by

at Lincoln’s last speech

at Lincoln’s second inauguration

a martyr in the Confederate South

in Maryland swamps

personality of

physical appearance

plans assassination of Lincoln

reward poster for

search for

Stanton connection

views on slavery

Washington residence

as womanizer

Booth, Junius Brutus

Booth, Mary Ann Holmes

Boston

Bowie knife

Brockenbrough, John

Bryantown, Maryland

Buckingham, John

Bull Run

Bunker, George W.

Burns, Francis

Burroughs, Joseph

Caesar, Julius

Canada

Capitol Building

construction

Chandler, Theodore

Chandler, William

Chase, Salmon P.

Chicago

Chicago Tribune

City Point, Virginia

Civil War

Antietam

casualties

destruction of Richmond

end of

Five Forks

High Bridge

last days of

Lee’s retreat

Lee’s surrender

Petersburg

Sayler’s Creek

Civil War Times

Clark, William

Cobb, Silas T.

Cody, Buffalo Bill

Coggeshall, Willliam

Colburn’s United Service Magazine

Colfax, Schuyler

Confederacy Black Thursday

Confederate army

desertions

destruction of Richmond

food shortages

High Bridge

last days of war

at Petersburg

retreat from Petersburg

Sayler’s Creek

surrender of

Confederate Secret Service. See also specific members

Confederate White House

Conger, Everton

conspiracy against Lincoln. See assassination conspiracy; kidnap plot

Constitution, U.S.

Corbett, Boston

Booth killed by

Corry, John

Crane, Charles H.

Crockett, Davy

Crook, William

life after Lincoln’s death

Custer, George Armstrong

Battle of Little Bighorn

Danville, march to

Davis, Jefferson

Dearing, James

Deery’s tavern

Deringer pistol

Devin, Thomas

“Dixie,”

Dry Tortugas

Eckert, Thomas T.

Eglon, king of Moab

Egypt

Emancipation Proclamation

Ewell, Richard

Farmville, Virginia

Ferguson, Jim

Fillmore, Millard

Five Forks, Battle of

flag, American

thirty-six-star

Fletcher, John

Forbes, Charles

Ford, James

Ford, John

Ford’s Theatre

Booth approaches state box

Booth arrives at

Booth leaps onstage after shooting

as Booth’s mailing address

1862 fire

facilities

Lincoln at

Lincoln removed from

Lincoln shot in

Our American Cousin

post-assassination

state box

Fort Jefferson

Fort Sumter

Fredericksburg

Garfield, James

Garrett, John

Garrett, Richard

Garrett farm

Booth captured at

Georgetown Aqueduct

Gettysburg

Gifford, James J.

gold

Gordon, John B.

Grand Illumination

Grant, Julia

Mary Lincoln disliked by

Grant, Ulysses S.

death of

declines invitation to Ford’s Theatre

last days of war

leadership style

Lee’s surrender and

Lincoln and

marriage of

Meade and

memoirs of

at Petersburg

physical appearance of

pincer movement

in postwar Washington, D.C.

as president

Great Britain

Greenback Saloon

Green Mount Cemetery, Baltimore

Griffiths, Jabes

Grover’s Theatre

guerrilla warfare

guns

habeas corpus, writ of

Hale, John Parker

Hale, Lucy Lambert

engagement to Booth

Hamlin, Hannibal

Hancock, Winfield Scott

hanging of co-conspirators

Hansell, Emerick

Harper’s Weekly, re-creation of

Harlan, James

Harris, Clara

Harrison, Benjamin

Harvard University

Hawk, Harry

Hay, John

Herndon House hotel

Herold, David

arrest of

capture of

escape of

hanging of

role in assassination plot

search for

trial of

High Bridge, battle for

Hill, A. P.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Jr.

horses

getaway

Illinois

Lincoln’s funeral train to

Indians

Jackson, Andrew

assassination attempt against

Jackson, Stonewall

Jefferson, Thomas

J. J. Chaffey Company

John S. Ide

Johnson, Andrew

assassination plot against

death of

impeachment hearings

inaugural speech

as president

Reconstruction policies

as vice president

Johnston, Joe

Jones, Thomas

role in Booth’s escape

Juniper (gunboat)

Keene, Laura

death of

Lincoln’s last hours and

Keim, W. R.

Kentucky

Key, Francis Scott

Key, Philip Barton

kidnap plot

abandoned by Booth

see also assassination conspiracy

King, Albert

King, Prescott

Kirkwood House hotel

Knights of the Golden Circle

Lamon, Ward Hill

Lawrence, Richard

Leale, Charles

Lee, Custis

Lee, Fitzhugh

Lee, Robert E.

death of

last days of war

pardon of

at Petersburg

retreat from Petersburg

surrender at Appomattox

Lincoln, Abraham assassination of. See assassination conspiracy

autopsy on

childhood of

Civil War and

death of

deathbed of

death threats and premonitions

end of war and

at Ford’s Theatre

funeral of

Gettysburg Address

Grant and

last hours after shooting

last known photograph of

last speech of

mail of

marriage of

medical care of

physical appearance

religious views

removed from Ford’s Theatre

in Richmond

second inaugural

second term

security measures for

shot by Booth

Stanton and

telegrams and

Lincoln, Edward

Lincoln, Mary Todd

death of

at Ford’s Theatre

life after Lincoln’s death

Lincoln’s last hours after shooting

Lincoln’s funeral and

marriage of

mental instability of

pension of

physical appearance

Lincoln, Robert Todd

death of

death of his father

life after his father’s death

Lincoln, Tad

Lincoln, Willie

Lincoln Conspiracy, The (movie)

Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C.

Little Bighorn, Battle of

Long Bridge

Longstreet, James “Pete,”

death of

Lovett, Alexander

Maddox, Jim

Malvern, USS

Manassas

Marshall, Charles

Maryland

as hideout for conspirators

swamps

Mason-Dixon Line

Matthews, John

McKinley, William

McLean, Wilmer

Meade, George

Metropolitan Police

Metz, Lucinda

Mexican War

Mexico

Military Telegraph Corps

Montauk, USS

co-conspirators imprisoned on

Montreal

Mudd, Samuel

arrest of

role in Booth’s escape

trial and sentence of

Mudd, Sarah

Nanjemoy, Maryland

National Detective Police

National Hotel

National Intelligencer

Booth’s letter to

Navy Yard Bridge

Naylor’s stable

Neff, Ray

Newport, Rhode Island

newspapers

on assassination and search

re-creation of Harper’s Weekly

on trial of co-conspirators

New York

Nicolay, John

North Carolina

O’Laughlen, Mike

trial and sentence of

Old Capital Prison

Old Clubhouse

Our American Cousin (play)

cast after shooting

playbill

rehearsals

Palestine

Papal Zouaves

Parke, John G.

Parker, John

Pennsylvania House hotel

Petersburg, Virginia

siege at

Petersen, William

Petersen house

Lincoln in

Philadelphia

Philip II of Macedon

Pickett, George

Pinkerton agents

playbill, Our American Cousin

Point Lookout

Pollack, Wally

Porter, Horace

Port Royal

Port Tobacco

posters, reward

Potomac River

Booth crosses

Powell, Lewis

arrest of

attack on Seward family

escape of

hanging of

role in assassination plot

trial of

prisoners of war

prostitution

Pumphrey, James

stable of

Randolph, Robert

Rappahannock River

Rathbone, Henry Reed

Read, Theodore

Reconstruction

religion

reunification

Revolutionary War

reward posters

Rhode Island

Rice’s Station

Richmond, Virginia

destruction of

fall of

Ritterspaugh, Jake

River Queen (steamboat)

Robinson, George

Rollins, Edward H.

Rosser, Thomas Lafayette

Rozier, Margaret

Safford, Henry S.

Sample, Bill

Sayler’s Creek, battle of

secessionist movement

Sessford, John

Seward, August

Seward, Fanny

Seward, Frederic

Seward, William H.

assassination plot against

attack on

death of

house of

life after attack

Shakespeare, William

Julius Caesar

Macbeth

Romeo and Juliet

Sheridan, Phil

Sherman, William Tecumseh

Sioux Indians

slavery

Booth’s views on

freedom

runaway slaves

Soldiers’ Home

Soles, Jacob

South Carolina

Spain

Spangler, Ned

trial and sentence of

Spencer rifles

spies

Confederate

Union

Springfield, Illinois

Stanton, Edwin M.

Baker and

conspiracy plot and

death of

life after Lincoln’s death

Lincoln and

at Lincoln’s deathbed

Stonewall Brigade

Stowe, Harriet Beecher

suffrage

Sumner, Isabel

Supreme Court

Surratt, Anna

Surratt, John death of

role in assassination plot

search for

Surratt, Mary

arrest of

boardinghouse of

hanging of

physical appearance

in prison

reburial of

role in assassination plot

tavern of

trial and sentence of

Surrattsville, Maryland

Taft, Charles Sabin

Taltavul, Peter

Taltavul’s Star Saloon

Taylor, Zachary

telegraph

Tennessee

Texas

Thomas, Lorenzo

tobacco

Treasurγ, U.S.

trial of co-conspirators

Twain, Mark

Union

reunification

Union army

blacks in

cavalry

control of Richmond

High Bridge

last days of war

Lee’s surrender and

at Petersburg

Sayler’s Creek

Union Light Guard

United States Colored Troops (USCT)

Usher, John P.

Virginia

Booth captured in

destruction of Richmond

High Bridge

Petersburg

Sayler’s Creek

War Department

Washburn, Francis

Washington, D.C.

Grand Illumination

Grant in

Lincoln’s funeral procession

post-assassination mourning

postwar celebrations

smuggling and escape routes

Washington, George

Webster, Amos

Weichmann, Louis

Westfall, John William

West Point

whiskey

White House

bombing conspiracy

Lincoln’s last speech at

open-door policy

white supremacy

Willard Hotel

Williams, Barney

Wilson, Woodrow

Withers, William

Wright, Horatio

Copyright © 2011 by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard

All rights reserved.

All images courtesy of the Library of Congress or private collection

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

O’Reilly, Bill.

Killing Lincoln : the shocking assassination that changed America forever / Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard.—1st ed.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-0-8050-9307-0

1. Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865—Assassination. I. Dugard, Martin. II. Title.

E4575.074 2011

973.7092—dc22

2011014342

First Edition 2011

Killing Kennedy

The End of Camelot

Bill O’Reilly

and

Martin Dugard

This book is dedicated to my ancestors, the Kennedys of Yonkers, New York.

Hardworking, generous, and honest folks.

A Note to Readers

NOVEMBER 22, 1963

MINEOLA, NEW YORK

APPROXIMATELY 2:00 P.M.

The students in Brother Carmine Diodati’s freshman Religion class were startled. Over the loudspeaker, a radio report crackled into the Chaminade High School classroom. President John F. Kennedy had been shot in Dallas, Texas, and taken to the hospital. A short time later we would all learn he was dead. No one knew what to say.

Most Americans born before 1953 remember exactly where they were when they heard the news that JFK had been assassinated. The days following that terrible Friday were filled with sadness and confusion. Why did it happen? Who really killed the president? What kind of country did we live in anyway?

The assassination of JFK was somewhat personal for me. My maternal grandmother was born Winifred Kennedy, and my Irish-Catholic family had deep emotional ties to the young president and his family. It felt as if someone in my own home had died violently. Like most kids on Long Island, I didn’t care much about national politics. But I vividly remember pictures of JFK displayed in the homes of my relatives. To them, he was a saint. To me, he was a distant figure who died in a terrible way, his brain splattered all over the trunk of a car. The vision of his wife, Jacqueline, crawling onto the back of the limo in order to retrieve the president’s shattered skull has stayed with me always.

*   *   *

Martin Dugard and I were well pleased that millions of people read and enjoyed Killing Lincoln. We want to make history accessible to everyone. We want to tell readers exactly what happened and why, using a style that is entertaining as well as informative. After chronicling the last days of Abraham Lincoln, the progression to John Kennedy was a natural.

It has been widely pointed out that the two men had much in common. In fact, the parallels are amazing:

Lincoln was first elected in 1860, Kennedy in 1960.

Both were assassinated on a Friday, in the presence of their wives.

Their successors were both southerners named Johnson who had served in the Senate.

Andrew Johnson was born in 1808, Lyndon Johnson in 1908.

Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846, while Kennedy was elected to the House in 1946.

Both men suffered the death of children while in office.

The assassin Booth shot inside a theater and fled into a storage facility, while the assassin Oswald shot from a storage facility and fled into a theater.

Back in 1963, few Americans understood how profoundly the assassination of JFK would change the country. These days, history is a difficult thing to impart, especially because of political agendas. In this book, we will try to cut through the fog and bring you the facts. Unfortunately, some of the facts are still not known. In our narrative, Martin Dugard and I go only as far as the evidence takes us. We are not conspiracy guys, although we do raise some questions about what is unknown and inconsistent.

However, before you proceed further, please know that this is a fact-based book and some of what you will read has never before been publicly stated.

The truth about President Kennedy is sometimes gallant, and sometimes disturbing. The truth about how and why he was murdered is simply atrocious. But all Americans should know the story.

It’s all here in this book. It is my special privilege to bring it to you.

BILL O’REILLY

May 2012

Long Island, New York

MAY 29, 1917–NOVEMBER 22, 1963

Prologue

JANUARY 20, 1961

WASHINGTON, D.C.

12:51 P.M.

The man with fewer than three years to live has his left hand on the Bible.

Chief Justice Earl Warren stands before him reciting the Presidential Oath of Office. “Do you, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, do solemnly swear…”

“I, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, do solemnly swear,” the new president repeats in a clipped Boston accent. His gaze is directed at the jurist whose name will one day be synonymous with Kennedy’s own death.

The new president, born into wealth, has a refined manner of speaking that would seem to distance him from the electorate. But he is an enthusiastic and easily likeable man’s man. He joked openly about his father’s vast riches during the campaign, defusing that divisive issue with humor and candor so that average Americans would trust him when he spoke about making America better. “Poor men in West Virginia heard a man from Boston say he needed their help, and they gave it. In the alien corn of Nebraska, with a familiar chopping motion of his right hand, he explained that America can be ‘great-ah,’ and the farmers knew what he meant,” one writer noted of Kennedy’s broad appeal.

But not everyone loves JFK. He won the popular vote over Richard Nixon by a razor-thin margin, garnering just 49 percent of the tally. Those farmers might have known what Kennedy meant, but 62 percent of Nebraskans voted for Nixon.

“That you will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States.”

“That I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States…”

Eighty million Americans are watching the inauguration on television. Twenty thousand more are there in person. Eight inches of thick, wet snow have fallen on Washington, D.C., overnight. The army had to use flamethrowers to clear the roads. The sun now shines on the Capitol Building, but a brutal wind strafes the crowd. Spectators wrap their bodies in sleeping bags, blankets, thick sweaters, and winter coats—anything to stay warm.

But John Kennedy ignores the cold. He has even removed his overcoat. At age forty-three, JFK exudes fearlessness and vigor. His lack of coat, top hat, scarf, or gloves is an intentional ploy to burnish his athletic image. He is trim and just a shade over six feet tall, with greenish-gray eyes, a dazzling smile, and a deep tan, thanks to a recent vacation at his family’s Palm Beach home. But while JFK looks like the picture of health, his medical history has been troubling. Kennedy has already been administered the last rites of the Roman Catholic Church on two separate occasions. His medical woes will continue to trouble him in the years to come.

“And will, to the best of your ability…”

“And will, to the best of my ability…”

In the sea of dignitaries and friends arrayed all around him, there are three people vital to Kennedy. The first is his younger brother and reluctant choice for attorney general, Bobby. The president values him more for his honesty as an adviser than for his legal ability. He knows Bobby will always tell him the truth, no matter how brutal it may be.

Behind the president is the new vice president, Lyndon Johnson. It can be said, and Johnson himself believes, that Kennedy won the presidency because of this tough, tall Texan. Without Johnson on the ticket, Kennedy might never have won the Lone Star State and its treasure trove of 24 electoral votes. As it was, the Kennedy-Johnson ticket won by the slender margin of 46,000 votes in Texas—a feat that must be replicated if Kennedy is to win a second term.

Finally, the new president spies his young wife just behind Justice Warren’s left shoulder. Jackie Kennedy is radiant in her taupe suit and matching hat. Dark brown hair and a fur collar frame her unlined face. Her amber eyes sparkle with excitement; she is not showing a hint of fatigue despite having stayed up until 4:00 A.M. The booze flowed freely at preinaugural celebrations thrown by the likes of Frank Sinatra and Leonard Bernstein. Jackie returned to their house in Georgetown long before the parties wound down, but her husband did not accompany her. When Jack finally showed up, just before 4:00 A.M., he found his wife wide awake, too excited to sleep. As the snow continued to fall on the stranded motorists and the impromptu bonfires lining the streets of Washington, the young couple sat together in early-morning conversation. He told her about a late dinner organized by his father, and they talked with excitement about the inauguration ceremony. It would be an extraordinary day, with the promise of many more to come.

John F. Kennedy well understands that the public adores Jackie. Just last night, when crowds on the snowy Washington streets glimpsed the Kennedys driving past in their limousine, the president-elect asked that the inside lights be turned on so that the people might glimpse his wife. Jackie’s glamour, sense of style, and beauty have captivated America. She speaks fluent French and Spanish, secretly chain-smokes filtered cigarettes, and prefers champagne to cocktails. Like her husband, Jackie has a dazzling smile, but she is the introvert to his extrovert. Her trust in outsiders is scant.

Despite her glamorous image, Jackie Kennedy has already known great tragedy during their seven years of marriage. She miscarried their first child, and the second was a stillborn baby girl. But she has also enjoyed the birth of two healthy children, Caroline and John Jr., and the stunning ascension of her dashing young husband from a Massachusetts politician to president of the United States.

The sadness is now behind her. The future looks limitless and bright. The Kennedy presidency seems destined to be, in the words of a new hit play that just opened at Broadway’s Majestic Theater, much like the mythical Camelot, a place where “there’s simply not a more congenial spot, for happily-ever-aftering.”

*   *   *

“Preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States…”

“Preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States…”

Kennedy’s predecessor, Dwight Eisenhower, stands next to Jackie. Behind Kennedy stand Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Harry Truman.

Normally, having just one of these dignitaries at an event means heightened security. Having all of them at the inaugural, sitting so closely together, is a security nightmare.

The Secret Service is on high alert. Its job is to protect the president. The fifty-five-year-old career agent and leader of the service, Chief U. E. Baughman, has been in charge since Truman was president. He believes that Kennedy’s athleticism and fondness for wading into crowds will make guarding him a challenge unlike any other in the Service’s history. The lean Baughman, with his trademark crew cut, almost cleared the inaugural stand three times today out of concern for presidential safety. On one occasion, blue smoke poured from the lectern during the invocation, and there was fear that it was a bomb. Agents rushed to investigate. As it turned out, the smoke came from the motor that raised and lowered the lectern. Stopping the problem was as simple as turning off the motor. Now Baughman’s agents scan the crowd, nervous about the close proximity of the vast audience. One well-trained zealot with a pistol could kill the new president, two former presidents, and a pair of vice presidents with five crisp shots.

Baughman is well aware of another chilling fact. Since 1840, every president elected in a twenty-year cycle has died in office: Harrison, Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, Harding, and Roosevelt. Yet no president has been assassinated for almost sixty years, thanks to the expertise of the Secret Service. Just last month, agents foiled an attempt on Kennedy’s life by a disgruntled former postal worker who planned to blow him up with dynamite. Nonetheless, Baughman is faced with a haunting question: Will the chain of presidential deaths be broken, or will Kennedy be its next link?

JFK laughs off suggestions that he might die in office. Just to prove that he isn’t a believer in omens, the new president has chosen to sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom during his first few nights in the White House—the ghost of Abe apparently of no concern.

“So help you God.”

“… So help me God.”

The oath complete, Kennedy shakes Chief Justice Warren’s hand, then those of Johnson and Nixon. Finally, he stands toe to toe with Eisenhower. The two men smile cordially, but there is steel in their eyes. Eisenhower’s condescending nickname for Kennedy is “Little Boy Blue.” He thinks him callow and incapable of governing, and finds it galling that a man who was a mere lieutenant during the Second World War is taking over the presidency from the general who directed the D-Day invasion. For his part, Kennedy sees the old general as a man little interested in righting the wrongs of American society—a top priority for JFK.

Kennedy is the youngest president ever elected. Eisenhower is the oldest. The great divide in their ages also represents two very different generations of Americans—and two very different views of America. In just a moment, Kennedy will deliver an inaugural address that will make those differences clearer than ever.

The thirty-fifth president of the United States lets go of Eisenhower’s hand. He pivots slowly to his left and stands at the podium bearing the presidential seal. Kennedy looks down at his speech, then lifts his eyes and gazes out at the thousands of frozen faces before him, knowing that the crowd is impatient. The ceremony started late, the invocation by Cardinal Richard Cushing was extremely long, and the eighty-six-year-old poet Robert Frost was so blinded by the sun that he was unable to read the special verses he’d written for the occasion. Nothing, it seems, has gone according to plan. What these freezing people long for is something redemptive. Some words that will signal a shift from the stagnant state of Washington politics. Words that will heal a nation divided by McCarthyism, terrified of the cold war, and still struggling with racial segregation and discrimination.

Kennedy is a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian, having received the award for his book Profiles in Courage. He knows the value of a great inaugural address. For months he has fussed over the words he is about to recite. Just last night, when the lights were turned on inside the car to make Jackie visible to onlookers, he reread Thomas Jefferson’s inaugural address—and found his own lacking by comparison. This morning, he rose after just four hours of sleep and, pencil in hand, scrutinized his speech again and again and again.

His words resonate like a psalm. “Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans—born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage…”

This is no ordinary inaugural address. This is a promise. America’s best days are still to come, Kennedy is saying, but only if everyone pitches in to do his part. “Ask not what your country can do for you,” he commands, his voice rising to deliver the defining sentence, “but what you can do for your country.”

The address will be hailed as an instant classic. In less than 1,400 words, John Fitzgerald Kennedy defines his vision for the nation. He now sets the speech aside, knowing that the time has come to fulfill the great promise he has made to the American people. He must manage the issue with Cuba and its pro-Soviet leader, Fidel Castro. He must tackle problems in a faraway land known as Vietnam, where a small band of U.S. military advisers is struggling to bring stability to a region long rocked by war. And here at home, the power of the Mafia crime syndicates and the divisiveness of the civil rights movement are two crucial situations requiring immediate attention. And on a much more personal level, he must negotiate the animus between Attorney General Bobby Kennedy and Vice President Lyndon Johnson, who despise each other.

JFK surveys the adoring crowd, knowing that he has much work to do.

But not all those invited to the inauguration have turned up. The famous entertainers attending the previous night’s parties were promised prime seats for this pivotal moment in American history, but owing to the cold and a 100-proof celebration that stretched into the wee small hours, singer Frank Sinatra, actor Peter Lawford, and composer Leonard Bernstein—along with a host of others—opted to sleep late and watch the event on television. “I’ll see the president’s second inaugural” is their common refrain.

But there will be no second inaugural. For John Fitzgerald Kennedy is on a collision course with evil.

*   *   *

Approximately 4,500 miles away, in the Soviet city of Minsk, an American who did not vote for John F. Kennedy is fed up. Lee Harvey Oswald, a former U.S. Marine Corps sharpshooter, has had enough of life in this Communist nation.

Oswald is a defector. In 1959, at age nineteen, the slightly built, somewhat handsome, enigmatic drifter decided to leave the United States of America, convinced that his socialist beliefs would be embraced in the Soviet Union. But things haven’t gone according to plan. Oswald had hoped to attend Moscow University, even though he never graduated from high school. Instead, the Soviet government shipped him more than four hundred miles west, to Minsk, where he has been toiling in an electronics factory.

Lee Harvey Oswald at his application for Soviet citizenship in 1959. (Bettmann/Corbis/AP Images)

Oswald is fond of being on the move, but the Soviets have severely restricted his travel. Until now, his life has been chaotic and nomadic. Oswald’s father died before he was born. His mother remarried and soon divorced. Marguerite Oswald had little money and moved young Lee frequently, traveling through Texas, New Orleans, and New York City. By the time he dropped out of high school to enlist in the marines, Oswald had lived at twenty-two different addresses and attended twelve different schools—including a reform institution. There, a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation found him to be withdrawn and socially maladjusted. He was diagnosed as having “a vivid fantasy life, turning around the topics of omnipotence and power, through which he tries to compensate for his present shortcomings and frustrations.”

The Soviet Union in 1961 is hardly the place for a man in search of independence and power. For the first time in his life, Lee Harvey Oswald is stuck. He gets up every morning and trudges to the factory, where he labors hour after hour operating a lathe, surrounded by coworkers whose language he barely understands. His defection in 1959 was reported by American newspapers because it was extremely unusual for a U.S. Marine—even one so pro-Soviet that his fellow marines had nicknamed him “Oswaldskovich”—to violate the Semper Fi (Always Faithful) oath and go over to the enemy. But now he is anonymous, which he finds completely unacceptable. Defection doesn’t seem like such a good idea anymore. Oswald confides to his journal that he is thoroughly disenchanted.

Lee Harvey Oswald has nothing against John Fitzgerald Kennedy. He doesn’t know much about the new president or his policies. And while Oswald was a crack shot in the military, little in his past indicates that he would be a threat to anyone but himself.

As America celebrates Kennedy’s inauguration, the defector writes to the U.S. embassy in Moscow. His note is short and to the point: Lee Harvey Oswald wants to come home.

PART I

Cheating Death

1

AUGUST 2, 1943

BLACKETT STRAIT, SOLOMON ISLANDS

2:00 A.M.

It is February 1961. The new president has a coconut on his desk. He is lucky to be alive, having already cheated death three times in his short life, and the unusual paperweight is a reminder of the first time he came face-to-face with his own mortality. His staff makes sure to place the coconut in a prominent position when they move the new president into the Oval Office. They know their boss wants that very special coconut in his line of sight, because it is a reminder of a now-famous incident that tested his courage.

*   *   *

Eighteen years earlier, in 1943, on a balmy Pacific night, three American patrol torpedo boats cruise the Blackett Strait in the South Pacific, hunting Japanese warships near a hotly contested area known as The Slot. At eighty feet long, with hulls of two-inch-thick mahogany, and powered by three powerful Packard engines, these patrol torpedo (PT) boats are nimble vessels, capable of flitting in close to sink Japanese battleships with a battery of Mark VIII torpedoes.

The skipper of the boat bearing the number 109, a young second lieutenant, slouches in his cockpit, half alert and half asleep. He has shut down two of his engines to conceal PT-109 from Japanese spotter planes. The third engine idles softly, its deep propeller shaft leaving almost no wake in the iridescent water. He gazes across the ocean on this night without moon or starlight in the hope of locating the two other nearby PTs. But they are invisible in the darkness—just like 109.

The skipper doesn’t see or hear the destroyer Amagiri until it’s almost too late. She’s part of the Tokyo Express, a bold Japanese experiment to transport troops and weapons in and out of the tactically vital Solomon Islands via ultrafast warships. The Express relies on speed and the cover of night to complete these missions. Amagiri has just dropped nine hundred soldiers at Vila, on nearby Kolombangara Island, and is racing back to the Japanese bastion at Rabaul, New Guinea, before dawn will allow American bombers to find and destroy her. She is longer than a football field but a mere thirty-four feet at the beam, her shape allowing Amagiri to knife through the sea at an astonishing forty-four miles per hour.

In the bow of PT-109, Ensign George “Barney” Ross of Highland Park, Illinois, also peers into the night. His previous boat was recently, accidentally, sunk by an American bomber, and he volunteered for this mission as an observer. Now Ross is stunned when, through his binoculars, he sees the Amagiri just 250 yards away, bearing down on 109 at full speed. He points into the darkness. The skipper sees the ship and spins the wheel hard, trying to turn his boat toward the rampaging destroyer to fire his torpedoes from point-blank range—either that, or the Americans will be destroyed.

PT-109 can’t turn fast enough.

It takes just a single terrifying instant for Amagiri to slice through the mahogany hull. The diagonal incision begins on the right side, barely missing the cockpit. The skipper is almost crushed, at that moment thinking to himself, “This is how it feels to be killed.” Two members of the thirteen-man crew die instantly. Two more are injured as PT-109 explodes and burns. The two nearby American boats, PT-162 and PT-169, know a fatal blast when they see one, and don’t wait around to search for survivors. They gun their engines and race into the night, fearful that other Japanese warships are in the vicinity. Amagiri doesn’t stop either, speeding on to Rabaul, even as her crew watches the small American craft burn in her wake.

Lieutenant John Fitzgerald Kennedy in the cockpit of PT-109. (Photographer unknown, Papers of John F. Kennedy, Presidential Papers, President’s Office Files, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)

The men of PT-109 are on their own.

The skipper, and the man responsible for allowing such an enormous vessel to sneak up on his boat, is Lieutenant John Fitzgerald Kennedy. He is twenty-six, rail thin, and deeply tanned, a Harvard-educated playboy whose father forced him to leave naval intelligence to seek a combat position when it was discovered that his son’s Danish mistress was suspected of being a Nazi spy. Being second-born in a family where great things are expected from the oldest son, Kennedy has had the luxury of a frivolous life. He was a sickly child, grew into a young man fond of books and girls, and, with the exception of commanding a minor vessel such as PT-109, has shown no interest in pursuing a leadership position in politics—an ambition required of his older brother, Joe.

But none of that matters right now. Kennedy must find a way to get his men to safety. Later in life, when asked to describe the night’s imminent turning point, he will shrug it off: “It was involuntary. They sunk my boat.”

His words belie the fact that he might have been court-martialed for allowing his boat to be sunk and two of his men to be killed. But the sinking of PT-109 will be the making of John F. Kennedy—not because of what just happened, but because of what is about to happen next.

The back end of PT-109 is already on its way to the bottom of the Blackett, some 1,200 feet below. The forward section of the hull remains afloat, thanks to watertight compartments. Kennedy gathers the surviving crew members on this section to await help. Amagiri’s wake is sweeping the flames away from the wreckage of 109, allaying Kennedy’s fears that the gasoline fires will ignite any remaining ammunition or fuel tanks. But as the hours pass—one, then two and three—and it becomes obvious that help is not coming, Kennedy knows he must devise a new plan. The Blackett Strait is bordered on all sides by small islands that are home to thousands of Japanese soldiers. It’s certain that someone on land has seen the explosion.

“What do you want to do if the Japs come out?” Kennedy asks the crew. Completely responsible for the lives of his men, he is at a loss. The hull is beginning to sink, and the only weapons he and his men possess are a single machine gun and seven handguns. A firefight would be ludicrous.

The men can plainly see a Japanese camp less than a mile away, on Gizo Island, and know that two other large bases exist on Kolombangara and Vella Lavella islands, each just five miles away.

“Anything you say, Mr. Kennedy. You’re the boss,” replies one crewman.

But Kennedy is not comfortable being the boss. In his months being skipper of the 109, his job has largely consisted of steering the boat. The men complain that he is more interested in chasing girls than commanding a ship. Kennedy is much more at ease in a supporting role. Growing up, he took orders from his domineering father and looked up to his charismatic older brother. His dad, Joseph P. Kennedy, is one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in America, and a former ambassador to Great Britain. His brother Joe, at twenty-eight years old, is a flamboyant naval aviator soon to see action flying antisubmarine missions against the Nazis in Europe.

The Kennedy family takes all its directives from their patriarch. John Kennedy will one day liken the relationship to that of puppets and their puppet master. Joseph P. Kennedy decides how his children will spend their lives, monitors their every action, attempts to sleep with his sons’ and daughters’ girlfriends, and even had one of his own daughters lobotomized. He has already pinpointed Joe as the family politician. Indeed, his father saw to it that his eldest was a delegate at the 1940 Democratic National Convention. Meanwhile, in those days before the war broke out, John spent his time writing and traveling. Many in the family still believe that writing might become his chosen profession.

Now, on this tragic Pacific night, there is no way for Joseph P. Kennedy to tell his son what to do. “There’s nothing in the book about a situation like this,” JFK tells the crew, stalling for time. “Seems we’re not a military organization anymore. Let’s just talk this over.”

The men have been trained to follow orders, not discuss strategy. They argue, and yet Kennedy still won’t play the role of commander. The men have been waiting for a ship to come looking for them, or a search plane. As morning turns to noon, and PT-109 sinks lower and lower into the water, remaining with the wreckage means either certain capture by Japanese troops or death by shark attack.

The Kennedy family at their Hyannis Port compound in 1931. (Photograph by Richard Sears, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)

Finally, John F. Kennedy takes charge.

“We’ll swim,” he orders the men, pointing to a cluster of green islands three miles to the southeast. He explains that while these specks of land might be more distant than the island of Gizo, which appears close enough almost to touch, they’re less likely to be inhabited by Japanese soldiers.

The men hang on to a piece of timber, using it as a flotation device as they kick their way to the distant islands. Kennedy, a member of the swim team at Harvard, tows a badly burned crew member by placing a strap from the man’s life jacket between his own teeth and pulling him. During the five long hours it takes to reach the island, Kennedy swallows mouthful after mouthful of saltwater, yet his strength as a swimmer allows him to reach the beach before the rest of the crew. He leaves the burned crewman in the shallows and staggers ashore to explore their new home. The island is not much: sand, a few palm trees, and the reef that surrounds it. From one side to another, it’s just a hundred yards. But it’s land. After more than fifteen hours in the ocean, there’s no better place to be.

Joseph Kennedy with sons Joseph Kennedy Jr. and John F. Kennedy in Palm Beach in 1931. Joseph Kennedy expected his eldest son would be the one to go into politics. (Photograph by E. F. Foley, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)

The rest of the crew finally arrives. They hide in the shallows as a Japanese barge passes within a few hundred yards. Kennedy is collapsed in the shade of nearby bushes, exhausted from the swim and nauseated from swallowing all that seawater. Yet, despite his weakened condition, something is different about him. The man who once shied away from leadership has realized that only he can save his crew.

JFK rises to his feet and gets to work.

*   *   *

Kennedy looks toward the beach. The sand is off-white and slopes into the water. The men have sought shelter under low-hanging trees. With a sense of relief, he sees that nearby lies a large bundle wrapped in a kapok life vest, something the men salvaged from PT-109. Kennedy needs that package for what he is about to do next.

Inside the bundle is a ship’s lantern. Kennedy staggers to his men and outlines a plan: he will swim to another nearby island, which is closer to a channel known as the Ferguson Passage, a popular route for the patrol torpedoes, and will use the lantern to signal any passing PT boats that might venture their way in the night. If Kennedy makes contact, he will signal to his crew with the lantern.

Kennedy prepares for the swim. He is still on the verge of vomiting, and is now also light-headed from dehydration and lack of food. He peels off his shirt and pants to save weight, and ties a .38-caliber pistol to a lanyard around his neck. He had stripped off his shoes and tied them around his neck before the long swim from PT-109, but now puts them back on to save his feet from being cut on the sharp reef. Finally, Kennedy hugs the kapok vest tightly around his naked body, knowing that the lantern wrapped inside it is the key to their rescue.

Kennedy steps back into the sea. He thinks of the giant barracuda that live in these waters, which are rumored to swim up out of the blackness and bite off the genitals of passing swimmers. Without pants, he is surely an inviting target.

Kennedy swims alone into the night until his shoes scrape against a reef. He makes his way along the sharpened surface, searching for that inevitable moment when the reef ends and the sandy beach begins. But the reef is endless. Even worse, the coral slices his hands and his legs time and again. Whenever Kennedy takes a misstep and plunges underwater into some unseen hole, his mind immediately races to thoughts of barracuda.

Kennedy never finds that sandy beach. So, tying his shoes to his life belt, he undertakes a courageous and slightly foolhardy alternate course of action: he swims out into open water, lantern held aloft, hoping to signal a passing PT.

But on this night, of all nights, the U.S. Navy is not sending patrol torpedo boats through the Ferguson Passage. Kennedy treads water in the utter blackness, waiting in vain for the sound of muffled propellers.

He finally gives up. But when he tries swimming back to his men, the currents work against him. He is swept far out into the Blackett Strait, frantically lighting the lamp to signal his men as he drifts past. They argue among themselves as to whether the lights they’re seeing are an illusion brought on by hunger and dehydration, even as their skipper slips farther and farther into the utter blackness.

John Kennedy pries off his heavy shoes and lets them fall to the sea bottom, thinking that the reduced drag will allow him to swim more easily. It doesn’t. He drifts farther and farther out into the Pacific. No matter how hard he swims, the currents push him in the other direction. Finally, he stops fighting. Alone in the dark, his body now cold and his mind a jumble of conflicting thoughts, Kennedy bobs lifelessly. He is an enigmatic man. Despite his reputation for bedding as many girls as possible, he was raised in a Roman Catholic household. His faith has faltered in recent months, but it now serves him well. Even though his situation seems impossible, Kennedy has hope.

And he never lets go of his lamp.

*   *   *

Kennedy floats, as alone and powerless as a man can be, all night long. The skin of his fingers wrinkles, and his body grows even colder.

But it is not his time to die. Not yet. As the sun comes up, Kennedy is stunned to realize that the same currents once pulling him out to sea have now spun around and deposited him right back where he started. He swims back safely to his men. After hours as a beacon in the darkness, the lamp finally extinguishes itself once and for all.

Days pass. Kennedy and his men survive by choking down live snails and licking moisture off leaves. They name their home Bird Island because of the abundance of guano coating the tree leaves. Sometimes they see aircraft dogfighting in the skies, but they never spot a rescue plane. Indeed, even as they struggle to survive, their PT brethren hold a memorial service in their honor.

After four days, Kennedy persuades George Ross of Highland Park, Illinois, to attempt a swim with him. This time they head for an island named Naru, where it is very possible they will run into Japanese soldiers. At this point in their ordeal, with the men’s bodies racked by hunger and excruciating thirst, capture is becoming preferable to certain death.

The swim lasts an hour. At Naru, they come upon an abandoned enemy barge and see two Japanese men hurriedly paddling away in a canoe. Kennedy and Ross search the barge for supplies and find water and hardtack biscuits. They also discover a small canoe. After spending the day in hiding, Kennedy leaves Ross on Naru and paddles the one-man canoe out into the Ferguson Passage. No longer in possession of a lantern or other means of signaling a passing PT, JFK is now desperate, taking crazy gambles. And yet, despite long odds, he once again makes it through the night, paddling the canoe back to his men.

Finally, he receives a bit of good news. The men he mistook for Japanese soldiers were actually local islanders. They had spotted Kennedy and Ross, and then paddled to PT-109’s crew to warn them about Japanese forces in the area.

Kennedy meets these islanders in person the next morning, when his canoe founders on the way back to Naru. These highly experienced men of the sea come out of nowhere to pluck him from the Pacific and paddle him safely to George Ross. Before the islanders depart, Kennedy carves a note into the shell of a fallen coconut: “NAURO ISL … COMMANDER … NATIVE KNOWS POS’IT … HE CAN PILOT … 11 ALIVE … NEED SMALL BOAT … KENNEDY.”

With that cryptic message in their possession, the natives paddle away.

*   *   *

Night falls. Rain pours down. Kennedy and Ross sleep under a bush. Their arms and legs are swollen from bug bites and reef scratches. The islanders have shown them where yet another canoe is hidden on Naru, and Kennedy insists to Ross that they paddle back into the open sea one more time in search of a PT.

Only now the Pacific isn’t placid. The rain turns torrential. The seas are six feet high. Kennedy gives the order to turn back, only to have the canoe capsize. The two men cling to their overturned boat, kicking as hard as they can to guide it toward land. Giant waves now pound against the reef. Kennedy is torn from the canoe. The sea’s force holds him under and spins him around. Yet again he believes he is near death. But just when it seems all is lost, he comes up for air. He battles his way onto the reef. Ross is nearby, alive. As the rain pours down, they pick their way across the sharp coral and onto the beach, once again slicing open their feet and legs. This time there are no thoughts of barracuda, only survival. Too exhausted to care about being seen by the Japanese, they collapse onto the sand and sleep.

John Kennedy is out of solutions. He has done all he can to save his men. There is nothing more he can do.

As if in a mirage, Kennedy wakes up to see four natives standing over him. The sun is rising. Ross’s limbs are horribly disfigured from his coral wounds, with one arm swollen to the size of a football. Kennedy’s own body is beginning to suffer from infection.

“I have a letter for you, sir,” one of the natives says in perfect English.

An incredulous Kennedy sits up and reads the note. The natives have taken his coconut to a New Zealand infantry detachment hidden nearby. The note is from the officer in charge. Kennedy, it says, should allow the islanders to paddle him to safety.

So it is that John F. Kennedy is placed in the bottom of a canoe, covered in palm fronds to hide him from Japanese aircraft, and paddled to a hidden location on New Georgia Island. When the canoe arrives at the water’s edge, a young New Zealander steps from the jungle. Kennedy comes out from under his hiding place and climbs out of the canoe. “How do you do?” the New Zealander asks formally. “I’m Lieutenant Wincote.” He pronounces his rank the British way: LEFF-tenant.

“Hello. I’m Kennedy.” The two men shake hands. Wincote nods toward the jungle. “Come up to my tent and have a cup of tea.”

Kennedy and his men are soon rescued by the U.S. Navy. And thus the saga of PT-109 comes to an end, even as the legend of PT-109 is born.

*   *   *

There is another incident that influences John Kennedy’s journey to the Oval Office. Kennedy’s older brother, Joe, is not as lucky about cheating death. The experimental Liberator bomber in which he is flying explodes over England on August 12, 1944. There is no body to bury and no memento of the tragedy to place on JFK’s desk. But that explosion marked the moment when John F. Kennedy became a politician and began the journey into the powerful office in which he now sits.

*   *   *

Less than six months after the war ends, John Fitzgerald Kennedy is one of ten candidates running in the Democratic primary of Boston’s Eleventh Congressional District. The veteran politicians and ward bosses of the deeply partisan city don’t give him a chance of winning. But JFK studies each ward in the district, reveling in his role as the underdog. He recruits a well-connected fellow World War II veteran named Dave Powers to help run his campaign. Powers, a rising political star in his own right, is at first reluctant to help the skinny young man who introduces himself by saying, “My name is Jack Kennedy. I’m a candidate for Congress.”

But then Powers watches in awe as Kennedy stands before a packed Legion hall on a cold Saturday night in January 1946 and gives a dazzling campaign speech. The occasion is a meeting of Gold Star Mothers, women who have lost sons in World War II. Kennedy speaks for only ten minutes, telling the assembled ladies why he wants to run for office. The audience cannot see that his hands shake anxiously. But they hear his well-chosen words as he reminds them of his own war record and explains why their sons’ sacrifice was so meaningful, speaking in an honest, sincere voice about their bravery.

Then Kennedy pauses before softly referring to his fallen brother, Joe: “I think I know how all you mothers feel. You see, my mother is a Gold Star Mother, too.”

Women surge forth as the speech concludes. Tears in their eyes, they reach out to touch this young man who reminds each of them of the sons they lost, telling him that he has their support. In that instant, Dave Powers is convinced. He goes to work for “Jack” Kennedy right then and there, forming the core of what will become known as Kennedy’s “Irish Mafia.” It is Dave Powers who seizes on PT-109 as a vital aspect of the campaign, mailing voters a reprint of a story about that August night in 1943 to show the selfless bravery of a wealthy young man for whom some might otherwise not be inclined to vote.

Thanks to Dave Powers’s insistence on making the most of PT-109, John F. Kennedy is elected to Congress.

*   *   *

During his first months as president, the coconut on which Kennedy carved the rescue note is a reminder of the incident that started him on his path to the White House.

The coconut is also a daily reminder that JFK owes the presidency, in part, to the sharp political intuition of Dave Powers. The tall Boston native, five years JFK’s senior, has been on the Kennedy payroll since that January night in 1946. As special assistant to the president, he is not a cabinet member, or even an official adviser—just a very close friend who always seems to anticipate the president’s needs and whose company the always-loyal JFK enjoys immensely. Powers has been described as the president’s “jester in residence,” and it’s true: his official capacity in the White House is largely social. Dave Powers is willing to do anything for John Kennedy.

But even Dave Powers, with his remarkable powers of intuition, cannot possibly know what “anything” means—nor can he predict that even as he witnessed John Kennedy’s first-ever political speech, he will also witness his last.

2

FEBRUARY 1961

THE WHITE HOUSE

1:00 P.M.

The president of the United States is naked, and on schedule. Almost every afternoon, at precisely 1:00 P.M., he slips into the indoor pool—always heated to a therapeutic ninety degrees—located between the White House and the West Wing. John Kennedy does this to soothe his aching back, a problem for him ever since he was a student at Harvard. His ordeal with the Amagiri exacerbated his back problems, and he has even endured surgery—to no avail. The pain is constant and so excruciating that Kennedy often uses crutches or a cane to get around, though rarely in public. He wears a corset, sleeps on an extra-firm mattress, and receives regular injections of the anesthetic procaine to ease his suffering. Aides know to look for a tightening of his jaw as a sign that the president’s back is acting up. The half hour of breaststroke and the heat of the pool are part of Kennedy’s therapy. His lack of a bathing suit for many of those swims stems from his notion of manliness. Real men do the breaststroke au naturel, and that’s that.

The White House staff could never imagine the previous president, Dwight Eisenhower, swimming naked anywhere, anytime. The elderly general and his wife, Mamie, were as traditional as they come. Very little unexpected happened in the White House during the eight years the Eisenhowers lived there.

But now everything has changed. The Kennedys are much less formal than the Eisenhowers. Smoking is allowed in the staterooms. Receiving lines are being abolished, giving formal functions a more casual feel. The First Lady is having a stage set up in the East Room, to allow performances by some of America’s most notable musicians, such as cellist and composer Pablo Casals and singer Grace Bumbry.

Still, the White House is a serious place. The president’s daily schedule revolves around periods of intense work followed by restorative breaks. He rises each morning around seven and immediately begins reading the news of the day in bed, including dispatches from the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal. Kennedy is a speed-reader, capable of absorbing twelve hundred words every sixty seconds. He is done with the newspapers in just fifteen minutes, and then moves on to a pile of briefing books covering events going on around the world.

The president then takes breakfast in bed. It is a substantial meal: orange juice, bacon, toast slathered in marmalade, two soft-boiled eggs, and coffee with cream. By and large, he is not a huge eater. He meticulously keeps his weight at or below 175 pounds. But he is a creature of habit and eats the same breakfast almost every day of the week.

Shortly before 8:00 A.M., Kennedy slips into the tub for a brief soak. In the bath, as he will throughout the day, he has a habit of tapping his right hand constantly, as if the hand is an extension of his active thought process.

The president is in the Oval Office at nine o’clock sharp. He sits back in his chair and listens as his appointments secretary, Ken O’Donnell, maps out his schedule. Throughout the morning, as Kennedy takes calls and listens to advisers brief him on what is happening in the rest of the world, he is interrupted by his handpicked staff. In addition to court jester Dave Powers and the quick-witted Kenny O’Donnell, son of the College of the Holy Cross’s football coach, there are men such as the bespectacled special assistant and Harvard history professor Arthur Schlesinger; Ted Sorensen, the Nebraska-born special counselor and adviser; and Pierre Salinger, the former child prodigy pianist who serves as press secretary.

President Kennedy and David Powers, his trusted aide and a member of the Kennedy White House’s “Irish Mafia” in 1961. (Abbie Rowe, White House Photographs, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)

With the exception of the president’s personal secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, the Kennedy White House is very much a fraternity, with every man deeply loyal to his charismatic leader. Conversation often lapses into the profane, as the president’s naval background lends truth to the saying “swears like a sailor.” “I didn’t call businessmen sons of bitches,” Kennedy once complained about being misquoted in the New York Times. “I called them pricks.”

The tone is courtlier when women are around. The president, for instance, never refers to his secretary as anything other than Mrs. Lincoln. But even then, crudeness can be camouflaged. Once, in his wife’s presence, Kennedy uses a version of the military’s phonetic alphabet to lash out at a newspaper columnist, referring to him as a “Charlie-Uncle-Nan-Tare.”

When the confused First Lady asks the president to explain, he deftly changes the subject.

*   *   *

Kennedy’s half-hour midday swim is an effective tonic for his pain, but sometimes he also uses the swimming sessions to conduct business, inviting staff and even members of the press to put in laps alongside him. The catch? They have to be naked, too. Dave Powers, a regular swimming partner, is quite used to it. For some on the White House staff, however, the scene is almost surreal.

Enigmatically, the president’s informal aquatic habits belie the fact that he is the polar opposite of his easygoing vice president. Lyndon Johnson is well-known for grabbing shoulders and slapping backs, but Kennedy keeps a physical distance between himself and other men. Unless he is campaigning, a chore he relishes, the president finds even the simple act of shaking hands to be a burden.

After swimming, Kennedy eats a quick lunch upstairs in the residence—perhaps a sandwich and possibly some soup. He then goes into his bedroom, changes into a nightshirt, and naps for exactly forty-five minutes. Other great figures in history such as Winston Churchill napped during the day. For Kennedy, it is a means of rejuvenation.

The First Lady wakes him up and stays with him to chat as he gets dressed. Then it’s back to the Oval Office, most nights working as late as 8:00 P.M. His staff knows that after business hours, Kennedy often puts two feet up on his desk and casually tosses ideas back and forth with them. It is the president’s favorite time of the day.

When everyone has cleared out, Kennedy makes his way back upstairs to the family’s private quarters—often referred to as “the residence” or “the Mansion” by his staff—where he smokes an Upmann cigar, enjoys Ballantine scotch and water without ice, and prepares for his evening meal. Often, Jackie Kennedy puts together last-minute dinner parties, which the president tolerates.

Truth be told, JFK would rather be watching a movie. The White House theater can screen any film in the world, anytime the president wishes. His preferences are World War II flicks and Westerns.

Kennedy’s fixation on movies rivals his other favorite recreational pursuit: sex.

The president’s bad back does not discourage him from being romantically active, which is a good thing, because, as JFK once explained to a friend, he needed to have sex at least once a day or he would suffer awful headaches. He and Jackie keep separate bedrooms, connected by a common dressing room—which is not to say that John Kennedy limits his sexual relations to the First Lady. While happily married, he is far from monogamous.

*   *   *

The president’s philandering aside, unquestionably the biggest change between the Kennedy and Eisenhower administrations is in the lady of the house. Jackie Kennedy, at thirty-one, is less than half the age of Mamie Eisenhower. The former First Lady was a grandmother while in the White House and a known penny-pincher who spent her downtime watching soap operas. By contrast, Jackie enjoys listening to bossa nova records and keeps fit by jumping on a trampoline and lifting weights. Like her husband, Jackie keeps her weight constant, a slim 120 pounds to compliment her 5-foot, 7-inch frame.

Her one true vice is her pack-a-day cigarette habit—either Salems or L&Ms—which she continues even throughout her pregnancies. As her husband does with his physical ailments, Jackie Kennedy keeps her smoking a secret—during the recent presidential campaign, an aide was charged with staying within arm’s reach with a lighted cigarette so Jackie could sneak a puff anytime she wanted.

Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, pictured here at a 1962 inaugural party, brought glamour to her role as First Lady. (Abbie Rowe, White House Photographs, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)

Jackie’s parents divorced before she was twelve, and she was raised in wealth and splendor by her mother, Janet. She attended expensive girls’ boarding schools and then Vassar College before spending her junior year in Paris. Upon her return to the United States, Jackie transferred to George Washington University, in D.C., where she got a diploma in 1951.

Throughout the First Lady’s developmental years, she was taught to be extremely private and to hold thoughts deep within herself. She likes to maintain “a certain quality of mystery about her,” a friend will later note. “People did not know what she was thinking or what she was doing behind the scenes—and she wanted to keep it that way.”

The fact is that Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy never fully reveals herself to anyone—not even to her husband, the president.

*   *   *

In far-off Minsk, Lee Harvey Oswald is having the opposite problem. The woman he loves just won’t stop talking.

On March 17, at a dance for union workers, he meets a nineteen-year-old beauty who wears a red dress and white shoes and who styles her hair in what he believes to be “French fashion.” Marina Prusakova is reluctant to smile because of her bad teeth, but the two dance that night, and he walks her home—along with several other potential suitors smitten by the talkative Marina.

But Lee Harvey is defiant, as always. He knows the other men will soon be distant memories.

And he is right. “We like each other right away,” the defector writes in his journal.

After her mother’s death two years before, Marina, who was born out of wedlock, was sent to live with her uncle Ilya, a colonel in the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs and a respected member of the local Communist Party. She is trained as a pharmacist, but quit her job sometime ago.

Oswald knows all this, and so much more about Marina, because between the nights of March 18 and 30, they spend a great deal of time together. “We walk,” he writes. “I talk a little about myself, she talks a lot about herself.”

Their relationship takes a sudden turn on March 30, when Oswald enters the Fourth Clinic Hospital for an adenoid operation. Marina visits him constantly, and by the time Lee Harvey is discharged, he “knows I must have her.” On April 30 they are married. Marina almost immediately becomes pregnant.

Life is getting more and more complicated for Lee Harvey Oswald.

*   *   *

In the winter of 1961 the world outside the White House is turbulent. The cold war is raging. Americans are terrified of the Soviet Union and its arsenal of nuclear weapons. Ninety miles south of Florida, Fidel Castro has recently taken over Cuba, ushering in a regime thought to be friendly to the Soviets.

In America’s Deep South, there is growing racial strife.

In the marketplace, there is a new contraceptive device known simply as “The Pill.”

On the radio, Chubby Checker is exhorting young Americans to do the Twist, while Elvis Presley is asking women everywhere if they’re lonesome tonight.

But inside the Kennedy White House, Jackie sees to it that none of these political and social upheavals intrude on creating the perfect environment to raise a family. Her schedule revolves around her children. In a break from the traditional style of First Lady parenting, in which children are managed by the household staff, she is completely involved in the lives of three-year-old Caroline and baby John, taking them with her to meetings and on errands.

As she grows more comfortable in the White House, it will not be uncommon for Jackie to camouflage herself with a scarf and heavy coat and take the children to the circus or a park—discreetly followed by the Secret Service.

The sight of the First Lady playing with her children on the South Lawn will also soon become commonplace, causing one observer to note that Jackie is “so like a little girl who had never grown up.” Indeed, she speaks with the same breathy, almost childlike voice of actress Marilyn Monroe.

The First Lady likes to think of herself as a traditional wife and dotes on her husband. But she also has a fiercely independent streak, breaking White House protocol by refusing to attend the myriad teas and social functions other First Ladies have endured. Jackie prefers to spend time with her children or concoct designs for a lavish renovation of the White House, an activity that does not interest her husband, who has little aesthetic sense when it comes to such matters. Jackie Kennedy refers to her new home as “the president’s house” and takes her inspiration from Thomas Jefferson’s White House, elaborately decorated by the former ambassador to France.

Jackie was a devoted mother to her children, Caroline and John F. Kennedy Jr., pictured here playing with his mother’s necklace in the West Bedroom. (Cecil Stoughton, White House Photographs, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)

The current décor dates to the Truman administration. Many pieces of furniture are reproductions instead of actual period originals, giving America’s most notable residence a cheap, derivative feel rather than an aura of grandeur. Jackie is assembling a team of top collectors to enhance the décor of the White House in every possible way.

She thinks she has years to finish.

At least four. Perhaps even eight.

She thinks.

3

APRIL 17, 1961

WASHINGTON, D.C./BAY OF PIGS, CUBA

9:40 A.M.

John F. Kennedy absentmindedly buttons his suit coat. He is seated aboard Marine One, his presidential Marine Corps helicopter, as it flares for a landing on the South Lawn of the White House. He has just spent a most unrelaxing weekend at Glen Ora, the family’s four-hundred-acre rented country retreat in Virginia that the Secret Service has code-named Chateau.

The president is meticulous about his appearance and will change his clothes completely at least three more times today, on each occasion putting on yet another crisply starched shirt, a new tie, and a suit custom-tailored by Brooks Brothers. His suit coats are invariably charcoal or deep blue. But it is not vanity that drives John Kennedy’s obsession with clothing. Rather, it is a peculiar quirk of his personality that he is uncomfortable if he wears a garment too long. He drives his longtime valet, George Thomas, crazy with his constant changes.

But right now Kennedy is not concentrating on his personal appearance, even though he does, as always, pat the top of his head to make sure every strand of hair is in place. Habits are hard to break.

Kennedy is preoccupied with Cuba. Roughly twelve hundred miles due south of Washington, D.C., a battlefield is taking shape. Kennedy has authorized a covert invasion of the island nation, sending fourteen hundred anti-Castro exiles to do a job that the U.S. military, by rule of international law, cannot do itself. The freedom fighters’ goal is nothing less than the overthrow of the Cuban government. The plan has been in the works since long before Kennedy was elected. Both the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Chiefs of Staff have assured the president that the mission will succeed. But it is Kennedy who has given the go-ahead—and it is he who will take the blame if the mission fails.

Once the UH-34 helicopter touches down on the metal pads specially placed on the South Lawn as a landing spot, JFK emerges headfirst out the door, stepping down onto the new spring grass. The president looks calm and unflappable, but his stomach is churning, literally. The stress of the weekend, with its last-minute planning of the risky attack, has brought on severe diarrhea and a debilitating urinary tract infection. His doctor has prescribed injections of penicillin and a diet of liquefied food to make his afflictions more bearable. Yet he feels miserable. But as awful as things seem right now, the president knows that his Monday is about to get much worse.

The president walks purposefully through the serenity of the White House Rose Garden, even as the Cuban exiles comprising Brigade 2506 are in grave danger, pinned down on a remote stretch of sand in Cuba.

This inlet will go down in infamy as the Bay of Pigs.

John F. Kennedy steps through the Rose Garden entrance into the Oval Office, with its gray carpet and off-white walls. During the winter, when there are no leaves on the trees, it is possible to gaze out toward the National Mall from the tall windows behind Kennedy’s desk. At the far end, hidden from JFK’s view by the Old Executive Office Building, rises the Lincoln Memorial. But Kennedy doesn’t sit down, nor does he glance out in the direction of Mr. Lincoln.

He is much too anxious about the events in Cuba to have a seat.

*   *   *

It has not been a good week for America. On April 12 the Soviets stunned the world by launching the first man into space, proving to one and all that they have rockets capable of carrying nuclear warheads all the way to the United States. The cold war that has raged between the two nations for more than a decade is now clearly tipped in the Soviets’ favor. Many in Washington believe that overthrowing the pro-Soviet Castro will go a long way toward restoring equilibrium to the cold war.

Kennedy knew he had the backing of the American people when he authorized the invasion. Fear about the global spread of communism is rampant in the United States. Anything he does to stop it will be applauded. And while invading another country is an enormous diplomatic risk, the president enjoys a 78 percent approval rating after his first months on the job, political capital with which to gamble. Newspapers and magazines are gushing about the young president, calling Kennedy “omniscient” and “omnipotent.”

But no man is all-knowing, and even the president of the United States is not all-powerful. Kennedy is about to make the sort of sworn enemies that come with a colossal blunder. By the time the Bay of Pigs is over he will count among these enemies not only Castro but also one of the highest-ranking officials of the U.S.government: the wily CIA chief, Allen Dulles.

*   *   *

Kenny O’Donnell greets Kennedy in the Oval Office and quickly briefs him on the day’s schedule. The president then strides out through another of the Oval Office’s four doors. His path takes him past the desk of his loyal personal secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, and into the Cabinet Room, where Secretary of State Dean Rusk awaits.

A brilliant man, Rusk attended Oxford as a Rhodes scholar and served as a chief of war plans as an army officer in the China-Burma-India Theater during World War II, organizing covert missions very much like the Bay of Pigs. The Georgia native sat in on the many planning meetings leading up to the weekend’s invasion. Yet he was not Kennedy’s first choice to head the State Department, and just three months into his new job, the new secretary of state remains tentative with his boss, wary of speaking his mind. At a time when Kennedy desperately needs solid advice, Rusk is unwilling to share his professional misgivings about the Bay of Pigs, including his belief “that this thin brigade of Cuban exiles has a snowball’s chance in hell of success.”

Rusk’s reluctance to advise him in an open and honest fashion is the least of the president’s troubles at this point. Nobody, it seems, will level with Kennedy. As JFK awaits word from the battlefront, he craves the company of someone who will tell him the unvarnished truth.

Sensing a crisis, the president picks up a phone and dials.

*   *   *

Cuba.

Americans of means once made this steamy, rum-soaked paradise their favorite tropical playground. The country’s sandy white beaches are sensual and the casinos legendary. Ernest Hemingway wrote of Cuba’s many charms, then unwound with his favorite rum libation, the daiquiri. Behind the scenes, America’s organized crime bosses such as Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano were as comfortable in the Cuban capital, Havana, as they were in New York City. And for decades, U.S. corporations took advantage of Cuba’s climate and thoroughly corrupt government to set up vast sugarcane plantations, oil fields, and cattle ranches.

In fact, ever since that epic moment in 1898 when Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders charged up San Juan Hill to liberate Cuba from Spain, the Cuban-U.S. relationship was mostly peaceful, free of tension, and, in a word, easy.

Until 1959.

Corruption reached an all-time high under the American-friendly regime of General Fulgencio Batista, sparking rebellion among Cubans. After four years of fighting, Fidel Castro, the thirty-two-year-old bastard child of a wealthy Cuban farmer, led his guerrilla army into Havana and toppled Batista. (The general died of a heart attack in exile in Portugal, just two days before Castro’s team of assassins could complete its mission.) The United States responded to Batista’s overthrow by officially recognizing the new government.

*   *   *

Castro is a man of many secrets. In perhaps his most egregious episode, eleven days after overthrowing Batista’s government in 1959, seventy-five political prisoners were marched in the dead of night toward an open field outside the city of Santiago, hands tied behind their backs. There was no path, and those who slowed down or stumbled felt the sharp jab of a soldier’s bayonet in their ribs. Suddenly, a row of army trucks turned on their headlights, revealing a trench six feet deep and fifty yards long. Bulldozers were parked alongside the trench, blades lowered and ready to plow the fresh mounds of dirt back into the massive hole.

The executions were supposed to be a secret, but the prisoners’ wives and girlfriends found out and kept vigil, following the procession from a distance and gasping with horror as those headlights illuminated what would soon be a mass grave. As the women’s sobs and wails punctured the still night air, Castro’s soldiers lined their husbands and sons and boyfriends shoulder to shoulder along the edge of the ditch, all the while taunting the women with jeers and catcalls. The women wept and prayed right up until that inevitable moment when the machine guns opened fire and their loved ones toppled into the abyss.

Thus marked the beginning of Fidel Castro’s reign of terror. Soon after, a Cuban judge was shot through the head for pardoning military pilots who had flown against Castro’s forces during his guerrilla campaign. Castro then ordered the pilots convicted of genocide. When the new judge sentenced them to hard labor instead of death, he, too, was shot dead. The Cuban leader, in his own words, is “violent, given to tantrums, devious, manipulative, and defiant of all authority.”

The Cuban people soon realized that they were paying a high price for supporting the rise of Castro. But overseas, Castro’s popular facade as a revolutionary hero took hold. One British newspaper wrote that “Mr. Castro’s bearded, youthful figure has become a symbol of Latin America’s rejection of brutality and lying. Every sign is that he will reject personal rule and violence.” In April 1959, Castro spoke at the Harvard University Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Even though he had used his knowledge of the law to suspend Cuba’s writ of habeas corpus, and even though the January 12 massacre was reported in the New York Times, Castro’s Harvard speech was interrupted time after time by enthusiastic cheering and applause.

On that same trip to America, the Cuban leader met with Vice President Richard Nixon, who was immediately impressed by Castro. In fact, Nixon wrote in a four-page secret memo to Eisenhower that “the one fact we can be sure of, is that he has those indefinable qualities which makes him a leader of men.”

John F. Kennedy, then a U.S. senator still months away from beginning his campaign for the presidency, knew that Batista was a ruthless despot who had murdered more than twenty thousand of his own people. Kennedy saw nothing wrong with Castro’s rise to power. And, like Hemingway, he was also fond of a daiquiri from time to time.

In 1959, Kennedy and Castro were on the verge of becoming two of the twentieth century’s greatest rivals. Both were charismatic, idealistic young men beloved by their fanatical followers. Both enjoyed a good cigar and had had long political winning streaks that resulted in each man ruling his nation. But each had a setback during his rise to power—Castro was imprisoned in the early years of his revolution; Kennedy’s painful back condition and a potentially deadly adrenal gland condition known as Addison’s disease each nearly killed him. Perhaps the most striking similarity between the two men is that Kennedy and Castro were the sort of highly competitive alpha males who never accept losing, no matter what the circumstances, no matter how high the cost.

*   *   *

In Cuba the costs of revolution are very high. With blood running in the streets of Havana, it was only a matter of time before America comprehended the truth. In February 1960, thirteen months after Castro seized power, a CIA briefing to the National Security Council warned of the Soviet Union’s “active support” for Castro, while also lamenting the disorganization of anti-Castro forces. The Eisenhower administration quietly began making plans to overthrow Castro’s regime, authorizing the CIA to begin paramilitary training of Cuban exiles at a secret base in Guatemala.

Castro became a hot-button issue of the 1960 presidential campaign. Kennedy vigorously attacked the Eisenhower administration, using the situation in Cuba to illustrate its weakness against communism. “In 1952 the Republicans ran on a program of rolling back the Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe,” Kennedy warned the nation. “Today the Iron Curtain is 90 miles off the coast of the United States.”

The question of a Cuban invasion became not a matter of if, but when. In a speech on December 31, 1960, Castro warned America that any landing force would suffer far greater losses than on D-Day. “If they want to invade us and destroy the resistance they will not succeed … because as long as a single man or woman with honor remains[,] there will be resistance,” he railed. A few days later, on January 3, 1961, Castro inflamed the cold war fears of every American by announcing that “Cuba has the right to encourage revolution in Latin America.”

As John Kennedy prepared to take office, roughly one in every nineteen Cubans was a political prisoner. America had severed diplomatic relations with Havana. On January 10, the New York Times ran a front-page story entitled “U.S. Helps Train Anti-Castro Forces at Guatemalan Air-Ground Base,” revealing that commandos were being trained in guerrilla warfare for a planned attack against Cuba. The Times article got the attention of Castro, who responded by ordering the placement of land mines at potential invasion zones.

Inside the Washington Beltway, the CIA and its longtime director, Allen Dulles, have become obsessed with killing Fidel Castro. It will one day be estimated that they concocted more than six hundred plans to assassinate him, including such unorthodox methods as a Mafia-style hit and exploding cigars. On March 11, a year after Dwight Eisenhower authorized the training of rebel forces, President Kennedy was formally presented with CIA plans for a landing. The invasion would take place in daylight, and the location would be a beach code-named Trinidad.

The operation presented Kennedy with a major dilemma. On the one hand, he had run for president on a platform of change, promising the nation a new start after the cold war policies of Dwight Eisenhower. On the other hand, he had fanatically ridiculed Eisenhower about Castro and knew he would look soft on communism if he did nothing to deter the brutal dictator. On April 7 the New York Times ran another front-page story, this one saying that the Cuban rebels were breaking camp and preparing to launch their invasion, prompting Kennedy to remark privately that Castro didn’t need spies in the United States—all he had to do was read the paper.

On April 12 the Communist Party in Guatemala reported to Moscow that the anti-Castro American-sponsored guerrillas would launch their invasion within a matter of days. The Soviets, however, were unsure of the intelligence and didn’t pass along the news to Castro. That very same day, President Kennedy attempted to disavow any American involvement in an invasion, explaining, “There will not be, under any conditions, any intervention in Cuba by United States forces.” Kennedy carefully left out any mention of U.S. financing, training, and planning of a rebel-led assault.

The young American president was attempting a deft diplomatic maneuver, hoping to confront a very real threat by not allowing U.S. military personnel actually to take part. His remarks stretched the truth, but the subtext couldn’t have been clearer: the invasion had become personal. It was no longer about the United States versus Cuba, but about John F. Kennedy versus Fidel Castro, two extremely competitive men battling for ideological control over the Western Hemisphere. In the days to come, each would take the actions of the other as a personal affront. And each man would remain determined to win at all costs.

In Moscow, another brutal dictator, Nikita Khrushchev, who murdered his way up the ladder of Soviet Union politics, was confused: “Why should an elephant be afraid of a mouse?” he wondered. Castro’s ongoing defiance of the United States was keeping his popularity in Cuba very high. Khrushchev understood that even if the Cuban invasion succeeded, the Cuban people would be hard-pressed to accept an American puppet as their new leader. An ensuing guerrilla war against the United States by Castro’s supporters might benefit the Soviet Union by allowing it to establish a military presence in the Western Hemisphere to aid the Cuban dictator.

The bottom line for Khrushchev, of course, had little to do with Castro or Cuba. His goal was world domination. Anything that distracted or in any way diminished the United States was good for the Soviet Union.

*   *   *

In the days leading up to the scheduled invasion, President Kennedy soured on the CIA’s plan. The Trinidad beach was too much like the Normandy landing zones. The president wanted the invasion to seem as if it had been generated solely by Cuban exiles, thereby masking American involvement. Kennedy wanted an out-of-the-way location where men and supplies could come ashore quietly, then slip into the countryside unnoticed.

The CIA response was to offer a new location, known as Bahia de Cochinos—loosely translated as the “Bay of Pigs.” The landing would take place at night. Unlike the broad beachheads of Trinidad or even Normandy, miles of impenetrable swamp bordered the Bay of Pigs, and few roads led in or out.

Yet, while the United States has a history of successful large-scale amphibious invasions, very few of them have taken place in darkness. There are only two ways the mission can succeed. First, the invasion force will have to get off the beach immediately and take control of the access roads. Second, rebel planes need to take control of the skies, wipe out Castro’s air force, and then gun down Castro’s troops and tanks as they race toward the Bay of Pigs. Without overwhelming airpower, the mission will fail.

Kennedy is a man fond of spy novels—James Bond is a personal favorite—and enchanted by the cloak-and-dagger world of undercover agents. CIA director Alan Dulles, an urbane and wealthy gentleman in his late sixties, epitomizes that aura of secrecy and covert intrigue. He assured Kennedy that the plan would succeed.

The president initially believed him. On April 14, just two days after giving a press conference in which he promised there would be no intervention by U.S. forces in Cuba, Kennedy gave Operation Zapata, as the Bay of Pigs invasion was known, the official go-ahead.

April 14 was a Friday. After launching the invasion, there was nothing for the president to do but wait. So he flew to Glen Ora to be with Jackie and the kids, where he endured a gut-wrenching weekend waiting for news from Cuba. When word finally came, almost none of it was good.

It started on Saturday morning, when eight B-26 bombers piloted by Cuban freedom fighters attacked three Cuban air bases. The original plan called for sixteen planes, but Kennedy had gotten cold feet and ordered the number cut in half.

As a result, the bombings were ineffectual, barely damaging the Cuban air force at all. But Fidel Castro was furious. He immediately turned up the heat on the Kennedy administration by launching public accusations of U.S. involvement in the attack.

Things only got worse after that. A diversionary landing on Saturday was supposed to put roughly 160 anti-Castro Cuban freedom fighters ashore near Guantanamo Bay, but was canceled due to the breakdown of a crucial boat. In a separate incident, Cuban forces arrested a small band of freedom fighters who were already on the island with a large cache of arms.

By Saturday afternoon, the Cuban ambassador to the United Nations was addressing the General Assembly, denouncing the United States for its attack—in response to which Adlai Stevenson, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, repeated JFK’s promise that no American forces would ever wage war in Cuba.

As all this was taking place, John Kennedy hid in the country. Each event so far had been a prelude to the real invasion. But the pressure has already gotten to Kennedy. He canceled a second wave of bombings, even though he knew full well the move might doom the invasion.

In the dead of night, just after Sunday turned to Monday, the landing force of 1,400 Cuban exiles from Brigade 2506 powered toward the Bay of Pigs aboard a small fleet of freighters and landing vessels. Their hopes were high—their dream was to regain control of their homeland.

Very few of the invaders were actually soldiers. They were men from all across the social strata who had been trained by American World War II and Korea veterans—and those hardened U.S. vets were impressed by what they saw.

But when they landed, the brave freedom fighters had no idea that the president had called off a second wave of air strikes. Now the men of Brigade 2506 would have to secure the beachheads on their own—an almost impossible task.

On Monday morning, even as those Cuban freedom fighters encountered the first wave of Castro’s defenders, the president boarded Marine One and flew back to Washington, hoping that the freedom fighters might find a way to do the impossible.

*   *   *

Other than John Kennedy, only two men are allowed to enter the Oval Office through the Rose Garden door: Vice President Lyndon Johnson and Attorney General Robert Kennedy. That privilege, along with their mutual disdain, is all the two men have in common.

The six-foot, four-inch Texan is a self-made man and career politician, a former high school teacher whose towering physique belies a fragile and sometimes insecure persona. The fifty-one-year-old LBJ, as he is known, was perhaps the most successful and powerful Senate majority leader in U.S. history, adept at building partnerships and fortifying his party faithful to pass important legislation.

Bobby, at a shade over five foot nine, speaks with the same clipped Boston accent as his brother. He is a physical fitness buff who was born into privilege and has never held elective office. LBJ knows this and revels in the fact that as leader of the Senate, he is a cut above the relatively inexperienced Kennedy political machine.

Their feud dates to the autumn of 1959, when Bobby Kennedy went to visit Johnson at his expansive Texas ranch. His brother had sent him to Texas to gauge whether Johnson would run against Kennedy for the Democratic nomination in 1960.

President Kennedy and his brother Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy had a contentious relationship with Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson. (Abbie Rowe, White House Photographs, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)

It was LBJ’s habit to take important guests deer hunting on his vast property, and Bobby’s visit was no different. At first, Bobby and LBJ got along extremely well—that is, until Bobby shot at a deer. The rifle’s recoil knocked him flat and opened a cut above one eye. Johnson, reaching down to help Bobby to his feet, couldn’t resist taking a swipe: “Son,” he told Bobby, “you’ve got to learn to shoot a gun like a man.”

No one speaks to Bobby Kennedy that way. Of such small moments are great feuds made.

As the election of 1960 drew nearer, it was Bobby who fought hardest against Lyndon Johnson as the choice for vice president. And it was also Bobby who personally visited Johnson’s hotel suite during the Democratic convention in Los Angeles to offer him the job—though not before trying to talk him out of accepting.

Now the Bay of Pigs will mark the moment when their careers officially veer in two radically different directions. Bobby’s stature will quickly rise, with his brother soon referring to him as the “second most powerful man in the world.”

Johnson, who privately refers to Bobby as “that snot-nosed little son of a bitch,” is already regretting leaving the Senate. LBJ is a man in decline. President Kennedy doesn’t trust him and barely tolerates him. The president is so dismissive of Johnson that he even wonders to Jackie, “Can you imagine what would happen to the country if Lyndon were president?”

Being vice president, noted John Nance Garner, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first VP, is like being “a pitcher of warm spit.” John Adams once described being in the position as “I am nothing.” Lyndon Johnson knows precisely what his predecessors meant. He no longer has a constituency, no longer has political leverage, and no longer has a whit of authority.

For instance, the vice president does not have a plane of his own. When his duties require him to travel, Johnson must ask one of Kennedy’s aides for permission to use a presidential plane. Though he is technically second in command of the nation, Johnson’s request carries no more weight than that of a cabinet member. Sometimes his request is denied. When that happens, the vice president of the United States might even be forced to fly commercial.

The greatest insult, however, isn’t that Johnson has lost his political pull in Washington, it’s that he has lost almost all his clout in his home state of Texas. Despite Johnson’s crucial role in delivering Texas to Kennedy on Election Day, Senator Ralph Yarborough is now moving in to take control of Texas politics, and Secretary of the Navy John Connally is making plans to run for governor. One, or both, of them will soon control political power in the Lone Star State. Johnson is becoming expendable. If Kennedy chooses another running mate when he seeks a second term in office, LBJ will be out of politics entirely.

For now, however, Johnson possesses that rare privilege of entering the Oval Office through the Rose Garden door. But when Kennedy picks up the phone to call for help on the morning of April 17, he does not call Lyndon Johnson.

It is Bobby Kennedy who answers the phone. He is in Virginia, giving a speech. “I don’t think it’s going as well as it could,” the president tells his younger brother. “Come back here.”

John Kennedy has purposely focused his brother on domestic policy issues, preferring to let others advise him on international matters. Despite their frequent phone conversations, the president sees his younger brother as a guy who’s benefited from nepotism, for it was Joseph Kennedy who insisted that JFK hire Bobby as attorney general. But now, in a moment of great insecurity, John Kennedy understands his father’s wisdom. Even though Bobby hasn’t had a CIA briefing on the Cuban operation in three months, he is the one man the president believes he can count on.

Meanwhile, Lyndon Johnson drifts farther and farther from the center of political power.

*   *   *

John Kennedy stands in the Oval Office, helpless to stop what he has started. The president could have called off the invasion right up to the moment on Sunday night when the highly trained men and teenage boys of Brigade 2506 clambered down from their transport ships and transferred to the boats that would carry them to shore.

But reversing course would have taken extraordinary courage. Kennedy would have lost face with Allen Dulles, the CIA, his close advisers, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Yet that is the sort of unpopular decision he had been elected to make. And now Kennedy’s unwillingness to make those tough choices is threatening to devastate his administration.

He has come a long way since his days as the young commander of PT-109. But he is still learning, as Abraham Lincoln also learned, that the decision to use force should not be determined by men whose careers depend upon its use.

But it was not the CIA or the Joint Chiefs who ordered the invasion; it was John Kennedy.

Bobby has sped back from Virginia and now steps into the Oval Office to find his older brother in a pensive mood. “I’d rather be called an aggressor than a bum,” JFK laments. The news from the landing beaches is not good: the freedom fighters have failed to secure key roads and other strategic points. There is no way off the beach for the men of Brigade 2506. Cuban forces have pinned them down. The invasion is stalled.

A distraught JFK openly shares his fears with Bobby. The president knows when speaking with his brother that he is safe from security leaks or attempts to undermine his authority. But even now, with Bobby at his side, John Kennedy feels the crushing loneliness of being the president of the United States. He has made this mess in Cuba, and he alone must find a way to turn a potential fiasco into a rousing victory.

*   *   *

But it’s not to be.

By Tuesday, April 18, Castro himself is on the beach in a T-34 tank, fighting off the invaders. Tens of thousands of Cuban militia have taken up positions to contain the rebel advance. The Cubans now control the three main roads leading in and out of Bahia de Cochinos. Most important of all, thanks to Kennedy’s cancellation of air cover, the Cuban air force and its T-33 jets easily control the skies.

At noon on April 18, National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy meekly reports to the president that the “Cuban armed forces are stronger, the popular response is weaker, and our tactical position is feebler than we had hoped. Tanks have done in one beachhead, and the position is precarious at the others.”

That evening, at a White House meeting shortly after midnight, Kennedy is dressed in white tie as he listens to yet another report on the failure of the invasion. Earlier that night he was called away from a White House reception for Congress—formal duties call even in the midst of the crisis.

The Cabinet Room is decorated with a map of the Caribbean, on which tiny magnetic ships have been placed to show the location of the various vessels on station to support the invasion. Among them are the aircraft carrier Essex and her protective escort vessels.

“I don’t want the United States involved in this,” snaps an incredulous JFK as he surveys the map.

Admiral Arleigh Burke, head of the U.S. Navy, takes a deep breath and speaks the truth: “Hell, Mr. President, we are involved.”

In a last-ditch attempt to salvage the invasion, the president reluctantly authorizes one hour of air cover from 0630 to 0730 by six unmarked jets from the Essex. The jets are to rendezvous with B-26 bombers piloted by Cuban freedom fighters and keep the Cuban aircraft at bay. However, the U.S. Navy pilots are not to attack ground targets or actively seek out air-to-air combat—yet another sign that JFK has lost his nerve.

After the midnight meeting, the president steps through that Oval Office door into the Rose Garden, the weight of the free world and the fate of more than a thousand men on his shoulders. He is alone for an hour pacing in the wet grass.

On the morning of April 19, more bad news: incredibly, the CIA and the Pentagon didn’t account for the time zone difference between Cuba and the freedom fighters’ air base in Nicaragua. Jets from carrier Essex and the B-26 bombers from Central America arrive at the rendezvous one hour apart. The two groups of aircraft never meet up. As a result, several B-26s and their pilots are shot down by the Cuban air force. Pierre Salinger, the president’s press secretary, discovers Kennedy alone in the White House residence weeping after hearing the news.

Jackie has never seen her husband so upset. She has seen JFK cry only twice before and is startled when he puts his head in his hands and sobs. Bobby asks the First Lady to stay close, because the president needs comfort. On this day, Kennedy doesn’t even worry about his usually meticulous personal appearance, greeting one senator for a meeting in the Oval Office with his hair a mess and his tie twisted at an odd angle.

Bobby Kennedy rushes to his brother’s defense when Lyndon Johnson complains that he’s been kept out of the loop. Bobby paces the floor of the Cabinet Room, glaring now and again at the Caribbean map and those magnetic ships. “We’ve got to do something, we’ve got to do something,” he says again and again. When the CIA and military leaders don’t reply, he wheels around and sharply says, “All you bright fellows have gotten the president into this, and if you don’t do something now, my brother will be regarded as a paper tiger by the Russians.”

Meanwhile, the president passes the rest of the day wallowing in grief, making no attempt to hide his depression from the White House staff. “How could I have been so stupid?” he mutters to himself, often interrupting a completely different conversation to repeat those words. “How could I have been so stupid?”

*   *   *

By 5:30 P.M. on the night of April 19, Cuban forces have taken complete control of the Bay of Pigs. The invasion is over.

In addition to the dead and captured on the ground, Castro’s forces have sunk almost a dozen invasion vessels, including those carrying food and ammunition, and shot down nine B-26 bombers.

The defeat is a major humiliation for the United States. Kennedy is forced to give a press conference and take full blame. “There’s an old saying that victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan. What matters,” he says, is that “I am the responsible officer of the government.”

One day JFK will look back and speculate that the Bay of Pigs blunder could have given the U.S. military reason to interfere with the civilian American government on the grounds that the president was unsuited for office.

Six months later, however, it is CIA director Allen Dulles who is fired. The CIA chief is extremely bitter. The slight is one that the old spymaster and his agency will not soon forget.

*   *   *

A week after the Bay of Pigs debacle, Kennedy calls his advisers, including Bobby, into the Cabinet Room. Bobby’s attendance at a foreign policy meeting is unusual, and at first the president’s brother holds his tongue.

The president leans back in his chair and softly taps a pencil against his teeth as Undersecretary of State Chester Bowles reads a lengthy statement that absolves the State Department from any blame concerning the Bay of Pigs.

JFK can see that Bobby is seething. The two brothers find Bowles whiny and self-righteous.

The president knows from a lifetime of observing his little brother in action that an explosion is coming soon. He has also authorized Bobby to speak for him. JFK waits, keeping his expression blank, listening, tapping that pencil against his teeth.

Finally Bobby Kennedy takes the floor. He brutally tears into Chester Bowles with words designed to humiliate.

“That’s the most meaningless, worthless thing I’ve ever heard. You people are so anxious to protect your own asses that you’re afraid to do anything. All you want to do is dump the whole thing on the president. We’d be better off if you just quit and left the foreign policy to someone else,” Bobby growls, his voice growing louder. The president watches, his face impassive, that pencil making just the slightest clicking noise on his perfect white teeth.

“I became suddenly aware,” Kennedy adviser Richard Goodwin will later write, “that Bobby’s harsh polemic reflected the president’s concealed emotions, privately communicated in some earlier, intimate conversation. I knew, even then, that there was an inner hardness, often volatile anger beneath the outwardly amiable, thoughtful, carefully controlled demeanor of John Kennedy.”

If Lyndon Johnson is the vice president, it will one day be written, then Bobby Kennedy is soon to become the assistant president—but only after the Bay of Pigs bonds the brothers and transforms the way JFK does business in the White House. From now on, when President Kennedy wants a contentious point made to his cabinet or advisers, he will rely on Bobby, who will then speak for the president and endure any subsequent criticism or argument so as not to weaken his big brother.

*   *   *

Amazingly, Kennedy’s approval ratings rise to 83 percent after the invasion, proving to the president that the American people firmly stand behind his actions against Castro. Behind the scenes, U.S. plots to overthrow the Cuban leader continue to be hatched, and Castro becomes openly defiant of Kennedy, further cementing the widespread belief that each man wants the other dead.

Meanwhile, even as Kennedy’s approval ratings temporarily make him one of the most popular presidents of the twentieth century, he knows that something must be done to restore America’s prestige among the international community. In an interview with James Reston of the New York Times, Kennedy sets aside the Cuban situation. Instead, he candidly admits that “we have a problem making our power credible and Vietnam looks like the place.”

Vietnam.

Small, and until now almost completely overlooked by America, the Asian nation is in the throes of its own Communist uprising. Now President Kennedy deems it vital to American security. In May 1961, JFK tasks Vice President Lyndon Johnson with a fact-finding trip to Vietnam, sending him farther away from the Oval Office than ever before.

The reasons have as much to do with national security as the president’s awareness of the toll that being powerless is taking on the vice president. “I cannot stand Johnson’s damn long face,” JFK confides to one senator. “He just comes in, sits at cabinet meetings with his face all screwed up. Never says anything. He looks so sad.”

When Kennedy’s good friend Senator George Smathers of Florida suggests Johnson go on an around-the-world trip, JFK is delighted, calling it “a damn good idea.”

Just to reinforce the journey’s importance, the vice president is allowed the use of a presidential airplane.

*   *   *

More than 110 men would not have died if JFK had canceled the Bay of Pigs invasion. And more than 1,200 freedom fighters would not have been captured and sentenced to Castro’s brutal prisons. The Bay of Pigs not only exposed flaws in Kennedy’s international policy, but it also eroded the power the voters had given him—even if this was unbeknownst to them at the time. Kennedy was indecisive at a time when he should have been resolute. He allowed himself to be misled. It is impossible to ascertain why. But there is no question that in the first major test of his administration, Kennedy’s leadership failed.

The harrowing days of April 1961 taught the Kennedy brothers an indelible lesson: they are on their own. Their advisers are not worth shoe polish. In order to restore America’s power position, the Kennedy brothers will have to find a way to defeat their enemies, both abroad and, especially, in Washington, D.C.

*   *   *

Meanwhile, in the Soviet Union, the U.S. State Department has decided to return Lee Harvey Oswald’s American passport and allow him to return home. But while Oswald is quite anxious to leave the Soviet Union, he is no longer the unattached nomad who defected nearly two years earlier. He delays his departure until a time when Marina and their unborn child can travel with him.

He also delays telling Marina that they are going anywhere.

Finally, Oswald breaks the news. “My wife is slightly startled”—he writes in his journal on June 1, after finally telling Marina that they are leaving the Soviet Union, most likely forever—“but then encourages me to do what I wish to do.”

Marina is on the verge of leaving behind everything she knows for a life of uncertainty with a man she barely knows. But she accepts this hard reality because she has already learned one great truism about Lee Harvey Oswald: he always does what he wants to do, no matter how many obstacles are thrown in his path.

Always.

4

FEBRUARY 14, 1962

WASHINGTON, D.C.

8:00 P.M.

The First Lady glides alone down a hallway, walking straight toward the six-foot-high television camera bearing the logo of the CBS eye. Her outfit and lipstick are a striking red, accenting her full lips and auburn bouffant hairdo. The camera will broadcast only in black and white, so this detail is lost on the forty-six million Americans tuning in to NBC and CBS to watch her televised tour of the White House. This is Jackie’s moment in the national spotlight, a chance to show off the ongoing effort to restore her beloved “Maison Blanche.”

Jackie pretends that the camera is not there. This is the way she goes through life as well, feigning ignorance and keeping a discreet distance from all but a few trusted confidants. Despite her practical detachment, Jackie is anything but unaware of her circumstance, having written and edited the show’s script herself, filling the document’s margins with small reminders about a piece of furniture’s history and the names of wealthy donors. She knows not only the renovation status of each of the White House’s fifty-four rooms and sixteen baths but also the complete history of the 170-year-old building itself.

And yet, as America will learn over the course of the broadcast, the First Lady does not come across as a pompous know-it-all. In fact, she doesn’t even like to be called “the First Lady”; she thinks it sounds like the name of a racehorse. This ability to laugh at herself gives Jackie that precious gift of appearing vulnerable and shy, rather than aloof, even as she speaks with an upper-crust accent. Many men find her sexy, and many women see her as an approachable icon. Throughout the first year of her husband’s presidency, her perceived accessibility has endeared Jackie Kennedy to America and the world.

President Kennedy made light of this when they visited Paris in June 1961, on a state visit to meet French president Charles de Gaulle. The Bay of Pigs had taken place just six weeks earlier, and JFK’s image had been vastly diminished in the estimation of many European leaders. But not so Jackie’s image. When Air Force One touched down at Orly Airport, she was hailed as the very picture of glamour, poise, and beauty. The president couldn’t help but notice the popping flashbulbs that followed in her wake. Speaking before a host of dignitaries at the Palais de Chaillot, JFK opened his remarks with somber tones as he delivered an apt description of his status in the eyes of Paris and the world. “I do not think it altogether inappropriate for me to introduce myself to this audience,” he said with a straight face. “I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris—and I have enjoyed it.”

*   *   *

After her walk past the CBS camera, the First Lady starts her television special by narrating a brief history of the White House. Viewers hear her demure voice as images of drawings and photographs fill the screen. There is drama in her words, underscoring her emotional attachment to the building. She speaks in approving tones about Theodore Roosevelt’s addition of the West Wing, which moved the offices of the president and his staff from the cramped second-floor environs of the White House residence into a far more spacious and businesslike environment.

There is an air of tragedy in her voice as she describes how the White House had to be gutted in 1948. President Truman’s study floor had begun vibrating as if on the verge of collapse. An inspection revealed that the entire building was about to implode because it had not been renovated or reinforced for decades. “The whole inside was scooped out. Only the exterior walls remained,” Jackie says breathily as photographs of giant bulldozers tearing out the historic original floors and ceilings flash on the screen. “It would have been easier and less expensive to demolish the whole building. But the White House is so great a symbol to Americans that the exterior walls were retained.”

The First Lady finishes her monologue with a reminder that she has immersed herself in the details of all renovations, past and present: “Piece by piece, the interior of the president’s house was put back together. The exterior views were exactly those which Americans had seen throughout the century, except for the balcony on the South Portico—which President Truman added.”

The scripted words are a coy barb. Truman was roundly denounced in 1947 for adding the balcony, which was seen as a desecration of the White House’s exterior architecture. President Kennedy was initially nervous about Jackie’s restoration, fearing that she would come under the same sharp criticism as Truman. But rather than defer to her husband, as she does so often, the First Lady refused to back down. This “won’t be like the Truman Balcony,” she insisted, assuring her husband that her efforts would be viewed positively. Her focus would be the interior, finally finishing the work those bulldozers began in 1948. Her goal is nothing less than to transform the White House from the very large home of a bureaucrat into a presidential palace.

Mamie Eisenhower was once fond of referring to the White House and its objects as her personal property—“my house” and “my carpets.” She also had a passion for the color pink. Jackie, who doesn’t get along with her predecessor, has gotten rid of all of Mamie’s cheap furniture and carpeting and painted over the pink.

As Americans are about to see for themselves, the White House now belongs to Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy.

The First Lady once again steps before the camera to take viewers on a walk around her new home, now followed by the show’s host, Charles Collingwood of CBS. Jackie’s personal touches are everywhere, from the new draperies, whose designs she sketched herself; to the new guidebook she authorized to raise funds for the restoration (selling 350,000 copies in just six months). She has done away with oddities such as the water fountains that made the White House look more like an office building than a national treasure.

The First Lady has scoured storage rooms and the National Gallery, turning up assorted treasures such as paintings by Cézanne, Teddy Roosevelt’s drinking mugs, and James Monroe’s gold French flatware. President Kennedy’s new desk was another of Jackie’s finds. The Resolute desk, as it is known, was carved from the timbers of an ill-fated British vessel and was a gift from Queen Victoria to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880. Jackie found it languishing in the White House broadcast room, buried beneath a pile of electronics. She promptly had it relocated to the Oval Office.

No one other than longtime household staff knows the White House and its secrets quite as well as Jackie. But despite her vast knowledge, there is also a great deal she does not want to know.

Foremost on that list are the names of the women her husband is sleeping with. And they are many. There is Judith Campbell, the mistress who serves as Kennedy’s clandestine connection to Chicago Mafia kingpin Sam Giancana—and who complains that JFK is less tender as a lover since becoming president. And twenty-seven-year-old divorcée Helen Chavchavadze, whom JFK has been seeing since before the inauguration. There are the girls brought in by Dave Powers. The president’s mistresses even include some of Jackie’s friends and personal staff. Jackie makes it a habit to leave for the couple’s Glen Ora estate in Virginia most Thursdays for a weekend of horseback riding. She does not return until Monday. The president has full run of the White House while she is away. So the list of his consorts grows by the day.

Jackie Kennedy is not stupid. She has known about JFK’s affairs since he was in the Senate. Her feelings are deeply hurt, but she sets the president’s indiscretions aside for the sake of appearances, for the prestige of being First Lady, and most of all because she loves her husband—and believes that he loves her.

The First Lady has a fascination with the European aristocracy and knows that it is common, perhaps even natural, for powerful men in Europe to have affairs. Her beloved father, John “Black Jack” Bouvier, strayed often. And her father-in-law, Joseph Kennedy, is notorious for his dalliances. The First Lady has no reason to believe that the president of the United States, the most powerful man in the world, will be any different. Besides, it’s a family tradition. “All Kennedy men are like that,” she once commented to Joan, the wife of JFK’s youngest brother, Teddy. “You can’t let it get to you. You can’t take it personally.”

Once, while passing through Evelyn Lincoln’s office with a French reporter, Jackie spied Lincoln’s assistant, Priscilla Wear, sitting to one side of the small room. Switching from English to French, Jackie informed the reporter that “this is the girl who supposedly is sleeping with my husband.”

However, despite outward acceptance, deep inside Jackie takes it very personally. From time to time, her friends notice the quiet sadness about her marriage. Even the Secret Service agents, who genuinely like and respect her, can see that the First Lady is suffering.

Even in the midst of her pain, however, the First Lady is practical. She makes a point to keep Kenny O’Donnell aware of the precise time she plans to leave for and return from any trip outside the White House, just to make sure she doesn’t stumble upon the president in flagrante delicto with a consort.

The First Lady has thought of taking a lover. She often dines alone with Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. They flirt with each other and read poetry together. And when Jackie is in New York she visits the apartment of Adlai Stevenson, America’s ambassador to the United Nations. They always kiss when they say hello and enjoy trips to the ballet and opera together.

She is intrigued by these men and knows that there are rumors she has had a fling with actor William Holden, but it is her husband whose love she craves. Until recently their lovemaking was hardly spectacular. There was little attempt at foreplay—indeed, for all his sexual adventures, the president made love to Jackie as if it were a duty. She often wondered why he felt the need to sleep with other women and began to question whether she was the problem. Despite the adoration of millions of men around the world, there had to be some reason that her own husband seemed oblivious to her sexual charms.

Then, in the spring of 1961, when Jackie twisted her ankle playing touch football at Hickory Hill, Bobby’s Virginia home, Bobby asked his neighbor, Dr. Frank Finnerty, to treat the injury. Finnerty was a thirty-seven-year-old cardiologist who taught medicine at Georgetown University. He was also extremely handsome and likeable. Jackie found him to be a good listener. A week later, her ankle healed, she asked Finnerty if she could call him from time to time, just to talk. A surprised Finnerty was more than happy to agree.

Sex was definitely on Jackie’s mind when she made the proposition, but not sex with Dr. Finnerty. Over the course of several conversations, she told Finnerty the names of the women her husband was involved with and admitted how bad JFK’s affairs made her feel about herself. The Kennedy marriage was designed, in Jackie’s words, as “a relationship between a man and a woman where a man would be the leader and a woman be his wife and look up to him as a man.” That construct extended to the bedroom, where his pleasure was paramount. She wondered why the president made love so quickly, without any concern for her pleasure. It was all about him, and she felt left out. “He just goes too fast and falls asleep,” she complained.

Dr. Finnerty came up with a solution. He scripted a discussion that Jackie might have with the president, suggesting ways that their lovemaking might be more mutual. Finnerty coached her to speak matter-of-factly and use precise descriptions of what she wanted and of how she might also be able to enhance the president’s enjoyment.

Thus fortified, Jackie nervously broached the subject to JFK over dinner one night. As the president listened in amazement, his usually shy and sexually inhibited wife told him precisely what she wanted from him in bed. Jackie lied when he asked how she had suddenly become so knowledgeable, claiming that she had gotten the answers from a priest, a gynecologist, and several very descriptive books.

The president was impressed. He “never thought she would go to that much trouble to enjoy sex,” Finnerty would later recall.

Jackie reported back to the doctor that the sex with JFK had improved, and whatever anxieties she had had about her own performance were gone for good.

Not that the president has stopped sleeping around. But at least Jackie now knows that he is getting satisfaction in the marital bed.

*   *   *

“Thank you, Mr. President,” concludes reporter Charles Collingwood. “And thank you, Mrs. Kennedy, for showing us this wonderful house in which you live, and all of the wonderful things you’re bringing to it.”

John Kennedy has joined his wife on camera for the last few minutes of the broadcast special, explaining the importance of Jackie’s ongoing efforts and what the White House means as a symbol of America. The First Lady says nothing as she smiles warmly and gazes into the camera. Jackie looks utterly unflappable as the special comes to an end, not a hair out of place, the strands of pearls around her neck perfectly aligned.

But looks are deceiving. The White House tour was actually recorded a month ago, and the hour-long broadcast took seven hours to film. A nervous Jackie chain-smoked her L&Ms whenever the cameras weren’t rolling and wound down afterward by combing out her bouffant so that her hair hung straight down.

She also downed one very large scotch.

*   *   *

Jackie’s White House tour is one of the most watched shows in the history of television. In fact, it earns the First Lady a special Emmy Award. America is now completely smitten. Jacqueline Kennedy is a superstar.

Meanwhile, the White House restoration continues. Far down on the list of items to be addressed are those gray Oval Office curtains, which will not be replaced until late in November 1963.

5

MARCH 24, 1962

PALM SPRINGS, CALIFORNIA

7:00 P.M.

John F. Kennedy is tired but alert. He is in the resort city of Palm Springs, standing on the patio of the Spanish-style home of show business legend Bing Crosby. But Crosby is not present this evening, having turned his comfortable house over to JFK and his entourage for the weekend. Kennedy watches as the party unfolds around the crowded pool on this warm spring evening. Sounds of laughter and splashing fill the night air. Beyond the pool, the president sees boulder-strewn mountains rising above the one-acre property, forming a stunning desert backdrop.

Yesterday, Kennedy gave a rousing speech to eighty-five thousand people at the University of California, Berkeley. He spoke of democracy and freedom, key themes throughout the cold war. He then flew south on Air Force One to Vandenberg Air Force Base, where he watched his first-ever missile launch. The slim white Atlas rocket blasted off without incident, proving that the United States was catching up in the space race, which was going strong, with the Soviet Union having just this week reached an agreement to share outer space research with America’s cold war adversaries.

Palm Springs, and Crosby’s secluded home, is the perfect weekend hideaway after the hectic West Coast trip. There was a brief bit of official business earlier in the day, when the president met with Dwight Eisenhower to discuss foreign policy. But now JFK can finally unwind with a cigar and a daiquiri or two.

But the president is not completely relaxed. He knows he has offended good friend and longtime supporter Frank Sinatra by canceling his plans to spend the weekend at Sinatra’s house and staying at the home of Crosby, a Republican, of all things—but the president will deal with that symbolism later. Tonight he just wants to have fun.

A lot of fun.

It’s Saturday, which normally means that Jackie and the children are spending the weekend at the Glen Ora estate. But the First Lady, as the whole world knows from the many media accounts, is halfway around the globe on an official visit to India and Pakistan. The success of her television special confirmed what her husband has known for years: Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy is John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s number one political asset. He’s already making plans to leverage her popularity for his 1964 reelection campaign.

And while the president would be a fool to damage their marriage (and his career) by a brazen act of public infidelity, there are moments when this normally pragmatic man is helplessly self-destructive.

Such as now.

Among the guests at Bing Crosby’s estate is the most glamorous and perhaps the most troubled woman in Hollywood. JFK has cultivated a relationship with her for almost two years and is quite certain that tonight Marilyn Monroe is finally his for the taking.

The First Lady on a boat cruise on Lake Pichola in Rajasthan during her official visit to India and Pakistan in 1962. (Cecil Stoughton, White House Photographs, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)

The president of the United States takes another pull on his cigar and steps into the bedroom. His wife is eight thousand miles away. He can do anything he wants tonight. Anything. And there’s absolutely no chance his wife will walk in on him.

*   *   *

“My wife had her first and last ride on an elephant!” JFK spontaneously informed the packed stadium at the University of California the day before. The crowd roared and laughed in approval.

That’s how JFK talks to America about his Jackie: as if they’re eavesdropping on a private conversation. People crave even the smallest intimate nugget of information about their marriage. The president’s keen political instincts tell him, though he never admits it aloud, that the Kennedys aren’t just the most glamorous couple in America—they’re the most glamorous couple in the entire world. The cool heat of their relationship is an inspiration to lovers everywhere.

The Kennedy children would often play in the Oval Office while the president attended to his official duties. (Cecil Stoughton, White House Photographs, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)

And it’s true: the Kennedys do love each other. JFK is a doting father and husband who cherishes his family. He lets Caroline and John play in the Oval Office as he works, and the presidential bathtub is often filled with floating rubber ducks and pink pigs, because he knows they amuse baby John. He spends a few minutes in Jackie’s bedroom each morning before walking down to the office and likes it when his wife does the same for him each afternoon—waking him up from his nap, the two of them catching up on the news of the day as he gets dressed.

The president’s only complaint about his wife is that Jackie has a profound indifference to fiscal discipline. She spends more money on clothes than the U.S.government pays him to be president. (JFK’s net worth is more than $10 million. He dedicates his $100,000 presidential salary to charities such as the Boy Scouts and the United Negro College Fund.)

Yet there is an enormous contradiction in the Kennedys’ otherwise charmed marriage. The president’s voracious sexual appetite is the elephant that the president rides around on each and every day while pretending that it doesn’t exist.

There’s no way the First Lady can keep up. She’s raising a family, restoring the White House, and juggling a busy social calendar. Jackie would have to be superhuman to meet the president’s physical needs. Plus, he wouldn’t be satisfied with just one woman. The sheer volume of call girls, socialites, starlets, and stewardesses escorted into the White House whenever Jackie and the kids are away is beyond the realm of most men’s moral or physical capacities. It’s gotten to the point where the Secret Service no longer even checks the names and nationalities of all the women Dave Powers procures for the president.

More than one federal agent believes the situation is dangerous. The number of women who have access to the president is, of course, a security breach that could bring down the presidency, whether through blackmail or even, say, covert assassination via hypodermic injection. It is a topic of discussion among the Secret Service. But its job is to protect the president, not lecture him. The agents turn a blind eye to his behavior, and some even provide cover for him. Being a member of the White House detail means being married to the job, and the fifty to eighty hours of overtime every month can increase a Secret Service agent’s paycheck by more than $1,000 a year. An agent would be a fool to give that up for the sake of a morality lesson.

The White House press corps also looks the other way. The president’s private life is none of their business, or that of the public’s. White House reporters know that the president cherishes loyalty and will cut them off from full access if he doesn’t get it. Not a word about suspected infidelities is printed or broadcast. In fact, the Washington bureau chief for Newsweek, Ben Bradlee, a very close friend of the president’s, will forever claim to know nothing about JFK’s philandering.

Meanwhile, the president is having sex with Bradlee’s sister-in-law.

Sometimes the objects of Kennedy’s flirtations actually work in the White House, as in the case of Jackie’s secretary, Pamela Turnure, and Evelyn Lincoln’s assistant, Priscilla Wear. This makes the president’s courting easier from a logistical and security standpoint, but brings about its own unique dangers.

For instance, the president is quite fond of the occasional afternoon swim with the two twentysomething secretaries Priscilla Wear and Jill Cowen—nicknamed Fiddle and Faddle by the Secret Service. A Secret Service agent is always positioned outside the door to make sure no one enters.

But one day the First Lady appeared at the pool door, eager to go for a swim. This had never before happened. The panic-stricken agent barred the door and tried to explain to Jackie that she was not allowed to use the pool of the very White House she was so lovingly restoring.

Inside, JFK heard the commotion, quickly pulled on his robe, and fled the pool just before he could be caught. Agents would later recall that his large wet footprints and the smaller prints of his female swim partners left a very clear trail, which Jackie did not see, having left in a huff.

*   *   *

Even as one part of the president’s brain strategizes clever ways to deal with Fidel Castro, Nikita Khrushchev, and Charles de Gaulle, another part strategizes ways to have as much sex as he wants without Jackie walking in on him. And as Kennedy gets more and more comfortable in the White House, his affairs get more and more outrageous.

“We got to the point where we’d say, ‘What else is new?’” one member of the Kennedy Secret Service detail later remembered. “There were women everywhere. Very often, depending on what shift you were on, you’d either see them going up, or you’d see them coming out in the morning. People were vacuuming and the ushers were around. There were several of them that were regular visitors. Not when Jackie was there, however.”

When Kennedy goes more than a few days without extramarital sex, he becomes a different man—so much so that the Secret Service breathes a sigh of relief whenever Jackie takes the kids away for the weekend. “When she was there, it was no fun,” a longtime agent would later admit. “He just had headaches. You’d really see him droop because he wasn’t getting laid. He was like a rooster getting hit with a water hose.”

Sex is John Kennedy’s Achilles’ heel. Why in the world does he do this to Jackie? And what is he doing to the nation in the process?

*   *   *

Just a few short weeks after being named attorney general, Bobby Kennedy received a special file from J. Edgar Hoover, the pug-nosed and Machiavellian head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In the file was evidence about the president’s extramarital affairs. It turns out that while the newspapers were looking the other way, the FBI had been tracking JFK’s liaisons since the late 1940s, because he was seeing a woman thought to be a spy for Nazi Germany. The file is Hoover’s idea of job security. He wants everybody to know the FBI will never be diminished—and that there’s nothing illicit going on in America that he doesn’t know about. For reasons of national security, not even the president of the United States is above the scrutiny of the FBI.

In early 1962, as President Kennedy’s visit to Palm Springs is being planned, a Justice Department investigation into organized crime reveals that singer Frank Sinatra is deeply involved with the Mafia. This is trouble for the Kennedys—Americans know that Sinatra not only supports the president but is also a close personal friend. And if that isn’t enough to compromise the attorney general and the president of the United States, their sister Patricia’s husband, movie actor Peter Lawford, is a member of Sinatra’s famous Rat Pack.

Making the matter more delicate is a brand-new file from Hoover delivered to Bobby just a few weeks before the Palm Springs trip. This one indicates that the president of the United States is having sex with a consort of Sam Giancana, not only one of the most notorious mobsters in the country, but also at the top of the list of Mafia kingpins whom Bobby Kennedy is trying to bring down. The woman’s name is Judith Campbell, and Hoover is describing her as a major security risk. Unbeknownst to Patricia Kennedy Lawford, her husband owes that affiliation to her family heritage. Sinatra has long wanted to be closer to the throne of power. Once he realized that the Kennedys were on the verge of becoming the most powerful family in America, he allowed Lawford into his inner circle. In addition, it was Patricia Kennedy Lawford who bankrolled the script for Oceans 11, assuming her husband would costar with Sinatra. But Dean Martin was given the role instead. Sinatra treats Peter Lawford like a hanger-on, suspecting that Patricia Kennedy Lawford, like most people outside the Hollywood bubble, will do almost anything to bask in the reflected glow of movie stars’ fame.

And Sinatra is correct. Despite numerous snubs, the Lawfords remain keen to be part of the Rat Pack “vibe.”

Thus, the woman who extended Sinatra’s invitation for JFK to stay in his Palm Springs home on his visit to the city is none other than Patricia Kennedy Lawford.

After reading Hoover’s Sinatra file, Bobby Kennedy tells the president to stay somewhere else in Palm Springs. Bobby doesn’t care that this slight might sever a long-standing political relationship with Sinatra, who not only campaigned extensively on behalf of Kennedy in 1960, but also worked overtime to coordinate the inaugural gala.

The truth is that Bobby has no choice. Sinatra has had repeated contact with ten of the biggest names in organized crime. The FBI reports detail not only the times and dates when the singer is phoning Mafia heads from home, but also reveal that the mobsters are dialing his private number. “The nature of Sinatra’s work may, on occasion, bring him into contact with underworld figures,” reads the report. “But this does not account for his friendship and/or financial involvement with people such as Joe and Rocco Fischetti, cousins of Al Capone, Paul Emilio D’Amato, John Formosa and Sam Giancana—all of whom are on the list of racketeers.”

The FBI has been keeping files on Sinatra since the late 1940s, chronicling his associations with other famous gangsters such as Lucky Luciano and Mickey Cohen. As early as February 1947 there were reports that he had vacationed in Havana with Luciano and his bodyguards, and that the trio were seen together at “the race track, the gambling casino, and at private parties.” What made these sightings so extraordinary was that Luciano had recently been paroled from prison and deported to Sicily. Such a high-profile appearance in Havana was his way of thumbing his nose at U.S. law enforcement.

President Kennedy was once close friends with Frank Sinatra, shown here in California. (AFP/Getty Images)

The list of alleged associations goes on and on. Bobby’s true surprise about Sinatra, however, is not that the singer is connected with the Mafia. Rather, it’s that the FBI has evidence linking the Kennedy White House with organized crime through the singer. In fact, Hoover has years of files documenting the close relationship between Sinatra, the Kennedys, and high-profile members of the Mafia such as Giancana—who wears a sapphire pinkie ring given to him by none other than Frank Sinatra. The most damning bits of the report state that Giancana frequently visits Sinatra’s Palm Springs estate. Agents also found a number of calls from Giancana’s good friend Judith Campbell to Evelyn Lincoln, the president’s secretary, suggesting a clear link between the Kennedy White House and organized crime.

Frank Sinatra and John Kennedy have shared many laughs, many drinks, and, as the FBI suggests, a woman or two. In a separate investigation in February 1960, the FBI observed JFK at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas with the Rat Pack and noted that “show girls from all over town were running in and out of the Senator’s suite.” Sinatra and the Rat Pack sang the national anthem to open the 1960 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles. Sinatra has visited the Kennedys’ family estate at Hyannis Port and once startled guests by performing an impromptu concert at the living room piano. Sinatra even reworded his 1959 hit song “High Hopes” to make it an anthem for the Kennedy campaign.

There are also rumors that the Kennedys used the Mafia to help influence voters during the 1960 election.

The file is just a warning: Hoover is letting Bobby know that the connection between the Kennedys and organized crime is on the verge of becoming widespread public knowledge. And only Hoover can stop that.

Despite their significant history, JFK listens to Bobby and cuts Sinatra off in an instant. They’re done. The singer has become a snare that could potentially entangle Kennedy and bring him down—and no friendship is worth the presidency. Ruthless might be a word commonly associated with Bobby, but now and again the president can be just as cold-blooded.

*   *   *

Bobby phones Peter Lawford to break the news that the president will not be staying with Sinatra. Lawford owes his career to Sinatra. He fears the man and is reluctant to make the call to Sinatra canceling the presidential weekend.

So JFK himself gets on the phone to Lawford. “As President, I just can’t stay at Sinatra’s and sleep in the same bed that Sam Giancana or some other hood slept in,” he tells his brother-in-law. Kennedy then demands two favors. The first is to find him someplace else to rendezvous with Monroe during his weekend in Palm Springs. The second is to buck up and break the news to Frank.

Peter Lawford has no choice but to make the calls. Chris Dumphy, a Florida Republican, connects Lawford with Bing Crosby, solving Lawford’s first problem. The president’s womanizing is an open secret. Crosby, who is out of town, suspects what might go on at his house, but he doesn’t care. He’s worked in Hollywood long enough to know that infidelity is as common as sunrise.

Delivering the news to Sinatra is not so simple.

The forty-six-year-old singer has been anticipating this visit for months. He has purchased extra land next to his property and built cottages for the Secret Service. He has installed special state-of-the-art phone lines. A gold plaque has been hung in the bedroom the president will use, forever commemorating the night when “John F. Kennedy Slept Here.” Pictures of JFK are hung all over the main house. A flagpole is erected so that the presidential standard can fly over the compound. And most important, Sinatra has built a special new cement landing pad for the president’s helicopter. Sinatra is giddy about the visit. So giddy, in fact, that it doesn’t even bother him that the president will be rendezvousing with Sinatra’s former girlfriend, Marilyn Monroe.

The truth is, the Kennedys are somewhat embarrassed that Sinatra believes his home will become the western White House. It’s not that the Kennedy clan doesn’t like Sinatra—although Jackie can’t stand him—but they prefer to keep the flamboyant singer at arm’s length.

Finally, Lawford breaks the news by phone. Sinatra listens, but only for as long as it takes to realize that he is being cast out of the president’s circle of friends. The singer slams down the receiver and hurls the phone to the floor. “Do you want to know where he’s staying?” Sinatra screams to his valet. “Bing Crosby’s house. That’s where. And he’s a Republican!”

Sinatra will never forget this slight. He calls Bobby Kennedy every name in the book, then phones Lawford back and cuts him off from his inner circle. He races around his house and tears Kennedy photos from the walls, then finds a sledgehammer and storms outside to single-handedly destroy the concrete helipad.

*   *   *

John Kennedy stands just outside a back door watching the crowd drifting in and out of Bing Crosby’s home. Secret Service agents hover at the edges of the lawn and in the shadows of the palm trees and shrubbery ringing the grounds. Marilyn Monroe is already by the president’s side. There is an intimacy in their movements that leaves no doubt they will be sleeping together tonight.

Monroe has been drinking. A lot. Or so it appears.

The thirty-five-year-old movie star is not a stupid woman, although she often plays that role both on- and offscreen. “I thought you were dumb,” her character in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is told. “I can be smart when it’s important,” she replies, “but most men don’t like it.”

It is a line that Norma Jean Baker herself suggested. After spending much of her youth in foster homes, she began modeling in her teens and landed a movie contract in 1946, changing her name to Marilyn Monroe. Born a brunette, she dyed her hair and began cultivating the “dumb blonde” persona that became her calling card. Her career path led her to a number of high-profile performances in movies such as How to Marry a Millionaire, The Seven Year Itch, and Some Like It Hot. She has been married and divorced three times, and has developed a reputation for abusing alcohol and prescription drugs. Substance abuse is slowly destroying her career. But she is still voluptuous, vivacious, and clever enough in her lucid moments that her true intelligence reveals itself.

Kennedy first met Monroe at a dinner party in the 1950s. Their relationship ramped up on July 15, 1960, the night he accepted the Democratic nomination for president. The two flirted that night, much to the dismay of Kennedy’s staff, who were immediately concerned the pair would be caught having an affair during the campaign. Patricia Kennedy Lawford went so far as to pull Marilyn aside and warn her not to have sex with her brother.

But that was almost two years ago—and ironically, it was Patricia who invited Marilyn and JFK to a dinner party at her New York home in late February 1962. Marilyn marched in late, as was her custom. She’d been drinking sherry. Her dress was a small beads-and-sequins affair. “It was the tightest goddam dress I ever saw on a woman,” the legendary show business manager Milt Ebbins would later remember of Monroe’s pre-party preparations—specifically of pulling the dress on over Monroe’s head: “We couldn’t get it past her hips. Of course, typical of Marilyn, she wasn’t wearing any underwear either. So there I was, on my knees in front of her … pulling down this dress with all my might, trying to get it [down] past her big ass.”

Ebbins was eventually successful with the dress, and JFK immediately gravitated to Monroe’s side as she sashayed into the party. A photographer attempted to take their picture, but the president quickly turned his back so they wouldn’t be photographed together. For good measure, the Secret Service demanded the film.

Before the night was over, JFK had casually invited Marilyn to meet him in Palm Springs on March 24. To close the deal, he confided that “Jackie won’t be there.”

*   *   *

Now Marilyn Monroe wears a loose robe as the party swirls at the Crosby estate. She is “calm and relaxed,” in the opinion of one partygoer.

The president is entranced by her wit and intellect and would be thrilled to add such a famous sex symbol to his list of conquests. He also finds her nurturing. After Kennedy complains of his chronic back pain, Monroe phones her friend Ralph Roberts, an actor and masseur knowledgeable about back issues. When she puts Kennedy on the phone, Roberts doesn’t know it’s the president he’s talking to, but he can’t help but think that the man on the other end sounds just like John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Roberts offers a quick diagnosis and hangs up after a few minutes, thinking to himself that Marilyn is once again up to no good.

In some ways, she can’t help herself. Monroe has been married to two very famous and powerful men—baseball player Joe DiMaggio and playwright Arthur Miller—but JFK eclipses them by far. “Marilyn Monroe is a soldier,” she later tells her therapist, speaking in the third person. “Her commander-in-chief is the greatest and most powerful man in the world. The first duty of a soldier is to obey the commander-in-chief. He says do that, you do it.” The attorney general has caught her attention, as well. “It’s like the Navy—the president is the captain and Bobby is his executive officer,” she will tell her therapist. “Bobby would do anything for his country, and so would I. I will never embarrass him. As long as I have memory, I have John Fitzgerald Kennedy.”

Yet despite her passion and beauty, Marilyn Monroe is damaged goods. Her three marriages aren’t socially acceptable in the Kennedys’ Catholic world, nor is her affair with Frank Sinatra. JFK knows that she broke up Arthur Miller’s previous marriage so that she could marry the playwright. More ominously, the president suspects that Monroe has visions of moving into the White House sometime soon. He has even made a point of telling her that she’s “not First Lady material.”

No, Marilyn is not going to replace Jackie, no matter what the movie star might believe during the two nights she spends with the president in Palm Springs. Marilyn gives JFK a chrome Ronson Adonis cigarette lighter as a gift to remind him of their special time together, although the president certainly needs no reminder of his time with the world’s leading sex symbol.

*   *   *

News of the Kennedy-Monroe liaison would be about as explosive as it gets. The question lingering in the minds of Kennedy’s Secret Service detail and the president’s close-knit Irish Mafia cronies is why the president continues to take such risks. Some believe it’s a carryover from the old days of the Kennedy heritage in Ireland, where the leader of a clan commonly had free rein to sleep with women outside of marriage. Until his recent stroke, the president’s father, Joseph Kennedy, behaved in just such a manner.

In addition, some believe that John Kennedy’s personal tragedies—the death of his brother and of his infant child, and his own brushes with death—have given him a fatalistic attitude. All the sex is his carpe diem way of living life to the utmost.

And then there is the issue of his chronic physical pain. John Kennedy’s appearance may be robust, but he suffers from a nervous stomach, back pain, and Addison’s disease. His physical activity is limited to walking, sailing, and the occasional nine holes of golf. He can barely ride a horse. And the Kennedy family’s legendary games of touch football don’t include him as much as they used to.

Sex is the president’s physical release of choice. He’s an adrenaline junkie, and his psyche requires illicit excitement. As he told a family friend, “The chase is more fun than the kill.”

*   *   *

“Happy Birthday, Mr. President.”

Two months after their weekend in Palm Springs, Marilyn Monroe stands before a dazzled crowd in New York’s Madison Square Garden, singing the traditional birthday song in the most salacious manner possible. Her skintight dress leaves little to the imagination, both front and back, even as her breathless words inspire a thousand questions. Marilyn, still stung by JFK’s blunt assessment that she is not First Lady material, is desperately trying to rekindle the Palm Springs nights of romance.

“Happy Birthday to you,” she purrs into the microphone.

The date is May 19, 1962, ten days before JFK’s actual birthday. Jackie, once again, is not in attendance, but she knows all about Marilyn. She’s not so much hurt as disgusted, correctly sensing that the president is taking advantage of an emotionally troubled woman who is easy prey for such a powerful man.

The president never comes in contact with the seemingly tipsy Marilyn as he climbs to the lectern at Madison Square Garden. But he does favor her with a lupine gaze that one journalist will later remember as “quite a sight to behold, and if I ever saw an appreciation of feminine beauty in the eyes of a man, it was in John F. Kennedy’s at that moment.”

Marilyn Monroe has become so obsessed with JFK that she calls the White House constantly, but her singing performance falls on deaf ears. The president has moved on, putting as much distance between himself and Marilyn as he did between himself and Frank Sinatra.

“Happy Birthday, Mr. President.” Marilyn Monroe serenaded JFK at his birthday gala in 1962. (Getty Images)

Like Sinatra, Marilyn is a snare that could easily entangle Kennedy and bring down his presidency. This is where the pragmatist in JFK returns, overriding his libido. He is willing to take great personal risks to satisfy his sexual needs, but he does not gamble when it comes to remaining in power. Better to have Monroe and Sinatra and the Mafia as enemies whom he can view from a wary distance, rather than as friends who could drag him down.

At the lectern before the party faithful in New York City, the president adopts the chaste mien of an altar boy. “I can now retire from politics after having ‘Happy Birthday’ sung to me in such a sweet and wholesome way,” the president speaks into the microphone, his wry delivery suggesting that he is above such sexual shenanigans.

But the president hasn’t given up on extramarital affairs. He is just beginning a new long-term relationship with a nineteen-year-old virgin whom he deflowers on Jackie’s bed.

*   *   *

The presidency is a daunting and lonely job. Moments like the Madison Square Garden party offer a welcome respite from the pressure. JFK basks in the birthday appreciation, which comes in the midst of a campaign rally that raises more than $1 million for the Democratic Party.

The president has no way of knowing that he will celebrate this special day just one more time.

*   *   *

In the faraway Soviet city of Minsk, Lee Harvey Oswald has finally cleared the tangle of red tape that has prevented him from returning home.

The plan now is for him, Marina, and five-week-old June Lee to take the train to the American embassy in Moscow to pick up their travel documents.

On May 18, Oswald is discharged from his job at the Gorizont (Horizon) Electronics Factory. Few are sad to see him go. The plant director thinks Oswald is careless and oversensitive and lacks initiative. Even Marina thinks her new husband is lazy and knows he resents taking orders.

The Oswalds arrive in Moscow on May 24, 1962, the same day that navy test pilot Scott Carpenter becomes the second American astronaut to orbit the earth. President Kennedy is quick to commend Carpenter for his courage and skill, even as he grapples with Congress over the issue of affordable nationwide health care.

On June 1 the Oswalds board a train from Moscow to Holland. Lee Harvey carries a promissory note from the U.S. embassy for $435.71 to help start his life anew in America. On June 2, as Secretary of the Navy John Connally wins a runoff to become the Democratic nominee for governor of Texas, the Oswalds’ train crosses the Soviet border at Brest. Two days later they board the SS Maasdam, bound for America, where they stay belowdecks most of the journey. Oswald is ashamed of Marina’s cheap dresses and doesn’t want her to be seen in public. He passes the time in their small cabin writing rants about his growing disillusionment with governmental power.

Marina and Lee Harvey Oswald with their daughter, June Lee, in 1962. (Getty Images)

The Maasdam docks in Hoboken, New Jersey—Frank Sinatra’s hometown—on June 13, 1962. The Oswalds pass through customs without incident and take a small room at New York City’s Times Square Hotel. The plan is to stay there until they can afford to fly to Texas, where Oswald’s brother Robert lives. There, Oswald can finally settle down and find work.

The next morning, in far-off Vietnam, South Vietnamese soldiers are flown aboard U.S. helicopters to combat a Communist stronghold, a move that forces President Kennedy to backpedal publicly on the issue of direct U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia, a war that he believes is vital to stanching the worldwide spread of communism.

Meanwhile, thanks to a loan from his brother, Lee Harvey Oswald and his family fly to Dallas. The city simmers with a rage that mirrors Oswald’s ongoing personal unhappiness in many ways. The Deep South swung in President Kennedy’s favor during the election, but there are pockets of militant anger about Kennedy being the first Roman Catholic president, his desire to bring about racial equality, and what some perceive as his Communist tendencies.

This is the environment into which the Oswald family arrives. They land at a Dallas area airport called Love Field, where the president and First Lady will touch down aboard Air Force One in seventeen short months.

Oswald is unhappy that his return to the United States has not attracted widespread media attention—or any media attention, for that matter. But even as he fumes that the press is nowhere in sight, he has no idea that he is being secretly watched—by a very powerful concern.

6

AUGUST 23, 1962

WASHINGTON, D.C./BEIRUT, LEBANON

MIDDAY

The president is impotent.

Or so thinks Nikita Khrushchev, leader of the Soviet Union. Not physically, of course, but in the bruising global arena of realpolitik.

Khrushchev has watched Kennedy closely since the Bay of Pigs, searching for signs of the same weakness and indecisiveness that defined the U.S. president’s handling of that crisis. The sixty-eight-year-old Khrushchev, who came to power after a brutal political battle to replace Joseph Stalin, well knows how to evaluate an opponent’s strengths and weaknesses. He does not see a worthy adversary in Kennedy. September will mark Khrushchev’s tenth anniversary in power. He plans on marking the occasion with a celebration of Soviet dominance in the world. If he can humiliate an American president in the process, so much the better.

The Russians, as the Soviets are often called, are flaunting their control of outer space by sending not one but two spaceships into orbit at the same time. The cosmonauts piloting each craft then further parade Soviet mastery of missile technology by speaking to each other through a device known as a radio telephone.

In addition, Khrushchev and his Politburo are thumbing their noses at an international nuclear test ban by exploding two 40-megaton nuclear weapons over the Arctic, one week apart.

They are also building an eighty-seven-mile-long wall through the heart of Berlin, Germany. The wall separates the Soviet-controlled sector from the rest of the city, which is controlled by the Western Allies. The barrier is not meant to keep people out, but to imprison the citizens of Communist East Germany, preventing them from fleeing to the freedom of West Germany. The results are horrific. On August 23, 1962, East German border guards shoot a nineteen-year-old railway policeman who is trying to sprint to the West through a hole in the still-unfinished wall. They watch as the young man struggles to crawl the final few yards to freedom, then do nothing to help him as he collapses and dies.

The same thing happened a week earlier, when another young German was shot while trying to escape East Germany. Again, border guards watched for an hour as the man slowly bled to death. No one was allowed to go to his rescue. Riots broke out in West Berlin to protest the Soviet behavior, but it continues without apology.

Through it all, President Kennedy has refrained from making public threats or even critiquing the Soviet atrocities. Still, the American people overwhelmingly support JFK. He is the most popular president in modern American history, with an average approval rating of 70.1 percent—almost six points higher than Eisenhower’s and a whopping 25 points higher than Harry Truman’s. But the public will not forgive another misstep like the Bay of Pigs, so JFK tiptoes carefully through the high-stakes arena of foreign policy.

*   *   *

Lyndon Johnson does not tiptoe when it comes to foreign relations. The vice president—whose Secret Service code name is Volunteer—now stands up in the front seat of a convertible in Beirut, Lebanon. This “Paris of the Middle East” loves him. He waves to the huge crowds lining the road as he is driven to the Phoenicia Hotel.

No matter where in the world he travels, the vice president wades into crowds, handing out ballpoint pens and cigarette lighters with the initials LBJ stamped on them. Then he launches into a pep talk. Whether it’s a leper in Dakar or a shirtless beggar in Karachi, the vice president is keen to shake his hand and tell him that the American dream is not a myth—that there is hope, even in the midst of poverty.

And best of all, LBJ believes this. Johnson was raised in poverty himself. He knows firsthand the ravages of neglect and substandard living conditions. In many ways, the vice president has a far deeper emotional connection with the unwashed crowds along the side of the road than with the wealthy diplomats who host him.

Johnson is larger than life, a towering dynamo with basset hound bags under his eyes and sweat rings soaking his shirt. Back in Washington, he mopes around, bemoaning his lack of power. But when he travels abroad, Johnson is a rock star. His foreign antics are becoming legendary, particularly his impulsive habit of halting motorcades so he can jump out of his personal convertible limousine and into crowds to press the flesh.

Beirut is no different. This is the first layover on a nineteen-day trip that will also see stops in Iran, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, and Italy. Lebanon was just supposed to be a refueling stop for his 707, but when Johnson learns that he is the highest-ranking American official ever to visit the Land of Cedars, he can’t help himself. The refueling stop suddenly becomes an official visit, and the vice president is soon whisked from the airport and into the heart of Beirut.

As his motorcade slows down, Johnson spots a crowd of children at a roadside melon stand. He orders his driver to halt. Whipping off his sunglasses to make eye contact, Johnson bounds over to the startled kids and tells them about the power of the American dream. Some of the children look confused. A teenager wearing a “Champion Spark Plugs” cap is told that the United States stands behind the “liberty and integrity” of Lebanon.

Johnson’s voice is booming, and he waves his arms as he speaks. Secret Service agents hasten to surround him, once again annoyed at the vice president’s ignorance about security. Then, in a flash, Johnson is back in the front seat of his car, standing tall, waving to the crowds with both hands as he continues into the heart of Beirut.

Lyndon Johnson is a persnickety traveler. In addition to his limousine, he travels with cases of Cutty Sark scotch and a special shower nozzle whose needlelike jets of water he prefers. He demands a seven-foot-long mattress in each hotel room, to accommodate his large frame—not that he sleeps much: long after his staff has gone to sleep, LBJ is still at work, making phone calls back to Washington and reading diplomatic cables.

Originally, Johnson fought JFK over being used as a roving ambassador, but now he has come to love this aspect of his job. In Washington his craving for authority has many in the White House referring to him as Seward, a reference to Abraham Lincoln’s power-hungry secretary of state. But on the road, Johnson truly does have power. He speaks for the president, but just as often veers off message to speak his own mind, which are moments he relishes.

But the Kennedys, John and Bobby, are annoyed with Johnson, especially when he speaks irresponsibly. On one trip to Asia, he praises South Vietnam’s president, Ngo Dinh Diem, a man who tortured and killed an estimated fifty thousand suspected Communists. Incredibly, Johnson pronounces Diem to be the “Winston Churchill of Asia,” a pronouncement that leads some to question the vice president’s very sanity.

In Thailand, LBJ conducts a 3:00 A.M. press conference in his pajamas. On that same trip, he is warned that patting people on the head is considered an offense in Thai culture—whereupon he immediately bounds onto a local bus and rubs his very large hands on the heads of its passengers.

Johnson does one better in Saigon: while holding a press conference in his steamy hotel room, he suddenly strips naked, towels the sweat from his body, and puts on a fresh suit—all while answering questions from the media.

But there’s no need for disrobing in Beirut. The Phoenicia Hotel is just two blocks from the blue Mediterranean. The August heat is tempered by a cool sea breeze. This will be one of the longest trips Johnson has ever undertaken, but the vice president is reveling in every minute, because for each one of these nineteen days away from the United States, he will be the most powerful and respected man in the room.

*   *   *

At the same time, at home, Bobby Kennedy is engaged in a completely different power struggle, one best epitomized by an incident that happened seven years ago.

Mississippi, 1955. A fourteen-year-old African American boy named Emmett Louis “Bobo” Till is visiting relatives in the Mississippi Delta town of Money. Till is from Chicago and has come to the Deep South to see for himself where his mother grew up. He had polio as a small child, which caused him to develop a stuttering problem. But though just five foot, four inches, Emmett now looks mature enough that he often passes for an adult. A close look at his smooth face, however, reveals that he is still very much a child.

Emmett’s mother has warned him that there is a big difference between Chicago and Mississippi, and she isn’t talking about the weather. Just a week before Emmett’s trip south, a black man was shot dead in front of a courthouse not far from Money. His killers will soon be acquitted.

Emmett tells his mother he understands the southern racial climate and promises to be careful. This will turn out to be a false promise.

The teenager arrives at the small two-bedroom home of his sixty-four-year-old great-uncle Moses Wright on August 21, 1955. Three days later, on a Wednesday, he and some of his teenage relatives drift over to Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market, a small mom-and-pop operation that caters mostly to local sharecroppers. It is 7:30 at night. The twenty-four-year-old owner, Roy Bryant, a former soldier, is away in Texas, hauling shrimp from New Orleans to San Antonio. His twenty-one-year-old wife, Carolyn, a petite woman with black hair and dark eyes, is running the store.

Emmett is among eight young blacks who pull up to the store in a 1946 Ford. All are between thirteen and nineteen years old. They meet up with another group of black teens that is already playing checkers at tables on the store’s front porch. Emmett, hundreds of miles from home and trying his best to fit in, shows the group a picture of a white girl in his wallet and then brags that she was a sexual conquest.

The crowd, which now numbers almost twenty teenage boys and girls, can’t believe their ears. Such an intermingling of the races is unheard of in Mississippi. Public restrooms, drinking fountains, and restaurants there are segregated. A black man would never even dream of shaking hands with a white man, unless the white man extended his hand first. Blacks lower their gaze when talking to whites, always showing them respect, referring to them as “Mister” or “Missus” or “Miss,” and never by their first name. So Emmett Till’s claim that he not only spoke with a white girl but also took her clothes off and lay with her is met with monumental disbelief.

So they tell Emmett to prove it. They dare him to go inside the grocery and talk to Carolyn Bryant. Sensing danger, Emmett tries to back out. But that spurs the group on, and they begin taunting him for being chicken. Emmett surrenders. He pulls open the screen door and steps into the store. He walks over to the candy case, where he asks for two cents’ worth of bubble gum. When Carolyn hands him the gum, Emmett places his hand over hers and asks the married mother of two young boys for a date.

Back home in Chicago, a man touching a woman’s hand might not be considered a big deal. But in the Deep South, skin-on-skin contact between blacks and whites is forbidden. When money is exchanged in stores, a black person will place it on the counter rather than into the white person’s hand. Similarly, when the change is returned, it is also placed on the counter. And Emmett didn’t just touch a married white woman, he asked her for a date.

Carolyn pulls away, astonished. Emmett reaches for her again, this time around her waist. “You needn’t be afraid of me, baby,” he assures her. “I been with white girls before.”

Angrily, she pushes him away. Emmett finally leaves the store. But he is soon followed by the furious woman, who is racing to her car to get her husband’s handgun. It’s getting late, and she now fears for her safety.

But Emmett Till means her no harm. He is in the habit of substituting whistling for words when his stutter sets in, as he does now, whistling at Bryant. Carolyn Bryant is shocked again. And so are the black teenagers watching the scene unfold. They “knew the whistle would cause trouble,” the official FBI report will read. “And they left in haste, taking Till with them.”

When Roy Bryant returns home and hears what happened, he wastes no time in conducting his own personal criminal investigation. On August 28, at 2:30 A.M., he bangs on the door at the home of Emmett’s great-uncle, Moses Wright. Roy is accompanied by his friend, J. W. “Big” Milam.

Big Milam is twelve years older than Roy Bryant. He is a hulking, extroverted Mississippian who quit school after the ninth grade and fought the Germans in World War II. Each man carries a Colt .45 handgun—a revolver for Bryant and an automatic for Milam. The men force Moses to take them to “the nigger who did the talking.”

A frightened Moses leads the two men into a small back bedroom, where Emmett and three cousins share a bed. Big Milam shines a flashlight in the boy’s face. “You the nigger who did the talking?”

“Yeah,” comes the response.

“Don’t say yeah to me. I’ll blow your head off. Get your clothes on.”

Moses and his wife beg for the two men to reconsider, even offering them money to let the whole thing slide, but Roy and Big won’t listen. They march Emmett out to Big’s pickup truck and drive off into the night.

Their plan is to take Emmett to a cliff along the Tallahatchie River, where they will pistol-whip the youth and scare him by pretending that they’re going to throw him over the side. But in the dark, Big can’t find the spot. After three hours of driving, Big drives the pickup to his own house, where he has a two-room toolshed in his backyard. They bring Emmett inside and pistol-whip him, each man smashing his face hard with his gun. But instead of backing down, Emmett is defiant. “You bastards. I’m not afraid of you. I’m as good as you are,” he tells them, his face badly bruised but not bleeding.

This sets Big Milam into a rage. “I’m no bully,” Milam will explain to Look magazine. “I never hurt a nigger in my life. I like niggers—in their place—I know how to work ’em. But I just decided it was time a few people got put on notice. As long as I live and can do anything about it, niggers are gonna stay in their place.”

But apparently, Emmett doesn’t know his place, because he continues to tell his captors that he is their equal, and even brags about having sex with white women. This belief in the equality of blacks and whites, something that Emmett finds relatively common in integrated Chicago, infuriates Milam and Bryant. “I stood there in that shed and listened to that nigger throw that poison at me,” Milam will remember. “And I just made up my mind. ‘Chicago boy,’ I said, ‘I’m tired of ’em sending your kind down here to stir up trouble. Goddam you, I’m going to make an example of you—just so everybody can know how me and my folks stand.’”

Big and Roy are no longer interested in just scaring Emmett. Now they want to murder him.

Big remembers that a nearby cotton company has just changed the fan on one of their gins. The replaced part is perfect for what Big now has in mind. The fan is enormous—three feet across and weighing seventy-five pounds. They drive to the Progressive Ginning Company, steal the discarded fan, and continue on to a hidden spot along the Tallahatchie where Big likes to hunt squirrels. They force Emmett to carry the fan to the river’s edge, then they force him to strip.

“You still as good as I am?” Big asks.

“Yeah.” Even standing naked before men two decades older than he, Emmett Till finds a way to be courageous. Blood streams down his face, and his cheekbones are broken. One of his eyes has been gouged out.

“You still ‘had’ white women?”

“Yeah.”

Big raises his .45 and shoots Emmett point-blank in the head. The bullet makes a small hole as it enters near the right ear and kills the fourteen-year-old in an instant. Big and Roy then run a strand of barbwire around Emmett’s neck and attach it to the fan. They roll his body, anchored by the giant hunk of metal, into the river, and then drive home to wash out the blood that’s pooling in the back of the pickup.

Despite the heavy fan tied around his neck, Emmett’s body drifts with the current. Three days later, fishermen find his bloated corpse bobbing in the water some eight miles downstream. His head is almost flattened from the pistol blows.

When Emmett’s body is returned to Chicago, his mother insists on an open casket at the funeral, so that the whole world can see the crime perpetrated against her son. Pictures of Emmett Till’s battered and flattened head are published in magazines nationwide. Tens of thousands attend the viewing, and public outrage about the murder spreads across the country.

But not in Mississippi. Though police later arrest Roy Bryant and Big Milam, both men are acquitted of the crime by a jury of their peers (whites) three months later. Taking advantage of the judicial concept of double jeopardy, which does not allow an individual to be tried twice for the same crime, the two men later boast to a Look magazine writer about the day they murdered Emmett Till.

*   *   *

Until 1962 JFK was not eager to lead the fight for civil rights, knowing that taking a pro-black position could hurt him within the Democratic Party. In fact, the president’s record on race issues was middling at best when he was in the Senate. Since the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling by the Supreme Court, which ordered that schools be integrated, tension between whites and blacks in the South has reached an all-time high, and events such as the murder of Emmett Till are no longer an exception. “Human blood may stain southern soil in many places because of this decision,” an editorial in a Mississippi newspaper correctly prophesied shortly after the ruling.

But beginning with his May 1961 Law Day address at the University of Georgia Law School, Bobby Kennedy made it plain he would use his Justice Department as a bully pulpit to enforce civil rights throughout America, particularly in the Deep South. He is taking up an exhausting, never-ending battle, one that originated on the day the first African slaves were brought to America in 1619. The Kennedy brothers do so with the knowledge that this intense fight will gain them a whole new group of very dangerous enemies.

Bobby Kennedy was instrumental in helping civil rights activists known as Freedom Riders travel by bus into the South to fight segregation in 1961. The Greyhound Company, fearing its buses might be vandalized, had initially denied the northern activists passage. Kennedy pressured Greyhound, and the company relented.

But RFK could not stop what happened next. As soon as the activists tried to get off some of the buses, they were beaten with pipes and clubs by angry mobs. Local law enforcement did little to stop the brutality.

Despite—or perhaps even because of—the violence, the civil rights movement continues to gain momentum, and Robert Kennedy is now paying close attention to one of its most prominent leaders, a thirty-three-year-old charismatic Baptist minister named Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Reverend King is as intense and enigmatic as President Kennedy. He is a man of deep religious values who also sleeps with women outside his marriage. His speaking tone and rhetoric are bold and impassioned, but he advocates the same nonviolence to achieve his methods as Gandhi used in India. King also appears to be a Communist sympathizer. This puts Bobby in the unlikely position of having to monitor King to determine whether the reverend is indeed a Communist, while at the same time ensuring that King is protected from harm and guaranteed free speech as he pushes the cause of civil rights. One assassination attempt has already been made on King, when a deranged black woman stabbed him in the chest in 1958, and there are constant fears that the reverend will one day be lynched during his travels through the Deep South.

Truth be told, the civil rights movement is an enormous headache for Bobby Kennedy. His main enforcement arm, the FBI, has little concern for civil rights, or even for making inroads into Bobby’s other major legal concern, organized crime. Instead, J. Edgar Hoover is entirely focused on stopping the spread of communism. He is all too happy to play the part of Pontius Pilate, washing his hands of racial bloodshed. In fact, in 1962 the FBI has only a handful of black agents in the field.

FBI director J. Edgar Hoover kept dossiers on many civil rights leaders and even had a file on the president. (Abbie Rowe, White House Photographs, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)

Hoover, however, does take an interest in Reverend King—but only because of the widespread belief within the FBI that the civil rights movement is part of a larger Communist plot against America. One of the bureau’s division leaders, William C. Sullivan, will characterize King as “the most dangerous Negro of the future in this nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro, and national security.”

*   *   *

The truth—and Bobby Kennedy knows this—is that in large parts of the South, black Americans have little protection from prejudice and violence. Although the Kennedy tradition is to put politics above social concerns, the two brothers raised in affluent northern liberalism have become increasingly interested in righting the wrongs of racial injustice.

J. Edgar Hoover believes this preoccupation is folly and that Reverend King’s comments will one day be forgotten. For Hoover, civil rights are just a passing trend. So he will continue with the political game he’s played since he joined the Justice Department during World War I. He will endure Bobby Kennedy’s overeager style, just as he will continue to chronicle, yet keep silent on, the president’s indiscretions. First and foremost, he will keep his job.

But that doesn’t mean the FBI chief has to like the Kennedy boys—and he doesn’t.

Bobby knows that one of JFK’s first official acts after being reelected in 1964 will be to fire J. Edgar Hoover. So he soldiers on, investigating civil rights violations without the FBI director’s support. It’s tough going. Something as simple as getting a judge approved by the Senate for an open spot in a federal court is stymied when the senator in charge of the subcommittee orders that the proceedings be halted indefinitely. Not surprisingly, the judge up for approval, Thurgood Marshall, is black. And also not surprisingly, the senator who halted the proceedings is white.

But Robert Kennedy is the U.S. attorney general, sworn to uphold the nation’s laws. And as long as young men such as Emmett Till are being lynched for the color of their skin, Bobby has no choice but to wage this war.

*   *   *

It is brutally hot in Fort Worth, Texas, on August 16, 1962. FBI special agents John Fain and Arnold J. Brown, warriors in J. Edgar Hoover’s war against communism, have been waiting all day to see Lee Harvey Oswald. They sit in an unmarked car, just down the street from Oswald’s newly rented duplex apartment on Mercedes Street, right around the corner from the Montgomery Ward department store.

Special Agent Fain is just two months away from finishing his twenty years with the bureau. He’s going to retire to Houston. There, he’ll live off his pension while working for his brother, an orthopedic surgeon. This will mark yet another major career change for the veteran agent. Fain is a complicated man in his mid-fifties who taught school, ran for public office, and passed the Texas state bar before joining the bureau in 1942. The Oswald case is nothing new to him. Back when Oswald first defected to the Soviet Union, it was Fain who was assigned a minor investigation of Oswald’s mother because she had mailed twenty-five dollars to her son in the Soviet Union. When it comes to rooting out Communists, no stone is too small to be left unturned by Hoover’s FBI.

It is also John Fain who spoke face-to-face with Oswald just eight weeks earlier, on June 26, 1962. Oswald’s case has been designated as an “internal security” investigation, based on the belief that his defection might make him a threat to national security. Fain’s job is to find out whether the Russians have trained and equipped Oswald to perform a job against the United States. It is protocol with all internal security investigations to have two agents present, so that all statements can be corroborated.

Something about the first interview, which lasted two hours, doesn’t sit well with Fain. He doesn’t like Oswald’s attitude, thinking him “haughty, arrogant … and insolent.” And his answers to most questions seemed incomplete. Fain has in-depth knowledge of Oswald’s struggle to return to America and knows that the Russians originally would not allow Marina and the baby to leave with him. But Oswald refused to leave without his wife, and the Soviet authorities finally relented. The one question that Oswald has never answered in a completely truthful manner is whether the Russians demanded anything in return for letting him come to America.

John Fain needs that question answered. He’s a very thorough man and takes it upon himself to interview Lee Harvey Oswald one more time.

At 5:30 P.M. the two agents see Oswald sauntering down the street, on his way home from his new job as a welder at the Leslie Machine Shop. Oswald lied on his job application, stating that his Marine Corps discharge was honorable when it was not. Oswald was kicked out of the Corps for a series of minor infractions. He also neglected to tell his employer about his time in the Soviet Union. And while he’s been on the job only a month, Oswald is already sick of the menial labor. He wants to quit and find better work in Dallas.

Fain drives up alongside the walking Oswald. “Hi, Lee. How are you?” he says out the car window. “Would you mind talking with us for just a few minutes?”

“Won’t you come in the house,” Oswald answers politely, remembering Fain from the last interview. Special Agent Brown is a new face. A different agent accompanied Fain back in June.

“Well, we will just talk here,” Fain responds. “We will be alone to ourselves and be informal, and just fine.”

Brown gets out to let Oswald into the backseat. Fain stays up front behind the wheel, but Brown slides in next to Oswald. Fain twists around to explain that they didn’t contact Oswald at work, not wanting to embarrass him with his new employer. And they don’t want to speak with him inside, for fear of rattling Marina. Thus the car.

The three men talk for a little over an hour. The car windows are open just enough to take the edge off the stifling humidity. But the men still perspire—particularly the G-men, in their coats and ties. Oswald has already put in a hard day of blue-collar labor, and the smell of his body odor wafts through the car. Despite the discomfort, Oswald is friendlier than before, less defensive. He explains that he’s been in touch with the Soviet embassy, but only because it is required for Soviet citizens such as Marina to inform the embassy of their location on a regular basis. When pressed on whether this involved discussions with Soviet intelligence officials, Oswald is coy, wondering aloud why anyone would want to discuss spying with a guy like him. “He didn’t feel like he was of any importance to them,” Fain will later testify. “He said that he would cooperate with us and report to us any information that would come to his attention.”

But Fain still is not satisfied. He presses Oswald again and again as to why he went to the Soviet Union in the first place. To the agent, it doesn’t make sense. U.S. Marines are known for their motto, Semper Fidelis, “Always Faithful.” Why would one of them willingly renounce America and take up residence in a nation that poses the greatest threat to the United States?

It is the one question Oswald doesn’t answer. He dances around it, talking about “his own personal reasons” and that “it was something that I did.”

At 6:45, Oswald is released from the car and goes inside his home. His time with the agents was actually a respite from tension in his household. He and Marina have been fighting, sometimes quite violently, for more than six months. The strife has become worse since they came to America. It used to be that Oswald was the only person Marina could talk to in America, because she doesn’t speak English. But now she’s made new friends within Dallas’s small local Russian expat community. Among these is a man named George de Mohrenschildt, who not only may have CIA connections, but also knew Jackie Kennedy when she was a child. De Mohrenschildt was a close friend of Jackie’s aunt Edith Bouvier Beale. Marina’s new friends find her husband rude and take her side in their marital battles.

And the battles are many. Oswald likes to be “the Commander” in their marriage, dictating the details of their life and refusing to let Marina learn English, for fear he’ll lose control over her. She is embarrassed by her bad teeth and wants corrective dental work, but he puts it off. He often plays out his need for power by hitting his wife in anger.

But Marina is no shrinking violet. She screams at him for not making enough money and complains that he is indifferent to her. Their sexual relations are so infrequent that she accuses him of not being a man. She nags him constantly, and when he compares himself with the great men in the historical biographies he enjoys reading, she sarcastically derides him. Marina even writes to a former boyfriend in the Soviet Union, telling him she made a terrible mistake marrying Oswald. Unfortunately for her, the letter is returned for not having enough postage. Oswald opens and reads it, then beats her. Oddly, Marina condones Oswald’s violence. Even that little bit of passion, however misguided, is better than the cold side of his character that she finds so frustrating.

The marital friction, coupled with his surprise FBI interrogation, would normally be enough to send Oswald into one of his trademark rants—the kind where he rails on and on about suppressive governments. But tonight his new copy of the Worker, the newsletter of the American Socialist Workers Party, awaits him. Oswald settles in to read.

It is Special Agent Arnold J. Brown, not John Fain, who prepares the final report concerning the conversation in the car. The papers are submitted on August 30, 1962. But it is Fain, the twenty-year veteran, who will decide if there is any reason to believe that Lee Harvey Oswald is a secret agent for the Soviet Union, planted within the United States to do the nation harm.

Content with the answers Oswald has given them, and looking forward to retirement, Special Agent John Fain requests that the Lee Harvey Oswald internal security investigation now be considered closed. After all, Oswald doesn’t own a gun or otherwise appear to be a threat.

And so the case is closed.

But Lee Harvey Oswald and the FBI will soon meet again.

7

OCTOBER 16, 1962

THE WHITE HOUSE

8:45 A.M.

The president of the United States is rolling around on the bedroom floor with his children. Jack LaLanne is on the television telling JFK, Caroline, and John to touch their toes. Kennedy wears just a T-shirt and underpants. The carpeting and a nearby easy chair are cream-colored, providing perfect accents to the blue-patterned covers on the president’s four-poster canopy bed.

The TV volume is “absolutely full blast” in Jackie’s words, as JFK and his son and daughter tumble around—loud enough that Jackie comes in from her bedroom to see what’s going on. She loves her husband’s lack of self-consciousness and how at ease he is in all situations. But as she can plainly see, morning with the kids is when John Kennedy is at his most relaxed. He dotes on his children, letting Jackie be the disciplinarian, and takes unbridled pleasure in being close to them. She worries about their rambunctious behavior. The president thinks it a blessing. His one great lament is that his bad back prevents him from tossing young John into the air and catching him, a game the president’s son loves. Instead, JFK depends upon members of his staff and even visiting dignitaries to do the throwing for him.

As president, JFK no longer needs to campaign or spend hours in his Senate office. He works at home. What was once a solitary morning ritual has become a family affair. He has drawn closer to his children than ever before and relishes each and every moment they spend together. They start each morning in his bedroom, even as he bathes, shaves, stretches, and eats.

The president has just finished his bath and will soon get dressed. The kids will stick around and watch cartoons. Jackie might return to her bedroom, or she might come sit with him as he wraps his back brace into place before slipping on the tailored shirt that longtime valet George Thomas has laid out for him. Then will come the president’s shoes, the left one with a quarter-inch medical lift. Then, a quick glance into the bedroom mirror above the dresser to double-check his appearance. The mirror’s frame is a clutter of postcards, family photographs, and other minutiae, such as the Sunday Mass schedules for St. Stephen’s and St. Matthew’s cathedrals. He attends Mass and takes the sacrament regularly, although Kennedy bridles when photographers shoot pictures of him leaving confession. A time of atonement should also be a time of humiliation and privacy.

Sometimes during the day, John and Caroline walk into the Oval Office and play on the floor or even beneath the presidential desk. Jackie fiercely protects the children from the public eye. But the president takes a larger view, realizing that America is enthralled by such a young First Family and clamors for every morsel of news about their daily life. Caroline and John have become celebrities in their own right, although they don’t know it. Photographers, writers, news magazines, and daily newspapers chronicling their young lives are just a fact of daily life.

John, almost two years old, likes to stop at Evelyn Lincoln’s typewriter on his way in to the Oval Office and pretend to type a letter. Caroline, who is nearly six years old, likes to bring one or all of the family’s three dogs when she pays a visit to her father. In fact, the Kennedy children have turned the White House into a veritable menagerie, with dogs, hamsters, a cat, parakeets, and even a pony named Macaroni. JFK is allergic to dog hair, but he never lets on.

Sometimes the president returns the favor by paying a surprise visit to Caroline and her classmates at their small private school on the third floor of the White House. The school is unique, set up by Jackie Kennedy to protect her children and those of her sister-in-law Ethel Kennedy. The First Lady has brought in two teachers to give the children the best possible education.

At nights the president is a great storyteller, making up tales about the fictitious giant in “Bobo the Lobo” and the sock-eating creatures of the deep in “The White Shark and the Black Shark.”

The drop-in visits, forays to the schoolroom, and bedtime stories are unscheduled, but rolling around on the floor is a cherished morning routine. Kennedy, like every president since John Adams became the White House’s first resident in 1800, has learned that life inside the White House is complicated. Mornings are the only time the president can be carefree, unrehearsed, and, best of all, unwatched by a curious public.

But on this Tuesday morning in October, a knock on the president’s bedroom door intrudes on his private time with the children. That knock will change everything.

*   *   *

National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy steps through the door. The razor-sharp creases of his suit pants and his polished shoes give the slim, bespectacled scholar an outward look of complete organization, which conflicts with his internal feelings of utter disarray.

Bundy is about to deliver very bad news. He learned of it last night but has intentionally waited until now to tell the president. John Kennedy was in New York to deliver a speech and didn’t return to the White House until very late. The national security adviser wanted to make sure Kennedy received a full night of sleep before Bundy stepped into the presidential bedroom and broke the news. Bundy knows that from now until the moment this problem is solved, the president will be lucky to get any rest. For what McGeorge Bundy is about to tell JFK could change the course of history.

“Mr. President,” the forty-three-year-old Bundy calmly informs Kennedy, “there is now hard photographic evidence, which you will see later, that the Russians have offensive missiles in Cuba.”

U-2 spy planes flying over Cuba have confirmed that six Soviet medium-range ballistic missile sites and twenty-one IL-28 medium-range bombers are now just ninety miles from the United States. Each of the airplanes is capable of launching nuclear weapons from thousands of feet up in the air. Each of the medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBMs) can fly as far as Montana.

The detonated nuclear warheads could kill eighty million Americans within a matter of minutes. Millions more would die later from the radioactive fallout.

The president has dealt with crisis after crisis since taking office twenty-one months ago. But nothing—not the Bay of Pigs, not civil rights, not the Berlin Wall—can even remotely compare to this.

*   *   *

The Bay of Pigs, in its own mismanaged way, has shaped John Kennedy’s presidency. Now, listening to National Security Adviser Bundy, JFK is not nervous, as he was in April 1961. He is not overwhelmed. Instead, he behaves like the president of the United States, a man who long ago stopped defining himself by party affiliation.

Kennedy knows that he needs to tread carefully. The Bay of Pigs will forever be a fresh wound. A second misstep in Cuba could be devastating—not only to his presidency, but also to his own children. The thought of losing Caroline and John to an atomic bomb terrifies Kennedy, for his children are always on his mind when he deals with the Soviets and the issue of nuclear war. The president is lobbying for an international nuclear test ban and characterizes himself as “President of generations unborn—and not just American generations.”

Once, on a visit to a New Mexico nuclear testing ground, Kennedy was astounded at the enormity of the crater left by a recent underground test explosion. Even more troublesome was the opinion of two physicists, who explained, with broad smiles on their faces, that they were designing a more powerful bomb that would leave a much smaller crater.

“How can they be so damned cheerful about a thing like that?” the president groused to a writer afterward. This was highly uncharacteristic. Kennedy’s typical behavior is outwardly friendly and inwardly guarded. He usually gives away nothing. So this sharing of his feelings is glaring evidence of his anxiety. “They keep telling me that if they could run more tests they could come up with a cleaner bomb. If you’re going to kill a hundred million people, what difference does it make whether it’s clean or dirty?”

*   *   *

JFK orders McGeorge Bundy to immediately schedule a top secret meeting of the national security staff. He then phones Bobby, telling him that “we have some big trouble. I want you over here.” The president decides not to deviate from his normal schedule, not wanting the news about Cuba to get out quite yet. One reason is that he doesn’t want to panic the American public. He knows very little about the situation and doesn’t have a plan for moving forward. Leaking word prematurely, at a time when he doesn’t have answers to the many questions the press will ask, will make him appear weak and indecisive.

Another reason for keeping this “second Cuba” quiet has to do with JFK’s political best interests. The president long ago assured the American public that he would not allow the Soviets to install offensive weapons in Cuba. Khrushchev is calling Kennedy’s bluff at a time when midterm congressional elections are just a few weeks away. The president has no way of knowing whether the Soviets ever plan to use the missiles, but their mere presence shows that Khrushchev continues his quest to secure the upper hand in the U.S.-Soviet relationship.

This must not happen. As with all midterms, the votes being cast across the nation will be a referendum on Kennedy’s policies and administration. His party holds a majority in the House and Senate, making it easier for JFK to promote his presidential agenda. Losing those majorities will complicate his job—and could perhaps cost him the election in 1964.

President Kennedy, with brothers Robert and Teddy. (Cecil Stoughton, White House Photographs, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)

There is another, even more personal, reason JFK wants his policies viewed in a popular light: his youngest brother, Teddy, is running for the Senate in Massachusetts. Something as catastrophic as a mishandling of this new Cuba situation could destroy any hopes of Teddy winning.

JFK is proud of his thirty-year-old brother’s bid for office but has given it a wide berth during the campaign. The president’s official statement on the matter was a terse “His brother prefers that this matter be decided by the people of Massachusetts and that the president should not become involved.” JFK bristles at the widespread media coverage of Teddy’s run, including a sarcastic New York Times column about the youngest Kennedy brother’s relative inexperience and other newspaper articles warning of a Kennedy dynasty.

None of this really bothers the president, personally. But he knows that if Teddy loses in the Kennedys’ home state, it will be a reflection on JFK’s political strength—or lack thereof.

The final, and by far the most important, reason the president doesn’t want word leaking out about the missiles in Cuba is that he does not want the Russian leadership to know that he is onto their secret. In that way, he believes, he can gain some control over the unsettling turn of events.

Because on the morning of October 16, as Kennedy leaves his bedroom and strolls down to the Oval Office to start his day, one fact is very clear: if the Soviets launch those missiles, the midterm elections, Teddy’s bid for office, and even the opinion of the American people won’t matter anymore. Because there may no longer be a Washington, D.C.—and there may no longer be much left of the United States of America.

Whatever happens next has nothing to do with being a Democrat or a Republican, and everything to do with what’s best for the American people. If anything shows how much JFK has grown since taking the Oath of Office, it is this resolve, at this moment.

*   *   *

At 10:00 A.M. the president emerges from a brief meeting in the Oval Office with Mercury astronaut Wally Schirra, who spent nine hours in outer space two weeks earlier. JFK walks next door into Kenny O’Donnell’s office. The appointments secretary has previously voiced an opinion that America’s voters don’t care about Cuba anymore. “You still think the fuss about Cuba is unimportant?” Kennedy asks innocently.

“Absolutely. The voters don’t give a damn about Cuba.”

The president calmly shares with O’Donnell the news McGeorge Bundy delivered just an hour ago.

“I don’t believe it.”

“You better believe it,” Kennedy tells him before marching back to the Oval Office.

Two hours later, JFK steps away from his desk yet again. He joins Caroline in the nearby Cabinet Room, then shoos her back to the residence as he convenes the top secret meeting about the Soviet missiles. He takes a seat at the center of the table, not the head. Bobby sits across from him, as does LBJ. Eleven other men are in attendance, all handpicked for their expertise and loyalty to the president.

Photos taken by U-2 spy planes show that the Soviet missiles are still being prepared for launch, but for the time being, they probably lack the nuclear warheads that would make them lethal. The talk shifts to military options. After listening to the various opinions, the president provides his own list. The first is a limited air strike. The second is a broader air strike, on a broader number of targets. The third is a naval blockade of Cuban waters, preventing the Soviet ships carrying nuclear warheads from reaching the missiles.

Bobby, who has listened quietly throughout the seventy-minute meeting, finally speaks up, suggesting that a full-scale invasion of Cuba might be necessary. It is the only way to prevent Russian missiles from ever being placed on Cuban soil.

Even as military force seems like the only solution, JFK is still troubled by the question of motive. Why is Nikita Khrushchev trying to provoke the Americans into war?

The president doesn’t know the answer. But two things are apparent: those missiles must be removed and, far more important, those nuclear warheads cannot be allowed to reach Cuba.

Ever.

*   *   *

It is Saturday afternoon, October 20. John Fitzgerald Kennedy is spending the weekend in downtown Chicago, rallying the Democratic Party faithful at a fund-raiser.

Two days ago he met privately with Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko. It was Gromyko who requested the meeting, not knowing that the Americans had discovered that the Soviets had placed offensive missiles in Cuba. The topics of discussion were the goings-on in Berlin and Soviet leader Khrushchev’s pending visit to America. Kennedy skillfully guided the subject toward the topic of nuclear weapons. Gromyko then lied to the president’s face, stating most adamantly that “the Soviet Union would never become involved in the furnishing of offensive weapons to Cuba.”

For this reason, Kennedy now refers to Gromyko as “that lying bastard.”

The mood in Chicago is a radical departure from the tension in Washington. When Air Force One lands at O’Hare Airport, the president is greeted by an army of bagpipers and local politicians, and an estimated half million people line the Northwest Expressway to witness the president’s motorcade. After JFK’s speech at a $100-a-plate fund-raising dinner on Friday night, a fireworks show lights up the sky over Lake Michigan. As if by magic, the display features the president’s face in profile.

But the public adulation is a stark contrast to the private inner hell John Kennedy is living right now. He hasn’t even told his wife what is going on in Cuba. What will become known as the Cuban missile crisis is now four days old, and his ExComm team—short for Executive Committee of the National Security Council—is close to formulating an aggressive strategy to avert a nuclear attack. One hundred and eighty naval ships are being sent to the Caribbean. The army’s First Armored Division is being relocated from Texas to Georgia. The air force’s Tactical Air Command has transferred more than five hundred fighter jets and tankers to Florida and is hustling to find enough munitions to supply them.

The legendary Strategic Air Command has squadrons of B-47 and B-52 bombers ready to launch, the pilots sequestered in secure “Alert” facilities. Most of these long-range bomber bases are in the northern portion of the United States—Maine, New Hampshire, and northern Michigan. The primary reason for this is simple: it’s the shortest route to the Soviet Union, which has long been thought to be the primary target once war comes. The pilots and navigators are familiar with those coordinates and have practiced them for years. The straight shot down to Havana is brand-new territory.

The president calls the First Lady from his Chicago suite. Jackie and the children are at the Glen Ora estate in Virginia.

“I’m coming back to Washington this afternoon. Why don’t you come back there?” he asks her. Jackie senses “something funny” in JFK’s voice.

“Why don’t you come down here?” she answers playfully. Jackie and the children have just arrived. The autumn weather is warm enough that Jackie is lying in the sun when she takes her husband’s call.

But something about that tone in JFK’s voice alerts Jackie. He knows how important those weekends in Virginia are to her and how much she treasures unwinding from the pressures of the White House. He’s never before asked her to cut a weekend short.

“Why?” the First Lady asks again. She will later remember the alarm she felt, realizing that “whenever you’re married to someone and they ask something—yeah, that’s the whole point of being married—you must sense some trouble in their voice and mustn’t ask why.”

But she asks anyway.

“Well, never mind,” JFK answers, not telling her his reasons. “Why don’t you just come back to Washington?”

Then, suddenly, the president changes his mind. At a time like this, he wants nothing more than to relieve his burden and be with his family. So the president finally tells Jackie about the possibility of a nuclear war.

“Please don’t send me away to Camp David. Please don’t send me anywhere,” Jackie answers. She now pleads with her husband, disregarding her safety. Jackie knows that in event of an attack, the family will be evacuated to the Maryland presidential retreat, which will take her and the children away from JFK—perhaps forever. “Even if there’s no room in the bomb shelter in the White House. Please, then I just want to be on the lawn when it happens. I just want to be with you, and I want to die with you, and the children do too.”

The president assures his wife he will not send her away. Then, instructing Pierre Salinger to explain to the press that he has a cold, JFK flies back to Washington, D.C. The New York Times will report that a “slight upper respiratory infection” is the reason the president is cutting short the three-day trip; the paper is unaware that the president is flying back to Washington in an effort to prevent global thermonuclear war.

Jackie and the children are waiting when he arrives.

*   *   *

There is no day and there is no night in the Kennedy White House as the Cuban confrontation escalates. The president is in such pain from his back that he gets around on crutches, further adding to the tension. He sleeps just one or two hours at a time, then rises and talks on the phone for hours in the Oval Office, before returning to bed for another short nap. Jackie sleeps with him now, whether night or day. Sometimes they sleep in his small bed; at others, in her bedroom, in the two double beds, which have been pushed together to form one large king. They often talk late at night about the crisis. Once, Jackie wakes up to see Mac Bundy standing at the foot of their bed to wake her husband, whereupon JFK rises instantly and disappears for several more hours of top secret phone calls.

Jackie will later remember these days and nights as the time she felt closest to her husband. She walks by the president’s office all the time, cheering him up by bringing the children for surprise visits. She arranges for dinner from a favorite Miami seafood restaurant to be flown to Washington. The president and First Lady often slip into the Rose Garden for a quiet walk, where he confides in her about the escalating tension.

When the president returns to his work, he is not alone—nor is Jackie. While Bobby Kennedy works closely with his brother, his wife, Ethel, and their three children are frequently at the White House. It is Ethel who gives White House nanny Maud Shaw a pamphlet on how to prepare children for nuclear war—a pamphlet that Jackie snatches away moments later. “Don’t you know that panic is catching? And that children are susceptible?” the First Lady scolds Shaw.

This is not the demure Jackie the public sees, but a fiercely protective mother and wife taking charge of her household.

For two days, the president and his small White House entourage debate the top secret threat to the United States. Photos taken by U-2 spy planes show that the Soviets are working around the clock to complete the missile sites, meaning that warheads could be launched toward the United States within a matter of days. No one “bitches it up,” in JFK’s words, by leaking this information to the press, even though it’s clear that some journalists already know. Not even the Congress is told.

On the night of Monday, October 22, the scene changes. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy appears on national television to inform America about the potentially lethal missiles in Cuba—and what he plans to do about them. The end of the world is no time to keep the American people uninformed.

*   *   *

“Good evening, my fellow citizens,” John Fitzgerald Kennedy greets the nation from his study at the White House. There are deep grooves under his greenish-gray eyes, giving him a haggard look instead of the vibrant, youthful countenance the nation is used to seeing.

JFK’s face is puffy from his chronic hypothyroidism. He wears a crisp blue suit, blue tie, and starched white shirt, though the television audience can see him only in black and white. It is 7:00 P.M. in Washington, D.C.

This broadcast from the White House is quite the opposite of Jackie’s lighthearted tour of just ten months earlier. John Fitzgerald Kennedy must make the most powerful speech of his life. He does not smile. His face is stern. There is menace in his eyes. He is not optimistic, nor even hopeful. His words come out angrily, with a vehemence that shocks some viewers. Kennedy speaks the words of a man who has been bent until he will bend no more. And now he’s fighting back.

“Within the past week, unmistakable evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive missile sites is now in preparation on that imprisoned island. The purpose of these bases can be none other than to provide a nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere.”

Here the president pauses, letting the words sink in. He then recounts Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko’s visit to his office the previous Thursday, quotes Gromyko on the subject of missiles in Cuba—and then calls Gromyko a liar, for all the world to hear.

“The 1930s taught us a clear lesson: Aggressive conduct, if allowed to grow unchecked and unchallenged, ultimately leads to war. This nation is opposed to war. We are also true to our word. Our unswerving objective, therefore, must be to prevent the use of these missiles against this or any other country and to secure their withdrawal or elimination from the Western Hemisphere.”

The president’s cadence is quicker now, as he grows angrier and angrier. The word Cuba comes out as Cuber.

After his speech is done, the president will enjoy a quiet dinner upstairs with Jackie, Ethel, Bobby, and a handful of invited guests. Watching the speech, the president’s dinner guests—among them designer Oleg Cassini and Jackie’s sister, Lee Radziwill—are stunned to learn that their dinner will not be the typical easygoing White House gathering. Even though they will sip French wine in the newly redecorated Oval Room, on the second floor, and JFK, with his usual understated style, will play the part of the congenial host, the tension at the dinner table will be something they will remember for the rest of their lives.

*   *   *

Thirteen hundred miles away, in Dallas, Texas, Lee Harvey Oswald is listening to Kennedy’s speech. Unlike the majority of his peers, Oswald believes that the Soviets have every right to be in Cuba. From his perspective, the Russians must protect Castro’s people against terrorist behavior by the United States. Oswald is firmly convinced that President Kennedy is putting the world on the brink of nuclear war by taking such an aggressive stance against the Soviets. To him, JFK is the villain.

Oswald finalized his move from Fort Worth to Dallas earlier in the month and rented a P.O. box, number 2915, at the post office on the corner of Bryan and North Ervay Street. A few weeks before that, Oswald found a job at the firm of Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall, as a photographic trainee. Amazingly, the firm has a contract with the U.S. Army Map Service that involves highly classified photographs taken by the U-2 spy planes flying over Cuba. It is Marina Oswald’s Russian friend George de Mohrenschildt who arranged for Oswald to be hired there. If the FBI, in all its zeal to stop the spread of communism, is concerned that a former Soviet defector has access to such top secret U-2 data at the peak of cold war tension, it’s not proving it by paying attention to his case.

*   *   *

On television, the president is about to throw down the gauntlet. “Acting, therefore, in the defense of our own security and of the entire Western Hemisphere, and under the authority entrusted me by the Constitution as endorsed by the resolution of Congress, I have directed that the following initial steps be taken immediately.”

Then, after months of being diplomatic and appearing weak in Soviet eyes, the president shows his true mettle. JFK promises to “quarantine” Cuba, using the might of the U.S. Navy to prevent any Soviet vessel from entering Cuban waters. He declares that he is prepared to use military might in the form of an invasion, if necessary. He states unequivocally that any missile launched by the Cubans or Soviets will be considered an act of war and that the United States will reciprocate with missiles of its own. The president then places the blame squarely on his nemesis. The entire speech has been building to this moment. “And finally, I call upon Chairman Khrushchev to halt and eliminate this clandestine, reckless and provocative threat to world peace and stable relations between our two nations. I call upon him further to abandon this course of world domination and to join in an historic effort to end the perilous arms race and transform the history of man.”

The power of the president’s speech, and the terrible news that he now delivers to the public, will make this moment stand forever in the minds of everyone who is watching. Kennedy once noted that “the only two dates that most people remember where they were was Pearl Harbor and the death of President Roosevelt.”

His Cuban missile crisis speech now joins that list.

For as long as they live, men and women will be able to recount where they were and what they were doing when they got this terrible news. They will describe the people standing nearby and how their reactions compared. They will talk about the headlines the next day and how their world was transformed by the traumatic news. They will suddenly appreciate each sunrise, each sunset, each mirthful peal of a child’s laughter.

Tragically, another event in JFK’s short life will also soon join that list of unforgettable moments. Its shock and horror will eclipse this news of Cuba and missiles and Soviet lies. John Kennedy will never know it happened.

That event is exactly thirteen months from today. But for now, the Cuban missile crisis is drama enough.

John Kennedy, being his charismatic self, is incapable of concluding a speech without a stirring moment to galvanize his listeners. Whether with his Gold Star Mothers speech in a Boston American Legion hall during his first run for Congress, or with his inaugural address in 1961, or now on national television, JFK knows how to grab his listeners by the heart—or by “the nuts,” as he so often likes to say—and rally their emotional support.

“Our goal is not the victory of might, but the vindication of right. Not peace at the expense of freedom, but both peace and freedom—here in this hemisphere and, we hope, around the world. God willing, that goal will be achieved.”

The White House set fades to black.

*   *   *

American forces around the world immediately prepare for war. All navy and marine personnel are about to have their duty tours extended indefinitely. American warships and submarines are forming a defensive perimeter around Cuba, preparing to stop and search the twenty-five Soviet ships currently sailing toward that defiant island.

At Torrejón Air Base in Spain, the men of the 509th B-47 bomber wing hear the president’s words over loudspeakers in their rooms, part of a global alert going out to all U.S. military. Captain Alan Dugard, a young bomber pilot, is packing for a week’s leave in Germany. When the air force’s defense readiness condition (Defcon) is upgraded to Defcon 2—only Defcon 1, which means that nuclear war is imminent, is higher—Captain Dugard instantly realizes that there will be no vacation.

U.S. Air Force bombers are already in the air around the clock. The crews will circle over European and American skies in a racetrack pattern, awaiting the “go” code to break from their flight plan and strike at the heart of the Soviet Union. Their contrails are a visible reminder of what is at stake.

The nonstop air brigade means just one thing: the United States is ready to retaliate and destroy the USSR.

*   *   *

Five thousand miles away, in Moscow, a furious Nikita Khrushchev composes his response to JFK’s televised message.

The Soviet leader is the dashing JFK’s polar opposite in appearance and aplomb. He is just five foot three, weighs almost two hundred pounds, and is as bald as a circus clown. Khrushchev has an enormous mole under his right eye, a wide gap between his front teeth, and a very unstatesmanlike habit of mugging for the camera. When he stepped off the plane on his 1959 visit to the United States, a woman in the crowd took one look at him and exclaimed, “What a funny little man.”

But there is nothing funny about Nikita Khrushchev. He believes in diplomacy by “balance of fear.” His decision to place missiles in Cuba is calculated and ruthless. “I came to the conclusion that if we did everything secretly, and the Americans found out about it only after the missiles were in place and ready to be launched, they would have to stop and think before making the risky decision to wipe out our missiles by military force,” Khrushchev will later write.

However, now, as he begins his response to Kennedy’s speech, the Soviet dictator turns crafty and chooses his words carefully. “You, Mr. President, are not declaring a quarantine,” Khrushchev dictates to a secretary, “but rather are setting forth an ultimatum and threatening that if we do not give in to your demands you will use force. Consider what you are saying!

“The Soviet government considers that the violation of the freedom to use international waters and international air space is an act of aggression which pushes mankind toward the abyss of a world nuclear missile war,” Khrushchev lectures JFK. “Naturally, we will not simply be bystanders with regard to piratical acts by American ships on the high seas. We will then be forced on our part to take the measures we consider necessary and adequate in order to protect our rights. We have everything necessary to do so.”

It was Khrushchev alone who devised the plan to place missiles in Cuba. He presented his idea to the Soviet government’s Central Committee, and then to Fidel Castro just three months earlier. He believed the missiles could be hidden from the United States and, even if they were discovered, that Kennedy would refuse to act.

Khrushchev also claims the decision was a goodwill gesture to the Cuban people, in case of another Bay of Pigs–style invasion by the United States. Having participated in World War II, the Soviet leader knows that the logistics of launching a war in another hemisphere are just about impossible. So he wants his arsenal closer to America, and Cuba provides that opportunity. The weapons he has persuaded Castro to take are Soviet-made, manned by Soviet soldiers and technicians, tipped with Soviet nuclear warheads—and brought to Cuba aboard Soviet ships.

Having been a former political commissar in the Red Army, Khrushchev understands the power of words. He tells the world that the Soviet Union has “a moral and legal justification” for placing missiles in Cuba. Soviet ships have every right to enter Cuban waters and unload any cargo they like and that the American naval quarantine—a fancy way of saying “blockade,” which is an act of war—is reprehensible. Khrushchev feels persecuted by the Americans. He is outraged that the Soviet Union has suffered two world wars on its soil, while the United States has suffered very little homeland devastation. Khrushchev also knows quite well that the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima had an explosive force equivalent to 20,000 tons of TNT. That makes the Soviet dictator smile: his nuclear warheads are equivalent to 1 million tons.

Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev collaborated with Cuban prime minister Fidel Castro to challenge President Kennedy in the Western Hemisphere, far from the seat of Soviet power. (Associated Press)

Nikita Khrushchev is no stranger to mass death. He served at the Battle of Stalingrad during World War II, where more than a million men died—including many of the German soldiers Khrushchev personally interrogated. But those killings pale next to the sadistic methods a younger Khrushchev employed to climb the Communist Party ladder in the early 1930s.

When Joseph Stalin, the serial killer who ran the Soviet Union for thirty years, ordered a “Great Purge” of his enemies in 1934, Nikita Khrushchev was an eager participant in this plan. Millions of suspected disloyal Communists were executed or relocated to Siberian prisons. Khrushchev personally ordered thousands of murders and authorized the killing of some of his own friends and colleagues. He gave a speech in 1936 stating that the executions were the only way to rid the Soviet Union of the dissidents striving to undermine its grand success. The following year, Stalin appointed Khrushchev as head of the Communist Party in Ukraine. By the time World War II ended his tenure there in 1939, Khrushchev had overseen the arrest and murder of almost every member of the local party leadership. Hundreds of Ukrainians were murdered. Few politicians survived.

Now Nikita Khrushchev’s relentless quest for power has put the world on the brink of nuclear war.

But there’s a problem: Khrushchev is surprised to learn that his adversary, John Kennedy, is deadly serious about defending his country at all costs. But Khrushchev tells associates he will not back down. He is a firm believer in the old Russian adage, “Once you’re in a fight, don’t spare yourself. Give it everything you’ve got.”

John Kennedy was ignorant of that adage eighteen months ago, during the Bay of Pigs invasion. Now Nikita Khrushchev is gambling that the president of the United States will make the same mistake once again.

On the evening of October 24, Khrushchev orders that his letter be transmitted to Kennedy. In it the Communist leader states calmly and unequivocally that the president’s proposed naval blockade is “a pirate act.” Soviet ships are being instructed to ignore it.

*   *   *

President Kennedy receives Premier Khrushchev’s letter just before 11:00 P.M. on October 24. He responds less than three hours later, coolly stating that the blockade is necessary and placing all blame for the crisis on Khrushchev and the Soviets.

It’s becoming clear that Kennedy will never back down. The U.S. Navy soon boards a freighter bound for Cuba. Appropriately, the destroyer USS Joseph Kennedy Jr., named for the president’s late brother, is the ship tasked with enforcing the risky quarantine.

“Did you send it?” Jackie asked her husband, referring to the ship, when she learned of this coincidence.

“No,” the president replied. “Isn’t that strange?”

*   *   *

While the Soviet leadership waits for JFK to crack, he instead goes on the offensive. The president spends Friday, October 26, planning the invasion of Cuba. No detail is too small. He requests a list of all Cuban doctors in Miami, just in case there will be a need to airlift them into Cuba. He orders that a U.S. naval vessel loaded with sensitive radar be moved farther off the coast of the island nation, to make it less vulnerable to attack. Kennedy knows where each invasion ship will assemble, and even scrutinizes the wording of the leaflets that will be dropped to the Cuban people. All the while, the president frets that “when military hostilities first begin, those missiles will be fired at us.”

JFK is privately telling aides that it’s now a showdown between him and Khrushchev, “two men sitting on opposite sides of the world,” deciding “the end of civilization.”

It’s a staring contest. The loser blinks first.

But John Kennedy has seen Nikita Khrushchev blink before. In the early days of Kennedy’s presidency, shortly after the Bay of Pigs incident, the two men held a summit meeting in Vienna. Khrushchev tried to bully his younger adversary on the subject of West Berlin, hoping to take control of the entire city because more and more citizens of Soviet-controlled East Berlin were risking their lives in the name of freedom by escaping into the adjacent territory controlled by the United States and her World War II allies. Kennedy refused to back down, and a chastened Khrushchev began construction of the Berlin Wall to save face.

But time is on Khrushchev’s side on this occasion. Construction of the missile launch facilities in Cuba is nearly complete.

So, while the rest of the world prepares for imminent doom, Nikita Khrushchev spends the early evening of October 26 at the Bolshoi Ballet. “Our people and the foreigners will see this, and it will have a calming effect,” he exhorts his comrades in the Soviet leadership. “If Khrushchev and the other leaders are going to the theatre at a time like this, then it must be possible to sleep peacefully.”

But Nikita Khrushchev is the most anxious man in Moscow, and there’s no way he can rest now. At least a dozen Soviet ships have either been intercepted by U.S. warships or turned back of their own accord. The lightly armed Russian vessels are no match for the American firepower.

After the ballet, Khrushchev spends all night in the Kremlin—just in case something violent transpires. The Soviet leader is uncharacteristically pensive. Something is on his mind. Shortly after midnight, he sits down and dictates a new message to President Kennedy.

*   *   *

It is 6:00 P.M. in Washington and 2:00 A.M. in Moscow when the message is delivered. JFK has spent the day fine-tuning the upcoming invasion of Cuba. He is bone tired, running on a hidden reserve of energy. His aching body is in a state of chaos. The president has long suffered from a condition known as autoimmune polyendocrine syndrome type 2 (APS-2), which has caused not only his hypothyroidism (insufficient thyroid hormone) but also his Addison’s disease, which must be closely monitored at all times. Addison’s causes his body to fail to produce the necessary hormones, such as cortisol, that regulate blood pressure, cardiovascular function, and blood sugar. Left unchecked, Addison’s causes exhaustion, weight loss, weakness, and even death. In 1946, before the disease was diagnosed, Kennedy collapsed at a parade and turned so blue and yellow that he was thought to be suffering from a heart attack.

That must not happen now.

So JFK is receiving injections of hydrocortisone and testosterone to battle his Addison’s. He is taking antispasmodic drugs to ward off his chronic colitis and diarrhea. And the president is suffering from another painful urinary tract infection, which requires antibiotics. All of this is in addition to relentless excruciating back pain. A less driven man would have taken to bed long ago, but John Kennedy refuses to let his constant pain and suffering interfere with his performing his duties.

Jackie has chosen not to worry about Jack’s fatigue, having seen him drive himself hard through many a campaign, attending a fund-raising dinner until late in the night and then waking up before dawn to stand outside some factory or steel mill to shake hands with the workers arriving for their shift. But this is different, and she doesn’t know how much longer he can go on. She sees the awkward way he eases himself into his favorite rocking chair for meetings to lessen the pain in his back.

More ominously, Jackie knows about the time his Addison’s almost killed him, fifteen years earlier. She also remembers that, in 1954, a metal plate was inserted into her husband’s spine (to counter a degenerative condition) and a postoperative infection put him in a coma. Once again, John Kennedy was administered the last rites of the Roman Catholic Church. And once again he battled back.

That makes three times—PT-109, Addison’s, and the back surgery—in which JFK defeated death. Jackie Kennedy knows that her man, the president of the United States, is extremely tough. He will persevere. He always has.

But it’s actually the men of ExComm who have the First Lady concerned. Jackie has pressed her ear to the door and eavesdropped on their meetings. She has heard the strain. She believes these men are working to “the peak of human endurance” to save the world.

McGeorge Bundy, too, is quite sure that the ExComm men are all about to crack. They’ve been awake night and day for almost two weeks. These staid men have become emotional because of their extreme exhaustion and have cultivated opinions and petty jealousies that will define their relationships for years to come. One of the most powerful voices among them is that of air force general Curtis E. LeMay, who sees nothing wrong with blowing Cuba off the map.

*   *   *

Then Khrushchev’s message arrives. The letter’s wording is personal, an appeal from one leader to another to do the right thing. The Soviet leader insists that he is not trying to incite nuclear war: “Only lunatics or suicides, who themselves want to perish and to destroy the whole world before they die, could do this,” he writes. The Soviet ruler rambles on, questioning Kennedy’s motivations.

Khrushchev concludes his letter by negotiating with Kennedy in a somewhat confusing fashion. The paragraph that draws the most attention states: If you have not lost your self-control, and sensibly conceive what this might lead to, then, Mr. President, we and you ought not to pull on the ends of the rope in which you have tied the knot of war, because the more the two of us pull, the tighter the knot will be tied. And a moment may come when that knot will be tied so tight that even he who tied it will not have the strength to untie it, and then it will be necessary to cut that knot.”

The ExComm crew does not believe that Khrushchev’s message is the sign of an outright capitulation. But they all agree it’s a start.

For the first time in more than a week, John F. Kennedy feels hopeful. Yet he does not lift the blockade. There are still nearly a dozen Soviet vessels steering directly toward the quarantine line—and these ships show no signs of turning around.

The tension increases the next afternoon, when word reaches JFK that Cuban surface-to-air missiles have shot down an American U-2 spy plane. The pilot, Major Rudolf Anderson Jr., has been killed.

In retaliation, the Joint Chiefs of Staff demand that the president launch U.S. bombers in a massive air strike on Cuba within forty-eight hours, to be followed by an outright invasion.

Worst of all, spy plane photographs now confirm that some of the Soviet missile installations are complete. There are twenty-four medium-range ballistic missile launchpads, and forty-two MRBMs. Once the warheads are attached, the MRBMs can be launched. Each has a range of 1,020 miles—far enough to reach Washington. Soviet diplomats in their Washington, D.C., embassy are so convinced war is imminent that they have begun burning sensitive documents.

The crisis isn’t over. The prospect of nuclear war has never been greater. The United States is so close to invading Cuba that one bad joke in the nonstop series of ExComm meetings is that Bobby Kennedy will soon be mayor of Havana.

White House appointments secretary Kenny O’Donnell sums up the mood best, describing the ExComm meeting on Saturday evening, October 27, as “the most depressing hour that any of us spent in the White House during the president’s time there.”

President Kennedy secretly sends Bobby to meet with Soviet officials in Washington, promising not to invade Cuba if the missiles are removed, and also to meet a Khrushchev demand that he withdraw U.S. missiles from Turkey that are currently in range of the Soviet Union. The Turks won’t like it, and the missiles are technically under control of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), but the president is willing to make this one concession if it will stave off war.

It is a war that could be just hours away.

*   *   *

Then Khrushchev blinks.

The Communist leader is so sure that Kennedy is bluffing that he has not mobilized the Soviet army to full alert. Yet Khrushchev’s intelligence reports now show that the United States is very serious about invading Cuba. And if that happens, the Russians will be forced to fire nuclear missiles. Failure to do so would make Khrushchev and the Soviet Union an international laughingstock. Far worse, the world will think that John Kennedy is more powerful than Nikita Khrushchev.

There is no way the Soviet leadership or the Soviet people will stand for that humiliation. Khrushchev will be toppled from power.

Despite this possibility, the Soviet leader becomes less bellicose. The “funny little man” is introspective when it comes to the subject of war. He lost his first wife to typhus during World War I. Khrushchev may be remembering his beloved Yefrosinia when he says of war “it has rolled through cities and villages, everywhere sowing death and destruction.” The Russian dictator sees that the American president is willing to conduct a nuclear war if pushed to the limit. Yes, the United States will be gone forever. But so will the Soviet Union.

On Sunday morning, at 9:00 A.M., Radio Moscow tells the people of the Soviet Union that Chairman Khrushchev has saved the world from annihilation. The words are also aimed directly at JFK when the commentator states that the Soviets choose to “dismantle the arms which you described as offensive, and to crate and return them to Soviet Russia.”

After thirteen long days, the Cuban missile crisis is over.

*   *   *

In Dallas, Lee Harvey Oswald has been following the action closely. His reaction is to show solidarity with the Russians and Cubans by joining the Socialist Workers Party.

Oswald is alone in the new two-story brick apartment he has rented on Elsbeth Street and is eager for Marina to join him. She and baby June are living with friends in Fort Worth, and he is lonesome for her company despite their violent history. Yet when Marina finally arrives in Dallas, on November 3, their domestic battles resume. She calls their squalid new dwelling a “pigsty.” They scream at each other for two solid days. Oswald swears that he’s going to “beat the hell out of her,” and then goes one step further by threatening to hit her so hard and so long that he’ll kill her.

Marina has had enough. She leaves him again, moving in with some of her Russian friends. So complete is their split that she doesn’t even give Oswald her new address. The members of the Russian community in Dallas, who never liked Oswald, refuse to assist him in his search for his wife.

Outcast, misunderstood, and alone, Lee Harvey Oswald, who considers himself a great man, destined to accomplish great things, festers in a quiet rage.

He has now become desperate.

*   *   *

On November 6, 1962, Teddy Kennedy is one of the first beneficiaries of the outcome of the defused crisis, sweeping into office as the newly elected U.S. senator from Massachusetts. There will now be three Kennedys in Washington. And while the Cuban missile crisis has seen JFK’s approval rating soar to 79 percent, not everyone is happy about the growing Kennedy influence. The Joint Chiefs of Staff are irate that JFK did not, and now will not, invade Cuba. Fidel Castro feels sold out by the Soviets and is already seeing his influence in Latin America plummet because he has been exposed as a Russian puppet. Seething, he blames Kennedy.

With good reason. The Cuban missile crisis does not mark the end of efforts to get rid of Castro. And while the president has promised Khrushchev that he will not meddle in Cuban affairs, this does not mean that the CIA’s Operation Mongoose has come to an end. The brainchild of JFK, Mongoose involved inserting teams of Cuban exiles into Cuba to foment rebellion against Castro. Initially, the Mafia was also secretly enlisted, with the primary aim of killing Castro. The president never used the word assassinate to describe the operation’s ultimate mission, but the Mafia is not a military organization, and their well-documented involvement took Mongoose beyond a popular overthrow by the exiles and into the realm of carefully plotted political murder.

*   *   *

The bond between Jack and Bobby Kennedy became tighter than ever during the Cuban missile crisis, even as Lyndon Johnson once again stumbled. The vice president made the crucial mistake of being disloyal to President Kennedy, initially aligning himself with the hawkish generals who advocated a full-blown invasion. Bobby, meanwhile, took the opposite point of view. He thought an attack on Cuba would remind the world of Pearl Harbor—an opinion mirroring that of JFK.

Now, with the crisis successfully defused, John Fitzgerald Kennedy is elated. He sees a comparison between the successful outcome of the Cuban missile crisis and Abraham Lincoln’s stable leadership that brought about the end of the Civil War. “Maybe this is the night I should go to the theater,” JFK jokes to Bobby, remembering that Lincoln attended a play as the war ended—only to be assassinated.

It is a bold joke, a playful poke at a fellow president’s murder, almost tempting fate. And it is out of character for John Kennedy, a man with echoes of Lincoln everywhere in his life: from sleeping in the Lincoln Bedroom on the night of his inauguration, to having a secretary surnamed Lincoln, to being driven in a bubble-top convertible Lincoln Continental limousine. But after the nail-biting tension of the recent crisis, John Kennedy feels he is allowed a touch of black humor. Even such a morbid joke feels lighthearted after the darkness that has enveloped his life these last thirteen days and nights.

The president and the attorney general laugh.

“If you go” to the theater, Bobby answers, “I want to go with you.”

Little do they know how macabre those words actually are.

PART II

The Curtain Descends

8

JANUARY 8, 1963

WASHINGTON, D.C.

9:30 P.M.

Jackie Kennedy’s bare, tanned shoulders accentuate the pink color of her strapless Oleg Cassini gown. She wears dangling diamond earrings designed by legendary jeweler Harry Winston. Long white gloves come up past her elbows. She makes small talk with a man she adores, André Malraux, the sixty-one-year-old writer who serves as the French minister of culture. The First Lady’s eyes sparkle after a restful family Christmas vacation in Palm Beach, Florida.

On this night, the First Lady is truly a vision.

And, unbeknownst to all but one of the thousand people filling the West Sculpture Hall of the National Gallery of Art, she is also pregnant.

The president stands less than three feet away, paying no attention whatsoever to his wife. He gazes at a dark-haired beauty half his age named Lisa Gherardini. She is blessed with lips that are full and red, contrasting seductively with her smooth olive skin. Her smile is coy. The plunging neckline of her dress hints at an ample bosom. She bears the faintest of resemblances to the First Lady.

There are television cameras, newspaper reporters, and those thousand guests. The president’s every move is being scrutinized, but he is unafraid as his gaze lingers on this tantalizing young woman. He is the president of the United States, a man who has just rescued the world from global thermonuclear war. Everything is going his way. Surely John Kennedy can be allowed the minor indiscretion of appreciating this lovely twentysomething.

Playing to those who might be watching closely, JFK smiles at young Lisa. But he is a changed man since the Cuban missile crisis, and far more enchanted by Jackie than by other women—at least for the time being. That near-catastrophic experience reminded him how deeply he loves his wife and children.

The new Congress begins tomorrow, and the president’s State of the Union address is less than a week away. Kennedy will push for “a substantial reduction and revision in federal income taxes” as the “one step, above all, essential” to make America more competitive in the world economy. But that tax cut will be controversial, a hard sell with the new Democratic Congress. Tonight the burdens of being president of the United States are far more pressing than spending time with Lisa Gherardini.

The president moves on.

*   *   *

But Jackie stays, turning away from Malraux to gaze at the same bewitching young woman. Lisa Gherardini is not actually here in person, but in a painting hanging on the gallery wall. She is also known as La Gioconda, or the Mona Lisa, a wife and mother of five children who sat for this portrait in the early sixteenth century.

Jackie revels in the Mona Lisa’s presence with a feeling of profound success, for it was her persistent dream to bring the world’s most famous painting to the National Gallery of Art, in Washington. About a year ago she made a discreet request to Malraux, who then arranged the loan—much to the outrage of Parisians, many of whom consider America a cultural wasteland.

But this is hardly the first time the Mona Lisa has traveled. Napoléon once hung her on his bedroom wall, gazing upon her each morning. In 1911 the painting was stolen from the Louvre and not returned to the Paris museum for two years. She was moved several times during World War II, to prevent her from falling into Nazi hands. And now Jackie has brought Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece to America, where “Mona Mania” is about to break out. Millions of Americans are lining up to view the painting before its return to France in March—and all because of Jackie Kennedy.

John Walker, director of the National Gallery, was against the loan, fearful that his career would be ruined if he failed to protect the Mona Lisa from theft or the damage that might accompany moving a fragile 460-year-old painting across an ocean in the dead of winter. In fact, on October 17, just as JFK and his staff were first grappling with the realities of Soviet missiles in Cuba, Walker called the First Lady and gently told her that bringing the painting to America was a horrible idea. The mere thought of it filled him with dread.

Then, like the rest of America, Walker was soon distracted by the barrage of radio and television reports documenting the Cuban missile crisis. He was deeply touched by Jackie’s maternal nature and the fact that she had insisted on remaining at the White House to be with her husband. Walker realized that the First Lady was a woman of substance, not just a wealthy young lady with a passion for French culture.

So he changed his mind. Long before the Cuban missile crisis was over, he began arranging the Mona Lisa’s trip to America.

Walker’s task was made much easier when JFK ordered the world’s most elite bodyguards to watch over the precious work of art—none other than the men who would willingly take a bullet to protect the president himself: the Secret Service.

*   *   *

The president’s Secret Service code name is Lancer. The First Lady’s is Lace. Caroline and John are Lyric and Lark, respectively. Almost everything and everyone in the First Family’s lives has a code name: LBJ is Volunteer, the presidential Lincoln is SS-100-X, Dean Rusk is Freedom, and the White House itself is Castle. Things that exist temporarily have code names, such as Charcoal, the name given to the president’s residence when he is not in the White House. Most subsets of names and places begin with the same first letter: L for the first family, W for the White House staff, D for Secret Service agents, and so on.

The Secret Service protection given President Kennedy is constant, and contrasts sharply with the protection given Abraham Lincoln a hundred years ago. Back then, the Secret Service did not exist. The agency was not founded until three months after Lincoln’s assassination. Even then, its primary role was to prevent currency fraud, not to protect the president.

In Lincoln’s day, private citizens could walk into the White House whenever they wished. Vandalism was rampant as overenthusiastic visitors stole pieces of the president’s home to keep as souvenirs. The Department of the Interior responded by hiring a select group of officers from Washington’s Metropolitan Police to protect the great building. But as death threats against Abraham Lincoln mounted in the waning days of the Civil War, these police officers shifted their protective focus to the president. Two officers remained at his side from 8:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. Another stayed with Lincoln until midnight, and a fourth man covered the graveyard shift. Each officer carried a .38-caliber pistol.

President Lincoln was never completely safe, though, as his assassination proved. On the night Lincoln was shot in the head, John Parker, the officer who was supposed to be protecting him, was instead drinking beer in a nearby tavern. And even though the president of the United States was shot to death after Parker left his post, the officer was never convicted of dereliction of duty—and, incredibly, was even allowed to remain on the police force.

Before Lincoln’s assassination, there were many (including Lincoln himself) who believed that Americans were not the kind of people who killed their political leaders. One pistol shot by John Wilkes Booth blatantly disproved that theory. Still, some people continued to believe the myth of presidential safety. Lincoln’s death was thought to be an anomaly—even when a second president, James Garfield, was assassinated sixteen years later. Compulsory protection of the vice president didn’t begin until 1962, reinforcing the notion that the vice presidency is a thankless job.

*   *   *

John Kennedy’s bodyguards sport the telltale bulge of .38 revolvers beneath their suit coats. But every other aspect of their protection is furtive. The Secret Service’s motto is “Worthy of trust and confidence,” and the agents reinforce that message through their poise and professionalism. They are athletic men, many of them possessing college degrees and military backgrounds. Drinking beer on duty is out of the question. There are eight agents on each of the three eight-hour shifts, and every agent is trained to handle a variety of deadly weapons. The Secret Service headquarters in the White House is a small windowless office at the north entrance to the West Wing, where an armory of riot guns and Thompson submachine guns provides additional firepower. There are several layers of security between JFK and a potential assassin, beginning at the White House Gates and continuing right up to the black-and-white-tiled hallway outside the Oval Office, where an agent remains on duty whenever the president is working. Should Kennedy need to summon that agent at a moment’s notice, the president can push a special emergency button beneath his desk.

The easiest place to attack the president is outside the White House. The Secret Service need only look to recent events in France for proof. President Charles de Gaulle is virtually untouchable inside the Élysée Palace, where he lives and works. But on August 22, 1962, terrorists opened fire on his motorcade in the French suburb of Petit Clamart. One hundred and fifty-seven shots were fired. Fourteen bullets struck the car, puncturing two tires of de Gaulle’s Citroën, but his driver skillfully steered to safety. Even as the Mona Lisa is unveiled in America, the leader of the assassination plot is on trial in Paris. Jean Bastien-Thiry, a disgruntled former air force lieutenant colonel, will be found guilty and become the last man in French history to be shot by a firing squad.

To prevent an American version of Bastien-Thiry from getting to President Kennedy, eight Secret Service agents travel ahead to survey his upcoming location anytime he leaves the White House. Once the president is out of the White House, eight agents form a human shield around him as he moves.

For those protecting the president, JFK’s almost manic activity is the toughest part of the job.

John Kennedy likes to appear vigorous in public and often risks his life by wading deep into crowds to shake hands. These forays terrify his security detail. Any crazed lunatic with a gun and an agenda can easily take a shot during moments like those. Should that happen, each agent is prepared to place his body between the bullet and the president, sacrificing his own life for the good of the country.

It helps that the agents truly like JFK. He knows them by name and is fond of bantering with them. Despite this familiarity, the men of the Secret Service never forget that John Kennedy is the president of the United States. Their sense of decorum is evident in the respectful way they address Kennedy, a man whose intimate life they well know. Face-to-face, they call him “Mr. President.” When two agents talk about him, he is known as “the boss.” And when speaking to visitors or guests, the detail refers to him as “President Kennedy.”

These Secret Service agents are no less fond of Jackie. The agent in charge of her detail, six-foot-tall Clint Hill (code name Dazzle), has become her close friend and confidant.

Thus it is almost natural that Secret Service protection be extended to the Mona Lisa. The passionate crowds who will surround da Vinci’s painting are similar to the throngs who scream for JFK and Jackie on their travels around the world.

The painting sails to America in her own first-class suite aboard the SS France, where French agents guard her around the clock. She travels by ship rather than plane to safeguard against the possibility of a crash that would destroy the painting forever. Should the luxury liner go down, the special metal case containing the Mona Lisa is designed to float. Only the captain of the SS France is told that the Mona Lisa is on board, and security is so intense as she is brought on that guests speculate that the metal box actually holds a secret nuclear device. But when word finally leaks out about the box’s true contents, passengers transform the ship into a nonstop Mona Lisa party, complete with special pastry cakes and drinking games.

Upon docking in New York, the Mona Lisa is driven to Washington, D.C., by a special Secret Service motorcade that does not stop for any reason. Once again, the four-hour drive is chosen over a simple flight, due to fears of a crash. Secret Service snipers are stationed on rooftops along the way, and Secret Service agent John Campion personally rides next to the Mona Lisa in the black “National Gallery of Art” van. The vehicle is equipped with extra heavy springs to absorb road shocks that could chip flecks of pigment from the canvas.

Upon arrival in Washington, the Mona Lisa is locked behind steel doors in a climate-controlled vault that keeps the temperature at a perfect 62 degrees at all hours. Should the electricity fail, a backup generator will automatically take over. Even in the vault, the Secret Service maintains its vigilance by monitoring her on closed-circuit television.

Their protection of da Vinci’s masterpiece is extraordinary. Yet there is one huge difference between protecting the president and protecting this precious cargo: the Mona Lisa is just a painting. Angry citizens have damaged her on at least three occasions—a vandal once tried to spray-paint her, another attacked her with a knife, and a third threw a ceramic mug at her—and, of course, she was once stolen. But Lisa Gherardini herself has been in the grave for almost five centuries. There is no way she can be shot dead.

The same cannot be said of the president.

That is why the Secret Service never lets its guard down.

Not yet, at least.

*   *   *

“Politics and art, the life of action and the life of thought, the world of events and the world of imagination, are one,” John Kennedy tells the distinguished crowd on hand for the unveiling of the Mona Lisa. The words come out as “Moner Liser” in his clipped Boston accent.

The president and First Lady have never been more popular than they are right now, and never more synonymous with America herself. Also, they are closer than ever as a couple. The Secret Service has noticed that Kennedy seems less interested in other women. Friends have seen the couple shift their relationship from the professional formality that defined the first two years in office. There is a new tenderness to their time together and, in the way they talk to each other, a transformation that has made them history’s first power couple. The United States is “the most powerful nation in the world,” in the words of fashion designer Oleg Cassini, “represented by the most stunning couple imaginable.”

One glance around the packed hall gives evidence to Cassini’s words. Everyone from Supreme Court justices to senators to wealthy diplomats and oilmen are here to pay their respects. Even as the president’s speech brilliantly links the Mona Lisa and the politics of the cold war, it is Jackie who orchestrates every last detail of this very special night. The Mona Lisa may be dazzling—hidden though she is behind bulletproof glass—but the average partygoer spends only fifteen seconds staring at the painting, while some spend all night staring at Jackie. Her beauty, poise, grace, and glamour are unmatchable.

On this night, it is the First Lady, not the Mona Lisa, who owns the room.

*   *   *

Jackie has come to think of the Kennedy White House as a mythical place—what she will later describe as an “American Camelot.” The First Lady is referring to the Broadway musical starring Richard Burton as the legendary King Arthur, the lovely Julie Andrews as Queen Guinevere, and Robert Goulet as Sir Lancelot. In the play, Camelot represents an oasis of idyllic happiness in a cold, hard world. A growing number of Americans agree with Jackie that the Kennedy White House is a similarly mythical place and a bulwark of idealism in the midst of the cold war.

Even the president is inspired by Camelot. Many nights, Jackie will later admit, he plays the Broadway sound track album on his record player before going to sleep.

But there is a dark side to Camelot, one that JFK’s Secret Service detail knows all too well.

There is a flip side to the president’s popularity polls: 70 percent of the nation may love JFK, but another 30 percent hate his guts. Castro definitely wants him dead. In Miami, many in the Cuban exile community are bitter about the Bay of Pigs debacle and want revenge. In the Deep South, rage at the president’s push for racial equality is so widespread that southern Democrats say that their only smart political choice—if they are to remain in office—is to maintain their firm stand against his domestic policies.

Right here in Washington, the CIA is none too happy about rumors that JFK would like to place the agency under closer presidential supervision by putting Bobby Kennedy in charge. Also, more than a few military leaders at the Pentagon do not trust Kennedy’s judgment. The president has stated aloud that he thinks the generals are capable of attempting to remove him from office.

Finally, the Mafia, to whom Kennedy was once so close that mobster Sam Giancana referred to JFK as Jack rather than Mr. President, is angry that Kennedy is repaying their years of friendship by allowing Bobby and the Justice Department to conduct an anti-Mafia witch hunt. “We broke our balls for him,” Giancana complains, “and he gets his brother to hound us to death.”

JFK is aware of his enemies. And he knows the threats will not go away, no matter how often he shuts out the world at night by dropping the needle on his hi-fi and listening to Camelot.

*   *   *

If the Secret Service is aware of Lee Harvey Oswald, that fact is nowhere in any record.

Their ignorance is not unusual. Why would the powerful Secret Service be watching a low-level former marine living in Dallas, Texas?

Oswald and Marina are back together again. There is always a heat to their reunions, and their latest is no different. Marina Oswald is now pregnant again.

Despite their very different life circumstances, Jackie Kennedy and Marina Oswald are connected by the fact that they are two young women enjoying the life-changing early days of pregnancy. Jackie is due in September, Marina in October. And one more thing links them: like Jackie, Marina finds JFK to be quite handsome. Which makes her unstable husband more jealous than he usually is.

*   *   *

Lee Harvey Oswald’s life continues to be defined by a balance of passion and rage. On January 27, 1963, as crowds ten abreast line the streets of Washington to view the Mona Lisa, Oswald orders a .38 Special revolver through the mail. The cost is $29.95. Oswald slides a $10 bill into the envelope, with the balance to be paid on delivery. He keeps the purchase a secret from Marina by having the gun sent to his P.O. box and even uses the alias of “A. J. Hidell.”

Oswald has no special plans for his new pistol. Nobody has been making threats on his life, and for now he has no intention to kill anyone. He merely likes the idea of owning a gun—just in case.

*   *   *

January comes to an end, and with it the Mona Lisa’s stay in Washington, D.C. On February 4 another high-security motorcade drives the painting to New York, where “Mona Mania” reaches even greater heights.

January has been an amazing month for the president and Mrs. Kennedy. The glamour surrounding the Mona Lisa has temporarily overshadowed the fear of the cold war. Two years into the Kennedy presidency, and it is clear to the world that John and Jackie are in control of America’s fate.

Thus, Jackie Kennedy may be right: this might just be Camelot—or at least part of it. For her there is no dark side to the story—although it definitely exists.

When Jackie thinks of Camelot, she focuses on the final act of the play, where King Arthur regains his wonder and hope. But she overlooks the rest of the story. Camelot is fraught with tragedy, infighting, and betrayal. There is danger and death. More than half the Knights of the Round Table are slain before the final curtain falls.

And Queen Guinevere, the heroine with whom Jackie so identifies, ends up alone.

9

MARCH 11, 1963

ST. AUGUSTINE, FLORIDA

8:00 P.M.

The loneliest man in Camelot wants to be president of the United States.

Lyndon Baines Johnson stands bathed in a spotlight. His typewritten speech lies before him on the lectern, but he is not focused on the words. He’s more interested in the two tables of voters somewhere out in the audience who might just make that impossible presidential dream come true someday.

What Lyndon Johnson wants, above all else, is a return to power. He adores power. And he will endure anything to know that heady sensation once again.

Anything.

The vice president searches the room for the “Negro tables,” desperate to know if his political gamble will pay off.

*   *   *

Robert Francis Kennedy also wants to be president of the United States.

With five years to go before the 1968 election, an article by Gore Vidal in Esquire magazine’s March issue picks him to win the Democratic nomination over Lyndon Johnson.

Bobby Kennedy has become such a political force that even the vice president worries he is powerless to stop Bobby from winning in 1968.

It all seems so easy: JFK until 1968, then Bobby takes the White House, and then wins again in 1972, and then maybe even Teddy in 1976 and 1980. The Kennedy dynasty is poised to control the American presidency for the next twenty years. It’s almost a sure thing.

But there are no sure things in politics. And little does LBJ know that insidious forces are possibly targeting Bobby even now—plotting not only the attorney general’s downfall, but that of the entire Kennedy family political dynasty.

*   *   *

August 5, 1962. Marilyn Monroe lies naked facedown on her bed. She is dead. Police investigators see no sign of trauma. The Los Angeles coroner will later conclude that the actress died from an overdose of barbiturates. Yet her stomach is almost completely empty, with no pill residue whatsoever.

The public instantly chalks up Marilyn’s death to a life of excess. The tabloids have firmly established that she is a substance abuser. So there is little public outcry for a closer look at what happened to the glamorous actress.

But there is a darker theory circulating in the precincts of organized crime. Mafia lore suggests that the old Sam Giancana–CIA connection from the Operation Mongoose days is still quietly active. The theory holds that Giancana conspired to have Monroe murdered by a team of four hit men who entered her home, taped her mouth shut, and injected a lethal suppository of barbiturates and chloral hydrate into her anus. This was done to prevent the vomiting that often accompanies an oral drug overdose. The tape was removed from her mouth once she was dead, and Monroe’s body wiped clean.

Giancana’s motivation was revenge for Bobby Kennedy’s ongoing Justice Department investigations into organized criminal activity. The intent of the killers, according to that same Mafia legend, was to implicate Bobby in the murder. However, their plans went awry when Bobby was tipped off by anonymous sources that Marilyn Monroe had unexpectedly died. The attorney general then ordered Peter Lawford to arrange for a private eye named Fred Otash to go over Marilyn’s home with a fine-tooth comb to ensure there was absolutely no evidence of her involvement with the president or the Kennedy family. The two men cleaned up well, even taking Marilyn’s diary.

There was also, however, the issue of Marilyn’s phone records. These would show whom she was talking to in the last forty-eight hours of her life. The story goes on to say that Bobby Kennedy appealed to J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI to expunge those records. Not wanting to lose the chance to use Monroe’s death for political gain, the legend continues, Los Angeles police chief William Parker obtained a copy of those records and kept them in his garage for years, as blackmail evidence. The tapes, Parker would say, are “my ticket to get Hoover’s job when Bobby Kennedy becomes president.”

Peter Lawford will later claim that Bobby was in Monroe’s home that night, having flown down from the Bay Area, where he was staying with Ethel and four of their children. Lawford’s story, not confirmed by anyone, alleges that Marilyn was going to reveal her former relationship with JFK to the press and that Bobby was present in Los Angeles trying to do damage control.

The recollections of both Lawford and Mafia members have been dissected thoroughly. Neither has been proven true. Nor have the rumors that Bobby and Marilyn were having an affair of their own.

The facts are that Marilyn Monroe phoned Bobby several times throughout the summer of 1962. She was distraught over the end of her affair with JFK and was openly gossiping about it in Hollywood. The press had begun asking questions about the alleged affair, and it appeared that the matter might surface during the 1964 election. Yet the Northern California ranch where Bobby and his family were staying on the night of Marilyn’s death was an hour from the nearest airport and a five-hour drive from Los Angeles. That makes it highly unlikely that RFK could have slipped away without being noticed.

Any involvement by Bobby Kennedy in Marilyn Monroe’s death, whether it was suicide or murder, makes it a conspiracy theory without substance to this day.

There is no question, however, that Monroe’s going public could have been enough to sink a presidential campaign. JFK was perceived to be a dedicated family man. Details of a sordid affair with the flamboyant Monroe would have ruined the image of Camelot.

With family baggage all over the place, Bobby Kennedy knows he is anything but a sure thing for the presidency. Which means he must work extra hard to discredit his main rival, Lyndon Johnson, before LBJ does the same to him.

Meanwhile, Bobby Kennedy is quietly backing away from his anti-Mafia investigations.

No sense angering old friends unnecessarily.

*   *   *

LBJ is making new friends. He is thrilled by the presence of black voters at his St. Augustine dinner speech. It is a Monday evening, and the occasion is the four hundredth anniversary of the city’s founding, an event about which LBJ cares little. What matters are the symbolic reasons he flew to Florida in the first place: his courtship of black Americans.

LBJ’s brown eyes scan the mostly white audience in the Ponce de Léon Hotel’s ballroom. Finally, he locates the so-called Negro tables. The vice president insisted upon this act of integration when accepting the speaking engagement.

Johnson sees both tables right up front, a handful of black faces in a sea of white southerners. The people seated there nod their heads somberly as he speaks, appreciative just to be in the room. Tonight marks the first time that blacks have been allowed to eat in this fabled hotel, all thanks to LBJ. Two tables aren’t many, and the change is only for tonight, but at least Johnson can return to Washington bragging that he’s on the front lines of the battle for racial equality.

It’s a powerful feeling. Yet back in Washington, LBJ has all but forgotten what power feels like. On the road, he’s a big deal. People defer to him. He meets with local leaders. He is quoted in the local papers. People want to touch him or enjoy one of his patented high-energy handshakes, the kind where Johnson wraps his meaty fist around another man’s, then holds on for as long as they talk, forging a friendship and, in the old days back in the Senate, winning their vote.

But he is now invisible in Washington. For Johnson, the Kennedy White House is not Camelot. He compares the experience with another c word: castration. LBJ refers to himself as a “steer” or a “cut dog.” The president deliberately excludes him from important meetings, makes jokes about him behind his back, and ignores him at White House dinner parties—if he even bothers to invite him at all.

The president isn’t the only one treating Johnson with contempt. Bobby Kennedy thinks LBJ is a political charlatan. Jackie Kennedy keeps her distance. And the White House staff can barely conceal their disdain. “The Harvards,” as Johnson calls them, make fun of his ill-fitting suits, his slicked-back hair, and the twang of his Texas Hill Country accent. When Johnson commits the faux pas of pronouncing hors d’oeuvres as “whore doves” at one party, he instantly becomes the butt of Washington jokes about his hillbilly ways.

One derogatory nickname for Johnson is “Uncle Cornpone,” as if he were some irrelevant hick instead of the man who got Kennedy elected in 1960 by carrying the Deep South. Some refer to him as “Judge Crater,” for the New York City official who abruptly disappeared in the 1920s and was never seen again. One White House staffer was overheard at a dinner party joking, “Lyndon? Lyndon who?”

But Johnson is anything but gone, and anything but a hillbilly. During his time as Senate majority leader he was masterful at passing difficult legislation. His favorite biblical verse, Isaiah 1:18, exemplifies his passion for building coalitions: “Come now, let us reason together.”

Truth be told, the vice president is a complex man, whose tastes run the gamut from spicy deer sausage to Cutty Sark scotch to Viennese waltzes. And he is almost as sexually active as the president—only far more discreet about how he manages his affairs.

This discretion carries over into politics. The gregarious Johnson has stifled his personality, disciplining himself to be completely silent in meetings in order to avoid offending the president. It’s killing Johnson that he has to endure a nonstop barrage of insults. The vice president has become anxious, depressed, and overeager to please. He barely eats. He has lost so much weight that his always-baggy suits look enormous on him. Even the vice president’s nose and ears appear proportionally larger—like how a political cartoonist might draw him in caricature.

LBJ has almost nothing to do. His phone barely rings. From his office in the Executive Office Building, he can look out the window and see the comings and goings across the street at the White House. Sometimes the vice president will leave his desk to meander through the West Wing hallways, wishing for a meeting to attend or a decision to make. Other times, he’ll take a seat outside the door to the Oval Office, hoping to catch John Kennedy’s eye and be invited inside.

But those occasions are fewer and fewer. The president and vice president will spend less than two hours alone in the year 1963.

Still, Johnson puts up with the abuse. Because, without the vice presidency, he has nothing. There is no Senate opening in Texas for which he can run. And the former Kennedy insider John Connally filled the governor’s seat there just four months ago. But at the end of four more years, Johnson can run for the most powerful job in America.

And why shouldn’t LBJ be president? He served twelve years in the House of Representatives, twelve more in the Senate, and ruled for six years as majority leader. He is versed in foreign policy and domestic legislation and can give a tutorial on the subtleties of backroom wheeling and dealing. There isn’t a more qualified politician in the land.

LBJ is fighting for his political life as he locates the two token tables of racial integration in that St. Augustine hotel ballroom. And while the occasion may officially be the anniversary of the city’s founding, it also marks the day when Lyndon Johnson takes a public stand in favor of civil rights.

The Kennedy brothers have deliberately kept him out of their escalating battle for racial equality. They know that as a southern politician, he could use the issue to gain power.

Johnson understands this as well. And he does everything he can to be at the forefront of JFK’s civil rights campaign.

For Johnson, civil rights has nothing to do with right or wrong. Taking this stand just makes good political sense.

So LBJ waits, castrated and emaciated, hoping it will all pay off.

*   *   *

On March 4, just one week before Lyndon Johnson’s St. Augustine speech, Attorney General Robert Kennedy responds to the Esquire story by telling the press, “I have no plans to run at this time”—which the media know to be code for “I’m running.”

But is he qualified? Bobby Kennedy is a lawyer who has never tried a case in court, and he’s an attorney general who got the job because of his father and brother. Since then, he has often ignored his duties at the Justice Department to serve as JFK’s mouthpiece and sounding board. And the CIA certainly doesn’t approve of his job performance. One popular bumper sticker at the agency’s Langley, Virginia, headquarters reads “First Ethel, Now Us.”

But the world is changing drastically, and Bobby Kennedy reflects the youth and vitality of Camelot instead of the stodgy cold war values synonymous with the older Johnson. American culture is under siege by new influences.

A British rock-and-roll band named the Beatles is releasing their first album.

A new comic book character named Iron Man makes his debut.

Writer Betty Friedan ignites a new wave of the women’s movement with her book The Feminine Mystique.

The draconian U.S. penitentiary on Alcatraz Island is closed for good. As if to mark the event, the CIA expands its powers even further into J. Edgar Hoover’s world by creating a domestic operations division.

Bobby Kennedy is aware of his cultural influence; he well understands the Camelot allure. Yet he is still obsessed by his rivalry with Lyndon Johnson. In fact, he hates him. Bobby does such a poor job of hiding his loathing that friends once presented him with a Lyndon Johnson voodoo doll, complete with stickpins.

The one thing Bobby can’t stand is a liar, and he believes that Johnson lies all the time.

Still, there is something in Johnson that inspires fear in Bobby. He once told a White House staffer, “I can’t stand the bastard, but he’s the most formidable man I know.”

And so two intense and ruthless politicians are set against each other. But neither one has an inkling about the calamity that is now just eight months away.

*   *   *

Lee Harvey Oswald is growing more isolated. He has turned a closet in his home into an office. There he writes angry diatribes about the world around him. Oswald is growing increasingly agitated, and people are beginning to fear him.

On March 12 in Dallas, just one day after Lyndon Johnson’s speech in St. Augustine, Oswald decides to buy a second gun to go along with the pistol he keeps hidden in his home. This time it’s a rifle, purchased through the February 1963 issue of American Rifleman magazine. The Italian Mannlicher-Carcano, model 91/38, was made in 1940 and originally designed for the Italian infantry during World War II. This is not a gun designed for hunting animals, but for shooting men. As a former Marine Corps sharpshooter, Oswald knows the difference, just as he also knows how to clean, maintain, load, aim, and accurately fire such a weapon.

Of all the amazing things happening in the world in March 1963, this simple mail-order purchase would seem to have little significance. In fact, nothing will have a greater impact on world events than this nineteen-dollar Italian war-surplus bolt-action rifle.

The weapon arrives on March 25. Marina complains that they could have used the money for food. But Oswald is pleased with the purchase and gets in the habit of riding the bus to a dry riverbed for target practice against the levee.

On March 31, while Marina is hanging diapers on the clothesline to dry, Oswald steps into the backyard dressed all in black. His new pistol is tucked into his belt. He brandishes the rifle in one hand and holds copies of two Communist newspapers in the other. He demands that an amused Marina take photographs of him. He plans to send them to the Worker and the Militant to show that he is prepared to do anything to wage class warfare.

On April 6, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald is fired from his job at Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall. His Communist rants have grown offensive to his coworkers, and his bosses claim that he has become undependable.

On April 10, 1963, Oswald decides it’s time to kill someone.

10

APRIL 9, 1963

WASHINGTON, D.C.

MIDDAY

The man with seven months to live is talking to Winston Churchill.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy stands in the White House Rose Garden before a large, warmhearted crowd. Churchill, the ninety-two-year-old former prime minister whose inspirational courage helped save Britain during World War II, watches live by satellite from his home in London. The purpose of this Rose Garden gathering is to make Winston Churchill an American citizen—the only foreign leader since Lafayette to be so honored.

“A son of America though a subject of Britain,” Kennedy begins his speech, referring to the fact that Churchill’s mother, née Jenny Jerome, was a U.S. citizen, “has been throughout his life a firm and steadfast friend of the American people and the American nation.”

Churchill’s fifty-one-year-old son, Randolph, stands at JFK’s side. Jackie Kennedy stands directly behind her husband. The Rose Garden is filled with diplomats and acquaintances from the United States and England. The president’s father, Joseph, who served as ambassador to Great Britain just prior to the Second World War, watches from a wheelchair inside the White House, the elder Kennedy having experienced a stroke two years prior.

But even as John Kennedy stands before this idyllic gathering, seeing the warmth and smiles that come with honoring such a distinguished and legendary world leader, his thoughts are never far from another “Churchill”—and another war that is gaining steam.

*   *   *

It was Dwight Eisenhower who first sent American soldiers to Vietnam to stem the flow of communism in Southeast Asia. But it was John Kennedy who ordered a gradual escalation in the number of troops since taking office, hoping to ensure that Vietnam did not fall to communism and thus perhaps begin a domino effect that would see other Asian nations turn their backs on democracy.

But Kennedy’s good intentions have gone awry. The handful of American “advisers” in Vietnam has now swelled to almost sixteen thousand pilots and soldiers. American pilots are dropping napalm firebombs from the sky to destroy the Viet Cong army that is now fighting the U.S.-backed Saigon regime. Thousands of Viet Cong soldiers have been killed—as have thousands of innocent Vietnamese peasants. “The charred bodies of children and babies have made pathetic piles in the middle of the remains of the marketplace,” the Associated Press reported after one such bombing incident.

American pilots fly hundreds of missions over Vietnam every month. A systematic process of defoliation has begun, with American airplanes spraying chemicals over the jungle to kill all vegetation that might hide enemy soldiers. Of course, the crops of many innocent farmers are destroyed in the process. This “scorched earth” policy will eventually come back to haunt the United States in a number of ways.

The CIA has joined in the fight in Vietnam, conducting covert search-and-destroy missions in the Communist north. Gunners aboard American helicopters have free rein to open fire on the peasants who turn and run when they see Hueys come sweeping in over the treetops. The assumption is that the farmers run because they are the enemy, not that they might be superstitious and terrified about aircraft that have suddenly invaded the skies above their primitive villages.

John Kennedy believes that America needs to end the Vietnam conflict—though he is not quite ready to go public with this. “We don’t have a prayer of staying in Vietnam,” he will tell Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Charles Bartlett off the record. “Those people hate us. They are going to throw our asses out of there at any point. But I can’t give up that territory to the Communists and get the American people to reelect me.”

To safeguard his chances for reelection, the president cannot, and will not, pull U.S. troops out of Vietnam until after the 1964 election. The war is still popular with voters. In the meantime, he hopes to contain U.S. involvement, reading his briefing books each morning and praying that South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem doesn’t do anything stupid or irresponsible to inflame the situation.

Diem is a Catholic, just like the Kennedys. But his faith is almost fanatical, causing him to lose focus on fighting communism. He is now fighting a war on two fronts. The first is against the Viet Cong; the second is a holy war against Vietnam’s majority Buddhist population.

Yet it is Diem whom Vice President Johnson once famously praised as “the Winston Churchill of Asia.” The Kennedy brothers hate that gross exaggeration. Unlike the real Winston Churchill, Diem is not a firm and steadfast friend of the American people or the United States of America. He is a mass murderer, concerned only about his own glorification.

And that narcissism will soon doom him.

*   *   *

In the Rose Garden, Kennedy concludes his remarks. He now listens as Randolph Churchill reads from a speech his father has prepared. “Our past is our key to our future,” says Churchill, in words that make Kennedy and the British icon sound like two very similar statesmen. “Let no one underrate our energies, our potentialities, and our abiding power for good.”

*   *   *

But not every man believes in an abiding power for good.

John Kennedy is hardly a violent man. He dislikes guns and even abhors hunting animals. The same cannot be said for Lee Harvey Oswald. Now, on a hot April night, Oswald hides in the shadows of a Dallas alleyway. His new rifle is pointed at Major General Ted Walker, an avowed anticommunist.

Walker sits in the study of his Dallas home intently poring over his 1962 tax returns. The fifty-three-year-old West Point graduate is a closeted gay man and a famous opponent of communism. The date is April 10, and he is home alone on this Wednesday night, having just returned from a controversial trip around the country. The desk lamp is the room’s only light. A small window looks out into the darkness. Normally, Walker might crack the window to let in the sweet spring air, but it was a record-high ninety-nine degrees today. It’s still hot, even at 9:00 P.M. Walker is running the air-conditioning.

Lee Harvey Oswald’s hiding spot in the alley is just forty yards away. He watches Walker’s every move through the telescopic sight of his Italian Mannlicher-Carcano rifle. The hum of the air-conditioning unit drowns out the sound of Oswald’s carefully choreographed movements. He is now concealed behind Walker’s back fence, the barrel of his rifle poking through the latticework. There is a church near Walker’s home, where the congregants have gathered for a midweek service on this Wednesday evening.

The oppression of the workingman courses through Lee Harvey Oswald’s veins. He finds strength in the ideals of communism and socialism. After almost a year back home in America, he has become even more enraged by what he perceives as the injustice of the capitalist system. He is angry enough to kill any man who speaks out against communism.

Which is why he is aiming his brand-new rifle with murderous intent at Ted Walker’s head. The former general is at the very top of the list of people whom Oswald despises. Eighteen months ago, Walker was asked to leave the army after telling a newspaper reporter that Harry Truman and Eleanor Roosevelt were most likely Communists. He resigned his post rather than retire, a symbolic gesture of defiance that cost him his pension. Since then, the veteran of World War II and the Korean War has devoted himself to political causes. He ran for governor of Texas as a Democrat—an odd alignment for a man so politically far to the right, especially one living in Dallas, a violent city where Democrats are such a minority that many of them are wary of openly expressing their beliefs.

After finishing last in that election—which was won by John Connally—Walker traveled to Mississippi, attempting to block the integration of the University of Mississippi. Two people were killed and six U.S. Marshals were shot in the ensuing riot, after which Walker was temporarily sent to a mental institution and held on federal charges of sedition. It was Bobby Kennedy himself who ordered that Walker be charged for acts of violence against the civil rights of an American citizen.

But Oswald doesn’t care about civil rights. He has come to Walker’s home because the Worker, the Communist newspaper to which he subscribes, has targeted the general as a threat to its beliefs. And because of Walker’s recent participation in Operation Midnight Ride, a Paul Revere–like barnstorming tour to warn Americans about the scourge of communism. The Mississippi grand jury’s decision not to press charges against Walker was Oswald’s motivation for purchasing a rifle. Since the Mannlicher-Carcano’s arrival, Oswald has traveled frequently by bus to the area around Walker’s home. He has walked the streets and alleys, studying and sketching and learning the lay of the land, memorizing escape routes and the church schedule. Oswald took several photographs of the area and developed them at work before being fired on April 6. All his intelligence is stored in a special blue loose-leaf notebook.

Oswald knows that Walker spends most evenings in his study. The short distance between the alley and that room makes Walker impossible to miss.

Oswald didn’t tell Marina where he was going tonight. But before leaving their apartment, he jotted down a note detailing what she should do if he is arrested. The note contains details about the bills he has paid, how much money he has left to her, and where the Dallas jail is located. Oswald wrote the note in Russian, just to be sure Marina understood every word. He left the note on his desk, in that small closet he’s converted into a study. She knows not to go in there, but if he’s missing long enough, Oswald is sure she will enter the room.

*   *   *

Back in the alleyway, Oswald quietly takes aim. Walker is in profile, viewed from his left side. The general wears his dark hair slicked close to the scalp. Oswald can see every strand through his scope. He has never shot a man before, nor even fired a gun in anger. But he spent hours on the firing range back in his Marine Corps days, and these last few weeks, he has been diligently working on his shot down in the dry bed of the Trinity River, using the levee walls as a backstop. It’s almost comical that a man plotting a murder takes the bus to and from target practice, and indeed to and from the murder scene itself. But Lee Harvey Oswald has no choice. He doesn’t own a car.

Walker sits, transfixed by the numbers on his tax forms. Oswald takes a deep breath and slowly lets it out. He knows to exhale before firing, and to time the squeezing of the trigger with the end of that breath leaving his body. He also knows to gradually increase pressure on the trigger, squeezing it slowly rather than jerking it.

Back when he was in the marines, he rarely took practice at the rifle range seriously, openly laughing about the red “Maggie’s drawers” flag that was raised whenever he missed a target. But he can shoot extremely well when he wants to, as his Marine Corps “sharpshooter” qualification proves.

Now he wants to.

Oswald squeezes the trigger. He fires just one shot. Then he turns and runs as far and as fast as he can.

*   *   *

“I shot Walker,” Oswald breathlessly tells Marina. It’s 11:30 at night. She has already read the note and is worried sick.

“Did you kill him?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” he replies in Russian.

“My God, the police will be here any minute,” she cries. It is an irrational fear, for the police have absolutely no idea who shot at Walker. “What did you do with the rifle?”

“Buried it.”

Oswald turns on the radio to see if he’s made the news. Marina, meanwhile, is terrified and anxious. She paces and frets, while her exhausted husband finally lies down on their bed and falls into a deep and immediate sleep.

*   *   *

The Walker assassination attempt is in the newspapers and on the radio the next morning. Oswald hangs on every word, though he is appalled to learn that he missed Walker completely. Eyewitnesses claim they saw two men fleeing the scene in a car, and Dallas police are looking for a gun that fires a completely different sort of ammunition than the kind Oswald fired. Oswald is crestfallen. He shot at Walker because he wanted to be a hero in the eyes of the Communist Party; he wanted to be special. Now not only has he botched the easiest shot he will ever take but the police are looking for a completely different man. Police will later surmise that the bullet ricocheted off the windowpane, missing Walker’s head by just three inches. Oswald’s telescopic sight, designed to look far into the distance, would have blurred the windowpane for Oswald, meaning that he didn’t even know it was in the way as he took aim and fired.

But none of this matters to Lee Harvey Oswald right now. He is worse than a failure; he is anonymous.

*   *   *

Three days later, Lee Harvey Oswald burns his blue loose-leaf notebook. Walker’s house is being guarded around the clock, and a second attempt on his life would be almost impossible. Still, Marina knows that her husband is unstable and tenacious. His hatred for those who would oppose communism is powerful and real.

Deeply afraid, she suggests something drastic: she wants to move the family to New Orleans. She believes that the police will come knocking on their door any minute. Having grown up in the repressive Soviet police state, she lives in fear of being marched off to jail in the middle of the night and disappearing forever.

On April 21, Marina spots Oswald getting ready to leave the house with a pistol tucked in his waistband. It’s a Sunday. He’s wearing a suit. Marina furiously demands to know where he’s going. “Nixon is coming,” Oswald tells her. “I’m going to go check it out.”

The former vice president has just made headlines by demanding the removal of all Communists from Cuba. Like General Walker, Richard Nixon has been making a political name for himself by denouncing Communists.

“I know how you look,” Marina says. Her husband’s idea of checking out a situation is to fire a shot at a human being. It’s quite clear that Lee Harvey needs to be saved from himself.

Then, showing just how powerful she can be when pushed to the limit, Marina Oswald pushes her husband into their tiny bathroom and forces him to remain there. Her husband is a prisoner the rest of the day. By the time she sets him free, it’s clear that, for his own good, Lee Harvey Oswald must leave Dallas.

*   *   *

Five days after John Kennedy’s Rose Garden speech, the president and First Lady formally announce that she is pregnant. This marks the first time that a sitting president’s wife will have a baby since Grover Cleveland’s spouse gave birth in 1893.

Americans respond with warmth and enthusiasm—and more than a little surprise. For although she is four months along, Jackie still doesn’t show the slightest sign of expecting. The baby will sleep in the same white crib that John Jr.used as an infant. Drapes and a new rug will be added to a small room in the residence as it is transformed into a nursery.

With every passing moment, the Kennedys seem to be living an idyllic life, where everything goes right and each day is more glamorous than the one before it. Unlike Abraham Lincoln, whose shoulders sagged and whose face grew lined and weary from the strains of being president, John Kennedy truly enjoys the job—and it shows. Friends have noted how much he has grown as a leader during his time in office, and the vigor with which he tackles his work.

But America is changing rapidly. John Kennedy will soon be forced to use every bit of these hard-won presidential skills to manage turbulent times. The tense challenges that have dogged his presidency—Cuba, Vietnam, Mafia power, civil rights, and even his personal life—have not disappeared.

For now, they are merely simmering—and as spring becomes summer in 1963, these problems will explode.

11

MAY 3, 1963

BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA

1:00 P.M.

“We’re going to walk, walk, walk. Freedom … Freedom … Freedom,” the protesters chant as they march out through the great oak doors of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. It is a Friday, and these young black students should be in school. Instead, they have gathered to march for civil rights. Some are less than ten years old. Most are teenagers. They are football players, homecoming queens, track stars, and cheerleaders. Most are nicely dressed, in button-down shirts and clean slacks for the boys, and dresses and bows for the girls.

The marchers number more than one thousand strong. All have skipped class to be here. Some of them even climbed over locked gates. Their goal is to experience something their parents have never known for a single day of their lives: an integrated Birmingham, where lunch counters, department stores, public restrooms, and water fountains are open to all.

The Children’s Crusade, as Newsweek magazine will call it, fans out and marches across acre-wide Kelly Ingram Park. “We’re going to walk, walk, walk,” they continue to chant. They are peaceful, almost spiritual. Yet electricity courses through the group, for what they are doing is completely illegal. “Freedom … Freedom … Freedom.”

The protesters plan to march into the white business district and peacefully enter stores and restaurants. More than six hundred students were arrested doing the same thing yesterday. The youngest was just eight years old. This earned the Children’s Crusade national recognition. About a thousand miles away, Attorney General Bobby Kennedy actually scolded the black civil rights leaders who had organized the children’s march, stating that “schoolchildren participating in street demonstrations is dangerous business. An injured, maimed or dead child is a price that none of us wants to pay.”

Even Malcolm X, one of the fieriest black leaders in America, railed against the Children’s Crusade, stating that “real men don’t put their children on the firing line.”

But these kids want to be here. Many have come against their parents’ wishes. Nothing can stop them. They know that if their mothers and fathers were to do the marching, their arrests could cause them to lose jobs, or days and weeks of income.

They know that this march is not just about public toilets; this march is an act of defiance. A few days before he took office, just four months ago, Alabama governor George Wallace made one thing crystal clear: “I’m gonna make race the basis of politics in this state, and I’m gonna make it the basis of politics in this country.” Later, at his inaugural, he proclaimed, “I have stood where once Jefferson Davis stood, and took an oath to my people. It is very appropriate then that from this cradle of the Confederacy, this very heart of the great Anglo-Saxon Southland, that today we sound the drum for freedom … Let us rise to the call of freedom-loving blood that is in us … In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny. And I say, segregation today! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!”

Those words are a call to arms for blacks and whites alike who disagree with Wallace. The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. traveled to Birmingham earlier in the spring to fight for integration. Local black leaders, fearing retribution from their white creditors, told King they didn’t want him in town. The civil rights leader ridiculed their fears, implying they were cowardly, thus shaming them into joining the fight.

But despite the best efforts of King and his close friend Ralph Abernathy, the fight for Birmingham stalled just a week ago. After months of protests and arrests, the national media lost interest. There was no longer money to pay the bail for the hundreds being arrested. And the size of the protests dwindled. The segregationists, led by Birmingham’s public safety commissioner, Eugene “Bull” Connor, were on the verge of winning. Connor, a sixty-five-year-old former member of the Ku Klux Klan, has enjoyed this battle tremendously and takes great delight in the thought of keeping blacks “in their place.”

The first children’s march, on May 2, altered Connor’s plans. When it is done, thousands gather in the Sixth Avenue Baptist Church to hear Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speak about the courage of the children. And King swears that the demonstrations will continue. “We are ready to negotiate,” he tells the press. “But we intend to negotiate from strength.”

But Bull Connor has other plans.

*   *   *

“We’re going to walk, walk, walk. Freedom … Freedom … Freedom.”

The Children’s Crusade has now reached the shade of Kelly Ingram Park’s elm trees. The temperature is a humid eighty degrees. Ahead, the marchers see barricades and rows of fire trucks. German shepherds, trained by the police to attack, bark and snarl at the approach of the young students, and an enormous crowd of black and white spectators lines the east side of the park, waiting to see what will happen next. The black adults taunt the police, even as the marchers begin singing “We Shall Overcome.”

Martin Luther King Jr. spoke to the protesters before they set out from the church, reminding them that jail was a small price to pay for a good cause. They know not to fight back against the police or otherwise provoke confrontation when challenged. Their efforts will be in vain if the march turns into a riot.

Bull Connor can’t afford to let these kids get to the white shopping district. He has ordered Birmingham firefighters to attach their hoses to hydrants and be ready to open those nozzles and spray water on the marchers at full force—a power so great that it can remove the bark from trees or the mortar from a brick building. If the protesters reach the shopping district, using the hoses might damage expensive storefronts. The marchers need to be stopped now.

The first children in the group are met with a half-strength blast from the fire hoses. It’s still enough force to stop many of them in their tracks. Some of the kids simply sit down and let the water batter them, following orders not to be violent—or to retreat.

Connor, realizing that half measures will not work with these determined children, then gives the order to spray at full strength. Every protester is knocked off his or her feet. Many children are swept away down the streets and sidewalks, their bodies scraping against grass and concrete. Clothing is torn from their bodies. Those who make the mistake of pressing themselves against a building to dodge the hoses soon become perfect targets. “The water stung like a whip and hit like a cannon,” one child will later remember. “The force of it knocked you down like you weighed only twenty pounds, pushing people around like rag dolls. We tried to hold on to the building but it was no use.”

Then Connor lets loose the police dogs.

A German shepherd’s jaws bite down with 320 pounds of pressure—half the force of a great white shark or a lion. But the German shepherd is much smaller than these predators. Pound for pound, the Birmingham police dogs are unmatched in their bite force.

Bull Connor watches with glee as the German shepherds lunge at the children, ripping away their clothing and tearing into their flesh. Connor, a pear-shaped, balding man who wears glasses, appears mild-mannered. But in actuality he is a vicious good old boy whose beliefs are even more racist than those of Governor Wallace. The public safety commissioner wades into the thick of the action, encouraging policemen to open the barricades so that Birmingham’s white citizens can get a better view as the police dogs do their worst.

By 3:00 P.M., it all seems to be over. The children who haven’t been arrested limp home in their soaked and torn clothing, their bodies bruised by countless point-blank blasts of water cannon. No longer bold and defiant, they are now just a bunch of kids who have to explain to their angry parents about their wrecked clothes and a missed day of school.

Once again, Bull Connor has won.

Or at least it seems that way.

But among those in Birmingham this afternoon is an Associated Press photographer named Bill Hudson. He is considered one of the best in the business, willing to endure any danger to get a great photo. He has ducked bullets during the Korean War and dodged bricks while covering the civil rights movement.

On this day in Birmingham, Bill Hudson takes the best photo of his life. Appropriately, it’s in black and white. He snaps it from just five feet away. The photograph is an image of a Birmingham police officer—looking official in pressed shirt, tie, and sunglasses—encouraging his German shepherd to take a chunk out of black high school student Walter Gadsden’s stomach.

The next morning that photograph appears on the front page of the New York Times, three columns wide, above the fold.

And so it is that John Kennedy, starting his morning as he always does by reading the papers, sees this image from Birmingham. Disgusted by what he sees, Kennedy makes a point to tell reporters that the picture is “sick” and “shameful.”

Just one look and JFK instinctively knows that America and the world will be outraged by Hudson’s image. Civil rights are sure to be a major issue of the 1964 presidential election. And Kennedy now understands he can no longer be a passive observer of the civil rights movement. He must take a stand—no matter how many votes it might lose him in the South.

Meanwhile, the reputation of Martin Luther King Jr. is on the rise. He will soon see the Birmingham situation resolved in his favor, thanks to the Children’s Crusade. After Bull Connor’s initial “victory,” the public pressure against Alabama authorities becomes so intense that change is inevitable.

This photograph of a nonviolent civil rights protester being attacked by police dogs brought the brutality of Bull Connor’s police force to national attention. (Bill Hudson/Associated Press)

Despite the triumph, Martin Luther King Jr. and John Fitzgerald Kennedy are not on the same page. In fact, they are on a collision course.

*   *   *

Civil disobedience is not limited to the American civil rights movement.

Five days after the children of Birmingham peacefully march into that wall of water cannons and police dogs, and two days after a U.S. Army lieutenant is killed by the Viet Cong just outside Saigon, a crowd of Buddhists gathers in the South Vietnamese city of Hue. It is May 8, 1963, the 2,527th birthday of the Buddha.

The protesters have come to demonstrate against a new law set forth by President Ngo Dinh Diem that makes flying the Buddhist flag illegal in Vietnam. It is Diem’s great desire to convert his country to Catholicism, and vital to that effort is the systematic subjugation of the nation’s Buddhist majority. Diem—whose regime President Kennedy has long supported, but whose anti-Buddhist stance is contrary to American foreign policy—denies promotions to officials known to be Buddhist and looks the other way when Roman Catholic priests organize private armies that loot and demolish the pagodas where the Buddhists worship. To give his crusade credibility in the eyes of the American government, Diem insists that Buddhism and communism are the same—a suggestion akin to J. Edgar Hoover’s quiet belief that civil rights and communism are synonymous.

Now, as the three thousand unarmed Buddhist protesters gather near the Perfume River to voice their frustrations, government police and troops fire into the crowd. Bullets and grenades scatter the marchers, killing one woman and eight children in the process.

In the ensuing public outrage, Diem blames the deaths on his Viet Cong opponents—even though the police and army were clearly South Vietnamese. The so-called Buddhist crisis escalates when Diem refuses to punish the men who did the shooting.

Tensions grow throughout Vietnam during the month of May. Diem, like Bull Connor in Birmingham, appears to have the upper hand. Nothing can be done to end his reign of terror. On June 3, government troops once again attack Buddhists in Hue, using tear gas and dogs to disperse the demonstrators. But the crowd will not leave and continues to reassemble. Now the Buddhists turn violent, shouting obscenities at their government attackers. Finally, South Vietnamese troops pour an unnamed red liquid on the heads of Buddhists who are sitting in the streets praying. Sixty-seven of these men and women are taken to hospitals with burns covering their scalps and shoulders.

Unable to control the protesters any longer, Diem’s soldiers place the entire city of Hue under martial law.

Still, just as the Birmingham integration movement was losing steam before the Children’s Crusade gave it new life, so the Buddhist crisis has begun to bore members of the foreign press. Diem’s persecution of Buddhists has become old news.

But on June 11, 1963, a seventy-three-year-old Buddhist monk will give those reporters something to write about.

*   *   *

It is almost 10:00 A.M. as Thich Quang Duc sits down on a crowded Saigon thoroughfare. He is dressed in a flowing saffron robe. Duc is an ordained member of the Buddhist clergy, a monastic who lives a meditative life of poverty. This morning he has chosen to protest the government crackdown on his beliefs by burning himself to death.

This is not an impulsive decision. Many within the Buddhist community have sought someone who would immolate himself to draw attention to their plight. Such a startling gesture can’t help but attract media coverage from around the world. Indeed, the day before, members of the foreign press were told to be in front of the Cambodian legation the next day if they wanted to see something special.

Not many journalists accept the invitation, so few are on hand to witness the gray Austin sedan driving slowly toward the intersection of Phan Dinh Phung Boulevard and Le Van Duyet Street. Three hundred and fifty Buddhist protesters carrying banners in Vietnamese and English that denounce the Diem regime follow right behind.

The Austin stops at the intersection. Thich Quang Duc gets out, gathering his robes about him as he does so. A cushion is placed on the street, and the aging monk sits down. He assumes the lotus position and begins to recite the words “return to eternal earth Buddha” over and over again.

Duc has come to this point in his life willingly, but nothing has prepared him for the moment when a fellow protester pours five gallons of gasoline over his bald head. The fuel soaks his robes and flows down his back until the cushion on which he sits is saturated.

The protesters gather in a circle around Duc to prevent the police from interfering. In one hand the monk holds a string of oak prayer beads. In the other he holds a match.

Duc lights the match.

There is no need to touch the flame to his person, because the fumes are enough to make his body burst into fire. His face, as seen through the flames, is a mask of pure agony. But Duc does not cry out or even make a sound. His skin turns black. His eyelids are fused shut. Yet as one minute passes, and then another, he still does not die.

The police cannot get to him; they are blocked by that protective circle of protesters. When a fire truck tries to get close enough to drench the monk with water, other monks throw their bodies beneath its wheels to stop it.

Finally, after ten agonizing minutes, Thich Quang Duc topples forward, dead.

His fellow monks lift the charred corpse into the coffin they have brought with them for this moment. The destroyed body does not fit, and one of Duc’s arms sticks out from the lid as they carry him back to the Xa Loi Pagoda. His heart, they discover later, despite the intensity of the flames, is not badly damaged. The monks remove it from Duc’s chest cavity and place it on display in a glass chalice.

In the months that follow, other monks will also martyr themselves. And one South Vietnamese official will even make the mistake of telling a reporter, “Let them burn and we shall clap our hands.”

As in Birmingham, this moment is the beginning of the end for those who hold power in Saigon. And once again, an Associated Press photograph will make the difference.

Malcolm Browne, the AP Saigon bureau chief, was one of the few journalists to witness the immolation of Thich Quang Duc. His picture of the burning monk horrifies people around the world. And as with Bill Hudson’s photo of police dogs attacking innocent protesters, that shot will become one of the most enduring and iconic images of the 1960s.

And again, John F. Kennedy will read his morning papers horrified by the photograph. Instantly, the president knows that his Vietnam problem has just escalated. He can no longer support President Diem. The world will turn on the Vietnamese leader after such a horrific image.

Diem must go.

The question facing John Kennedy, his fellow Catholic, is how?

This horrifying image of a Buddhist monk self-immolating became one of the most enduring images of protest against the Vietnam War. (Malcolm Browne/Associated Press)

*   *   *

It is 5:45 P.M. on May 29 in Washington, D.C. President John Kennedy has had a busy day of back-to-back meetings in the Oval Office. Yet his burgundy tie is neatly cinched around his neck and his tailored navy blue suit coat looks as immaculate as when he put it on after his 1:00 P.M. nap. Right now, JFK is needed in the Navy Mess, on the lower level of the White House. He rises slowly from his desk, stretching his back as he does so, then begins the short walk downstairs.

The president has no illusions over what is about to transpire. Today is his forty-sixth birthday. His staff has abruptly disappeared, leading him to believe that they have already made their way to the Navy Mess for what is supposed to be a surprise party.

The cares of the world are never far from Kennedy’s shoulders, even during a time of celebration. So as he walks to a party in his honor, there is a third incendiary situation looming over his administration. This problem has nothing to do with race or religion or war. Instead, it is about that most primal of all human longings: sex. And it has far more potential to end his presidency than does Birmingham or even Vietnam.

JFK has long been aware that revelations about his philandering would ruin not only that carefully burnished image of him as a family man but also his political future. Now he need look no further than Great Britain to see exactly what that downfall might look like. John Profumo, a dapper forty-eight-year-old British war hero and politician, has been caught having an affair with a twenty-one-year-old call girl named Christine Keeler. Profumo is married, and his wife, former film star Valerie Hobson, has chosen to forgive him. If Profumo were any other man, the embarrassing story might end there.

But John Profumo is also Britain’s secretary of war and one of the most powerful men in the government of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. And not only is Christine Keeler sleeping in his bed, but she is also having sex with a deputy Soviet naval attaché. When first confronted about his affair in the House of Commons, Profumo denied it. On June 5, he will be forced to admit that he lied. A disgraced Profumo will be shunned by his colleagues and forced to resign.

Profumo will disappear from the government and high society. His humiliation will be so complete that he will undertake extraordinary measures to seek redemption. He will volunteer to scrub toilets at a London shelter for the poor—a penance that he will continue to perform long after Queen Elizabeth restores his social status in 1975 by making him a Commander of the British Empire.

Prime Minister Macmillan is not guilty of a single indiscretion, but he is the man ultimately responsible for any secrets Profumo might inadvertently have leaked to his mistress. Seventy-one percent of the British public is in favor of either Macmillan’s resignation or the chance to vote for a new prime minister via an immediate general election.

John Kennedy is riveted by the scandal. The similarities between himself and Profumo are too many to be ignored: both are nearly the same age, both have glamorous wives, both are decorated World War II veterans, and both men even go by the nickname Jack.

But there is no comparison in their womanizing. JFK’s indiscretions go far beyond those of Profumo. John Kennedy has been extremely fortunate so far that no women have stepped forward to boast about bedding the president. And he has no reason to believe that any of the women who spent the night in the White House were spies. But as his brother Bobby reminds him, even one woman going to the tabloids could ruin him. The damage would go far beyond the innuendos Marilyn Monroe spread around Hollywood before her untimely death.

The irony is that Jackie’s pregnancy has made John Kennedy more devoted to his wife and family than ever before. His staff has continued to see the president and First Lady holding hands and spending far more time together—though only Jackie bears witness to the president saying nightly prayers on his knees. Back in March, Secret Service agents were stunned when JFK actually showed up at the airport to greet Jackie, Caroline, and John upon their return from a trip. “The president had clearly missed his family and was eager to see them,” agent Clint Hill will later write.

As Jackie’s pregnancy becomes more visible, the Kennedys are spending more weekends together at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland that Dwight Eisenhower famously named for his grandson. Situated on 125 acres in the Catoctin Mountains, the thickly forested retreat features miles of trails for walking, a large main cabin known as the Aspen Lodge, a putting green, a driving range, a skeet-shooting facility, horse stables, and a heated outdoor pool. Wire fences patrolled by Marine Corps guards ring the entire facility. Best of all to the Kennedy family, Camp David is one of the only places in the world where a Secret Service agent does not hover nearby every minute of the day. The marines are deemed enough to protect the First Family.

Now, in the Navy Mess, it is Jackie who leads the chorus of “Happy Birthday” the instant her husband enters the room. He feigns surprise as a glass of champagne is slipped into his hand and his staff gathers around to present an array of gag gifts.

But Jackie Kennedy has more surprises up her sleeve. For the party later moves from the Navy Mess to the presidential yacht, Sequoia. Only family and a few close friends are invited. As Sequoia cruises slowly up and down the Potomac, the quiet birthday gathering turns into a raging party. Dom Perignon 1955 flows, and music from a three-piece band blares in the aft salon. The Twist has gone out of style, but it’s the president’s favorite, so the band plays Chubby Checker again and again. Secret Service agent Clint Hill will later say that he’s never seen John and Jackie Kennedy having more fun together, “doing the twist, the cha-cha, and everything in between.”

Despite his infidelities, President Kennedy was devoted to his family, shown here on Easter Sunday, 1963. (Cecil Stoughton, White House Photographs, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)

The cruise is set to end at 10:30, but JFK is having so much fun that he orders the skipper to take her out for another hour. And another. And yet another, all the while ignoring the lightning and rain that keep Bobby, Ethel, Teddy, and the rest of the party indoors.

It’s 1:20 in the morning when the Sequoia finally docks. Washington is asleep. John and Jackie Kennedy are awash in the romance of a very special evening. The Birminghams and Vietnams and Profumos will once again confront the president in the morning, but for now those problems are very far away.

The man with six months to live doesn’t contemplate it, but those closest to him may remember his last birthday party as his very best.

12

JUNE 22, 1963

WASHINGTON, D.C.

LATE MORNING

“You’ve read about Profumo?” John Kennedy asks his guest.

The president and Martin Luther King Jr. walk alone through the White House Rose Garden. This is the first time they’ve met. Kennedy towers over the five-foot-six civil rights leader. Today is a Saturday and the start of a carefully orchestrated series of meetings between the White House and some powerful business groups to mobilize support for the civil rights movement. In a few hours, the president will board Air Force One for a trip to Europe, temporarily leaving the racial inferno behind. This will put control of White House business into the hands of Lyndon Johnson and Bobby Kennedy, whose feuding has reached an all-time high.

Before he goes, JFK has an important point to make to Reverend King. The president has hard evidence, provided by J. Edgar Hoover, that the civil rights leader has something in common with the disgraced British politician John Profumo.

In not so many words, the president is warning King to be smart and control his libido.

For both their sakes.

John Kennedy has thrown the power of his office behind the civil rights movement, but he has done so reluctantly. The president has no black friends. The nearest he comes to indulging in black culture is dancing to Chubby Checker. In John Kennedy’s world, blacks are primarily valets, cooks, waiters, and maids. His forefathers were poor immigrants from Ireland who quickly took advantage of America’s freedoms to achieve prosperity. JFK takes liberties for granted, even as generation after generation of children descended from slaves have never known such opportunities.

Bobby Kennedy is a driving force behind his brother’s new stand. Bobby has become such a zealot for civil rights that his first name is considered an insult in the South. John Kennedy’s finally standing up for the black man is a victory for Bobby as well.

May 1963 was a trying month, marked by confrontation after confrontation in Birmingham spurred by the racist Alabama governor George Wallace. The battles rage on. On June 11, after successfully ensuring that the University of Alabama was integrated, JFK delivered a major nationally televised address about civil rights. In a hastily written and partially improvised speech that would one day be counted among his best, the president promised that his administration would do everything it could to end segregation. He pushed Congress to “enact legislation giving all Americans the right to be served in facilities open to the public.”

The very next day, civil rights activist Medgar Evers is shot dead in the driveway of his Mississippi home.

Integration, however, is not just a matter of doing the right thing. JFK’s commitment has far-reaching ramifications. For instance, some Americans equate civil rights with communism. The last thing Kennedy needs during the height of the cold war is to be branded a Communist and a Negro sympathizer—even though he knows that many in the Deep South will immediately make that improbable leap.

And then there is Martin Luther King Jr.’s womanizing. This fact is well-known throughout the civil rights movement. King spends the majority of each month away from his home and from his wife, Coretta, who knows not to question him about his faithfulness. According to FBI surveillance and the admissions of his good friend Ralph Abernathy, King has sex with prostitutes, hangers-on, and even other men’s wives. When pressed by friends, he does not deny the indiscretions, explaining that he needs sex to curb his anxiety during intense times when he is often very lonely. (Nearly a decade after Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated in 1968, the FBI files on his private life will be sealed until the year 2027.)

Because Director Hoover believes King is a Communist, the FBI has been tapping King’s phones and bugging his motel rooms for a year and a half. Hoover is obsessed with bringing King down. The FBI chief describes the civil rights leader as a “tomcat with obsessive degenerate sexual urges.” Hoover fumes when King is named Time magazine’s 1963 Man of the Year. (Kennedy won in 1961; Johnson will win in 1964.) J. Edgar Hoover actually spends hours listening to the secret recordings made of King’s assignations. The president and attorney general are both informed of what is being recorded. Jackie Kennedy, who thinks King is a phony, will later remember her husband confiding the contents of a tape recording in which King “was calling up all these girls and arranging for a party of men and women, I mean, sort of an orgy in the hotel and everything.”

The most infamous King recording will take place on January 6, 1964, at Washington, D.C.’s Willard Hotel. As recounted in Taylor Branch’s Pillar of Fire, King is caught on tape saying, “I’m [having sex] for God. I’m not a negro tonight!”

None of these shenanigans would normally matter to John F. Kennedy. What King does in private is the good reverend’s business. But the president has thrown in with the civil rights movement. Kennedy and King, its most prominent voice, are politically shackled at the wrist—like it or not.

And the president doesn’t like it one bit. His alliance with King runs counter to every careful strand of his political DNA. There are enormous parallels between the two men. Kennedy can be impulsive in some aspects of his life, but he is precise and cautious when it comes to preparing for an election. King’s infidelities, alleged Communist sympathies, and relentless pursuit of civil rights make their public association an enormous political risk. Even standing here in the relative privacy of the Rose Garden with Martin Luther King makes Kennedy sweat. “King is so hot,” an exasperated JFK confided to Bobby before the reverend’s arrival, “that it’s like [Karl] Marx coming to the White House.”

Martin Luther King Jr. could not care less about the president’s discomfort. In fact, he’s turning up the heat. Dr. King is planning a mass demonstration for August, on the Washington Mall. This moves the civil rights battle from the Deep South and into full view of the Oval Office. “What if they pee on the Washington Monument?” a horrified Kennedy says when he hears the news.

The president’s words underscore a painful truth: unlike the Cuban missile crisis or even the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, the civil rights situation is a problem over which John Kennedy has little direct control. Martin Luther King Jr. is on the front lines in this battle. After his victory in Birmingham, it is King who is in command—and both men know it.

Now JFK wants some of that power back. “I assume you know you’re under very close surveillance,” he warns the civil rights leader.

King does not know. However, he doesn’t rattle easily. The reverend is round to Kennedy’s lean, and short to Kennedy’s tall. Their upbringings couldn’t have been more different. But Martin Luther King Jr. is every bit as educated, well-read, and politically savvy as the president. He didn’t come this far by buckling to white men.

King laughs off the warning. Kennedy gets even more worried.

But Air Force One is waiting. This will be the president’s first visit to Europe since the Cuban missile crisis. The cold war situation is still very tense. JFK will be leaping from one political quagmire and into another.

Before he leaves, JFK needs to know that King understands the problem.

Kennedy counters the reverend’s evasiveness. He uses the Profumo affair to explain the potentially volatile link between his presidency and King’s crusade.

JFK can be vague when he speaks, diplomatically letting listeners draw their own conclusions. But now he is painfully direct. There can be no mistake: King must sever his ties with Communists and be cautious about his infidelities.

“You must be careful not to lose your cause,” the president warns. His point couldn’t be clearer. “If they shoot you down, they’ll shoot us down, too. So be careful.”

The president of the United States has made his point. There is no more time. JFK cuts their conversation short and walks off to catch a plane.

Martin Luther King Jr. has five more years to live.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy has precisely five months.

*   *   *

In the meantime, the battle for control of the White House has begun. As the afternoon meeting in the Cabinet Room gets under way, President Kennedy is already on his way to Europe, taking with him most of his top staff. It is left to Lyndon Johnson and Bobby Kennedy to finish the civil rights agenda of June 22.

Lyndon Johnson is holding court. The president has unexpectedly placed him in charge, fearing a confrontation if he did not. The vice president sits in the president’s chair at the center of the oblong table in the Cabinet Room. Notable for its headrest among a sea of back-high chairs, this chair is the acknowledged center of power. Bobby Kennedy sits on the far side. Twenty-nine civil rights leaders pack the small room. There aren’t enough chairs. Many are forced to stand along the walls. Left unsaid is that there have never been so many black faces in the Cabinet Room.

For Bobby Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, this is the ideal opportunity to show the gathering just who is boss.

The vice president does so by speechifying, proving to the civil rights leaders that he is their ally. Lyndon Johnson keeps his mouth shut as often as possible when the president presides over a meeting. It’s his way of keeping a tight rein on his passion for grand speeches. But now that he’s in charge, Johnson rambles on and on about civil rights, an issue for which he has become passionate since his speech in St. Augustine. He followed this up with another address, on Memorial Day, at the Gettysburg battlefield in Pennsylvania.

Bobby Kennedy was the driving force behind the president’s new stance on civil rights. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders are shown here with Bobby and the vice president on an official visit to the White House in 1963. (Cecil Stoughton, White House Photographs, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)

That eloquent speech was a triumph. Coming at the end of May, it had the effect of placing Johnson in competition with the Kennedys for leadership on the civil rights issue. Upon his return to Washington, Johnson had begged for “fifteen minutes alone with the president,” in order to build on that success. Kennedy granted that request. Johnson used that time to wedge himself further into the civil rights battle.

Lyndon Johnson’s long-winded Cabinet Room speech does not please Bobby Kennedy. Civil rights are his issue, and it was largely at his urging that his brother joined the cause. Bobby doesn’t just want Lyndon off civil rights; he wants him out of the White House altogether. With Johnson’s political power in the South rapidly declining, the Kennedys might not need him on the ticket in 1964. There is a good chance they can win the state of California, whose thirty-two electoral votes more than make up for losing the twenty-five that Johnson might have delivered with Texas. There is also growing evidence that Johnson has become so weak in his home state that Texas will be lost, even if LBJ remains on the ticket.

There is even talk of a Kennedy-Kennedy ticket in 1964.

So Bobby is fearless as he sits across the Cabinet Room table from Johnson—fearless enough to be rude.

The attorney general crooks a finger, beckoning Louis Martin, a black newspaper publisher. “I’ve got a date,” he whispers as Martin comes to his side. “Can you tell the vice president to cut it short?”

Martin is terrified. He knows both men are capable of great rage. Martin diplomatically returns to his place along the wall.

Bobby doesn’t waste any time. He beckons Martin again. “Didn’t I tell you to tell the vice president to shut up?”

Now Martin has no choice. He owes Bobby Kennedy a favor—a very big favor. When Louis Martin’s good friend Martin Luther King Jr. was jailed for civil rights demonstrations in 1960, Bobby swung support to King’s cause by placing a sympathetic phone call to the reverend’s wife, Coretta. Of course, that phone call also helped the Kennedys politically, swinging the black vote behind JFK.

The room is not big enough to hide Martin’s discomfort. It’s obvious to everyone around the table that something is going on. Lyndon Johnson is speaking from his bully pulpit in the chair with the headrest, while Bobby has now twice called the fifty-year-old Martin to his side.

Martin is held in such high esteem that he will one day be known as “the Godfather of Black Politics.” So this is not a minor underling whom Bobby has summoned. This is a man known to everyone. And the attorney general has clearly whispered some angry words in Louis Martin’s ears.

Martin carefully maneuvers between the many bodies and chairs. Lyndon Johnson pretends not to notice—even though he’s a man who notices everything.

Martin is cautious. His progress around the table is not fast, and no one takes his eyes off him.

Lyndon Johnson is speaking as if nothing odd is happening. It’s true that all eyes are upon him—but only because Louis Martin is finally standing behind him.

Martin bends over and places his lips near Johnson’s ear. The vice president never stops talking.

“Bobby has got to go and he wants to close it up,” Martin whispers.

Johnson turns his head so that his eyes bore directly into Louis Martin’s. The vice president gazes at him icily but never once stops talking.

In fact, much to the rage of Bobby Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson rambles on for another fifteen minutes.

This battle for control of the White House is not about the ten days JFK will be in Europe but about that all-important spot on the ticket in 1964. And while Lyndon Johnson may have finished his speech, Bobby’s move let everyone know who held the real power in the room.

Bobby Kennedy is winning this war. The more Lyndon Johnson realizes this, the sicker and more depressed he will become. Reversing his previous weight loss, LBJ will grow very fat over the course of the summer as a result of this despondence. His face will become mottled, leading some to think he has begun drinking heavily.

The Kennedy brothers have broken the man who once considered himself Washington, D.C.’s ultimate power broker.

*   *   *

Lee Harvey Oswald has two passions in the summer of 1963: reading and lying.

He spends the month of June working as a maintenance man for the Reily Coffee Company in New Orleans. Oswald collects unemployment even though he has a job. He writes to the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in New York about all he is doing on its behalf. He prints business cards in the fictitious name of A. J. Hidell that list him as president of Fair Play, and even submits a passport application with false information. Lee Harvey Oswald has become an ardent Communist, with the intention of committing yet another bold act to further that political cause.

Oswald’s employers are not thrilled with his job performance, complaining that he spends too many of his working hours reading gun magazines.

Marina lives with him in yet another apartment she can’t stand. The family sleeps on pallets, and she sprays a ring of bug repellent on the floor each night to keep away the cockroaches. She knows that her husband is applying for a visa that could return them to the Soviet Union, even though she doesn’t want to go. In fact, because he is applying separately for his own visa, it appears he may be trying to send the pregnant Marina and their daughter, June, back to Russia without him.

Lee Harvey Oswald is far from the great man he believes he will one day become. Right now he is a drifter who spends his off time trying to make wine from blackberries, barely clinging to employment, and treating his family like a nuisance.

Reading fuels Oswald’s rage. He devours several books a week. The topics range in subject matter from a Chairman Mao biography to James Bond novels. Then, as summer 1963 concludes its first weeks, Oswald chooses to read about subject matter he’s never before explored: John F. Kennedy.

In fact, Lee Harvey is so enchanted by William Manchester’s bestseller Portrait of a President that after returning it to the New Orleans Public Library, he checks out Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage.

The collection of essays, which won John Kennedy the Pulitzer Prize in 1957, is about the lives and actions of eight great men.

Even in the midst of the squalor and depression that define the Oswalds’ New Orleans summer, Lee Harvey Oswald reads JFK’s carefully chosen words and is inspired to hope that one day he, too, will exhibit that sort of courage.

*   *   *

On day seven of his trip to Europe, John Kennedy rides in an open-air convertible through the narrow, twisting streets of Galway, Ireland. The crowd is manic and presses in close toward the Cadillac. The many tight turns force the president’s driver to slow the car to a crawl. Some Secret Service agents believe that seaports such as Galway are higher-risk environments than inland cities because of their large immigrant populations, but as is always the case when a motorcade route causes the president’s car to slow down for a turn, the intersection has been thoroughly prechecked by an advance team of agents.

But the tight turns are not the only potential hazard: the buildings lining the route are mostly two stories tall. The distance between their upper windows and the president’s motorcade is a third of the distance between General Ted Walker and the alley where Lee Harvey Oswald hid on the night of April 10, 1963.

In fact, John F. Kennedy is traveling through the ideal kill zone. One man with a gun could squeeze off a shot and escape into the throngs in a matter of seconds. And the president is clearly aware that such a thing might happen. He has been thinking quite a bit about martyrs lately and has become fond of quoting a verse by Irish poet Thomas Davis:

We thought you would not die—we were sure you would not go;

And leave us in our utmost need to Cromwell’s cruel blow—

Sheep without a shepherd when the snow shuts out the sky—

Oh, why did you leave us, Eoghan? Why did you die?

But today the specter of death doesn’t seem to matter. It is Saturday, June 29, 1963. An estimated hundred thousand Irish citizens line the streets of that raucous port city on the west coast of Ireland. Six hundred Gardai, police, are there to hold back the cheering crowds.

Due to Jackie Kennedy’s history of troubled pregnancies, she did not make the trip to Europe, as she so famously did two years ago. John Kennedy has the adulation of the crowds all to himself.

Many questioned why the president would go to Europe at such a volatile time. The title of an editorial in last Sunday’s edition of the New York Times asked, “Is This Trip Necessary?”

“In the face of much adverse comment and good reasons not to go,” the editorial went on to say, “President Kennedy is proceeding with his trip to Europe at a most inauspicious time.”

But John Kennedy knows the power of good political timing, and the trip has been a smashing success. At a time when the civil rights controversy has threatened to damage his presidency, the European trip proves that he is clearly the most popular and charismatic man in the world. More than a million Germans lined his motorcade route in Cologne when he arrived there a week ago. Twenty million more Europeans watched him on television. And another million greeted him in West Berlin. There, to chants of “Ken-ne-DEE,” he won over the crowd with a powerful prodemocracy speech. “All free men, wherever they live, are citizens of Berlin,” said the president. “And therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words, ‘Ich bin ein Berliner.’”

The crowd went wild.

JFK’s Berlin speech was a security nightmare for the Secret Service. The president stood alone and unprotected on a podium as thousands looked on. The crowd wasn’t checked for weapons, and many watched from rooftops or open windows. John Kennedy, in the words of one agent, was a “sitting duck.”

Or, in the words of another agent: “All it takes is one lucky shot.”

*   *   *

In Moscow, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, fearing that Kennedy’s popularity would lead to an erosion of support in East Berlin, quickly flew to that divided city to reassert his nation’s claims. He and Kennedy did not meet. In fact, crowds a fraction of the size that greeted Kennedy even noticed that Khrushchev was in town, underscoring JFK’s amazing popularity and sending a clear message that Khrushchev’s power was on the wane.

John F. Kennedy’s European presence even affects the arrogant French president, Charles de Gaulle. From his perch in Paris, de Gaulle has become the bully of Western European politics, but he has more than met his match in JFK, prompting an amazed New York Times writer to marvel that “for the first time, President de Gaulle had been confronted by a Western leader whose ideas on that future are as firm as his own, whose confidence in the ultimate triumph of his ideas is as great and who, finally, speaks for the most powerful nation in the community.”

Kennedy and de Gaulle do not meet on this trip, but the French leader watches every move the president makes.

*   *   *

And then comes Ireland.

“If you go to Ireland,” Appointments Secretary Kenny O’Donnell pointed out when Kennedy adds it to his European itinerary, “people will just say it’s a pleasure trip.”

“That’s exactly what I want,” the president replied. “A pleasure trip to Ireland.”

He has been lauded everywhere he has traveled in the small island nation, hailed as a victorious returning son.

Galway comes on his fourth day in Ireland, and it’s clear by his easy smile and the playful way he interacts with the locals that the pressures of domestic affairs, foreign problems, and the impending birth of his third child seem a million miles away.

Three hundred and twenty children from the Convent of St. Mercy greet the president’s helicopter as it lands on a grassy seaside field at 11:30 A.M. Each of the children is dressed in orange, green, or white, and arranged so that together they form the Irish flag.

Then it is into an open-top limousine for the short drive to Eyre Square, at the center of the city. At one house, Kennedy orders the driver to stop so that he can spend a few minutes talking with the women standing out front.

The speech he gives in Eyre Square is the most heartwarming and personal of JFK’s entire presidency, harkening back to the emotional beginnings of his political career in Boston. The president is utterly at ease as he looks out upon the thousands who fill the square, which will one day be renamed in his honor. This visit is not a campaign stop, or a fund-raising dinner, or even one of those significant historical occasions he might mark with a speech filled with gravity and somber words.

This is a visit from a man whose heart has been touched by the people of his homeland at a time when he needs that very much, and who hopes that his words might do the same for them. “If the day was clear enough, and you went down to the bay, and you looked west, and your sight was good enough, you could see Boston, Massachusetts,” he tells the adoring crowd.

“And if you could,” he continues, “you would see down there working on the docks there some Doughertys and Flahertys and Ryans and cousins of yours who have gone to Boston and made good.”

And then the president asks for a show of hands from the crowd, asking the people of Galway if they have a relative in America. The square is instantly filled with hands thrust to the sky. The crowd roars in laughter and recognition, and bursts into applause. The president is truly one of their own.

The impact is overwhelming. Kennedy’s words speak to a belief in the American dream. But those words are more than a dream to these people. No child of an immigrant in the history of the world has returned to his homeland and enjoyed this sort of adulation. Just one look at Kennedy as he gazes out over the crowd is proof that a family can come to America with nothing and someday reach the highest level. John F. Kennedy, a son of Ireland, is now the most powerful man in the world.

*   *   *

Left unsaid on that day is that black immigrants to America still don’t have that opportunity. But Kennedy is working on it.

“If you ever come to America,” the president closes, after talking about the bright days he has spent in Ireland, “come to Washington. And tell them, if they wonder who you are at the gate, that you come from Galway. The word will be out and when you do, ‘Cead Mile Failte’—One hundred thousand welcomes.

“Thank you and good-bye.”

Kennedy is driven back through town and returns to his helicopter just forty-five minutes after arriving. The love of his homeland courses through his veins. The president has nothing to fear in this motorcade, from these people.

Thousands of snapshots are taken of JFK that day. Many of them remain hanging in the pubs and homes of Galway.

13

AUGUST 7, 1963

OSTERVILLE, MASSACHUSETTS

MORNING

Enjoying the New England summer, a very pregnant Jackie Kennedy leans on a chest-high fence rail watching five-year-old Caroline’s horseback riding lesson. The First Lady and the children are spending the summer at a rented cottage named Brambletyde, just a short distance from the Kennedy family compound at Hyannis Port. Normally, the First Family would stay in the house they own adjacent to the compound property.

The president’s father and Bobby Kennedy own homes right next door. This enclave has long been the family oasis for planning campaigns, celebrating weddings, or just playing a spirited game of touch football. The Kennedy presence has put Cape Cod, Massachusetts, on the map.

So much so that hordes of tourists now invade the area each summer. The raucous crowds have gotten in the habit of trampling shrubbery and causing traffic headaches on the narrow beachfront streets in their desire to catch a glimpse of JFK and Jackie. The Hyannis Port property is also a security nightmare for the Secret Service, which is why the First Family has rented a more secluded residence for the summer of 1963. Jackie and the children are there all the time, while the president commutes from Washington on weekends.

Brambletyde is concealed by thick woods and is accessible only by driving down a narrow one-lane gravel road. From both a privacy and a security standpoint, renting the home makes perfect sense.

There is another reason Jackie chose Brambletyde: she doesn’t want any of the press taking photos of her pregnant. She doesn’t even go into town, letting the head of her Secret Service detail, Clint Hill, pick up the tabloids she secretly loves to read.

Today is Wednesday. Hill is taking the day off. The veteran agent is vigilant in his protection of the First Lady. He works six days a week, sometimes sixteen hours a day. But now Special Agent Paul Landis is taking his place. Landis stands near the riding ring, keeping a trained eye on the First Lady while Special Agent Lynn Meredith, of the “kiddie detail,” hovers nearby to protect Caroline.

Suddenly Jackie feels a sharp pain in her abdomen. Then another. Soon the pain won’t stop. “Mr. Landis, I don’t feel well,” she says, sensing a crisis. “I think you’d better take me back to the house.”

“Of course, Mrs. Kennedy.” But there is no urgency in Landis’s movements.

“Right now, Mr. Landis,” Jackie commands. Her breathy voice has a sharp edge.

Landis rushes to the car and holds open the rear door. Jackie’s face has a fearful look as she slides into the backseat. The pain is coming from her womb. Her growing panic is caused by painful memories of the two troubled earlier pregnancies that ended in the loss of children. Jackie miscarried in 1955. Her second pregnancy resulted, on August 23, 1956, in a stillborn baby girl, whom she and her husband christened Arabella. The loss of even a single child is staggering. Losing two, even more so. But to lose a third baby, particularly after delivering two healthy children, would be intolerable for Jackie.

So although the First Lady is just a few short weeks away from a full-term delivery, she takes nothing for granted when it comes to her unborn baby’s welfare.

Caroline stays with Agent Meredith as Landis drives eighty miles an hour down the narrow road, at the same time radioing ahead to have a doctor and a helicopter on standby.

The First Lady’s anxiety increases as it becomes clearer that she’s going into labor. “Please go faster,” she commands.

The time has come to get to a hospital—immediately. Should Landis be unable to get there in time, it’s very likely that the Secret Service agent will be forced to pull over and personally deliver the president’s child in the backseat of a government sedan.

Agent Landis presses down harder on the gas.

*   *   *

In Washington, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy confronts a different kind of problem. Polls show that his popularity in the crucial state of Texas has dipped to an all-time low—and continues to drop. The state is growing increasingly conservative and Republican. Lyndon Johnson has lost all political power there. This hurts not just in potential electoral votes, but in the wallet, too. Texas has long been a major source of Democratic campaign funding, thanks to the deep pockets of its wealthy oilmen and other big-business people. And once upon a time, LBJ could be counted upon to deliver that money. But now Texas governor John Connally, a conservative Democrat, holds the purse strings—and behind the scenes, he is not a big Kennedy fan.

Therein lies the problem: JFK has been pushing Johnson to arrange a fund-raising trip to Texas. But Johnson knows that such a trip will reveal his lack of clout, making it obvious to the president that Connally will be the man delivering the big donors to the Kennedy campaign. This will further erode any chance of Johnson remaining on the ticket.

Making matters even more complicated, not only has LBJ deliberately avoided arranging any trip by the president to Texas, but Governor Connally is also trying to prevent Kennedy from coming to the state. Both are Democrats, but the governor knows that any public appearance he makes with Kennedy will cost him dearly with Texas voters.

But John Kennedy needs Texas and its money. He is determined to make the trip a reality.

That is the problem hanging over the president’s head on the morning of August 7. In an instant, it will be almost completely forgotten.

*   *   *

Secret Service agent Jerry Behn approaches the desk of Evelyn Lincoln. It is 11:37 A.M.

Special Agent Behn discreetly informs the president’s secretary that Jackie is being airlifted to the hospital at Otis Air Force Base, located near Falmouth, Massachusetts, on the western edge of Cape Cod. The agent also tells Lincoln that the First Lady doesn’t want her husband to be disturbed, in case the labor pains are a false alarm.

Evelyn Lincoln, knowing the president’s deep emotional involvement in Jackie’s pregnancy, steps into the Oval Office anyway.

“Jerry tells me that Mrs. Kennedy is on her way to Otis,” she says calmly, passing along the message without trying to upset the president or his guests unnecessarily.

It doesn’t work. The meeting is immediately adjourned. A hasty series of phone calls confirm that Jackie is being sedated and is about to deliver the Kennedys’ new child by Caesarean section. The president summons Air Force One.

But all four of the president’s airplanes are unavailable today.

JFK doesn’t care. He demands an airplane, any airplane, immediately.

*   *   *

One hour later, as the president of the United States, his Secret Service detail, and select members of his staff race to Otis Air Force Base crammed inside a small six-passenger JetStar aircraft, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy takes his first breath. The president’s second son weighs just four pounds, ten and a half ounces.

However, there are grave concerns about that breath. It appears shallow and labored. The baby grunts as he exhales. His skin has a bluish pallor, and his chest wall is retracted. The infant is immediately placed in an incubator.

Baby Patrick is assigned a Secret Service agent, even though it’s becoming clear that the only direct threat against the newborn’s life comes from within his own body. The lungs are among the last organs to develop in the womb, and young Patrick is suffering from hyaline membrane disease, the most common form of death among children born prematurely.

The First Lady is still sedated from her Caesarean and doesn’t know of the problem. As soon as the president arrives, he takes command. He huddles with Dr. John Walsh to discuss the status of his new son. The doctor explains that there is a chance Patrick might die. Kennedy immediately summons the base chaplain to baptize Patrick, ensuring that his son will go to heaven, based upon the teachings of the Catholic Church.

Dr. Walsh then makes the suggestion that Patrick be moved to Children’s Hospital in Boston, which has state-of-the-art facilities for treating hyaline membrane disease. The president immediately agrees.

At 5:55 P.M., as Jackie is still shaking off the grogginess of her sedation, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy is placed in an ambulance for the hour-long drive to Boston.

This child is precious cargo. Far dearer than the Mona Lisa. So like the famous painting, Patrick makes the journey escorted by a full complement of Massachusetts police. Sirens wail as the ambulance pulls away from the air force hospital.

The caravan does not stop. The baby’s life must be saved.

*   *   *

Now comes the waiting. Jackie Kennedy remains in her ten-room maternity suite, recovering. So it is the president who moves on to Boston to hold vigil at Children’s Hospital. This is a far different man from the one who, in 1956, waited three days before returning from Europe to see his wife after her first miscarriage. Now he stares helplessly at the thirty-one-foot-long experimental high-pressure chamber in which the small body of his son gasps for air. Patrick can clearly be seen through the chamber’s small windows. The intensive care unit is cleared of all visitors whenever JFK is on the floor, which only adds to the president’s solitude.

“How are things with little Patrick?” Evelyn Lincoln gently asks. She has made the trip to Boston to help the president manage the many details of his office that still need his attention.

“He has a fifty-fifty chance,” JFK responds.

“That’s all a Kennedy needs,” she assures him, knowing that her longtime boss will appreciate this sort of encouragement.

World leaders and good friends barrage Kennedy with phone calls and messages, but he never takes the focus off his newborn son. The president has a deep love for children. This baby, conceived in the wake of the Cuban missile crisis, holds special significance. This is the child who would have never entered the world if the crisis had ended in global thermonuclear war. Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, who is named for JFK’s paternal grandfather and for Jackie’s father, has been a source of pride and concern ever since the day the First Lady announced she was pregnant.

The president has a room at the Ritz-Carlton overlooking Boston Common, where he spends the first night of Patrick’s life restlessly passing the hours reading up on documents for a nuclear test ban treaty. But he prefers to spend the second night closer to his ailing son and moves from the luxury of the Ritz-Carlton to an empty hospital room.

At 2:00 A.M. on August 9, Secret Service agent Larry Newman gently awakens him. JFK gets up in an instant and rides the hospital elevator to the pediatric unit on the fifth floor, along with Dr. Walsh and Special Agent Newman. The Secret Service veteran has seen a great deal during his time on the White House detail and knows the president’s moods and personal issues intimately. Newman, who admits he doesn’t cry easily, has himself been on the verge of tears during this heartbreaking ordeal.

Now Special Agent Newman sees anguish settle upon the president’s shoulders. Dr. Walsh is informing JFK that Patrick is in grave condition and is unlikely to survive until the morning. The baby’s underdeveloped young lungs aren’t functioning properly. He has begun to suffer prolonged periods of apnea, with his body refusing to breathe at all.

The elevator door opens. The hallway is dark and empty at this early hour. John Kennedy begins the slow trek to the intensive care unit to gaze upon his dying son.

Then the president hears the sound of children’s laughter. Curious, JFK pokes his head into the room from which it is coming. Two little girls sit up in bed. They are young, just three or four years old. Both have bandages covering large portions of their bodies.

“What’s wrong with them?” he asks Dr. Walsh.

They’re burn victims, explains the doctor, who goes on to add that one girl may soon lose the use of her hands.

The president pats his pockets, searching for a pen. He doesn’t have one. This isn’t unusual. The only thing he carries in his pockets is a handkerchief.

Special Agent Newman and Dr. Walsh come up with a pen. A nurse, seeing that the president has no paper, finds a scrap from the nurse’s station. Then JFK writes a note to the children, telling them to be courageous, letting them know that the president of the United States cares for their well-being. The nurse assures him that she will give the note to their parents. “Nothing was ever said about it,” Newman will later recall. “He just went on to do what he had to do—to see his son. This was part of the dichotomy of the man—the rough-cut diamond.”

Patrick Bouvier Kennedy dies just two hours later. “He was such a beautiful baby,” the president laments to top aide Dave Powers. “He put up quite a fight.”

Kennedy is holding young Patrick’s hand as the child breathes his last. As the president absorbs the terrible moment, he is well aware that his grief is not private. The nurses, doctors, and his own staff watch to see how he handles this awful moment. Slowly, JFK leaves the room and wanders the hospital hallway, keeping his pain to himself.

*   *   *

In the outside world, there is so much going on. A movie about Kennedy’s old boat, PT-109, is a popular summer hit, further burnishing the president’s heroic image. The political situation in Texas is a growing mess that the president himself will try to fix by visiting the state in a few short months. In Chicago, mobster Sam Giancana is swearing revenge on the Kennedy brothers for tightening surveillance on his alleged criminal behavior. Ninety miles from Florida, Fidel Castro is in a rage about ongoing American covert activity in Cuba. In the nation’s capital, Martin Luther King Jr. is about to direct hundreds of thousands of civil rights protesters onto the Washington Mall. In Vietnam, the chain-smoking Catholic despot Diem is out of control. And, finally, in New Orleans, a ne’er-do-well named Lee Harvey Oswald is under arrest for distributing Communist literature, leading the FBI finally to reopen their investigation into his behavior.

But right now none of that matters to John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

The president’s son has died. He lived just thirty-nine hours. The grief is almost too much to bear.

JFK takes the elevator back upstairs to the room in which he had been sleeping. There, he sits down on the bed, lowers his head, and sobs.

“He just cried and cried and cried,” Dave Powers will later remember.

*   *   *

Sixty-five miles to the south, Jackie is also overcome with agonizing grief. The press swarms outside the hospital at Otis Air Force Base. A few hours later, the president arrives to be with his wife.

Even in the midst of her incredible pain, the First Lady can see how much her husband is also suffering. Gently, she reminds him that they still have each other, as well as John and Caroline.

“The one blow I could not bear,” Jackie tells JFK, “would be to lose you.”

14

AUGUST 28, 1963

WASHINGTON, D.C.

AFTERNOON

“Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation,” begins Martin Luther King Jr. His words are scripted. His mannerisms are unusually stiff, as befitting a man speaking before such a massive audience for the first time.

Daniel Chester French’s iconic white marble statue of Abraham Lincoln looms over King’s shoulder. One of Lincoln’s fists is curled into the sign language letter A; the other displays the sign language L. The Great Emancipator’s shoulders are slumped, and his head is slightly lowered, as if he still carries the great burden of being president. It has been one hundred years since Lincoln freed the slaves, and now King is telling a crowd of hundreds of thousands that black Americans are still not free.

The crowd is silent as he begins his speech. He can hear them fidgeting. The applause is light and polite, when it comes at all. King reminds them that America is still a segregated nation, one hundred years after the slaves were freed. It is a powerful thought, but his matter-of-fact delivery robs the words of their full impact.

King rambles on, the sound system carrying his voice out across the Mall and television cameras transporting his voice and image into homes across the nation.

John Kennedy is considered a great orator for his speeches’ carefully chosen words and phrasing, as is Dr. King. But on his best days, Reverend King takes his oration to an even higher level than Kennedy by adding the techniques learned from countless Sunday mornings speaking from the pulpit: thunder and whisper as his voice rises and falls, the changing pace as the reverend speeds up and slows down to make the listener hang on his every word, the stretching or shortening of syllables to accentuate a point. King, in particular, is fond of coming down hard on the letter t when he desires emphasis.

Normally, King’s delivery is fearless and sure, transforming words of damning rage into a hopeful prayer.

But today his delivery is flat. His long syllables and prepared words sound no different from those of any of the day’s other speakers. Martin Luther King Jr., truth be told, is dull.

He talks about poverty and the fact that America separates black from white. Today is the eighth anniversary of Emmett Till’s murder. King’s words testify that little has changed since then.

Many in the crowd have traveled hundreds of miles to be here today. They are black and they are white. The day has been long, filled with hours of speeches—many of which have been downright boring.

But Martin Luther King Jr. is the man they’ve waited to hear. And the fatigue and the heat and the claustrophobia are all forgotten as these 250,000 people strain to hear his every word. They have come for the cause of civil rights, but they have also come to hear the great orator shape this day for them. As they listen to the speech, King’s mellifluous voice carrying out over the reflecting pools between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument, the audience knows in their hearts that King will rally them to greatness.

This is their expectation: that before this speech is done, Martin Luther King Jr. will say something so powerful that this day will never be forgotten.

The crowd listens closely, but as King’s speech passes the nine-minute mark, he has said almost nothing that excites them.

Two minutes later all that changes.

*   *   *

Meanwhile, in the White House, John Kennedy watches King’s speech on television. It is exactly three weeks since Jackie went into labor with baby Patrick. She is mourning in seclusion on Cape Cod, her easy smile replaced by a solemn downward gaze and her eyes hidden behind oversize sunglasses. The president has been vigilant about breaking away from Washington whenever possible to be with her.

But today, a Wednesday, is one day he absolutely must be in Washington, D.C. Bobby Kennedy and their brother Teddy, the new senator from Massachusetts, join JFK as he watches King begin speaking.

The attorney general is a major advocate for the civil rights movement, but his relationship with Dr. King is strained. Part of this is because he has heard J. Edgar Hoover’s wiretap recordings of King, and part is because Bobby is being protective of the president.

Since King announced the March on Washington three months ago, it is Bobby who has become its reluctant organizer. He knows that his brother’s foray into civil rights will fail if the rally at the Lincoln Memorial turns hostile or is sparsely attended. So the attorney general, working closely with his staff at the Justice Department, has quietly guided the march into a shape that can be easily controlled. He made sure that the Lincoln Memorial was the site of King’s speech, because it’s bordered on one side by the Potomac River and on the other by the Tidal Basin. This would make crowd control smoother in case of riots and also keep marchers away from the Capitol Building and the White House.

Bobby ensured that Washington’s police dogs were not on the scene, because dogs would remind people of Bull Connor and Birmingham. He saw to it that all bars and liquor stores were closed for the day, portable toilets were available to avoid his brother’s fear about public urination, and that troops were on standby at nearby military bases in case the crowd turned into a mob. To avoid the appearance that the civil rights movement was supported only by blacks, Bobby worked with the United Auto Workers Union to encourage attendance by its white members. And he even arranged for an aide to position himself below the speaker’s platform with a copy of Mahalia Jackson’s “He’s Got the Whole World (in His Hands)” to be played over the sound system the instant one of the day’s speakers said something inflammatory or anti-American.

Nothing can be done that reflects poorly on the White House or its belated push for civil rights.

And all this, to support Martin Luther King Jr., a man of whom Bobby acidly commented just last night, “He’s not a serious person. If the country knew what we know about King’s goings-on, he’d be finished.”

Just as the Kennedys would be finished if the country knew about the president’s goings-on.

So it is that the president and his brothers watch King’s speech with great interest, praying that their unlikely political ally will deliver on the promise of this great march on Washington.

*   *   *

“We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote,” Martin Luther King Jr. preaches—and that is exactly what he is doing right now, on the verge of swerving away from his prepared speech to quote from the Old Testament book of Amos.

King’s anxiety is so great that he often develops painful stomach problems before a big event. But now his nervousness is gone. His voice begins to rise. His long syllables become staccato. He hits hard on the letter t in the word ghetto.

Looking out across the Mall, King can see that the weariness of those hundreds of thousands listening to his speech has vanished. His voice rises. He has spoken in paragraphs until now, but, as the words begin to flow, those paragraphs become simple, powerful declarative sentences.

Martin Luther King Jr. has found his rhythm.

Gone is the monotone. Gone is the matter-of-fact delivery. He stands in the pulpit now, a minister exhorting his flock. King’s voice turns golden.

And then, for the first time, he belts out the phrase that will come to define this day forever:

“I have a dream!” King proclaims.

Now Martin Luther King owns the crowd. The entire Mall is in a fever pitch.

And then he tells them about that dream. King describes an earthly paradise where blacks and whites are not divided. He dreams that even a hostile southern state like Mississippi will know such wonders.

This dream of King’s is a complete and utter fantasy in America right now. But he is putting into words the ultimate goal of the civil rights movement. And for the people in the crowd to hear it stated so powerfully and clearly has them beside themselves with emotion and pride. Black and white alike, they hang on King’s every word. In a speech that is just sixteen minutes long, King has proved that today is truly, as he hoped, the greatest day for civil rights in American history.

By the time King winds up for the great finish, he is shouting into the microphone, flecks of spittle bursting from his mouth. The image of Lincoln gazing over his shoulder is profoundly moving as King calls upon the spirit of the Emancipation Proclamation. It is clear to all who stand out on the Mall that King plans to finish what Lincoln began so long ago and that the two men—divided by a century of racial injustice—are forever linked in history from this day forward.

“‘Free at last, free at last,’” he quotes from a Negro spiritual, “‘thank God almighty, we are free at last.’”

As the crowd on the Mall erupts in applause, knowing they have just seen and heard a profound moment in their nation’s history, John Kennedy turns to Bobby and passes judgment on what he has just seen.

“He’s damned good.”

*   *   *

One hour later, an exultant Martin Luther King Jr. meets with John Kennedy in the Oval Office. There are eleven other people in attendance, including Lyndon Johnson, so this visit is not a summit meeting between the president of the United States and the most powerful man in the civil rights movement. But Kennedy makes sure King knows he’s been paying attention to the day’s events.

“I have a dream,” he tells King, adding a nod of the head to show approval—and that his fears about King have been temporarily set aside.

*   *   *

But the March on Washington does not change the ongoing racial battle in the American South. At 10:22 A.M. on September 15, 1963, less than three weeks after America listened to Martin Luther King Jr. dream about black boys and girls in Alabama joining hands with white boys and girls, twenty-six black children are led into the basement of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church for Sunday morning services. They are due to hear a children’s sermon on “The Love That Forgives.”

The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church is the same congregation that launched the Children’s Crusade on Birmingham in May 1963. It stands just across from the park where Bull Connor’s police dogs bit into the flesh of innocent black teenagers and elementary school students and has earned a special level of hatred from the white supremacist groups that still battle to block the integration of Birmingham.

The children attending church this Sunday morning cannot possibly know that four members of the Ku Klux Klan have planted a box of dynamite near the basement. So the explosion that shatters the spiritual calm of the church service is completely unexpected. The force of the blast is so great that it doesn’t just destroy the basement, but also blows out the back wall of the church and destroys every stained-glass window in the building—all but one. That lone surviving window portrays an image of Jesus Christ ministering to a group of small children.

The window is symbolic in a sense, because almost all of the children in the basement this Sunday morning survive the horrific tragedy. However, four of them—Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Denise McNair—do not.

Their dream has come to an end.

15

SEPTEMBER 2, 1963

HYANNIS PORT, MASSACHUSETTS

NOON

“Oh, God,” reads a small plaque given to the president, “thy sea is so great and my boat is so small.”

On this Labor Day, John Kennedy sees a small boat bobbing in the distance as he removes his American Optical Saratoga sunglasses and eases himself into a wicker chair on the grass of Brambletyde’s beachfront yard. Sitting directly across from the president, CBS journalist Walter Cronkite does the same, preparing for one of the biggest TV interviews of his life. Today the subject is the rough waters and turbulent swells being navigated by the president of the United States. Both men wear dark suits, even as the September sun beats directly down on them. Cronkite crosses his legs, while Kennedy’s are stretched out in front of him. The wind messes up JFK’s carefully combed hair, forcing him to reach up absentmindedly every few minutes to press it back into place. The balding Cronkite has no such problem.

At forty-six, roughly the same age as Kennedy, Walter Cronkite is considered the nation’s premier television newsman. He and the president have an easy rapport, and JFK is so comfortable that he leans back in his cushioned chair during parts of the interview, just as he does when thinking over a tough problem in the Oval Office.

The two men casually banter as they are miked for sound and then sit quietly opposite each other as the final ten seconds before taping are counted down. Cronkite acknowledges an off-camera signal, and the interview begins.

The broadcaster aims his questions at JFK in a delivery that alternates between baritone rumble and easy drawl. His interviewing style is disarming and even warm, no matter how sharp his queries. As a result, Kennedy remains completely at ease. The interview sounds like a conversation between two friends well-informed about American politics. And truth be told, that isn’t far from Cronkite’s mind-set. He is a devoted Democrat, although he skillfully hides that fact from his viewing audience.

“Do you think you’ll lose some Southern states in ’64?” Cronkite asks.

“Well I lost some in ’60, so I suppose I’ll lose some in, uh, maybe more in ’64,” Kennedy smiles wistfully, forced to reveal a painful political weakness. Cronkite is letting Americans in on a secret known only to pollsters and veteran politicians. “I don’t know. It’s too early to tell, but I would think we were, I’m not sure that, uh, I’m the most popular figure in the country today in the South. But that’s all right. I think we’re going to have to wait and see a year and a half from now…”

There is now a fighting spirit in the president’s eyes. The mere talk of the next election excites him. He loves the thrill of the political battle. JFK also loves being president. He is an adrenaline junkie, relishing the rush of competing for power.

Cronkite presses the president. “What do you think the issues might be in ’64?”

“Well, of course, abroad would be the security of the United States. Our effort to maintain that security. To maintain the cause of freedom. At home I think it’s the economy. Jobs. Opportunity for all Americans.”

The president, without consulting notes, then rattles off a long list of statistics. He presses for a tax cut, to ward off a recession, he says, and backs it up with detailed financial specifics about the way in which cutting taxes would stimulate the economy.

Cronkite finally gets around to the touchy subject of Vietnam. With every passing day, Americans are becoming more concerned about U.S. involvement in that troubled nation. The ongoing and well-publicized oppression of the Buddhists has made some Americans forget that communism is the primary reason U.S. troops are in Vietnam. There are growing cries for America to leave Southeast Asia and let the Vietnamese fight their own war.

“Everyone has said the administration would apply diplomacy in Vietnam,” Cronkite begins, emphasizing the second syllable with a short letter a (“NAM” as in ram). “Which I’d assumed we’d been trying all along. What can we do in this situation that seems to parallel other famous debacles of dealing with unpopular governments?”

Cronkite has a soothing on-camera presence that television viewers have grown to trust. The president knows that convincing this newsman of his views on Vietnam is the same as convincing the voters watching at home.

“The war is going better,” JFK begins. “But that doesn’t mean that the events of the last two months aren’t very ominous. I don’t think that if greater effort isn’t made by the government, that the war can be won out there. In the final analysis, it’s their war. They’re the ones who have to win it or lose it.”

The president stops short of saying that U.S. troops should be removed, despite the fact that dozens of Americans have already been killed fighting another country’s battles. He voices his concerns that if Vietnam falls to the Communists, then so will the rest of Asia. JFK lists the countries that will topple, beginning with Thailand and continuing all the way to India. “We’re in a desperate struggle with the Communist situation,” he insists, “and I don’t want Asia to pass into the control of the Chinese.”

Kennedy’s voice intensifies, showing his disdain for both Vietnam’s president Diem and those enemies that would spread communism around the world. This is not the John Kennedy whom some consider to be an affable young man who was elected based on good looks and his father’s money. JFK has grown into a true world leader. He combines discipline with a powerful work ethic, knowledge, guts, and compassion.

The interview ends after twenty minutes. The president immediately pulls his sunglasses from his breast pocket and slips them back on. He and Cronkite make small talk about the cost of producing a half-hour television show, but their attention soon turns to a small sunfish sailboat skimming lazily across the water. It is a dot on a sea that stretches endlessly across the horizon. Both men are sailors, fascinated by the water.

The weather in the bay is calm. Turbulence is not far away. Nevertheless, the interview has gone flawlessly. The president can now relax with his family for the rest of the afternoon, enjoying a time of peace amid all the sadness and turmoil of the previous month.

Kennedy and Cronkite shift the conversation to sailing until it is time to remove their microphones. Inside Brambletyde, just a few feet away, a grieving Jackie Kennedy hides from the cameras—and the world. The president has been spending more time not just with Jackie, but with Caroline and John, too, swimming in the ocean, allowing them to ride in the presidential helicopter, and attending Caroline’s riding lessons. The president has urged his wife to put on a brave face for the media, but she’s just not ready.

However, Jackie will soon break her self-imposed seclusion. She has decided to spend a few weeks in Greece with her sister, Lee Radziwill, in order to ease her mourning. The mere thought of that trip, which is still a month away, brings a rare smile to the First Lady’s face.

*   *   *

Walter Cronkite and John Kennedy say good-bye. And on this perfect Labor Day afternoon, with the wind blowing in off the Atlantic and the sun warming their faces, neither man can possibly know that it will be Cronkite who will appear on national television in just twelve weeks to make an announcement that will shock the world.

16

SEPTEMBER 25, 1963

BILLINGS, MONTANA

LATE AFTERNOON

November 21 and 22 are looming.

Those dates reside in the back of John F. Kennedy’s mind as he stands in the rodeo ring at the Yellowstone County Fairgrounds, addressing an overflow crowd. Billings, Montana, has a population of just fifty-three thousand, and it appears as if every single citizen has come out to cheer on the president. A marching band only adds to the pageantry.

“The potential of this country is unlimited,” Kennedy begins, and it’s almost as if he is talking about himself. In the past five days alone, he has helped Montana’s farmers by approving a massive wheat sale to the Soviet Union, brokered a global ban on the testing of nuclear weapons, cut income taxes, and even stood before the UN General Assembly promising to send men to the moon. JFK’s speech that day was so outstanding that even the Soviets applauded.

The sunlight is fading but still warm as the president speaks in the open-air dirt arena, the Rocky Mountains towering in the near distance. The day smells like autumn. Kennedy’s coat and tie look stiff compared to the jeans and cowboy boots worn by many in the audience, and his Boston accent is almost jarring in this iconic western setting. And when Kennedy speaks about the wonders of the American West, he quotes Henry David Thoreau—a man from Massachusetts who never crossed the Mississippi.

But the good people of Montana don’t mind a bit. They hang on the president’s every word, thrilled that John Fitzgerald Kennedy has come to their town as part of his eleven-state swing through the West. The president’s focus is on shoring up support for his upcoming campaign. Back in 1960, Nevada was the only western state Kennedy carried. Not only did he lose Montana and its four electoral votes, but Yellowstone County voted against JFK by a margin of 60 percent to 38 percent.

But that was three years ago.

Today, the president was mobbed when Air Force One landed at the Billings airport. Men and women of all ages pressed forward to shake his hand. Kennedy, much to the chagrin of his Secret Service bodyguards, put his life at risk by eagerly wading into the crowd. He knew that nothing would make these people happier than to go home tonight and say they had touched the president. Thousands lined the motorcade route to the fairgrounds, including men on horseback.

It would seem that JFK might just win Montana if the election were held tomorrow. And success in the West is a vital part of Kennedy’s reelection strategy. A victory in Texas, for example, would almost guarantee his victory in 1964.

And so Appointments Secretary Kenny O’Donnell has selected November 21 and 22 as the likely dates of Kennedy’s eagerly anticipated Texas fund-raising trip.

The president envisions a grand tour of the state, with stops in five major cities: San Antonio, Fort Worth, Dallas, Houston, and Austin. Texas governor John Connally, the conservative Democrat who has been maintaining a discreet political distance from the president, is quietly in favor of a less ambitious itinerary. Dallas, for instance, is not Kennedy territory. It is a city where “K.O. the Kennedys” bumper stickers are displayed. And parlor games about “Which Kennedy do you hate the most?” are commonplace. Children boo the president’s name in classrooms, and a popular local poster of Kennedy designed to look like a mug shot bears the inscription “Wanted for Treason. This Man Is Wanted for Treasonous Activities Against the United States.”

Even more ominous are the pro-assassination jokes—a situation made all the more troubling by the extraordinary murder rate in Dallas. More murders are committed in Texas than any other state, and more homicides occur in Dallas than anywhere else in Texas. The state does not regulate or register firearms, and 72 percent of the murders are by gunshot.

There is no question that John F. Kennedy’s visit to the “Southwest hate capital of Dixie,” as Dallas has been called, is fraught with complications.

The president will discuss this issue, along with other details of the trip, with John Connally next week at the White House. In yet another confirmation that Lyndon Johnson has no place in John Kennedy’s future plans, the vice president has been neither invited to that meeting nor even told it will take place.

One statistic about the Texas trip is most glaring of all: more than 62 percent of Dallas voters rejected John Kennedy in 1960.

But JFK loves a challenge. If Billings, Montana, can be won over, then why not the “Big D”?

*   *   *

Meanwhile, at the exact same time President Kennedy is speaking in Montana, Lee Harvey Oswald is already on his way to Texas—and beyond. Dressed in casual slacks and a zippered jacket, Oswald rides Continental Trailways bus 5121 bound for Houston. From there he will change buses and travel due south to Mexico City. Unlike the American forces (which included among them a young Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee) that took a year to make that journey during the Mexican-American War of 1846, Oswald will make the trip in just one day.

Oswald is traveling like a man who is never coming back. He has no home, because he has just abandoned his squalid New Orleans apartment. When the landlady came around demanding the seventeen dollars in back rent, Oswald put her off with a lie and later sneaked out in the dead of night.

The sum of Oswald’s worldly possessions are now divided among his wallet and the two cloth suitcases stowed in the bus’s luggage bay.

As for a family, Oswald no longer has one. Two days ago he sent the very pregnant Marina and their nineteen-month-old daughter, June, back to live with Marina’s friend Ruth Paine outside Dallas. Marina has been Oswald’s unwitting pawn these past few months, her Soviet citizenship vital to his goal of returning to the Soviet Union. It is unclear if she knows he is traveling to Mexico—or that he had to leave the country to travel at all.

But Oswald has hatched a clever new scheme—one that doesn’t require Marina. So just as he abandoned their apartment, now he also abandons his family. Every mile that Trailways 5121 travels past the pine thickets and swampland of the Texas coastal highway puts Lee Harvey Oswald one mile farther away from the shackles of his turbulent and bitter marriage.

Oswald has temporarily abandoned plans to return to the Soviet Union. Instead, he dreams of living in the palm tree–fringed workers’ paradise of Cuba. But it’s impossible to attain a Cuban travel visa in the United States because the United States and Cuba have severed diplomatic relations. Thus Oswald is taking the bus to Mexico City in order to visit the Cuban embassy there.

Lee Harvey Oswald never fits in, no matter where he goes. He is not an outcast because that would mean allowing himself to join a group before being rejected by it. Instead, he is something far more unpredictable—and ultimately more dangerous: he is a parallel member of society, a thin-skinned loner operating by his own rhythms and rules, constantly searching for that place where he can hunker down, for that identity that will allow him to be the great man he so longs to be.

Oswald believes that Cuba is such a place. And in his mind he has done plenty to impress the Cuban dictator, Castro. Oswald’s time in New Orleans passing out leaflets for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee was his way of proving his loyalty to Fidel. Marina Oswald will later claim that Lee Harvey even planned to hijack an airplane that would take him directly to Havana.

At 2:00 A.M. on the morning of September 26, Lee Harvey Oswald changes buses in Houston, switching to Continental Trailways 5133. One day later, he arrives in Mexico City. Throughout the journey he is chatty, even boastful, desperate to impress his fellow passengers. He regales them with tales of his time in the Soviet Union and his work with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. He even makes a point of showing them the Soviet stamps in his passport. Whenever the bus stops for a food break, the rail-thin Oswald devours heaping platters of Mexican cuisine. He doesn’t speak Spanish, which he’ll need to learn for his new life in Cuba. So, for now, he orders by jabbing a finger randomly at a menu item and hoping for the best.

In his wallet, Oswald carries close to two hundred dollars, a Mexican tourist card that allows him one fifteen-day trip to that country, and two passports—one from his Soviet days and the other brand-new, recently issued by the U.S.government. In his blue athletic bag, Oswald has wedged a Spanish-English dictionary, newspaper clippings that prove he was arrested while agitating on behalf of Cuba, his Russian-language work permit from his time in Minsk, and proof of his marriage to a Soviet citizen. Oswald also carries a pad containing notes explaining that he speaks Russian and is a devoted friend of the Communist Party.

Like all true Communists, Lee Harvey Oswald is an avowed atheist, so he does not pray for his journey’s success. Instead, he puts his faith in that thick stack of documents he now carries.

But Oswald knows that the journey is a gamble. He might get all the way to Mexico City and be denied. If that happens, the precious dollars spent on travel, food, and lodging will have been squandered. But it is a risk he must take.

The bus arrives in Mexico City at 10:00 A.M. Oswald once again drifts, immediately separating himself from his new acquaintances. He checks in at the Hotel de Comercio, just four blocks from the bus station, at a rate of $1.28 per night. And though exhausted after the grueling twenty-hour bus ride, he walks immediately to the Cuban embassy.

*   *   *

John Kennedy is traveling west. Lee Harvey Oswald is traveling south. And Jackie Kennedy is traveling east. She and her sister, Lee, are off for Greece. There they will spend two weeks aboard the yacht Christina, owned by the shadowy womanizer Aristotle Onassis, a man who has been under surveillance by the FBI for almost twenty years due to his unscrupulous business practices. Among other things, Onassis has been investigated for fraud against the American government and for violation of U.S. shipping laws in the mid-1950s. It’s no wonder that, back in 1961, when the First Lady went abroad alone on a goodwill tour, President Kennedy issued very firm instructions to Jackie’s Secret Service detail: “Whatever you do in Greece, do not let Mrs. Kennedy cross paths with Aristotle Onassis.”

The swarthy Greek shipping magnate is more than twenty years older than Jackie, and three inches shorter. He’s also one of the richest men in the world. His yacht has been the scene of many a society function, and men such as JFK and Winston Churchill have been aboard it. The last time the First Lady was on board the 325-foot-long Christina, which is renowned for such opulent features as solid-gold faucets, was almost ten years ago, as a guest with JFK. At that time, Jackie Kennedy thought the boat vulgar and was particularly disgusted by the bar stool covers made of whale scrotums. But now her sister is pursuing Onassis romantically, even though the portly Greek is having an affair with opera star Maria Callas. Understanding the situation, Jackie is coming along to offer emotional support.

The First Lady would never dare be photographed in a bikini on U.S. soil. The image of her in a revealing bathing suit would be scandalous, and perhaps even politically damaging for her husband. But Greece is half a world away from the restrictions and cares of being the First Lady.

Jackie needs a break from all that. For the next two weeks she wants nothing more than to be pampered and free-spirited. The First Lady has lost all of her baby weight. It would be a shame not to flaunt her newly slim figure in the privacy of her opulent surroundings. So she makes sure her staff puts a bikini in her suitcase before she boards the TWA 707 for Greece on October 1.

It has been exactly fifty-two days since she endured the tragedy of baby Patrick’s death. It is exactly fifty-two days until she will endure another unspeakable tragedy.

17

OCTOBER 6, 1963

CAMP DAVID, MARYLAND

10:27 A.M.

The president of the United States is furious. John Kennedy steers a golf cart to Camp David’s military mess hall for Sunday Mass. The paved path meanders through a thick wood, taking him past the Hawthorn, Laurel, Sycamore, and Linden guest cabins on his three-minute journey. With him are five-year-old Caroline and John Jr., who will turn three next month. But it is not politics that is on the president’s mind—his trip to Texas is set. (After meeting with Governor John Connally two days ago, the much-needed political foray is a done deal.) Nor is it the pressures of the office. And it is certainly not his children who have JFK annoyed—the president is excited to be spending time alone with Caroline and John. He has even asked legendary Look magazine photographer Stanley Tretick to take some informal photos of them at play.

No, what’s making the president so angry is the First Lady. She won’t come to the phone.

Despite her husband’s objections, the First Lady spent two weeks as a guest on Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis’s yacht Christina in 1963. (Associated Press)

It’s bad enough that Jackie Kennedy is cavorting around the Mediterranean with Aristotle Onassis, a man whom the president does not trust. But it’s far worse that pictures of her Greek adventures are front-page news around the world, leading many to ask why the president is allowing his wife to spend time with a man who has been investigated for fraud against the U.S.government. Perhaps worst of all, however, Aristotle Onassis is a known philanderer.

A simple phone conversation with Jackie might lessen Jack’s tension. But the First Lady is now unreachable. Even when the president plans ahead and accounts for the time change, the most powerful man in the world cannot speak to his wife. JFK doesn’t know whether she’s avoiding him or if the Christina truly lacks modern communication technology.

The situation is not just making Kennedy angry—it’s making him jealous.

*   *   *

Four months. Four long months. That’s how long it will take for Lee Harvey Oswald to obtain a Soviet visa, which it turns out he needs before Cuban officials will grant him travel documents.

But Oswald doesn’t have enough money to wait four months. He needs to go to Cuba now.

And so he stands toe-to-toe with consul Eusebio Azcue at the Cuban consulate in Mexico City, arguing with him over the Soviet visa. The conversation long ago stopped being civil. Oswald is “highly agitated and angry,” in the eyes of one employee of the Cuban consulate. Instead of being deferential to the man who controls his entry into the Communist country, Oswald is yelling at him.

Finally, Azcue has had enough. The diplomat in him is gone, and he speaks candidly with the American. “A person like you,” Azcue tells Oswald in fractured English, “in the place of aiding the Cuban Revolution, are doing it harm.”

Azcue concludes by telling Oswald that he will never get the paperwork to enter Cuba.

The consul turns and strides back to his office, leaving Oswald crushed: his dream of escaping to Cuba is over. A consular employee hands Oswald a scrap of paper with her name and the embassy’s contact information on it, should he ever want to try again.

A despondent Oswald stays the weekend in Mexico City, loading up on the local food and taking in a bullfight. But his despair is growing.

He then takes the bus back to Dallas, where he rents a room at the YMCA and looks for work. He sheepishly phones Marina, who is still living with family friend Ruth Paine and is due to deliver the Oswalds’ second baby any day. Paine is a Quaker housewife who was introduced to the Oswalds by George de Mohrenschildt, the well-educated Russian with possible CIA connections whom Oswald met in the summer of 1962.

Ruth Paine speaks a smattering of Russian, which helps to make Marina feel more at home. All Marina’s possessions are stored in Paine’s garage. Among them is a green-and-brown rolled blanket in which Lee Harvey Oswald’s rifle is concealed. Ruth Paine, being a peace-loving Quaker, would never allow the gun in her garage, but she has no idea it’s there.

Oswald regales Marina with tales of Mexico, but also admits that his trip was a failure. Marina listens, and believes that there is a change for the better in her husband. But she refuses to live with him. So, while looking for work, Oswald phones his wife when he can and sometimes hitchhikes from Dallas out to the Paine residence to see her.

Finally, thanks to a kindly reference from Ruth Paine, he finds a job. It is menial labor for a man with Oswald’s relatively high IQ of 118, and involves nothing more than placing books into boxes for shipping. But he and Marina are happy nonetheless. Maybe it’s a sign of a new beginning.

At 8:00 A.M. on Wednesday, October 16, Lee Harvey Oswald reports for his first day on the job at the Texas School Book Depository. The seven-floor redbrick warehouse is located on the corner of Elm and North Houston and overlooks Dealey Plaza, named for a onetime publisher of the Dallas Morning News. Most fortuitously, Parkland Memorial Hospital is just four miles away, should Marina go into labor with the new baby while Oswald is at work.

On October 18, Oswald gets a birthday surprise: the Cuban embassy in Mexico City has inexplicably reversed itself and granted him a travel visa. But it’s too late. He has moved on.

On October 20, Audrey Marina Rachel Oswald is born at Parkland Memorial. Lee Harvey doesn’t immediately go to see his wife and child, fearful that the hospital will present him with a bill he cannot pay.

This absence from the life of his newborn daughter is something Marina and the baby will have to get used to. Because Lee Harvey will not be around to watch young Audrey Marina Rachel Oswald grow up.

*   *   *

Jackie Kennedy is back in Washington. Between her summer on Cape Cod, two September weeks in Newport, Rhode Island, and the two weeks in Greece, she’s been gone from the White House for almost four months. The date is October 21, and it’s suppertime in the White House. The First Lady has invited Newsweek correspondent Ben Bradlee and his wife, Tony, over for a late meal. They will dine in the White House family residence on the second floor, which Jackie renovated in 1961, hand-selecting the antique wallpaper portraying scenes from the American Revolution.

And while tonight’s meal will be light and the conversation lively, this room has ghosts. President William Henry Harrison died here in his bed from pneumonia back in 1841. Abraham Lincoln’s eleven-year-old son, Willie, took ill and died here in 1862. And Lincoln himself was embalmed in this room after being shot dead. Finally, just before the turn of the century, this high-ceilinged chamber served as the bedroom of William McKinley, who was also killed by an assassin’s bullet.

This impromptu dinner is the sort of get-together the First Lady enjoyed so often before baby Patrick’s death. It’s been a long time since the Kennedys had friends over just for fun. And while Jackie has canceled all formal social obligations until January 1964, this simple supper is an attempt to begin a normal daily life again. She waited until late afternoon to confirm that the president’s schedule was clear. The Bradlees received their invitation only at 7:00 P.M. but were more than happy to drop everything and come over.

The president has had a terrible day. The ongoing racial unrest down in Birmingham and the pitched battles over civil rights legislation here in Washington have left him in a foul mood. But the Bradlees are perhaps the Kennedys’ closest friends in Washington, and the president knows that, with them, his words are off the record. So Jackie did well by inviting Ben and Tony. JFK sits in his shirtsleeves sipping a drink and blowing off steam by talking politics across the table. Much of the conversation revolves around what he plans to do if he is reelected. “Maybe after 1964,” Kennedy repeats over and over. “Maybe after 1964.”

But 1964 might not be a year of victory, and John Kennedy knows that. Things are darkening in Camelot. Even Jackie’s recent vacation has turned out to be a liability. Her fondness for European culture and fashion have long contrasted with the more down-to-earth sensibilities of the American public. The First Lady’s extraordinary popularity once made her impervious to political attacks. This is no longer the case.

Less than two months after she suffered the brutal pain of losing a child, Republicans in Congress have decided that she is fair game. They publicly bash her for the Greece trip, accusing the First Lady of being nothing more than a pleasure-seeker. “Why doesn’t the lady see more of her own country instead of gallivanting all over Europe?” wonders Congressman Oliver Bolton of Ohio.

The press is also writing lengthy stories about the frequent parties on the Onassis yacht. Some writers are painting the First Lady as self-indulgent. “Does this sort of behavior seem fitting for a woman in mourning?” asks the Boston Globe. One published photograph even shows a carefree Jackie being assisted onto the Christina by a strapping, young, bare-chested, and sun-bronzed male crew member. Another image, of Jackie sunning herself in a bikini, was splashed on front pages all around the world. For the first time, the First Family is under siege from the media.

The UPI newspaper syndicate is even questioning the First Lady’s morals, suggesting that her sunbathing is too sensual. “Mrs. Kennedy allows herself to be photographed in positions and poses which she would never permit in the United States,” reads the story. The writer goes on to add archly that it would be common courtesy for the president and First Lady to reciprocate by inviting Aristotle Onassis to the White House next time he’s in the United States.

Now, at the White House dinner table, the First Lady’s deep tan is the most obvious reminder of her husband’s political fragility. But she seems oblivious to the pain she’s causing. Jackie defends Onassis to her husband and the Bradlees, telling them that the Greek is an “alive and vital person”—which, of course, only makes the president angrier.

John Kennedy does not know everything that did, or did not, happen on board the Christina. He does know about the massages, caviar dinners, and shots of vodka. He also understands that his wife is drawn to the Christina’s opulence and to the vast wealth of Aristotle Onassis. What the president doesn’t know is whether his wife was unfaithful, though it’s most likely that she was not, especially accompanied as she was on board by her sister, who had designs on Onassis. But the president senses that something is troubling his wife, and he has already confided to Ben Bradlee about “Jackie’s guilt feelings.”

Now he uses that guilt to his advantage.

“Maybe now you’ll come to Texas with us next month,” the president says with a cautious smile. He is determined that Jackie make this journey. And not just to answer the charges that she has seen more of Europe than of America. The First Lady is far more popular in the South than he is, particularly among female voters. Jackie hasn’t made a campaign appearance since 1960, but her presence in Texas might deflect some of the animosity surrounding the president’s visit. “Jackie will show those Texas broads a thing or two about fashion,” JFK says.

The fact is that Jackie actually wants to be at his side—no matter what. She is tired of being away from her husband.

It was in this spirit that Jackie bared her soul to JFK in a handwritten letter on October 5, shortly after the Christina put out to sea.

“If I hadn’t married you my life would have been tragic, because the definition of tragic is a waste,” she wrote in the privacy of her personal stateroom, named for the Greek island Chios. As is her habit, Jackie substitutes dashes for normal punctuation. The First Lady goes on to admit that she’s actually sorry for their daughter, Caroline, because it will be impossible for her to marry a man as wonderful as her father.

The Kennedy marriage can be restrained at times; many things are left unsaid. But on other occasions the simmering passion is so palpable that the American people sense it just by watching JFK and Jackie stand side by side. The heat between the president and the First Lady is undeniable, and that sentiment flows through her written words. Jackie writes line after line on the Christina that day, until the simple love note stretches to seven pages long.

“I loved you from the first day I saw you,” Jackie’s letter confesses. Their ten-year anniversary had been September 12. “Ten years later, I love you so much more.”

Now, two weeks later, in the White House, this man whom she so adores wants to take her on a trip to Texas. How can she possibly say no?

“Sure, I will, Jack. We’ll just campaign,” the First Lady responds. Whatever happened on the Christina is in her past. Her future is gazing at her intently with those beautiful greenish-gray eyes of his.

“I’ll campaign with you anywhere you want.”

The First Lady then reaches for her red appointment book and pens the word Texas across November 21, 22, and 23.

PART III

Evil Wins

18

OCTOBER 24, 1963

DALLAS, TEXAS

EVENING

Jacqueline Kennedy has no clue. If she could see the hell her good friend Adlai Stevenson is enduring in Dallas this balmy evening, she might not be so optimistic about making the upcoming Texas trip with her husband.

Known as “Big D,” Dallas is a dusty, dry town, miserably hot in the summer and annoyingly cool in the winter. It is surrounded by some of the most unremarkable scenery in all America. It is a hard city, built on commerce and oil, and driven by just one thing: money. The television series Dallas will one day be seen as a caricature of this fixation on garish wealth, but the real Dallas is not that different.

Fifty years from now, Dallas will be a cosmopolitan metropolis, home to a diverse population and a wide range of multinational corporations. But in 1963 the population of 747,000 is overwhelmingly white, 97 percent Protestant, and growing larger and more conservative by the day, as newcomers flood in from rural Texas and Louisiana.

Dallas is a law-and-order town. Sort of. It’s the kind of city where heavy fines on sin have driven the prostitutes to nearby Fort Worth, but one where murders are on the rise. Dallas is full of Baptist and Methodist churches, but it’s also home to a place like the Carousel Club, a downtown strip joint owned by a fifty-two-year-old suspected mafioso named Jacob Rubinstein—aka Jack Ruby—where cops and newspapermen often drink side by side.

But most of all, Dallas is a city that does not trust outsiders or their political views—–particularly those of liberal Yankees. And the local citizens are not passive in their disdain. Jewish stores are sometimes defaced with swastikas.

On this particular night, Adlai Stevenson is experiencing what some have called Dallas’s “general atmosphere of hate” firsthand. He is a devoted Democrat who ran against, and was defeated twice by, Dwight Eisenhower. Texas is decidedly not Stevenson country, even though a big crowd is now seated at the Memorial Auditorium. The occasion is United Nations Day. Last night, the right-wing zealot General Ted Walker spoke at the same venue, delivering a rousing anti-UN speech that was attended by the man who once tried to kill him: Lee Harvey Oswald.

Now, as Stevenson tries to speak, he can barely be heard. Time and again he is heckled and booed by a fringe group known as the National Indignation Convention. They intentionally mispronounce the stately diplomat’s name, calling him “Addle-Eye.”

Stevenson patiently tolerates the abuse, standing still at the lectern, hoping calm will take hold. But this proves impossible. So he finally confronts one heckler: “Surely, my dear friend, I don’t have to come here from Illinois to teach Texas manners, do I?”

Then things get worse.

Twenty-two-year-old Robert Edward Hatfield races up to the podium and unloads a violent gob of spit into Stevenson’s face. As police seize Hatfield, he spits on them as well. Adlai Stevenson has had enough. Wiping his face, he walks out of the auditorium. But the chaos doesn’t end. A waiting crowd of anti-UN protesters confronts him. Rather than let Stevenson walk back to his hotel peacefully, the protesters block his path and jeer at him. One agitator, forty-seven-year-old Cora Frederickson, actually hits the ambassador over the head with her picket sign.

Still, Stevenson tries to be diplomatic. The sixty-three-year-old politician waves off the Dallas police rushing over to make their second arrest of the night. “What is wrong?” Stevenson asks the woman who hit him. “Can I help you in any way?”

“If you don’t know what’s wrong, I don’t know why. Everyone else does,” she shoots back with an angry Texas twang.

John Kennedy does not like Adlai Stevenson. But the president is shaken when he hears of the vicious attacks. Now the many negative reports he has heard about Dallas are being confirmed. Trusted friends are warning him to cancel this leg of his Texas trip. As far back as October 3, Senator William Fulbright of Arkansas confided to John Kennedy that he was physically afraid of entering Dallas, calling it “a dangerous place.”

“I wouldn’t go there,” he told JFK. “Don’t you go.”

Evangelist Billy Graham is also warning the president to stay away from Dallas. Henry Brandon of London’s Sunday Times is so sure Kennedy’s visit will be volatile that he himself is making the trip just to chronicle the tension. Texas congressman Ralph Yarborough’s two brothers live and work in Dallas, and both make a point of telling him that the city hates Kennedy. And in early November, Byron Skelton of the Texas Democratic National Committee will have a premonition that JFK may be placing himself in grave danger by coming to Dallas. Skelton will repeatedly warn the president to stay away.

But John Kennedy is the president of the United States of America—all of them. There should be no place in this vast country where he has to be afraid to visit.

As he is fond of saying before attempting a hard golf shot: “No profiles, only courage.” So it is with Dallas. JFK has decided to visit Big D. There is no backing down.

*   *   *

Half a world away, it is All Souls’ Day in Saigon. This is a time of prayer in the Roman Catholic Church. So it is that Ngo Dinh Diem, president of Vietnam, receives Holy Communion alongside his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu.

But there is another reason the brothers are praying, and John Kennedy should know why. A U.S.-backed coup has overthrown the Diem government. As the military action was unfolding, JFK met with his top advisers to discuss the future of Vietnam—and the fate of Diem and his brother. The meeting dragged on so long that Kennedy even sneaked out halfway through to attend Mass, before returning for the meeting’s conclusion.

In a far more frantic manner, President Diem and his brother sneaked out of the presidential palace during the coup, literally running for their lives. Like JFK, they went to Mass. Now the brothers are taking refuge inside the sanctuary of Saigon’s St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church.

Shortly after 10:00 A.M. they are recognized, and the president and his brother prepare to be arrested and deported from the country. Diem has readied himself for this moment by stuffing a briefcase with U.S. banknotes.

General Mai Huu Xuan of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) leads a convoy consisting of an armored personnel carrier and two jeeps into the church courtyard. Diem surrenders, asking only that the convoy stop at the palace before taking him and his brother to the airport. General Xuan refuses and orders that his captives be immediately taken to army headquarters. Soldiers then tie the hands of the president and his brother behind their backs, and the two are placed inside an armored personnel carrier—ostensibly for their own protection. Two ARVN officers join them in the back of the vehicle before the heavy steel door is closed.

The convoy stops at a railroad crossing. One of the ARVN officers then calmly places his finger on the trigger of his semiautomatic weapon and fires a bullet into the back of President Diem’s skull.

19

NOVEMBER 1, 1963

IRVING, TEXAS

2:30 P.M.

It is Friday afternoon, and a weary James Hosty Jr. rings the bell at Ruth Paine’s home. The burly thirty-five-year-old FBI agent has spent the day investigating cases in nearby Fort Worth. He is juggling almost forty investigations right now, taking small bites out of each one. But any case involving J. Edgar Hoover’s battle against communism gets top priority, which is why Hosty is stopping at Mrs. Paine’s rather than driving straight back into Dallas to start his weekend. The agent is looking for Lee Harvey Oswald. The bureau has received a tip from the CIA about Oswald’s visit to the Cuban embassy in Mexico City last month, and the Feds are now anxious to find him.

Mrs. Paine opens the door. Hosty flashes his badge, explaining that he’s a special agent of the FBI, and asks if they can talk.

These are hard times for Ruth Paine. Her husband of five years has left and is filing for divorce. Perhaps to mitigate her loneliness, Ruth invited Marina Oswald to live at her home, despite knowing that the young mother has no money to contribute. But the minor financial burden is nothing compared with the quirky behavior of Marina’s husband, Lee Harvey, who comes to visit on the weekends. Ruth Paine refuses to let him live in her house. She doesn’t trust him.

Yet Mrs. Paine is very warm to James Hosty. She invites him inside and gushes that this is the first time she’s ever met an FBI agent.

But Hosty isn’t just any agent. He’s a Notre Dame graduate and former banker who has worked in the Dallas branch office for almost ten years. He knows his way around Dallas and its growing suburbs. He is also a diligent investigator and thinks nothing of going out of his way to visit the home of Ruth Paine even as his Friday shift comes to an end.

But most of all, Special Agent Hosty is the FBI’s expert on Lee Harvey and Marina Oswald. Back in March, he opened a file on Marina in order to keep tabs on the Soviet citizen. Later that month, Hosty requested that Lee Harvey’s file be reopened due to Oswald’s obvious Communist sympathies. The agent has tracked the Oswalds from apartment to apartment, from Dallas to New Orleans and back again. The New Orleans FBI office has kept Hosty apprised of Oswald’s arrest and pro-Cuba behavior. But now the Oswald trail has grown cold.

Hosty asks Ruth Paine if she knows where he can find the man.

Paine admits that Marina and her two girls live in her home. After a moment’s hesitation, she puts forth that she doesn’t know where Oswald lives, though she does know that he works at the Texas School Book Depository in downtown Dallas. Paine gets a phone book and looks up the address: 411 Elm Street.

Hosty writes all this down.

Marina wanders into the living room, having just awakened from a nap.

Speaking in Russian, Ruth Paine informs her that Hosty is an FBI agent. Marina’s face takes on a wild, fearful look. Hosty commonly sees this sort of behavior from people raised in Communist countries and knows that Mrs. Oswald thinks he’s some sort of secret police who has come to take her away. He immediately instructs Paine to tell Marina that he’s not there for the purpose of “harming her, harassing her, and that it isn’t the job of the FBI to harm people. It is our job to protect people.”

Ruth Paine translates. Marina smiles and calms down.

Hosty stands to leave. The interview has lasted almost twenty-five minutes. Hosty has a couple more cases he wants to follow up on before going back to Dallas. But even as he writes down his name and phone number for Paine, just in case she has any more information about Oswald’s whereabouts, Special Agent Hosty now mentally assigns a low priority to the Oswald investigation. He’s concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald is just a young guy with marital problems, a fondness for communism, and a habit of drifting from job to job.

There’s no need for urgency. Lee Harvey Oswald is bound to show up sooner or later. Special Agent Hosty is sure of that.

*   *   *

On November 11, the Monday after Hosty’s visit to Ruth Paine’s home, Special Agent Winston G. Lawson of the Secret Service’s White House detail is informed of the president’s upcoming trip to Dallas.

Lawson, a Korean War veteran in his early thirties, specializes in planning Kennedy’s official travels. As with all such visits, his primary responsibilities are to identify individuals who might be a threat to the president, take action against anyone considered to be such a threat, and plan security for the president’s speeches and motorcade route.

There is still discussion over whether there is to be a motorcade through downtown Dallas, which will be a security nightmare, thanks to the more than twenty thousand windows lining the city’s major thoroughfares. The more windows, the more places for a gunman to aim at the president’s limousine.

But Lawson temporarily sets that question aside. He begins his investigation of potential threats by combing through the Secret Service’s Protective Research Section (PRS). These files list all individuals who have threatened the president or may be potentially dangerous to him. A check of the PRS on November 8 by Lawson shows that no such person exists in the Dallas area.

Lawson then travels to Texas from Washington and interviews local law enforcement and other federal agencies, continuing his search for individuals who might be a threat to the life of John F. Kennedy. Of particular interest are the protesters involved in the Adlai Stevenson incident just a few weeks ago. Lawson obtains photographs of these people, which will be distributed to Secret Service and Dallas police on the day of the president’s visit. People who resemble those individuals will be instantly scrutinized should they come anywhere near the president.

Lawson’s diligence is soon rewarded when the FBI comes forth with the name of a Dallas-area resident who might be a serious threat to the life of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

Special Agent James Hosty Jr., however, does not provide that name, and it is not that of Lee Harvey Oswald. Instead, it is of a known local troublemaker who has absolutely no plans to kill the president of the United States.

*   *   *

Back in the nation’s capital, November 11 is a brisk day, marked by pale sunlight and a wind that straightens the many flags flying at Arlington National Cemetery, across the Potomac River from the District of Columbia. A crowd of hundreds of soldiers and civilians looks on as the president of the United States celebrates Veterans Day by placing a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns. John Kennedy, a decorated war veteran himself, stands at attention as a bugler blows taps, traditionally the final musical movement at all military ceremonies. The bugler’s name is Sergeant Keith Clark. He is the principal trumpeter of the U.S. Army Band and knows this sad song all too well. Clark plays the solo beautifully, the lonesome notes echoing mournfully across the sea of white tombstones and green grass.

President Kennedy is touched by the history and drama of this setting. Arlington was once home to the family of Robert E. Lee and was turned into a cemetery during the Civil War by Union troops so that the Confederate general might never again be tempted to live in the family mansion that still dominates the grounds. Kennedy can see why this was such a great loss to Lee, for the rolling hills look out over the river to Washington, where the fast pace and backroom deals are a drastic contrast to the quiet and peace of the cemetery.

“This is one of the really beautiful places on earth,” the president later tells Congressman Hale Boggs. “I could stay here forever.”

That thought is not fleeting. Kennedy repeats the sentiment to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. “I think, maybe someday, this is where I’d like to be.”

20

NOVEMBER 13, 1963

THE WHITE HOUSE

LATE EVENING

The man with nine days to live admires Greta Garbo as she takes off her shoes and lies down atop the mattress in the Lincoln Bedroom. There is a dinner party in Camelot tonight, and the famously reclusive Swedish actress is the guest of honor. Jackie Kennedy is self-admittedly “obsessed” with Garbo, in whom she sees a kindred spirit. But it is the president who has offered to take the fifty-eight-year-old beauty on a tour of what his schedulers simply call “the Mansion.”

At dinner, a nervous Garbo has knocked back glass after glass of vodka. But the president has been the picture of abstinence, neither smoking a cigar nor taking a sip of alcohol. “I felt like one of the damned when I lit a cigarette,” Garbo will later remember.

John F. Kennedy is enchanted by Garbo, as she is by him. Rather than sneak away from the party right after dinner to enjoy a few quiet moments alone before bed, as is often his habit, JFK lingers for “longer than I have ever done since I became President.”

Kennedy and Garbo have never met before tonight but have quickly become fast friends, thanks to a practical joke at the expense of Kennedy’s roommate from his teenage years at Choate prep school. Lem Billings is JFK’s best friend in the world. The two men are as close as brothers, and Billings spends the night at the White House so often that he keeps a set of clothes in a third-floor bedroom. In 1960 the forty-four-year-old advertising executive voluntarily took a sabbatical from his career to help Kennedy run for president, asking nothing in return. But JFK offered him a job anyway, as head of the brand-new Peace Corps. Billings declined, fearing it would alter their friendship.

Billings met Greta Garbo over the summer, while vacationing in the south of France. Upon his return home, the unmarried Billings boasted so frequently about how well he and Garbo had gotten along that even Jackie told him to stop talking about the movie star.

The president couldn’t resist. A friendly practical joke at Billings’s expense would only add to the thrill of Garbo’s visit. He called the actress, making her a proposition: “My friend Lem boasts how well he knows you. So when he comes in, pretend you’ve never met him before.” JFK persuaded Garbo to arrive early to the White House dinner party in order to rehearse her lines for Kennedy’s elaborate ruse.

“Early” in Camelot usually means sometime around 8:30 P.M. Tonight is no exception.

This is because the president has worked yet another typically exhausting day. His schedule began with a 9:45 A.M. meeting with columnist Ann Landers about the 1963 Christmas Seal campaign and ended with a 6:30 P.M. meeting with John A. Hannah, head of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. In between there was a meeting with the president of Czechoslovakia; a South Lawn pipe and drums performance by the Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment), from Great Britain; a fifteen-person meeting about the poverty in eastern Kentucky; and a smaller foreign policy meeting with Dean Rusk, McGeorge Bundy, and former secretary of state Christian Herter in the early evening.

The president took his usual midafternoon swim at 1:10 and had lunch at 1:40, but otherwise the pace never slackened. Meeting followed meeting, with Kennedy expected to be not just in attendance, but also knowledgeable about and decisive on each of the many varied subjects presented to him. All the while, in the back of the president’s mind, was the thought of next week’s trip to Texas.

When JFK hit the pool for his second swim of the day, it was 7:15. By the time he toweled off and went up to his bedroom, it was 8:03 P.M. Garbo had already arrived. Kennedy took his time showering and changing, knowing Jackie would explain to the actress that he’d been delayed.

Lem Billings was ecstatic when he saw Garbo. “Why, Greta! Oh, my gosh. How are you?” he exclaimed.

Garbo stared at him with a blank expression, then turned her gaze to Jackie. “You must be mistaken. I do not recall that we have ever met before,” she said.

When the president arrived, Garbo repeated her assertion that she didn’t know Billings. The president’s old friend grew more and more dismayed, ignoring JFK to remind Garbo over and over about where they’d met and some of the same people they knew. The more Billings talked, the more obvious it seemed that Greta had never met him before. Throughout it all, JFK unwound, setting aside the cares of the office as he reveled in the easy banter of this lighthearted dinner and his practical joke. Lem Billings will not realize he’s been had until tomorrow morning.

Soon after dinner ended, JFK took the entire group on a private tour of the White House. Now a tipsy Greta Garbo doesn’t want to soil the bedspread in the Lincoln Bedroom, so takes off her shoes before lying down atop the mattress. The tour ends in the Oval Office. Unbeknownst to most Americans, JFK has a habit of collecting scrimshaw and often bids anonymously for these pieces of inscribed whale’s teeth. They are on display in a case in his office. When Garbo admires the collection, the president opens the case and offers her a piece as a gift. The actress gladly accepts.

This is life in Camelot: a day spent solving the world’s problems, two therapeutic nude swims, celebrities at the table for a late-night dinner, and a tour of America’s most famous residence with a glamorous former movie star. Where else would such a thing happen?

But the evening ends abruptly. “I must go. I am getting intoxicated,” Garbo proclaims before disappearing back to her hotel.

Thus ends the last dinner party ever held in Camelot.

But the memory of this magical evening will linger, and even someone as famous as Greta Garbo is not immune to Camelot’s allure: “It was a most unusual evening that I spent with you in the White House,” she writes in her thank-you note to Jackie Kennedy. “It was really fascinating and enchanting. I might believe it was a dream if I did not have the president’s ‘tooth’ facing me.”

But Camelot is not a dream. It is reality—and that reality is about to take a turn that will alter America forever.

21

NOVEMBER 16, 1963

DALLAS, TEXAS

1:50 P.M.

Thirteen-year-old Sterling Wood aims his Winchester 30-30 rifle at the silhouette of a man’s head. He exhales and squeezes the trigger, then squints downrange at the target. It is Saturday. Sterling and his father, Homer, have come to the Sports Drome Rifle Range to sight their guns for deer season.

Young Sterling notices a young man standing in the shooting booth next to him. He is aiming at a similar silhouette. The teenager reads a lot of gun books and is pretty sure that the guy is firing an Italian carbine. It appears that the rifle’s barrel has been sawed off to make it shorter, but it’s still longer than Sterling’s Winchester, by a few inches. Judging from the number of scratches on the stock, the precocious Dallas teenager suspects that the weapon is army surplus. It’s even got a sling to make it easier for an infantryman to carry and a four-power telescopic sight to make the target seem closer and easier to shoot with pinpoint accuracy.

“Daddy,” Sterling whispers to his father. “It looks like a 6.5 Italian carbine.”

The man shoots. Flame leaps from the end of the gun, thanks to its shortened length. Sterling can actually feel the heat from the blast. The gunman removes the spent cartridge and places it in his pocket as if he doesn’t want to leave behind evidence that he’s been there. Sterling finds it unusual that the shooter does this after each and every round.

The teenager is impressed that almost all of the shooter’s bullet holes are clustered around what would be the eye if the paper target were a real man.

“Sir, is that a 6.5 Italian carbine?” Sterling asks the stranger.

“Yes, sir,” the man responds.

“And is that a four-power scope?”

“Yes, it is.”

The shooter stays just long enough to fire only “eight or ten” shots, in Sterling’s estimation—just enough rounds to ration his ammunition while ensuring that his rifle and scope are accurate.

Sterling will later testify that this man is Lee Harvey Oswald.

*   *   *

On that November Saturday, the front page of the Dallas Morning News features a story on President Kennedy’s visit to Dallas, which is just six days away. The paper speculates on the route Kennedy’s motorcade will follow through the heart of the city. Air Force One will land at the Love Field, and from there the president will travel to a large commercial center known as the Trade Mart, where he will give a speech. On the way, he will pass the Texas School Book Depository, the workplace of Lee Harvey Oswald.

Oswald is an avid newspaper reader and has known for quite some time that John Kennedy is coming to Dallas. On this day, Oswald has decided to spend the weekend in the city rather than journey out to the suburbs to see Marina and their daughters.

Oswald turned twenty-four just one month ago. He has little to show for his time on earth. He is losing his wife and children. He works a menial job. And despite his keen intellect, he has no advanced education. He doesn’t know whether he wants to be an American, a Cuban, or a Russian.

Still, he longs to be a great man. A significant man. A man whose name will never be forgotten.

John Wilkes Booth, in the days before he shot Abraham Lincoln, also longed to be such a man. And just as Booth practiced his marksmanship at a shooting range days before the assassination, so, too, does Lee Harvey Oswald.

Thirteen-year-old Sterling Wood is the first person impressed by Oswald in a long time. For today, Oswald was truly great—great at firing several shots through the silhouette of a man’s head.

*   *   *

The destruction of Camelot might have begun with the Bay of Pigs, when John F. Kennedy made a permanent enemy of Fidel Castro and infuriated his own Central Intelligence Agency.

Or it might have started that October night in 1962 when JFK severed his ties with Sam Giancana, Frank Sinatra, and the Mafia, then stood back and did nothing as his brother Bobby zealously prosecuted organized crime.

Camelot’s demise could have originated during the Cuban missile crisis, when JFK scored a decisive public relations victory over Nikita Khrushchev and the Soviet Empire, while at the same time frustrating his top generals and what Dwight Eisenhower called “the military-industrial complex” for refusing to launch a war.

The destruction of Camelot could have begun in any number of ways.

But in fact, it begins on November 18, when Special Agent Winston G. Lawson of the Secret Service advance team, Forrest V. Sorrels of the Secret Service’s Dallas office, and Dallas police chief Jesse Curry drive ten very carefully selected miles from Love Field to the Trade Mart. “Hell,” says Special Agent Sorrels, glancing up at the thousands of windows looking down on them, “we’d be sitting ducks.”

Nevertheless, the agents decide that this will be the presidential motorcade route.

Anytime the president of the United States drives through a crowded city, there is a careful balance between protecting his life and ensuring the spectacle of the chief executive intermingling with the American people. Security is the act of getting him through the crowds alive, which is difficult on those days when the bubble-top roof is not buckled onto his convertible. A perfect motorcade route is devoid of the high windows from which a sniper can poke a gun, offers alternative routes in case something goes wrong, features wide streets that keep crowds far back from the vehicle, and has few, if any, tight turns.

The Dallas motorcade route violates every one of these principles.

The process of turning the presidential vehicle forces William Greer, the Secret Service agent who most often serves as JFK’s driver, to slow the limousine down considerably. This makes the president an easier target for a marksman to hit. Secret Service protocol stipulates that whenever a motorcade must slow down for a turn, agents must do a security check of the entire intersection ahead of time. Something as simple as a ninety-degree turn, which the Dallas motorcade route features at the corner of Main and Houston, can cause Greer to step hard on the brakes. A sweeping 120-degree turn, such as the one at the corner of Houston and Elm, can slow Kennedy’s Lincoln down to just a few miles per hour.

That is the pace of a brisk walk, and, through the high-powered scope of an assassin’s rifle, such a slow speed can turn the president’s body into a very attainable target. When this happens, Secret Service agents are trained to position their bodies between the president and the crowd, acting as human shields. While doing so, they are to study the landscape and look up at building windows for signs of a gunman or rifle barrel. The president’s limousine has running boards on both sides that allow the agents to shield the president while also performing this scan. They hold on to metallic handles for balance. However, JFK does not like the agents to stand on the running boards because this blocks the crowd’s view of him, so they often ride one car behind.

But all of this protection can be circumvented once a gunman knows the precise motorcade route. Thus, once Secret Service special agents Sorrels and Lawson choose the president’s path on November 18, and then release that information to the public, anyone who wants to harm the president can begin planning the precise place and time of the attack. To put it another way: Many people would like to see John F. Kennedy dead. But before Monday, November 18, there existed no field of fire in Dallas.

Now there does.

22

NOVEMBER 21, 1963

ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE

2:00 P.M.

In the final hours of his life, President John F. Kennedy is flying in style aboard Air Force One. He pores over the “Eyes Only, President” intelligence documents overflowing from his battered black alligator-skin briefcase. JFK speed-reads at his normal 1,200 words per minute, glasses perched on the end of his nose, a study in focus. On the couch against the opposite wall of JFK’s airborne office, Jackie Kennedy speaks softly in Spanish, practicing a speech she will give tonight in Houston to a group of Latin American women.

The First Lady’s Castilian purr is a welcome addition to the president’s private in-flight sanctuary. John Kennedy is so glad Jackie is traveling to Texas with him that he took the unusual step of helping her select the clothes she will wear at her many public appearances. One outfit, a pink Chanel wool suit with a matching pillbox hat, is his personal favorite.

Fashion might not normally interest JFK, but the design and décor of Air Force One has received plenty of his attention. There were three presidential airplanes available to him when he first took office. Any one of them could be dubbed “Air Force One” whenever he is on board. Yet these airplanes looked more air force than presidential. Indeed, the words Military Air Transport Service were emblazoned on the sides. The predominant fuselage characteristic was unpainted metal.

But the craft possessing tail number 26000, in which John Kennedy now flies, is a distinct upgrade. The president took delivery of this new presidential version of the Boeing 707 in October 1962. And just as Jackie has overseen the redecoration of the White House—one fine detail is now taking place even as the Kennedys fly to Texas: upon their return, JFK will enjoy new drapes in the Oval Office—so John Kennedy has overseen the redecoration of Air Force One. The fuselage and wings, for instance, feature a bold new pale-blue-and-white color scheme, with the words United States of America proudly displayed above the row of forty-five oval passenger windows. Inside, the carpeting is lush and the creature comforts many, including a private office, a conference area, and a bedroom where a painting of a French farmhouse hangs over the president’s rock-hard mattress. The presidential seal seems to adorn every fixture. JFK enjoys this new airplane so much that he has flown seventy-five thousand miles aboard 26000 in just thirteen months.

Today’s journey began at 9:15 A.M., when John Kennedy said good-bye to Caroline as she set off to the third floor of the White House for school. John Jr., who will be three years old next week, got the privilege of riding with his parents in the presidential helicopter as they flew from the White House to Air Force One. The young boy wore a London Fog coat to keep away the November chill and enjoyed the trip immensely.

But as Marine One set down on the runway next to the presidential plane, young John pleaded for his journey to continue. “I want to come,” he said to his father.

“You can’t,” the president replied softly.

“It’s just a few days,” the First Lady reminded the crying child. “And when we come back, it will be your birthday.”

John Jr. began to sob. “John, like Mummy said, we’ll be back in a few days,” the president explained. JFK then kissed his son and turned to the Secret Service agent in charge of the boy’s protection: “You take care of John for me, Mr. Foster,” he ordered gently.

Bob Foster thought this unusual. President Kennedy normally never made such statements, no matter how much his son cried when it was time to say good-bye.

At 11:00 A.M., the president gave John Jr. one last hug and stepped onto the tarmac before climbing the steps up into Air Force One. The First Lady was at his side. Five minutes later, the plane went wheels-up out of Andrews for the three-and-a-half-hour flight to Texas. John Kennedy Jr. watched the great jet rise into the sky and disappear into the distance.

Air Force One will land first in San Antonio. Then it’s on to Houston and then Fort Worth, where the president and First Lady will spend the night. Dallas will come tomorrow. JFK’s personal pilot, Colonel Jim Swindal, will fly the Kennedys from Fort Worth into Dallas’s Love Field. The flight will be short, just thirteen minutes. But the symbolic image of Air Force One descending from the heavens to land in that troubled city will be a far more powerful sight than John Kennedy driving thirty-five miles across the prairie in a limousine.

Now the president takes a break from his reading to light a cigar. Jackie has gone into their private cabin to change clothes. JFK smokes thoughtfully. Texas will be tricky politically. There’s no telling if the crowds will be hostile or receptive, and he’s concerned about Jackie enjoying herself. This could be a big test of whether she will be eager to campaign with him in 1964.

JFK gets up and makes his way back to the First Family’s quarters.

The president taps lightly on the door and pokes his head in. “You all right?” he asks Jackie. They will be landing soon. His wife is slipping into a crisp white dress.

“Fine,” the First Lady responds, looking in the mirror to adjust the beret that accessorizes the dress and its black belt.

“I just wanted to be sure,” he tells her, closing the door.

The president feels a slight dip as Air Force One begins to descend. He looks out the window. Five miles below and slowly rising up to greet him lies the barren and flat landscape of Texas.

*   *   *

On the ground in Dallas, Lee Harvey Oswald stuffs cardboard shipping boxes with books as he fills orders at the Texas School Book Depository. But today he is easily distracted, and a map of the motorcade route printed on the front page of the Dallas Times Herald’s afternoon edition soon catches his attention. Oswald need look no farther than the nearest window to see precisely where President Kennedy’s limousine will make a slow right turn from Main Street onto Houston, then an even slower left-hand turn onto Elm, where it will pass almost directly below the windows of the depository. Getting a good glimpse of the president will be as simple as looking down onto the street below.

But Lee Harvey Oswald is planning to do much more than catch a glimpse. In fact, he is quietly plotting to shoot the president. Just a month ago, mere days before the birth of their second child, Marina noted his fascination with the movies Suddenly and We Were Strangers, both of which deal with the shooting of a government official—in the case of Suddenly, the president of the United States. The couple watched the films together, and Oswald even told Marina that the films felt authentic. She thought that a strange remark.

Oswald does not hate the president. He has no reason to want JFK dead. He is, however, bitter that a man such as John Kennedy has so many advantages in life. Oswald well understands that it’s easier for men born into privilege to distinguish themselves. But other than that small amount of envy, he does not speak unfavorably about the president. In fact, Oswald would very much like to emulate JFK.

Above all, he wants to be a great man.

*   *   *

“Can I ride home with you this afternoon?” Oswald casually asks coworker Wesley Frazier. The nineteen-year-old’s home is a half block from where Marina Oswald lives with Ruth Paine. Oswald often catches a ride out to the suburb of Irving on Friday in Frazier’s nine-year-old black Chevy four-door and then makes the return trip back into Dallas with him on Monday.

“Sure,” Wesley replies. They are standing on the first floor of the Texas School Book Depository, next to a large table. “You know, like I told you, you can go home with me anytime you want to, like I say, anytime you want to go see your wife that is all right with me.”

But then Frazier realizes that today isn’t Friday. It’s Thursday—and Oswald never rides to Irving on Thursdays. “Why are you going home today?” Frazier asks him.

“I am going home to get some curtain rods,” Oswald replies.

Oswald then steals a length of brown wrapping paper from the depository’s shipping department. He spends the rest of his workday fashioning a bag in which to conceal his “curtain rods.”

Through it all, as he folds the paper to form the best possible sheath in which to hide his rifle, Lee Harvey Oswald is unsure that he will actually kill President Kennedy. What he really wants is to be permanently reunited with Marina and the girls. Tonight, he will beg his wife to take him back.

But if she doesn’t, Oswald will be left with no choice.

That is how delusional Lee Harvey Oswald’s world has become. He now deals only in absolutes: either live happily ever after—or murder the president of the United States.

23

NOVEMBER 22, 1963

IRVING, TEXAS

6:30 A.M.

The Oswalds have been fighting. Again. But this time is different. This time it’s over. Lee Harvey stands at the foot of the bed in their cramped room at Ruth Paine’s house, dressed for work in gray pants and an old shirt. He twists the wedding band off his left hand and drops it into a china cup on the dresser. It was once a symbol of his love for Marina, but now it is yet another confirmation of the failure that envelops his life.

Today Oswald will do something to change all that. Today he will prove that he is not a failure, even if it means losing his own life in the process.

He drops $187 in cash onto the dresser as a going-away present to his wife and daughters. After all, it’s not as if he has a future.

Marina lies on the bed, half awake. Hers and her husband’s last night together was not romantic. Oswald tossed and turned while Marina was up with the baby twice. They did not make love, although Marina made a 3:00 A.M. attempt at tenderness. He responded by angrily kicking her away.

Oswald’s trip home was primarily to get his rifle. But he was willing to set aside his dark plan if Marina agreed to live with him. All evening long he pleaded with his wife to reconcile. He told her how much he missed his girls, and even promised to buy Marina a washing machine because he knew how much she wanted one.

But Marina was furious that he had come to see her on a Thursday, which was against Ruth Paine’s house rules. So Oswald’s pleas turned into yet another round of bickering. But still he didn’t give up.

Marina, however, doesn’t seem to want him back. They spent the evening outside, playing with June and Audrey on the dying autumn grass of Ruth Paine’s lawn. Oswald pleaded with Marina to become his wife again. She wavered, because Lee Harvey Oswald had once been the love of her life. But she did not give in.

Oswald went to bed early. He lay there thinking. Even when Marina came to bed, her body warm and smelling like soap from a late-night bath, he pretended to be asleep. The hours passed. Over time he found his courage. He had nothing left in the world. He would go forward with his plan.

Now, at dawn, after dressing for work and leaving his worldly possessions on the dresser, Lee Harvey Oswald hears Marina stir behind him.

“Don’t get up,” he tells her. “I’ll get breakfast myself.”

She’s exhausted and has no intention of getting up. Audrey fusses, and Marina reaches for her to nurse her. Oswald softly lets himself out of the room without saying good-bye.

The assassin fixes himself a cup of instant coffee in the kitchen, then steps into Ruth Paine’s crowded garage to retrieve his rifle. He unrolls the blanket lying next to his olive-green Marine Corps seabag, revealing the 6.5-millimeter Mannlicher-Carcano infantry carbine. He lays the gun in the brown paper wrapping he stole from work yesterday.

Holding the “curtain rods” by the barrel, he steps out of the garage, forever leaving his old life behind.

By 8:00 A.M., Oswald and Wesley Frazier are pulling up for work at the Texas School Book Depository. Oswald is out of the car before Frazier cuts the engine. He has grabbed his brown package and raced inside the building before Frazier can catch up and ask him why he’s in such a hurry.

*   *   *

“It’s raining,” says George Thomas, stepping inside John Kennedy’s Fort Worth hotel suite. The president’s valet rouses him at precisely 7:30 A.M. A crowd is already gathering in the parking lot eight floors below, waiting to hear Kennedy speak to them from the back of a flatbed truck. The audience of nearly five thousand is mostly male, and primarily union workers. Many have been standing in the rain for hours.

“That’s too bad,” Kennedy replies to his valet. He rises from bed and heads for the shower. Rain means that the bubble-top roof will be buckled onto his limousine for the Dallas motorcade. Not only will the local citizens be upset by having to wait in the cold and rain for hours until he passes by, but their inability to get a clear glimpse of the president and First Lady inside the bubble will do little to sway their votes come next November.

The president wraps himself in his back brace, tightly adjusting the straps. He then dresses in a blue two-button suit, a dark blue tie, and a white shirt with gray stripes from Cardin’s in Paris. He reads the CIA situation reports, paying close attention to the casualty count from Vietnam. After that, he scans several newspapers. The Chicago Sun-Times is reporting that Jackie just might be the pivotal factor in helping him get reelected in 1964. That’s the best news of this trip so far: everyone loves the First Lady. The uproar over her bikini photos has clearly been forgotten.

The people of Texas screamed and cheered for JFK on the first day of the Texas trip. But as big as his ovations are, and as intently as the audiences hung on every word of his speeches, the reception John Kennedy received was nothing like what his wife is experiencing. Jackie is the talk of Texas, and bringing her along may just be the smartest political move the president has ever made.

By 9:00 A.M., John Kennedy is standing on the back of the flatbed truck, looking upbeat and triumphant. “There are no faint hearts in Fort Worth,” he says approvingly to the crowd. He has a well-deserved reputation for not giving in to the elements. The union workers knew their waiting in the rain would be rewarded and that the speech would not be canceled.

“Where’s Jackie?” someone shouts.

“Where’s Jackie?” yells another voice.

John Kennedy smiles and points up to her hotel room. “Mrs. Kennedy is organizing herself,” he jokes. On the eighth floor, sitting before her vanity, Jackie can hear the speech rising up from the parking lot. She enjoys hearing her name and how easily her husband banters with the crowd.

“It takes her a little bit longer,” the president adds. “But, of course, she looks a little bit better than we do when she does it.”

The crowd roars in laughter, as if the president is their coolest drinking buddy and he’s sharing some juicy tidbit about his personal life.

But the truth is that, today, Jackie doesn’t just need a little extra time to get ready—she needs a lot of time. The First Lady looks visibly exhausted as she primps before the mirror. Campaigning is hard work. Yet she is determined to stick this out. There is to be another swing through California in two weeks, and she wants to make that trip, too. In fact, Jackie Kennedy is determined to be at her husband’s side from now until he is reelected next November.

But all of that is in the future. What matters now is that the Texas trip is halfway done. All Jackie has to do is make it through this day, and then she can relax. “Oh, God,” she says, looking at her frazzled image in the mirror. “One day’s campaigning can age a person thirty years.”

The First Lady has no idea that today will age her like no other day in her young life.

*   *   *

The energy in the Fort Worth parking lot fuels the president, who delivers a powerful and impassioned speech. “We are going forward!” he exclaims in closing, reminding his audience that he is keeping the promises he made in his inaugural address less than three years earlier. The cold war is behind us, he’s saying, all the while implying that the future is a Camelot for all Americans.

The earsplitting cries of approval from those thousands of hardened union men is all the proof John Kennedy needs that Texas really isn’t such a bad place after all.

The president rides a wave of adrenaline off the stage and back into the hotel. Campaigning revitalizes him, even in an early-morning Texas drizzle.

But as good as he feels, the president knows that the rest of Friday, November 22, is not going to be easy. From both a political and a personal standpoint, he must be at the top of his game if he is going to win over the hardened people of Dallas.

Or, as the president warns Jackie, “We’re heading into nut country today.”

24

NOVEMBER 22, 1963

TEXAS SCHOOL BOOK DEPOSITORY, DALLAS

9:45 A.M.

Crowds of eager Dallas residents stand on the curb in front of the Texas School Book Depository. The president won’t pass by for three hours, but they’ve come early to get a good spot. Best of all, it looks like the sun might come out. Maybe they’ll get a glimpse of John F. Kennedy and Jackie after all.

Lee Harvey Oswald peers out a first-floor window of the depository building, assessing the president’s route by where the crowds stand. He can clearly see the corner of Elm and Houston, where John Kennedy’s limousine will make a slow left turn. This is important to Oswald. He’s selected a spot on the depository’s sixth floor as his sniper’s roost. The floor is dimly lit by bare 60-watt lightbulbs and is currently under renovation, and thus empty. Stacks of book boxes near the window overlooking Elm and Houston will form a natural hiding place, allowing Oswald to poke his rifle outside and sight the motorcade as it makes that deliberate turn. The marksman in Lee Harvey Oswald knows that he’ll have time for two shots, maybe even three if he works the bolt quickly enough.

But one should be all he needs.

*   *   *

Air Force One crabs into the wind as Colonel Jim Swindal eases her down onto the runway at Dallas’s Love Field. John Kennedy is ecstatic. Peering out the windows of his airplane, he sees that the weather has turned sunny and warm and that yet another large Texas crowd is waiting to greet him. “This trip is turning out to be terrific,” he happily confides to Kenny O’Donnell. “Here we are in Dallas and it looks like everything in Texas will turn out to be fine for us!”

Police cars circle the field, and officers are even stationed on rooftops. But these are the only ominous sights at the airport. For the estimated welcoming party of two thousand are overjoyed to see Air Force One touch down, marking the first time a president has visited Dallas since 1948. Grown men stand on their tiptoes to see over the throngs in front of them. Airport personnel leave their desks inside the terminal and jostle into position near the chain-link fence separating the runway from the parking lot. The U.S. Air Force C-130 carrying the president’s armored limousine lands and opens its cargo ramp. The bubble top remains on board the plane. The convertible top is completely down. A local television newsman, who is covering the spectacle live on air, enthusiastically reports that the bubble top is nowhere in evidence and that people will be able to see the president and First Lady “in the flesh.” The reporter also reminds his audience that the president will be returning to Love Field between “2:15 and 2:30” to depart for Austin.

Lyndon Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird, await the president on the tarmac, as they have on every leg of the Texas trip. The vice president’s job is to stand at the bottom of the ramp and greet the president. Johnson is not happy about this assignment, but he puts on a good face as Jackie emerges from the rear door of the plane, radiant in the pink Chanel suit with the matching pillbox hat. Two steps behind, and seen in person for the first time by the people of Dallas, comes John Kennedy.

“I can see his suntan from here!” the local TV reporter gushes.

The official plan is for JFK to head straight for his limousine to join the motorcade, but instead he breaks off and heads into the crowd. Not content with merely shaking a few hands, the president pushes deep into the throng, dragging Jackie along with him. The two of them remain surrounded by this wall of people for more than a full minute, much to the crowd’s delight. Then the president and First Lady reemerge, only to wade deep into another section of crowd.

“Boy, this is something,” enthuses the local reporter. “This is a bonus for the people who have waited here!”

The president and First Lady shake hands for what seems like an eternity to their very nervous Secret Service detail. “Kennedy is showing he is not afraid,” Ronnie Dugger of the Texas Observer writes in his notebook.

Finally, John and Jackie Kennedy make their way to the presidential limousine. Awaiting them are Governor John Connally and his wife, Nellie. There are three rows of seats in the vehicle. Up front is the driver, fifty-four-year-old Bill Greer. To his right sits Roy Kellerman, like Greer, a longtime Secret Service agent. Special Agent Kellerman has served on the White House detail since the early days of World War II and has protected presidents Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, and now Kennedy.

JFK sits in the backseat, on the right-hand side, patting his hair into place after his foray into the crowd. Jackie sits to his left. The First Lady was handed a bouquet of red roses upon landing in Dallas, and these now rest on the seat between her and the president.

Governor Connally sits directly in front of the president, in the middle row, known as jump seats. Connally takes off his ten-gallon hat so that the crowds can see him. Nellie sits in front of Jackie and right behind the driver, Special Agent Greer.

As the motorcade leaves Love Field at 11:55 A.M., the presidential limousine—Secret Service code name SS-100-X—is the second car in line, flanked on either side by four motorcycle escorts.

Up front is an advance car filled with local police and Secret Service, among them Dallas police chief Jesse Curry and Secret Service special agent Winston Lawson.

Behind John Kennedy’s vehicle is a follow-up convertible code-named Halfback. Kennedy’s two main members of the Irish Mafia, Dave Powers and Kenny O’Donnell, sit here, surrounded by Secret Service agents heavily armed with handguns and automatic weapons. Clint Hill, head of the First Lady’s Secret Service detail, stands on the left running board of Halfback. Special agents Bill McIntyre, John Ready, and Paul Landis also man the running boards.

Car four is a convertible limousine that has been rented locally for the vice president. Even as the vehicles pull away from Love Field, it is obvious that LBJ is angry and pouting. While every other politician in the motorcade is waving to the crowds, he stares straight forward, unsmiling.

Bringing up the rear is car five, code-named Varsity and filled with a Texas state policeman and four Secret Service agents.

Way up at the front of the motorcade, driving several car lengths in front of SS-100-X, Dallas police chief Jesse Curry is committed to making the president’s visit as incident-free as possible. The fifty-year-old chief is a lifetime law enforcement officer. In addition to working his way up through the ranks of the Dallas police, he has augmented his knowledge by attending the FBI Academy. Curry has been involved in almost every aspect of the planning for John Kennedy’s visit and is dedicating 350 men—a full third of his force—to lining the motorcade route, handling security for the president’s airport arrival, and policing the crowd at the Trade Mart speech.

However, Curry has chosen not to position any men in the vicinity of Dealey Plaza, thinking that the main crowd-control issues will take place prior to that destination. Once the motorcade turns from Houston Street and onto Elm, it goes under an overpass, turns right onto Stemmons Freeway, and through a relatively uncrowded area to the Trade Mart. Better to focus his officers on the busiest thoroughfares along the route, rather than waste them in a place where few people will be standing.

Curry has also ordered his men to face toward the street, rather than toward the crowd, thinking it wouldn’t hurt for them to see the man they’re protecting as a reward for the many long hours they will be on their feet. This ignores the example of New York City, where policemen stand facing away from the street, so they can better help the Secret Service protect the president by scanning the city’s many windows for signs of a sniper’s rifle.

But it doesn’t matter during the motorcade’s first easy miles. There is so little to do and so few people to see that a bored Jackie puts on her sunglasses and begins waving at billboards for fun. The white-collar workers along Lemmon Avenue are few in number and unexcited. They’d rather enjoy their lunch break from the IBM factory.

*   *   *

At the exact same moment, it’s also lunchtime at the Texas School Book Depository. Most of Lee Harvey Oswald’s coworkers have left the building, hoping to get a glimpse of the president.

Just down the block, FBI special agent James Hosty has forgotten all about investigating Lee Harvey Oswald and is just trying to make sure he gets a look at his hero, President Kennedy.

Lee Harvey Oswald didn’t bring a lunch to work today. And he doesn’t plan on eating. Instead, he moves a pile of boxes into position on the grimy sixth floor of the depository building, fashioning a well-concealed shooting nest.

At 12:24 P.M., nearly thirty minutes into the motorcade, the president’s car passes Special Agent James Hosty on the corner of Main Street and Field. The G-man gets his wish and sees Kennedy in the flesh, before spinning back around and walking into the Alamo Grill for lunch.

At 12:28 the motorcade enters a seedy downtown neighborhood. Straight ahead, the beautiful green grass of Dealey Plaza is clearly visible. The Secret Service agents are stunned by the reception the president is now receiving, with people everywhere cheering and applauding.

At 12:29 the motorcade makes the crucial sharp right-hand turn onto Houston Street. From high above, in his sixth-floor sniper’s lair, Lee Harvey Oswald sees John F. Kennedy in person for the first time. He quickly sights the Mannlicher-Carcano, taking aim through his scope as the motorcade skirts the edge of Dealey Plaza.

The crowds here are still large and enthusiastic, despite Chief Curry’s prediction that they would have thinned by this point. The people shout for Jackie and the president to look their way. As per agreement, JFK waves at the people standing in front of buildings on the right side of the road, while Jackie waves at those standing along grassy Dealey Plaza, to their left. This ensures that no voter goes without a wave.

The motorcade is just five minutes away from the Trade Mart, where Kennedy will make his speech. Almost there.

Inside the presidential limousine, Nellie Connally stops waving long enough to look over her right shoulder and smile at John Kennedy. “You sure can’t say that Dallas doesn’t love you, Mr. President.”

Ironically, at that very moment, if JFK had looked up to the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, he would have seen a rifle barrel sticking out of an open window, pointed directly at his head.

But Kennedy doesn’t look up.

Nor does the Secret Service.

It is 12:30 P.M. The time has come for Special Agent Bill Greer to steer SS-100-X through the sweeping 120-degree left turn from Houston and onto Elm.

*   *   *

Most people live their lives as if the end were always years away. They measure their days in love, laughter, accomplishment, and loss. There are moments of sunshine and storm. There are schedules, phone calls, careers, anxieties, joys, exotic trips, favorite foods, romance, shame, and hunger. A person can be defined by clothing, the smell of his breath, the way she combs her hair, the shape of his torso, or even the company she keeps.

All over the world, children love their parents and yearn for love in return. They revel in the touch of parental hands on their faces. And even on the worst of days, each person has dreams about the future—dreams that sometimes come true.

Such is life.

Yet life can end in less time than it takes to draw one breath.

25

NOVEMBER 22, 1963

DEALEY PLAZA, DALLAS, TEXAS

12:14 P.M.

Anticipating the arrival of the president of the United States, a married high school student named Aaron Rowland stands with his wife, Barbara, along Dealey Plaza. Looking up at the Texas School Book Depository, he sees a man silhouetted against a corner sixth-floor window. An avid hunter, Rowland recognizes that the man is holding a rifle at port arms—diagonally across his body, with one hand on the stock and the other on the barrel. This is how a U.S. Marine might hold his weapon while waiting to fire at the rifle range.

Rowland is fascinated, but for all the wrong reasons. “Do you want to see a Secret Service agent?” he asks his wife.

“Where?”

“In that building there,” he replies, pointing.

Six minutes later, a full ten minutes before the motorcade reaches Dealey Plaza, Ronald Fischer and Robert Edwards, who work in the nearby county auditor’s office, look up and see a man standing motionlessly in the sixth-floor window. “He never moved,” Fischer will later remember. “He didn’t blink his eyes. He was just gazing, like a statue.”

At the same time, Howard L. Brennan, a local pipe fitter, uses his khaki shirtsleeve to wipe the sweat from his brow. This makes him wonder how hot it is. And so he glances at the Hertz sign atop the Texas School Book Depository’s roof that shows time and temperature. As he does so, Brennan’s eyes pick out a stone-still mystery man positioned to fire in the upper window.

But then comes the sound of cheering as the motorcade gets nearer and nearer. Down on Main Street, the crowds are lined up ten to twenty feet deep, and their roar echoes through the window-lined canyons of downtown Dallas. In all the excitement, the sight of a man standing in a window clutching a rifle is forgotten. The president is near.

Nothing else matters.

*   *   *

Lee Harvey Oswald would prefer to shoot while in the prone position. That is the optimum for a marksman. In such a position, the rifle is not supported by muscle, which can grow weary or flinch. Instead, when the body is belly-down on the floor, the hard ground and the bones of the right and left forearm form a perfect and stable triangle.

But Oswald does not have that option. He will have to shoot standing up. Yet as a veteran marksman, he knows to keep his body as still as possible. So now he leans hard against the left window jam and presses the butt of his Italian carbine against his right shoulder. The scratched wooden stock of the butt is against his cheek, just as it was for so many hours at the rifle range with the M-1 rifle from his Marine Corps days. His right index finger is curled around the thirty-three-year-old trigger.

Lee Harvey Oswald peers into his four-power telescopic sight, the one that makes John Kennedy’s head look as if it is two feet away. Oswald knows time is short. He’ll be able to shoot two shots for sure. Three, if he’s quick. He has probably nine seconds.

Seeing his target clearly, Oswald exhales, gently squeezes the trigger, and even as he feels the recoil kick the rifle back, hard against his shoulder, he smoothly pulls back the bolt to chamber another round. He can’t tell whether the first bullet has done much damage. But that doesn’t matter. Oswald must immediately fire again.

The assassin is an impulsive man, and perhaps even more powerless to stop the flood of adrenaline that would course through any man’s body after firing a high-powered rifle at the president of the United States. The instant a man commits such an act, his life is changed forever. There is no turning back. From that second on he will be hunted to the ends of the earth. Perhaps he will spend the rest of his life in prison. Perhaps he will be executed.

The smart thing to do after firing a shot at the president is to throw down the rifle and run.

But if the first shot somehow misses, just like that shot missed General Walker back in April, and the president lives, Oswald will look like a fool. And that’s the last thing he wants. No, the plan is to kill John Fitzgerald Kennedy. And Lee Harvey Oswald will see that plan through.

He doesn’t think twice. Oswald fires again.

The sound of the second shot is not drowned out by the crowd below. It is so loud that pieces of the plaster ceiling inside the Texas School Book Depository fall and the panes of the windows along which Lee Harvey Oswald stands rattle.

At approximately 8.4 seconds after firing his first shot, Lee Harvey Oswald pulls the trigger on the third. And then Oswald is away. He drops his now-unnecessary Italian carbine and steps from the tower of book boxes behind which he’s been hiding. He races to get out of the depository.

Dallas motorcycle officer Marrion L. Baker has raced into the building and up the stairs. He stops Oswald at gunpoint on the second floor but then lets him go when it becomes clear that Lee Harvey is a TBSD employee.

Sixty seconds later, Lee Harvey Oswald steps out of the depository building and into the sunshine of a sixty-five-degree Dallas afternoon.

Against all odds, the assassin is getting away.

*   *   *

Earwitness testimony in Dealey Plaza will later confirm that three shots were fired from the depository. One of the shots misses the president’s car completely, and decades later there is still speculation whether it was the first or third round. But the fact remains that two of the shots did not miss.

The first impact strikes the president in the back of his lower neck. Traveling at 1,904 feet per second, the 6.5-millimeter round tears through the president’s trachea and then exits his body through the tight knot of his dark blue tie. No bones are struck, and though his right lung is bruised, JFK’s heart and lungs still function perfectly.

The president is badly hurt, but very much alive. He has trouble breathing and talking as blood floods into his windpipe. Otherwise, the rifle shot will most likely not kill him.

The same cannot be said for Texas governor John Connally. His jump seat, immediately in front of the president, is three inches lower than where the president is currently sitting. Therefore, ballistics after the fact show that the bullet that passed through Kennedy then entered Connally’s back.

The governor had turned his body just before Oswald fired the shot. He was twisting around, trying to speak face-to-face with the president. Thus, the so-called “magic bullet” (which was traveling at slightly more than 1,700 feet per second) manages to pierce Connally’s skin and travel through his body, exiting below the right side of his chest. But the magic bullet isn’t finished. It then pierces the governor’s wrist and deflects off the bones and into his left thigh, where it finally comes to rest.

The blow knocks Governor Connally forward, bending him double. His chest is immediately drenched in blood. “No, no, no, no,” he cries, “they’re going to kill us both.”

Roy Kellerman thinks he hears the president yell, “My God, I’m hit,” and turns to look over his left shoulder at the man whose Boston accent he knows so well.

Kellerman sees for sure that JFK has been shot.

President Kennedy and Governor Connally are just four miles from Parkland Hospital. There, a team of emergency surgeons can save their lives. It’s up to Secret Service driver Bill Greer to get them there. But the driver of SS-100-X has also looked back to check on the president’s status. This distraction means that the limousine veers slightly from side to side rather than speeding to the emergency room. When Greer turns back to the wheel there’s still time to save the president. All he has to do is accelerate.

But the impact of what has happened has not sunk in. Not for Greer. Not for Kellerman. Not even for Jackie, who is now turning toward JFK.

And the presidential limo still travels far too slowly down Elm Street.

*   *   *

Secret Service special agent Clint Hill, in charge of the First Lady’s detail, hears the shot and leaps into action. Shoving himself away from the running board on Halfback, the vehicle directly behind the president’s limousine, Hill sprints forward in an effort to jump on the small step that sticks out from the back of the president’s car.

Meanwhile, JFK is leaning to his left, but still upright. Jackie wraps her hands lovingly around her husband’s face. The First Lady looks into the president’s eyes to see what’s wrong with him. The distance between her beautiful, unlined face and that of the tanned and very stunned John Kennedy is approximately six inches.

The torso of a normal man would have been shoved farther forward by the force of a bullet striking his body at nearly twice the speed of sound. This is precisely what happened to Governor Connally. If John F. Kennedy had been knocked forward, he might have lived a long life.

But now the president’s long and painful struggle with back problems returns to torture him one last time.

The back brace that he is wearing holds his body erect. The president fortified its rigidity this morning by wrapping the brace and his thighs in a thick layer of Ace bandages.

If not for the brace, the next bullet, less than five seconds later, would have traveled harmlessly over his head.

But it does not. The next bullet explodes his skull.

*   *   *

The diameter of the entry wound from the second impact is just slightly wider than that of a number two pencil. The high rate of speed ensures that the shell will travel all the way through the brain and out the front of the skull, rather than lodging inside like the slower bullet that killed Abraham Lincoln. When Lincoln was shot, physicians inserted something called a Nelaton probe into his brain. This slender porcelain stick followed the path of the wound until the tip struck the solid metal ball fired from John Wilkes Booth’s pistol. The path of the bullet was all very linear and neat.

But the 6.5-millimeter round fired by Lee Harvey Oswald is a far more vicious chunk of lead. Such a slender bullet might seem insignificant, but it is capable of bringing down a deer from two hundred yards.

This copper-jacketed missile effectively ends John F. Kennedy’s life in an instant. It barely slows as it slices through the tender gray brain matter before exploding the thin wall of bone as it exits the front of his skull.

Jackie’s arms are still wrapped around her husband when the front of his head explodes. Brains, blood, and bone fragments shower the First Lady’s face and that pink Chanel suit; the matter sprays as far forward as the limousine’s windshield visors.

As is so often his habit when something messes up his hair, John Kennedy’s hand reflexively tries to pat the top of his head.

But now the top of his head is gone.

*   *   *

There is no chance for mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, as was attempted when Lincoln lay dying on the floor of his Ford’s Theatre box. There will be no overnight vigil, as with Lincoln, so that friends and loved ones can stand over JFK in his final moments, slowly absorbing the pain of impending loss, and perhaps speaking a few honest words about how much they love John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

The man who swam miles to save the men of PT-109, who has shaken the hands of kings and queens and prime ministers, who inspired the entire world with his bold speeches and deeply held belief in the power of democracy and freedom, who caressed the cheeks of his children, endured the loss of so many family loved ones, and who stood toe-to-toe with men who might otherwise destroy the world, is brain dead.

*   *   *

Little do the horrified onlookers know, but historians and conspiracy theorists, as well as average citizens born years after this day, will long argue whether Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone or perhaps had the help of others. Federal authorities will scrutinize ballistics and use a stopwatch to time how quickly a man can aim and reload a 6.5-millimeter Mannlicher-Carcano. A variety of people will become self-described experts on grainy home videos of the assassination, grassy knolls, and the many evildoers who longed to see John F. Kennedy physically removed from power.

Those conspiratorial arguments will become so powerful and so involved that they will one day threaten to overwhelm the human tragedy of November 22, 1963.

So let the record state, once and for all, that at 12:30 P.M. on a sunny Friday afternoon in Dallas, Texas, John Fitzgerald Kennedy is shot dead in less time than it takes to blink an eye.

He leaves behind a beautiful widow.

He leaves behind two adoring young children.

He leaves behind a nation that loves him.

26

NOVEMBER 22, 1963

DALLAS, TEXAS

12:31 P.M.

Inside the presidential limousine, there is chaos.

“Oh, no, no, no. Oh, my God. They have shot my husband. I love you, Jack,” Jackie Kennedy cries.

The First Lady will not remember what she does in the seconds after her husband is shot. She is in shock. In the future, she will watch videos of herself and feel as if she is watching some other woman. Her children will protect her by tearing the assassination images out of books before she can see them.

“They’ve killed my husband,” Jackie says to no one and everyone. Up front, driver Bill Greer and Special Agent Roy Kellerman are radioing that the president has been hit. Governor Connally is still conscious, but fading fast. His wife, Nellie, has thrown her body over his. This leaves Jackie alone in the backseat, the president’s lifeless body leaning against hers.

“I have his brains in my hand,” she yells.

And then Jackie is up and out of the seat. She’s on a mission.

Secret Service special agent Clint Hill knows precisely what the First Lady is doing. Rather than sitting with her husband’s body, she is crawling onto the trunk of the moving presidential limousine in order to collect pieces of skull and brain that cover the dark blue metal. Some fragments are flesh colored, with the skin still attached. Behind her, the president’s body is still upright, though tilted to the left. Blood pours out of his head wound in great torrents, drenching her roses and his clothing and spilling onto the floor of the vehicle.

“Good God, she’s going to fly off the back of the car,” Hill thinks as he jumps onto the small platform attached to the back of the Lincoln. To Special Agent Hill, the shot that killed the president sounded like “a melon shattering onto cement.” Splatter from the president’s head covers Hill’s face and clothes as he and the fatal bullet reached the kill zone simultaneously.

Terror fills the First Lady’s eyes. Her face is covered in blood and gray matter. This is a stark change for a woman so often consumed by appearing nothing less than elegant. But Jackie could not care less. “My God, they have shot his head off,” she screams.

Hill is just inches away from Jackie Kennedy as Bill Greer accelerates toward Parkland Hospital. SS-100-X is a behemoth of a vehicle, specially modified for use by the president. In addition to those mid-vehicle jump seats—which stretch the car from the 133-inch wheelbase of a factory Lincoln to 156 inches—the car weighs almost four tons. The 350-horsepower engine is its weak link, making it unable to accelerate quickly. But once the vehicle is up to speed, it hurtles down the freeway like an unstoppable force.

Which is precisely what it’s doing now. Scattering the police motorcycle escort, Bill Greer is pressing the accelerator all the way to the floor. Clint Hill, struggling to keep Jackie Kennedy from falling off the vehicle, almost flies off the back bumper himself. His hand clings to a grip on the trunk that has been placed there specifically for the Secret Service to hold on to. Now he grips for dear life with just that one hand, the other reaching for Jackie as the limo rockets down Elm Street. Hill grabs Jackie’s elbow, which allows him finally to get stabilized on the trunk of the presidential limousine.

Hill’s first job is to protect Jackie Kennedy. Even as he presses his body flat against the trunk and holds on tight, he shoves her hard back into the backseat. The president’s body falls over and onto her lap. She holds his head in her white-gloved hands, cradling him as if he has simply fallen asleep. “Jack, Jack. What have they done to you?”

Up front, driver Bill Greer is depending upon Chief Curry to lead the president’s limousine to Parkland Hospital, which is four miles away.

Still clinging to the trunk, Clint Hill turns and looks at Halfback, where Secret Service agents ride on the running boards. He makes eye contact with Special Agent Paul Landis, then shakes his head and holds out his hand in a thumbs-down signal.

Special Agent Emory Roberts sees Hill’s gesture and immediately radios to the agents protecting Lyndon Johnson. With one downturned thumb, Clint Hill has confirmed that Lyndon Baines Johnson is now the acting president of the United States. Protecting his life becomes the Secret Service’s number one priority.

In the backseat of the Lincoln, Jackie Kennedy holds her husband’s head and quietly sobs. “He’s dead. They’ve killed him. Oh Jack, oh Jack. I love you.”

*   *   *

Lee Harvey Oswald is doing everything right. He’s walking east up Elm Street to catch a bus. The panic and chaos that now define Dealey Plaza recede behind him. No one has stopped Oswald. At this point, no one even suspects him.

Meanwhile, his escape plan is coming together slowly. For now, the assassin is on his way to his rooming house to pick up his pistol—just in case.

*   *   *

The radio call of “Code 3” means an emergency of the highest importance to Dallas-area hospitals. The term is almost never used. So when Parkland dispatcher Anne Ferguson requests more details, she is simply told, “The president has been shot.”

The time is 12:33 P.M.

Three minutes later, the presidential limousine roars into Parkland, blowing past the sign reading “Emergency Cases Only.” Bill Greer parks in the middle of the three ambulance bays.

But there is no stretcher waiting, no emergency team rushing to help the president. Incredibly, a breakdown in communications has stymied the hospital’s emergency response. The trauma team has barely been notified.

So those inside the presidential limo simply wait.

Nellie Connally lies atop her husband, even as a moaning Jackie Kennedy holds John Kennedy’s head.

Halfback pulls up, right behind SS-100-X. Dave Powers and Kenny O’Donnell, men who have been in the political trenches with JFK since the 1946 congressional campaign, rush to the Lincoln, hoping for the best. The president still has a faint pulse—which continues to push pint after pint of blood out through his head wound.

“Get up,” Secret Service special agent Emory Roberts commands Jackie Kennedy.

She doesn’t move. She has positioned her arms and jacket so that no one can see JFK’s face or head. The First Lady does not want her husband remembered this way.

Roberts delicately lifts Jackie’s arm so he can see for himself if the president is dead. One look is all he needs. Roberts backs off.

Dave Powers sees the fixed pupils gazing sightlessly into the distance and breaks into tears. O’Donnell, who served in the Army Air Corps during World War II, reverts to his soldier days and snaps to attention as a sign of numb respect.

Even if Jackie were to try to move right now, she would have nowhere to go. The slumped body of John Connally blocks the car’s door, meaning that the governor of Texas must be moved before the president of the United States can be lifted from the Lincoln.

It is Dave Powers, not hospital personnel, who finally sets aside his tears and lifts Connally out by the legs and onto a gurney. The governor is conscious, though just barely. His wounds are life threatening, and the emergency physicians at Parkland will be very busy today trying to save Connally’s life. (They will succeed—a rare bit of good news on a brutal day.)

Though Connally has been wheeled inside to Trauma Room Two and no longer obstructs the car door, Jackie Kennedy still refuses to let go of her husband. When she lets go, she knows he’s gone forever. This will be the last time she holds him. The First Lady curls her body forward so that the president’s blood-soaked face and her breasts come together. She weeps quietly, pushing her body closer and closer to her husband’s.

“Mrs. Kennedy,” Special Agent Clint Hill says, “please let us help the president.”

Jackie doesn’t respond. But she knows that voice. It is the soft command of a man who has protected her from danger night and day.

The voice of Clint Hill is the only voice Jackie responds to in her moment of shocked grief.

Hill softly places his hand on her shoulder. The First Lady trembles, in mourning.

The quiet crowd of Secret Service agents and Kennedy staffers around the Lincoln do not speak. The seconds tick past.

“Please, Mrs. Kennedy. Please let us get him into the hospital,” Hill implores.

“I’m not going to let him go, Mr. Hill,” Jackie says.

“We’ve got to take him in, Mrs. Kennedy.”

“No, Mr. Hill. You know he’s dead. Leave me alone.”

Jackie sobs. Her body jerks as pain courses through her.

Hill realizes something. It’s bad enough that she is seeing the man she loves with his head blown off, but she doesn’t want anyone else seeing him like that. And as the media descend onto Parkland Hospital even in the midst of Jackie’s lonely Pietà, there is no way in the world Jackie will allow John Fitzgerald Kennedy to be photographed in this state.

Clint Hill is exhausted. He has worked long hours on this trip and gotten by on little food and even less sleep. But there’s nothing he won’t do for Jackie Kennedy. Knowing in an instant that it is the right thing to do, Special Agent Hill removes his suit coat and sets it gently atop the president’s body.

Jackie Kennedy, her pink suit and white gloves now covered in the president’s copious blood, wraps her husband’s head and torso in Clint Hill’s coat.

Then, for the last time, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy lets go of the man she loves. The president is placed atop a gurney and hustled down to Trauma Room One, those pushing the gurney following the red line on the floor. The walls are tiled in tan, and atop the president’s chest is the bouquet of bloody red roses, which have stuck to his body.

*   *   *

About four miles away from the bloody hospital scene, Lee Harvey Oswald boards a bus at the corner of Elm and Murphy and completes his getaway.

*   *   *

The assassination of Abraham Lincoln in April 1865 was a spiderweb of conspiracy. On the same evening that Lincoln was shot in Ford’s Theatre, there were also plans to kill his vice president and secretary of state. Had those plans succeeded, the top level of American government would have been beheaded.

As soon as the first shot is fired in Dallas, those long-ago events are instantly remembered. Immediate steps are taken to ensure that a possible conspiracy is not completed. Several members of the cabinet are west of Hawaii, en route to Japan. A radio call orders them to turn around and come home.

Vice President Lyndon Johnson is under constant watch the instant his rented limousine arrives at Parkland Hospital. He is hustled into a small white cubicle in Parkland’s Minor Medicine section with his wife, Lady Bird. A Secret Service detail guards his life. A patient and a nurse are kicked out to make room for them. There is no word yet on the fate of the president, though everyone knows that surviving such a gunshot wound is just about impossible. The Secret Service wants LBJ flown immediately back to Washington and out of harm’s way. Failing that, it would like him relocated to the safest possible security zone in Dallas: Air Force One.

But Vice President Johnson refuses to leave the hospital. He remains waiting for word of President Kennedy’s fate. The Secret Service pressures him again and again to depart, but LBJ will not go. Johnson is planning his next steps. Until the presidential succession is official, he will deliver no orders. The oath of office is not necessary to make him officially president. Succession will take place the instant JFK is declared dead. So LBJ stands there in the small cubicle at Parkland Hospital, leaning against the wall and sipping coffee in complete silence, waiting for the official announcement of President Kennedy’s death.

In Trauma Room One, the president’s body is stripped, except for his underwear. His gold watch is removed from his wrist. He no longer has a regular pulse, but he breathes in short breaths. Blood continues to pour out of his head wound and the hole in his throat; the rest of his body is unscathed. An overhead fluorescent lamp lights the small army of medical professionals at work in the trauma room. The first doctor on the scene is second-year medical resident Charles J. Carrico, who knows what to do and acts quickly. A tube is inserted into John Kennedy’s throat to open his airway, and saline solution is pumped into his body through his right femoral vein.

The room slowly fills with surgeons, until there are fourteen doctors standing over the president. Outside the trauma room, Jackie Kennedy sits in a folding chair holding vigil.

Dr. Mac Perry, a thirty-four-year-old surgeon, now steps in to head the team. He uses a scalpel to slice open the president’s throat and perform a tracheotomy, while someone else attaches a tube to a respirator to induce regular breathing.

Jackie now rises from her chair, determined to enter the trauma room. She has heard the talk about fluids and resuscitation and is beginning to hope that her husband might just live. A nurse blocks her path, but the demure First Lady can display an iron will when she wants to. “I’m going to get into that room,” she repeats over and over as she wrestles with Nurse Doris Nelson, who shows no signs of backing down. “I’m going to get into that room.”

“Mrs. Kennedy, you need a sedative,” a nearby doctor tells her.

But the First Lady does not wish to be numbed. She wants to feel every last moment with her husband. “I want to be in there when he dies,” she says firmly.

*   *   *

Bobby Kennedy gets the bad news from J. Edgar Hoover.

As the head of America’s top law enforcement agency, Hoover is informed of the shooting almost immediately. The FBI director is a dispassionate man, but never more so than right now. He sits at his desk on the fifth floor of the Justice Department Building as he picks up the phone to call Bobby Kennedy. It has been fifteen minutes since Lee Harvey Oswald first pulled the trigger. The surgical trauma team at Parkland is fighting to keep the president alive.

Bobby is just about to eat a tuna fish sandwich on the patio of his Virginia home when his wife, Ethel, tells him he has a call.

“It’s J. Edgar Hoover,” she tells Bobby.

The attorney general knows this must be important. The director knows better than to call Bobby at home. He sets down his sandwich and goes to the phone. It’s a special direct government line known as Extension 163.

“I have news for you,” Hoover says. “The president has been shot.”

Bobby hangs up. His first reaction is one of great distress, and his body seems to go slack. But his next thought, as always, is to protect his older brother. He calls the White House and has all the locks on JFK’s file cabinets changed so that Lyndon Johnson cannot go through them. The most delicate files are completely removed from the White House and placed under round-the-clock security.

Bobby then fields phone call after phone call from friends and family. He holds back tears, but Ethel knows that her husband is breaking down and hands him a pair of dark glasses to hide his red-rimmed eyes.

The calls don’t stop. In the midst of them all, Bobby realizes that the tables have been turned. And he knows that he will soon get a call from a man he despises.

*   *   *

Jackie Kennedy gets the bad news from Dr. William Kemp Clark.

It comes just moments after, against great odds, the First Lady battles her way into the trauma room. She stands in a corner, out of the way, just wanting to be near her husband.

The sight is singularly medical, as tubes now sprout from the president’s mouth, nose, and chest. His skin is the palest white. Blood is being transfused into his body. Dr. Mac Perry presses down on the president’s sternum to restart the heart, even as the electrocardiogram machine shows a flat line. Dr. William Kemp Clark, Parkland’s chief neurosurgeon, assists Perry by monitoring the EKG for even a flicker of deviation.

Finally, Clark knows they can do no more. A sheet is drawn over JFK’s face. Dr. Clark turns to Jackie Kennedy. “Your husband has sustained a fatal wound,” the veteran surgeon tells the First Lady.

“I know,” she replies.

“The president is dead.”

Jackie leans up and presses her cheek to that of Dr. Clark. It is an expression of thanks. Kemp Clark, a hard man who served in the Pacific in World War II, can’t help himself. He breaks down and sobs.

*   *   *

Most people in the United States get the bad news of the president’s death from CBS newsman Walter Cronkite.

The most trusted man in America first breaks into the soap opera As the World Turns just eight minutes after the shooting, saying that an assassin has fired three shots at the president. Despite the fact that most Americans are at work or school, and not home watching daytime television, more than seventy-five million people are aware of the shooting by 1:00 P.M.

*   *   *

Lyndon Baines Johnson gets the bad news from Kenny O’Donnell.

Shortly after 1:00 P.M., John F. Kennedy’s appointments secretary marches into the small white cubicle in the Minor Medicine section of the hospital and stands before Lyndon Johnson. O’Donnell is openly distraught. He is not the sort of man who weeps at calamity, but the devastated look on his face is clear for all to see.

Even before O’Donnell opens his mouth, LBJ knows that it is official: Lyndon Baines Johnson is now the thirty-sixth president of the United States.

*   *   *

Jack Ruby gets the bad news from television, just like most of America.

The nightclub owner is on the second floor of the Dallas Morning News building, just four blocks from Dealey Plaza. He has come to place an ad for his burlesque business, the Carousel Club—“a f---ing classy joint,” in Ruby’s own words. He pays in person because the Morning News has canceled his credit after he fell behind on his payments one too many times. The ad announces his featured performers for the coming weekend and is no different from his usual weekly ads gracing the newspaper.

Ruby is five foot, nine inches and 175 pounds, and is fond of carrying a big roll of cash. He’s got friends in the Mafia and on the police force. He is known to like health food and has a lightning-quick temper. But most of all Jack Ruby considers himself a Democrat and a patriot.

The first reports state that a Secret Service man has been killed, but as Ruby and the advertising staff of the Morning News gather around a small black-and-white television for more information, the harsh truth is announced.

A despondent Jack Ruby wanders off and sits alone at a desk. After a time, he gets up and announces that he is canceling the club advertisement. Instead, he places another ad. This one tells the good people of Dallas that the Carousel Club will be closed all weekend, out of respect for President Kennedy.

Jack Ruby will not be doing business over the next few days. He will be doing something else.

*   *   *

Lee Harvey Oswald is on the move. After his bus stalls in heavy post-assassination traffic, he gets off and walks a bit before finding a cab, which takes him closer to his rooming house at 1026 North Beckley. Upon arriving there, he races to his room, grabs his .38-caliber pistol, and sticks it in his waistband. Then he quickly leaves.

Little does Oswald know, but eyewitnesses at the scene have given the police his description. Now the cops are on the lookout for a “white male, approximately 30, slender build, height 5 foot 10 inches, weight 165 pounds.”

At 1:15 P.M., Officer J. D. Tippit of the Dallas Police Department is driving east on Tenth Street. Just after the intersection of Tenth and Patton, he sees a man matching the suspect’s description walking alone, wearing a light-colored jacket.

Tippit is a married father of three children. He is thirty-nine years old, earned a Bronze Star as a paratrooper in World War II, has a tenth-grade education, and earns just a little over $5,000 a year. The “J.D.” initials do not stand for anything.

Tippit has been with the Dallas Police Department eleven years as he pulls his car alongside Lee Harvey Oswald. He knows to be cautious. But he also knows to be thorough in his questioning.

Oswald leans down and speaks to Tippit through the right front window vent. He is hostile.

Tippit opens the door and steps out of his police cruiser. He walks around to the front of the car, intending to ask Oswald a few more questions. Based on the answers, Tippit will then make a decision whether to place Oswald in handcuffs. But the policeman doesn’t get farther than the left front wheel. Lee Harvey Oswald pulls out his .38 and fires four bullets in rapid succession. Tippit is killed instantly.

Oswald, the man who nervously missed General Walker so many long months ago, has now killed the president of the United States and a Dallas police officer in cold blood just forty-five minutes apart.

But Oswald is running out of options. He is out of money, almost out of ammunition, and the Dallas police know what he looks like. He will have to be very clever in these next few minutes if he is to continue his escape.

The killer quickly reloads and continues his journey, turning down Patton Avenue. But this time he doesn’t walk; he jogs. There is no doubt about it: Oswald is being hunted. The police are closing in. He needs to move quickly now. The time is 1:16 P.M.

*   *   *

At 1:26 P.M. the Secret Service whisks Lyndon Johnson to Air Force One, where he immediately climbs the steps up to the back door of the plane. There he moves into President Kennedy’s personal bedroom, takes off his coat, and sprawls on the bed while he awaits Jackie Kennedy’s return to the plane. She has remained behind at Parkland, refusing to leave until the body of her husband comes with her.

And so LBJ waits. Even as he relishes his first moments of power, outside the bedroom, mechanics are removing several of the first-class seats in the rear of Air Force One to make room for John Kennedy’s coffin.

LBJ has chosen the bedroom because he wants privacy. He picks up John Kennedy’s personal presidential telephone next to the bed and places a call to a man he loathes.

On the other end of the line, Bobby Kennedy picks up the phone and says a professional hello to his new boss.

*   *   *

Lee Harvey Oswald hears the sirens and knows they’re coming for him.

He races toward the quickest hiding place he can find, a movie house called the Texas Theatre. Oswald has traveled eight blocks in the twenty-five minutes since killing Officer Tippit. He shed his jacket shortly after shooting Tippit, hoping to confuse his pursuers. He runs past the Bethel Temple, where a sign advises “Prepare to Meet Thy God.”

But Lee Harvey Oswald is not showing fear.

Foolishly, he runs right past the ticket booth. In the dark of the theater, he finds a seat, trying to make himself invisible. His seat is on the main floor, along the right center aisle. The matinee film is War Is Hell, an ironic name for a decidedly hellish day of Oswald’s invention.

After seeing the man run inside without paying, and then at the same time hearing sirens as police cars race to the scene of Officer Tippit’s murder, ticket taker Julia Postal puts two and two together. Realizing that the man she just saw is “running from them for some reason,” she picks up the phone and dials the police.

Squad cars are on the scene almost immediately. Police close off the theater’s exits. The house lights are turned on. Patrolman M. N. McDonald approaches Oswald, who suddenly stands and punches the policeman in the face while reaching for the pistol in his waistband. McDonald is not hurt and immediately fights back. Other policemen join the scrum. Thus, screaming about police brutality, Lee Harvey Oswald is dragged out of the theater and taken to jail.

*   *   *

Undertaker Vernon Oneal receives the call from Clint Hill personally, ordering him to bring his best casket to Parkland Hospital. Oneal specializes in taking care of the dead, running a fleet of seven radio-equipped white hearses that convey the newly departed to his mortuary, where relatives can sip from the coffee bar before paying their respects in the Slumber Room.

The casket Oneal quickly selects for John Kennedy is the “Britannia” model from the Elgin Casket Company. It is double-walled and solid bronze. The upholstery is satin.

Upon his arrival at Parkland Hospital, Oneal is told that Jackie Kennedy wants one last moment with her husband. That’s all. She removes the wedding band from her finger and slides it over the knuckle of Jack’s little finger with the help of an orderly, so that it will not fall off during the inevitable embalming. She then smokes a cigarette. Jackie is exhausted and brokenhearted. The mood at Parkland is mournful but slowly returning to normal hospital routine. As doctors and nurses begin attending to other cases, Jackie Kennedy is feeling more and more out of place.

“You could go back to the plane now,” she is told.

“I’m not going back till I leave with Jack,” she replies.

Meanwhile, Vernon Oneal places a sheet of plastic down on the inside of the coffin, lining the bottom. He then carefully swaddles the body of John Kennedy in seven layers of rubber bags and one more of plastic. Finally, the president’s body is laid inside. Oneal is concerned that the president’s blood will permanently stain the satin lining.

Almost an hour after being declared dead, John Kennedy is now ready to leave Parkland Hospital and fly back to Washington.

Yet ironically, the city of Dallas, which once wanted him to stay away, now will not let JFK leave.

*   *   *

It is a little-known fact that it is not a federal crime to kill the president of the United States. It is against federal law to initiate a conspiracy to kill the president, which is why J. Edgar Hoover is now insisting that JFK’s murder was the act of many instead of just one. Hoover wants jurisdiction over the case. But at this point, he is not getting it. Jurisdiction falls to the state of Texas and the municipality of Dallas.

Thus Dallas officials won’t let John Kennedy’s body leave the state of Texas until an official autopsy has been performed. The Dallas medical examiner, who has now arrived at Parkland, will not budge on this matter.

Veteran Secret Service special agent Roy Kellerman, who has now taken charge, is livid. “My friend,” Kellerman makes it clear to Dallas medical examiner Dr. Earl Rose, “this is the body of the president of the United States and we are going to take it back to Washington.”

“No. That’s not the way things are,” Rose replies. “Where there is a homicide, we must have an autopsy.”

“He is going with us,” Kellerman tells Rose.

“The body stays,” insists the medical examiner, an upright man fond of wagging his finger in people’s faces.

Meanwhile, Lyndon Johnson and Air Force One are stuck on the ground because of this legal wrangling. Jackie Kennedy won’t leave without JFK’s body, and LBJ won’t depart without Jackie, fearing he would be considered insensitive if he did.

The argument now becomes an old-fashioned Texas standoff—a physical showdown between the Secret Service, Dr. Rose, and members of the Dallas Police Department. There are forty men present. Pushing and shoving break out. The Secret Service is determined to have its way, but the Dallas police won’t back down. Finally, Kennedy’s close friends Kenny O’Donnell and Dave Powers order Secret Service agents to grab JFK’s coffin and bull their way through the police. “We’re getting out of here,” O’Donnell barks as the undertaker’s cart on which the casket rests is rolled toward the exit door. “We don’t give a damn what these laws say. We’re leaving now!”

The president’s body is loaded into Vernon Oneal’s 1964 white Cadillac hearse. Jackie Kennedy sits in the rear jump seat, next to her husband’s body. Clint Hill and other agents jam themselves into the front seat. Bill Greer is still inside the hospital, but Roy Kellerman isn’t waiting for him. Secret Service special agent Andy Berger takes the wheel and races for Love Field at top speed. As he watches the hearse peel out, Vernon Oneal wonders aloud how and when he’s going to be paid.

There is no stopping when the Cadillac reaches the airport. Tires squealing, Special Agent Berger races the hearse onto the tarmac, ignoring the signs reading “Restricted Area” and “Slow—Dangerous Trucks.” He speeds past the Braniff and American Airlines hangars, oblivious to all dangers until the hearse screeches to a halt at the back steps leading up to Air Force One. Kennedy’s friends and bodyguards then personally manhandle the six hundred pounds of coffin and president, banging it off the stairwell leading up into the plane and tilting the casket at awkward angles. They load the body onto Air Force One through the same rear door John Kennedy stepped out of three hours earlier. That moment was ceremonial and presidential. This moment is morbid and ghastly.

President Lyndon B. Johnson, with Jackie at his side, takes the oath of office on Air Force One following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. (Cecil Stoughton, White House Photograph, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)

Jackie Kennedy waits until her husband’s body is on board before climbing up the steps. The inside of Air Force One is like an inferno; the air-conditioning has been off for hours. The blinds are down, and the cabin is dark out of fear that more assassins are on the loose and will shoot through the plane’s windows. Yet Lyndon Johnson insists on being sworn in before Air Force One leaves the ground. So it is that the Kennedy staff and the Johnson staff stand uncomfortably next to one another as federal judge Sarah Hughes, who was personally appointed to the bench by LBJ and now has been hastily summoned to the presidential jet of which John F. Kennedy was so fond, administers the oath.

“Do you, Lyndon Baines Johnson, solemnly swear…”

“I, Lyndon Baines Johnson, solemnly swear…”

LBJ stands tall in Air Force One. To his left, still wearing the bloodstained pink suit, is Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy. The former First Lady has not changed clothes. She is adamant that the world have a visual reminder of what happened to her husband here.

Standing before Johnson is the judge.

Several feet behind them, in the rear of the plane, lies the body of John F. Kennedy.

After the swearing-in ceremony, Jackie sits down in a seat next to the coffin as the long ride home begins.

*   *   *

It is Sunday morning, November 24. The nation is devastated by the assassination of John F. Kennedy and is riveted to the television with depressed fascination as events unfold. Jackie Kennedy is now out of sight, privately mourning her husband’s death. So the eyes of America turn to Lee Harvey Oswald. The assassin has become infamous since Friday, particularly after telling a crowd of reporters, “I’m just a patsy.”

That impromptu midnight press conference at Dallas police headquarters was surreal. Reporters were allowed to physically crowd the handcuffed Oswald. Many in Dallas, and across America, are so infuriated by JFK’s death that they would gladly exact revenge. Yet the Dallas police do little to shield Oswald.

One of those enraged is Jack Ruby, who worked his way into the press conference unmolested, with a loaded Colt Cobra .38 in his suit coat pocket.

The lack of security around Oswald continued throughout the press conference. He told reporters that the police were after him only because he had lived in the Soviet Union. He denied shooting the president. His tantalizing words “I’m just a patsy” hung in the air, suggesting that he was some sort of scapegoat.

To some, those words brought to mind another such incident, thirty years earlier.

On February 15, 1933, in Miami, Florida, Giuseppe “Joe” Zangara emptied a .32-caliber handgun at President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Zangara missed his target, instead hitting and killing Chicago mayor Anton Cermak. The trial was amazingly quick, and Zangara was executed by the electric chair just five weeks later.

There are some who insist that Roosevelt was not the intended target. Instead, they believe that the point all along was to kill Cermak, as part of a Mafia conspiracy.

In mob slang, Zangara was a “patsy”—someone whose guilt was set up to advance a crime coordinated from behind the scenes.

Lee Harvey Oswald’s public statement that he is a patsy fuels the flames that John Kennedy’s death is part of a greater conspiracy.

*   *   *

There are still Americans who believe Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone in killing John F. Kennedy. Some came to this belief thanks to Oswald’s comments and J. Edgar Hoover’s insistence that there was a conspiracy. Even Bobby Kennedy believed that Oswald did not act alone.

The world will never know the answer.

After saying just a few words to the press on Sunday morning, Lee Harvey Oswald is led through the basement of the Dallas Police Department to a waiting armored car, where he will be transferred to the county jail. In actuality, the armored car is a decoy—for security measures, Oswald will be led to a police car instead.

A crowd of journalists watches a handcuffed and smiling Oswald as he makes his way down the corridor, his right arm handcuffed to the left of Detective J. R. Leavelle.

Between forty and fifty journalists and more than seventy policemen are waiting as Oswald is brought out. Three television cameras roll.

“Here he comes!” someone shouts as Oswald emerges from the jail office.

The newsmen press forward. Microphones are thrust at Oswald and questions shouted. Flashbulbs pop as photographers capture the moment for posterity.

An unrepentant Lee Harvey Oswald. (Associated Press)

Oswald walks ten feet outside the jail office, on his way to the ramp where the police car is waiting.

Suddenly, Jack Ruby emerges from the crowd to Oswald’s left. He has come back to see Oswald for a second time, and once again he carries a pistol. Known to policemen and reporters, Ruby had no problem getting close to the perp walk, even though there is absolutely no reason for him to be there.

Ruby has left his dog waiting in the car. But he is an impulsive man, fond of spontaneously beating drunks who make passes at the strippers in his club. He is so devastated by Kennedy’s assassination that friends have found him crying. Now, enraged by Oswald’s smiling presence, Jacob Rubinstein ensures that he will never see his dog again. He moves fast, aiming his gun at Oswald’s abdomen, and fires one shot. The time is 11:21 A.M.

Jack Ruby is set upon by police. Lee Harvey Oswald slumps and is immediately transported to Parkland Hospital. After arriving, he is placed in Trauma Room Two, right across the hall from the emergency room where John Kennedy spent the final minutes of his life. At 1:07 P.M., forty-eight hours and seven minutes after JFK’s death, Lee Harvey Oswald also dies.

But unlike Kennedy, Oswald is not mourned.

By anyone.

27

JANUARY 14, 1964

ATTORNEY GENERAL’S OFFICE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

Jackie Kennedy sits in a simple leather club chair before a roaring fire. The flag of the United States can be seen over her left shoulder. Her eyes, once so bright and playful, are dull. She wears black. Across from her as the cameras roll, are Bobby and Teddy Kennedy, there to offer moral support. Bobby, in particular, has become a surrogate parent to Caroline and John, and a constant companion to Jackie.

When her husband died eight weeks ago, Jackie Kennedy had no place to go—protocol mandated that she move out of the White House immediately, which also meant an end to Caroline’s special schooling and John’s fondness for riding in Marine One. Jackie was hardly penniless, but actually had little cash to her name, a circumstance that will continue until JFK’s will is sorted out.

Jackie’s whole life was John Kennedy, and even now she sometimes forgets that he’s dead. She is filming this spot, which will be shown in movie theaters across the nation as a newsreel, because she wants to give thanks for the tremendous outpouring of warmth from the American people. She’s received more than eight hundred thousand letters of condolence. “The knowledge of the affection in which my husband was held by all of you has sustained me,” Jackie says firmly to the camera, “and the warmth of these tributes is something we shall never forget.”

Jackie’s words are scripted, and she reads from cue cards. But they are her own words, chosen specifically to evoke heartfelt emotion. The same American people who elevated a president and his wife to movie star celebrity status have not forgotten Jackie in her time of need. And while she is no longer the First Lady, Jackie Kennedy carries herself with the full weight of that title as never before.

But looks are deceiving: privately she aches, compulsively chain-smoking Newport cigarettes and biting her fingernails to the quick. Her eyes are constantly red-rimmed from crying.

Jackie pauses several times during the filming to catch her breath or flutter her eyes to keep the tears at bay. “All of you who have written to me know how much we all loved him, and that he returned that love in full measure,” she tells the world.

And then Jackie Kennedy takes on the same visionary tone of her husband. She speaks of building a John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston, so that people from around the world will know of her husband’s legacy.

It is a brave and poignant performance. In less than two minutes, Jackie Kennedy says a heartbreaking thank-you to the American people. Her grief is obvious, as is her elegance. She symbolizes the grandeur of Camelot, for which Americans are already growing nostalgic.

One of the last times Jackie Kennedy saw her husband’s face was that afternoon at Parkland Hospital, just before the quiet reverence of Trauma One was turned into an unsightly fracas between Secret Service agents and Dallas police. It was in that quiet moment before she slipped her wedding ring onto Jack’s finger. She remembers that moment as if it were yesterday, but prefers to dwell only on the wonderful times. All the indiscretions and controversies of the past are forgotten.

Calm and in command is the way Jackie will always remember Jack. And that’s the way she wants history to remember him. “For Jack, history was full of heroes,” she told Theodore White of Life magazine a week after the assassination. “He was such a simple man, but he was so complex, too. Jack had this hero side to history, the idealistic view, but then he had that other side, the pragmatic side. His friends were his old friends, he loved his Irish Mafia.”

The end of Camelot. Bobby, Jackie, President Kennedy’s sister Patricia, and his children, Caroline and John Jr., in mourning. (Abbie Rowe, National Park Service, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)

It was during that interview, which ran in Life’s December 6 edition, that she first told the world the tale of JFK listening to the Camelot sound track before falling asleep, and how he loved the final line: “Don’t let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as Camelot.”

When White dictated the story to his editors in New York, Jackie hovered nearby, listening in. She insisted that the Camelot theme be predominant. This is how she wants her husband’s presidency to be remembered.

So as Jackie Kennedy finishes filming the newsreel, and rises from the club chair in Bobby Kennedy’s office—he will keep the attorney general title for nine more months—she understands that this is all part of her ongoing obligation to frame her husband’s legacy. But she also knows it is time to move on to a more normal life—a life that will be far less magical than the one she wants the world to remember. As she sadly admitted to Life’s Theodore White, “There’ll never be another Camelot.”

And to this day, that statement remains true.

Afterword

Jackie Kennedy’s enormous grief, and the grace with which she handled herself after the assassination, only enhanced the public admiration she earned during her husband’s presidency. In 1968 she married Aristotle Onassis, the Greek shipping tycoon on whose yacht she recovered from the death of her son Patrick. The paparazzi dubbed her “Jackie O,” and hounded her constantly, a practice they would continue for the rest of her life. Sadly, the sixty-nine-year-old Onassis died of respiratory failure just seven years after their marriage, making Jackie a widow for the second time at the young age of forty-six. After Onassis’s death, Jackie retreated from the public eye, eventually securing a job with Viking Press as a book editor in New York City. She quit that job three years later, angry and embarrassed that the company had published a work of fiction in which Ted Kennedy was the president of the United States and there was an assassination plot against his life. She then moved on to work for Doubleday for the remainder of her nearly two decades in publishing, editing the books of people as diverse as Michael Jackson, Carly Simon, and Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz, a Nobel laureate. In the early 1990s, Jackie’s lifetime smoking habit finally caught up with her. She died on May 19, 1994, from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma at the age of sixty-four.

Caroline Kennedy grew up to attend Radcliffe College and later earn her Juris Doctor from Columbia University. She married Edwin Schlossberg, bore three children, and pretty much stays out of the public eye. In December 2011, singer Neil Diamond admitted that Caroline was the inspiration for his multimillion-selling song “Sweet Caroline.”

John F. Kennedy Jr. became a symbol for the tragic history of the Kennedy family. The image of him on his third birthday saluting his father’s coffin broke hearts worldwide. Erroneously thought to be nicknamed “John-John”—that name was fabricated by the press—John Jr. attended college at Brown and then went on to the New York University School of Law, which eventually led to a short stint in the Manhattan district attorney’s office. In 1988, People magazine named John Jr. “The Sexiest Man Alive.” Like his mother, he was the subject of intense media scrutiny. On July 16, 1999, he was piloting a small plane when it crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard. The accident killed John Kennedy Jr., his wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and her sister, Lauren. He was thirty-eight years old. His ashes, and those of his wife, were scattered at sea.

Lyndon Johnson inherited no small amount of unfinished business from the Kennedy administration, most notably the Vietnam War. He masterfully cobbled together coalitions within Congress to help pass the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964. Johnson, working closely with Martin Luther King Jr., framed the issue in terms of JFK’s legacy in order to gather support for the act. However, Vietnam was an inherited headache that proved to be his undoing. The Diem assassination was America’s point of no return in terms of involvement, and while there are many who debate whether or not the United States had a hand in his death, there’s no disputing that the situation only got worse from there. After winning the 1964 election in a landslide over Arizona’s Barry Goldwater (a Republican defeat JFK had predicted), Johnson began to mismanage the war in Southeast Asia. As the antiwar movement gained traction, LBJ, fearing defeat, chose not to run again in 1968. Upon leaving Washington, Lyndon Baines Johnson returned to his Texas ranch, where he died of a heart attack at the age of sixty-four on January 22, 1973.

As with the death of John Kennedy, it was Walter Cronkite who broke the news of LBJ’s death to the nation. Cronkite himself remained a news broadcaster at CBS until 1980. In 2009 he died at the age of ninety-two, still bitter about being replaced by Dan Rather as the anchor of the CBS Evening News.

The man who took most advantage of Lyndon Johnson’s decision not to run for the presidency in 1968 was Bobby Kennedy. The former attorney general had been devastated by his brother’s assassination, but overcame his grief to mount a very successful campaign. However, like his brother, Bobby Kennedy was assassinated by a disturbed lone gunman, Sirhan Sirhan, who shot Bobby in a Los Angeles hotel just moments after he had claimed victory in the California primary. He lived for twenty-six hours before dying on June 6, 1968, at the age of forty-two.

Lee Harvey Oswald was buried in Shannon Rose Hill Cemetery in Fort Worth, Texas, on November 25, 1963, the same day that John F. Kennedy was interred at Arlington. In 1967, on the fourth anniversary of Oswald’s death, his tombstone was stolen by local vandals. Though it was eventually returned, his mother feared that the grave site would be robbed again, so she replaced the stone with one much cheaper and hid her son’s original tombstone in the crawl space beneath her Fort Worth home. After Marguerite Oswald died in 1981 at the age of seventy-three, the house was sold. When the new owners discovered the 130-pound slab in the crawl space, they quietly sold it to the Historic Automotive Attractions Museum in Roscoe, Illinois, for less than ten thousand dollars. The museum also houses the ambulance that transported Oswald to Parkland Hospital and the Checker Cab he hailed shortly after shooting JFK.

The museum’s owners, however, balked at buying Oswald’s original pine casket, which was replaced after his body was exhumed in 1981, saying it was too macabre.

One other anonymous individual disagreed, purchasing the coffin at auction for $87,468 in December 2010.

Jack Ruby, aka Jacob Rubinstein, argued that he shot Lee Harvey Oswald to redeem the city of Dallas for the assassination. Legendary San Francisco attorney Melvin Belli defended Ruby for free during his trial, but his arguments about Ruby being insane at the time of the murder did not sway the jury. Jack Ruby was convicted of murder with malice and sentenced to death. After that, Ruby testified before the Warren Commission about the Kennedy assassination and was eventually awarded a new trial by the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals, the judge buying the argument that Ruby could not have received a fair trial in Dallas, due to the enormous publicity surrounding the shooting. But before proceedings could get under way, Ruby was admitted to the now-legendary Parkland Hospital for symptoms of the flu. Instead, he was found to have cancer in his liver, lungs, and brain. He died of a pulmonary embolism on January 3, 1967, at the age of fifty-five. Jack Ruby is buried next to his parents in Westlawn Cemetery, in Norridge, Illinois. It’s worth noting that Ruby may have known about his aggressive cancer before he shot Oswald.

Martin Luther King Jr. continued his civil rights crusading and became one of the world’s most admired men. On April 4, 1968, King was shot down in Memphis, Tennessee, by an assassin named James Earl Ray, a racist who escaped to Canada, and then to England, before being arrested for the murder of Dr. King. Ray was sentenced to ninety-nine years in prison, a term that was extended to an even one hundred as punishment after he again escaped, this time from the Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary. He was caught three days later. Some believe Ray had help in assassinating King, but this has never been proven. The murders of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, coupled with the drawn-out American involvement in Vietnam, led to a national sense of disillusionment that was the diametric opposite of Camelot’s hope and optimism.

J. Edgar Hoover survived the attempts of several presidents to replace him as director of the FBI. There were many rumors that Hoover was homosexual, based on his close relationship with Clyde Tolson, an associate director of the bureau. Well after JFK’s death, Hoover continued his practice of providing presidents with lurid classified files containing the personal indiscretions of high-ranking and influential individuals. Lyndon Johnson took full advantage of this practice. Soon after ascending to the presidency, he requested thick personal dossiers on each of “The Harvards”: those members of the Kennedy administration who had once taken such great delight in taunting him. On an even larger scale, Johnson asked Hoover to dig up information on some twelve hundred real or imagined adversaries. J. Edgar Hoover, who like LBJ had felt personally humiliated by the Kennedys during JFK’s time in office, was only too happy to comply. Lyndon Johnson returned the favor by issuing an executive order precluding Hoover from compulsory retirement, thus allowing the director to remain in charge of the FBI until his death in 1972 at the age of seventy-seven.

John Connally survived his Dallas wounds and went on to serve two terms as governor of Texas before returning to Washington to serve as Richard Nixon’s secretary of the Treasury. He switched from the Democratic to the Republican Party, and ran for president in 1980. However, his campaign floundered badly, and he was forced to drop out after securing just one delegate. John Connally died of pulmonary fibrosis on June 15, 1993. He was seventy-six years old.

Marina Oswald never returned to the Soviet Union. She is still alive and has lived in Dallas for many years. She remarried, briefly, and had a son by her second marriage, which ended in divorce. Like her daughters, June and Audrey (who now goes by the name Rachel Porter), the stigma of Lee Harvey Oswald has followed her since November 22, 1963. The girls even took the name of their stepfather, Porter, to avoid greater public scrutiny. Now and again Lee Harvey Oswald’s family makes television appearances, but otherwise their lives are largely private.

In March of 1977 a young television reporter at WFAA in Dallas began looking into the Kennedy assassination. As part of his reporting, he sought an interview with the shadowy Russian college professor who had befriended the Oswalds upon their arrival in Dallas in 1962. The reporter traced George de Mohrenschildt to Palm Beach, Florida, and traveled there to confront him. At the time, de Mohrenschildt had been called to testify before a congressional committee looking into the events of November 1963. As the reporter knocked on the door of de Mohrenschildt’s daughter’s home, he heard the shotgun blast that marked the suicide of the Russian, assuring that his relationship with Lee Harvey Oswald would never be fully understood.

By the way, that reporter’s name is Bill O’Reilly.

One footnote: A year earlier, de Mohrenschildt sent a letter to George H. W. Bush, then director of the CIA. In that letter, the Russian asked protection from people “following” him. That correspondence with Mr. Bush led to speculation that de Mohrenschildt had CIA ties—and also possessed undisclosed knowledge of the Kennedy assassination.

Another former director of the CIA, Allen Dulles, died of a severe case of the flu in 1969, at the age of seventy-five. To this day, conspiratorialists believe that Dulles was involved in the Kennedy assassination as payback for his firing in the wake of the botched Bay of Pigs invasion. Dulles also served on the Warren Commission, the panel that investigated JFK’s shooting.

Sam Giancana, the Chicago mobster, was also thought by conspiracy theorists to be tied to the Kennedy assassination. Giancana was due to testify before a Senate panel investigating whether the CIA and the Mafia had any ties to the murder. Before he could testify, Giancana himself was murdered in his home on June 19, 1975. His assassin shot him in the back of the head, then rolled the body over and emptied the rest of the clip into Giancana’s face. The killer was never caught.

Frank Sinatra became a Republican in the years after John Kennedy’s Palm Springs snub and was a well-known supporter of President Ronald Reagan. But the singer remained largely silent on his feelings toward JFK. Not so Peter Lawford, the man John Kennedy forced to make the phone call telling Sinatra that the president would be staying elsewhere during his Palm Springs visit. In 1966, Lawford divorced JFK’s sister Patricia and began making sordid accusations against the Kennedy family. Among them was that Marilyn Monroe had had an affair with Bobby Kennedy as well as JFK, and that Bobby was complicit in Monroe’s death. Those charges came at a time when Lawford had lost his acting career to philandering, drinking, and drugs—and remain unproven. Peter Lawford died in 1984 from cardiac arrest brought on by liver failure. He was sixty-one years old.

Greta Garbo lived to the age of eighty-four, dying in New York City on April 15, 1990. She was a recluse to the end of her life, never marrying or having children, and always living alone. The legendary actress, however, was fond of taking long walks through the streets of New York, most often wearing a pair of oversize sunglasses—a habit that her admirer, Jackie Kennedy, would also assume. Garbo was very good with her money, and though she had been retired for nearly forty years at the time of her death, she left an estate to her niece worth more than $32 million.

It has been argued that Camelot was a myth concocted by Jackie Kennedy to burnish her husband’s legacy. Whether or not the comparisons to Camelot were discussed in the Kennedy White House during the president’s lifetime is unclear. But the comparisons are apt and, as Jackie had hoped, the story of Camelot shaped how her husband’s presidency is remembered to this day.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy is buried on a slope near the former home of Robert E. Lee, in Arlington National Cemetery, the place he so admired just a few weeks before his death. He is one of only two presidents buried there—the other being William Howard Taft, who died in 1930.

Jackie Kennedy was insistent that her husband’s funeral be as much like Abraham Lincoln’s as possible. Professor James Robertson Jr., director of the Civil War Centennial Commission, and David Mearns from the Library of Congress were enlisted to research Lincoln’s funeral in the short span between JFK’s assassination and his burial. The East Room of the White House was transformed so that it looked almost exactly as it did when it held Lincoln’s body in 1865. Also, the caisson and funeral procession through Washington, D.C., were copied from Lincoln’s final journey.

John Kennedy’s burial site at Arlington is lit by an eternal flame, at the suggestion of Jackie Kennedy. It burns at the center of a five-foot circular slab of Cape Cod granite. Jackie rests next to him, as do their two deceased infants, Arabella and Patrick. Television coverage of John Kennedy’s funeral transformed Arlington from the burial place of soldiers and sailors into a popular tourist destination. To this day, no place in Arlington is more popular than the grave of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. A generation after his assassination, more than four million people a year still arrive at Arlington to pay their respects to the fallen president.

And also to the grand American vision that he represented.

Epilogue

We began this book associating John F. Kennedy with Abraham Lincoln. And so shall we end it.

On February 10, 1962, JFK wrote a letter to Washington lawyer Ralph E. Becker. The letter was to be read at a celebration of the hundredth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. Throughout his presidency, John Kennedy often referenced Abraham Lincoln. There was a strong connection between the two men. The following letter is the best evidence that John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln were indeed kindred spirits.

Sources

This book required both primary and secondary source research. Much of the primary material came from interviews and reporting that Bill O’Reilly has done over the years. In fact, he won a Dallas Press Club Award for his reporting on the JFK assassination while at WFAA-TV. Extensive new information was gleaned from a variety of law enforcement agents, in particular Richard Wiehl, the FBI agent assigned to investigate and debrief Marina Oswald after the shooting. We are grateful to Mr. Wiehl, who has never spoken before on the record about his findings.

The life and death of John Kennedy needs no embellishment. It stands alone as a riveting period in history. But since many of the events recounted in this book are so fantastic and also so horrific, and because so many of the details are rather intimate, it’s important to remind the reader that Killing Kennedy is completely a work of nonfiction. It’s all true. The actions of each individual and the events that took place really happened. The quotations are words people actually spoke. Those details are made possible in large part because JFK is a contemporary historical figure whose entire presidency was thoroughly documented by all manner of media.

This sheer volume of material available on the life and death of John F. Kennedy allowed for unexpected research delights when compiling the manuscript. Not only were there a number of first-person manuscripts that provided specific details about meetings, conversations, and events, but there is also extensive Internet video of JFK’s speeches and television appearances, which brought his words and voice to life during each writing day. For readers, taking the time to find and watch these will add immeasurably to learning more about John Kennedy. The reader is directed, specifically, toward the 1963 Galway speech as an example of the president’s wit, warmth, and presence.

To hear about life inside the Kennedy White House from Jackie herself, listen to Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy, a series of recordings she made not long after the assassination. It is remarkable to hear the candor with which the former First Lady speaks, particularly when she opens up about so many of the most famous and powerful figures in the world at that time. Like her husband, her wit, warmth, and sheer presence are palpable.

The authors owe a special debt to the team of Laurie Austin and Stacey Chandler at the Kennedy Library. No research request was too big or too small, and suffice it to say that it was quite a historical rush to receive, for instance, copies of John Kennedy’s actual daily schedule, showing his precise location, the names of different people at various meetings, and the time each afternoon he slipped off to the pool or to “the Mansion.” To read these schedules was to see the president’s day come alive and gave a vivid feel of what life was like in the White House. When in Boston, a visit to the Kennedy Library is a must.

Special recognition must also go to William Manchester’s Death of a President, which was written shortly after the assassination and built around first-person interviews with almost everyone who was with JFK in Dallas on November 22, 1963. Manchester’s work was written with the complete cooperation of Jackie and the Kennedy family. The level of detail is fantastic for that very fact and proved invaluable as the ultimate answer to many questions when other resources conflicted with one another.

The backbone of this book are books, magazine articles, videos, the much-maligned but always fascinating Warren Commission Report, and visits to places such as Dallas, Washington, Galway, and the Texas Hill Country. The authors owe a debt of gratitude to the many brilliant researchers who have immersed themselves in the life and times of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. What follows is a detailed reference to sources. This list, however, is not exhaustive and includes only those works used for the heavy lifting of writing history.

Prologue: Arthur Schlesinger’s A Thousand Days, Doris Kearns Goodwin’s The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, Karen Price Hossell’s John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Speech, and Thurston Clarke’s Ask Not: The Inauguration of John F. Kennedy and the Speech That Changed America. Todd S. Purdum’s February 2011 Vanity Fair piece on the inauguration was also very helpful, as were the National Archives database and the Warren Commission Report.

Chapter 1: John Hersey’s 1944 New Yorker story about PT-109 provided the best account of the ordeal. Lance Morrow’s The Best Years of Their Lives, which is a quick and fascinating read, nicely counterbalances Hersey’s sometimes fawning version of events. Details about the Gold Star Mothers speech and the birth of the Irish Mafia can be found in William Manchester’s One Brief Shining Moment.

Chapter 2: The White House Museum website offers a fine map of the entire building, along with its history in words and pictures. Also, Robert Dallek’s writing on JFK’s myriad medical woes was very helpful in our getting a handle on the many medications the president was required to take. The Kennedy Library’s website is a great source of detail on life in the White House. Information on Jackie comes courtesy of Sally Bedell Smith’s Grace and Power.

Chapter 3: William R. Fails’s Marines and Helicopters details the evolution of presidential transportation, while Dallek’s An Unfinished Life and Humberto Fontova’s Fidel: Hollywood’s Favorite Tyrant lend detail to the Castro atrocities. The weather comes courtesy of the Farmers’ Almanac, while Manchester’s Brief Shining Moment adds behind-the-scenes comments on the president’s thoughts on the Bay of Pigs. Other notable resources: Dean Rusk’s As I Saw It, Edward R. Drachman and Alan Shank’s Presidents and Foreign Policy, Michael O’Brien’s John F. Kennedy: A Biography, Thomas G. Paterson’s Kennedy’s Quest for Victory, Jim Rasenberger’s The Brilliant Disaster, James Hilty’s Robert Kennedy, Richard Mahoney’s Sons and Brothers, and Richard Goodwin’s excellent Remembering America.

Chapter 4: The reader is directed to go online and watch Jackie’s excellent White House tour, particularly the body language between the president and First Lady at the end. Seymour Hersh’s The Dark Side of Camelot was only too happy to spill the secrets of White House infidelities, while Sally Bedell Smith’s Grace and Power, Christopher Andersen’s Jack and Jackie, Laurence Leamer’s The Kennedy Women, and C. David Heymann’s A Woman Named Jackie seem more intent on understanding the reasons why.

Chapter 5: The JFK Library and Jackie’s own words in Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy speak to the topic of Camelot, as does Sally Bedell Smith’s May 2004 Vanity Fair piece, “Private Camelot.” Randy J. Taraborrelli’s The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe; The Sinatra Files, by Tom and Phil Kuntz; and the FBI’s dossier on Sinatra add compelling detail to the goings-on in Palm Springs. Evan Thomas’s Robert Kennedy provides insight into RFK. Hersh’s Dark Side of Camelot was also invaluable. JFK’s comments about the chase came from the U.S. News and World Report (May 9, 2004) interview with Sally Bedell Smith. The Gallup Poll’s website offered information on approval ratings, while Sam and Chuck Giancana’s Double Cross provided background on the various potential Mafia plots against Marilyn and the Kennedy brothers.

Chapter 6: The Kennedy Library’s website has a feature that allows you to browse the New York Times by date. This provides much of the background information on the travels of the president, the atrocities in East Berlin, and the world’s interest in matters such as Soviet cosmonauts and the revolutionary radio telephone. Robert Caro’s Passage of Power was a treasure trove of information about the habits of Lyndon Johnson, particularly his travails as vice president. Details about life in the Deep South come from FBI reports documenting that period, while the story of Emmett Till came directly from his killers’ Look magazine article, along with other sources that add more dimension, and from the Ebony magazine photograph showing his battered and flattened head. Dave Garrow’s Atlantic Monthly piece of July/August 2002 documents the FBI’s fascination with Martin Luther King Jr. FBI special agent Fain’s recollection of Lee Harvey Oswald comes from Fain’s Warren Commission testimony.

Chapter 7: Photographs of JFK’s bedroom can be seen at www.whitehousemuseum.org, and further detail can be found in Manchester’s Brief Shining Moment. More White House history can be found at www.whitehouse.gov; Jackie Kennedy speaks a great deal about their life there in Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy. Specific conversations during the Cuban missile crisis can be found in The Kennedy Tapes, by Ernest May and Philip Zelikow, and in Ted Kennedy’s True Compass. Also of note: Stern’s The Week the World Stood Still; the archive file of Dean Rusk’s meeting with Soviet foreign minister Gromyko; Charles Tustin Kamps’s The Cuban Missile Crisis; Jackie, Ethel, and Joan, by Randy J. Taraborrelli; The Mind of Oswald, by Diane Holloway; Khrushchev, by William Taubman; and The Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, by the late Soviet dictator. Robert Dallek’s Atlantic story about Kennedy’s medical woes (December 2002) was also very helpful.

Chapter 8: Believe it or not, the Mona Lisa’s unveiling can be found on YouTube. Fascinating stuff. Mona Lisa in Camelot, by Margaret Leslie Davis, sheds light on this improbable chapter in our nation’s history. The glossary of Manchester’s Death of a President provides the Secret Service code names, while the Warren Commission Report includes a solid summary on the history of presidential assassination and the need for a Secret Service. The Secret Service’s own website shows this, too. Much of the behind-the-scenes information about the various agents and their details can be found in Clint Hill’s Mrs. Kennedy and Me, and in Gerald Blaine’s The Kennedy Detail. Edward Klein’s All Too Human was also very helpful.

Chapter 9: Caro provides more great detail on LBJ in Passage to Power. The Giancanas’ Double Cross goes further into the Mafia conspiracies. These conspiracies are not presented as facts in this book, but as theories—and Double Cross lays out these possibilities very nicely. Also of note in this chapter: Evan Thomas’s Bobby Kennedy, Burton Hersh’s Bobby and J. Edgar, Edward Klein’s All Too Human, Jim Marrs’s Crossfire, and the LBJ Library’s website.

Chapter 10: The Winston Churchill website has a fine overview of this special day, while Rethinking Camelot, by Noam Chomsky, deals with the early days of Vietnam in graphic detail.

Chapter 11: Many details about the marchers came from Washington Post coverage the following day. Glenn Eskew’s But for Birmingham and Diane McWhorter’s Carry Me Home provide additional awesome detail. Shelley Tougas’s Birmingham 1963 speaks of how a single photograph changed so many minds. Seth Jacobs’s Cold War Mandarin provides gruesome detail on the burning of monks and the Diem regime. And once again, Manchester provides great behind-the-scenes glimpses of the Kennedy White House.

Chapter 12: Taylor Branch’s Parting the Waters; Jessica McElrath’s Everything Martin Luther King, Jr. Book; Marshall Frady’s Martin Luther King, Jr.: A Life; Jackie Kennedy’s Conversations; and Newsweek’s infamous January 19, 1998, issue were all valuable resources, as were Evan Thomas’s Robert Kennedy, Robert Caro’s Passage to Power, and Dianne Holloway’s The Mind of Oswald. Clint Hill’s Mrs. Kennedy and Me is a priceless peek into their relationship, and most helpful.

Chapter 13: Manchester, once again. And Hill. Klein’s All Too Human and Leamer’s The Kennedy Men provided insight as well.

Chapter 14: Dallek, Unfinished Life, and Thomas, Robert Kennedy. King’s entire speech can be heard online at www.americanrhetoric.com.

Chapter 15: This interview between Cronkite and JFK is another Web gem, and worth the watch to see Kennedy’s smooth knowledge about the many topics Cronkite throws at him and the way the two men relax so visibly when the formal filming is completed.

Chapter 16: Information from the JFK Library, Death of a President, Passage of Power, and the Warren Commission Report form the nucleus of this chapter. David Kaiser’s The Road to Dallas was thoughtful and informative, and the FBI files on Aristotle Onassis provide fascinating background information.

Chapter 17: There are a number of websites devoted to Camp David. These are all well worth a look for a glimpse into such a private and exclusive compound. The information about Oswald comes from the Warren Commission, while Heymann’s A Woman Named Jackie and the White House Museum website add great detail on the family residence dining room. Ben Bradlee’s Conversations with Kennedy documents this special dinner. Donald Spoto’s JBKO details the date of her last campaign appearance; Manchester provided details about her punctuation; and Heymann and Leamer document the letter from the yacht Christina.

Chapter 18: The bulk of this chapter comes from newspaper accounts and from Manchester. Bradlee’s Conversations provides the “No profiles” quote.

Chapter 19: Special Agent Hosty’s Warren Commission testimony provides the details about his visit to Ruth Paine. The Kennedy White House: Family Life and Pictures, 1961–1963, by Carl Sferrazza Anthony, provides the quotes about Arlington. It’s interesting to note that Sergeant Clark also played taps at JFK’s funeral.

Chapter 20: Barry Paris’s Garbo and David Pitts’s Jack and Lem speak well of this forgotten night in White House history. Thank you to Camille Reisfield of Ross, California, for writing to ask if the episode would be in the book, making the authors aware of this last-ever dinner party in Camelot.

Chapter 21: The Warren Commission and Kaiser’s Road to Dallas provide unique insight into the days leading up to the assassination. There is still some question as to whether Oswald was actually the shooter whom Sterling Wood witnessed, as the owner of the shooting range swore he saw Oswald there on a completely different date. The fact that a lone man was seen firing a unique Italian rifle, however, is not in doubt.

Chapter 22: Hill, Manchester, Warren Commission testimony, and the White House Museum website.

Chapters 23 through 26: A wide range of websites and books were used to sift through the vast number of facts surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The timing, crowd descriptions, arrival scene, and all other aspects of the shooting and drive to Parkland Hospital are standard facts. However, the primary sources for specific conversations, private moments, and otherwise particular details are Death of a President, the Warren Commission, Clint Hill’s fascinating Mrs. Kennedy and Me, Vincent Bugliosi’s Reclaiming History, Dallek’s writings on JFK’s medical woes and on the assassination itself, and, of course, the Zapruder film. We watched it time after time after time to understand the sequence of events, and it never got less horrific—nor did the outcome ever change.

Chapter 27: Jackie’s filmed newsreel can be found online, and her grief is still startlingly painful to watch. Any number of her biographers have briefly mentioned this taping. But it was hardly inconsequential. As with the night with Garbo, or that with the Mona Lisa, this event was unique and remarkable, and all too easily overlooked.

Acknowledgments

Super-agent Eric Simonoff continues to be amazingly perspicacious in both creative and business endeavors.

Makeda Wubneh, my assistant for more than twenty years, keeps all my enterprises running smoothly, not an easy task.

Also, much gratitude to my publisher Stephen Rubin, the best in the business, and to my boss at Fox News, Roger Ailes, a brilliant, fearless warrior.

—BILL O’REILLY

I would like to extend a debt of gratitude to all who made this book possible, including Steve Rubin, the rock-steady Gillian Blake, and Eric Simonoff. And, of course, much heartfelt love and thanks to Calene Dugard—muse, soul mate, and closet historian.

—MARTIN DUGARD

Index

The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.

Abernathy, Ralph

Adams, John

African Americans. See also civil rights movement

Alabama, University of

Amagiri (Japanese destroyer)

American Rifleman

Anderson, Rudolf, Jr.

Andrews, Julie

Arlington National Cemetery

Azcue, Eusebio

Baker, Marrion L.

Bartlett, Charles

Bastien-Thiry, Jean

Batista, Fulgencio

Baughman, U. E.

Bay of Pigs invasion

aftermath of

launched

lead-up to

Beale, Edith Bouvier

Behn, Jerry

Beirut, Lebanon

Belli, Melvin

Berger, Andy

Berlin

Jack’s speech in

Wall

Bernstein, Leonard

Bessette, Lauren

Billings, Lem

Birmingham, Alabama

Baptist Church bombing

Children’s Crusade

Blackett Strait

Boggs, Hale

Bolton, Oliver

Booth, John Wilkes

Boston Globe

Bouvier, John “Black Jack” (Jackie’s father)

Bowles, Chester

Bradlee, Ben

Bradlee, Tony

Branch, Taylor

Brandon, Henry

Brenna, Howard L.

Brigade 2506

Brown, Arnold J.

Browne, Malcolm

Brown v. Board of Education

Bryant, Carolyn

Bryant, Roy

Bumbry, Grace

Bundy, McGeorge

Burke, Arleigh

Burton, Richard

Bush, George H. W.

Callas, Maria

Camelot (musical)

Campbell, Judith

Camp David

Campion, John

Capone, Al

Carpenter, Scott

Carrico, Charles J.

Casals, Pablo

Cassini, Oleg

Castro, Fidel

assassination plots vs.

Bay of Pigs and

Cuban missile crisis and

Cuban revolution and

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)

anti-Castro plots and

Bay of Pigs and

Bobby and

domestic operations and

Jack’s assassination and

Mafia and

Oswald and

Vietnam and

Cermak, Anton

Chavchavadze, Helen

Checker, Chubby

Chicago Sun-Times

Christina (Onassis yacht)

Churchill, Randolph

Churchill, Winston

Civil Rights Act (1964)

civil rights movement. See also specific events and individuals

Civil War

Civil War Centennial Commission

Clark, Keith

Clark, William Kemp

Cohen, Mickey

cold war. See also communism; Soviet Union

Collingwood, Charles

Collins, Addie Mae

communism

Connally, John

assassination attempt on

Connally, Nellie

Connor, Eugene “Bull”

Cowen, Jill

Cronkite, Walter

Crosby, Bing

Cuba

Bay of Pigs invasion

CIA covert activity in

missile crisis

Oswald and

revolution of 1959

Cuban exiles

Cuban Expeditionary Force

Curry, Jesse

Cushing, Richard

Dallas

FBI and

Jack’s assassination in

Jack’s visit planned

Stevenson in

Dallas Morning News

Dallas Police Department

D’Amato, Paul Emilio

da Vinci, Leonardo

Davis, Jefferson

Davis, Thomas

Dealey Plaza

de Gaulle, Charles

Democratic Party

elections of 1962 and

nomination of 1960

nomination of 1968

de Mohrenschildt, George

Diamond, Neil

Diem, Ngo Dinh

DiMaggio, Joe

Dugard, Alan

Dugger, Ronnie

Dulles, Allen

Dumphy, Chris

Ebbins, Milt

Edwards, Robert

Eisenhower, Dwight

Eisenhower, Mamie

elections

of 1960

of 1962

of 1964

of 1968

of 1972

Elizabeth II, queen of England

Emancipation Proclamation

Esquire

Essex, USS (aircraft carrier)

Evers, Medgar

Executive Committee of the National Security Council (ExComm)

Fain, John

Fair Play for Cuba Committee

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

civil rights movement and

Jack investigated by

Jack’s assassination and

Mafia and

Monroe and

Onassis and

Oswald and

Feminine Mystique, The (Friedan)

Ferguson, Anne

Finnerty, Frank

Fischer, Ronald

Fischetti, Joe

Fischetti, Rocco

Formosa, John

Foster, Bob

Frazier, Wesley

Frederickson, Cora

Freedom Riders

French, Daniel Chester

Friedan, Betty

Frost, Robert

Fulbright, William

Gadsden, Walter

Garbo, Greta

Garfield, James

Garner, John Nance

Georgia, University of

Giancana, Sam

Goldwater, Barry

Goodwin, Richard

Goulet, Robert

Graham, Billy

Grant, Ulysses S.

Greer, William

Gromyko, Andrei

Guatemala

Hannah, John A.

Harding, Warren G.

Harrison, William Henry

Hatfield, Robert Edward

Hayes, Rutherford B.

Hemingway, Ernest

Herter, Christian

“Hidell, A. J.” (Oswald alias)

Hill, Clint

Hiroshima

Historic Automotive Attractions Museum

Hobson, Valerie

Holden, William

Hoover, J. Edgar

civil rights leaders and

Jack and

Jack’s assassination and

Monroe and

Hosty, James, Jr.

Hudson, Bill

Hughes, Sarah

India

Ireland

“Irish Mafia”

Jackson, Mahalia

Jackson, Michael

Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall firm

Japan

Jefferson, Thomas

John F. Kennedy Presidential Library

Johnson, Lady Bird

Johnson, Lyndon Baines

Bay of Pigs and

Bobby and

civil rights and

Cuban missile crisis and

death of

FBI and

Jack’s assassination and

Jack’s inauguration and

Memorial Day address of

personality of

presidency of

presidential ambitions of

Secret Service and

Senate career of

sworn in as president

Texas trip and

Time and

travels to Beirut

travels to Thailand

travels to Vietnam

as vice president

Vietnam War and

Joint Chiefs of Staff

Joseph Kennedy Jr., USS (destroyer)

Justice Department

Keeler, Christine

Kellerman, Roy

Kennedy, Arabella (daughter)

Kennedy, Caroline (daughter)

Kennedy, Carolyn Bessette

Kennedy, Edward M. “Teddy” (brother)

Kennedy, Ethel (sister-in-law)

Kennedy, Jacqueline Bouvier “Jackie” (wife)

Bay of Pigs and

Camelot image and

Cape Cod and

childhood and youth of

children and family life and

Churchill and

Cuban missile crisis and

Dallas trip and

death of

death of son Patrick and

de Mohrenschildt and

finances and

Garbo and

Jack’s affairs and

Jack’s affair with Monroe and

Jack’s assassination and

Jack’s birthday and

Jack’s funeral and

Jack’s inauguration and

Jack’s memory and

King and

later life of

LBJ and

marries Onassis

miscarriages and

Mona Lisa and

personality of

popularity of

pregnancy of

relationship with Jack

Secret Service and

Sinatra and

smoking and

travels to France

travels to Greece

travels to India and Pakistan

White House entertaining and

White House renovation and

White House schedule and

White House TV tour and

Kennedy, Joan (sister-in-law)

Kennedy, John, Jr. (son)

death of

Kennedy, John Fitzgerald

affairs and

affair with Campbell

affair with Monroe

Air Force One décor and

appearance of

Arlington grave of

assassination of

assassination of, and conspiracy theories

Bay of Pigs and

Berlin and

birthdays of

Bobby and

body flown to Washington

brothers and

Camelot image and

Castro and

challenges of presidency and

childhood and youth of

children and family life and

Churchill and

civil rights and

Cronkite interview of

Cuban missile crisis and

daily schedule of

Dallas arrival of

Dallas motorcade route of

death of, announced

death of brother Joe and

death of son Patrick and

Diem assassination and

Dulles fired by

early assassination attempts on

Eisenhower and

elected to Congress

election of 1960 and

election of 1964 and

enemies of

father and

finances of

funeral of

Garbo and

health problems of

Hoover and

inauguration of

Jackie’s pregnancy and

Jackie’s relationship with

Jackie’s trip to Greece and

Jackie’s White House tour and

King and

last White House dinner of

LBJ and

Lincoln and

Mafia and

Mona Lisa and

Montana speech and

naval intelligence and

nuclear test ban and

Oswald targets

personality of

popularity of

Powers and

Profiles in Courage and

Profumo and

PT-109 and

religion and

Secret Service and

Sinatra and

State of the Union address by

swimming and

tax cuts and

Teddy’s Senate campaign and

Texas trip planned for

Time and

travels to France

travels to Ireland and Germany

UC-Berkeley speech by

Vietnam and

West Virginia primary and

White House staff of

World War II and

Kennedy, Joseph, Jr. (brother)

Kennedy, Joseph P. (father)

Kennedy, Patrick Bouvier (son)

Kennedy, Robert F. “Bobby” (brother)

assassination of

as attorney general

Bay of Pigs and

bond with Jack

Cape Cod house of

CIA and

civil rights and

Cuban missile crisis and

Hoover and

inauguration and

Jackie and

Jack’s affairs and

Jack’s assassination and

LBJ and

Lincoln assassination and

Mafia and

Monroe and

presidential ambitions of

Kennedy, Rose (mother)

Khrushchev, Nikita

Bay of Pigs and

Berlin Wall and

Cuban missile crisis and

Stalin and

trip to U.S. and

Khrushchev, Yefrosinia

King, Coretta

King, Martin Luther, Jr.

assassination of

FBI and

Jack meets with

March on Washington and

Ku Klux Klan

LaLanne, Jack

Landers, Ann

Landis, Paul

Lansky, Meyer

Lawford, Patricia Kennedy (sister)

Lawford, Peter (brother-in-law)

Lawson, Winston G.

Leavelle, J. R.

Lee, Robert E.

LeMay, Curtis E.

Life

Lincoln, Abraham

assassination of

funeral of

Lincoln, Evelyn

Lincoln, Willie

Lincoln Memorial

London Sunday Times

Look

Luciano, Lucky

Macmillan, Harold

Mafia

Bobby and

Jack and

Jack’s assassination and

Monroe and

Mahfouz, Naguib

Malcolm X

Malraux, André

Manchester, William

Mao Zedong

March on Washington

Marshall, Thurgood

Martin, Dean

Martin, Louis

Massachusetts

primaries of 1946

Teddy as senator for

McCarthyism

McIntyre, Bill

McKinley, William

McNair, Denise

McNamara, Robert

Mearns, David

Meredith, Lynn

Midnight Ride, Operation

Milam, J. W. “Big”

Militant (newspaper)

Miller, Arthur

Mississippi

Mona Lisa (da Vinci painting)

Mongoose, Operation

Monroe, James

Monroe, Marilyn

Napoléon Bonaparte

National Gallery of Art

National Indignation Convention

Nazi Germany

Nelson, Doris

Newman, Larry

Newsweek

New York Times

New Zealand

Nhu, Ngo Dinh

Nicaragua

Nixon, Richard

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)

nuclear weapons

Ocean’s Eleven (film)

O’Donnell, Kenneth

Onassis, Aristotle

Oneal, Vernon

Oswald, Audrey Marina

Oswald, June Lee

Oswald, Lee Harvey

arrest of

assassination executed by

assassination planned by

attempts to go to Cuba

burial of

childhood and youth of

children of

CIA and

conspiracy theories and

Cuban missile crisis and

defects to Soviet Union

escapes after assassination

family and

FBI and

jobs of

killed by Ruby

Mannlicher-Carcano rifle and

marries Marina

marines discharge of

marital problems of

moves to Dallas

moves to New Orleans

psychology of

returns to U.S.

Texas School Book Depository job and

Tippit shot by

Walker shot by

weapons bought by

Oswald, Marguerite

Oswald, Marina Prusakova

eve of assassination and

FBI and

later life of

Lee’s attack on Walker and

marital problems of

marries Lee

moves to U.S.

pregnancy of

Oswald, Robert

Otash, Fred

Paine, Ruth

Pakistan

Parker, John

Parker, William

Parkland Memorial Hospital

Peace Corps

Pentagon

People

Perry, Mac

Pillar of Fire (Branch)

Porter, Rachel

Portrait of a President (Manchester)

Postal, Julia

Powers, Dave

presidents, deaths of, in office

Presley, Elvis

Profiles in Courage (Kennedy)

Profumo, John

Protective Research Section (PRS)

Prusakov, Ilya

PT-109

racial segregation and discrimination. See also civil rights movement; and specific events and individuals

Radziwill, Lee (Jackie’s sister)

Rather, Dan

Ray, James Earl

Ready, John

Reagan, Ronald

Republican Party

Resolute desk

Reston, James

Roberts, Emory

Roberts, Ralph

Robertson, Carole

Robertson, James, Jr.

Roman Catholic Church

Roosevelt, Eleanor

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

assassination attempt on

Roosevelt, Theodore “Teddy”

Rose, Earl

Ross, George “Barney”

Rowland, Aaron

Rowland, Barbara

Ruby, Jack

Rusk, Dean

Salinger, Pierre

Schirra, Wally

Schlesinger, Arthur

Schlossberg, Edwin

Secret Service

Jackie and

Jack’s assassination and

Sequoia (presidential yacht)

Seward, William H.

Shannon Rose Hill Cemetery (Fort Worth, Texas)

Shaw, Maud

Simon, Carly

Sinatra, Frank

Sirhan, Sirhan

Sixteenth Street Baptist Church (Birmingham) bombing

Skelton, Byron

Smathers, George

Socialist Workers Party

Solomon Islands

Sorensen, Ted

Sorrels, Forrest V.

South Vietnam

Buddhist protests in

Diem assassination and

Soviet Central Committee

Soviet Communist Party

Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs

Soviet Politburo

Soviet Union

Bay of Pigs and

Cuban missile crisis and

“Great Purge” of 1934

nuclear test ban treaty and

Oswald and

Profumo and

space race and

wheat sale to

space program

Stalin, Joseph

Stalingrad, Battle of

State Department

Stevenson, Adlai

Strategic Air Command

Suddenly (film)

Sullivan, William C.

Swindal, Jim

Tactical Air Command

Taft, William Howard

Texas

election of 1960 and

election of 1964 and

Jackie’s popularity in

Jack’s trip planned

LBJ and

Oswald and

Texas Criminal Court of Appeals

Texas Democratic National Committee

Texas Observer

Texas School Book Depository

Thailand

Thich Quang Duc

Thomas, George

Thoreau, Henry David

Till, Emmett Louis

Time Man of the Year

Tippit, J. D.

Tolson, Clyde

Tretick, Stanley

Truman, Harry

Turkey, missiles in

Turnure, Pamela

U-2 spy planes

United Auto Workers Union

United Nations

United Nations Day

U.S. Air Force

U.S. Army

First Armored Division

Map Service

U.S. Congress

U.S. House of Representatives

Jack elected to

U.S. Marines

U.S. Navy

U.S. Senate

U.S. Supreme Court

Victoria, queen of England

Vidal, Gore

Viet Cong

Vietnam War

Walker, John

Walker, Ted

Wallace, George

Wall Street Journal

Walsh, John

War Is Hell (film)

Warren, Earl

Warren Commission

Washington Post

Wear, Priscilla

Wesley, Cynthia

West Germany

West Virginia

We Were Strangers (film)

White, Theodore

White House

East Room

family residence

Jackie’s renovation of

Jackie’s TV tour of

Lincoln Bedroom

Oval Office

Truman Balcony

West Wing built

White House staff

Wood, Homer

Wood, Sterling

Worker (newsletter)

World War I

World War II

Wright, Moses

Xuan, Mai Huu

Yarborough, Ralph

Zangara, Giuseppe “Joe”

Zapata, Operation. See Bay of Pigs invasion

Henry Holt and Company, LLC

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www.henryholt.com

Henry Holt® and ® are registered trademarks of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.

Copyright © 2012 by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard

All rights reserved.

Part title photographs © John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston, and Associated Press

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

O’Reilly, Bill.

Killing Kennedy: the end of Camelot / Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard.—First edition.

pages cm

ISBN 978-0-8050-9666-8

1.  Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917–1963—Assassination.   I.  Dugard, Martin.   II.  Title.

E842.9.O74 2012

973.922092—dc23

2012026143

First Edition 2012

Maps by Gene Thorp

eISBN 9780805096675

About the Authors

BILL O’REILLY is the anchor of The O’Reilly Factor, the highest-rated cable news show in the country. He also writes a syndicated newspaper column and is the author of several number-one bestselling books. He is, perhaps, the most talked about political commentator in America.

MARTIN DUGARD is the New York Times bestselling author of several books of history, including Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley and Livingstone and The Last Voyage of Columbus. He is also the author of To Be a Runner, a collection of essays about distance running. Mr. Dugard lives in Southern California with his wife and three sons.

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