MANSFIELD — Richland County has an interesting link to the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln — and the death of his killer, John Wilkes Booth.
Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., on Good Friday, April. 14, 1865. The president died the next morning.
In the theater audience that night was Mansfield resident, Col. Roeliff Brinkerhoff.
Twelve days after the murder, Booth was cornered in a Maryland barn by troops under the command of Col. Everton Conger, a Richland County native. Conger lit the match that set fire to the structure and Booth was shot and killed after refusing to surrender.
Today marks the 160th anniversary of Lincoln’s shooting.
As a tribute, we’re sharing Brinkerhoff’s account of the assassination — as he chronicled in his 1900 autobiography, “Recollections of a Lifetime.” The book is available for review at The Sherman Room of the Mansfield Richland County Public Library.
Interestingly, Brinkerhoff was not a theater-goer.
However, U.S. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant had just accepted Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Courthouse, Va., five days earlier, on April 9.
Brinkerhoff’s friends wanted to see Grant in person. The Union general was to join Lincoln in attending the play “Our American Cousin,” starring Laura Keene. News of Lincoln and Grant’s plans was in the evening newspapers.
So, Brinkerhoff agreed to go along and see the celebrities.
This was Brinkerhoff’s first visit to the theater while stationed in Washington. He was a quartermaster and supply officer in the Union Army. Later, he rose to the rank of general and an elementary school was named after him in Mansfield.
Brinkerhoff and friends left early to get a good seat for the play. It was an exceptionally dark evening, with no moon visible as the group walked to the theater. There was a gloomy mist in the air.
The party entered the venue and secured seats diagonally opposite the presidential box, but on the same second floor.
Prior to this night, this location was two boxes. But the partition between them had been removed to accommodate the president and his guests. A special rocking chair was placed inside it for Lincoln’s comfort.
The box was 12 feet, 8 inches above the stage, with flags draped over the front of it. Brinkerhoff had an excellent view of the president, and what was about to happen:
Brinkerhoff witnesses Lincoln’s assassination
Brinkerhoff recalled it this way:
The play commenced and had been in progress quite a while, perhaps half an hour, when the President came in.
He was greeted with a storm of applause as he passed on to his box. He was accompanied by Mrs. Lincoln, Miss (Clara) Harris and Major (Henry) Rathbone.
General Grant had concluded not to come and was then on his way to Philadelphia.
Mr. Lincoln took a seat in an armchair (a rocking chair) at the side next to the audience. Mrs. Lincoln was at his right, near the center of the box, and Miss Harris at the further side.
Major Rathbone was seated on a sofa near Miss Harris, a little back from the front. Mr. Lincoln, for the first time during my knowledge of him, seemed cheerful and happy.
I had seen him often during his presidential term, commencing with his inauguration in 1861, and a sadder face I never saw. But now the load seemed lifted and every vestige of care and anxiety had passed away. He seemed to enjoy the play very much.
The play was Our American Cousin, and Laura Keene was the star of the evening.
Everything passed on very pleasantly until about 10 o’clock or a little later. It was in the third act, in the milkmaid scene, when one of my friends called my attention to the President’s box, with the remark, “there’s a reporter going to see Father Abraham.”
I looked and saw a man standing at the door of the President’s box with his hat on, and looking down upon the stage.
Presently, he took out a card case or something of that kind from his side pocket and took out a card. It is said he showed it to the President’s messenger outside, but I saw nothing of that kind.
In fact, I saw no other man there aside from those seated in the audience.
He took off his hat, and put his hand upon the door knob and went into the little hall or corridor, back of the box. I then turned to the play.
Then, I cannot say how soon, it may have been two, three, or five minutes, I heard a pistol shot. I turned to the President’s box and saw a man flash to the front, with face as white as snow, and hair as black as a raven.
My first impression was that it was a part of the play. The man put his left hand upon the front railing and went over, not with a clean sweep, but with a kind of a scramble, first one leg and then the other. It evidently was his intention to swing over as we swing over a fence, but his spur, as appeared afterwards, caught in the flag, and hence the scramble.
As he went over, or possibly after reaching the stage, he shouted very clearly and distinctly, “sic semper tyrannis,” and then for the first time it flashed upon me that the whole thing meant assassination.
The Virginia coat of arms, with its device, had been familiar to me from childhood, and of course with “sic semper tyrannis” (thus always to tyrants) ringing clearly through the hall, I understood it at once.
The man struck the floor, and sunk down partially, but immediately rose up and brandishing a double-edged dagger, which glittered in the gas light, he passed diagonally across the stage, with his face to the audience, and went out.
He did not run, it was a swift stage-walk, and was evidently studied beforehand, like everything else he did, for effect. It is said his leg was broken by the fall, but I saw no evidence of it in his gait.
For a moment there was a stillness of death. The audience seemed paralyzed. No sound whatever came from the box that I heard. It is said in the various accounts that Mrs. Lincoln shrieked. I heard no shriek.
Major Rathbone testified that he shouted “stop that man.” I heard nothing of that kind, and I believe I could have heard a whisper.
I saw Mr. Lincoln sitting in his chair with his head drooped upon his breast, but in all other respects he retained the position that he had before he was shot.
Quite a little interval passed before anything was said or done. By interval I mean 20, 30, or 40 seconds, which under such circumstances seem a long time. Then some of the audience rose up, others sat still. Here and there inquiries came as to whether the President was hurt.
In company with Major Potter (a paymaster in the army), I started for the box, but before we got there others had found that it was barred inside.
In the meantime, Miss Keene had gone into the box from the stage entrance, and perhaps one or two others; at any rate an inquiry was made for a surgeon, and a crowd gathered around the box. There was no uproar or confusion at any time.
After a few moments the door was opened and Mr. Lincoln was carried out along the back side of the dress-circle and out at the front.
I was close behind, and as we went down the stairs I noticed a splash of blood on every step. His face was very pale, and the stamp of death upon it, which once seen rarely deceives us.
As we reached the street the news began to come of other assassinations. The vice president had been killed; Mr. Seward had been murdered, also Mr. Stanton. In fact the air was full of rumors of blood, and for a short time it looked as if there might be a second Saint Bartholomew in progress.
I immediately passed down Tenth Street for a sight of the signal station upon the Winder building, and soon saw signals to the army and answers from the fortifications, and knew that any uprising would be quickly suppressed.
Mr. Lincoln was taken into a dwelling house across the street from the theater, where he lingered until morning of April 15, and then died. This closing stanza of his favorite poem illustrates his ending:
‘Tis the wink of an eye — tis the draught of a breath, From the blossom of health to the paleness of death, From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud; Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud!
As to the impelling causes of a deed so desperate, yet so useless as the assassination of Mr. Lincoln, it is difficult to answer.
Booth himself, doubtless, was actuated by various motives. He was steeped to the lips in the spirit of the rebellion, but I am inclined to think that ambition was the strongest influence.
A wise poet has said: “Ambition has but two steps: the lowest, blood; the highest, envy.”
Booth loved notoriety as he loved life, and notoriety he must have, good or bad. Like Erastratus, “he yearned for immortality,” and doubtless he remembered the old couplet:
“He who burned the Ephesian dome outlived in fame the pious fools who reared it.”
It may be that Booth had worked himself into the idea that Mr. Lincoln was a kind of representative tyrant, and that in killing him he was playing the role of Brutus.
But I think not. For the entire affair was too stagey, at least for the spirit of Brutus.
He was acting a premeditated part from beginning to end, it is true. But it was entirely for stage effect, and for the glorification of the actor.
His “sic semper tyrannis” was stagey. His whole attitude and walk before the audience at the theater was stagey. His double-edged gladiatorial dagger had been prepared purposely for stage effect.
In fact, it was all a part of a play which was to make John Wiles Booth immortal in history.
Booth had a certain kind of reckless physical courage and was a gamey looking fellow. But there was no moral basis to his character.
Hence, I cannot find any motive in him to do this deed except vanity, and a morbid love of notoriety.
Conger’s troops kill Booth
(Booth) showed these traits in his death, the circumstances of which were related to me by Col. (Everton) Conger, who was in command of the soldiers who captured (the killer).
Conger was a native of Richland County, Ohio, and was the son of Rev. Enoch Conger, one of the founders of the Congregational Church in the city of Mansfield, and was as brave a man as ever went into battle.
At this time he was a Lt. Col. of the First D.C. Cavalry. Conger was especially friendly to me for the reason that I aided him with Governor (William) Dennison in 1861 in securing his first commission as a First Lieutenant.
Booth and (David) Harold were driven into a barn in Maryland and surrounded. Harold gave himself up, but Booth refused.
He knew it was death anyhow, and therefore, true to his instincts of notoriety, he determined to put himself in an attitude suitable for the final close of the plan and the fall of the curtain.
To the summons of surrender he replied: “If you withdraw your men in line 100 yards from the door, I will come out and fight you.”
He was told that they did not come to fight, but to capture him.
Booth then proposed that if the soldiers would withdraw 50 yards he would come out and fight them.
Upon receiving the same reply as before, he replied in a theatrical voice: “Well, my brave boys, prepare a stretcher for me!”
After all the necessary dispositions had been made of the troops, with orders to take him alive, if possible, Conger made a final demand of Booth to give himself up.
He refused.
It was a rough night, and dark as a wolf’s mouth, so that nothing could be seen thus far. Conger then took a match from his pocket, and lighted some hay through a crevice in the barn. The flames at once rushed up the side of the barn and rolled over the haymow in a vast volume of light.
Booth was revealed standing in the center of the barn floor, leaning upon crutches, with a carbine in his hand, and in a stage attitude of a robber at bay.
He looked all around, but seeing no audience he started for the door. But before reaching it was he was shot by Sgt. Boston Corbett.
Thus died John Wilkes Booth, the puppet of the Rebellion and the slave of his own vanity.
Thus the tragedy ended. Each went to his reward. Lincoln to an immortality of honor, Booth to an immortality of infamy.
