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  THE FIRST ASSASSIN

  A NOVEL BY JOHN J. MILLER

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  This novel was originally published, in a slightly different form, by Woodbridge Press in 2009

  Text copyright © 2010 John J. Miller

  All rights reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by AmazonEncore

  P.O. Box 400818

  Las Vegas, NV 89140

  ISBN: 978-1-935597-11-7

  For Amy,

  who told me to write it

  “The real war will never get in the books.”

  —Walt Whitman

  CONTENTS

  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

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  EPILOGUE

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ONE

  SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1861

  When Lorenzo Smith heard the chugging of the train, he felt for the revolver at his side. His fingers met its smooth handle hidden beneath his black coat. Then he found the short barrel and the trigger below. Smith had reached for it a dozen times in the last hour, but he wanted to be certain that the gun was still there. It will make me a hero, he thought. It will change history.

  Listening for the rumble of the train had been difficult. A loud mass of people waited for its arrival at Calvert Street Station. Smith did not know how many were there, but they must have numbered in the thousands. The noisy throng spilled from the open-ended depot onto Calvert and Franklin streets. Inside the station, where Smith stood, shouts bounced off the walls and ceiling. This place of tearful departures and happy reunions had become a hotbed of agitation.

  The train’s steam whistle pierced the din of the crowd. The engine would pull into Baltimore on schedule at half past noon. Heads bobbed for a view. Smith struggled to keep his position near the track. He had picked it two hours earlier, when the flood of people was just a trickle. He was not sure precisely where the train would stop, but he thought he had made a good guess about where the last car might come to a halt. He wanted to be within striking distance.

  As the locomotive’s big chimney came into view, a man standing next to Smith bellowed, “Here he comes! Here comes the Black Republican!” A roar of jeers and insults filled the station. Smith craned his neck. He saw the engine’s massive oil lamp mounted on top of the smoke box. It gazed forward like the unblinking eye of a mechanical cyclops. Behind it were the cab, the coal tender, and a line of cars. Flags and streamers covered them all. The whole train glistened from a recent cleaning. At the rear, Smith spotted a car painted in orange and black. He reached into his coat another time and tapped the gun. Just making sure.

  For the last ten days, the train carrying Abraham Lincoln on his inaugural journey from Springfield, Illinois, to Washington, D.C., had taken the president-elect through six Northern states—all populated by the abolitionists who had voted him into office. Applause greeted him at almost every stop. But on this morning, as Lincoln’s train turned south into Maryland, it had entered slaveholding territory for the first time. Baltimore was the only city on the trip that had not extended a formal welcome to the incoming president—an obvious snub that pleased Smith when he thought of it.

  Smith scanned the crowd and saw several men wearing hats with blue-ribbon cockades. This was the fashion among Baltimore’s secessionist set. Each cockade had a button in its center displaying the palmetto tree, the symbol of South Carolina. That state had quit the Union in December, before any of the others. Many Marylanders now wanted to join the growing Confederacy. The moment Lincoln pulled into the depot, the members of the mob would let him know that he did not have their support. They did not even respect him. In fact, they hated him.

  Rumors had circulated for weeks that Lincoln would not be safe when he reached Baltimore. But the president-elect had no choice about the visit. The only rail route into Washington from the north required going through Baltimore. Lincoln had to stop and switch to the Baltimore & Ohio Rail Road line at another station more than a mile away. That meant the presidential party would have to make a slow transit from one depot to the other, surrounded the whole way by an angry swarm. Lincoln was supposed to catch a three o’clock departure for Washington, where he would arrive about an hour and a half later.

  Smith could not keep from grinning. He could hardly have asked for a better opportunity than the one handed to him here and now. He was about to become a hero—the hero of a new nation. He had planned for this moment from the day he heard Lincoln would pass through his city. He had visited the depot to see where the trains stopped along the platform. He had walked the route Lincoln would take to the other rail line, checking alleys and side streets for the best escape routes. He had studied a picture of Lincoln that had appeared in a magazine. When he learned that the president-elect had grown a beard, he drew whiskers on the picture and studied it more. Smith had cleaned his revolver over and over, trying to keep it in perfect condition. He had tried on his entire wardrobe, testing the gun in trouser pockets, through belts, and in his coat. He bought himself a new pair of shoes and broke them in.

  They felt good on his feet as Lincoln’s train crawled into the station. The shouting grew louder and louder. The engine rolled past Smith slowly, from right to left. His eyes met the conductor’s for a moment. The man was shaking his head from side to side. Smith wondered what it meant, but not for long—there was too much going on. The cars kept moving by him. The presidential car in back crept closer. He could see the silhouettes of a few heads through its windows. A fellow up the platform from Smith began to smack the car’s exterior with his cane, but it rolled out of his reach a moment later.

  Then the train hissed to a halt with the presidential car directly in front of Smith. His meticulous planning had paid off. He jumped onto the car’s metal steps. His feet clanged against them as he thrust himself forward and up. He heard men rushing behind him. At the door into Lincoln’s car, Smith hesitated. He quickly surveyed the depot from this elevated position. It was so full of people that he was not sure how he or anybody else could make a hasty exit. He would have to slip into the crowd and count on its anonymity to envelop him.

  First things first, he reminded himself. Several other men stood beside him on the back of the car. Smith thought he recognized one of them from a secessionist meeting he had attended. His hand was hidden inside his coat. Smith saw a slight bulge. So at least two of us are ready to perform the job today, he thought. Then Smith reached into his own coat and clutched his revolver. He was about to pull it out when the door flew open.

  “Stop right there!”

  The shout came from within the car. Before Smith could comprehend it, he saw the end of a pistol pointing at his face, just inches away. Behind the weapon he met the gaze of a man who looked ready to pull the trigger.

  “Raise your hands!”

  Smith knew that before he could even lift his gun, he would be shot between the eyes. But he di
d not loosen his grip. He was too close to his goal.

  “Where’s Lincoln?” he yelled.

  “Raise your hands, sir, or I will shoot!” came the reply. The man leaned forward. His pistol almost touched Smith’s forehead.

  Suddenly Smith felt a commotion in the depot. He sensed that the men backing him up were pulling away. The tone of the mob’s shouting had changed too. He could not hear exactly what they were saying.

  “One last time, sir: raise your hands!”

  Smith released the revolver. It slid back into his pocket. He showed his hands.

  “Lincoln is not on this train,” said the man. “You won’t find him in Baltimore today.”

  Smith peered over the man’s shoulders into the rest of the car. It looked like a room in the mansion of a wealthy family. The red walls and heavy furniture bore all the dainty trappings of Victorian elegance. Blue silk covered the space between the windows. Little tassels dangled from the chairs and shone in the light of the open door. As Smith peered inside, he realized the man with the gun was actually letting him study the car’s interior. He wanted Smith to see who was aboard—and who was not.

  Toward the rear, Smith noticed a plump, round-faced woman with her arms wrapped around a couple of frightened girls. A hulking man stood beside her, his arm on the back of her seat. A couple of boys sat nearby. Smith was certain he had seen the woman before. She glared back at him, her eyes glowing with anger. Then Smith realized who she was. He had seen her photograph. It was Mary Todd Lincoln, wife of the president-elect. He spent another few seconds looking at the other faces. Mrs. Lincoln’s husband was definitely not aboard.

  The man with the gun spoke again: “There’s your proof. He’s not here. Now leave this train immediately!”

  Smith studied the man. He was in his early twenties. Except for a thin mustache, his face was clean-shaven. His features were soft. He did not look like the sort of fellow who would pack a gun and protect a dignitary, but there was a steady determination in his gaze. Smith had no doubt the young man was willing to pull the trigger.

  Smith still did not move. “Who are you?” he asked meekly.

  “I am John Hay, secretary to Abraham Lincoln, who at this very moment is relaxing in Washington. He passed through Baltimore early this morning, in darkness. Now, back off or I will shoot!”

  Smith retreated a step. The door slammed shut. Smith realized that he now stood on the back of the car with a single companion, the man he had recognized. The others who had followed him up the steps were gone. He looked at the mass of people surrounding the train. He heard voices up the track: “Lincoln is not on the train! He’s not on board!” Someone at the front of the car must have delivered the message, which spread quickly through the crowd.

  Dozens of faces now turned to Smith, hoping he would contradict this report. But they saw a demoralized man. “It’s true,” he said. “Lincoln is not here.”

  The catcalls started again. “Lincoln is a coward!” “He’s a sneak!” “He’s lucky he’s not here!”

  Smith slumped his shoulders and looked at the man beside him.

  “We have failed,” he said.

  Then he stepped off the train and vanished into the mob. On the way out, he did not touch his gun.

  TWO

  MONDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1861

  Langston Bennett threw down his copy of the Charleston Mercury. The pages fluttered to the floor as Bennett balled his hands into fists. “Damn him!” he said, sharply but to himself. His anger crested and began to subside. Bennett could almost feel it flow from his body. That was how it always happened—a moment of lost control followed by a quick return to his senses. He let out a sigh, leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes. He ran his fingers through the long gray hair that touched the collar of his shirt. “Something must be done,” he said in a low voice.

  He opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out a blank sheet of paper. Instead of writing, he arched his back and gazed out the window in front of him, through the trees in Battery Park and across the harbor. He could see a couple of ships on the water. Farther to his left, at the harbor’s mouth more than two miles away, he spied a tiny flag flapping above the waves. His eyes narrowed and returned to the page on his desk. He dipped his pen in a small bottle and rattled it around. When he brought it to the top of the page, the pen made a short black mark and ran dry. Now Bennett frowned. He could not even write the first letter of the date. He put the pen down, reached for a bell on his desk, and rang it loudly.

  Footsteps sounded on the staircase. The door opened and a tall black man walked in. His wrinkled face told of many years. Bennett remained seated.

  “Lucius,” he said. “I’ve run out of ink. Please fetch me some.”

  “Yessir.”

  “Is there money in the till?”

  “I think so.”

  “Very well.”

  Lucius bent down on one knee and began to pick up the newspaper pages scattered around Bennett’s feet.

  “Thank you, Lucius. I became aggravated. That menace Lincoln slipped through Baltimore in the middle of the night on his way to Washington. So he has proven himself to be not only a villain but also a coward. I still have trouble believing this man will actually become president in a few days.”

  Lucius could not read the Mercury, but he reassembled the pages and placed them on Bennett’s desk before leaving the room. Bennett thought about standing up, but it felt too good to stay seated. This was a sensation that he had started to feel more often, and it might have bothered him if he had actually let it. He was already an old man, having been born seventy-one years earlier—in 1789, the year George Washington was elected president for the first time. Bennett liked to joke that he was as old as the republic itself. That remark was once tinged with pride. When he made it nowadays, though, it sounded more like a complaint—partly because he really was getting old, but mostly because he had lost faith in the republic.

  Looking again at the dot of a flag by the harbor’s mouth, he wished he had enough ink in his pen to blot it out: this was Fort Sumter, and inside it a company of men flew their banner in defiance of South Carolina. For two months, Bennett had glared at the flag every day. It was just a dash of color in the distance, but Bennett knew it displayed stars for South Carolina and six other states that had formally withdrawn from the Union. That flag must come down, he thought to himself. It will come down.

  He could do nothing about it from the second story of his home and with no ink in his pen. He pushed back from the desk but did not rise to his feet. His leg ached—the left one. He reached down and rubbed it. Sometimes he still bristled when his hand touched the hard wood below his knee. His leg had become a stump fourteen years earlier, during the Mexican War. The surgeons told him it was a choice between his leg and his life, and before Bennett even had a chance to think about what they had said, they had sawed it off. He was glad they did, and he wore the peg like a badge. Many of the wounded men who returned from Mexico tried to hide their disfigurements, but not Bennett. He rolled up his trousers and exposed the peg for all to see.

  The leg was a heavy price to pay for service in Mexico, but Bennett bore no regrets. He had bought himself a commission in the army, ready for an adventure. His wife had died many years earlier in childbirth, and his two sons were finally grown. Yet the war was not just a simple diversion for Bennett. The term “Manifest Destiny” had entered the public’s vocabulary, and Bennett believed in it. California and New Mexico belonged in the United States, not in a corrupt Mexico. But more important than any of this, the war would allow the expansion of slavery into new territories. To stay strong, the institution needed to grow. Many Northern politicians, especially those abolitionists in New England, opposed the war for exactly this reason. But the war came and went, with the United States acquiring vast new holdings and the slavery question put off for another day.

  About this time, Bennett first encountered the name that now haunted him. The South Carolinian had return
ed to his plantation home to nurse his wounded limb. In newspapers, he read of a first-term member of Congress who charged the administration of President James Polk with illegal acts in starting the war. This upstart continued the assault for a month with speeches and amendments, and he backed off only when Polk’s treaty with Mexico ending the war arrived in the Senate for ratification. Bennett did not make much of the incident or of the congressman, who did not run for a second term. But he remembered the name. He knew for years that he did not like Abraham Lincoln.

  He liked him even less after Lincoln became the Republican nominee for president—and then went on to win the election. Now Bennett was delighted to see the man humiliated. The Mercury carried a story about Lincoln’s craven arrival in Washington. Instead of taking the train through Baltimore at noon, as he had been scheduled to do, Lincoln passed through that city in the early morning, while it was still dark, and arrived in Washington at dawn. By the time a huge crowd had assembled at the depot in Baltimore, Lincoln was comfortably checked into a second-story suite at Willard’s, a hotel near the White House.

  The incident already was proving to be a huge embarrassment for Lincoln. Supporters said the president-elect had had a warning about a plot against his life in Baltimore, and this news required him to take drastic action. How typical, sneered Bennett. The man had condemned the Mexican War from afar, while others fought and died for their country. Now he was showing himself to be fearful even of the American public. Bennett took some consolation from the fact that Lincoln’s flight through Baltimore had no shortage of critics, even among his allies in the Northern press. Almost nobody thought it was necessary. Bennett smiled at the thought of Lincoln making problems for himself even before his inauguration, when he would suddenly have to confront many other problems not of his own making.