Stories about John Wilkes Booth's assassination and whereabouts thereafter have considerable variety, but an astounding recent find puts some stability and details around the arrival of Booth's corpse aboard the USS Montauk.
Booth was allegedly captured and killed on April 26, 1865 at Garrett's farm in Northern Virginia. His body was carried away in sewn blankets eventually landing on the Montauk. However, the diaries of Henry Washington Landes provide rare details not provided in the history books.
Landes was originally a soldier in the 129th Pennsylvania Infantry, Company C who later became a marine stationed aboard the Montauk where he served as guard for the accused assassins of Abraham Lincoln. His kept a regular diary which contains many fascinating entries, especially during the aftermath of the assassination in late April.
The marine records in his diary on April 27
27 - I was on post from twelve to two. Booth and his partner came on the boat at 1/4 before two [AM], dead. Arrived on the steamboat Burnside. No inspection. Stood guard over him from 6 to 8. Over the partner from 12 to 2. At 2 they took Booth's head off...
We find that early in the morning of April 27, at 1:45 AM, Booth and his partner, David Herold, are brought aboard the Montauk having been couriered by the steamboat Burnside. At 2 PM, later that same day, the autopsy is performed which results in the decapitation of Booth.
Booth's corpse was not to remain long on the Montauk. Landes continues:
Full of visitors, officers and citizens. Warm day and full of excitement. Took him away at two o'clock. His partner picture taken in the afternoon
After the 2 PM autopsy, Herold's picture is taken, no doubt a reference to Alexander Gardner's glamour shots of the prisoners. However, based upon the sequence of events Landes mentions, Booth was immediately removed from the ship, at 2 PM on April 28, but Landes does not tell us his destination.
There is room for interpretive doubt concerning the time of day when Booth was carried away - ie, was it 2 AM or 2 PM? After all, how could one behead Booth while at the same time removing him from the ship? Therefore, wouldn't there have to be a lapse of time to keep chronological concordance with these vents? My view is that Landes was compressing time and action, viewing the autopsy and Booth's removal as a singularity - ie beginning at 2 PM he was beheaded and then removed from the ship immediately thereafter.
This actually makes more sense than interpreting 2 o'clock as 2 AM since one would not want to keep a decapitated composing corpse on board with a ship crew and prisoners, risking the many health hazards which that scenario holds. At that point, Booth had been dead since around 6-7 AM April 26. Thus approximately 20 hours after dying, Booth is on the Montauk.
At 32 hours past death, Booth is offloaded from the Montauk, and sent to parts unknown.
We conclude, then, that Booth was on the Montauk for approximately 12-13 hours - from 1:45 AM to some time after 2 PM on April 27.
In a letter to his sister on the 28th, Landes writes
He had his leg broken, I seen it. He had paste board around it. No beard and his forehead shaved.
The broken leg strongly, though not definitively, supports the contention that the corpse in custody was John Wilkes Booth.
However, we have no idea that Landes actually knew what Booth looked like. Although photography was fast developing in 1865, pictures of people were still not common place. Reviewing a couple of the prominent newspapers of the time, such as the New York Herald, and Washington newspaper, there isn't a picture in sight. In other words, public recognition of famous and infamous people is not what it is today.
In any event, this powerful testimony will help keep in check any speculative conjecture about Booth's brief stay on the USS Montauk.
Reference
Copyright 2020 Tony Bonn. All rights reserved.
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