SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2010
KLMNO
EZ EE A lifetime of Lincoln began in his childhood swanson from E1
ton author is standing outside the mausoleum, recounting the buri- alof 11-year-oldWillieLincoln.He iswearing dark-rimmed eyeglass- es,adarkraincoat,darkpantsand dark shoes, and looksmore like a cop than a scholar. “Lincoln didn’t want to bury
Willie inWashington permanent- ly,”Swansonis saying, “becausehe expected to go home to Illinois in March 1869 at the end of his sec- ond term.” What Lincoln did not expect
was thathewouldbe assassinated in 1865, and that his body and Willie’s would be taken home to- gether in a funeral that Swanson argues was “the most extraordi- nary public event in American history.” Imagine what it felt like after
Sept. 11, 2001, he says, and after the assassination of John F. Ken- nedy, “and multiply those emo- tions several fold. . . .That’s how intense itwas.” That 1,600-mile, 18-day jour-
ney from Lincoln’s deathbed in a boardinghouse across the street from Ford’s Theatre to Spring- field, Ill., is but one part of Swan- son’s new book, “Bloody Crimes: TheChase for JeffersonDavis and the Death Pageant for Lincoln’s Corpse.” But it makes up the better-
known and more wrenching seg- mentofhisportraitofLincolnand the Confederate president amid the closing scenes of the CivilWar and its aftermath. Davis’s flight from Richmond
as the Southern rebellion crum- bled, his defiant postwar life and his subsequent disappearance from the war’s modern iconogra- phymake for a good yarn. Yet it is the nation’s tortured farewell to its fallen“FatherAbraham” that is the most gripping part of Swan- son’s account. In theWhiteHouse,where Lin-
coln was embalmed and his au- topsy conducted, bleachers were erected in the East Room to ac- commodate all the mourners for Lincoln’s funeral service there. During the stop in New York
City,womentriedtokiss thepresi- dent’s lips, though he had been dead for nine days. In Brocton, N.Y.,adelegationof sobbingwom- en was permitted to kiss the cof- fin. In the rain, by torchlight, by
bonfire, mourners thronged the public halls, orwaited by the rail- road tracks singing dirges. From Washington to New York City, to Cleveland and Chicago, millions witnessed the event. The funeralwas also the culmi-
nation of a lifelong Lincoln explo- ration that Swanson began as a child. And that trip, in a way, winds up here, too. As the afternoon sun sets on
Oak Hill Cemetery, he grasps the bars of the locked mausoleum gate and peers inside. His voice echoes off the interior, as if in a cave. He says he’s not sure in which
“slot” Willie Lincoln was buried. The tomb belonged to the clerk of the U.S. Supreme Court, William T. Carroll, who was a friend of Lincoln’s andlenthimthe spot for
Willie. Inside, dead leaves blowacross
the stone floor. Some slots bear names of long-dead members of the Carroll family. Others are bricked up. “I feel Lincoln at this place,”
Swanson says. “I can just imagine Lincoln probably coming down this path. . . . I can just see him coming around that bend.”
Mementomori Early on the morning of April
15, 1865, Secretary of War Edwin
M.Stantonstoodaloneintheback bedroomof thePetersenboarding house on 10th Street NW, Swan- sonrecounted inhis 2006 assassi- nation bestseller, “Manhunt.” AbrahamLincoln had just died
there of the gunshot wound in- flicted the evening before by John Wilkes Booth. And after a nine- hour death struggle, the presi- dent’s naked body was stretched across a bed under the covers. Stanton closed the window
blinds, leanedover thepresident’s head and cut a small sheaf of Lincoln’s coarse brown hair. He put the hair in a white envelope, signed his name, then wrote: “To Mrs.Welles.” The hair was intended as a
keepsake for Mary Jane Welles, wifeofSecretaryof theNavyGide- onWelles. She was a friend of the president’s wife, Mary Todd Lin- coln, and had helped nurse the dying Willie Lincoln three years before. Onerecentafternoon,Swanson
stoodinhisCapitolHillhome and held a framed display that con- tains the hair, the envelope and the dried flowers Mrs. Welles saved from Lincoln’s coffin at his WhiteHouse funeral service.
The items, once in the collec-
tion of Malcolm Forbes, were ac- quired several years ago from a rare-book dealer friend, Swanson said. These are the kinds of objects
heuses to transporthimself to the past — venerable things he col- lects that take him from what he calls his “earth life.” He has others. The silk patch of actress Laura
Keene’s dress stained with Lin- coln’s blood. She had been per- forming in “Our American Cous- in,” the play Lincoln was watch-
ing.Sherushedtothepresidential box after the shooting and held the president’s bleeding head in her lap. “Having this inmy handsmade
that scene comealive inmy imagi- nation,” Swanson said. “Lincoln touched this. . . . His head rested on this fabric. It’s indescribably moving.” The bronze mask of Lincoln’s
cleanshaven face cast by Augus- tus Saint-Gaudens in the 1880s, from an original plaster mask made by Leonard Volk in 1860. “This is exactly what Abraham Lincoln looked like,” Swanson said. “It’s eerie.” The 1864 black sculpture of
Lincoln’s head, done from life, that stands inacornerofhis living room. Lincoln, with bags under his eyes, looks preoccupied, care- worn. “At night, when the shad- ows come through the room, “ Swanson said, “it almost feels like
Lincoln is here.’’ There is also the assassination-
night theater playbill. The flag- pole from the hearse that carried Lincoln’s body in New York. And theBoothwantedposterSwanson bought for $2,000whenhewas in high school. Born on the 150th anniversary
of Lincoln’s birth, Swanson must have been an unusual kid. This was themoneyhe earnedmowing lawns, and he used it to buy . . . memorabilia? “I figured I’d keep this longer
than some used car,” he said. Besides, “when I touch these
things, history comes alive,” he said. “I feel like I’mthere.” “I couldn’t write my books if I
didn’t have access to the original artifacts, if I couldn’t touch them, examine them,” he said. Swanson, who is married and
has two young boys, is a lawyer and senior legal scholar at the Heritage Foundation.He grewup in Chicago, where his father, a history buff, ran a cookie factory. As a child, Swanson oftenwent
to the Chicago Historical Society, which had a spooky display of the actual deathbed and furniture fromthe PetersenHouse. “Therewasabuttonrecessedin
the wall,” he recalled. “If you pushed that button a sombre man’s voice would come on and tell . . . the story of the night Lin- colnwas shot.” In this very bed . . . As an adult, Swanson spent
ONE DAY ONLY!
area around Ford’s. Actors Ben Stiller and Richard Dreyfus also havetakenthetour,Swansonsaid. One year, the tour was accom-
panied by a band of CivilWar era musicianswho played periodmu- sic, then taps at 10:15 p.m., the moment ofBooth’s attack. Often, he said, they will leave
lilacs on the steps of the Petersen House—a reference to poetWalt Whitman’s Lincoln elegy, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.” For the sweetest, wisest soul of allmy days and lands. . .
History on every block One recent fall evening, the
lights were turned low inside Ford’s Theatre, except for the spotlight onstage. Although the theater’s interior
is a re-creation of the original, it looked as it did that night in 1865. The empty presidential box draped in U.S. flags. The red-up- holstered rocking chair. The bal- cony, like the one from which Booth jumped. About 100 people sat in the
seats, many holding copies of “Manhunt” or “Bloody Crimes,” waiting to hear Swanson speak. Among them was Colleen LaMay ofWarrenton and her 12-year-old son,Cole. They had moved to the area
SUSAN BIDDLE FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
TOUCHINGHISTORY: At home on CapitolHill, alongside a bust of Robert E. Lee and a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, James L. Swanson holds the Lincoln assassination wanted poster he bought as a teen.His newbook, “Bloody Crimes,” recounts the aftermath of Lincoln’s death.
countless hours writing in Ford’s Theatre, seeking a cosmic “glimpse” of that night. But thosewere tragic times. “Reading about death in the
Civil War, and assassination and murder, can create a kind of a brooding mood,” he said. “Some- times I can feel a cloud hovering overme.” To brighten things, Swanson
said, he throws book parties. He has hosted themfor fellowauthor and friend Vincent Bugliosi, for- mer House speaker Dennis Hast- ert and retired U.S.
senator
GeorgeMcGovern. He also has a project in the
works about the Booth family with actor Kevin Bacon, has shown actor LiamNeeson his col- lection and is acquainted with ConanO’Brien,whoSwansonsaid is an avid student of Lincoln. O’Brien went along on one of
Swanson’sprivateApril 14assassi- nation-night walking tours of the
from Idaho a few weeks before, and both had become enthralled by the assassination. LaMay said she had been “riveted” by “Man- hunt.” Cole held a version for young people. They had just walked along
10th Street, where the mortally wounded Lincoln was carried, passedbythePetersenHouse,and nowwere sitting in Ford’s. “Everyblockinthis townseems
to emanate [from] the past,” La- May said. “You live inthe past and the present in away thatwe don’t in theWest.” As theysat inthedimlight, they
were a fewfeet fromwhere Booth jumped to the stage, and fromthe presidential box, where Lincoln slumped in the red rocker and a womanhadscreamed, “Thepresi- dent is shot!” “It’s sad,”ColeLaMay said, “and
. . . really interesting.”
ruanem@washpost.com
I
MOREPHOTOS To see a photo gallery of Swanson’s collection of
art and artifacts, go to
washingtonpost.com/style.
E5
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