Page:Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs (Volume Two).djvu/73

Rh Corbett saluted the colonel and said: “Colonel, Providence directed me.” Thus the parallel runs. Booth claimed that he was the instrument of the Almighty in the assassination of Lincoln, and Boston Corbett claimed that he acted under the direction of Providence when he shot Booth.

Booth was shot at about three o’clock in the morning of April 26, and he died at fifteen minutes past seven. During that time he was conscious for about three fourths of an hour. He asked whether a person called Jett had betrayed him. His only other intelligible remark was this:

“Tell my mother I died for my country.”

During the afternoon preceding the assassination of Mr. Lincoln, Booth met John Mathews a brother actor, and requested him to hand a letter to Mr. Coyle, of the National Intelligencer, the next morning. Mathews had a part in the play at Ford’s Theater. When the shot was fired and Mathews was changing his dress to leave the theater, he discovered the letter, which for the time he had forgotten. When he reached his rooms he opened the letter. It contained an avowal of Booth’s purpose to murder the President, and he named three of his associates. Booth referred to a plan that had failed, and he then added: “The moment has at length arrived when my plans must be changed.” These statements were made by Mathews from recollection. Mathews destroyed the letter under the influence of the apprehension that its possession would work his ruin.

The records seem to warrant certain conclusions:

1. That the Confederate authorities at Richmond made a plan for the capture of Mr. Lincoln, and that Booth, Mrs. Surratt and others—who were implicated finally in the murder—were concerned in the project to abduct the President and to hold him as a hostage.

2. That that undertaking failed.

3. That following Lee’s surrender and the downfall of the