Booth Crosses the Potomac: An Exercise in Historical Research (1990)

Booth Crosses the Potomac: An Exercise in Historical Research William A. Tidwell When John Wilkes Booth fled through southern Maryland after shooting President Lincoln on April 14, 1865, he was assisted by a number of people connected to clandestine activities of the Confederate Government .1 Evidence collected after the event is in reasonable agreement that Booth and a companion, David Herold, reached the Potomac shore of King George County, Virginia, on Sunday, April 23, 1865. Witnesses disagree, however, about the date on which Thomas Jones, the Confederate Signal Corps agent, launched Booth from Dent's Meadow in Charles County, Maryland, on his trip across the river. The date has a bearing on the interpretation of Booth's activities between the time he left Jones and the time he arrived in Virginia. Jones said that Booth started across the Potomac—a trip that would normally take only a few hours—late in the evening of Friday, April 21. Jones's black servant, Henry Woodland, said that this occurred on Thursday, April 20.2 Instead of crossing the Potomac immediately after Jones pushed their boat into the river, Booth and Herold turned up on Nanjemoy Creek in southern Maryland, several miles upriver from their departure point, before they re-embarked on the trip that finally brought them near their intended destination at the mouth of Machodoc Creek in Virginia. Though a minor point in the sweep of history, the deviation in Booth's journey was drastic, the reason obscure, and the consequences unknown. The detour to Nanjemoy Creek has thus become a mystery in need of explanation, one made even more tantalizing by the fact that King's Creek, a tributary of Nanjemoy Creek, was the hiding place of 1 William A. Tidwell with James O. Hall and David Winfred Gaddy, Come Retribution: The Confederate Secret Service and the Assassination of Lincoln (Jackson, Miss.: Univ. Press of Mississippi, 1988), 6. 2 U.S. National Archives, Microfilm record M-599, Reel 6, Frames 0450-0453. Woodland did not state explicitly that Booth left on April 20, but Woodland's account of Jones's movements leads to that conclusion. Civil War History, Vol. XXXVI, No. 4, ° 1990 by the Kent State University Press 326 CIVIL WAR HISTORY 3? BOOTH'S POTOMAC CROSSING327 the boat that Booth's group had procured earlier in 1865 to take a captive President Lincoln across the Potomac.3 The reason for Booth's detour is important because of the involvement of Nanjemoy Creek in the earlier plan to take President Lincoln hostage. Could the detour reveal anything more about that earlier operation? The date of Booth's departure is important in the sense that it would indicate whether Booth and his associate stayed in the Nanjemoy Creek area for one or two days. He had to stay in the Nanjemoy area at least one day to wait for night to fall again to hide his next venture into the Potomac. But, the longer the stay on the Maryland side of the Potomac, the more Booth was risking capture by the Federal troops that were swarming in the area. If Booth had stayed two days in Maryland, it would raise questions about the reason for his enduring the added risk. Various people have advanced explanations for Booth's detour. Booth contributed to the mystery by leaving a notation that said in part, "After being hunted like a dog through swamps, woods, and last night being chased by gunboats till I was forced to return wet, cold, and starving, with every man's hand against me...."4 Booth dated this notation as being written on April 21, thereby adding to the evidence supporting April 20 as his departure date. Apparently few historians have felt it credible that Booth was literally "chased by gunboats" inasmuch as one would have expected the gunboat to be an easy winner. Some apparently have been willing to believe, however, that Booth and Herold may have gotten off course in order to avoid being seen by a gunboat. Others, however, have sought other reasons. Jones himself advanced as an explanation, "The strong flood-tide, against which I had forgotten to caution him [Booth], swept the boat up...