The Life, Crime, and Capture of John Wilkes BoothTownsend, George Alfred
History
The Life, Crime, and Capture of John Wilkes Booth
Townsend, George Alfred
Assassins -- United States -- Biography; Booth, John Wilkes, 1838-1865; Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865 -- Assassination
Payne, the strangest criminal in our history, was alone dignified and
self possessed. He wore a closely-fitting knit shirt, a sailor's straw
hat tied with a ribbon, and dark pantaloons, but no shoes. His collar,
cut very low, showed the tremendous muscularity of his neck, and the
breadth of his breast was more conspicuous by the manner in which the
pinioned arms thrust it forward. His height, his vigor, his glare made
him the strong central figure of this interelementary tableaux. He said
no word; his eyes were red as with the penitential weeping of a
courageous man, and the smooth hardness of his skin seemed like a
polished muscle. He did not look abroad inquisitively, nor within
intuitively. He had no accusation, no despair, no dreaminess. He was
only looking at death as for one long expected, and not a tremor nor a
shock stirred his long stately limbs; withal, his blue eye was milder
than when I saw him last, as if some bitterness, or stolidness, or
obstinate pride had been exorcised, perhaps by the candor of confession.
Now and then he looked half-pityingly at the woman, and only once moved
his lips, as if in supplication. Few who looked at him, forgetful of his
crime, did not respect him. He seemed to feel that no man was more than
his peer, and one of his last commands was a word of regret to Mr.
Seward.
I have a doubt that this man is entirely a member of our nervous race. I
believe that a fiber of the aboriginal runs through his tough sinews. At
times he looked entirely an Indian. His hair is tufted, and will not lie
smoothly. His cheek-bones are large and high set. There is a tint in his
complexion. Perhaps the Seminole blood of his swampy state left a trace
of its combative nature there.
Payne was a preacher's son, and not the worst graduate of his class. His
real name is Lewis Thornton Powell.
He died without taking the hand of any living friend.
Even the squalid Atzerott was not so poor. I felt a pity for his
physical rather than his vital or spiritual peril. It seemed a
profanation to break the iron column of his neck, and give to the worm
his belted chest.
But I remember that he would have slain a sick old man.
The third condemned, although whimpering, had far more grit than I
anticipated; he was inquisitive and flippant-faced, and looked at the
noose flaunting before him, and the people gathered below, and the
haggard face of Atzerott, as if entirely conscious and incapable of
abstraction.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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