A dark prophecy scratched into the glass of the window of room 22 of the McHenry House in Meadeville, Pennsylvania, came true. Sometime in the June before, the chambermaid noticed someone had written, “Abe Lincoln departed this life August 13, 1864, by the effects of poison.” The handwriting was believed to be that of actor and oil-businessman J. Wilkes Booth, who had stayed there several times while he had traveled through Pennsylvania as part of the Dramatic Oil Company venture. The hotel proprietor, however, took it as mere drunken shenanigans and didn’t even bother to replace the window until word spread of Lincoln’s death.
The president had not returned from riding one of his favorite federal horses, Old Abe, Abraham Lincoln to visit Soldiers’ Home in northeast Washington, a less formal getaway the Lincolns and other members of the government used. When he hadn’t arrived that night, staff at Soldiers’ Home thought he had stayed at the White House as he had mentioned stomach troubles following dinner. Old Abe returned to the White House with an empty saddle, and a search of the route in the early hours of the morning found the president dead on the side of the road with clear signs of poisoning.
The nation launched into an uproar, largely against the Confederacy, who was accused at large of cowardice and assassination. Booth and numerous others made claims that they had been behind the poisoning, although many of the claimants proved false under examination or disappeared into hiding before they could be caught. The prophetic sign in the window was taken down and sent to the Justice Department along with copies of Booth’s signature. Though Booth was never seen again, the glass later appeared in Harpers’ Pictorial History of the Civil War.
When the president was laid to rest and Hannibal Hamlin sworn into office, the question remained what would be done about the election in November. There had already been a great deal of upheaval in the Republican Party in 1864 with a split that officially nominated Lincoln and Andrew Johnson representing the National Union Party after radicals nominated John C. Fremont. Fremont gained much ground in the polls by using Lincoln’s death as a rallying point and promising vengeance against the South. Hamlin promised a more moderate end, though even that conflicted with Southerner Johnson. Many moderate Republicans migrated toward the Democrats, who campaigned readily with former general George B. McClellan. In November, McClellan would eke out a narrow win after taking New York and Pennsylvania.
McClellan had promised to put an end to the war, and, when he came into office in March 4, 1865, the South was nearly utterly defeated. Straying from the party platform written by Clement Vallandigham calling for peace negotiations on the first day, McClellan instead vowed that peace negotiations must maintain the Union. Vallandigham and other Copperheads (radical peace Democrats) called it “the Great Betrayal,” but generous terms offered by the McClellan administration brought many Confederates, including President Jefferson Davis, to call for a return to the Union.
With the war ended, McClellan’s administration was tasked with Reconstruction and reforming the Southern economy from slave-based labor to free. Having a lifetime of service in the military, McClellan was well work as a quartermaster on such a scale. Violence against freedmen and corruption within state-run agencies proved so rampant that McClellan soon felt there would be no hope to improve the conditions of African American life in the South. Reinvigorating the Homestead Act of 1862, McClellan put much of the Freedmen’s Bureau efforts into resettlement, spurring the Great Emigration where former slaves established all-Black towns as freedmen’s colonies throughout the West and especially in the Unassigned Lands of central Indian Territory.
Republicans narrowly took back the White House with General Ulysses S. Grant in the 1868 election, but by then many of the Reconstruction policies had largely played out. The McClellan name would not be long out of office: George Brinton McClellan, Jr., was elected in 1912 as the first father-son pair to serve as presidents since the Adamses.
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In reality, Lincoln was not poisoned to death in 1864. There are some suspicions of previous attempts, including a letter by one of the Night of Terror conspirators that “the cup had failed us and could again” before Booth’s ultimate shooting of the president April 14, 1865. The scratching in the window became famous as Booth’s following the assassination, although no one could prove it was his. Eerily enough, Lincoln did face an assassination in August of 1864, when he was shot at while riding to Soldier’s Home in northeast Washington. The bullet passed through his hat. About the same time, Fremont stepped back, encouraging his supporters to vote for Lincoln to ensure a Republican victory.
Sources:
Bates, Finis L. The Escape and Suicide of John Wilkes Booth. 1903.
“Homes: Soldiers’ Home.” Mr. Lincoln’s White House. http://www.mrlincolnswhitehouse.org/washington/homes/homes-soldiers-home/
Mattocks, Ron. “The Magnificent McHenry House Part 2 Departures and Demise.” Crawford Messenger. Mar 5, 2017. http://crawfordpahistory.blogspot.com/2017/03/John-wilkes-booth-mchenry-house-meadville.html
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