Documenting the Death of an Assassin
In 1865, a single photograph was taken during the autopsy of John Wilkes Booth. Where is it now?
- By Ashley Luthern
- Smithsonian.com, May 06, 2011, Subscribe
When President Barack Obama announced this week that he would not release postmortem pictures of Osama bin Laden, people around the world immediately questioned his decision.
The debate today echoes a similar controversy involving John Wilkes Booth, the man who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln.
On April 26, 1865—12 days after he shot Lincoln at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C.—Booth himself was cornered and shot in a Virginia barn. He died from his wound that day. His body was taken back to Washington and then aboard the USS Montauk for an autopsy.
The administration, led by Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, ordered that a single photograph be taken of Booth’s corpse, says Bob Zeller, president of the Center for Civil War Photography. On April 27, 1865, many experts agree, famed Civil War photographer Alexander Gardner and his assistant Timothy O’Sullivan took the picture.
It hasn’t been seen since, and its whereabouts are unknown.
“Stanton was a guy who really took charge,” Zeller says. And in this case, Zeller says, he was “trying to control photographs of Booth’s body so he would not be a martyr or lionized.” In the short term, however, the absence of the image buoyed conspiracy theories that Lincoln’s assassin was still alive.
The Booth photo wasn’t the first image that Stanton would have censored. The war secretary was incensed after a photograph of Lincoln’s body in its casket, taken as the slain president lay in Governor’s Room at New York City Hall, was printed in the evening editions of New York newspapers, Zeller writes in The Blue and Gray in Black and White: A History of Civil War Photography.
“I cannot sufficiently express my surprise and disapproval of such an act while the body was in your charge,” Stanton wrote to Gen. Edward D. Townsend, who assisted with Lincoln’s funeral. “...You will direct the provost-marshal to go to the photographer, seize and destroy the plates and any pictures or engravings that may have been made, and consider yourself responsible if the offense is repeated.”
The Booth controversy arose soon afterward, when the New York Tribune reported on April 28 that a photograph of Booth’s body had been taken aboard the Montauk.
A crucial account of what happened while Gardner and O’Sullivan were on the ship, Zeller says, comes from James A. Wardell, a former government detective who had been assigned to accompany the two men. Wardell’s account, given in 1896 to a historian who was searching for the missing Booth photograph, appears in Witness to an Era: The Life and Photographs of Alexander Gardner, by D. Mark Katz:
Under no circumstances was I to allow him or his assistant out of my sight until they had taken a picture and made the print, and then I was to bring the print and the glass [negative] back to the War Department and give it only to Col. [L.C.] Baker [chief of the Secret Service] or Secretary of War Stanton. ...[Gardner] was told that only one plate was to be made and it was to have only one print made and both were to be given to me when finished….
“Gardner took the plate and then gave it to the assistant and told him to take it and develop it and to make one print. I went with him and even went into the dark room. About 4:00 in the afternoon I got the plate and the print from the assistant and took it to the War Department. I went in to the outer office and Col. Baker was just coming out of the War Office. I gave him the plate and print and he stepped to one side and pulled it from the envelope. He looked at it and then dismissed me.
Wardell said he doubted the historian would be able to track down the picture: “The War Department was very determined to make sure that Booth was not made a hero and some rebel would give a good price for one of those pictures of the plate.”
There the trail of the photograph goes cold. But that doesn’t mean it won’t warm up someday, Zeller says.
“That’s the reason why I’m so absolutely passionate about the field of Civil War photography,” he says. “You keep making huge finds. You can’t say it won’t happen. You can’t even say that it’s not sitting ... in the National Archives War Department records.”
Edward McCarter, supervisor of the still photography collection at the National Archives, says the photo is not there, as far as he knows. He’d never even heard of such a photograph—and given how often and how long researchers have been using the photographs and textual records in the Archives, “I’m sure it would have surfaced.”
Subscribe now for more of Smithsonian's coverage on history, science and nature.
Comments (11)
If he hadnt been shot in that tobaco barn he most likly would have been hanged anyway if they had captured him alive
Posted by Spuring Plover on October 28,2012 | 08:36 PM
i have allways loved and tried to read or watch anything i could find about the civil war and the whole time period, i am a big fan or lincolns, i really enjoy all of this information, am so glad to have found this page. if a person can look up to someone who was gone long before their time, then that is what i am, thank you
Posted by jeannie villier on May 6,2012 | 09:17 PM
John Wilkes Boothe's body was dug up from the navy Yard cemetery, and buried elsewhere by his family. I believe, though I'm not looking at the source right now, that his body would have still been recognizable to his family, which would not support a cover-up theory.
Posted by Paul Perrin on April 26,2012 | 10:13 PM
I recently purchased Witness to an Era, Katz. Wardell's complete statement revealed that he took a look at the picture before handing it to L. C. Baker at the War Department. He mentioned that Booth's mustache was "shaggy and dirty."pp. 162
Dr. Mudd revealed that Booth shaved his mustache off two weeks prior to the time the picture taken of the Booth.
It makes one wonder!!!
Ray
Posted by Ray Myers on February 6,2012 | 04:53 AM
Re: My earlier post stated Gardner and Tipton. It should have been stated as Gardner and O'Sullivan.
Posted by Rob on January 9,2012 | 08:42 PM
That plate or print is long gone to history. Edwin Stanton and Col. Lafayette Bakers' lives hung on that very plate and photo. In my educated opionion, Stanton was the weasel in the henhouse, using Baker as his fox. I think that photo would not show John Wilkes Booths' body, as his body was most likely not the one photographed by Gardner and Tipton. It would have been a post mortem picture of John Wilkes possibly, the red headed fellow that was killed outside of Garretts Barn. The same point still arises, the photograph and plate were surely destroyed in 1865.
Posted by Rob on January 9,2012 | 08:38 PM
Interesting information
Posted by MJ Palmiro on January 2,2012 | 08:15 PM
Interesting information
Posted by MJ Palmiro on January 1,2012 | 05:53 PM
fascinating. History does repeat itself even though it may be a little skeward. Whether this photo of Booth ever shows up or not, it will keep us remembering that the saying "never say never" is one worth remembering. I wonder what future generations will think of not having the Bin Laden photo shown (at least as of this writing)
Posted by Claire Jarkovsky on May 11,2011 | 06:59 PM
Jeff Fenner's favorite magazines are as follows:
1. The Writer
2.SMITHSONIAN
3.Gramophone
Posted by Jeff Fenner on May 11,2011 | 05:22 PM
My personal legacy is the phtographs I have taken for over sixty years. (My family has had enough of my words and none have ever been published.) I became a denizen of the darkroom in 1954. I believe there something magical about freezing the moment and recording it through every step in its presentation as the photographer's vision. And I am a student and teacher of United States history.
Alex Gardner and Timothy Sullivan (a giant in his own right as a photographer) got into the heavily-guarded warship to take ONE IMAGE of Lincoln's dead assassin. At some point in Booth's autopsy.
Ashley Luthern's article highlights two points: (1) if the plate negative and SINGLE print were delivered to the War Department, we won't see either, ever again. But also that (2) those old glass plate negatives are hiding all over the country (at least figuratively) and wonderful things turn up all the time.
The author might have added that the Smithsonian will be waiting for each discovery.
Posted by tom sloss on May 11,2011 | 04:53 PM