On Exhibit: John Wilkes Booth’s Calling Card

Today’s post comes from Emma Rothberg, intern in the National Archives History Office. 

John Wilkes Booth's Calling Card, 04/14/1865. (National Archives Identifier 7873510)
John Wilkes Booth’s Calling Card, 04/14/1865. (National Archives Identifier 7873510)

Tucked in a corner in the Lawrence F. O’Brien Gallery at the National Archives in Washington, DC, is a rectangular piece of paper faded grey with time. It is unobtrusive and, due to its small size, could easily be missed among the larger and flashier documents and artifacts. But this card is a reminder of one of the most resonant and well known stories of American history—that of President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination by the actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth.

Vice President Andrew Johnson, undated. (National Archives Identifier 530496)
Vice President Andrew Johnson, undated. (National Archives Identifier 530496)

On April 14, 1865, Vice President Johnson was staying at the Kirkwood House—a hotel that stood at the corner of 12th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, NW.  Also in the hotel, and in a room directly one floor above the Vice President’s suite, was George Atzerodt. He was a fellow conspirator in Booth’s larger plot to murder President Lincoln, Secretary of State William H. Seward, and Vice President Johnson and thus throwing the recently victorious North into chaos and disarray. Atzerodt—a German carriage painter from Maryland who had spent the Civil War years ferrying Confederates across the Potomac—arrived at the Kirkwood House on the morning of the 14th. His task: to assassinate Vice President Johnson.

Like a character from a bad cop movie, Atzerodt proved to be an inept conspirator—he signed for the room with his own name and spent most of his “surveillance” time in the hotel bar asking suspicious questions about Johnson. Once drunk, Atzerodt armed himself and asked the desk clerk to point him in the direction of the Vice President’s ground-floor room. When told that Johnson had just returned to his room, Atzerodt balked and immediately left the hotel. He spent the next several hours drunkenly wandering around the streets of Washington. Vice President Johnson left shortly afterward for his own meeting with Lincoln at the White House.

John Wilkes Booth, undated. (National Archives Identifier 518136)
John Wilkes Booth, undated. (National Archives Identifier 518136)

Later that afternoon, just hours before he assassinated Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth arrived at the Kirkwood Hotel looking for George Atzerodt.  Upon learning of his co-conspirator’s flight, Booth asked for a blank card, addressed it to Vice President Johnson and wrote, “Don’t wish to disturb you Are you at home? J. Wilkes Booth.”

This card is now on display in “Making Their Mark: Stories Through Signatures,” an exhibit at the National Archives Building in Washington, DC.

We all know the rest of the story. President Lincoln, joined by his wife Mary, Maj. Henry Rathbone and his fiancée, Clara Harris, attended a staging of the popular comedy Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theatre on 10th Street on the night of April 14. Having acted on its stage, Booth knew the ins and outs of the theatre, and he was also quite familiar with the play. He walked up the back stairs, waited for the line that would garner the most laughs (Mr. Trenchard: “Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, you sockdologizing old man-trap”), and fired into the back of Lincoln’s head.

Private box in Ford's Theater where President Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, on the night of April 14, 1865. (National Archives Identifier 559275)
Private box in Ford’s Theater where President Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, on the night of April 14, 1865. (National Archives Identifier 559275)

The crowd was at first unaware of what had happened, thinking it was a part of the play, until audience members heard Mary’s scream from the Presidential box and saw Booth jumping to the stage. As he jumped, he caught his boot spur on the bunting and broke his left shin bone as he landed. Booth then uttered his famous line, “Sic semper tyrannis”—“Thus always to tyrants,” the Virginia state motto—before hobbling off the stage and making his escape on horseback.

President Abraham Lincoln died the next morning at 7:22 a.m. on April 15, 1865.

Historians continue to debate why Booth would have left this card for Vice President Johnson. The Senate’s biography on Andrew Johnson posits the idea that, upon knowing that Atzerodt was not up to task, Booth devised a plan to implicate the Vice President in the conspiracy. Having to explain a calling card left by the assassin of the President of the United States would certainly create problems for Johnson and further Booth’s ultimate plan of throwing the North into confusion.

Fortunately for Johnson, his secretary William A. Browning picked up the mail (including Booth’s calling card) assuming it was for him. Browning had met Booth once after a theater performance.

Whether or not this is the whole story behind the calling card, the signature gives us pause.

We know what it speaks to, we know the date it was signed, and we recognize the name. We recognize this calling card and this signature—a signature that played a direct role in the assassination of one of the United States’s most beloved Presidents—as small yet important parts in a story that we all know so well.

The exhibit “Making Their Mark: Stories Through Signatures” is free and open to the public in the Lawrence F. O’Brien Gallery of the National Archives Building in Washington, DC, through January 5, 2015.

5 thoughts on “On Exhibit: John Wilkes Booth’s Calling Card

  1. Thank You for sharing that, very enjoyable read. I felt Booth did left the calling card to implicate the ever-hapless Atzerodt. Booth had already made it clear to Atzerodt that he was implicated when the German immigrant expressed reservations about going through with the plot. As far as Booth was concerned, everything was going according to plan, with Powell set to murder Seward.
    Booth had a talent for manipulating others. One example of that was when he wanted his friend, John Matthews to mail a letter to the National Intelligencer that would implicate all four of them (Booth, Herold, Atzerodt, and Powell). At that point, the fate of the other conspirators was sealed as far as Booth was concerned. Though, interestingly, Mattehews never followed Booth’s instructions, which was probably wise given the mass hysteria following the assassination.
    Very enjoyable, thank you for sharing.

  2. So far, there’s only ONE connection between “J.WilkesBooth” and Vice
    President Andrew Johnson. Booth was a 33rd degree Freemason and Vice
    President Andrew Johnson was a 32nd degree Freemason–the “shadow
    government” or “deep state.”

    1. The alleged “attack” by Louis Powell on Secretary of State William Seward was
      faked. It never happened. This so-called “attack” was designed by the real
      conspirators to camouflage their complicity in assassinating Lincoln by
      assuming the roles of victims. “After all, if I’m a victim of this conspiracy, how
      could I possibly be an accomplice?”

  3. I LOVE this article, it has so much lots of information and is cool ???????????? I can’t believe that this is so good. ??????

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