Southern cities where he played a furious spirit
of partizanship against Lincoln and the Union party. After the
reelection of Mr. Lincoln, he visited Canada, consorted with the rebel
emissaries there, and--whether or not at their instigation cannot
certainly be said--conceived a scheme to capture the President and take
him to Richmond. He passed a great part of the autumn and winter
pursuing this fantastic enterprise, seeming to be always well supplied
with money; but the winter wore away, and nothing was accomplished. On
March 4 he was at the Capitol, and created a disturbance by trying to
force his way through the line of policemen who guarded the passage
through which the President walked to the east front of the building.
His intentions at this time are not known; he afterward said he lost an
excellent chance of killing the President that day.

His ascendancy over his fellow-conspirators seems to have been complete.
After the surrender of Lee, in an access of malice and rage akin to
madness he called them together and assigned each his part in the new
crime which had risen in his mind out of the abandoned abduction scheme.
This plan was as brief and simple as it was horrible. Powell, alias
Payne, the stalwart, brutal, simple-minded boy from Florida, was to
murder Seward; Atzerodt, the comic villain of the drama, was assigned to
remove Andrew Johnson; Booth reserved for himself the most conspicuous
role of the tragedy. It was Herold's duty to attend him as page and aid
him in his escape. Minor parts were given to stage-carpenters and other
hangers-on, who probably did not understand what it all meant. Herold,
Atzerodt, and Surratt had previously deposited at a tavern at
Surrattsville, Maryland, owned by Mrs. Surratt, but kept by a man named
Lloyd, a quantity of arms and materials to be used in the abduction
scheme. Mrs. Surratt, being at the tavern on the eleventh, warned Lloyd
to have the "shooting-irons" in readiness, and, visiting the place again
on the fourteenth, told him they would probably be called for that
night.

The preparations for the final blow were made with feverish haste. It
was only about noon of the fourteenth that Booth learned that the
President was to go to Ford's Theater that night to see the play "Our
American Cousin." It has always been a matter of surprise in Europe that
he should have been at a place of amusement on Good Friday; but the day
was not kept sacred in America, except by the me