Atzerodt Fails To Attack Andrew Johnson
Booth had assigned George Atzerodt to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson, who was staying at the Kirkwood Hotel in Washington. Atzerodt was to go to the Vice President's room at 10:15 p.m. and shoot him. On April 14, Atzerodt rented room 126 at the Kirkwood, directly above the room where Johnson was staying. He arrived at the Kirkwood at the appointed time and went to the bar downstairs, carrying on his person a gun and a knife. Atzerodt asked the bartender, Michael Henry, about the Vice President's character and behavior. After spending some time at the hotel saloon, Atzerodt got drunk and wandered away through the streets of Washington. Nervous, he tossed his knife away in the street. He made his way to the Pennsylvania House Hotel by 2 a.m., where he checked into a room and went to sleep.
Earlier that day, Booth stopped by the Kirkwood Hotel and left a note for Johnson that read, "I don't wish to disturb you. Are you at home? J. Wilkes Booth." The card was picked up that night by Johnson's personal secretary, William Browning. This message has been interpreted in many different ways throughout the years. One theory is that Booth, being afraid that Atzerodt would not succeed in killing Johnson, or worried that Atzerodt would not have the courage to carry out the assassination, tried to use the message to implicate Johnson in the conspiracy. Another theory is that Booth was actually trying to contact Browning in order to find out whether or not Johnson was expected to be at the Kirkwood that night.
Read more about this topic: Assassination Of Abraham Lincoln
Famous quotes containing the words fails, attack, andrew and/or johnson:
“Someone is always at my elbow reminding me that I am the grand-daughter of slaves. It fails to register depression with me. Slavery is sixty years in the past. The operation was successful and the patient is doing well, thank you. The terrible struggle that made me an American out of a potential slave said “On the line!” The Reconstruction said “Go!” I am off to a flying start and I must not halt in the stretch to look behind and weep.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“Scandal is an importunate wasp, against which we must make no movement unless we are quite sure that we can kill it; otherwise it will return to the attack more furious than ever.”
—Sébastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort (1741–1794)
“All the historians are Harvard people. It just isn’t fair. Poor old Hoover from West Branch, Iowa, had no chance with that crowd; nor did Andrew Jackson from Tennessee. Nor does Lyndon Johnson from Stonewall, Texas. It just isn’t fair.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents.... It is a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community.... It is a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)