The Capitol Dome

Union and a close friend of Lincoln. 27 As the inaugural ceremony at the Capitol concluded, the Marine Corps Band provided one final exercise in civic reli- gion with the performance of "God Save Our President," set to a poem by Philadelphia businessman and poet Francis De Haes Janvier. e song's first stanza pays tribute to the setting ("the shrine of Liberty"), the historical context ("an undivided band"), and the purpose ("to elevate, with solemn rites, the ruler of our land"). Its final words provided a fitting conclusion to the inaugural ceremony; and if Lincoln had invoked divine assistance, it was reciprocated by those in attendance: God of our country! Seal his oath With y supreme assent. God save the Union of the States! God save our President. 28 EPILOGUE: THE DEVIL IN THE SHADOWS On May 12, 1865 as the trial of the conspirators in the assas- sination of Abraham Lincoln began, Samuel Knapp Chester, an actor and colleague of John Wilkes Booth (fig. 13) testified that Booth had tried to recruit him in the plot. During one of their conversations, Booth exclaimed, "What an excellent chance I had to kill the President, if I had wished, on inaugu- ration-day." 29 Booth was present for the inaugural ceremony and had been in the Capitol, the guest of one of his paramours, Lucy Hale, the daughter of New Hampshire Senator John P. Hale. As the daughter of a senator, Lucy had been able to pro- cure a ticket for Booth to enter the Capitol for the swearing in of Vice President Johnson and then to go out onto the east portico for Lincoln's inaugural. 30 In 1956, Frederick Hill Meserve, the leading collector of Lincoln photographs, claimed to have identified Booth in one of the several photographs taken at the inauguration. Meserve identified not only Booth, but also his fellow conspirator, Lewis Paine, in the photograph. 31 Meserve's daughter and grandson, Dorothy Meserve Kunhardt and Philip B. Kunhardt, Jr., later published a book of photographs pertaining to the Lincoln assassination. In it they claim to identify not only Booth and Paine, but also fellow conspirators George Atzerodt, David Herold, John Surratt and Edmund Spangler in the inaugural crowd. 32 Whether the identification of Booth and the others is cor- rect is somewhat beside the point given Booth's assertion that he could have killed Lincoln on March 4, "if I had wished." For in Chester's testimony, he added that Booth "said he was as near the President on that day as he was to me." 33 Certainly Booth wasn't that close to Lincoln on the inaugural platform; but he may well have come that close to him as the President passed through the Capitol Rotunda. At least, that's the way Benjamin B. French remembered it. As superintendent of public buildings, French was responsible for the inaugural arrangements at the Capitol. He was in the rotunda as the presidential party proceeded to the east portico. He later recalled in a letter to his son, "As the procession was passing through the Rotunda toward the Eastern portico, a man jumped from the crowd into it behind the President. I saw him, & told [John W.] Westfall, one of my Policemen, to order him out. He took him by the arm & stopped him, when he began to wrangle & show fight. I went up to him face to face, & told him he must go back. He said he had a right to be there, & looked very fierce & angry that we would not let him go on, & asserted his right so strenuously, that I thought he was a new member of the House whom I did not know & I said to Westfall 'let him go.'" After the assassination, someone Fig. 13. John Wilkes Booth, who attended the second inaugural, later boasted that if he had wanted to, he had the perfect opportunity to kill Lincoln on that occasion. L IBR ARY OF CONGRE S S PRIN T S AND PHOTO GR APHS DIVISION THE CAPITOL DOME 17

• Cover