(Lincoln, Abraham) | John Wilkes Booth Is Still At Large

(Lincoln, Abraham)

War Department, Washington, April 20, 1865, | $100,000 Reward! | The Murderer | of our late beloved President, Abraham Lincoln, | Is Still At Large. | $50,000 REWARD | will be paid by this Department for his apprehension, in addition to any reward offered by | any Municipal Authorities or State Executives. | $25,000 REWARD | will be paid for the apprehension of John H. Surratt, one of Booth's Accomplices. | $25,000 REWARD | will be paid for the apprehension of David C. Harold [sic], another of Booth's accomplices. … | Let the stain of innocent blood be removed from the land by the arrest and punishment of the murderers. | All good citizens are exhorted to aid public justice on this occasion. Every man should consider his own conscience charged with this solemn duty, and rest neither night nor day until it be accomplished. | [signed in type:] Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War. [Washington, D.C.: War Department, 1865]

Broadside reward poster (593 x 315 mm, sight). Gallows frames filled with early twentieth-century gelatin silver prints of Booth, Surratt, and Herold probably printed by Frederick Hill Meserve; lightly soiled, creased, fold separations and tears, some repaired and one costing portions of about six letters.

The hunt for Lincoln's assassins. "Six days after the assassination, John Wilkes Booth and his alleged accomplices, John H. Surratt and David Herold, were still on the loose, To speed their arrests, on April 20, 1865, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton offered a reward of $100,000 for their apprehension—and threatened with death anyone who gave them aid. Several different types of broadsides were printed in Washington, D.C., to publicize the reward" (Swanson & Weinberg). In the present version, the public is warned that Booth may have shaved off his "heavy black moustache."

Although Booth was shot at Garrett's farm on 26 April 1865 and Herold, who was captured in the same action, was hanged on 7 July of the same year, no rewards were paid until late 1866, when, after various competing claims were settled, more than thirty soldiers and detectives divided the bounties on Booth and Herold. Surratt fled to Canada and so evaded immediate capture. He was apprehended in Europe and returned to the United States to stand trial in December 1866, but the jury could not reach a verdict, and in 1868 he was released from prison on bail and the indictment against him was not pursued further.

REFERENCE

Swanson & Weinberg, Lincoln's Assassins: Their Trial and Execution, p. 50, fig. 38