Attending the Ford Theater performance on the night of Lincoln's assassination was former Wisconsin Governor Leonard Farwell. Farwell was a friend of Andrew Johnson who lived on the same floor at the Kirkwood House. Upon witnessing the shooting of the President, he immediately left the theater and hurried to Andrew Johnson’s hotel room. A few moments after calling loudly for him and rapping on the door, the Vice-President rose from his bed and answered his call. Farwell told him of the assassination, locked and bolted the door, and isolated him from the mob forming in the streets by insisting the hotel place a guard outside his room.
Washington’s Provost Marshall Major James O’Beirne also sent a man to guard the Vice-President as soon as he heard the news of the attack. After a briefing with Secretary of War Stanton, O’Beirne, secured a buggy and fought his way through the crowds to summon the Vice-President at the Kirkwood House.
Asked by Johnson if the President was dead, O’Beirne replied that he was not when he left the Peterson House but death could come at any moment. He then told him, “It is the wish of Mr. Stanton that you come down to the Peterson House, in order to be sworn in when Mr. Lincoln dies. And I believe it is intended to hold a cabinet meeting in the parlor of the house.”
Senator Charles Sumner was at Lincoln’s bedside the entire night and said Johnson arrived ‘about two o’clock in the morning’. According to the Senator, Johnson remained only two minutes in the Lincoln’s room, because Mary wanted to visit her husband again.
Since Johnson’s visit to Lincoln’s deathbed was so brief, we have to assume he spent the majority of his time conferring with Stanton. Best estimates put his stay between 20 to 30 minutes. Johnson was a virtual prisoner in his room after the attack and was anxious to learn as much as possible. He continually queried his guards over Lincoln and Seward’s condition. He even asked Farwell to go in person to see the President and not be satisfied with second or third hand information.
Senator Sumner knew that Mrs. Lincoln had a strong dislike for Andrew Johnson and thought it best that she not see him hovering over her husband. Since his briefing with Stanton was finished, Johnson excused himself and disappeared into the night. What happened next became a mystery and controversy.
The only people that we know who were actually looking at their watches and recording the time of events was Stanton as he dispatched orders and Dr. Ezra Abbott who was recording Lincoln’s pulse readings.
Mary Lincoln’s friend Elizabeth Dixon wrote that Mrs. Lincoln left her husband’s side only twice the entire evening. From Dr. Abbott’s notes, we know that the first time she left was 2:10 a.m. returning to his side at 3:00 a.m.
1.30 o’clock. Pulse 95; appearing easier.
1.45 o’clock. Pulse 86; respiration irregular; Mrs. Lincoln present
2.10 o’clock. Mrs. Lincoln, with Robert Lincoln, retired to an adjoining room.
2.30 o’clock. Pulse 54; President very quiet; respiration 28.
2.52 o’clock. Pulse 48; respiration 30.
3.00 o’clock. Visited again by Mrs. Lincoln.
The second and last time was twenty minutes before his death confirmed by the accounts of Dr. Leale and Mrs. Dixon.
If the Dixon and Sumner accounts are true, then Johnson’s visit with Stanton had to have taken place between 2:10 and 2:52 am. His visit to Lincoln’s bedside occurred the first time Mary Lincoln was absent from the room. Since he left before she entered, we have to assume he left the building between 2:52 and 3:00 am.
At 7:22 Lincoln died. Upon Lincoln's death, Stanton remarked, "Now he belongs to the ages." He later eulogized Lincoln with the words, "There lies the most perfect ruler of men the world has ever seen.”
Remarkably, President Andrew Johnson gave Lincoln no eulogy at all. Nor did he offer any condolences to his widow or his family. When Robert Lincoln offered to sell Johnson the former president’s carriage, horses and other trappings of the office, he refused to consider it. He also refused to set foot on the boat Lincoln used to sail on the Potomac. Furthermore, his actions at the Peterson House seemed callously irresponsible. Stanton’s purpose for calling him, according to O’Beirne, was to keep the government functioning by not leaving the position of President vacant. Johnson’s abrupt departure left the impression that Lincoln was not dying fast enough for him.
This was the most important night and event in Johnson’s life. Where did he go? What did he do? . The silence on his whereabouts is deafening. Illustrators of the day placed Johnson in the death room with Lincoln dying in his arms, which we know was not true, but it gave the correct political spin that the country needed to see. By having no written account on the matter, Johnson’s biographers leave us with the impression that he merely returned alone to his room at the Kirkwood, finished reading a book, and went back to sleep waiting for Lincoln to die. If true, Johnson was the only man in Washington who slept that night. With every self-serving politician in D.C. trying to get into the Petersen House and anarchy running in the streets, the account of the Vice President’s actions seem to have been expunged. He simply disappears from history.
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