Lincoln, the unknown

224 •LINCOLN THE UNKNOWNin a basket. Knowing that each wood-path was being searchedand that spies were everywhere, he called his hogs as he carriedthe basket and pretended to be feeding his live stock.Booth, hungry as he was for food, was hungrier still for information.He kept begging Jones to tell him the news, to lethim know how the nation was applauding his act.Jones brought him newspapers, and Booth devoured themeagerly, searching in vain, however, for the burst of acclaim hehad coveted so passionately. He found in them only disillusionand heartbreak.For more than thirty hours he had been racing toward Virginia,braving the tortures of the flesh. But, violent as they hadbeen, they were easy to endure compared with the mental anguishthat he suffered now. The fury of the North—that wasnothing, he had expected that. But when the Virginia papersshowed that the South his South—had turned upon him, condemningand disowning him, he was frantic with disappointmentand despair. He, who had dreamed of being honored as a secondBrutus and glorified as a modern William Tell, now foundhimself denounced as a coward, a fool, a hireling, a cutthroat.These attacks stung him like the sting of an adder. Theywere bitter as death.But did he blame himself? No. Far from it. He blamed everybodyelse—everybody except himself and God. He had beenmerely an instrument in the hands of the Almighty. That washis defense. He had been divinely appointed to shoot AbrahamLincoln, and his only mistake had been in serving a people "toodegenerate" to appreciate him. That was the phrase he set downin his diary— "too degenerate.""If the world knew my heart," he wrote, "that one blowwould have made me great, though I did not desire greatness.... I have too great a soul to die like a criminal."Lying there, shivering under a horse-blanket, on the dampground near Zekiah Swamp, he poured out his aching heart intragic bombast:Wet, cold and starving, with every man's hand againstme, I am here in despair, and why? For doing what Brutuswas honored for—for what made Tell a hero. I havestricken down a greater tyrant than they ever knew, andI am looked upon as a common cut-throat; yet my actionwas purer than either of theirs. ... I hoped for no gain.