I

N the ludicro-terrific aftermath of Lincoln's assassination there was one ray of sunshine-Boston Corbett, the mad hatter.

Insanity had a peculiar hold upon the city of Washington in that month of April, 1865; and, among its weird manifestations, many a later historian would have gone mad but for the refreshing appearance, here and there in the yellowing pages, of Corbett the clown.

School-children are not shown any of his antics. To them he is merely the briefly thrilling sergeant who revenged Lincoln's death by shooting down the assassin, John Wilkes Booth. Only to those dull drones, the bookworms, does Corbett stand forth in his full stature as the "Gloryto-God Man."

Thomas P. Corbett came to America in 1839, a seven-year-old son of English immigrants, presumably settling in Troy, New York-for it was there, at an early age, that he learned his trade of itinerant hatfinisher. In its pursuit he proceeded by way of Albany, Richmond and New York to Boston, where in 1857 he was employed in the factory of one Samuel Mason, Jr.

It was in this year, the year he was twenty-five, that he gave himself a new first name, coming to this

rebaptism through religious conversion. On the street one night he listened to a soap-box evangelist— and was saved. Under the preacher's words Corbett saw himself revealed as a sinner; his fondness for hard liquor loomed now as a gaudy crime. His soul swam before him as a precious thing demanding sacrifices. So he marched to the mourners' bench and joined up for life.

For his baptism in the Methodist Episcopal Church, Corbett needed a new Christian name, since Jesus when he called his disciples had given them new names; and after much indecision he settled on "Boston," believing that its selection would honor the site of his rebirth. Boston Corbett he became.

Great days followed. Every evening, when the sun went down, the new-born man struck off, full of high hopes and hot supper, to help the street evangelists with their salvage.

But instead of helping, he nearly ruined them. They found it impossible to be heard above their new convert's sanctified bellowings. His ecstatic cries of "Come to Jesus" and "Glory to God" drowned everything else; and, at length, harassed beyond endurance, they blessed him and sent him forth to work alone.

Hat-finishing in those days was a matter of coördinating hands. In Mason's factory, as in all others, the workmen sat in long rows, giving form to the hats that passed from hand to hand. If the human chain was broken, all work stopped; and after Corbett's conversion, breaks were frequent. Whenever one of his comrades dropped an oath or sighed for a drink, down would go Boston on his knees, and up would go Boston's voice in interminable prayer. Naturally the hats waited, and, naturally enough, Samuel Mason, Jr. began to teeter on the edge of bankruptcy, edging so close, in fact, that he was driven to discharge his zealous workman-not, however, without a presumable blessing.

Eight years later when Corbett had become a national hero, Mason's daughter on being shown Corbett's latest photograph, said, "They must have cut his hair in the army, for when he was here he wore it like the Saviour's, long and parted in the middle."

Between saving souls and finishing hats he bridged the three years that followed; then came Lincoln's first call for volunteers. Corbett was one of the earliest to enroll, enlisting in Company I of the 12th New York militia on April 19, 1861. But not even the loss of his Messianic locks, or the rigorous drilling could divert him from his holy task, and in a few days the entire camp knew him as the "Glory-to-God Man."

On one of those early drill-days in Franklin Square, the regimental

Out from the ranks stepped a private. He saluted. He saluted. Butterfield gasped.

"Colonel, don't you know that you are breaking God's law?" asked the soldier firmly, yet not without kindness.

"Take him to the guard-house," bawled the officer.

It was Corbett again; and in the guard-house he sang hymns loudly, increasing their volume when ordered to keep quiet. When Colonel Butterfield sent word that he would be liberated if he would say he was sorry, Corbett sent back the answer that he had only offended the Colonel, whereas the Colonel had offended God, and that he would never ask the Colonel's pardon until the Colonel had asked the pardon of God for swearing.

Worn out, Butterfield freed him, and Corbett came up smiling with the Good Book under his arm and the exclamation upon his lips, “I had a good time in there with my God and my Bible."

21

Corbett was always a problem to his superiors. When his first enlistment was nearing its completion, he announced that, according to his way of figuring, his time was up on a certain day at midnight. His officers explained that the records set it several days later. Corbett said no more, but when his midnight came, calmly walked off sentry-post and began packing his suitcase. He was arrested, court-martialed and sentenced to be shot as a deserter.

Again his colonel relented and appealed to Lincoln, who pardoned the prisoner.

The day after his pardon came Corbett reënlisted-in fact he reenlisted three times before the war was over; for in spite of everything, colonels were glad to get him. He was a hell-cat in battle.

Colonel Mosby, the Confederate raider, who was considerable of a hell-cat himself, met Corbett once. It was at Culpeper Court House, sometime in June, 1864 in a brush between blue and gray cavalrymen. A detachment of the 16th New York horsemen who were cornered by Mosby's men, fought wildly until so many of them had been shot down that surrender became honorable. They gave up-all but one.

One sergeant still stood against a wall, blazing into the gray riders until his last cartridge was gone. Mosby, admiring, ordered him spared, and then, before them all, complimented the fellow. Corbett again.

The compliments of his captors, however, did not keep him out of Andersonville Prison. Soon he was in that sink of despair, but without the hopelessness of his companions. With no loss of time he fell to saving souls, traveling from cave to cave, haranguing in the dugouts where gaunt prisoners sold rats to each other for food. His energy mounted higher and higher, so high, in fact, that in a little while he had burst clear out of the prison and had worked his way well north before the bloodhounds "treed" him. Back in the detention camp once more he resumed his religious toil, keeping it up until bad food broke his health.

In the early spring of 1865 he was exchanged by his captors as worthless.

But there was no downing the man. In early April he was back at the headquarters of the 16th New York Cavalry for reinstatement. His new papers came just as Lee surrendered.

The regiment was stationed at Vienna, Virginia, twelve miles out of Washington, on Saturday, April 15, when the news came that Lincoln was killed. Like the other regiments of the Army of the Potomac, the 16th New York was rushed out to search for the fugitive Booth and his silly-boy follower, Davy Herold, when these two escaped from Washington and fled somewhere, God only knew. In detachments the troopers rode out on clues, stood guard about the streets of the capital or paraded in the Lincoln funeral procession during the days that followed.

On Saturday night, April 23, the "Glory-to-God Man" spoke at McKendry Chapel, a religious revival center in Washington. He had spoken there before, had, in fact, spoken there so often that the directors had come to regard him as a great nuisance. But this particular appearance was remarkable, according to the story Corbett was to tell several days later. He had prayed with great earnestness to God, to bring the guilty to punishment, and he had declared his belief that, as a reward for his religious labors, the Almighty would deliver Booth into his hands. Likely though it be that this coincidence was born in the fanatic's imagination after he had shot the assassin, he was nevertheless the particular sergeant ordered out at the head of twenty-five troopers

when Major-General Hancock, commanding the Army of the Potomac, agreed to send regulars with the two secret service men, Colonel Conger and Lieutenant Baker, who were starting on a new trail across the Rappahannock River. For ten days the hunt for the fugitives had been wild and fumbling. The army and the secret service had been squabbling, wasting time. Here was a fresh scent and on the afternoon of Monday, April 24, the party clattered forth.

Deep in the night of Tuesday, the twenty-fifth, the trail grew hot, and at two o'clock in the morning the hunted men were "treed" in a tobacco barn.

Booth was to be taken alive. Every trooper knew that. The order had been dinned into all ears ever since Secretary Stanton had launched the search on the fourteenth of April. Stanton wanted Booth dead or alive, but particularly alive so that he might hang him "as high as Haman" to awe the South, which he believed, or professed to believe, was rejoicing over Booth's deed.

Colonel Conger disposed the saddle-sore and weary soldiers about the barn in a circle, assigning each trooper some stick, stone or post for his station in order that none might stray away for a nap. Corbett's place, in this circle, was at one side of the barn, some thirty feet from it. Then followed arguments, through the locked door, between the awakened Booth and the detectivesappeals, from the outside, for a peaceable surrender; defiances, melodramatic speeches and Brutus-like heroics from within. After a while Herold, the only one of Booth's

troopers, of Herold afterward, "and as we tied him to a tree he said he'd always liked Mr. Lincoln's jokes."

When it became apparent that Booth would not surrender, Conger the detective fired the barn; and soon the assassin was visible, through the large cracks between the weatherboarding, hobbling about the now brightly lighted interior, brandishing a carbine as he leaned on a crutchhis leg had been broken in a ridiculously dramatic leap from the theater box to the stage after he had shot the President.

Corbett complained to his superiors that his position, opposite a particularly large crack, put him in danger of Booth's carbine. They paid no heed.

The flames rose, crackling. Booth started for the door. Hidden by the smoke one moment, disclosed, then hidden again.

A shot cracked out above the snapping of the fire. Booth fell. Lieutenant Baker, who had been peeping in at the door, sprang to pinion the fugitive and was kneeling beside him, hunting for the wound, when Conger came tumbling in, crying, "He shot himself." "He did not," Baker replied. "The man who shot him should go back to Washington in irons to-night.”

But the man who shot Booth was not only free of irons, but very full of triumph as the cavalcade, later in the day, started back to Washington with Herold lashed to a saddle, and Booth's carcass bumping about

in an old negro's cart which had been commandeered.

God had spoken to Corbett as of old. Voices had commanded and the servant had deliberately left his post, stepped nearer to the crack in the barn, and, taking careful aim with his pistol resting across his arm, had shot Booth in the back of the head-a remarkable piece of marksmanship.

So remarkable was it that Conger never believed Corbett did it. As the detective passed the sergeant, while the troops carried Booth out of the inferno, he asked, "Why did you fire against orders?"

Corbett, preening himself in the glare of the mounting flames, replied, "God Almighty directed me!"

"I guess He did," observed Conger, "or you could never have hit Booth through that crack in the barn."

Corbett rode into Washington a hero. The telegraph carried his fame to all the world. His photographs were soon selling like Grant's. In his talks with reporters he gave the credit to God.

On May 17, he testified briefly at the trial of the conspirators whom the Government was attempting to link with the dead Booth, "I saw Booth make a movement toward the door. I supposed that he was going to fight his way out. One of the men who was watching, told me that Booth aimed his carbine at me. He was taking aim, but at whom I could not say. My mind was upon him attentively to see that he did no harm, and when I became impressed that it was time, I shot him."

For this, his most flagrant insubordination, Boston Corbett

was

never punished. In the face of public hosannas, the Government had to hide its chagrin and pass over a piece of gross disobedience for which, in almost any other circumstance, its author would have been shot.

Congress did, at least negatively, chastise Corbett when it came to apportion the $75,000 reward which the Government had offered for the apprehension of Booth and Herold. The Committee on Claims gave the Glory-to-God man no more than it gave each of the privates in the party, $1,653.85, while Conger received $15,000, Lieutenant Baker $3,000 and Lieutenant Dougherty $5,250.

On his discharge from the army in the general mustering out, Corbett like more modern heroes of sensational trials, took to the lecture platform. Churches, women's clubs, Sunday-schools, religious leagues, patriotic bodies, besought him to address them. But they never besought him more than once. His addresses turned into wild incoherencies on religion, and soon the patriots and even the churchfolk found their curiosity smothered in yawns.

Soon he was again finishing hats in Boston. This too failed a little later when the style in men's headgear changed, throwing the hatfinishers out of their jobs. Corbett fortunately found an impoverished congregation of Methodists in Camden, New Jersey, who could afford only a lay preacher and upon them he descended. It was not long, however, until they blessed him and passed him along.

He is next heard from in 1878 homesteading in Kansas. Farming