Lafayette Square. Seven acres, four statues of foreign Revolutionary War heroes, one Andrew Jackson on a horse. It's a nice park. It was also the site of the most violent part of the assassination plot — and nobody talks about it.
While Booth was shooting Lincoln at Ford's Theatre, a twenty-one-year-old named Lewis Powell was HERE — on the east side of this square.
Secretary of State William Seward lived in a house on what was then Madison Place — right about where that federal courthouse stands now. Nine days before the assassination, Seward had been thrown from his carriage. Broken jaw. Broken arm. Concussion. He was bedridden on the third floor, wearing an iron jaw splint — a metal-and-canvas brace wired to his face.
At ten-fifteen on the night of April fourteenth — the same minute Booth was pulling the trigger — Powell knocked on Seward's front door. He told the servant he had medicine from Seward's doctor and needed to deliver it personally.
The servant was suspicious. Powell
forced his way past, climbed to the third floor, and encountered Frederick Seward — the Secretary's son and Assistant Secretary of State. When Frederick blocked the hallway, Powell aimed his revolver at Frederick's head.
The gun misfired.
So Powell pistol-whipped him. Beat Frederick Seward with the revolver until it broke apart in his hand — fracturing Frederick's skull in two places, exposing t
