Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from housetof
Speaker 1: works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Sarah Dowdy and I'm Delaney Charcoateboarding and around Christmas this year,
Speaker 1: listener Hillary sent us the book Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowel,
Speaker 1: about the assassinations of three U S Presidents, Lincoln, Garfield,
Speaker 1: and McKinley. And before I started the book, I figured,
Speaker 1: of those three, I'd probably know the most about Lincoln's assassination,
Speaker 1: at least the scene for its theater, the circumstances Lincoln
Speaker 1: shot point blank in the head, and the players involved,
Speaker 1: the actor John Wilkes Booth and his motley crew of conspirators.
Speaker 1: But I hadn't realized the entire breadth of the attack.
Speaker 1: The attack on Lincoln was really just one part of
Speaker 1: three planned assassinations that were supposed to go down that night.
Speaker 1: And I hadn't realized the intensiveness of the man hunt
Speaker 1: for Booth either, or the strange, sad stories about peripheral
Speaker 1: figures involved, like Booth's brother, the President's son, the Lincoln
Speaker 1: theater guests. The night of the assassination. It really proved
Speaker 1: to be a more in depth and more fascinating story
Speaker 1: than I had imagined. So in this podcast, we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about what happened the night of April fourteenth,
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty five at Ford's Theater, but also some of
Speaker 1: the events that happened long before that and long after.
Speaker 1: And if you're a Lincoln buff, we hope that you
Speaker 1: will get to hear your favorite weird detail or conspiracy
Speaker 1: theory about this, And if you're not, then you're probably
Speaker 1: going to be in for some surprises. It's sometimes fascinating
Speaker 1: to extend the story beyond the point that we're used
Speaker 1: to hearing, which for most people is probably Booth jumping
Speaker 1: over the railing of the President's box and escaping. But
Speaker 1: the first semi surprise of this podcast is going to
Speaker 1: be that John Wilkes Booth, who is now of course
Speaker 1: famous firstly as an assassin and secondly as an actor,
Speaker 1: was really a pretty big star. I always kind of
Speaker 1: imagined him as a middling actor in that fact was emphasized,
Speaker 1: you know, just to make it all the stranger that
Speaker 1: he was an assassin. He was, however, a member of
Speaker 1: a great theatrical family, albeit kind of a lesser member.
Speaker 1: But that's just because the other family members were so famous.
Speaker 1: Booth had been born in Maryland in eighteen thirty eight.
Speaker 1: He was the ninth of ten children of Junius Brutus Booth,
Speaker 1: who was an English actor very famous in England who
Speaker 1: had moved to the United States in eighteen twenty one.
Speaker 1: Booth Sr. Was one of the most famous Shakespearean actors
Speaker 1: in the country, maybe second only to Edwin Forest he
Speaker 1: might remember from last year's Astor Place riot, and partly
Speaker 1: to keep Junius Brutus from getting too wild on the road,
Speaker 1: he had a drinking problem. His three sons got into
Speaker 1: theater two and the middle boy, Edwin, became a star
Speaker 1: to really rival his father. We're going to talk about
Speaker 1: him a bit more later. The youngest, meanwhile, John Wilkes,
Speaker 1: had a rockier start with his theatrical career until he
Speaker 1: joined a Shakespearean company based in Richmond, Virginia. Yeah. Once
Speaker 1: with that company, he toured the country, including the South,
Speaker 1: and became celebrated for his good looks and athletic acting.
Speaker 1: But the intensity of Booth's political opinions made him a
Speaker 1: bit of an odd ball. He was extremely pro slavery,
Speaker 1: anti Lincoln, and an ardent supporter of the Confederacy. While
Speaker 1: some historians suggest Booth served as a Confederate agent during
Speaker 1: the war, the only thing stopping him from taking a
Speaker 1: more active role for his cause was a promise that
Speaker 1: he made for his mother so he wouldn't actually enlist
Speaker 1: in the army. So by the autumn of eighteen sixty four,
Speaker 1: Booth started making plans to kidnap President Lincoln, drawing in
Speaker 1: other conspirators to meet at Mrs Mary Sarat's Washington, d c.
Speaker 1: Boarding house, and Booth, for one, already had a pretty
Speaker 1: good in with the President, despite his earlier flings with actresses,
Speaker 1: including an incident reported by Thomas Lowry in America Civil
Speaker 1: War when he actress Henrietta Irving tried to stab Booth
Speaker 1: in the chest, grazing his face and stays, yes, he
Speaker 1: had away with the ladies, I guess. But Booth's current
Speaker 1: girlfriend was the daughter of an ardent abolitionist U S.
Speaker 1: Senator Lucy Hale, So with Lucy as his date and
Speaker 1: his ind to the Lincoln circle, Booth even got a
Speaker 1: prime seat at Lincoln's second inaugurlar address, ragging to a
Speaker 1: friend that he had had a really great chance to
Speaker 1: kill the president. Then you can even see Booth in
Speaker 1: the picture of Lincoln giving his address. The kidnapping plans
Speaker 1: ultimately kept falling through, though, and soon enough the motive
Speaker 1: to stage at kidnapping in the first place disappeared. So
Speaker 1: the point of kidnapping instead of killing had been to
Speaker 1: exchange Lincoln for Confederate prisoners of war. But on April
Speaker 1: nine sixty the war ended, so what are you gonna do? Ironically, though,
Speaker 1: it was Lincoln's speech on reconstruct Action, which took place
Speaker 1: just a few days after that on the White House
Speaker 1: lawn that really fired up Booth made him decide that
Speaker 1: he didn't want to give up the plan of kidnapping.
Speaker 1: He wanted to escalate it to something more. He had
Speaker 1: attended that speech with co conspirator Louis Powell and left
Speaker 1: it swearing that it would be Lincoln's last speech. So
Speaker 1: the right opportunity for Booth came almost immediately when he
Speaker 1: read in the paper that the President and Mrs Lincoln
Speaker 1: were due to attend a performance of Our American Cousin
Speaker 1: at Ford's Theater in d C the night of April fourteen. So,
Speaker 1: after months of plotting for more elaborate scenarios he swung
Speaker 1: into action. He lined up his co conspirators into a
Speaker 1: three pronged attack which was meant to cripple the government. Powell,
Speaker 1: a former Confederate soldier, would assassinate the Secretary of State
Speaker 1: William Seward with the help of David Harold. George at Serat,
Speaker 1: a German immigrant and former boatman for Confederate spies, would
Speaker 1: assassinate Vice President Andrew Johnson, and Booth himself would assassinate Lincoln.
Speaker 1: And all these attacks would take place at approximately ten
Speaker 1: pm on that night. So the morning of the assassination,
Speaker 1: Booth was spotted with Lucy Hale, whose father was probably
Speaker 1: at that same time meeting with Lincoln about his new
Speaker 1: appointment to Spain. Lucy Hill's father was looking to get
Speaker 1: out of DC along with his daughter, get her away
Speaker 1: from crazy actor Booth. But at about six pm that night,
Speaker 1: Booth entered Ford's Theater, which was pretty empty at that point,
Speaker 1: and tampered with the door to the President's box, fixing
Speaker 1: it so that the outer door of the box could
Speaker 1: be jammed from the inside. After that, he just had
Speaker 1: hours to kill, you know, trying to pass his time.
Speaker 1: The theater's conductor, William Withers Jr. Who was pretty paked
Speaker 1: to have the song he had composed performed for the
Speaker 1: President that night, was also killing time and spotted Booth
Speaker 1: at an actor's bar nearby the theater, and according to
Speaker 1: a Richard Sloan article in American Heritage, Withers even heard
Speaker 1: somebody joke quote, oh, Booth will never be as great
Speaker 1: an actor as his father, which sounds like fighting words
Speaker 1: most of the time with Booth, but Booth just replied,
Speaker 1: pretty coolly, quote, when I leave the stage for good,
Speaker 1: I will be the most famous man in America. So
Speaker 1: during the third act, Booth re entered the theater and
Speaker 1: walked into the President's box. He waited for a line
Speaker 1: in the play that he knew would get big laughs.
Speaker 1: I mean, remember, he was an actor, so we would
Speaker 1: have known that sort of thing. Then he bust into
Speaker 1: the inner door and shot Lincoln in the back of
Speaker 1: the head with a forty four caliber garranger. Booth had
Speaker 1: been expecting General and Mrs Grant to also be in
Speaker 1: the box, and that's what the papers had announced, so
Speaker 1: that's pretty much what he thought was going to happen.
Speaker 1: But the Grants had turned down the invite, and Booth
Speaker 1: instead found the Union officer, Major Henry Rathbone and his
Speaker 1: fiance Clara Harris. So Rathbone of course that's what has happened,
Speaker 1: and he kind of tussles with Booth, getting slashed in
Speaker 1: the arm before Booth jumps over the boxes railing shouting
Speaker 1: seeks semper tierness, thus always to tyrants, and he caught
Speaker 1: a spur on the American flag, landed on the stage
Speaker 1: below and broke his leg. From there, the conductor Withers
Speaker 1: ran into him again. Withers, who had taken an underground
Speaker 1: passageway around to the stage to question why his special
Speaker 1: song that he had written kept getting pushed back. He
Speaker 1: heard a pistol shot the thump, and then found himself
Speaker 1: face to face with Booth, a flashing mad Booth to
Speaker 1: Booth managed to escape down the passage out to an
Speaker 1: alley and then on horseback to Maryland. We're going to
Speaker 1: pick up with him later. But what about the other conspirators,
Speaker 1: because remember this was a three pronged attack. We know
Speaker 1: things must have not worked out quite according to plan,
Speaker 1: because Johnson did go on to become president, he lived,
Speaker 1: and Seward went on to buy Alaska from Russia for
Speaker 1: seven point two million dollars, something that was mocked at
Speaker 1: the time called Seward's folly. But enough on that Atserat,
Speaker 1: who was commission to kill the vice president, just completely
Speaker 1: chickened out. I think he went out drinking instead and
Speaker 1: got nowhere near Johnson Powell, though, did some pretty serious
Speaker 1: damage to the Seward family. He arrived at their home
Speaker 1: under the guise of a pharmacy delivery boy. Um. He
Speaker 1: went into Seward's house where the Secretary of State was
Speaker 1: laid up after a very serious carriage accident. He had
Speaker 1: broken an arm and his jaw, and uh that those
Speaker 1: injuries required pretty serious banishing to his face and head,
Speaker 1: which is a key point here. So when Paul entered
Speaker 1: the home and was trying to deliver his medicine, Seward's
Speaker 1: son Frederick met him but wouldn't allow him upstairs to
Speaker 1: deliver the items personally. So at that point Paul pulled
Speaker 1: out a gun tried to shoot Frederick, but found that
Speaker 1: his gun wouldn't fire and pistol whipped him instead. Then
Speaker 1: he charged up the stairs started slashing Seward Bedrooden Sewar
Speaker 1: with a bowie knife in front of Seward's daughter too,
Speaker 1: until finally the military officer who had been assigned to
Speaker 1: Seward during his convalescence grappled with Powell and uh Seward's
Speaker 1: other son joined into um ended up getting injured. A
Speaker 1: colleague of Seward's got injured to Powe really did some
Speaker 1: serious damage, but did manage to escape. Nobody was killed
Speaker 1: in this incident. Seward and his son's recovered um, but
Speaker 1: his wife died just a few weeks after because of
Speaker 1: the double shock of the carriage accident and then this violent,
Speaker 1: bloody attack in her home. Just to return and kind
Speaker 1: of pick up with the Lincoln portion of the story,
Speaker 1: Lincoln meanwhile, is dying from head wound. The first doctor
Speaker 1: on the scene was Charles sab and Taft, who ordered
Speaker 1: Lincoln to be removed to the nearest home. The president
Speaker 1: was brought across the street to the lodging house of
Speaker 1: William Peterson and placed diagonally across the bed because he
Speaker 1: was too tall to just lie on it properly. While
Speaker 1: the surgeon General cared for the president. Dr Taff stayed
Speaker 1: in attendance, journaling the next morning that he had held
Speaker 1: Lincoln's head almost all throughout the night he talked about
Speaker 1: how heavy it was to just hold it there all night.
Speaker 1: The president was pronounced dead at seven two am, and
Speaker 1: then the Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton proclaimed, quote,
Speaker 1: now he belongs to the ages. One of the more
Speaker 1: famous quotes about Lincoln. In the president's pockets were a
Speaker 1: pocket knife, two pairs of glasses, and a Confederate five
Speaker 1: dollar bill, which I think is the most unusual item there. Okay,
Speaker 1: so after the President dies, of course, the next day
Speaker 1: was Easter Sunday, which was the absolute perfect time to
Speaker 1: compare Lincoln's death to Jesus's sacrifice from pulpits across the country.
Speaker 1: So everybody is talking about Lincoln and everybody is talking
Speaker 1: about his assassin. After an autopsy, Lincoln lane state at
Speaker 1: the White House and the Capital the for being sent
Speaker 1: on a thirteen day train trip back to Springfield with
Speaker 1: plenty of open casket viewings. Um just to sign note here.
Speaker 1: Vale notes in her book that this was really great
Speaker 1: publicity for the new trend in embalming, seeing the president
Speaker 1: so many days after he had been killed. Meanwhile, as
Speaker 1: the President's body is traveling around the search for Booth
Speaker 1: and his accomplices, as heating up. It's the largest man
Speaker 1: hunt to that date, and it was helped along by
Speaker 1: the Secretary of Wars one hundred thousand dollar reward, which
Speaker 1: incidentally also helped shore of the historical record because, according
Speaker 1: to a Smithsonian article by James Swanson, so many of
Speaker 1: Booth's trackers documented the experience because they were trying to
Speaker 1: get a piece of the rewards, so a lot of
Speaker 1: them did. It was split up among many different people.
Speaker 1: But after fleeing forwards Theater, Booth had met up with
Speaker 1: David Harold, who, if you remember, was supposed to be
Speaker 1: on the Powell Seward assassination team. He had left Powell
Speaker 1: though behind at the Seward house. Those two who high
Speaker 1: tailed it for the Maryland home of Dr Samuel Mud
Speaker 1: who set Booth leg and then they spent five nights
Speaker 1: and five days in the woods waiting to cross the
Speaker 1: Potomac into Virginia. They had a little help, though, yeah.
Speaker 1: A Confederate agent named Thomas Jones brought them food and newspapers,
Speaker 1: and it was a big disappointment when Booth read those papers.
Speaker 1: People hated him. He thought that he would be considered
Speaker 1: a hero, the destroyer of a tyrant, and he journaled
Speaker 1: all of these feelings, complaining that people were talking about
Speaker 1: him as a quote common cutthroat. Once in Virginia, Booth
Speaker 1: and Harold wound their way to the farm of Richard Garrett,
Speaker 1: where they stayed under assumed names. Though they must have
Speaker 1: seemed like desperate men, the Garretts allowed them to sleep
Speaker 1: in their tobacco barn, but actually locked them in at
Speaker 1: night so that they wouldn't steal any horses. That night,
Speaker 1: Lieutenant Edward Dougherty, in charge of the sixteenth New York Cavalry,
Speaker 1: along with detectives Luther Baker and Everton Conquer, tracked the
Speaker 1: men to the farm. The Garretts dog started barking at
Speaker 1: the sound of horses, and so Booth and Harold of
Speaker 1: course woke up. They tried to escape, but found themselves
Speaker 1: locked in, and by the time they were trying to
Speaker 1: kick out aboard, the farmhouse was surrounded. So old man
Speaker 1: Garrett and his sons were pushed around a bit by
Speaker 1: the search party until they admitted where the men were
Speaker 1: in the tobacco barn. One of the sons was even
Speaker 1: forced to enter the barn and try to disarm Booth.
Speaker 1: Nobody else wanted to go in. Booth basically told him
Speaker 1: he sold me out, get out, or I'll kill you.
Speaker 1: But despite having a whole cavalry, the law enforcement officers
Speaker 1: really kind of dizzerd about what to do, because they
Speaker 1: did have orders to bring back Booth alive. He was,
Speaker 1: of course wanted for questioning, but nobody wanted to get
Speaker 1: killed either, and everybody fully expected that that would happen
Speaker 1: if they had a face to face with the armed
Speaker 1: and desperate Booth. So their solution was burned the barn.
Speaker 1: Harold begged to be let out, and he eventually is
Speaker 1: let out. Booth, on the other hand, poses kind of
Speaker 1: challenge to Baker, makes them a little proposition combat on
Speaker 1: open ground Booth against the cavalry just as long as
Speaker 1: they back up from the barn door. He creepily mentions
Speaker 1: to Baker how honorable he's been the whole time. He says, quote, Captain,
Speaker 1: I have had half a dozen opportunities to shoot you,
Speaker 1: but I did not. So at this point Baker realizes, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm holding this candle. So he loses that target. You
Speaker 1: can see him through the barn, the cracks in the
Speaker 1: barn wall. Yeah, he gets rid of that, but he
Speaker 1: declines Booth's offer. He says, quote, we did not come
Speaker 1: here to fight you. We simply came to make you
Speaker 1: a prisoner. Booth reduces the demands of his offer. At
Speaker 1: that point, he says that he'll come out and fight
Speaker 1: if the men just back off from the door just
Speaker 1: a little bit. Give me a chance for my life,
Speaker 1: he says. But that just was not happening. So Booth says, well,
Speaker 1: my brave boys prepare stretcher for me. But the way
Speaker 1: it went down was actually more like a bonfire. They
Speaker 1: finally sent the bar set the barn on fire. The
Speaker 1: barn goes up in flames really fast, and in the
Speaker 1: panic of Booth trying to get out, he gets shot
Speaker 1: by a sergeant Boston Corbett, who, as a sad note,
Speaker 1: was possibly a mad hatter. He did go insane, and
Speaker 1: it might have been because of the mercury used in
Speaker 1: hat making. Back to Booth, though, he was caught before
Speaker 1: he even hit the ground from getting shot by Boston Corbett,
Speaker 1: and he was presumed dead. In fact, though he was
Speaker 1: paralyzed from the neck down. He could talk a little
Speaker 1: bit and move his eyes, but he couldn't swallow the
Speaker 1: water that was offered to him. He had to watch
Speaker 1: as Colonel Everton Conger checked his pockets and removed money
Speaker 1: and keys and tobacco in a compass. When Conger went
Speaker 1: into an inner pocket, he found the diary Booth had
Speaker 1: been keeping, you know, lamenting the fact he wasn't a
Speaker 1: national hero, plus five photos of different ladies. One was
Speaker 1: a lesser known actress, two were pretty famous leading ladies
Speaker 1: of the day. One was a Subrette type actress who
Speaker 1: was married to a violinist, and then the last one
Speaker 1: was Lucy Hales. So I don't know if Lucy maybe
Speaker 1: had a surprise when she heard the news he had
Speaker 1: five photos in his pocket. But his official last words
Speaker 1: were tell mother, I die for my country. But he
Speaker 1: also had a few other last requests. He kept on
Speaker 1: asking to be able to examine his lifeless hands. He
Speaker 1: begged the soldiers to kill him. It sounds like a
Speaker 1: really gruesome, really horrible death. He died by the morning
Speaker 1: of April. Booth's body was secretly buried that then reentered
Speaker 1: a few years later at a Stanley plot in Baltimore.
Speaker 1: But the wild conspiracy theories began almost right away. The
Speaker 1: main one, of course, was that Booth didn't die. Instead,
Speaker 1: as the theory goes, he escaped, took the name John
Speaker 1: st Helen and went west. He told a lawyer in
Speaker 1: Texas that he was Booth, but left town in nineteen
Speaker 1: o three. Then the lawyer saw clipping that a David E.
Speaker 1: George committed suicide in Oklahoma and had confessed he was
Speaker 1: Booth before dying. The lawyer recognized the photo as that
Speaker 1: of none other than st Helen. George's body was mummified,
Speaker 1: which I'm not sure quite why, and it toward freak
Speaker 1: shows as Booth's body until at some point it went missing.
Speaker 1: So the Baltimore City Circuit Court has been petitioned even
Speaker 1: fairly recently, to have Booth's body exhumed, including by some
Speaker 1: of Booth's own relatives, but they've declined for two reasons. One,
Speaker 1: there's really not much basis for this claim. It's probably
Speaker 1: Booth buried at the memorial. Secondly, though it would involve
Speaker 1: exhuming a lot of the other Booths in the family plot,
Speaker 1: almost all of those kids of Junius Brutus are buried there,
Speaker 1: and it's not really clear where each individual family member
Speaker 1: is located. So now that we at least kind of
Speaker 1: no think we know what happened to Booth, what happened
Speaker 1: to the rest of his companions while they were also
Speaker 1: snatched up. Over the time, Harold surrendered at the barn
Speaker 1: as we mentioned, and Powell At, Surat, and the boarding
Speaker 1: house owner Mary Surratt were taken in and those four
Speaker 1: were all found guilty of murder and sentence to hang.
Speaker 1: Surat's sentence is still kind of controversial though, since while
Speaker 1: she definitely knew about the kidnapping plan, she may not
Speaker 1: have known everything about the murder also found guilty and
Speaker 1: sentenced to prison. Where Dr Mud, the guy who had
Speaker 1: set Booth leg, Samuel Arnold who had been in on
Speaker 1: the kidnapping plot but had dropped out earlier, and Michael O'Laughlin,
Speaker 1: who had also dropped out of the plot before it
Speaker 1: turned to a murderous one. And then finally Edmund Spangler,
Speaker 1: who had worked at Ford's theater, got a six year sentence.
Speaker 1: There's another conspirator, though, Mary Sarratt's son, John Surratt Jr.
Speaker 1: Who wasn't caught for a remarkable twenty months. I mean,
Speaker 1: consider again, this was the largest man hunt to date.
Speaker 1: They were all out looking for this guy. When he
Speaker 1: finally was apprehended, he wasn't even convicted of crime. So
Speaker 1: it's questionable whether John Throughout Jr. Was even in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. The night of the assassination, and of course
Speaker 1: he denied it. But after it he fled to Montreal,
Speaker 1: where he was hidden by a priest for a while
Speaker 1: and eventually put on a boat to Liverpool, where he
Speaker 1: made his way to Rome and, according to a Don
Speaker 1: Bryson article in America's Civil War, actually enlisted in the
Speaker 1: Papal Infantry Guards there, which sounds pretty bizarre and surprising
Speaker 1: that Suratt finally revealed his identity. He had a hard
Speaker 1: time keeping that information to himself, and the Vatican agreed
Speaker 1: to extradite him, but before that could actually happen, he
Speaker 1: escaped from six Papal soldiers, made his way to Naples
Speaker 1: and then got on a ship to Alexandria, Egypt, where
Speaker 1: he finally got off the ship and ran into the
Speaker 1: American authorities. So after they caught him, you know, the U. S.
Speaker 1: District attorney desperately wanted to convict Surat, but the prosecution
Speaker 1: was pretty weak and the trial ended in a hung jury.
Speaker 1: An attempt to rein indict him on the same charges,
Speaker 1: was eventually dismissed after the statute of limitations on those
Speaker 1: charges had passed, though throughout went free. Kind of one
Speaker 1: of the stranger sides of the whole Lincoln conspiracy story. Okay,
Speaker 1: so what about some of the lesser known victims of
Speaker 1: this assassination, including Lincoln's theater guests who we mentioned briefly. Well,
Speaker 1: Major Henry Rathbone, who tried to stop Booth from escaping
Speaker 1: and was stabbed in the arm, was still blamed for
Speaker 1: not stopping the killer. It started to drive him insane.
Speaker 1: This is the guilt from this. Eventually, he and Clara
Speaker 1: married and they had children and moved to Germany, but
Speaker 1: he ended up shooting and killing her, and he was
Speaker 1: actually going to try to kill their children too, before
Speaker 1: a nanny stopped him. There is also one final twist
Speaker 1: to this whole story, and it involves an old, seemingly
Speaker 1: nonsensical word game type statement, and that is Booth saved
Speaker 1: Lincoln's life. Okay, so we're not trying to make some
Speaker 1: sort of commentary on Lincoln's reputation through the ages or
Speaker 1: something having to do with his being assassinated. It's actually
Speaker 1: a fact booth saved Lincoln's life, but it's a different
Speaker 1: booth and a different Lincoln. So it's pretty well known
Speaker 1: how much family tragedy Mrs Lincoln faced. Only one of
Speaker 1: her four sons lived to adulthood, so when her eldest son, Robert,
Speaker 1: came of age to fight in the Civil War, Mrs Lincoln,
Speaker 1: having already lost two of her boys, refused to let
Speaker 1: him go fight. The President was kind of embarrassed by it,
Speaker 1: but Robert instead went off to college and only joined
Speaker 1: up the army in February eighteen sixty five, and even
Speaker 1: then in a pretty cushy position. He was a member
Speaker 1: of General Grant's staff. He got to see Lee's surrender.
Speaker 1: He wasn't really in too much danger. At one point
Speaker 1: in college, though, about eighteen sixty three or eighteen sixty four,
Speaker 1: somewhere in there, he was traveling from New York to
Speaker 1: d C. When his train stopped in Jersey City. Robert
Speaker 1: later recalled that a crowd was standing on the platform
Speaker 1: waiting to buy sleeping car places. When the train began
Speaker 1: to move, he somehow got knocked over and dropped in
Speaker 1: the gap between the platform and the train, so he
Speaker 1: couldn't move, he could have been crushed. I mean, it
Speaker 1: sounds just like a horrifying, scary situation. Suddenly he felt
Speaker 1: someone grab his collar and haul him up, and that
Speaker 1: person was Edwin Booth, who was, of course a super
Speaker 1: famous actor. It would be almost as if Brad Pitt
Speaker 1: came in and saved your life. That was the comparison
Speaker 1: I was thinking of, if you suddenly are lifted out
Speaker 1: of the train pit and you're looking at one of
Speaker 1: the most famous people of your day. Unlike his younger brother,
Speaker 1: though Edwin Booth was a supporter of the Union in
Speaker 1: Lincoln and considerably more even tempered, he had um kind
Speaker 1: of gone off the rails earlier in life and had
Speaker 1: ended up missing his wife's death in eighteen sixty three
Speaker 1: because he was who drunk. So he had really sobered
Speaker 1: up and kind of had much more moderate opinions than
Speaker 1: thumb members of his family. Um, he did learn whose
Speaker 1: life he saved, that he'd saved the President's son when
Speaker 1: he got a letter from a friend who had fall
Speaker 1: on Grant Staff, who had heard Robert Lincoln telling the story.
Speaker 1: As anybody would like, this super famous actor saved my life. Recently,
Speaker 1: isn't that an interesting story? So after John Wilkes Booth
Speaker 1: assassinated the President, Edwin Booth felt particularly devastated the loss
Speaker 1: of a leader, he admired, the family, shame it caused,
Speaker 1: and fear that he'd never be able to work again.
Speaker 1: Booth did make a successful return to the stage in
Speaker 1: January eighteen sixty six and his signature role of Hamlet,
Speaker 1: and went on to found the Players in New York
Speaker 1: City with Mark Twain and General Sherman. But the knowledge
Speaker 1: that he had helped save a Lincoln helped get him
Speaker 1: through the worst months after the assassination. We do have
Speaker 1: one last spooky tidbit for you, though, relating to both
Speaker 1: Edwin Booth and Lincoln's assassinate nation. During Edwin's eighteen ninety
Speaker 1: three funeral, Ford's Theater collapsed, It wasn't rebuilt until the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, and now it's under operation as a historical site.
Speaker 1: All right, So let's take a listen to our listener
Speaker 1: mail for the day. So I thought this one would
Speaker 1: be appropriate since we last heard from listener Hillary, who's
Speaker 1: sending us postcards through her tour of Europe, when she
Speaker 1: mentioned she has a violin from the Civil War era,
Speaker 1: so she especially likes Civil War era topics. Her latest
Speaker 1: postcard is from Madrid, and she wrote after the concert
Speaker 1: she played there, they're playing Prokopiev's Violin Can Share to
Speaker 1: a number one. She said that her teacher met that
Speaker 1: composer over that piece, and his second Violin can Share
Speaker 1: Too was premiered in the hall where she played, so
Speaker 1: there were all sorts of historical connections. Again, I really
Speaker 1: like relating modern cultural events like this to historical It's
Speaker 1: pretty neat, yes, and I continue to get even more jealous.
Speaker 1: I just love the Drid, I know, one of my
Speaker 1: favorite places. It sounds like it would be a nice
Speaker 1: place to play violin too. Yeah, or do just about it,
Speaker 1: just do anything. So thank you, Hillary. We do enjoy
Speaker 1: getting your updates from your travels, and we enjoy hearing
Speaker 1: from all of you guys, so please continue sending a suggestion.
Speaker 1: I think Booth was suggested Edwin Booth was suggested pretty
Speaker 1: recently today. I think it was today. It's so weird
Speaker 1: when we get requests on a day that we're actually
Speaker 1: recording the podcast of whatever the request is. Are not
Speaker 1: as spooky as the theater falling down on the day
Speaker 1: of the funeral. But still I do wonder if people
Speaker 1: can like read our minds or frothing when it's happening.
Speaker 1: Not I hope not to, but continues sending its suggestions.
Speaker 1: We get so many of our ideas from you guys.
Speaker 1: We're at History Podcasts at Discovery dot com. And if
Speaker 1: you want to learn a little bit more about some
Speaker 1: other things that happened during the Civil War era, maybe
Speaker 1: you're a buff like Hillary is, we have an article
Speaker 1: called how the Emancipation Proclamation worked, and you can find
Speaker 1: that by searching on our homepage at www dot how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Be sure to check out our
Speaker 1: new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff
Speaker 1: Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing
Speaker 1: possibilities of tomorrow. The housetoff Works I Fine app has arrived.
Speaker 1: Download it today on iTunes.