Speaker 1: Happy Saturday everyone. We have had a number of requests
Speaker 1: coming lately for episodes on various people who were connected
Speaker 1: to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. We don't have full
Speaker 1: on biographies of all of those folks, but a lot
Speaker 1: of the names that have come up are pulled together
Speaker 1: in this previous episode on the Booth conspiracy, so we
Speaker 1: are sharing that one today. Yeah. This episode is from
Speaker 1: previous hosts Sarah and Deblina, and it first came out
Speaker 1: on February Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class,
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm
Speaker 1: Deblina Chuckerboarding and around Christmas this year, listener Hillary sent
Speaker 1: us the book Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowel, about the
Speaker 1: assassinations of three U S presidents, Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley.
Speaker 1: And before I started the book, I figured, of those three,
Speaker 1: I'd probably know the most about Lincoln's assassination, at least
Speaker 1: the scene for its theater, the circumstances Lincoln shot point
Speaker 1: blank in the head, and the players involved. The actor
Speaker 1: John Wilkes, Booth and his motley crew of conspirators, but
Speaker 1: I hadn't realized the entire breadth of the attack. The
Speaker 1: attack on Lincoln was really just one part of three
Speaker 1: 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's
Speaker 1: theater guest 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 four,
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 a 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 Genius 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: Boost Senior 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
Speaker 1: road he had a drinking problem. His three sons got
Speaker 1: into theater too, and the middle boy, Edwin, became a
Speaker 1: star to really rival his father. We're going to talk
Speaker 1: about him a bit more later. The youngest. Meanwhile, John
Speaker 1: Wilkes had a rockier start with his theatrical career until
Speaker 1: he joined a Shakespearean company based in Richmond, Virginia. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Once 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 porter 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 the actress Henrietta Irving tried to stab Booth
Speaker 1: in the chest, grazing his face and still, 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 inaugural address, bragging 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 a 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 nine,
Speaker 1: the war ended, so what are you gonna do? Ironically, though,
Speaker 1: it was Lincoln's speech on reconstruction, which took place just
Speaker 1: a few days after that on the White House lawn
Speaker 1: that really fired up Booth made him decide that he
Speaker 1: didn't want to give up the plan of kidnapping. He
Speaker 1: wanted to escalate it to something more. He had attended
Speaker 1: that speech with co conspirator Louis Powell and left it
Speaker 1: swearing that it would be Lincoln's last speech. So the
Speaker 1: right opportunity for Booth came almost immediately when he read
Speaker 1: in the paper that the President and Mrs Lincoln were
Speaker 1: you to attend a performance of Our American Cousin at
Speaker 1: 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 psyched
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 he 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 sees 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 Tyrannus thus always to tyrants, and he caught
Speaker 1: a spur on the American flag, landed on the stage below,
Speaker 1: and broke his leg. From there, the conductor Withers ran
Speaker 1: into him again. Withers, who had taken an underground passageway
Speaker 1: around to the stage to question why his special song
Speaker 1: that he had written kept getting pushed back. He heard
Speaker 1: a pistol shot the thump and then found himself face
Speaker 1: to face with Booth. A slashing man add 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 Atzerot,
Speaker 1: who was commissioned 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. Paolo did some pretty serious damage
Speaker 1: to the Seward family. He arrived at their home under
Speaker 1: the guise of a pharmacy delivery boy. Um. He went
Speaker 1: into Seward's house where the Secretary of State was laid
Speaker 1: up after a very serious carriage accident. He had broken
Speaker 1: an arm and his awe and uh that those injuries
Speaker 1: required pretty serious banging to his face and head, which
Speaker 1: is a key point here, So when Powell entered the
Speaker 1: home and was trying to deliver his medicine, Seward's son Frederick,
Speaker 1: met him but wouldn't allow him upstairs to deliver the
Speaker 1: items personally. So at that point Powell pulled out a
Speaker 1: gun tried to shoot Frederick, but found that his gun
Speaker 1: wouldn't fire and pistol whipped him instead. Then he charged
Speaker 1: up the stairs started slashing Seward bedridden Seward with a
Speaker 1: bowie knife in front of Seward's daughter too, until finally
Speaker 1: the military officer who had been assigned to Seward during
Speaker 1: his convalescence grappled with Powell and uh Seward's other son
Speaker 1: joined into um ended up getting injured a colleague Seward's
Speaker 1: got injured to power really did some serious damage, but
Speaker 1: did manage to escape. Nobody was killed in this incident.
Speaker 1: Seward and his son's recovered um, but his wife died
Speaker 1: just a few weeks after because of the double shock
Speaker 1: of the carriage accident and then this violent, bloody attack
Speaker 1: in her home. Just to return and kind of pick
Speaker 1: up with the Lincoln portion of the story, Lincoln meanwhile,
Speaker 1: is dying from head wound. The first doctor on the
Speaker 1: scene was Charles Saban Taft, who ordered Lincoln to be
Speaker 1: removed to the nearest home. The president was brought across
Speaker 1: the street to the lodging house of William Peterson and
Speaker 1: placed diagonally across the bed because he was too tall
Speaker 1: to just lie on it properly. While the surgeon General
Speaker 1: cared for the president. Dr Taft stayed in attendance, journaling
Speaker 1: the next morning that he had held Lincoln's head almost
Speaker 1: all throughout the night. He talked about how heavy it
Speaker 1: was to just hold it there all night. The president
Speaker 1: was pronounced dead at seven two am, and then the
Speaker 1: Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton proclaimed, quote, now he
Speaker 1: belongs to the ages, one of the more famous quotes
Speaker 1: about Lincoln. In the president's pockets were a pocket knife,
Speaker 1: two pairs of glasses, and a Confederate five dollar bill,
Speaker 1: 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 before being sent on
Speaker 1: a thirteen day train trip back to Springfield with plenty
Speaker 1: of open casket viewings. Um just a side 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 of 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 up 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 high tailed
Speaker 1: it for the Maryland home of Dr. Samuel mud who
Speaker 1: set Booth leg and then they spent five nights and
Speaker 1: five days in the woods waiting to cross the Potomac
Speaker 1: into Virginia. Had a little help, though, yeah. A Confederate
Speaker 1: agent named Thomas Jones brought them food and newspapers. And
Speaker 1: 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 Garrets 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 Coner, tracked the
Speaker 1: men to the farm. The Garrett's 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 and
Speaker 1: were in the tobacco barn. One of the sons was
Speaker 1: even 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 dithered 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 a kind
Speaker 1: of challenge to Baker, makes them a little proposition combat
Speaker 1: on open ground. Booth against the cavalry just as long
Speaker 1: as they back up from the barn door. He creepily
Speaker 1: mentions to Baker how honorable he's been the whole time.
Speaker 1: He says, quote, Captain, I have had half a dozen
Speaker 1: opportunities to shoot you, but I not so. At this point,
Speaker 1: Baker realizes, oh, yeah, I'm holding this candle, So he
Speaker 1: loses that target. You can see him through the barn,
Speaker 1: the cracks in the barn wall. Yeah, he gets rid
Speaker 1: of that, but he declines Booth's offer. He says, quote,
Speaker 1: we did not come here to fight you. We simply
Speaker 1: came to make you a prisoner. Booth reduces the demands
Speaker 1: of his offer. At that point, he says that he'll
Speaker 1: come out and fight if the men just back off
Speaker 1: from the door just a little bit. Give me a
Speaker 1: chance for my life, he says. But that just was
Speaker 1: not happening. So Booth says, well, my brave boys prepare
Speaker 1: stretcher for me. But the way it went down was
Speaker 1: actually more like a bonfire. They finally sent the bar
Speaker 1: set the barn on fire. The barn goes up in
Speaker 1: flames really fast, and in the panic of Booth trying
Speaker 1: to get out, he gets shot by a sergeant Boston Corbett,
Speaker 1: who as a sad note was possibly a mad hatter.
Speaker 1: He did go insane, and it might have been because
Speaker 1: of the mercury used in hat making. Back to Booth,
Speaker 1: though he was caught before he even hit the ground
Speaker 1: from getting shot by Boston Corbett, and he was presumed dead.
Speaker 1: In fact, though he was paralyzed from the neck down.
Speaker 1: He could talk a little bit and move his eyes,
Speaker 1: but he couldn't swallow the water that was offered to him.
Speaker 1: He had to watch as Colonel Everton Conger checked his
Speaker 1: pockets and remove money and keys and tobacco in a compass.
Speaker 1: When Conger went into an inner pocket, he found the
Speaker 1: diary Booth had been keeping, you know, lamenting the fact
Speaker 1: he wasn't a national hero. Plus five photos of different ladies.
Speaker 1: One was a lesser known actress, two were pretty famous
Speaker 1: leading ladies of the day. One was a Subrette type
Speaker 1: actress who was married to a violinist, and then the
Speaker 1: last one was Lucy Hale. So I don't know if
Speaker 1: Lucy maybe had a surprise when she heard the news
Speaker 1: he had five photos in his pocket, but his official
Speaker 1: last words were tell mother, I die for my country.
Speaker 1: But he also had a few other last requests. He
Speaker 1: kept on asking to be able to examine his lifeless hands.
Speaker 1: He begged the soldiers to kill him. It sounds like
Speaker 1: a really gruesome, really horrible death. He died by the
Speaker 1: morning of April. Booth's body was secretly buried, but then
Speaker 1: re entered a few years later at his family plot
Speaker 1: in Baltimore. But the wild conspiracy theories began almost right away.
Speaker 1: The 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 toured 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, but 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, Powell, At Surat and the boarding house
Speaker 1: owner Mary Surat were taken in and those four were
Speaker 1: all found guilty of murder and sentence to hang. Saurat's
Speaker 1: sentence is still kind of kind troversial, 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 boost 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 Sarratt 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 a crime.
Speaker 1: So it's questionable whether John Sarot 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: But sarat 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 re indict him on the same charges
Speaker 1: was eventually dismissed after this statute of limitations on those
Speaker 1: charges had passed, So 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 have 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, though,
Speaker 1: Edwin Booth was a supporter of the Union in Lincoln
Speaker 1: and considerably more even tempered, he had um kind of
Speaker 1: gone off the rails earlier in life, and had ended
Speaker 1: up missing his wife's death in eighteen sixty three because
Speaker 1: he was too drunk, so he had really sobered up
Speaker 1: and kind of had much more moderate opinions than some
Speaker 1: members of his family. Um, he did learn whose life
Speaker 1: he'd saved, that he'd saved the President's son, when he
Speaker 1: got a letter from a friend who was on Grant
Speaker 1: staff who had heard Robert Lincoln telling the story, as
Speaker 1: 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 Lincoln helped get him through
Speaker 1: the worst months after the assassination. We do have one
Speaker 1: last spooky tidbit for you, though, relating to both Edwin
Speaker 1: Booth and Lincoln's assassination. During Edwin's funeral Ford's Theater collapsed.
Speaker 1: It wasn't rebuilt until the nineteen sixties, and now it's
Speaker 1: under a ration as a historical site. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for joining us on this Saturday. If you have
Speaker 1: heard an email address or a Facebook you are l
Speaker 1: or something similar over the course of today's episode, since
Speaker 1: it is from the archive that might be out of date. Now,
Speaker 1: you can email us at history podcast at how stuff
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