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Blogs by Robert A. Mills
HANDS 8/9/2014 6:28:41 AM
I have often been compared to a, say Doris Kerns Goodwin, for my enthusiasm for study and knowledge of our 16th president, Abraham Lincoln (let me hasten with the admission I don’t even have the credentials to wipe her pens clean); and if no mention is made of the Civil War.
True, I am often accused of such skullduggery, but there is not much validity in any of it.
I know little more knowledge of this, or any other discipline, than the average 6th grader — not really as much as he, assuming he has prepared for Friday’s history exam. I know, for example, that Lincoln went to the barber, and took Tad with him, before permitting Mary Todd Lincoln to drag him off to Ford’s Theater that evening.
“Just trim the moustache a little,” he told the barber, in his adolescent but presidential falsetto voice.
“You wanna some offa da beard, too,” suggested the much-shorter employee from Milano.
“N-no,” stuttered Tad. “I-I t-t-thimk n-not. M-m-m-must look as m-m-manly as G-g-e-neral G-g-grant-t-t.”
“They are our guests tonight — General Ulysses Grant and his charming wife,” said the President.
The barber looked surprised. “She gotta beard, too?”
“N-o, ’course n-n-not!” Tad said.
“See da talk-lessonsa not helpin’ da boy much. Whatsa Fordsa playin’?” asked the barber; momentarily he stopped stropping.
“An import from England, called ‘OUR AMERICAN COUSIN’ and starring Louisa Carmichael. Supposed to be a hoot.”
“Missusa Lincoln musta be exciteda,” muttered the barber.
“Mary and her damned theater tickets!” the chief executive muttered back.
At the last moment, the Grants begged off (Mrs. Grant had already seen the play in London’s West End when she and Ulysses visited Great Britain just after Robert E. Lee handed in his sword at Appomattox and the war was over). Mary Todd Lincoln immediately dispatched a servant named Kimberly Hudson to find Major Henry Rathbone and his fiancé, Miss Clara Hamilton Harris; they had within a fortnight expressed an interest in seeing OUR AMERICAN COUSIN.
With the new twosome in tow, the four theater goers set out for thespian heaven.
Unbeknownst to them, or anyone else (for the most part), a Devil’s Plan was already in the works. Since a boy of seventeen, more popular than even his father, Brutus, or his older brother, Edwin, an actor named John Wilkes Booth, now a man of 26 and a firm Southern supporter, had heard that General Grant and his spouse would be accompanying the President and Mrs. Lincoln to Ford’s Theater that night.
With all of them in the Presidential Box at the same time, the instant the audience laughter reached a fever pitch, Booth would fire his pistol, kill the despicable President Lincoln and he would finish off the undesirable General Grant at the same time, once and for all, and make an escape. (The original plan had been to merely ’kidnap’ Abraham Lincoln.)
But Booth had been at a speech a couple days before in which the President said he would ‘personally vote’ for a voting rights act for slaves (and other ‘blacks’), and an infuriated actor changed his plans from kidnapping to murder.
He was now determined to assassinate President Lincoln and also General Grant.
“Why not the both of them — all of them?” he hypothesized, as Booth formulated a plan with co-conspirators at Mary Surratt’s boarding house, a plan to assassinate Vice President Andrew Johnson, Secretary of State William H. Seward, the President and General Grant as well.
And without his main bodyguard to protect him, Lincoln left to attend the play.
(My kid brother just yesterday sent me an old photograph of a pair of leather gloves, blood-soaked, allegedly worn by Lincoln that fateful night — plus a note which read, “Do you think these were really his?” To which I replied, “No. They’re too small. I’m aware many think Lincoln suffered from Marfan’s syndrome, but they are as crazy as you are.”)
(The bodyguard, John Parker, who had caught up with the theater party, left the Presidential Box unattended and unlocked during intermission to join Lincoln's coachman for drinks in the Star Saloon next door. The now unguarded President sat in his state box in the balcony, waiting patiently for his assailant.
Seizing the opportunity, Booth entered the box, crept up behind the relaxed President, and at about 10:13 pm, during the act after intermission had ended, when laughter was at its most raucous, aimed his small pistol at the back of Lincoln's head and fired point-blank.
Major Henry Rathbone, now a substitute for Gen. Grant, momentarily got up and grabbed the assassin. He grappled with Booth, but the actor stabbed Rathbone with a hunting knife he also carried under his coat and managed to flee, seriously wounding the major; General Grant would have to await a more propitious time.
John Wilkes Booth escaped by jumping from the overly-festooned Presidential Box to the stage, breaking his leg and screaming an unintelligible Latin phrase which has been ascribed as from ‘E pluribus unum!’ to ‘Vini, vici, vidi!’ — what he actually shouted was ’Sic semper tyrannis!’ — ‘Ever thus to tyrants! ’— as he jumped onto the stage, limped out the rear and fled on horseback.
An Army surgeon, Dr. Charles Leale, w as sitting nearby in the dress-circle, less than 40 feet away, and he immediately went to the assistance of the president. He jumped into the Presidential Box and found Lincoln unresponsive, barely breathing and with no detectable pulse. Having determined that the President had been shot in the head — and not stabbed in the shoulder as first thought — he made an attempt to clear away the blood clot, after which the President, still unconscious, began to breathe more naturally.
The dying Abraham Lincoln was carried by several cabinet attendees and others at the play that evening across the street to the Petersen Tourist Home, and he was placed diagonally on a bed, being too tall to lay out normally.
After remaining in a coma for about nine hours, Lincoln died at 7:22 am on April 15, the Saturday before Easter.
(Poor Mrs. Lincoln; pretty much ignored at first, she was told by a cabinet officer — Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy — to ‘go on home, now, there’s nothing more you can do here’. Weeping uncontrollably as she left her husband’s side, Mrs. Lincoln moaned over and over again ‘I’m so sorry!’ and ‘goodbye, my love!’ for the millionth time, and departed.
Presbyterian minister Phineas Densmore Gurley, then present at the President’s bedside, was asked to offer a prayer, after which Secretary of War Stanton said, ‘Now he belongs to the ages’ — which has been often misquoted as ‘Now he belongs to the angels’. . .
No question about it, I have listened to and read with rapt attention all the conspirators and co-conspirator theories, but I believe none them — not even Dr. Mudd’s contention that he had nothing to do with the assassination plot. I am aware the doctor set Booth’s fractured leg, gave the miscreant ‘pain’ pills and half a bottle of whisky — but I don’t think he went beyond that, although he did make arrangements with a carpenter friend of his to fashion a decent pair of crutches for Booth.
John Wilkes Booth and fellow traveler, David Herold, punished their horses for about 70 kilometers (115 miles) from Ford’s Theater to an old tobacco barn in northern Virginia, dogged constantly by Federal troops — they nearly nailed the culprits at Dr, Mudd’s place!
There, on the farm of a man named Richard Garett, Booth and Herold were finally surrounded (after twelve days), and once the barn had been set afire, Herold promptly surrendered — but Booth held out till the bitter end. When the barn began to really burn, Booth moved quickly — but not quick enough. A Union Sergeant with the unusual name of Boston Corbett propped his carbine between two cracked and loose boards and fired a single shot.
The mini-ball was supposed to hit Booth in his good leg, but instead found its way to his neck, where it nearly severed his spine. He was dragged from the burning barn, laid out on the farmhouse porch and died three hours later, after gazing sadly at his raised hands and whispering ‘Useles, useless’, which no one understood at the time.
(Boston Corbett, when the dust had finally settled, was brought up on charges for acting without direct orders from his platoon leader; he was found not guilt when he testified, under oath, “I didn’t shoot until Booth raised his pistol and I figured we was all in grave danger.”)
Elsie Garrett, wife of the farm’s owner, claimed the reward for the capture of the President’s assassin; after all, Dick Garrett’s tobacco barn was burned down (they never collected).
David Herold was hanged with the other co-conspirators, including Mary Surratt, the first woman executed in the United States, because he (Herold) was assigned with Lewis Powell to the home of Secretary of War William Seward, where they were instructed to kill him. Herold ‘chickened out’ when Powell seriously wounded Seward’s son and slaughtered the secretay’s bodyguard. He (Herold) hastened to the back of Ford’s Theater and rode with Booth to the barn in northern Virginia.
George Azteroldt, who was supposed to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson, spent his time drinking in the hotel (where Johnson lived) and throwing up in the bushes outside. He was likewise hanged with the other conspirators the next July, when the trials had concluded.
Meanwhile, Powell, who was originally hired by Booth to be the ‘muscle’ in case the kidnapping of Lincoln became a reality; but when murder became necessary, Powell was re-assigned to kill William Seward.
Lewis Powell gained entrance to the secretary’s home that evening by seriously wounding Seward’s son, and entered the secretary’s bedroom, dispelling Seward’s bodyguard, and then he stabbed the Secretary of State many times, in his body and face, disfiguring him horribly — but Seward was not done in.
Powell, along with all of Booth’s co-conspirators, was hanged in July, 1969, after due process of the current law was complete.
But what about those not hanged? Like Michael O’Laughlen?
O’Laughlen, Booth’s childhood friend, was an ex-Confederate soldier. After he turned himself in to the authorities and tried as a conspirator. his role remained unclear. O’Laughlen was consequently sentenced to life in prison and sent to Fort Jefferson, off of Key West, Florida, where he died in the yellow fever epidemic of 1868.
Another long-time friend of Booth, Samuel Arnold was not in Washington at the time of the assassination. However, investigators tied Arnold to Booth’s original kidnapping plot, and sentenced him to life in prison. He was pardoned by President Andrew Johnson and survived until 1906, when he died of tuberculosis.
Samuel Mudd: Prosecutors succeeded in showing that Mudd, a doctor who set Booth’s broken leg during the night of April 14, was well acquainted with the killer before the night of the assassination. He escaped hanging by one vote of the military commission that had been convened to try the conspirators. Like Arnold, Mudd was sentenced to life in prison, but pardoned in 1869 by Andrew Johnson. Dr. Mudd died of pneumonia in 1883.
Edmund Spangler was a stagehand and carpenter at Ford’s Theatre; he was also called Edward, Edman, or Ned. Spangler knew Booth well and assisted him by keeping an eye on the ‘get-a-way’ horses behind the theater on Good Friday, April 14. He was not connected to the kidnapping plan, but he was found guilty and sentenced to six years in prison. He died in 1873, the exact day he was to be released.
John Surratt: Booth’s most valuable conspirator was a Confederate spy with a college education. Surratt introduced Booth to his mother Mary Surratt (an ardent, strong and outspoken Southern conspirator who demanded the actor shoot Lincoln) — unlike Herold and Azterodt, John Surratt had conspired with the others to kidnap the president but was not in Washington at the time of the assassination. He fled the U.S. when he heard news of the crime, and lived in Europe as a fugitive for several years until he was apprehended in Egypt in 1866. Tried by a civilian court in 1867-1868, Surratt was not convicted. He survived until 1916.
There you have it: I have read about or listened to every Abraham Lincofn/John Wilkes Booth theory there is, and, except for Doris Kerns Goodwin, Ken Burns and myself, all are unmitigated bullshit.
