590. The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln: Death at the Theatre (Part 1)

28:34Exactly. He's an up and down person, I think it's fair to say. When he's melancholy, he's very melancholy. And when he's jolly, he's very jolly. And of course, he's got big challenges now. Now they really have to make up their mind, what do they do with the rebel states? Now, at the time, lots of people said, why don't you give a speech? Go on, everyone wants a speech. But he said, no, no, I need a day to think about it. So it's not until the next day, the 11th of April, that evening, with a huge crowd waiting outside the White House, that he gives this speech. and very unusually, and this is a sign, I think, of the political pressure, he reads from a text.

29:06He doesn't deliver his remarks extempore. Because he needs every word to be finely valued and graded. He says, I'm going to talk about reconstruction, and sometimes I'm betrayed into saying things that other people don't like. And he doesn't talk really at all about, again, no triumphalism. He says, I would like us to welcome back the rebel states as though they were never out of the Union. In other words, we're like loving parents and we're welcoming the errant child back into the family. Or the prodigal son. Because I imagine that the language of the New Testament is saturating his prose. But now comes the kicker.

29:41For the very first time in public, Lincoln says, I think it is time to give the vote to some of our black fellow citizens. He says, I would myself prefer that it were now conferred on the very intelligent and on those who serve our cause as soldiers. now that may sound like only a small move but that's how lincoln always works it's always he works with the sort of thin end of the wedge he's a gradualist he's always very exactly what he did with emancipation he moves slowly but steadily towards a more radical position this is a massive massive moment and for one listener in the crowd in particular these words are like an electric shock or something and this bloke is a 26 year old actor and when he hears lincoln say these words He turns to the man next to him in the crowd and he says, that means citizenship.

30:35Now, by God, I'll put him through. That is the last speech he will ever make. And as we'll find out after the break, John Wilkes Booth means every word.

30:52Hello, everyone. Welcome back to The Rest is History. And Dominic, just before the break, you mentioned a man in the crowd listening to Lincoln talk about giving black Americans the vote. And this was a young actor called John Wilkes Booth. Who is he? And does he have a link to a famous assassin of Julius Caesar? He does indeed. He's born in Maryland in May 1838. He's 26 years old. He is the son of a Shakespearean actor from London called Junius Brutus Booth. And this bloke Booth's mistress, Mary Ann Holmes, and they had moved to America 17 years earlier. Now, Junius Brutus Booth was already married to somebody else.

31:39So John Wilkes, who is named after the John Wilkes, right? John Wilkes is a Whig MP in Georgian London. Marcus Julius Brutus, of course, is the famous assassin of Julius Caesar. Both of them obviously are radicals, people committed to the overthrow of tyranny. So this presumably is a family tradition. Totally. I mean, I think John Wilkes Booth grows up with this sort of nominative determinism hanging over him. Now, he's illegitimate because his parents aren't married, right? His father was married to somebody else. Now, actually, when he was 13, his parents did get married. but it's kind of too late for him and the stigma and the shame of this his biographers often think are massive drivers for him like he always feels this very keenly that his parents weren't actually married when they had him now he's a very athletic handsome bloke with kind of leading man looks he went to boarding school in maryland he's steeped in the classic so if his father's name wasn't enough he kind of grows up reading cicero and tacitus and all this sort of stuff so roman roman authors who are um essentially opposed to the tyranny of the caesars exactly he loves all this absolutely loves it now his father was an actor his older brother edwin was an actor and when he was 17 years old he starts out as an actor himself on the stage in baltimore 1855 everybody always said that edwin the older brother was a kind of more nuanced actor more precise but john wilkes he's more vital he's a he's boisterous he's exciting he's he's kind of brian blessed a little bit yeah he's a bit of a ham but he's a fun ham and he's a huge scene stealer and he will do he specializes in leaps and i don't know how much opportunity there isn't shakespearean soliloquist to do a little little leap or caper or something i mean leaping across a stage will be a feature of the story later on won't hurt exactly and he does these leaps and basically the women in the audience go mad with excitement when he does this kind of acrobatics and he gets loads of fan mail from women and on the eve of the civil war so 1860 61 he's in his very early 20s and he is really seen as a i mean he's often described actually as a failed actor or jobbing actor.

34:03He's quite a big star. I was wondering about this and whether you could give an analogy in today's star system. So is he, I mean, is he Timothee Chalamet? Is he a minor part on The Archers? I mean, where is he on the spectrum? Well, Timothee Chalamet is a very big star. I don't know whether he's quite that big, but he's definitely bigger than a bit part. He'd be a lead on a kind of HBO TV series, perhaps. That level. I'd say he would. He would be the lead in Outlander. I had always bought into this thing that he was a minor, frustrated actor who never got any jobs or anything. And to realise that actually he's been starring in an HBO series puts a completely different spin on it.

34:47Yeah. He is probably the most famous assassin in American history, by which I mean he's got a profile before he commits the murder. Right. Oh, he's totally got a profile. He has played Richard III. He has played Romeo. He has played Hamlet. He has played Brutus. He has played Mark Antony. Because it is often said that assassins are losers, isn't it? I mean, we talked about this when we did the JFK series. But in this case, it's not true. He is someone who is used to being on the stage. And as we will see, the assassination will see him jump onto a stage. Exactly. Although there are aspects of his life in which he does feel himself very strongly to be a loser.

35:24So he is a loser in a sense. But you're right, professionally, he's had quite a good run. Now, interestingly, his heartland is the North and the border states. And he did loads of shows in Washington and New York and Philadelphia and so on. In November 1863, here's a good example, Tom, of how he is a star watched by very famous people. He plays a villainous ancient Greek sculptor in a play that sadly not really endured. it's in the repertoire called the marble heart is it still around the script i'm sure it is i bet you can find it somewhere if you want to play it the theater he plays at is called ford's theater on 10th street in washington and in the audience in the box is abraham lincoln and at various points booth is delivering is when he's not leaping he's delivering these menacing line villainous lines and he aims them at the presidential box and lincoln actually says to a friend, he does look pretty sharp at me, doesn't he?

36:24Now this is no accident because Booth absolutely loathes Lincoln. I said he was born in Maryland. From the beginning of the crisis, Booth identified very strongly with the South. Maryland was a slave state where a lot of people strongly supported the Confederacy, but it didn't break away from the Union, so it didn't join the Confederate states. That's partly because the Union troops right away imposed martial law. It's also because Lincoln suspended habeas corpus. Maryland is strategically vital. If you lost that, you would lose Washington. So the union keeping, it was really, really important.

37:00Now, Booth feels this very keenly. And one reason he feels this very keenly, he hates the fact that Maryland is part of the union, is because he is so racist. He had actually drafted a speech in 1860 when the crisis was really blowing up and he planned to give it in philadelphia but he never did and in this speech he said you know slavery is brilliant he said i've been through the south um i've seen how happy the slaves are i have seen black people whipped but only when they really deserved it and never as much as they deserved and he says of abolitionists um i call them traitors treason should be stamped to death so deep is my hatred for such men i wish i had them in my grasp and And if I had the power to crush them, I would grind them into dust.

37:47So he's very against the woke mind virus. He's very much against the woke mind virus, it's fair to say. Now, you might well say, come on, mate. I mean, if you really hate it that much, why don't you actually go and fight for the Confederacy? Good point. What's his answer? He's promised his mother that he wouldn't. So not only is he racist, but he's a racist mummy's boy. Yeah, he's a cowardly racist. The worst kind of coward and the worst kind of racist, I think it's fair to say. No, the worst kind of racist is racist pee teachers. We agreed on that. I think we did, yeah. Yeah, but this is the second.

38:16Pea teachers and cowards is the revenge diagram there, I wonder. Anyway, he is such a massive mummy's boy in a really slightly weird way, which is why despite being very popular with the ladies, he's never got married and he's never really settled down. But as the war goes on, he feels guilty about this. As the war goes on, people say to him, will you stop talking about the war? Stop going on about how much you love the Confederacy. If you like it that much, go and fight for it. Even his sister says this. Why not go and fight for her? if you love the South so much. Every Marylander worthy of the name is fighting her battles.

38:49And at one point in late 1864, he says to his mum, I've begun to deem myself a coward and to despise my own existence. So all this time he's still doing his plays, is he? He is, and he's doing quite well. He actually genuinely is playing quite big parts and he's getting a lot of acclaim and stuff. But he's unhappy. His family had a history of mental instability. His father was a massive wife beater. He's drinking loads, he's necking loads of brandy, and he can't sleep. And I think a lot of this is actually because he feels so guilty about the war and because the news from the front is, as he perceives it, so bad.

39:24So basically every battle the South lose, he then drinks like another gallon of brandy or something. And he focuses all of this rage and resentment on the figure of Lincoln. So a barber said afterwards that basically whenever Booth turned up for a shave, everyone would kind of sigh and roll their eyes because basically for the next 10 minutes, He's going to treat them to a monologue about how terrible Lincoln is. He said to his sister, that man's appearance, his pedigree, his coarse, low jokes and anecdotes, his vulgar similes and his policy are a disgrace to the seat he holds. Not enough chat about Lincoln's low, vulgar jokes, I think.

39:59I mean, it is interesting that there is clearly no notion of any censorship going on, that you can badmouth the president in the depths of a terrible civil war and people just slightly roll their eyes. So any notion of Lincoln as a tyrant is clearly mad. Well, as we will see, some northern newspapers are absolutely ferocious in their invective against Abraham Lincoln. And actually, this brings us to an important point. Booth loves a historical analogy. So do we. So that is an unsettling point of comparison. To be fair, Tom, the hammy acting. I didn't want to go into the parallels, but they're pretty overwhelming.

40:41First of all, he sees Lincoln as an American Napoleon, and he does not mean that kindly. So he says to his sister in 1864, Lincoln rules by robbery, raping, slaughter, and bought armies. He is bone apart in one great move, that is by overturning this blind republic and making himself a king. And Dominic, can I ask, is there another figure from world history who is accused by his fellow citizens in a republic of trying to make himself a king? There is, and this will please that bloke on the Reddit. It's Julius Caesar. Brilliant. Hooray. So Booth actually writes a letter when he's made up his mind to do this dastardly deed.

41:19He writes a letter to the newspapers for publication, which is never printed. And he specifically says, Lincoln is like Caesar who menaced the liberties of the people, and I am like Brutus who arose and slew him. Now, Michael Burlingame in his enormous Lincoln book has a really interesting section about what a popular analogy this is at the time. It's still a popular analogy. I think we've talked about this, that in a republic that is modelled on the Roman Republic, everyone is absolutely prone to see any presidential figure as potentially a Caesar. Although, surely much more so at a time when all the opinion formers, politicians and whatnot, have had such a classical education.

42:01Of course, and also in a civil war, which is how Caesar comes to power. Now, in the southern newspapers often use this parallel. So you asked, are southerners calling for Lincoln's assassination? The Richmond dispatch said, and I quote, assassination in the abstract is a horrid crime, but to slay a tyrant is no more assassination than war is murder. Who speaks of Brutus as an assassin? What Yankee ever condemned the roundhead crew who brought Charles I to the block? So it's not just Caesar, he's Charles I. And Michael Burlingame points out that in the North as well, and this is your point about censorship, Tom, Lincoln's critics often compare him with Julius Caesar.

42:41So in May 1863, so these are Democrats and some radical Republicans, actually, who think that Lincoln is too much of a centrist dad. They say he's a tyrant and he's piling up power and whatnot. So in May 1863, at a New York college called the Cooper Union, a speaker said in public, let us remind Lincoln that Caesar had his Brutus and Charles I his Cromwell. Let us also remind George III of the present day that he too may have his Cromwell or his Brutus. Dominic, just two questions. The first, I have lurking in the back of my mind, I think I read an article about bioterrorism through history, that there was some guy who sent Lincoln a load of clothes that he tried to infect with yellow fever or something.

43:28yeah his name was Dr. Luke P. Blackburn and he was from Kentucky he was a confederate agent I'm laughing because actually I've just googled it so I don't actually really know this he yes he was going to distribute infected clothing with yellow fever and slightly weirdly it's the soiled the soiled what it was the soiled bedding of people from Bermuda I think that's unpleasant present. But apparently it wouldn't have worked because yellow fever spreads via mosquitoes. He went on a very long journey. He had to go through Canada. So multiple customs inspections with his soiled bed linen. Wow. Well, so that was your first question.

44:16What was your second? My second question is what kind of security does Lincoln have? So presumably there isn't a kind of national security service at this point. There aren't loads of people in suits with dark glasses. Well, actually, we will get on to this, Tom. I'm delighted to say he has virtually no security at all. He doesn't want security. He doesn't like bodyguards. It's not federally provided. No. So he has to basically provide it for himself. Pretty much. Exactly. Pretty much. Yeah. Now, you asked about security. John Wilkes Booth's first idea is actually to kidnap Lincoln, not to kill him.

44:48By 1864, Booth has developed this plan to kidnap Lincoln from his summer cottage outside Washington. him now the details of this plan are a little bit unclear but what seems to have happened is booth thought he could kidnap lincoln and exchange him for confederate prisoners of war that seems a mad waste if you've kidnapped the leader of the one of the combatants just to hand him over in exchange for some prisoners of war is i think is demented some historians think this is actually part of a wider confederate conspiracy the confederates had a lot of spies in washington and the secret agents hanging around.

45:24One of them is a man called John Surratt, who definitely worked for the Confederate Secret Service. And his mother, Mary Surratt, will come on to her. She ran a boarding house in Washington, which was a safe house for Confederate agents. And Booth seems to have been connected with these people. And he has this scheme that they're going to kidnap Lincoln on the road, then take him off into captivity. And as late as March 1865, he's got a group of kind of hangers-on, and he's chatting to them all the time about this kidnap scheme, but it doesn't really come to anything. There's one day when they do actually go, but Lincoln doesn't turn up.

45:59So whether they could have pulled it off, who knows. Then in early April 1865, Booth hears the news of the fall of Richmond and then of Robert E. Lee's surrender. And he is absolutely crushed. And I think this is the point when he comes up with the idea of killing Lincoln rather than kidnapping him. And there's another element to this. you asked if he was a loser what is undoubtedly true is that john wilkes booth feels himself to be a failure and is motivated by a thirst for fame he says to friends again and again a man could immortalize himself by killing lincoln he says i want to do something that will mean that i'm remembered for all time so the question is will he get the chance and we'll come to that now back to lincoln lincoln had made that speech on the 11th of april but two days later on the 13th of April he comes down with this terrible headache he was going to go on for a carriage ride with Mary to go and see the gas illuminations that had been put up across Washington to celebrate the victory he can't go so they make Ulysses S Grant go with Mary instead and guess what the trip is a total disaster the crowd cheer Grant and they chant his name and Mary Lincoln is basically furious and she actually at one point asked the carriage driver to stop and let her out because she can't bear it anymore, that people are chanting Grant's name and not her husband's.

47:18I quite like that. I'm coming to respect her. I think she's awful. I mean, I literally know nothing about her beyond what I read in George Saunders' novel. She made me more sympathetic. All right, fair enough. So the next day is the Good Friday, the 14th of April. Lincoln is killed on Good Friday. Yeah. So this Christ-like man is killed on Good Friday. Couldn't make it up. So that morning, the last morning of his life, Lincoln has a meeting of his cabinet with General Grant in attendance. And they are talking about reconstruction again. He says the great question before us, we must soon begin to act.

47:50But he says, I am not going to take a hard line on the South. We must extinguish our resentments if we expect harmony and union. He goes out of his way to say, I do not want you to persecute the Confederates after the war, no bloody work. He says, what I would like is for you to frighten the leaders out of the country, Jefferson Davis and co. Open the gates. let down the bars, scare them off, as in run away to Paris or something. Run away to Paris. It's a funny thing about Lincoln. He always talks very kindly, almost sort of fondly of his opponents. So he actually called Jefferson Davis, he used to call him Jeffy D.

48:26Sounds like a kind of minor singer in the late 1950s. Jeffy D. Jeffy D and the Confederates. Woo! Yeah.

48:36Yeah, or Bobby Lee. He would call Robert E. Lee Bobby Lee. Bobby Lee is very much, yeah. Yeah, that's his girlfriend. Anyway, everybody at the cabinet meeting said afterwards, Lincoln was actually in great form. He'd had this headache. He had a couple of days off. They seems to have done him good. His treasury secretary, Hugh McCulloch, said it. I'd never seen him so happy. The burden had been lifted. His face no longer had its weary look. It was bright and cheerful. Now, afterwards, he goes for a carriage ride with Mary. And actually, they don't have a massive argument on this carriage ride, which is nice.

49:07She comments out how jolly and playful he is. and Lincoln says to her, well, for the first time I really feel as though the war is over. He says to her, we must both be more cheerful in the future. Between the war and the loss of our darling Willie, we have been very miserable. So Willie is the boy who died of typhoid. They've got a nice evening out ahead, Tom. They're going to the theatre. So they've gone a lot to the theatre in the war. There are two theatres in Washington, really two big ones, the National and Ford's. Ford's is on 10th Street. It's a red brick building. It's seen as very modern.

49:40It was only opened two years earlier by a theatrical entrepreneur called John T. Ford. So he's a very modest man. Yeah, Ford's Theatre, exactly. Now, it's putting on, I'm delighted to say, a British play. A British play mocking Americans called Our American Cousin by Tom Taylor. It's a farce. I've actually read the script. I fell down the rabbit hole and read the script. Is it good? It's terrible. It's very unfunny. It's a farce about basically a boorish hick from Vermont who inherits the fortune of an aristocratic British family, and he goes to claim it. There's a series of comic misunderstandings.

50:16I think it sounds good. You could do a double bill of that and the one where Booth played a Greek sculptor. You could, actually. That would be quite interesting. Why don't people do more John Wilkes Booth-themed entertainment? It's an absolute riddle. Now, the Washington Evening Star has already reported that Lincoln's going to go to this play, and they've reported that he will go with general grant and the theater has had a rush of last minute bookings and they're rushing to kind of get um flags and they they're rushing to sort of do a patriotic lineup beforehand of songs and stuff it's all very exciting now meanwhile while lincoln's off on his carriage ride and talking to his cabinet what's john wilkes booth doing he has stayed in washington he had gone to see the illuminations the lights you know lit up kind eagles and stars and stuff.

51:04And he said, it was a great display, but I wish it had been a display in a nobler cause. But so goes the world. Might makes right. It's very sad because the South has lost. Sometime that morning, good Friday morning, he goes over to Ford's Theatre. Now he's very well known at Ford's Theatre because he's a big actor. And he often has mail sent there, kind of fan mail from his female admirers. And so presumably he knows Ford's Theatre like the back of his hand. knows all the exits i mean crucially he knows the entrance and exit he knows the stagehands even he knows it so well and while he's picking up his post he chats to the manager of the theater who's harry ford i think he's uh john ford's brother and booth says oh you've heard the news about lee surrendering appomattox says i'm absolutely gutted lee what a fool he should have gone down fighting what a cow what a what a mess he made of that and ford says to him well come on i mean he's a general and you're not.

52:00You don't know what you're talking about. I mean, I've got to say, Booth walked into that one. He did. He did. Booth is absolutely shocked and downcast by this. And then Ford says, hey, guess who's coming to our theatre tonight? President Lincoln. And he's bringing Ulysses S. Grant with him. And Booth apparently showed no reaction at the time. He just sat down and started looking at his post. But clearly he's thinking, because in the next few hours he does three things. First of all, he goes to see a bloke who runs a stable near the theatre, a man called Mr. Pumphrey, and he hires a brown horse, a mare, with a white star on her forehead.

52:34He says, I'll come back for this horse later. Hold on to the horse for the time being. Then he goes to that Confederate lodging house, the safe house run by Mary Surratt, and he talks to her in private and he gives her a package. Later, she goes out of the city to a tavern that she owns in the countryside in Maryland, and she leaves this package there. We'll come back to the package in the next episode. And then third thing, at some point in the afternoon, Booth contacts three of the sort of hangers-on who he'd been talking about the kidnap plot to. And he makes arrangements for the evening. And these three blokes are, there's a carriage repairman from Germany called George Azeroth.

53:19There's a pharmacist's assistant from Maryland called David Herold. and there's a former confederate soldier who's now working as a confederate agent called lewis powell and tom i will keep it in reserve what these arrangements are so now it comes to the evening the white house the lincolns have had their dinner they're about to go out to the theater they're delayed because the speaker of the house of representatives who has the excellent american name of shila colfax is waiting to talk to him about california and dominic it's fair to say isn't it that from this point on fans of mad 19th century american names are going to be in clover yeah because there's loads of them coming up there is and there's actually a lot of people i've cut out of the story who um people could kind of furlough weed or something like mad american names uh i've had to cut out so just assume that basically assume that in the background are a lot of people with these baroque ridiculous names so about 8 30 after talking to shila colfax uh the Lincoln's are ready to leave.

54:18Now, the plan has changed. Ulysses S. Grant has been so burned by his previous encounters with Mrs. Lincoln that he says, there is no way I am going to the theatre with these people. So Ulysses S. Grant was meant to be going on the night that Lincoln is assassinated. It drops out. Do people not find this suspicious? I mean, conspiracy theorists? Gosh, that's a good point. Does anyone think Grant was perhaps behind the plot to clear Lincoln out of the way so he could, in the due cause become president. I love the idea that you've invented a conspiracy theory. Live while recording a show. Wow. I've never heard that claim.

54:54I find that quite suspicious. So the other person who doesn't go, who hates Mrs. Lincoln, is Julia Grant. She says to Grant, I will not go if that woman is there. Does this not raise the possibility that the bullet was meant for Mary Lincoln? And actually it's Mrs. Grant who's behind the conspiracy. That would be a twist. That is a twist. So they don't go. now Lincoln says oh if they're not going I don't really want to go and Mary says you have to go the press hear that you're going and if none of us go everyone will be really disappointed she says anyway I've lined up some replacements my friend Clara Harris she does have a friend she does have a friend which is lovely I was thinking exactly that she's got at least one friend she's got Clara Harris and Clara Harris has her fiancé who's Major Henry Rathbone so they're going to take these two people now you asked about security there is very very little security They are escorted to the theater by a police patrolman called John Parker and a White House messenger called Charles Forbes.

55:49But they're not professional bodyguards. Lincoln never travels with professional bodyguards. He has said many times, I will not be shut up in an iron cage. Now, he says, when people say to him, do you not want to be careful? You're fighting a civil war. He says, who would want to kill me? No one would want to kill me. It's not in people's nature to want to kill me. Now, that would seem mad to us today. But the fact is that at the time, there's never been a successful assassination in American history. And Lincoln's own Secretary of State, William Seward, said in 1862, assassination is not an American practice or habit, and one so vicious and so desperate cannot be engrafted into our political system.

56:31Well, that's aged well. Yeah, how wrong he was. So they turn up at Ford's Theatre at nine o 'clock. Now, they're late. The play has been underway for 20 minutes, and they go up to their box. So it's actually two boxes which are knocked into one. So the theatre, when they know Lincoln is coming, they have to basically knock two boxes into one, boxes seven and eight. In the box are a sofa, an armchair, and a rocking chair that Lincoln will sit in. The box is very conspicuous. It's been hung with American flags for all to see. Lincoln goes in. The audience turns to look at him. The play stops. So they actually stop the play.

57:05The band plays Hail to the Chief. Everybody applauds. Lincoln smiles, Lincoln bows, and the play resumes. Everybody is roaring with laughter. They think this is a brilliant play. Lincoln is watching it. He seems very intent on it. He's kind of laughing to himself. And yet, Tom, all the time, his killer is coming closer and closer. So we get to 10.15. Now on stage, the American cousin who is played by an actor called Harry hawk has been arguing with his british relative mrs mount chessington miss that's a very british name doesn't it sound like a great play it sounds brilliant do you have an example of the brilliant dialogue from the play i do mrs mount chessington says to this bloke you don't know the manners of good society and she storms off and harry hawk playing the american cousin says i don't know the man is a good society, eh?

58:00Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal. You sock-dologizing old man-trap. Everybody laughs. Yeah, of course. The whole theatre erupts in laughter. On stage, this bloke, Hawke, Harry Hawke, he turns to walk off stage. And at that moment, the door of Abraham Lincoln's presidential box swings open and standing in the doorway is John Wilkes Booth. well if people want to know what happens next there's literally only one way to do it and that is either to wait until thursday to find out what happens to president lincoln or if you're a member of the rest is history club you can go straight ahead and listen to it now if you're not a member of the rest of history club but you would like to find out whether president lincoln survives or not you can go to the rest is history.com and on that gunshot goodbye goodbye