Posts Tagged 'Lincoln Assassination'
Abe Lincoln: The Freedmen's Monument
Posted in Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, American Civil War, the, Frederick Douglass, John Wilkes Booth, PEOPLE, tagged Abraham Lincoln, American Civil War, American history, assassination of Abraham Lincoln, biographies of presidents, black history month, Emancipation Proclamation, Frederick Douglass, Freedmen's Monument, John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln Assassination, Lincoln Memorial, Lincoln's birthday, Slavery, the, Washington D.C. on February 12, 2010| 1 Comment »
Freedmen's Monument, Lincoln Park, Washington, D.C.; sculptor, Thomas Ball. The sculpture was funded solely from freed slaves, primarily from African-American Union veterans, to pay homage to the American president who had issued the Emancipation Proclamation, thus liberating them from bondage in the Confederate States. The statue was dedicated on April 14, 1876, 11 years after Abraham Lincoln's assassination by the Confederate rebel John Wilkes Booth. Abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass delivered the dedication speech.
Oration in Memory of Abraham Lincoln
Frederick Douglass delivered a speech at the unveiling of the Freedmen's Monument in Memory of Abraham Lincoln at Lincoln Park, Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1876. This is the conclusion of what Douglass said to the crowd:
"Fellow-citizens, the fourteenth day of April, 1865, of which this is the eleventh anniversary, is now and will ever remain a memorable day in the annals of this Republic. It was on the evening of this day, while a fierce and sanguinary rebellion was in the last stages of its desolating power; while its armies were broken and scattered before the invincible armies of Grant and Sherman; while a great nation, torn and rent by war, was already beginning to raise to the skies loud anthems of joy at the dawn of peace, it was startled, amazed, and overwhelmed by the crowning crime of slavery–the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. It was a new crime, a pure act of malice. No purpose of the rebellion was to be served by it. It was the simple gratification of a hell-black spirit of revenge. But it has done good after all. It has filled the country with a deeper abhorrence of slavery and a deeper love for the great liberator.
Had Abraham Lincoln died from any of the numerous ills to which flesh is heir; had he reached that good old age of which his vigorous constitution and his temperate habits gave promise; had he been permitted to see the end of his great work; had the solemn curtain of death come down but gradually–we should still have been smitten with a heavy grief, and treasured his name lovingly. But dying as he did die, by the red hand of violence, killed, assassinated, taken off without warning, not because of personal hate–for no man who knew Abraham Lincoln could hate him–but because of his fidelity to union and liberty, he is doubly dear to us, and his memory will be precious forever."
Abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass, daguerrotype, 1855. Douglass recruited black men to serve in the Union Army during the Civil War.
Readers, I've posted many articles on Abe Lincoln. Scroll down the right sidebar to Categories/People/Abraham Lincoln for more! Enjoy.
Also on this blog: "Frederick Douglass, An American Slave."
The Lincoln Assassination: Double Date with Death
Posted in Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, Clara Harris, John Wilkes Booth, Major Henry Rathbone, Mental Institutions, PEOPLE, tagged Clara Harris, Ford's Theater, John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln Assassination, Major Henry Rathbone, Mary Todd Lincoln, Our American Cousin, President Abraham Lincoln, the murder of Clara Harris on June 5, 2009| 14 Comments »
Abraham Lincoln, February 5, 1865. He would live less than 3 more months.
It was the morning of Friday, April 14, 1865, the last full day of Abraham Lincoln's life. It was a beautiful spring day. The president was looking forward to an evening at the theater. Plays relaxed him, expecially comedy. There were some who looked down on him for being a theater-goer. They considered it lowbrow entertainment, especially for the commander-in-chief. Who were they to deny Lincoln a few minutes away from his troubling thoughts?
But that was all behind him now. The War Between the States was over. The terrible suffering had come to an end. Abe and his wife, Mary, had lost two sons to illness. That afternoon, he and Mary took a leisurely carriage ride. They spoke of the future together. Abraham was very happy. He said to Mary:
"We must both be more cheerful in the future."
Abraham Lincoln's favorite carriage. It was the carriage that took him, Mary, Major Henry Rathbone, and Clara Harris to Ford's Theatre on the night of Lincoln's assassination. The carriage is a 4-passenger barouche. When the doors are opened, steps unfold.
Shortly after their return to the White House, they dressed for the theater – Ford's Theater – to see "Our American Cousin" starring Laura Keene. Mary and Abe had had a dickens of a time finding someone to attend the performance with them. They had invited 12 people and all had declined. It was Good Friday, the most solemn day on the Christian calendar, and not a day many folks sought entertainment. Most were busy, some disapproved of theater in general. The Grants – especially Julia, the General's wife – could not stand the idea of being confined in a theater box with Mary and her explosive temper.
Clara Harris photographed by Mathew Brady, ca. 1860-68.
Finally, a young couple the Lincolns were fond of – Major Henry Rathbone and Clara Harris – accepted their invitation. Henry and Clara had just become engaged. Oddly enough, Clara was Henry's stepsister. When Henry's father died, his mother married Ira Harris, Clara's father.
The two couples arrived at Ford's Theater in the president's carriage after the performance had already begun. As the four entered the presidential box, decorated with American flags and a painting of George Washington, the actors froze on stage. The orchestra struck up "Hail to the Chief." The audience clapped, cheered, and waved.
"The president," remembered one theater-goer, "stepped to the box-rail and acknowledged the applause with dignified bows and never-to-be-forgotten smiles." (1)
The applause died down as the Lincolns, Clara and Henry took their seats. Abraham settled into a rocking chair Ford had brought up from his office especially for him. He sat on the far right of the box. To the left, Mary pulled her chair close to her husband's, nestling up to him at one point, and slipping her arm through his. On the left side of the box, Clara sat in a stuffed chair. Henry sat on a small sofa behind her and in the back of the box. Mary fretted that Henry couldn't see the stage well from the sofa and said so.
One of the biggest laughs in the play came in the third act when the male lead delivered this line:
"Don't know the manners of good society, eh?" he paused. "Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal – you sockdologizing old mantrap."
This line always got a big laugh. Tonight was no exception. The audience – including the president – laughed and clapped. They made so much noise that only the people in the box heard the crack of a gunshot, as actor John Wilkes Booth had planned. Booth had crept into the presidential box and, with a derringer, shot the president in the back of the head.
The "Assassination of President A Lincoln" showing, from left to right, Clara Harris, Mary Todd Lincoln, Major Henry Rathbone, President Abraham Lincoln, and John Wilkes Booth
The rest was blue gunsmoke and confusion. The president was slumped forward in his chair with no visible wound. He looked as if he was sleeping. Henry grabbed the gunman who held his gun in one hand and a dagger in the other. Booth dropped the gun and slashed Henry in the arm and the head. Because of Henry's interference, Booth was unable to make a clean jump out of the presidential box onto the stage below. Booth caught his foot as he jumped, landing on the stage at a weird angle, and breaking his leg. Henry shouted into the audience, "Stop that man!" Clara yelled, "The president has been shot!"
John Wilkes Booth flees across the stage of Ford's Theater after having assassinated President Lincoln. He shouts, "Sic semper tyrannis!" (Latin for "Thus it shall ever be for tyrants," the Virginia state motto) and, perhaps also, "The South is avenged."
Though Henry was weak from loss of blood and his wounds were serious, the president's wound was mortal. By the next morning, the president was dead.
Henry survived the attack and, in 1867, he and Clara were married. They had three children. But all was not well with Henry. Perhaps because of his head wound, his mental health rapidly deteriorated. He heard voices and believed he was being persecuted and tortured. He became jealous of his wife's attention to their children. Clara lived in utter terror of what Henry might do.
Eighteen years after Lincoln's assassination, Henry Rathbone reenacted Booth's brutal attack on President Lincoln – within his own home. Armed with knife and pistol, Henry attacked his family, murdering Clara with a pistol, trying to kill his children, then stabbing himself. He lived and was declared insane. He was institutionalized in Germany for the rest of his life.
(1) Fleming, Candace. The Lincolns: A Scrapbook Look at Abraham and Mary. New York: Random House, Inc., 2008.
The Man Who Killed John Wilkes Booth
Posted in Boston Corbett, John Wilkes Booth, Mental Institutions, tagged 19th century hatmaking, Abraham Lincoln, Boston Corbett, Edwin Stanton, insane asylum, John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln Assassination, mad as a hatter, mental illness, mercury poisoning on June 4, 2009| 17 Comments »
Boston Corbett (1832-?) photographed in 1865
The man who killed John Wilkes Booth was as mad as a hatter. His name was Boston Corbett. Actually, his name was not originally Boston Corbett, but Thomas T. Corbett. He became a reborn evangelical Christian while in Boston which he took as his new name. He began to wear his hair long like Jesus. He became a religious fanatic. Those who knew him said he was "different." Boston Corbett was as mad as a hatter.
Boston Corbett was as mad as a hatter because he was a hatter – at a time when mercury was used in the felt hatmaking process. Hatmakers breathed the mercury vapors which caused mercury poisoning. Mercury damages the nervous system, producing symptoms such as drooling, twitching, paranoia, hallucinations, and agitation. It was probably mercury poisoning that caused the mental problems that dogged Corbett all his days.
"The Mad Hatter's Tea Party." Though he did not create the expression "mad as a hatter," author Lewis Carroll did create the eccentric character of the hatter in his book, Alice in Wonderland (illustrations by Sir John Tenniel), first released in London in 1865, coincidentally, the year Lincoln was assassinated. The hatter in the book is an eccentric fellow with wacky ideas and incoherent speech, characteristics attributed to many hatters of the day, suffering from mercury poisoning. Mercury was used in hatmaking and its poisonous vapors caused debilitating neurological damage to the hatters, resulting in a complete mental breakdown.
As I was saying, Corbett's job – daily breathing in the noxious mercury fumes while he made felt hats – was making him go insane. By July 16, 1858, Corbett had become so insane that he picked up a pair of scissors, took off his pants, and castrated himself. After doing the strange deed, he nonchalantly dressed again and went out to a prayer meeting, where he ate heartily and then took a walk. Corbett did, however, end up seeing a doctor to receive treatment for his self-mutilation. (1)
At the outbreak of the Civil War, Corbett enlisted in the Union army. He reenlisted three times and was made sergeant. In the days following President Lincoln's assassination, he was selected as one of the 26 soldiers in the 16th New York Cavalry commissioned to pursue and capture the fugitive assassin John Wilkes Booth. On April 26, 1865, Corbett and the others cornered Booth and his coconspirator David Herold in a tobacco barn on Richard Garrett's Virginia farm. Herold gave himself up.
Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth
Booth refused to surrender, so the soldiers set the barn on fire, hoping to smoke him out. Corbett watched Booth through a large crack in the barn wall. As Booth moved about inside the burning barn, Corbett stuck his Colt revolver through the crack and aimed at the unsuspecting Booth, a full 12 feet away. Corbett's bullet struck Lincoln's killer in the neck, puncturing his spinal cord. Booth did not die at once.
When Corbett was questioned about his unilateral decision to kill rather than to capture Booth alive, he replied:
"God Almighty directed me."
Back in Washington, Corbett was placed under technical arrest, but Secretary of War Edwin Stanton refused to prosecute the man many considered a hero. Stanton said, "The rebel is dead. The patriot lives." Corbett collected $1653.85 in reward money.
Famous now, Corbett returned to the hat trade, first in Boston then in Connecticut and New Jersey. Further exposure to mercury caused his already volatile and erratic behavior to escalate. He got into frequent arguments which involved flashing his revolver in men's faces.
He grew paranoid.
Then, in 1878, he made a radical life change. He moved to Kansas to live in a dugout; his home was nothing more than a hole in a hill with a stone front and a patchwork roof. He lived simply, sleeping on a homemade bed. He bought a flock of sheep. He began to give religious lectures that invariably turned into incoherent rants. He kept a number of firearms.
Improbably, in 1887, Corbett was appointed assistant doorkeeper to the Kansas House of Representatives in Topeka. Shortly after his appointment, he got crosswise with some men, pulled out a gun, threatened them, and got arrested. He was declared insane and sent to the Topeka Asylum for the Insane.
But he didn't stay there. A little over a year later, he stole a horse that had been left at the asylum entrance and escaped. Little is known about where he went after that. Some say Mexico. He may have become a traveling salesman for a medicine company in Oklahoma Territory and Texas. No one knows what became of the man who killed John Wilkes Booth. That may forever remain a mystery.
(1) The actual hospital record can be read on page 59 of Lincoln and Kennedy: Medical & Ballistic Comparisons of their Assassinations by Dr. John K. Lattimer.
John Wilkes Booth had a Tattoo
Posted in Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth, PEOPLE, tagged Abraham Lincoln, Alexander Gardner photograph, Asia Booth Clark, Booth manhunt, Boston Corbett, David Herold, Ford's Theater, Garrett farmhouse, John Wilkes Booth, John Wilkes Booth's death, John Wilkes Booth's escape route, John Wilkes Booth's tattoo, Lincoln Assassination, map of John Wilkes Booth's escape route, the killing of John Wilkes Booth, the Montauk on June 3, 2009| 6 Comments »
John Wilkes Booth assassinates President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865. The Confederacy had fallen five days earlier.
John Wilkes Booth, assassin of President Lincoln, 1838-1865. Born into a famous acting family, his father named him after an English rebel and encouraged in him an anti-establishment nature.
For 12 days, Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth was a fugitive, successfully eluding Union manhunters who were combing the countryside south of Washington, D.C., in search of him. With a painful broken left leg, Booth rode and walked through Maryland, rowed across the Potomac River, and landed in Virginia. He hid in underbrush, Confederate safe houses, and pine thickets. But time was running out on him when he reached Virginia's shores. Booth had committed the most foul crime, the murder of our president. Abraham Lincoln had been dead for 11 days then. The country was plunged into deep mourning. The people -from both the North and South – agitated for justice. The Union manhunters hot on Booth's trail were not turning back, not until they'd brought in their prey – dead or alive.
They finally caught up with Booth and his assassination coconspirator Davey Herold at 2 a.m. on April 26, 1865. Union cavalry surrounded a tobacco barn at Richard Garrett's farm outside Port Royal, Virginia, where Booth and Herold were inside sleeping. They were 60 miles south of Ford's Theater in Washington.
Booth's escape route
Herold quickly surrendered, marching out of the barn and submitting to being tied to a tree. But Booth refused to come out of the barn. Gathering straw and brush, the soldiers set the barn on fire. Still Booth would not surrender. Through knotholes and cracks in the barn's walls, the soldiers watched him moving around inside the barn, hobbling around on a crutch, holding a carbine. By sunrise, though, Booth was dead, killed by a shot fired through his neck by soldier Boston Corbett aiming through the barn walls and acting on his own accord. Booth did not die instantly but lingered near death lying on the grass near a locust tree. He was later moved to the porch of the Garrett farmhouse, where he died.
Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth was pronounced dead at 7:15 A.M. April 26, 1865. After his death, a search of his body turned up a pair of revolvers, a belt and holster, a knife, some cartridges, a file, a war map of the Southern states, a spur, a pipe, a Canadian bill of exchange, a compass with a leather case, a signal whistle, an almost burned-up candle, photos of five women - four actresses (Alice Grey, Helen Western, Effie Germon, and Fanny Brown) and his fiancée, Lucy Hale (the daughter of ex-Senator John P. Hale from New Hampshire), and an 1864 date book kept as a diary.
By 8:30 a.m., Booth's limp body was sewn into a horse blanket, placed on a plank serving as a stretcher, and loaded onto a wagon that was then driven to Belle Plain. From there, it was loaded onto a steamship then a tugboat and transported up the Potomac to the Washington Navy Yard. There it was transferred to the anchored ship, the Montauk. Booth's remains were laid on a bench. The horse blanket was removed, and a tarp was placed over the corpse. Many witnesses were gathered to identify the body:
One of these people was Dr. John Frederick May. Some time prior to the assassination, Dr. May had removed a large fibroid tumor from Booth's neck. Dr. May found a scar from his operation on the corpse's neck exactly where it should have been. Booth's dentist, Dr. William Merrill, who had filled two teeth for Booth shortly before the assassination, pried open the corpse's mouth and positively identified his fillings.
Charles Dawson, the clerk at the National Hotel where Booth was staying, examined the remains, saying "I distinctly recognize it as the body of J. Wilkes Booth – first, from the general appearance, next, from the India-ink letters, 'J.W.B.,' on his wrist, which I had very frequently noticed, and then by a scar on the neck. I also recognize the vest as that of J. Wilkes Booth." …Seaton Munroe, a prominent Washington attorney who knew Booth, viewed the body and said that he "was very familiar with his (Booth's) face and distinctly recognize it." Alexander Gardner, a well-known Washington photographer, and his assistant, Timothy H. O'Sullivan, were also among those called to the Montauk to identify Booth's corpse. (1)
As for the tattoo, it was on John Wilkes Booth's left hand. His sister, Asia Booth Clarke, wrote about it in her published memoirs, The Unlocked Book, John Wilkes Booth, a Sister's Memoir. Asia felt her brother possessed both great charm and physical beauty, including his hands:
"He had perfectly shaped hands, and across the back of one he had clumsily marked, when a little boy, his initials in India ink." (2)
Though innocent of any crime, Asia's husband was one of a hundred people rounded up and imprisoned after the Lincoln assassination, implicated by association with John Wilkes Booth. After her husband's release from jail and exoneration from criminal activity, Asia, her husband, and their children (8 total, 2 of whom became actors) emigrated to England, away from the unwanted notoriety brought about by her brother's heinous crime.
(1) Abraham Lincoln's Assassination
(2) Steers, Edward, Jr. Blood on the Moon. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001.
John Wilkes Booth Uses the N-Word
Posted in Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth, tagged 1865, April 11, black Union soldiers, Confederacy, David Herold, Emancipation Proclamation, John Wilkes Booth, Julius Caesar, Lee's surrender, Lewis Payne, Lewis Powell, Lincoln Assassination, Lincoln's last speech, Noah Brooks, President Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, Tad Lincoln, the Civil War, the Union, the War Between the States on March 24, 2009| Leave a Comment »
President Lincoln and son "Tad" (Thomas) in a February 9, 1864 photograph by Anthony Berger of the Brady Studio.
April 11, 1865 became the official day of celebrating the end of the Civil War. An even larger crowd was assembled on the White House lawn than the night before. (See last post.) The band was playing triumphant music, people were waving banners and shouting, "Hoorah!" and calling out for President Lincoln to speak. It was evening, but Washington D.C., was blazing with light. The Capitol, other government buildings, the White House, and private homes were lit up from within to ring in the good news.
A great cheer went up from the crowd when the President appeared on the second-floor balcony to deliver his speech. There he stood patiently and quietly as waves of applause rolled toward him. Finally, the crowd settled down and Lincoln, holding a candle in his left hand and his notes in his right, prepared to speak. But the juggling of the candle and his manuscript instantly proved awkward for the president. So he gave the candle to his friend Noah Brooks to hold. Son Tad knelt at his feet to catch each fluttering page of his father's notes as he dropped them.
The crowd was silent when Lincoln began:
"Reuniting our country is fraught with great difficulty…and we differ among ourselves as to the mode and manner and means of reconstruction…."
Lincoln continued in this same vein, spelling out in greater and more boring detail the plans he had for reuniting the torn nation. The crowd was somewhat taken aback by the president's tone. This was not the speech they'd expected. They had come to hear a rousing speech, praising the Union troops for their bravery and sacrifice, but, instead their president was droning on with no merriment, skipping past the present and jumping into the future without pausing to savor victory. Not waiting for the end of the president's speech, some members of the crowd drifted away no doubt to find a jazzier way to spend the celebration.
John Wilkes Booth (1838-1865)
One of the people in the crowd that day was the famous young actor and Southern sympathizer John Wilkes Booth. Along with him were drugstore clerk David Herold and former Confederate soldier Lewis Powell, also known as Lewis Payne. Just weeks earlier, these three men and five others had been planning to kidnap Lincoln and exchange him for Confederate P.O.W.s. But now that the Confederacy had collapsed, Lee had surrendered, and Rebel P.O.W.s were being released, there was no incentive to kidnap the president. Still, Booth wanted to act. He hated Lincoln and considered him a tyrant along the lines of Julius Caesar. He was determined to do something heroic in defense of the South and to punish Lincoln.
Booth was startled to hear what the President said next. Lincoln said something that no other president had ever said publicly. He told the crowd that he was in favor of granting some black men the right to vote, especially, "the very intelligent and those who served our cause as soldiers." One hundred eighty thousand black men had served in the Union Army.
Booth went ballistic. He turned to his fellow co-conspirator Powell. "That means nigger citizenship. That is the last speech he will ever make," he vowed. He begged Powell to shoot Lincoln then and there. When Powell said no, Booth proclaimed, "By God, I'll put him through."
Booth was true to his word. It was the last speech Lincoln ever made. Four days later, the president would be dead, killed by a bullet fired into his head by John Wilkes Booth.
For related posts on this blog, see left sidebar "Categories." Select Mary and Abraham Lincoln. In particular, you might enjoy reading "The Lincoln Assassination: Mary Surratt & the 7 Hoods."
What They Found in Lincoln's Pockets
Posted in Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, PEOPLE, tagged Abraham Lincoln, Daniel Boorstin, Ford Theatre, Library of Congress, Lincoln Assassination, Lincoln assassination artifacts, Lincoln realia, Lincolniana, Mary Lincoln Isham, Our American Cousin, Robert Lincoln on March 16, 2009| 10 Comments »
Lincoln is assassinated at Ford's Theatre by John Wilkes Booth, April 14, 1865
On the morning of April 15, 1865, the day Abraham Lincoln died, someone emptied his pockets. These contents were put in a box which was then wrapped in brown paper and tied with a string. The box was then handed to Abraham's oldest son Robert Lincoln who was at his father's deathbed. Robert Lincoln then passed the box on to his daughter, Mary Lincoln Isham, who donated the box to the Library of Congress in 1937. Labeled "Do Not Open," the mystery box was tucked away in a vault in the Librarian's office and forgotten for almost four decades.
Finally, in 1975, then Librarian of Congress Daniel J. Boorstin decided to open the box. With staff looking on in eager anticipation, Boorstin untied the string, tore off the brown paper, and opened the box.
Lincoln assassination artifacts: contents of Lincoln's pockets the night he was murdered (left) and copy of a newspaper announcing the assassination (right)
The night Lincoln was murdered at Ford's Theatre, he was carrying:
a pair of small spectacles folded into a silver case,
a pair of reading glasses,
a small velvet eyeglass cleaner (I can't find above),
an ivory pocketknife trimmed with silver,
a large linen handkerchief with "A. Lincoln" stitched in red,
a tiny pencil ( I can't find above),
a brass sleeve button,
a fancy watch fob, and
a brown leather wallet lined with purple silk. It contained a Confederate five-dollar bill bearing the likeness of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and 8 newspaper clippings Lincoln had cut out and saved. All of the clippings praised him. (2)
These artifacts were put on display at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C, in 1976, the year of our nation's 200th birthday and are still on view today. Though only everyday items, the contents of Lincoln's pockets are among the items visitors to the Library most often ask to see.
Here's a close-up of Lincoln's reading glasses, broken at the left hinge and mended with a bit of string. Frugal Abe wore rickety reading glasses while, in contrast, extravagant Mary had a collection of 300 pairs of gloves.
Abraham Lincoln's reading glasses
(1) Freedman, Russell. Lincoln: A Photobiography. (New York: Clarion Books, 1987)
(2) Fleming, Candace. The Lincolns: A Scrapbook Look at Abraham and Mary. (New York: Random House, Inc., 2008)
Bad Omen #2: Lincoln Sees His Corpse
Posted in Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, PEOPLE, tagged Abraham Lincoln, Alexander Gardner photograph, Allan Pinkerton, Battle of Antietam, Lincoln Assassination, Lincoln's corpse, Lincoln's dream, Lincoln's premonition of death, Major John McClernard, Pinkerton Detective Agency, the Civil War on March 4, 2009| 2 Comments »
Allan Pinkerton, President Lincoln, and Major John A. McClernand in an 1862 photo by Alexander Gardner following the Battle of Antietam. Pinkerton was the head of Union Intelligence Services then. It was alleged that, in 1861, his Pinkerton Detective Agency uncovered an assassination plot against the president in Baltimore on his way to the inauguration. Thanks to Pinkerton's warning, Lincoln changed his travel itinerary and the plot was foiled. On the 3-story Chicago building of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, their logo, a black-and-white eye, says "We Never Sleep." This was the origin of the slang term for detective "private eye."
Since he stepped foot into the White House, President Lincoln was dogged by rumors of assassination and kidnapping. Threatening letters arrived on an almost daily basis. Lincoln stuffed them away in a bulging envelope marked ASSASSINATION. (1)
Abe's friends were worried. "I long ago made up my mind that if anyone wants to kill me, he will do it," he told a newspaper reporter. "If I wore a shirt of mail, and kept myself surrounded by a bodyguard, it would be all the same. There are a thousand ways of getting at a man if it is desired that he should be killed."
Nevertheless, soldiers camped on the lawn of the White House, the cavalry escorted him on his afternoon carriage rides, and private detectives served as bodyguards.
In early April of 1865, just before the fall of Richmond and the end of the Civil War (and less than two weeks before his assassination), Lincoln had a troubling dream he related to friends:
"About ten days ago, I retired very late. I had been up waiting for important dispatches from the front. I could not have been long in bed when I fell into a slumber, for I was weary. I soon began to dream. There seemed to be a death-like stillness about me. Then I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping. I thought I left my bed and wandered downstairs. There the silence was broken by the same pitiful sobbing, but the mourners were invisible. I went from room to room; no living person was in sight, but the same mournful sounds of distress met me as I passed along. I saw light in all the rooms; every object was familiar to me; but where were all the people who were grieving as if their hearts would break? I was puzzled and alarmed. What could be the meaning of all this? Determined to find the cause of a state of things so mysterious and so shocking, I kept on until I arrived at the East Room, which I entered.
a catafalque is a raised platform supporting a body or coffin
There I met with a sickening surprise. Before me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; and there was a throng of people, gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose face was covered, others weeping pitifully.
'Who is dead in the White House?' I demanded of one of the soldiers.
'The President,' was his answer; 'he was killed by an assassin.'
Then came a loud burst of grief from the crowd, which woke me from my dream. I slept no more that night; and although it was only a dream, I have been strangely annoyed by it ever since."
(1) Freedman, Russell. Lincoln: A Photobiography. (New York: Scholastic Inc., 1987)
Bad Omen #1: Lincoln's Doppelganger
Posted in Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, PEOPLE, tagged Abraham Lincoln, Alexander Gardner photograph, Civil War, Lincoln Assassination, Lincoln's doppelganger, Lincoln's premonition, Lincoln's psychic power, Lincoln's vision, Mary Todd Lincoln, Mathew Brady photographs, mediums, Noah Brooks, Victorian séances, White House séances, Willie Lincoln on March 3, 2009| 6 Comments »
Willie Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was deeply interested in psychic phenomena. Following the death of his eleven-year-old son, Willie, (1850-1862) of typhoid fever, Lincoln was consumed with grief. He was persuaded by wife Mary to participate in several séances held in the White House. Mary believed that professional mediums could pierce the veil between this life and the next, thus allowing her and her husband to communicate with their dead son. Once Lincoln attended a seance in which a piano lifted up and moved around the room. It was in the opinion of the mediums who worked with President Lincoln that he was definitely "the possessor of extraordinary psychic powers." (1)
Séances became popular in the mid-to-late 19th Century as Americans longed to reconnect with their many loved ones killed in the Civil War.
The day after his first election to the presidency in 1860, Lincoln called his good friend journalist Noah Brooks (1830-1903) into his office. He had been startled by a vision of seeing two of his faces at once in a mirror and wanted to tell Brooks about it. Brooks made a written record of the conversation, later including it in his White House memoirs, Washington in Lincoln's Time (1895). Adapted from Brooks' work, these are Lincoln's words:
Abraham Lincoln photographed by Mathew Brady, February 27, 1860
It was just after my election in 1860, when the news had been coming in thick and fast all day and there had been a great "hurrah, boys," so that I was well tired out, and went home to rest, throwing myself down on a lounge in my chamber. Opposite where I lay was a bureau with a swinging glass upon it (and here he got up and placed furniture to illustrate the position), and looking in that glass I saw myself reflected nearly at full length; but my face, I noticed had two separate and distinct images, the tip of the nose of one being about three inches from the tip of the other. I was a little bothered, perhaps startled, and got up and looked in the glass, but the illusion vanished. On lying down again, I saw it a second time, plainer, if possible, than before; and then I noticed that one of the faces was a little paler — say five shades — than the other.
Abraham Lincoln photographed by Alexander Gardner, February 5, 1865
I got up, and the thing melted away, and I went off, and in the excitement of the hour forgot all about it — nearly, but not quite, for the thing would once in a while come up, and give me a little pang as if something uncomfortable had happened. When I went home again that night I told my wife about it, and a few days afterward I made the experiment again, when (with a laugh), sure enough! the thing came back again; but I never succeeded in bringing the ghost back after that, though I once tried very industriously to show it to my wife, who was somewhat worried about it. She thought it was a "sign" that I was to be elected to a second term of office, and that the paleness of one of the faces was an omen that I should not see life through the last term.
(1) Wallenchinsky, David and Wallace, Irving. The People's Almanac (New York: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1975)
Abraham Lincoln: "That D____d Long Armed Ape!"
Posted in Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, PEOPLE, tagged Abraham Lincoln, Civil War, Cyrus McCormack, Edwin Stanton, Ford's Theatre, George Harding, Lincoln arms, Lincoln Assassination, Lincoln death, Petersen boardinghouse, President Obama on February 23, 2009| 3 Comments »
Lincoln's Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (1814-1869)
Much has been made of Democratic President Obama's attempt to incorporate a Republican into his cabinet, a move that today's political pundits liken to an overture made by the President Lincoln when, in 1862, he appointed Democrat Edwin Stanton as secretary of war in his Republican administration. Stanton was not just Lincoln's political opponent, he was one of his most scathing critics, referring to the "imbecility" of the Lincoln administration's handling of the Civil War. Not only that, he and Lincoln had met on another occasion – in a courtroom six years earlier – and Stanton had treated Lincoln with surly condescension.
During that case, Stanton headed a team of lawyers that included Lincoln that challenged Cyrus McCormack's patent on the reaper. Nationally-renowned patent lawyer George Harding was another member of that same team. Harding never forgot the first time he caught sight of Abraham Lincoln arriving at the Burnet House in Cincinnati where the lawyers were lodged. Lincoln approached Harding and Stanton. Harding described Lincoln as a
"tall, rawly-boned, ungainly back woodsman, with coarse, ill-fitting clothing, his trousers hardly reaching his ankles, holding in his hands a blue cotton umbrella with a ball on the end of the handle." (1)
Lincoln introduced himself to the two men, saying,
"Let's go up in a gang."
Both Stanton and Harding were shocked that this country bumpkin was part of their team. Stanton pulled Harding aside, whispering,
"Why did you bring that d____d long armed Ape here?"
Though the three of them spent a week together in trial and stayed at the same hotel, neither Harding nor Stanton asked Lincoln to join them for a meal or go with them to or from court. The brief Lincoln prepared for use in the trial was never even opened by Harding and Stanton. The judge presiding over the trial hosted a dinner for both teams of lawyers yet Lincoln was not invited.
Yet, in 1862, Lincoln set aside his ego and offered Stanton "the most powerful civilian post" – the post of secretary of war. Stanton accepted the position only to "help save the country." While Stanton was hot-tempered and brusque, Lincoln recognized his brilliance and ability. Over the three years of their working relationship, Stanton and Lincoln grew close.
On the night of Lincoln's assassination, Edwin Stanton was alerted. When he arrived at the Petersen boardinghouse across from Ford's Theatre, he found that the president had been placed diagonally across a bed to accommodate his large frame. Lincoln was stripped of his shirt. "His large arms were of a size which one would scarce have expected from his spare appearance," noted Stanton's companion. Edwin Stanton and the other cabinet members except for Seward were present when President Lincoln was pronounced dead at 7:22 a.m. on April 15, 1865. Stanton's tribute at that moment is still with us today.
"Now he belongs to the ages," Stanton said of Lincoln.
Death Bed of Lincoln
Throughout that long night when the president had lingered between life and death, the task had fallen to Secretary of War Stanton to alert the generals. Coolly and with self-possession, Stanton dictated numerous dispatches. But when the president was pronounced dead, Stanton could bear his grief no longer. He could not stop the tears from flowing down his face. No one could control his grief that long night. One witness observed, "there was not a soul present that did not love the president."
But "Stanton's grief was uncontrollable," recalled Horace Porter, "and," some time later, "at the mention of Mr. Lincoln's name, he would break down and weep bitterly." (1) Stanton later wrote that he came to love Lincoln more than any other person outside of his immediate family.
(1) Goodwin, Doris Kearns. Team of Rivals. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005.