In
just a little over a year – in what will be an historic 150-year
anniversary – the American people, and likely people all around the
world, will come together in remembrance of the man who was once rather
preposterously described by a biographer as “the most gentle, most
magnanimous, most Christ-like ruler of all time.” That man, of course,
was Abraham Lincoln, allegedly the 16th and most beloved President of
these United States.
I say “allegedly” here because
it is hard to see how someone could be the president of an entity that
didn’t actually exist. And the reality is that during Lincoln’s tenure,
there was no such thing as the “United” States. There were Northern
states presided over by Washington, and there were Confederate states
presided over by a parallel government in Richmond, but there certainly
weren’t any “united” states. Wouldn’t it then be just as accurate to
describe Jefferson Davis as the 16th president of the United States?
Just checking.
I also say “allegedly” here
because Lincoln was most certainly not, during his lifetime, a beloved
man. He was thoroughly despised throughout half the country, and wasn’t
even all that popular in the north. He received merely 40% of the
popular vote in 1860 and could have, as more honest historians have
noted, been very easily defeated had the Democratic Party bothered to
field a viable candidate. But Lincoln was clearly the anointed one.
As
we all know, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by famed actor and
Southern sympathizer John Wilkes Booth on the evening of April 14, 1865
(which happened to be Good Friday) while attending a play at Ford’s
Theater in Washington, DC. Just five days earlier, General Robert E. Lee
had surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, effectively
signaling an end to the unfathomably bloody US Civil War. What is less
widely known is that the assassination of Lincoln was allegedly part of a
larger plot that was to have included the simultaneous assassinations
of General Grant, Vice President Andrew Johnson, Secretary of State
William Seward and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton.
This
alleged plot, which is part of the official history of
the Lincoln assassination, obviously involved people other than John
Wilkes Booth. Nine of those people faced trial as co-conspirators, eight
by military tribunal (Mary Surrat, David Herold, George Atzerodt, Dr.
Samuel Mudd, Samuel Arnold, Michael O’Laughlen, Edward Spangler, and
Lewis Paine [or Lewis Payne, or Lewis Powell, depending upon who is
telling the tale]), and one who later stood trial alone (John Surrat).
Four were executed, three received life sentences, one was given a
six-year prison term, and one was acquitted. As for Booth, he was
captured and gunned down at Garrett’s barn on April 26, 1865 and so
never made it to trial.
And that, in a nutshell, is
the official narrative of the Lincoln assassination. It is an unusual
narrative, to be sure, because it explicitly acknowledges a ‘conspiracy’
surrounding the death of a president. Of course, many of the details
are usually left out when the story is told, leading many to think of
John Wilkes Booth as just another ‘lone nut’ assassin. But Booth was
hardly a lone nut and there was in fact a conspiracy at the heart of
the Lincoln assassination, though the people targeted by the government
weren’t the real conspirators; the real conspirators were the very
people who orchestrated the witch hunt against the scapegoats.
But
before we get to that, let’s first skip ahead and look at some of the
forgotten aftermath of the assassination, because there is always much
to be learned by examining the fates that befall those involved to
varying degrees in political conspiracies, especially those unfortunate
souls whose names are largely consigned to the dustbins of history.
Let’s
begin with Sergeant Thomas “Boston” Corbett, the Jack Ruby of
the Lincoln assassination. Corbett was a strange character if ever there
was one. How strange, you ask? Strange enough to have reportedly
castrated himself circa 1858, and to have then opted not to seek medical
attention until he had tended to other, apparently more important,
business. He was widely considered to be mentally unbalanced, shockingly
enough, and he often spoke of hearing disembodied voices. He was
mockingly referred to by his fellow soldiers as “the Glory to God man”
due to his rather unorthodox religious beliefs, which he wasn’t shy
about sharing.
Thomas “Boston” Corbett
Due
to his bizarre behavior and his unwillingness, or inability, to follow
orders, Corbett had been court-martialed and discharged from the
service. For some unexplained reason though, he was allowed to re-enlist
in 1863 and he quickly thereafter rose to the rank of sergeant. In
April 1865, he was assigned to the elite team that captured Booth and,
in defiance of direct orders, he personally shot and killed the man who
was said to be Booth. Corbett was never reprimanded or disciplined for
his actions and in fact profited handsomely by touring the country for
years as “The Man Who Killed Booth.”
In 1887,
Corbett was appointed as the clerk/doorman of the Kansas state
legislature. Things didn’t go so well for him after that. According to
some reports, one day he just decided to shoot the place up, though
other accounts hold that he didn’t fire his weapon but merely brandished
it and issued threats. Whatever the case, he quickly found himself
committed to a mental asylum. He managed to escape soon enough though
and may have briefly surfaced in Texas before never being seen or heard
from again.
Let’s next turn our attention to Major
Henry Rathbone and Clara Harris, the couple who were sharing the
presidential box at Ford’s Theater with Abe and Mary Lincoln. At the
time, Rathbone was dating Harris, who was both Rathbone’s stepsister and
the daughter of US Senator Ira Harris. Rathbone was reportedly deeply
cut when he attempted to disarm and detain Booth, who escaped by leaping
over the railing and onto the stage.
Clara Harris
Major Henry Rathbone
Rathbone
later married Harris and the two started a family and moved to Germany,
where Rathbone served as the US Consul to Hanover. Things didn’t work
out so well though for the Rathbones; in December 1883, Henry tried to
kill his children and, when thwarted in that effort, instead shot and
brutally carved up wife Clara, before turning the knife on himself. Like
Corbett, he was sent off to an asylum, but unlike Corbett, Henry
Rathbone spent the rest of his life there.
Since I
mentioned Mary Todd Lincoln just a couple paragraphs ago, I should
probably mention that she also ended up in an insane asylum. Always a
bit on the crazy side, Mary became considerably crazier after the
assassination, exhibiting increasingly erratic behavior and suffering
from vivid hallucinations. She was ultimately committed by her own son,
Robert Todd Lincoln.
Mary Todd Lincoln
To
say that Robert Lincoln had some rather unusual aspects to his life
story would be quite an understatement. To begin with, we could note
that he had the distinction of being the only man in history with direct
links to three presidential assassinations. Just twenty-one when his
father was gunned down, he subsequently was present at the
assassinations of James Garfield in 1881 and William McKinley in 1901.
He was also the only Lincoln son to survive his childhood; brother Eddie
died at age 3 in 1850, brother Willie at age 11 in 1862, and brother
Tad barely made it to age 18 before dying in 1871.
According
to Robert Lincoln’s own account, he was involved in a truly bizarre
incident in late 1864/early 1865, not long before the death of his
father. The younger Lincoln was saved from serious injury and possible
death when he was pulled to safety by a stranger during a mishap on a
train platform. That stranger just happened to be Edwin Booth, an older
brother of John Wilkes Booth. Lincoln later maintained a long-term
friendship and possible romance with Lucy Hale, the daughter of US
Senator John Hale and a former paramour and fiancé of John Wilkes Booth.
Small world, I guess.
Robert Todd Lincoln
Speaking
of Edwin Booth, on June 9, 1893, just as his casket was being carried
for burial (he had died two days earlier), Ford’s Theater mysteriously
collapsed, killing 22 people and injuring another 68. The building had
been converted into a government record storage facility and some of the
records of the assassination were lost in the wreckage. Shit happens.
Edwin
and John’s sister, Rosalie Booth, died under mysterious circumstances
in January 1880; rumors at the time spoke of a “mysterious assailant.”
Edwin Booth Clark, a son of sister Asia Booth and therefore a nephew of
John Wilkes Booth, attended Annapolis and became a US Naval officer, but
he thereafter disappeared at sea. Officially, he committed suicide by
jumping overboard. And Junius Brutus Booth, the patriarch of the Booth
clan, is said to have gone insane.
The Booth siblings – John Wilkes, Edwin and Junius, Jr.
US
Senator Preston King, credited with being one of the guys who
supposedly prevented a mercy petition on behalf of Mary Surrat from
reaching President Andrew Johnson, decided on November 12, 1865 to go
swimming in New York with a bag of bullets tied around his neck.
Officially, his death was a very innovative suicide. US Senator James
Lane, the other guy credited with supposedly preventing the mercy
petition on behalf of Surrat from reaching Johnson, shot himself in the
head while jumping from a carriage in Leavenworth, Kansas on July 1,
1866. Or else he slit his own throat. Whichever sounds better to you.
Senator Preston King
Senator James Lane
US Senator
John Conness, a likely conspirator and a pallbearer at Lincoln’s
funeral, was committed to an insane asylum, where he later died. There
was a lot of that sort of thing going around in those days. The body of
William Peterson – the owner of the boardinghouse where Lincoln was
taken immediately after being shot, and where he died the next morning –
was found on the grounds of the Smithsonian loaded with the drug
laudanum. His death, needless to say, was ruled a suicide.
Senator John Conness
Colonel
William Browning, who was Vice President Andrew Johnson’s personal
secretary as well as being a personal friend to John Wilkes Booth
(Browning claimed that Johnson was close to Booth as well), is believed
to have been murdered, though details are sketchy. Less sketchy were the
murders of Frank Boyle and William Watson, both of whom had the
misfortune of physically resembling John Wilkes Booth. Both of their
bodies were turned over to the War Department by overzealous vigilantes
for the reward that was being offered. Stanton’s department covered up
the murders by unceremoniously disposing of the bodies, one of which was
dumped into the Potomac River.
Frances Adeline
Seward and Frances Adeline “Fanny” Seward had the misfortune of bearing
witness to the staged attack on William Seward, sitting Secretary of
State and the husband of Frances and the father of Fanny. Frances died
of a reported heart attack on June 21, 1865, the summer solstice, just
two months after the assassination of Lincoln and the alleged attempt on
her husband’s life. Fanny died the next year, on October 29, 1866, just
before Halloween. She was just twenty-one; the cause of her death
remains unknown. A few years later, in 1870, William Seward legally
‘adopted’ his young ‘companion,’ Olive Risley, as his ‘daughter.’ Risley
was 26 at the time and Seward was 69.
William Seward, in a Masonic pose, with daughter Fanny
Lafayette
Baker was undoubtedly one of the central conspirators involved in
the Lincoln assassination. As ‘Honest’ Abe’s spymaster and head of the
NDP, forerunner of the US Secret Service, Baker had instituted a reign
of terror, just as he had previously done as a member of San Francisco’s
Vigilance Committee, running roughshod over the US Constitution. Under
Baker’s (and Stanton’s) tyrannical watch, there were 260,000 dubious
arrests made and some 38,000 people held without trial as political
prisoners. Baker also introduced such innovations as midnight raids,
forced entry without warrants, imprisonment without bail, and summary
arrests.
Circa 1867, Baker published a book
revealing the existence of what was said to be Booth’s suppressed diary.
He subsequently barricaded himself in his home and told friends that a
secret cabal was intent on killing him. Press reports from December 1867
through February 1868 tell of repeated attempts made on his life; he
was shot at twice, stabbed on his own front porch, and beaten by three
or four men who attempted to abduct him. Nevertheless, when he turned up
dead on July 3, 1868, the cause of death was said to be meningitis,
necessitating an immediate, sealed burial. A later exhumation though
indicated that the cause of death was actually arsenic poisoning. Baker
left behind cryptic notes alluding to a conspiracy behind
the Lincolnassassination involving eleven members of Congress, twelve US
Army officers, three US Navy officers, one governor, five bankers,
three nationally known newspapermen, and eleven wealthy industrialists.
Lafayette Baker
Police
officer John F. Parker had the dubious distinction of being the guy who
was supposed to be guarding Lincoln at the time of the assassination,
except that he instead opted to wander over next door to get good and
drunk. Parker had a seriously checkered history with the department,
having been written up on multiple occasions for conduct unbecoming an
officer, the use of insolent language, visiting a house of prostitution,
inappropriately discharging his weapon, sleeping on duty, and being
drunk on duty. He was nevertheless assigned the task of guarding the
president, a development that historians have been unable to explain.
And he was assigned that task just in time to be neglecting his duties
when Lincoln was shot.
Parker was never reprimanded
in any way for abandoning his post and leaving the president
vulnerable. In fact, he was returned to duty at the White House, an
honor usually reserved for senior officers with unblemished records. He
was released from duty though in 1868, just after Stanton relinquished
his post as Secretary of War. Parker was never seen or heard from again,
and it is believed that he was either killed or went into hiding to
avoid being killed.
Next up is Edwin
Stanton, Lincoln’s Secretary of War and a seriously deranged individual.
Prior to his emergence on the national scene, Stanton’s greatest
claim-to-fame was securing an acquittal for US Representative Daniel
Sickles on murder charges. On February 27, 1859, Sickles had gunned down
the unarmed Philip Barton Key II, US Attorney for the District of
Columbia and the son of famed composer Francis Scott Key. Stanton argued
a temporary insanity defense for the first time in US history.
Edwin Stanton
The
media, apparently every bit as corrupt in those days as it is today,
overwhelmingly supported Sickles while vilifying both Key and Sickles’
wife, who had reportedly been having an affair. Though standing trial
for a capital offense, Sickles was allowed to stay in his jailer’s
apartment, have unlimited visitors, and, most amazingly, retain his
weapon. As already stated, Sickles was acquitted and was subsequently
allowed to retain his seat in the House of Representatives. He later
became a Civil War general and the US Minister to Spain.
Elsewhere
in Stanton’s biography, we find that at various times in his life he
personally ordered the exhumation of at least two bodies, one of them
being his daughter Lucy, who was dug up circa 1842. According to
reports, Stanton kept his daughter’s decomposing corpse in a special
container in his home for at least a year. Nothing there that would
cause anyone to question his fitness to serve as Secretary of War.
Stanton became
a national figure when he was appointed by President Buchanan to serve
as Attorney General on December 20, 1860, just weeks before Lincoln took
office. He went on to wield considerable power in both the Lincoln and
Johnson Administrations. Indeed, Johnson’s attempted dismissal
of Stanton lead directly to the impeachment proceedings begun against
him. Stanton’s reign came to an end though on December 24, 1869, when he
turned up dead of unstated causes (though some reports allude to
suicide, just as his brother had reportedly done in 1846). He had been
nominated for a seat on the US Supreme Court by President Grant and
confirmed by the US Senate, but he died before he could take that seat.
That
is a whole lot of tragedy to befall a lot of people who were in a
position to know more about the Lincoln assassination than they should
have. There was though at least one guy who saw his fortunes rise. Major
General Lew Wallace was a member of the hopelessly corrupt military
tribunal that sat in judgment of Mary Surrat and others. In 1880, he
became far better known as a writer of historical fiction when he wrote
and published Ben Hur, the best-selling novel of the nineteenth century. Well over a hundred years later, it is still in print.
Lew Wallace… to be continued
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