If
there is anything we can be certain about in regards to the
assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, it is that we will never
know what really happened in the presidential box at Ford’s Theatre at
approximately 10:15 PM on the night of April 14, 1865.
In
addition to the guy who made a hasty exit across the stage and out the
back door, and the guy who caught a bullet to the head and never
regained consciousness, there were, depending upon which version of
events one chooses to believe, either three or four eyewitnesses present
in that box that fateful evening. Mary Todd Lincoln was certainly
there, as were Major Henry Rathbone and his fiancé/stepsister Clara
Harris. By some accounts (including Forbes’ own account) presidential
aide Charles Forbes was there as well.
The Lincoln party arrived at the theater around 8:30 PM, about a half-hour after the play, Our American Cousin,
had begun. The show was briefly halted while the band played “Hail to
the Chief,” accompanied by a rousing ovation from the crowd, after which
the Lincolns and their guests quietly took their seats and the play
resumed. Some two hours later, the president lay mortally wounded with a
lead ball lodged in his brain.
Of
the four potential eyewitnesses, none were ever questioned by
reporters. Only one was ever questioned by authorities. Only one was
ever deposed. Only one was ever called upon to testify as to what he or
she witnessed that evening. Only one ever spoke publicly in any way
about what exactly transpired in that box. Despite the fact that
the Lincoln assassination was billed as the Crime of the Century,
authorities seem to have had no interest at all in speaking with the
handful of people who actually witnessed the event.
As
for Mary Todd Lincoln, the only words of hers that were ever made
public concerning the death of her husband were from a personal letter
she sent to an Edward Lewis Baker, Jr. in 1877, twelve years after the
assassination. And those strangely punctuated words shed no light at all
on the events of that evening: “God, gives us our beloved ones, we make
them our idols, they are removed from us, & we have patiently to
await the time, when, He, reunites us to them. And the waiting, is so
long! My bereavements, have been so intense, the most loving and devoted
of husbands, torn from my side, my hand within his own, at the time –
and God has recalled from this earth, sons, the most idolising, the
noblest, purest, most talented – that were ever given to parents – Their
presence grand & beautiful – too good for this world, so full of
sorrow – Yet the time will come, when the severance, will be over,
together husband, wife and children – never more to be separated – I
grieve for those who have been called upon to give up their precious
ones, and until the sunlight of a happier clime dawns upon us, we will
never know until then, why, we have been visited, by such sorrow.”
Clara
Harris was similarly tight-lipped about what she witnessed at Ford’s
Theatre. Her account also comes from personal correspondence, this one
written on April 29, 1865, just two weeks after the tragedy: “That
terrible Friday night is to me yet almost like some dreadful vision … We
four composed the party that evening. They drove to our door in the
gayest spirits; chatting on our way – and the President was received
with the greatest enthusiasm. They say we were watched by the assassins;
ay, as we alighted from the carriage. Oh, how could anyone be so cruel
as to strike that kind, dear, honest face! And when I think of that
fiend barring himself in alone with us, my blood runs cold. My dress is
saturated with blood; my hands and face were covered. You may imagine
what a scene! And so, all through that dreadful night, when we stood by
that dying bed. Poor Mrs. Lincoln was and is almost crazy. Henry
narrowly escaped with his life. The knife struck at his heart with all
the force of a practiced and powerful arm; he fortunately parried the
blow, and received a wound in his arm, extending along the bone, from
the elbow nearly to the shoulder. He concealed it for some time, but was
finally carried home in swoon; the loss of blood had been so great from
an artery and veins severed. He is now getting quite well, but cannot
as yet use his arm …”
It wasn’t until almost thirty
years after the assassination that Charles Forbes swore out an
affidavit; unfortunately, that affidavit also fails to shed any light at
all on the events of that evening: “I was the personal attendant of the
late President Lincoln from shortly after his first inauguration up to
the time he fell by the assassin’s bullet … I accompanied him in the
carriage, was with him from the carriage to the box in the theatre, and
was in the box when the assassin fired his fatal shot.” Curious that
nearly three decades after John Wilkes Booth was identified as the
assassin, Forbes referred to him merely as “the assassin.”
And
that, dear readers, is the sum total of what we have from three of the
four eyewitnesses. Considering once again that this was, as I may have
mentioned, the Crime of the Century, that is a rather remarkable set of
circumstances.
That
leaves us with only the tale told by Major Henry Rathbone, which we
already know was a hopelessly scripted, rehearsed affair that he told
under oath in almost exactly the same words on no less than three
occasions. And yet it is the only account we have – the only account we
will ever have – so we must look at it in its entirety, as originally
told at his April 17, 1865 deposition. It is a strange tale, to be sure,
and it would seem to indicate that Rathbone spent more time studying
the physical characteristics of the room than he did watching the play:
“The
box assigned to the President is in the second tier, on the right hand
side of the audience and was occupied by the President and Mrs. Lincoln,
Miss Harris and this deponent and by no other person. The box is
entered by passing from the front of the building in the rear of the
dress circle to a small entry or passageway about eight feet in length
and four feet in width. This passageway is entered by a door which opens
on the inner side. This door is placed as to make an acute angle
between it and the wall behind it on the inner side. At the inner end of
this passageway is another door standing squarely across and opening
into the box. On the left hand side of the passageway and very near the
inner end is a third door which also opens into the box. This latter
door was closed. The party entered the box through the door at the end
of the passageway. The box is so constructed that it may be divided into
two by a movable partition, one of the doors described opening into
each. The front of the box is about ten or twelve feet in length and in
the center of the railing is a small pillar overhung with a curtain. The
depth of the box from front to rear is about nine feet. The elevation
of the box above the stage including the railing is about ten or twelve
feet.
“When the party entered the box a cushioned
armchair was standing at the end of the box furthest from the stage and
nearest the audience. This was also the nearest point to the door from
which the box is entered. The President seated himself in this chair
and, except that he once left the chair for the purpose of putting on
his overcoat, remained so seated until he was shot. Mrs. Lincoln was
seated in a chair between the President and the pillar in the centre,
above described. At the opposite end of the box – that nearest the stage
– were two chairs. In one of these, standing in the corner, Miss Harris
was seated. At her left hand and along the wall running from that end
of the box to the rear stood a small sofa. At the end of this sofa next
to Miss Harris this deponent was seated, and the President, as they were
sitting, was about seven or eight feet and the distance between this
deponent and the door was about the same. The distance between the
President as he sat and the door was about four or five feet. The door,
according to the recollections of this deponent, was not closed during
the evening.
“When the second scene of the third
act was being performed and while this deponent was intently viewing the
proceedings upon the stage with his back toward the door he heard the
discharge of a pistol behind him and looking round saw through the
smoke, a man between the door and the President. At the same time
deponent heard him shout some word which deponent thinks was ‘Freedom.’
This deponent instantly sprang towards him and seized him. He wrested
himself from the grasp and made a violent thrust at the breast of this
deponent with a large knife. Deponent parried the blow by striking it up
and received a wound several inches deep in his left arm between the
elbow and the shoulder. The orifice of the wound is about an inch and a
half in length and extends upwards towards the shoulder several inches.
The man rushed to the front of the box and deponent endeavored to seize
him again but only caught his clothes as he was leaping over the railing
of the box. The clothes, as this deponent believes, were torn in this
attempt to seize him. As he went over upon the stage, deponent cried out
with a loud voice ‘Stop that man.’ Deponent then turned to the
President. His position was not changed. His head was slightly bent
forward and his eyes were closed. Deponent saw that he was unconscious
and, supposing him mortally wounded, rushed to the door for the purpose
of calling medical aid. On reaching the outer door of the passageway as
above described, deponent found it barred by a heavy piece of plank, one
end of which secured in the wall and the other resting against the
door. It had been so securely fastened that it required considerable
force to remove it. This wedge or bar was about four feet from the
floor. Persons upon the outside were beating against the door for the
purpose of entering. Deponent removed the bar and the door was opened.
Several persons who represented themselves to be surgeons were allowed
to enter. Deponent saw there Colonel Crawford and requested him to
prevent other persons from entering the box. Deponent then returned to
the box and found the surgeon examining the Presidents person. They had
not yet discovered the wound. As soon as it was discovered, it was
determined to remove him from the Theatre. He was carried out this
deponent then proceeded to assist Mrs. Lincoln, who was intensely
excited, to leave the Theatre. On reaching the head of the stairs,
deponent requested Major Potter to aid him in assisting Mrs. Lincoln
across the street to the house which the President was being conveyed.
The wound which the deponent had received had been bleeding very
profusely and on reaching the house, feeling very faint from the loss of
blood, he seated himself in the hall and soon after fainted away and
was laid upon the floor. Upon the return of consciousness deponent was
taken in the carriage to his residence.
“In review
of this transaction it is the confident belief of this deponent that the
time which elapsed between the discharge of the pistol and the time
when the assassin leaped from the box did not exceed thirty seconds.
Neither Mrs. Lincoln nor Miss Harris had left their seats.”
Rathbone’s
deposition and subsequent testimony were given at a time when attorneys
did not have the luxury of submitting photographic evidence to set the
scene for jurors. It appears then that prosecutors used his detailed
physical description to paint a mental image for those in the courtroom.
And it is very hard to believe that Rathbone would have spontaneously
offered up such testimony. Those details were undoubtedly provided to
him as part of the script he appears to have been following.
Let
us now look at all the other reasons why Rathbone’s account is
seriously lacking in credibility. First of all, he claims that the
alleged assailant was in the box for up to thirty seconds after
shooting Lincoln, long enough to grapple with and seriously wound
Rathbone. But the accounts of other witnesses in the theater that
evening directly contradict that notion. A witness identified only as
“Basset,” for instance, claimed that “A second after the shot was fired a
man vaulted over the ballister of the box.” Witness Frederick Sawyer
wrote that, “The whole occurrence, the shot, the leap, the escape – was
done while you could count to eight.” Actor Harry Hawk, after describing
the sequence of events, claimed that “The above all occurred in the
space of a few seconds, and at the time I did not know the president was
shot.”
How then was there time for the alleged
struggle with Rathbone? And if Rathbone had been grappling with an
assailant as said assailant was leaping over the front railing, as
Rathbone claimed, those actions would have been visible to many of the
witnesses in the theater. And yet none of the witnesses who claimed to
see the man leap from the box mentioned seeing him struggling with
Rathbone either before or while doing so.
Another
problem is that Rathbone claims to have suffered a substantial wound
that bled profusely, so much so that his fiancé allegedly found herself
drenched in blood, and yet of all the witnesses who said they saw the
fleeing man prominently brandish a large knife as he made his exit
across the stage, not one of them mentioned seeing any blood on that
knife. Or on the man’s hands. Or on his clothing. How is it possible
that he could have cut Rathbone so severely, and then continued
grappling with him, and yet walked away with no visible blood on him?
Yet
another minor problem is that neither Rathbone nor his fiancé made any
mention of his very serious wound ever being treated. He claimed that
the wound was so severe that he passed out from blood loss, but that he
then was merely taken home and dropped off. According to the official
story, there were at least three skilled surgeons on hand, none of whom
could really do much for the mortally wounded Lincoln. Why then didn’t
anyone bother to attend to such a grave wound inflicted on a guest of
the President? From what I hear, those severed arteries can be a real
killer if left unattended.
What we seem to have
here is a situation in which: (a) witness accounts don’t allow for
enough time for Rathbone to have been seriously wounded; (b) Rathbone
never received treatment for a serious wound; (c) the knife that
allegedly inflicted the wound was bloodless just seconds later, as was
the guy carrying it; and (d) none of the self-proclaimed witnesses in
the theater that night saw Rathbone grappling with his alleged
assailant.
Moving
on to other peculiarities in Rathbone’s account, one obvious question
that is raised is: why would John Wilkes Booth, or anyone else entering
the box for the purpose of killing Lincoln in the manner in which it
occurred, take the time to wedge the outer door shut? Any pursuers
weren’t going to come from that direction. And if the alleged plan went
awry, the assailant might need to flee in that direction. So why cut off
a possible means of escape? And how is it that a sturdy wood plank of
the precise length needed to do the job just happened to be on hand?
Those are questions that historians have never really provided
satisfactory answers to.
According to Rathbone’s
account, the inner door to the box was open all night. How then would
the party not have heard an intruder enter the outer door and then close
it and forcibly wedge it shut … before sneaking up behind the
President? It doesn’t seem possible for an uninvited intruder to have
done that. And there was no reason to do it. Booth, it will be recalled,
was ludicrously armed with a single-shot derringer. The plan,
therefore, was heavily dependent upon the element of surprise. Why then
risk discovery by pointlessly wedging the door shut?
Who
then really wedged that door shut and why? Did it benefit the alleged
assailant, or did it provide a window of opportunity to stage the scene
before any responders could get to the president?
Several
other questions are raised by Rathbone’s account, including why the
president was seated furthest from the stage and closest to the door?
Wouldn’t the guest of honor customarily get the best seat in the house?
Why had the furniture in the box that day been arranged to place him
furthest from the stage? And being that he was the fourth member of the
party, why didn’t Rathbone sit in the fourth chair along the front of
the box? Why did he choose instead to sit alone on a sofa slightly
behind the others?
Beyond
the problems with Rathbone’s account, there are other problems with the
official story of what went down in Ford’s Theatre on April 14, 1865.
According to witness accounts, the man fleeing across the stage
brandished his knife in his right hand, indicating that he was
right-handed. But the bullet that killed Lincoln, purportedly fired by
an assailant standing behind him, entered behind his left ear and
traveled diagonally through the brain cavity, ending up behind his right
eye. That would be a rather tricky shot to pull off for a right-hander.
To the extent that historians have addressed this anomaly, it is
generally claimed that Lincoln turned his head just as the shot was
fired. But that is purely speculation aimed at bringing the known facts
of the case in line with the official story.
According
to all the early witness accounts, events played out very quickly and
the suspect was across the stage and out of the building before anyone
realized what had happened. It was only then, when it was too late to
apprehend the suspect, that Mary Lincoln’s anguished cries from the box
could be heard, along with Rathbone’s futile exhortations to stop the
fleeing suspect. But why did it take so long for Mary Todd and the
others to cry out?
Mary Lincoln had had her husband
gunned down as he sat right beside her, hand in hand. She had then
witnessed a violent struggle between her husband’s killer and Major
Rathbone, during which Rathbone was grievously wounded, bathing the box
in blood. Had Rathbone succumbed to his alleged wound, Mary and Clara
would have been left alone in that box with a knife-wielding madman. You
would think then that they would have been screaming bloody murder
throughout the ordeal, and quite likely trying to exit that box. Help,
after all, was just steps away.
But instead the two
ladies remained stoic, and seated, throughout the performance. It
wasn’t until the assailant had leaped from the box to the stage,
regained his footing, run across the stage and then exited the building
that Mary verbally responded to the attack. And Clara Harris never
responded at all.
Why the curiously delayed
reactions from everyone in the presidential box? And why, as previously
asked in this series, would the assailant have chosen such a
fundamentally preposterous weapon as a single-shot derringer for this
mission? And who would plan an escape route that included an exceedingly
risky leap onto a very hard stage floor below, especially while wearing
riding boots with spurs? Was that really a planned escape route, or was
it an improvised one?
Such are the questions that historians have avoided asking for 150 years now.
One
thing that we cannot definitively conclude from the early witness
accounts, contrary to popular opinion, is that the guy who hastily
exited Ford’s Theatre that evening was John Wilkes Booth. In witness
accounts recorded years after the official story had cast a long shadow
over that day’s events, Booth’s name pops up fairly often. But it isn’t
so easy to find in the early accounts.
One guy
closest to the scene was Army Captain Theodore McGowan, who was seated
in Ford’s Theatre not far from the entrance to the president’s box. I
like to think that this guy was an upright sort of guy, primarily
because he had a very honorable name. When called upon to testify at the
military tribunal, McGowan had this to say: “I was present at Ford’s
Theatre on the night of the assassination. I was sitting in the aisle
leading by the wall toward the door of the President’s box, when a man
came and disturbed me in my seat, causing me to push my chair forward to
permit him to pass; he stopped about three feet from where I was
sitting, and leisurely took a survey of the house. I looked at him
because he happened to be in my line of sight … I know J. Wilkes Booth,
but, not seeing the face of the assassin fully, I did not at the time
recognize him as Booth.”
So here we have a guy who
knew Booth, and yet from just three feet away, with the guy directly in
his line of sight, he did not recognize the man in the theater as Booth.
It is a fairly safe bet that the government exerted considerable
pressure on Captain McGowan to positively identify Booth, and yet he
proved unable, or unwilling, to do so. Curious also that McGowan
referred to him in the present tense when Booth was supposed to be dead.
So
what are we to make of all of this? Was Rathbone really gravely
injured? Or was his wound a substantially less severe one that was
self-inflicted while responders were held at bay by the barricaded door?
Was it really John Wilkes Booth who entered the presidential box that
evening? And whoever it was, did he enter for the purpose of
assassinating the president? Would a small derringer have been the
weapon of choice for an assassin, or was it a weapon that would have
been easy for someone else in that box to have brought along?
One
thing we do know – Henry Rathbone’s actions in the years after the
assassination clearly demonstrated that he was fully capable of two
things: murder, and self-inflicted knife wounds.
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