Episode 623: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln Part III - Sic Semper Tyranus

Summary

Detailed Summary of "Last Podcast on the Left" – Episode 623: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln Part III - Sic Semper Tyranus

Release Date: June 13, 2025

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Introduction

In Episode 623, titled "The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln Part III - Sic Semper Tyranus," The Last Podcast on the Left delves deep into the final chapter of one of America's most infamous political assassinations. Hosted by Marcus Parks and Henry Zabrowski, the episode combines meticulous historical analysis with the show's signature dark humor to unravel the complexities surrounding President Abraham Lincoln's assassination.

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Motivations Behind the Assassination [00:00 – 05:00]

The episode opens with a brief advertisement before transitioning into the core content. The hosts discuss the growing resentment among Confederate sympathizers, particularly John Wilkes Booth, towards Lincoln's progressive policies.

• Marcus Parks [05:14]: "Booth and his Confederate buddies had gotten quite riled up by Lincoln's mere suggestion in a speech made shortly before he was killed that maybe some black people should have the right to vote at some point in the future."

• Henry Zabrowski [05:30]: "Being an abolitionist was cool, underground..."

Booth perceived Lincoln's policies as a direct threat to the Southern way of life and power structures, fueling his desire to eliminate the president.

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Planning the Assassination [05:00 – 10:00]

Initially, Booth and his conspirators devised a plan to kidnap Lincoln, aiming to leverage his capture for the release of Confederate prisoners. However, as the Confederacy's position weakened, the plan swiftly pivoted towards assassination.

• Marcus Parks [10:05]: "From what it seems like the only part of the plan they had worked out, at least halfway, was how they were going to escape the Union following the murders."

The lack of a cohesive and well-organized strategy highlighted the desperation and chaotic nature of the Confederate efforts at this stage of the Civil War.

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The Night of the Assassination [10:00 – 20:00]

April 14, 1865, became a pivotal night in American history. Lincoln attended a performance of "Our American Cousin" at Ford's Theater, unaware of Booth's lethal intentions.

• Marcus Parks [13:33]: "Booth then took the stock of a music stand and tested his method for trapping the President."

Booth exploited his familiarity with the theater's layout to isolate Lincoln. He meticulously timed his attack to coincide with a humorous line in the play, ensuring the gunshot would be masked by laughter.

• Henry Zabrowski [17:44]: "It's like a character who is going to assassinate the President during it."

As Booth executed his plan, he managed to shoot Lincoln, though his escape faced unforeseen challenges.

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Execution and Immediate Aftermath [20:00 – 35:00]

Post-assassination, Booth attempted a dramatic escape by performing a stage stunt he was renowned for—the 15-foot stage jump. However, complications arose:

• Henry Zabrowski [50:40]: "John Wilkes Booth did have a broken fibula when he arrived at Dr. Mudd's plantation later that night."

Contrary to Booth's accounts, eyewitnesses reported that he escaped swiftly without showing signs of injury. This discrepancy hints at Booth's attempts to embellish his escape narrative.

Secretary of State William Seward's assassination also unfolded that night, albeit in a more gruesome and less successful manner.

• Marcus Parks [35:00]: "Mary Surratt's involvement in the conspiracy would eventually make her the first woman to be executed by the United States federal government."

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Fate of the Conspirators [35:00 – 55:00]

The aftermath of the assassination saw the swift capture and prosecution of several conspirators:

• Mary Surratt: The first woman executed by the U.S. federal government for her role in the conspiracy.

• Lewis Powell and David Herold: Attempted to assassinate Secretary Seward but were only partially successful. Powell's fate was sealed after being identified by Seward's servant.

Dr. Samuel Mudd, who treated Booth's broken leg, narrowly escaped execution thanks to a presidential pardon by Andrew Johnson.

• Marcus Parks [87:34]: "They probably got it back eventually, but a reporter ran off with it."

The chaotic scene at Ford's Theater, with crowds looting and taking souvenirs, underscored the frenzied public reaction to Lincoln's assassination.

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Conclusion and Teasers for Upcoming Episodes [55:00 – End]

As the episode draws to a close, the hosts reflect on the broader implications of Lincoln's assassination on American history and the Confederate cause. They hint at future episodes that will explore the manhunt for Booth and the eventual aftermath of the assassination.

• Marcus Parks [99:47]: "The man who killed John Wilkes Booth is incredible. Like, he is such a nut bar. I can't wait to talk about it."

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Notable Quotes

1. Marcus Parks [05:14]: "Booth and his Confederate buddies had gotten quite riled up by Lincoln's mere suggestion in a speech made shortly before he was killed that maybe some black people should have the right to vote at some point in the future." (05:14)

2. Henry Zabrowski [05:30]: "Being an abolitionist was cool, underground..." (05:30)

3. Marcus Parks [13:33]: "Booth then took the stock of a music stand and tested his method for trapping the President." (13:33)

4. Henry Zabrowski [50:40]: "John Wilkes Booth did have a broken fibula when he arrived at Dr. Mudd's plantation later that night." (50:40)

5. Marcus Parks [35:00]: "Mary Surratt's involvement in the conspiracy would eventually make her the first woman to be executed by the United States federal government." (35:00)

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Final Thoughts

Episode 623 of The Last Podcast on the Left offers a compelling and in-depth analysis of the final stages leading up to President Abraham Lincoln's assassination. Through engaging storytelling and insightful commentary, the hosts shed light on the motivations, planning, and consequences of one of America's darkest nights. For listeners seeking a blend of history, true crime, and dark humor, this episode provides a thorough and entertaining exploration of a pivotal moment in U.S. history.

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Note: The transcript included numerous off-topic advertisements and humorous interjections by the hosts. This summary focuses solely on the content related to Abraham Lincoln's assassination, adhering to the user's request to exclude advertisements, intros, outros, and non-content sections.

Transcript

[Marcus Parks]

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[Henry Zabrowski]

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[Henry Zabrowski]

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[Ed Larson]

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[Henry Zabrowski]

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[Marcus Parks]

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[Henry Zabrowski]

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[Marcus Parks]

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[Henry Zabrowski]

How many discounts will you stack up?

[Marcus Parks]

Tap the banner or visit usaa.com autodiscounts restrictions apply.

[Henry Zabrowski]

There's no place to escape to. This is the last on the left. That's when the cannibalism started. What was that? Mustard don't do no bad mustard. Ain't high quality mustard is not high calorie or anything.

[Marcus Parks]

If you're driving down the road and you're eating mustard like with a spoon and it's too spicy and you cough and you accidentally pull your car into another lane because you're coughing from the mustard, then it could be dangerous.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's not the mustard's fucking problem. It sounds like extenuating circumstances that surrounded the consumption of the mustard. Mustard's too spicy, but sometimes it's not. Sometimes mustard's kind of sweet.

[Marcus Parks]

It is.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And also I don't find a yellow mustard to be spicy at all.

[Marcus Parks]

Honey mustard.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, honey mustard.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Yellow mustard and honey mustard go.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You don't like. Wow.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah. You come in hot the last two episodes because we talked about on side stories. He's not into Ferrero Rochers.

[Marcus Parks]

No, I actually don't like him either.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Yeah. What's nothing to like?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Unbelievable.

[John Wilkes Booth]

It's a stupid nut. Snowball.

[Marcus Parks]

I don't like hazelnuts.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I'm starting to understand John Wilkes Booth just in terms of being a man alone. Oh, my God. Are you calling me Lincoln? Yeah. I just feel like I'm a man alone. I want to share a bed.

[John Wilkes Booth]

We are going to on the road soon.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I only sleep in the bed with my best friend.

[John Wilkes Booth]

I ordered a twin bed for my twin man.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yes, but we soon won't be twins. When I'm inside you, we'll be one man. One man in charge of a split man nation is a split ass. If you will. I'm coming.

[John Wilkes Booth]

I'm gone.

[Marcus Parks]

Welcome to the last podcast on the left. Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Marcus Parks. I'm here with Henry Zabrowski, the split man.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I am the split man. And I am happy to be two halves ready to come together onto the penis of the greatest living American president when he was alive.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Yeah, I think so.

[Marcus Parks]

And we have Ed twin bed. Lson with us in the studio as well.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Share my bed. Get in my bed. I've got two covers, if that'll change your mind.

[Henry Zabrowski]

God, I can't even sit on a twin bed.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Dude. I've been pillow nuts lately.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I've got nine pillows I got right now.

[John Wilkes Booth]

I'm going, I'm a five pillow man. I'm a five pillow man.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Right. One under my head, one gripped my hands, one under my ass, one between my knees, one between my feet.

[John Wilkes Booth]

One between your feet?

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yep.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Interesting. I've been putting it under my feet lately, and if I sleep on my back, I've been putting it under my feet and I've been so comfy.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Isn't that nice?

[John Wilkes Booth]

Isn't that great?

[Henry Zabrowski]

We're 40 years old.

[Marcus Parks]

I was just thinking, 20 years ago, this would not have been the conversation.

[Henry Zabrowski]

He had whatever sweat filled pillows he found in the fucking orphanage.

[John Wilkes Booth]

I was like, oh, my towel works fine. Why should I get a pillow?

[Henry Zabrowski]

I had one pillow. I had one blanket.

[Marcus Parks]

I remember the pillow that I had during the cowman years that I would. The one. Because I always. I would always come in, like, covered in, like, makeup and like, blood, fake blood. And I would never wash it off before I passed out. So I just had this horrible pillow, tricolor pillow that was also very brown and nicotine yellow.

[Henry Zabrowski]

My college pillow, if you took the COVID off of it, look like a bag of brown rice, you know what I mean? Like, it looked like a burlap sack filled with greasy ducks. Like, it was just the worst thing. And then a woman would sleep next to it. So every once in a blue moon.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Those poor ladies.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I didn't know any better.

[Marcus Parks]

Here we are. John Wilkes Booth, the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, Part three. So when we last left John Wilkes Booth, he had just convinced his co conspirators in the failed plot to kidnap Lincoln that the best course of action following the fall of the Confederate capital of Richmond would be to simply murder the President along with various members of the executive branch. Lot of shit's going on right now.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah. Just so you know, if you haven't listened to the first two episodes, we're killing Lincoln. Lincoln. And I can't wait to do it again.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, as far as motivation goes, Booth and his Confederate buddies had gotten quite riled up by Lincoln's mere suggestion in a speech made shortly before he was killed that maybe some black people should have the right to vote at some point in the future.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Sounds vague, though.

[Marcus Parks]

It is. No. Well, he was somewhat specific about it. He said, I think the exact quote was something along the lines of, who had served in the war. And the extremely intelligent.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Oh, you don't want to throw too much at everyone at once.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, I mean, that was actually what they argued against. His cabinet at the time, he's like, you're doing too much. Like, you just ended the war. Give it some time. But Lincoln was like, no, I'm going to fuck. I'm going to go out and I'm going to say what I feel. I'm going to say what I believe.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Because I asked that question about the idea of how did people really feel about slavery at the time? And I got some very interesting responses. But the idea that it was way more just people. Didn't people in the north just kind of live with it and didn't think about it? But then once it all became like, you're like, oh, but now we're going to let black people vote.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And it seemed to be being an abolitionist was cool. It was all. It was kind of. It was like, it was hip, underground. Yeah.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Do you think that maybe there were just like, less farms up north?

[Marcus Parks]

That was part of it. It didn't. I mean, there were quite a few farms up north at that point. Like, you know, American industry hadn't really, like, kicked into high gear.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yes.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Apples and corn and shit.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You never see the hair gel orchards of New Jersey. Like, there is some incredible stuff. It's so beautiful. The Tresem Farms outside of Newark.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. I mean, America at large was very agrarian prior to the Civil War.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Agrarian means nothing.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Oh, my God. So when I went and saw Lincoln in the theater, I went and saw it in New Jersey right when it came out. And you know the scene where they're all voting on the 13th Amendment.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[John Wilkes Booth]

And then when they got to New Jersey and New Jersey voted NO on the 13th Amendment, the entire audience just.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You could just hear in the back, oh, that's horrible.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, John Wilkes Booth had also found a way to insert himself into history when he rationalized the murder of Lincoln by comparing the President to Julius Caesar. In Booth's view, Lincoln was a tyrant in need of a Brutus because Booth believed that Lincoln planned to subjugate and destroy the United States, with a particularly harsh focus on the Southern states that had made John Wilkes Booth a star in the acting world.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Now, unlike most straight men on the Internet, I don't really care about the Roman Empire that much. Was Julius Caesar a Batman?

[Henry Zabrowski]

Julius Caesar, I believe in actual history. It was obviously vast and complicated, but in a play like this is more based upon the concept of Julius Caesar. In William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, that shows him as like. He's kind of like an obtuse man who is kind of just bent on his own power. He doesn't seem necessarily evil, he just is so incredibly powerful. And at the time, they felt that a truly wise man would basically refuse the empire because then he would become a dictatorship. And this is all about Julius Caesar slowly but surely coming around the idea of, what if I am emperor? And a bunch of people deciding that's not a great idea. All right.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, Booth did not have a specific plan in mind when he pitched the assassination plot to his little band of co conspirators. From what it seems like the only part of the plan they had worked out, at least halfway, was how they were going to escape the Union following the murders. We're going up, if you'll remember. The kidnapping plan had involved Booth reaching the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, by traveling at night and stopping at various safe harbors during the day. Places like John Surratt's Confederate Safe House Tavern just outside of D.C. and Dr. Mudd's plan in Maryland. But once the plan changed from kidnapping to assassination, John Wilkes Booth and his co conspirators planned to use these locations as hideouts after they escaped Washington, D.C. although I'm not sure what good going to Richmond was going to do because it had fallen to Grant's forces a month earlier.

[Henry Zabrowski]

They had a lot of kind of hasty made plans that had to be redone last minute.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, there was a lot of we'll figure it out laters.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Also, he just loved Richmond, right?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Now I have a lot to do with it.

[Marcus Parks]

Richmond was where he had been first gained fame, and he had said that he had found that he had found solace in the hierarchy of Richmond, which had, of course, fallen apart in the years since because of the Emancipation Proclamation.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Also, John Surratt's Confederate Safe House Tavern. Bad name. You know, people are going to find it immediately.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You know, it's a good name for something like that. John's Place.

[Marcus Parks]

Go on down to John Surround Confederate Tavern.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Confederate out there. Don't worry. Hate is safe.

[Marcus Parks]

The problem here, though, is that, from what I can tell, the actual Confederates who were halfway funding Booth's plot from Canada, they'd never really gotten around to planning where the next safe house was gonna be. After Dr. Mudd's farm, it was still quite a long ways from there to Virginia. This, I think, points to two possibilities. Either the plot to kill Lincoln to trade him for POWs was never taken seriously by the Confederacy, or small operations like Booths were disorganized. Throw everything at the wall of fares that were never really expected to work, but they were very good for introducing an element of chaos into the war.

[Henry Zabrowski]

My opinion is it's both.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Yeah, yeah, it's a Hail Mary at the end of the game.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. But whether Booth knew what he and his men were going to do after reaching Dr. Mudd's farm or not, the opportunity to murder President Abraham Lincoln presented itself to John Wilkes Booth on the morning of April 14, 1865, when Booth drop by Ford's Theater to pick up his mail.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yes, I have wooden teeth monthly. Excellent. I love to receive that. Oh, God damn, they found me another health care bill. Throw that one out. Ah, very good, very good. Another wonderful series of coupons to Keels. Excellent.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, the student loan officers from the.

[Henry Zabrowski]

From my performing arts school have found me once more. Will I ever escape this tyranny?

[Marcus Parks]

While Booth was chatting with one of the owners, a messenger from the White House arrived requesting a reservation for the presidential box. The Ford brothers, who did not share Booth's Confederate sympathies, happily agreed and arranged for the box to be decorated in patriotic fashion for the President's visit.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I'm seeing red, white, and blue ribbons. I'm seeing a big fancy chair. I'm hoping we get a taco bar. Every single thing a president could need. All want. Yes, Edwin, that's the best idea I've heard all week. You're right.

[Marcus Parks]

What if we would have a margarita bar?

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yes. Mexican themed. Indeed you would love it. Old stinking Lincoln is gonna be having a time of his life tonight.

[Marcus Parks]

It's been on the show, and it was also. And it was a big night as well, as far as, like, being patriotic, because I believe that it was the anniversary of the Confederate surrender of Fort Sumter, which Fort Sumter had been the. You know, that had been the battle that had kicked off the entire Civil War.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Oh, I thought it was all for Earth Day.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah. Yes. Super into it at the time. Super into it.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, Booth, of course, began salivating when he heard the President was coming. See, since Booth was a regular actor at Ford's Theater and Lincoln was a regular patron, Booth already had a plan worked out for how he could best murder The President during a play and escape unscathed. The Presidential box was located through an outer door that led to a small vestibule, which meant the Booth could shield himself from the audience whilst separating himself from Lincoln's box. Therefore, he could wait in the darkness for just the right moment to step into history.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I know that I have the perfect idea. Yes. I shall don a sheet and I shall present myself to the President as the ghost of his father. And I will tell him. Oh, I'm so disappointed you, Abe, you gay man. I'm so disappointed in you. Oh, I hate you, Abe. Oh, oh, oh, oh. And his sheer disappointment. He will fling himself from the booth and impale himself into the orchestra rows, therefore making the President be the only President to commit suicide while unawful enough fighting on the Confederacy. We end up fighting at the Confederacy in one fell swoop.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Lincoln's box was often empty, too, because it was the one between Mary Todd's niece.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's disgusting.

[Marcus Parks]

You're a piece of.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You're a piece of. She was a well sexed woman. Abraham Lincoln knew what he had to do. He knew he had to make love to her to convince her he's straight. And it took a second, but once he got into it, he was pretty convincing.

[Marcus Parks]

Now there's evidence that Booth had plans to kill Lincoln no matter where. Lincoln chose to have his next night out, whether it was at Ford's or at some other venue in D.C. because Booth had knowledge of and access to multiple theaters in town. See, the day before the assassination, Booth had dropped by to see the mother of one of his co conspirators, the Confederate sympathizer Mary Surratt. And Booth had told Mary to tell the tavern keeper at Surratt's Tavern, his first safe house, to, quote, have the shooting ions ready. Fuck. Just all has to be so dramatic.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yes, please. And then bring me the stabbing sticks and then I shall have. I need some burning liquid. I don't know names of things, okay? I'm an actor. Normally they write the words down for me to threat and fret, but it's happened.

[Marcus Parks]

Ford's Theater was Lincoln's choice on the evening of the 14th. So when Booth learned of Lincoln's plans, he visited his co conspirators one by one to relate their parts in the plan, as most of them were still in Washington D.C. waiting for their orders to strike first. Booth instructed George Atzerodt, the filthy German drunk, to register for a room at the Kirkwood Hotel with the purpose of assassinating Vice President Andrew Johnson. The Kirkwood was at that time the temporary home of the vice President who was staying there following his election until more suitable quarters could be found. There was, however, a very good reason why Andrew Johnson was still without housing three months into his vice presidency. And it all went back to Lincoln's second inauguration.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I was kind of a guy that likes to live out of his suitcase. I don't really see where the problem is. I'm a vice president, I should be allowed to do whatever the it is I wanted.

[Marcus Parks]

See Vice President Andrew Johnson, who would of course be president following Lincoln's murder. He was brand new to the Republican ticket in the election of 1864. Lincoln's first vice president, Hannibal Hamlin, was a radical Republican from Maine who had strongly encouraged the Emancipation Proclamation in addition to really going forth with its calling for the arming of freed black people. He's like, give them guns, give them weapons, let him defend themselves.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Yeah, he is very Tom Morello of them.

[Marcus Parks]

It is. But as I said last episode, Lincoln's reelection had not been a lock. The army actually had trouble keeping recruits after the Emancipation Proclamation because while northern whites had no trouble fighting for the Union, the idea of dying for the rights of enslaved black people was another highly racist matter altogether.

[Henry Zabrowski]

The key is to never tell Americans that one thing that you do could potentially help somebody else. Like if you could just tell them. If you just be like, like this helps you. Like you just have to be telling American. It helps you.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And then that's how you get them on board.

[Marcus Parks]

Or you just don't tell them at all. You just, you just tell them it helps freedom. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, just tell them it helps freedom just so long as it's not directly benefiting somebody else, especially someone who is not white.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Great.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Also just kill forward. Yeah, yeah, that works too. Kill, kill, forward.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

So Lincoln made a compromise. He replaced his abolitionist vice president with a slave owning senator from Tennessee, Andrew Johnson. Andrew Johnson had actually given up his 14 slaves just a little over a year before he was elected as Lincoln's vp.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I'll tell you what, nothing's been the same since I let go of my precious slavies. Yeah, I call them Slavies. It's fun to do. I do a little, kind of funny, little kind of innocent little child name for the whole fucking bad shit. I'm the vice president, I'm just here to make sure he fucking gets shot first.

[Marcus Parks]

Andrew Johnson, however, was either somewhat terrified at the very real prospect that he could be president if Lincoln was killed or he had no respect whatsoever for the Lincoln administration. Because on the day of Lincoln's second inauguration, Johnson had engaged in a day drinking session for the ages. With an extremely red face and a terrible case of whiskey breath, Johnson gave a rambling, nearly incoherent 20 minute speech in which he said the phrase I announce here today no less than 20 times. All while the VP he replaced, Hannibal Hamlin, tugged on his coat and urged Johnson rabbit up.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Shut the fuck up, Hanny Hamlin. Hammy. Fucking hammy. Hammy. Mr. Hanny Hammy. You. I'm the Vice President, United States. I announced here today. Everybody shut the up. I announced here today. Everybody stop giving me. All right. Because I'm the damn Vice President. They don't put a vice in there if I was supposed to do only good things. You get out there. I announce here today. Everybody's you, your mother, I'm. I'll do whatever I want. I'll do whatever I want.

[Marcus Parks]

Once Johnson took his mostly inaudible oath of office.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, I'll do it. I'll do what you need me to do.

[Marcus Parks]

He grabbed the Bible he swore upon, faced the audience and said, quote, I.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Kissed the book in the face of the United States.

[Marcus Parks]

And then he actually kissed the Bible.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, yeah. Oh, fuck, yeah, man. Yeah. So much paper. Oh, come on. Cut my tongue. Oh, fuck. I'm covered in blood.

[Marcus Parks]

Johnson was so drunk that he couldn't administer the oath of office to the incoming senators. And during Lincoln's second inaugural address, Johnson sat with his hat over his face, take a little nap. And later had to be carried out of the inaugural ball.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Anybody else know fucking Lincoln's gay. I know he's gay. I know he's. I know he's a lavender fellow. That's what they say in the newspaper. But he's. I tell you what, he's got a bit more brown to him. You can't tell me to leave fire myself.

[Marcus Parks]

Johnson's drunkenness at the inauguration was not a secret. The Lancaster, Pennsylvania newspaper actually printed a phonetic transcription of Johnson's slurred speech, complete with hiccups, while the London Times reported that anyone else would have been arrested for being intoxicated in the Senate chamber, which I didn't know was a law.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's awesome.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. As such, Johnson had disappeared from the public eye in shame and hadn't returned to Washington, D.C. until the occasion of Robert E. Lee's surrender to union forces on April 10. That meant that Lincoln and Johnson had only met twice in two highly unproductive and highly Unpleasant meetings that were held just days before Lincoln's death. I think Lincoln called him that miserable man and said, I can't imagine what kind of trouble he's gonna caus calls in my second term, all sorts of shit.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Everyone. You're not gonna be around anywhere to hear about it. Sorry. Is that fucking spoilers?

[John Wilkes Booth]

Let me just keep him liquored up so he does nothing.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, that is true. Yeah. Well, that's the thing, is that I don't think he was an alcoholic. At least that's what Lincoln said. He's like, he had one bad day. Bad day for Mr. Johnson.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah. He just did not like Abraham Lincoln.

[John Wilkes Booth]

That's what I would say if I just picked a drunk as my vice. That's just today. Don't worry about it.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's going to be fine. He's going to be fine.

[Marcus Parks]

It was only the day he was inaugurated as Vice President of the United States. We're all allowed to have a bad day.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, dude. It's just one day out of his year.

[Marcus Parks]

But that's all to say that this was why Andrew Johnson was staying at the Kirkwood Hotel on April 14, where John Wils Booth figured that Johnson would be an easy target for the consistently unwashed German immigrant George Atera.

[John Wilkes Booth]

You hate this guy.

[Marcus Parks]

He's a dick.

[Henry Zabrowski]

He's a smelly asshole.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

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[T Mobile Representative]

I feel like I have to get give you something in return for karma.

[Zoe Saldana]

That's okay.

[T Mobile Representative]

I don't really have much in my purse. Oh, let's see. Hand sanitizer. It's lavender.

[Marcus Parks]

I'm good.

[Zoe Saldana]

Seriously.

[T Mobile Representative]

Let me check this pocket. Oh, mints.

[Zoe Saldana]

Really, I'm fine.

[T Mobile Representative]

Oh, I have raisins. I'm a mom. Wait, wait one sec. I've got cupcakes in the car.

[Henry Zabrowski]

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[Ed Larson]

See T mobile.com in the summer all of Oregon is our playground thanks to our incredible park system. That's why it's so cool that Oregon Lottery gameplay like video lottery or cash pop help support tons of parks projects statewide like accessible trails at Silver Falls State park or upgrades to your favorite dog park in Newburgh. It's just one way a little lottery play for many Oregonians can add up to a lot of good the Oregon Lottery Together we do good things. Lottery games are based on chance and should be played for entertainment only. Must be 18 or older to play.

[Marcus Parks]

Craftsman days are here at Lowe's with big savings on the tools you need. Save $100 on the Craftsman V26 Tool Power Tool Combo Kit now at $199. No matter what the project is, Craftsman's high quality, high performance products empower you to build on Stop by your nearest Lowe's store and check out the full line of Craftsman tools today. Valid through 618. Wall supplies last selection varies by location so after John Wilkes Booth set at Surat on the path towards assassinating Vice President Johnson on the same night that Booth would ass President Lincoln, Booth returned to Ford's Theater at 6pm While the actors and crew were having supper. See, Booth wanted to ensure that he would not be disturbed during the assassination and that nobody would follow him after the shot. So he entered the vestibule to the President's box when no one was around and closed the outer door behind him. Booth then took a knife and cut a small square in the plastic wall with the purpose of creating a socket that could hold a wooden brace that would keep the door jammed shut. Booth, of course, would have his own method for escaping the presidential box after the assassination. Booth then took the stock of a music stand and tested his method for trapping the President.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And there another rehearsal please. Action. I got you, yes.

[Marcus Parks]

And once satisfied that the brace would hold, he removed it and placed it on the floor where it wouldn't be noticed. Now, after setting up the scene at Ford's theater, Booth left to meet the co conspirators who would carry out the third assassination of the night. At 7pm, Booth took a meeting with the crew's muscle, the 21 year old Confederate soldier Lewis Powell, along with the crew's geography expert David Herold.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, if you're such an expert, what do you call it when the mountain suddenly gets flat.

[Marcus Parks]

When a mountain gets. Gets what you. When the mountain gets flat? You mean like when the big one gets little?

[Henry Zabrowski]

I don't think he's a real geographer. Your plant, your Union plant, I know.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Not to go north.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's also what it's called is a plateau, which is also what my brother's career is doing right now. Funny, right?

[Marcus Parks]

It's a funny geography joke. Yeah. Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Let's kill us many presidents.

[Marcus Parks]

Pal's assignment would be to go to the home of Lincoln's Secretary of State, William Seward, Billy Se. And murder him in his bed. Harold, meanwhile, would wait outside, then use his geography experience to lead Powell out of town to a rendezvous point in Maryland, where all four assassins would continue on to Dr. Mud's plantation. As far as why Secretary of State Seward was targeted, he'd been a vociferous abolitionist prior to the war and had argued consistently against any compromise with the south concerning slavery. Seward had also earned the ire of Booth's beloved conspiracist know nothing party by making appeals to the Catholic population. From Booth's Shakespearean view of the situation, William Seward was Abraham Lincoln, Mark Antony. By Booth's estimation, Seward was the one who was really running the country. And leaving him alive would have allowed Seward to step into the power vacuum. So Seward had to die that very night, along with Johnson and Lincoln.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, vociferous abolitionist is. I had a great cocktail there in Salt Lake City.

[John Wilkes Booth]

It was called the Andrew Johnson.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, at the very least, Abraham Lincoln's last day on Earth was a good one. Robert E. Lee's armies had disbanded, and Union General Ulysses S. Grant was visiting the president in Washington, D.C. where the two men were having a victory lap of sorts. Even though the war wasn't technically over, well over 175,000 Confederate soldiers were still scattered throughout the south, still under command. And Jefferson Davis, the Confederate President, was stubbornly trying to continue the war after the fall of Richmond by giving orders from a boxcar in Greensboro, North Carolina.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You tell that bag of rice, get to the front of the line. We gotta do it. We still got a chance, boss. We still got a chance. I believe it, sir.

[Marcus Parks]

We ain't had rice now in two years.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yo. You quit lying to me, boy, right now. Go get the spaghetti, then. Go get some spaghetti. Try to pass people's hand.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, we got spaghetti.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah. Good job.

[Marcus Parks]

We got spaghetti.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I thought we did.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Sir, do you want these hobos in your boxcar?

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yes, I do. They are My, that's my cabinet. Yes, I love them both. I love Razor John and I love, I think his name. Honestly the last I heard his name is just Tugs.

[Marcus Parks]

No, that's Cigarette Bill.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, Tugs died, man. Tug.

[Marcus Parks]

That's right. But even though there were still Confederates itching to continue the fight, Lincoln was still exuberant over the news coming from the front and was therefore in the mind to go see a play that night with his wife, Mary Todd, so he could blow off a little steam. Now naturally, Lincoln invited General Grant to join at the theater with his wife, but Grant maintained that he and his wife wanted to leave Washington that night to visit their children in New Jersey. Others have suggested, however, that this was merely an excuse. See, Grant's wife had been on the business end of a Mary Todd Lincoln blowout a few weeks earlier in which Mary Todd had made a woman cry for riding her horse too close to the President while the Lincolns were visiting General Grant at a military base. Therefore, Grant's wife wasn't really feel idea of a hang with Abe and Mary Todd. Especially since in the middle of Mary Todd's blowout, Mary Todd had openly accused General Grant and his wife of engaging in a plot to steal the White House.

[John Wilkes Booth]

You know, she might have been right about all of this, right?

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, yeah.

[John Wilkes Booth]

This guy's riding too close to Lincoln. She's worried he's going to get killed. Turns out he's right.

[Henry Zabrowski]

There's people mechanizing against the background, wondering whether or not they're all jockeying for a position, trying to figure out whether or not he's going to die or make it through the presidency. She was correct as well.

[John Wilkes Booth]

And then didn't Grant switch political parties to win the presiden from Johnson?

[Henry Zabrowski]

I do believe that that is true. So yeah, she might have had some insight, but you were forgetting, Eddie, she also was a crying woman.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, and that was, which is far more important as far as the historians are concerned.

[Henry Zabrowski]

No one liked it people. Mary Todd, she had issues. Obviously she did.

[Marcus Parks]

No, no, Mary, I think a lot of it did have to do. I mean, Mary Todd definitely had her problems, but I think it also had a lot to do with the fact that she was married to the President during know the hardest time in American history. Her son Willie had died like three years earlier at the age of 11. No, I'm just. No, what I'm saying is I, I think, you know, people do portray Mary Todd Lincoln as, you know, the, the so called hysterical woman. I think it might be a little more fair to say that Mary Todd Lincoln had been dealing with a lot of.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Yeah, yeah, definitely. And also, you know, she had other kids die, too.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You also had a kiss. Abraham Lincoln.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Lincoln, yeah. That must have her chin up with all those whiskers.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's rough, dude. Also, you know what I forgot to bring up? Guess what's also coming up this week? They're killing the penny.

[John Wilkes Booth]

What?

[Henry Zabrowski]

What? They're wiping out the penny. We're not getting the penny anymore.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Really?

[Henry Zabrowski]

Lincoln's dead again.

[Marcus Parks]

He's on the dollar bill.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Five dollar bill.

[Marcus Parks]

No. Five dollar bill.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, but I barely use those five dollar bills. Yeah, I use pennies. I like to throw them at people on the street. I like to throw them for my car.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Well, now you can start collecting them, and they're worth something.

[Marcus Parks]

Wow. Yeah.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what they say about pennies? Saving them. Makes sense. I read that on a Bazooka Joe comic.

[Marcus Parks]

Weird.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I read that same thing, and it was just on the side of a bazooka.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, Grant begged off by saying that they needed to go see their kids. And Mary Todd instead invited the Assistant Secretary of War, who also made an excuse by pretending to be busy with work. Finally, though, Mary Todd settled on Major Henry Rathbone, a friend of the Lincolns.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I'll come. He didn't ask me yet. He asked two other people in front of me. I don't know why.

[John Wilkes Booth]

You're not busy. Right?

[Marcus Parks]

No. Good old Hank Rathbone. No, Hank Rathbone ain't never got nothing going on.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I've never had a plan. Oh, boy. The theater. Yay.

[Marcus Parks]

Can I bring my whistle?

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yes, you can bring your whistle.

[Marcus Parks]

And also joining Major Rathbone was his fiance. And so they became the Lincoln's boxmates at the theater on April 14th. Sadly, though, the lives of Major Rathbone and his future wife would be forever changed by their night at the theater with the Lincolns. Rathbone's mental state would steadily decline in the decades following Lincoln's death. Death due to his perceived inability to save the President from John Wilkes Booth. In reality, there was absolutely nothing he could have done.

[Henry Zabrowski]

His head kept going. From the front to the right, from the front to the right, from the front to the right, from the front to the right. His hat wasn't there. His head exploded. From the front to the right, from the front to the right.

[Marcus Parks]

Slam poetry, open mics. Fucking amazing. So good. But in a fit of madness, 18 years later, major Rathbone shot and murdered his wife in an attempted family Annihilation before attempting suicide by stabbing himself five times in the chest. Rathbone, however, survived and was convicted and committed to an asylum for the criminally insane, where he died in 1911. Eleven. Cool. Yeah. I had never. I. I did not know about. I never heard of that. The guy that was in the Booth with Lincoln murdered his wife and tried to stab himself in the chest 20 years later because he was so upset about it.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You know what it is?

[John Wilkes Booth]

Guy couldn't even annihilate his own family.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Seriously. What a failure. You know, it's interesting. I feel like this is one of those where it shows how nerds, how big of nerds we've become.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You're like. It really bring history to life. It's the truth. It's the idea of. You don't. I don't think about it in terms of, like, you. You just always think about it as, like, paintings in a museum or, like, pages in a history book. And you're like, no. You was traumatized by watching the guy blow his brains out of watching spin the whole country into total chaos so that he had his own fashion family annihilation breakdown.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Yeah. He was like. How many people throughout history could be described as all up?

[Henry Zabrowski]

He's one.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Just imagine stabbing yourself in the chest. Chest. Five times.

[Marcus Parks]

Elliot Smith.

[John Wilkes Booth]

And just not being able to. But he finished the job.

[Henry Zabrowski]

He was really, genuinely sad. I think that he didn't really want it. Look at R. Lang. He lived.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Yeah, he did. And I was 13.

[Henry Zabrowski]

He's the only one of that entire crew. Dirty Work, still alive.

[John Wilkes Booth]

I was thinking about that the other day. It's crazy.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Dirty Work. Incredible movie.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Yeah. Even Jack Warden's dead. Well, he was old.

[Marcus Parks]

He was very old. Now, even outside of family annihilations, there's a lot of speculation as to what would have happened if General Grant had attended Ford's theater that night instead of Major Rathbone. Some say that Grant's military retinue would have prevented Booth from reaching President Lincoln with a pistol. But Grant and Lincoln had attended a performance at Ford's Theater just two months earlier, and there is no evidence that guards were posted outside their box, nor that a full military escort had accompanied them.

[Henry Zabrowski]

So.

[Marcus Parks]

So in reality, it probably wouldn't have made much of a difference. There's also speculation that Lincoln didn't even want to go to the theater that night, but that Mary Todd had insisted. Two months after the assassination, however, Mary Todd wrote in a letter that she'd actually had a headache that night and had wanted to stay at home, but had agreed to go to the play because her husband, quote, had his mind fixed on some relaxation. In fact, by Mary Todd's recollection, Lincoln's mood on the day of his death was, quote, and this is a direct quote quote, so gay. Gay, of course, meaning happy in the parlance of that time.

[Henry Zabrowski]

My mom used to say that about people she saw on the television and stuff that she thought was gay. She'd be like, he's happy and light hearted.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Happy pride.

[Marcus Parks]

Yep, yep. He was, in her words, boyish and supremely cheerful, much as he'd been in the old days before the war and the death of their 11 year old son Willie three years earlier.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's what I did then. Now I'm going, ha ha.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Lucy died happy.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah. Lincoln and Mary Todd had even taken a relaxing carriage ride on the afternoon of the 14th to the Navy Yard. Interestingly, the Navy yard was Lincoln's number three visitation spot during his presidency behind the White House and soldiers home. Having been host to no less than than 60 visits from the President in the first three years of the war.

[Henry Zabrowski]

There's nothing like sitting down on a bench and watch a bunch of sailors tossing ropes in the navy.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, Abraham Lincoln was a massive fan of the theater.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Got everything about it.

[Marcus Parks]

I know. Everything I know.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's just like incredible interior decorator, wonderful dresser, excellent cook.

[Marcus Parks]

He actually, it wasn't Carson Crack. He was the one who coined the term Jush. Isn't that incredible? Well, Lincoln was, as I said, a massive fan of the theater. And he'd seen shows at Ford's countless times prior to the night of his death. In fact, Lincoln had already seen the play that was being performed on April 14th multiple times. That play, of course, was a satire called Our American Cousin.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Thank God. I was worried he didn't know how it ended.

[Marcus Parks]

Now you know, you know know. Our American Cousin was a British fish out of water comedy that played the interactions between a vulgar backwoods American cousin and his uptight British family. For laughs, the American cousin has inherited the family fortune and the uptight British family led by a noble with the humorous name of Lord Dundreary.

[Henry Zabrowski]

My sides are already splitting. You have all the crazy shenanigans.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, Lord Dundre is forced to endure his crass country bo manners in order to retain access to their generational web.

[John Wilkes Booth]

It's King Ralph.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, it is King Ralph. Now, the Lincolns arrived at ford's Theater around 8pm and were greatly enjoying the performance of Our American Cousin. When John Wil Booth arrived On horseback in a narrow alley behind the building at 9:31st.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Let me lube up the front of this horse so it could fit in the alley. Excellent. Jam packed, filled with horse.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Lincoln loved the narrow alley himself.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, yeah, I really do prefer a nice, heaving, bottomless alley.

[Marcus Parks]

So while the owners of the theater and most of the actors were not Confederate sympathizers, a stagehand and old family friend of the Booth, Ned Spangler, was. So when Booth arrived in the alleyway, he specifically asked for Spangler. Spangler, being an unreliable drunk, did not have any previous knowledge of the conspiracy. But Booth figured that he could trust Spangler to, at the very least, watch his horse. But Spangler was working the play. So he forced a fellow employee at Ford's, a guy named Johnny Peanut, to watch Booth's horse in his stead.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Sure thing. I'll take a look at the horse. You bet. Absolutely. My man. Now, which one is the horse? Johnny Peanut you asked for? You asked for me. You know, that's what Ain't no way out.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Literally asked Mr. Peanut to watch the horse.

[Henry Zabrowski]

My father. That's my Father's Day. Mr. Peanut, you're going call me Johnny Peanut. Oh, I got it. My top of my head is smaller than the bottom of my head. But it's not a dog.

[John Wilkes Booth]

That's a horse.

[Henry Zabrowski]

John. Wil. Boo. I don't understand you. Walk inside him.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, Booth's entrance into Ford's theater was suitably dramatic and completely unnecessary. After walking inside through the back, Booth lifted the trap door that led to a basement beneath the stage. Finding his way along the dirt floor in the dark, Booth crossed underneath the stage during the performance like a snake.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Like a man in the shutter.

[Marcus Parks]

Then he found the second trap door that opened to the other side. Booth then made his way to a door that led to another alley.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Another door, another alley. I don't mind that at all.

[Marcus Parks]

There. Booth exited the theater and entered the adjoining saloon. Now, looking at a diagram of the area, there's absolutely no reason that I can see as to why Booth had to go into the theater and crawl under the stage to get to the side door when he could have very easily just drop off his horse and walked around the building directly to the saloon.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Sneaky, sneaky Johnny Sneaky, sneaky Johnny Likes to do Sneak, sneaky, sneaky Johnny It's.

[John Wilkes Booth]

It would have like if he. That would have gotten him caught.

[Henry Zabrowski]

He could just.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Everyone knows him there.

[Henry Zabrowski]

He gets his mail there.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Just walk in the door.

[Henry Zabrowski]

No. I am the phantom. I am the dark vengeance. I am the man who won't kill the President.

[Marcus Parks]

I mean, even. I mean, I do understand him going in through the back or at least having his horse back there. I understand he needed the horse out back so he could escape. But there's the alley led directly to the saloon. He could have just walked over to the saloon. He didn't have to go inside. Do all the subterfuge. But I think since Boof looked at everything as a performance, all the subterfuge made him feel as if he was in the role.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Cloaked by the shadows.

[Marcus Parks]

He's doing what he expected an assassin to do. M. Rather than what made the most sense.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, he definitely reminds me of, like, those fat in Charlottesville or any of those guys with a Punisher tag where they have, like, all the gear, they have all the stuff. They have, like, they've got all the crazy mags and all the weird pocket.

[Marcus Parks]

Harnesses and it's looking the part and playing the part.

[Henry Zabrowski]

We're looking the part first.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Now, after Booth had a whiskey and water at the saloon, he walked to the front doors of Ford's Theater and asked for the time.

[Henry Zabrowski]

What time is it?

[Marcus Parks]

Booth time.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, it's Booth time.

[Marcus Parks]

The doorkeeper, who knew Booth as well as everyone else at Ford's Theater, told the actor to go inside and check the clock in the lobby. Fucking idiot.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Do I look like a fucking walking clock, or is there a clock in the other fucking room?

[John Wilkes Booth]

Let me get my sundial out. Oh, guess what.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's dark. Are we improvising an argument or are we having one? Because I love a game of improv, but if you're really yelling at me, stop.

[John Wilkes Booth]

The clock's in the lobby.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Okay, you're right. I'm sorry.

[Marcus Parks]

Once inside the theater, Booth made his way upstairs towards the presidential box. Now, President Lincoln did have a bodyguard that night, a man named John F. Parker. But as we discussed last episode, Lincoln's security protocols were lax, to say the least. And to this day, nobody has been able to produce a satisfactory answer as to where Parker actually was when the President was shot.

[John Wilkes Booth]

There is no satisfactory answer unless it's in front of the bullet.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You know, it's also. I feel like there's also almost a portal that some people, like, just walk into where it's like. It's that guy. It's the same guys that, like, where the guys that were supposed to be watching Jeffrey Epstein, where those guys go, it's like. There's, like, a portal. And all these guys ended up at the same Place.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

At the same time, Nexus. All just hanging out in a giant white, like, endless lobby.

[Marcus Parks]

It's just being everywhere except where they're supposed to be. Probably just staring at a wall in.

[Henry Zabrowski]

A super crucial moment in history, in American history.

[John Wilkes Booth]

What happened to that guy? Did he kill his too?

[Marcus Parks]

No, he was just like. I'm sorry.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Should have done better.

[John Wilkes Booth]

I apologize.

[Marcus Parks]

When John Wilk's booth arrived at Lincoln's box, the only person standing watch was the President's valet and footman, Charles Forbes. If you ever seen Veep like Charles Forbes, he was like the equivalent of Gary. You know, like the guy that's played by Tony Hail.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Oh, okay.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's concerned more with the President's comfort than his safety.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Excuse me, Mr. President.

[Marcus Parks]

Jeff Booth is here today.

[Henry Zabrowski]

He said he's going to kill you.

[Marcus Parks]

But I don't really think he's going to.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I just. Just want to make sure. Do you have your. Do you have your shoe inserts? I know you have sometimes. Do you need a water? Do you need water? Do you need some gum? Do you want me to take Mary.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Todd and take her down the street.

[Henry Zabrowski]

So you can have sex with a man? Yes, please. That you can do post haste.

[Marcus Parks]

I know it's April, so I just. I don't have any of your wet wipes here right now because I know your body.

[Henry Zabrowski]

We had a very long conversation about how I need wet wipes because I can't smear in front of the south. I understand, Mr. President.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Next week is 4:20. If you want me to get you some weed, I can.

[Marcus Parks]

Sure.

[John Wilkes Booth]

I can find you something.

[Henry Zabrowski]

420. That sounds wonderful. I would love a pair of weeds. Maybe some dandelions for marriage.

[Marcus Parks]

You understand what I'm talking about? What this meant was that all John Wilkes Booth had to do when he got to Lincoln's box was get past Forbes. And Booth easily did so by simply handing the President's valet his calling card, which says John Wilkes Booth, the famous actor. And since Booth was a famous actor, Forbes scrutinized the card and satisfied himself that Booth had legitimate business with the President. So Forbes waved Booth through before returning his personal attentions back to the play, which truly.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You go and see him right now, Mizu. Absolutely. He farted at dinner. Know how to use the. What happened was that. Was I laughing too hard?

[Marcus Parks]

Well, once Booth was passed Forbes and into the vestibule, he kneeled and picked up the stick that he'd laid out earlier. Then he braced the door so no one could enter Once the shooting began, Booth had also cut a small hole in the door leading from the vestibule to the box. So Booth peered through and saw his target, President Abraham Lincoln, sitting in a large rocking chair.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I hope your brains are ready to be confetti. Got you, Lincoln.

[Marcus Parks]

Once the door was blocked and the President was in his sights, Booth rose and drew his small derringer in anticipation of a moment of his choosing during the play. See, while Booth had never performed in a production of Our American Cousin, the play had been fantastically popular, so Booth was well acquainted with the script. He therefore had timed his shot to coincide with a tried and true line that had always earned a big laugh from the crowd. And that laugh would hide the noise of Booth's shot. As such, the last thing Abraham Lincoln ever heard was this line.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Don't know the manners of good society, eh? I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal. You say sock jaling, you suck Dologizing old Madden trap. It's my favorite punchline. I laugh about it to this day with my family.

[Marcus Parks]

And with that line, Booth pushed open the door to the box, raised his derringer, and squeezed the trigger less than 2ft from President Lincoln's head. With a bang, the lead ball smashed into the President's skull, fully penetrating his brain before lodging itself behind his right arm. As Lincoln's body went limp and his head slumped against his chest as if someone had turned out a light, Booth yelled out his infamous line, sick semper turtus, which of course means, thus always to tyrants. Booth then pulled out his knife and lunged at Major Rathbone.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I petty. I petty.

[Marcus Parks]

But he only managed to cut Rathbone's arm. Booth's brace, meanwhile, was doing its job well and was preventing anyone from entering the President's box in time to catch Booth before Booth made his escape. Escape Now. A scream from the box, either from Mary Todd Lincoln or Major Rathbone's wife, startled the audience out of its delight. And when the actor who delivered the sock dologizing man trap line instinctively looked up at the box, the audience's eyes followed what they saw. And this is incredible to think about from the audience's perspective at this point in time. They saw the famous actor John Wilkes Booth attempting a stunt that he'd performed a hundred times before. See, Booth's signature stunt was the 15 foot stage jump. And John Ford himself had seen Booth make that same jump three years earlier during a performance of Macbeth in Baltimore. But if you'll remember, John Ford had decorated The President's box with flags in honor of the President's visit. And Booth, who'd never killed anyone before, was probably a little frazzled after his first murder.

[Henry Zabrowski]

All right, come on, Wilkes. See? Let's give them what they paid for.

[Marcus Parks]

Booth therefore fumbled the stunt by getting his spurs appropriately tangled up in an American flag that had been draped over the presidential box's rail. And Booth therefore landed on the stage awkwardly and off balance. It wasn't a total fuck up, but it certainly ruined the drama. Drama of what was supposed to be Booth's defining moment. It's often said that John Wilkes Booth broke his leg during this jump and thereafter bravely made his escape with a massive injury that would have caused a lesser man to crumple on stage from the pain. The only evidence for that, however, was John Wilkes Booth's own writings. Later, Booth wrote in his diary that he broke his leg jumping to the stage. But witnesses on the scene said that Booth did not falter when he landed from the President's box, nor did he limp away when he escaped escaped. Multiple witnesses also said they saw Booth running through Washington D.C. that night with incredible speed. All of this, of course, would have been highly unlikely, if not impossible, with a broken leg. But John Wilkes Booth did have a broken fibula when he arrived at Dr. Mudd's plantation later that night, as per the plan. But according to Dr. Mudd, Booth did not say that he had broken his leg in the first. Rather, Booth told Dr. Mudd straight up that his horse had tripped and rolled with him still in the saddle during Booth's ride to the plantation.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I never should have taken him through Bananaville, never. Even though he was funny at the time. Very amusing for many to see. I unfortunately I have a boo boo.

[Marcus Parks]

Dr. Mott in front of the course. A horse accident is nowhere near as impressive of a story as Booth's later revision. But to this day, people in that show, Manhunt, you know, like it. It made a big show of like Booth tripping and breaking his leg. It's still being told to this day.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's cuz it's a funner story than the horse falling down.

[Marcus Parks]

It's funnier with the horse falling down.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, of course, funnier.

[John Wilkes Booth]

You know, who knows, Maybe they couldn't get the proper horse stunt actor.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's so hard to get. Honestly, these horses these days are such. None of them want to do the horse. They need to get in there. Yeah, they, they're losing, they're losing horse stunt jobs to AI. These horses need to Gum up. They need to go down there, they need to do the work and need to be able to fall on cue like they used to and then take getting shot in the head.

[John Wilkes Booth]

You got to sign the waiver. Horses. I know you don't have hands, but, you know, sign it.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You can just do it with their hooves.

[Marcus Parks]

Clomp it. Yeah. But regardless of when Booth broke his leg, he stood to his full height. When he landed on stage, he raised his dagger above his head, he shot.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Shouted, quote, the south shall be free.

[Marcus Parks]

And scurried off towards the back alley, where his horse was still being held by the hapless Johnny Peanut.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I sure hope they want your horse. And, you know, don't worry, I did a whole bunch to him. I painted him completely green, raised, all ready to go, and I fed him a good Coke, I fed him a hamburger, and I gave him a couple beers also.

[John Wilkes Booth]

The south shall be free is exactly what Lincoln was trying to do.

[Henry Zabrowski]

He literally was trying to do it, buddy. He was trying to do it. Some people were like, what are doing? You second they. Are they charging to go down South? I don't understand.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, no one was more surprised to see John Wilkes Booth at that moment than his fellow actors. And some of the actors on stage at that very moment had coincidentally, coincidentally, had deep personal connections to the Booth family. Lead actress Laura Keane, playing the role of Florence Trenchard. She also owned the rights to Our American Cousin. In fact, she was the one who'd made the play such a hit in America. Coincidentally, she had also engaged in a love affair with Booth's brother Edwin, years earlier.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, O.

[Marcus Parks]

Laura Keane had also been involved in a lawsuit with Booth's brother in law over a bootleg production of Our American Cousin in Philadelphia. But Keane had dropped the suit after Edwin Booth gave his brother in law personal information about Keane that could have caused a scam scandal and ended her career.

[Henry Zabrowski]

If you touch her butt, her tits fart. Put that in your pocket. Keep it for a rainy day.

[Marcus Parks]

And here on this night, you had yet another member of the Booth family up Laura Keane's day.

[Henry Zabrowski]

What the fuck?

[Marcus Parks]

Because after this, the play that Keane had worked so hard to make a hit, Our American Cousin, it would forever be relegated to the land of presidential assassination trivia.

[John Wilkes Booth]

The true victim of this whole thing.

[Marcus Parks]

Theater employees also recognized Booth, and one even thought that the whole thing was an elaborate prank, because it was ridiculous to think that John Wilkes Booth, the actor, had just shot the President.

[Henry Zabrowski]

How cool would it have been, though, if Lincoln stood up being like you all thought we were, you know, we were with you guys. You guys were just. See the look on your faces. It was all an elaborate joke. Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

Japa.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Jamie, guess what? I'm gay as hell. You know, like comes out.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes, he is.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And as am I.

[Marcus Parks]

Is that not surprising?

[Henry Zabrowski]

Do we kiss? Let's kiss, bro.

[Marcus Parks]

No, I'm also joking again.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, you're not joking.

[Henry Zabrowski]

No.

[Marcus Parks]

Neither am I.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's why Lincoln voice is really devolved.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Luckily, we don't need it anymore.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Goodbye, Lincoln.

[Marcus Parks]

Because the whole scene was just so surreal. Very few people, not the cast, nor the crew, nor the audience, really knew exactly what to do in that moment. Only one person in the audience, a major in the union audience army, leapt up on stage to give chase when Booth ran away. That major's path, however, was blocked by more bewildered actors. And by the time the major got outside, John Wilkes Booth had already struck Johnny Peanut in the face with the butt of his knife. It was quickly galloping away towards Maryland.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Exactly what you asked. I got your horse trunk. I was hanging out. I was hanging out with the horse and having a good time. Although it was petting his main. Angry with me. Why is everybody. People angry with Jelly Pino?

[John Wilkes Booth]

I mean, it also makes it Derringer isn't that loud either.

[Marcus Parks]

It's just a pop.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Yeah, yeah, it's a quick little pop. So if there was a laugh, then I assume most people had no idea what happened till it was already over.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Well, you heard the line.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Yeah. Six separate tyrannos.

[Marcus Parks]

No sockologizing. Old man trap.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, that was the thing. Yeah. Of course. Of course. No one could handle that line.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It was a guaranteed rush that that line crashed. That's how. That's how. How dependable that bit was.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Was that John Wil Booth knew he could assassinate the President during it.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's huge.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, it really was. He was waiting for that line. Specifically.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Think of another comedian whose actual like one stellar bit. What's a guy who. Who would always crush prior? Wow. Yeah. Cosby.

[Marcus Parks]

Let's just say prior. How about we say prior? Let's just say Richard Prior.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I actually think it's more like a Jeff Dunham. It's like. It's more like a.

[Marcus Parks]

Or maybe. Or like Eddie Murphy doing the goony goo.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Get her done. Like, get her done Just worked. Would cover many a presidential assassination. If you put it correct.

[John Wilkes Booth]

If you are a gay man with.

[Henry Zabrowski]

A big hat in the booth, you might be the President of the United States.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, one of the other people who'd immediately reacted to the shooting was a young army surgeon who'd attended the theater that night specifically because he'd read in the afternoon paper that the President was going to be in the audience. The surgeon, however, even after making his way up to the box, was stymied by the brace that Booth had left behind. Finally, Major Rathbone realized the problem, and he removed it just as another doctor was being hoisted from the stage directly below to examine the police president. The two doctors examined Lincoln and found that a small clot of blood was plugging the hole where the lead ball had entered the President's skull.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I found the problem. It's this big old gunshot in the.

[Marcus Parks]

Back of his head.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, I think this is going to be an issue.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, I saw these denti at them. The President appeared dead in that very moment, but when they removed the clot, Lincoln began breathing north normally. Six soldiers were then ordered to carry Lincoln out of the President's box and into a nearby house for further observation, because it was obvious that Lincoln would not survive a trip back to the White House. The crime scene that was Ford's Theater, meanwhile, was not secured in any way whatsoever. Forensics, the way we think of it, didn't exist back then. So crowds began stripping Ford's Theater and the President's Box for grizzly souvenirs. Immediately, one man made off with the President's bloodstained cravat. Another found the stick that Booth had used to trap Lincoln. They just handed Booth derringer to a fucking reporter.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I mean, it's very interesting.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Yeah, it's crazy, but didn't they use it in the trial? The derringer wasn't in an exhibit.

[Marcus Parks]

They probably got it back eventually, but a reporter ran off with it.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Crazy.

[Marcus Parks]

People were so hungry to get a piece of history that some even began chipping away the wood on the doors of the house where the President laid down, dying at that very moment.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Now, that's a sticky audience.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. But if you'll remember, President Lincoln, why true crime. Now. But if you'll remember, President Lincoln was not the only target that night. There was also the matters of Secretary of State William Seward and Vice President Andrew Johnson. Now, perhaps unfortunately, depending on your point of view, the only bad person targeted by John Wilkes Booth that night was also the only one who came out of it completely unstable. Scathed. That person, of course, was Vice President Andrew Johnson.

[Henry Zabrowski]

He just seems like a guy who drunkenly Mr. Magoo his way through many, like, all of his life.

[Marcus Parks]

Yep. Until impeachment, as it turned.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That was a Bit of a whoops to do.

[Marcus Parks]

Everybody.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Let's get a mulligan under prison. See if we could.

[John Wilkes Booth]

I love Peaches.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, Peaches Animent. That just sounds wonderful.

[Henry Zabrowski]

When I see Peaches out there. You're right. Peaches get impeach me.

[Marcus Parks]

Why don't we go get some rumple men?

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, why you get a rumple men? You come on. You come on. Let's party. Let's hang out. We never do it anymore.

[Marcus Parks]

Hold on.

[John Wilkes Booth]

You're a horse.

[Marcus Parks]

You know what reminds me, I haven't hung out with my horse in like days.

[Henry Zabrowski]

We been that horse just besides under me. Take me places.

[Marcus Parks]

As it turned out, the German immigrant co conspirator charged with killing Lincoln, George Athletic Atzerot. He had in fact been in the same room as Andrew Johnson at around the same time that Lincoln was shot. It was the bar at the Kirkwood Hotel. Atzerodt was even armed and had every opportunity to kill the Vice President. But Atzerodt had also been drinking for the better part of the day. And after having a whiskey at the hotel bar, he very simply chickened out and left. Hoping that he could just forget about the whole thing and start a new life in Germantown, Maryland on his cousin's farm. This is of course, despite being heavily involved in the conspiracy to wipe out the executive branch of government.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You know how many people in Germantown, Maryland are just trying to cool out after having tried to wipe out the executive branch of the government? It's a horrible. It's like where you go.

[Marcus Parks]

It's the first stop.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

At however couldn't help but talk about the assassination. And after telling people that he knew things about the plot that others didn't, he was awoken around sunrise just four days after the President's death by a police officer holding a.44 pistol to his skull. But while the assassination of the Vice President had not even been attempted, the assassination of Secretary of State William Seward was a bloody affair that damn near came close to success. At the same time that John Wilkes Booth was killing President Lincoln, his co conspirators Lewis Powell and David Herold were hitching their horses to a post outside of Secretary of State Seward's home with plans to go inside and commit murder most foul.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You guys need someone to watch your horse. I could do it for you to kill that. You're trying to kill somebody else. So now that's enough mean to do.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Damn it, Johnny.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Get to the theater. I was at the theater, but everybody was super mad with my results sir, no one likes when I did that.

[Marcus Parks]

The Seward was arguably the easiest target of all because he was bedridden at the time of the assassination. Nine days earlier, Seward had been riding in a carriage when the horses took off. While the driver was off the perch opening the carriage door, Seward leapt from the runaway carriage when the horses slowed down to take a turn. But the 63 year old politic timed his leap to safety.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That man's probably jumped once in his life.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Seward therefore hit the ground head first, shattering his face, jaw and right arm when he smashed into the pavement. As a result, Seward was in bed recovering from his injuries when his assassins arrived.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I just love this because the old time medicine is also rough. So he's just covered in metal braces just like, kill me.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. This is the trans. This is the transition point when like all medicine hurts.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Yes.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Man.

[John Wilkes Booth]

I remember I tried to do the same thing one time when I was in a parking lot riding on my buddy's car, like, hanging on the back trunk just for fun. And then he started to go too fast and my hands started slipping. In my mind, I'm like, okay, I'm just going to start running.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And then.

[John Wilkes Booth]

And then I'm just going to keep running. When I let go of the car.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Of course, you had the wy Coyote way to the safety.

[John Wilkes Booth]

And I just hit the ground face first and knocked out my tooth.

[Marcus Parks]

Nice.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[John Wilkes Booth]

But we went and saw Event Horizon. That was a nice day.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That is awesome. That is awesome. That's a great day.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Yeah, it wasn't bad. So I understand what he did.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I get it. You want to jump. You think you can handle it? Yeah.

[John Wilkes Booth]

You're like, just start running, see what happens.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Now, the plan here was that Harold would stand watch while Powell killed Secretary Seward and anyone who stood in his way. Harold would then use his geography skills to guide both of them out of the city towards the rendezvous point with Booth.

[Henry Zabrowski]

How is this supposed to be like. Yeah, that's a fjord.

[Marcus Parks]

He's got the map in his head. He knows directions.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, sure, that's what he meant. I just thought he meant he knew like, like what formations were. Yeah, sure, that's, that's, that's pleasantine rock. Or that's Byzantine rock.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, that's circuit. That's not. That's not geography. That's geology. That's knowledge of rocks. It's a totally different thing.

[John Wilkes Booth]

You know, I once lost the geography because I didn't understand that someone was asking for the definition of dirt.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I.

[Marcus Parks]

So I don't know.

[John Wilkes Booth]

I could go both ways here.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Either way, it's stupid.

[Marcus Parks]

You're talking about dirt, he's talking about rocks.

[Henry Zabrowski]

But I got friends in the geology department. I think that's what I'm saying. I'm sorry, Ellie.

[Marcus Parks]

But the plan fell apart very quickly. As it went, Powell knocked on the front door of Seward's home. And when Seward's servant opened the door, Powell said that he'd arrived important medicine from Seward's doctor, something to help with his injuries. Servant said, sure, just give it to me. I'll take care of it. Which is apparently an eventuality that Powell didn't think of.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Okay, here you go. I can't break the rules of improv.

[Marcus Parks]

So Powell began arguing with the servant, telling him that he had to deliver the medicine to Seward personally. And eventually the hubbub attracted the attention of Seward's son. Powell then made like he was to going to leave, but when he turned away, he took the opportunity to pull out his pistol. Ha. He squeezed the trigger, but the gun misfired. So Powell pistol whip Seward's son and left him on the ground with a skull fracture bad enough to expose his brains to the open air.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Cool.

[Marcus Parks]

A male army nurse attending to William Seward heard the commotion and came out of his room.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Why are you. Why specifically that he's a male army nurse?

[Marcus Parks]

Because when I first wrote army nurse, I thought that maybe people would think at the time time that it would just be a nurse. They would think. I was like, okay, well if it's 1865, then it might be a woman. But I wanted to make sure that people knew that it was a man and not a woman.

[John Wilkes Booth]

It makes the fight crazier.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, you're right.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah. Because, yeah, you know, Powell slashing at a woman, it's one thing, but you know, man, it's different.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Man, nurse, that's something else altogether.

[Marcus Parks]

It is. But when the male army nurse attending to William Seward heard the commotion and came out of his, he was met with Powell's knife. Powell slashed at the nurse and smashed the handle into his head, causing the nurse to fall backwards.

[Henry Zabrowski]

If I was a woman, you wouldn't.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Have done male nurse. Where do we want to send her?

[Marcus Parks]

Powell then made his way upstairs and pushed his way into Seward's room, past Seward's daughter Fanny, where Powell found Secretary Seward lying in bed completely helpless.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Kill me. Just fucking do it already. Fucking kill me.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Oh, thank God you're fine. Finally here.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Somebody Here to do something. Finally do it.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Oh, Mr. Reaper, please hit me with your sick.

[Marcus Parks]

But even though Seward could do little more than roll over, Powell still somehow missed Seward with the first slash of his knife.

[John Wilkes Booth]

He should have had the geography expert.

[Marcus Parks]

In there to help him.

[John Wilkes Booth]

His neck.

[Marcus Parks]

Higher.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Higher.

[Marcus Parks]

North. It's, you know. Instead, it's north.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Up, or it's up. Up, or it's north. That way. You gotta tell me different. Come here, you fucker. Stab me in the heart. Stab me in the fucking heart.

[John Wilkes Booth]

I'm a man and a nurse.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, the first slash instead hit the headboard.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Ow.

[Marcus Parks]

But with the second slide slash, Powell caught the secretary on his cheek and landed many more slashes afterwards on Stewart's head and neck.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Stab me in the heart. Take your time and do it right. You're just hurting me. You're just hurting me. Oh.

[Marcus Parks]

At this point, though, the army nurse had recovered.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Here comes a man. Time for a man to join this fight.

[Marcus Parks]

He entered the room and took Powell down to the ground. But Powell managed to break free and run away. On his way out, he stabbed a messenger in the back, all while screaming, quote, I'm mad.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I'm mad.

[Marcus Parks]

I'm just the messenger. But when Powell got back to his horse, he found that he was now all alone. David Herald had gotten spooked by all the commotion and had taken off without him. So when Powell jumped on his horse and rode away, he had not the slightest clue as to where he was supposed to go next. Now, as it turned out, the carriage accident had inadvertently saved William Seward's life. Seward had been wearing an iron brace to help his jaw heal. And even though his jaw was now barely attached to his face due to Powell's repeated slashings, the brace had caused Powell's knife blows to glance on Seward's neck.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Thank God for this brace then, huh? Thank God. Certainly didn't end me quick. Now I get to continue to fucking live.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Someone get my large cock nurse over here.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Hey, how about one of you guys, next time throw a fucking grenade in here or something? Something will finally end me, because I guess I can't fucking die.

[Marcus Parks]

I mean. I mean, Powell had totally failed to kill a bedridden old man. Like he was. It was like. I mean, you talk about shooting fish in a barrel. Stabbing an old man in bed is the murderous equivalent of that.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I guess I could move my torso fast enough.

[John Wilkes Booth]

I would like to make a case to change the expression to stabbing an old man in a bed.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, yeah. That's as easy as stabbing an old man in a bed. I love that. Yeah. We got to.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, definitely. It's. It's. And the Zeit guys. No.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Yeah. Rob put it on the whiteboard.

[Marcus Parks]

Powell, however, did cause Seward much further pain. Seward's new injuries prompted his doctor to fashion a vulcanized rubber splint for his jaw.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, God.

[Marcus Parks]

That was fit inside his mouth and screwed to his teeth.

[Henry Zabrowski]

There's no fucking reason for this. I'm begging to die. I'm begging to be killed.

[Marcus Parks]

Months afterward, his cheek had to be lanced so the fluids could drain out. But William Seward had nevertheless survived Booth's plot to have him killed.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yep, that's true what they say. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Yeah. For a real inspiration to the people, huh? Rise from your glory.

[Zoe Saldana]

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[T Mobile Representative]

Thanks. And here's my old phone to trade in.

[Zoe Saldana]

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[T Mobile Representative]

There's always a trade in.

[Marcus Parks]

Not right now.

[Zoe Saldana]

@ T Mobile.

[T Mobile Representative]

I feel like I have to give you something in return for karma.

[Zoe Saldana]

That's okay.

[T Mobile Representative]

I don't really have much in my purse. Oh, let's see. Hand sanitizer. It's lavender.

[Marcus Parks]

I'm good.

[Zoe Saldana]

Seriously.

[T Mobile Representative]

Let me check this pocket. Oh, mints.

[Zoe Saldana]

Really, I'm fine.

[T Mobile Representative]

Oh, I have raisins. I'm a mom. Wait, wait one sec. I've got cupcakes in the car.

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[Henry Zabrowski]

How many discounts does USAA auto insurance offer?

[Marcus Parks]

Too many to say here.

[Henry Zabrowski]

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[Marcus Parks]

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[Henry Zabrowski]

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Tap the banner or visit usaa.com autodiscount restrictions apply now. Since the President had been shot and the Secretary of State was nearly killed, it was only natural for people to assume that this had either been a Confederate conspiracy or a full on coup. Washington D.C. was awash with rumors that Lincoln's entire cabinet had been killed, that hundreds of Confederate prisoners had escaped, or that General Grant had also been murdered in a train car. Suffice to say, tempers were running high that night, so the public turned their attention towards the location of the murder. Forward theater Swarms of people blamed the building for what had happened there and began breaking off anything that could be broken.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's the damn building. That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. That's insane.

[Marcus Parks]

People get weird.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, they do.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Some people in the mob even began calling for the building to be set on fire with the actors and employees inside. Because from the mob's perspective, it was the theater's fault that the President had been killed.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's capital T theater's fault. Burn the planes, burn the costume.

[John Wilkes Booth]

This is shows that like when you have a mob of people a well timed, get it everything apart.

[Henry Zabrowski]

What if we get him? Yeah, like that is a lot of stuff.

[Marcus Parks]

President Lincoln meanwhile, was not doing well. Although his doctors were surprised at how fit Lincoln still was. They quote, marveled at his muscular development, remarking that if Lincoln had not been in possession of the chest and arms of an athlete, even at the age of 56. What a silver fox. He would have probably died from that shot immediately.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Hey, how about you guys quit masturbating and try to save my life, okay?

[John Wilkes Booth]

The bullets in my head, not my legs.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Legs guys are up here. Okay? What do I have to do here? All right, I know I'm sexy as all hell, but maybe we could stop waxing poetic about my body. If you guys could just for the love of God, save my life and then I'll blow off you.

[John Wilkes Booth]

I'm never heard of someone's strong legs saving them from a headshot.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Not once. Oh yeah, look at this. Look at his balls.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, for me it's such a human moment because it shows that there were, I think there were 14 doctors in the room at that point. And it's a tiny, tiny room. And they're all just staring. And just look at cuz the, you know, this original doctor, you know, taken off all Lincoln's clothes. You know, it's like, let's get him comfortable. So they're just sitting there staring at the President in awkward situation silence. Somebody's got to say something, you know.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Like you guys notice he's got a kind of a rocket body. You know what I didn't think.

[Marcus Parks]

How old is he? He was 56.

[Henry Zabrowski]

He looks good for 56.

[Marcus Parks]

Really good for 50.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Taking care of himself.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Nice tits for a president.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I mean, honestly, honestly, look at this guy. He looks really good.

[Marcus Parks]

It would have been far better if he would have just died. Y if he was just to see if he would have had my body just skinny and frail and just fucking died immediately. Because as it was, he lingered for hours. Finally though, at 7.22am, nine hours after he'd been shot, Abraham Lincoln drew one last ragged breath and died whilst laying diagonally on a bed far too small for his 6 foot 4 frame. Few, however, were more distressed by what had gone down on the night of April 14 than the members of the Booth family.

[Henry Zabrowski]

This is going to ruin the world tour.

[Marcus Parks]

Kinda.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Edwin Booth, he'd woken up late on the 15th and he immediately got the news.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Good morning, Slade. Let's go here. Some nice hot popping. What even happened?

[Marcus Parks]

Well, Edwin Booth, he was the one that was a little more lefty like he was. Yeah. But actually from what it seems like, I think Edwin Booth was more that guy Guy. Just like. Can we please just not talk about politics? Like I just. All I want to be is an actor. I don't want to get into any of this. I just want to be a actor. That's all.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Just want to about our American cousin and how I should have been in it. That's all I want to about.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. And he mostly lamented that his family's reputation had been ruined by his idiotic confederate brother. Edwin wrote that he had stayed loyal from the first moment of, quote, this damned rebellion. But he, along with his children now bore the agony of being thus blasted in all hopes by a villain. And that villain had of course, been his own brother. The Booths actually had to go into hiding after the news broke. And Edwin received letters to his home saying that there are revolvers loaded with which to shoot him and his family down. Because the public now hated the Booth name.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, makes sense.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Now, concerning the path of John Wilkes Booth. After leaving Ford's Theater, he'd had quite a the night following the assassination of the President. As I said earlier, Booth's horse had tripped and rolled at some point during his escape.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Damn, clumsy horse.

[Marcus Parks]

So when Booth arrived at the rendezvous point sometime around midnight, his leg had indeed been broken. So when David Herold arrived minutes later, having completely abandoned Lewis Powell at Secretary Seward's home, Booth was badly in need of medical attention. So it was decided to decided that they would not wait for their compatriots. And after a short stopover at the Confederate Tavern in Surrattsville, Booth and Harold arrived at Dr. Mudd's plantation.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You always want to get the best health care over at Dr. Mudd's down there, and his special curated ancient Chinese farts are gonna make sure your legs are completely fine.

[Marcus Parks]

The booth journey following Dr. Mudd's plantation makes for a fantastic tea TV show, but it also makes for quite the tedious podcast.

[Henry Zabrowski]

If you can't show men on horses go in places, it's not interesting to.

[Marcus Parks]

Just hear about it, because that's what this is. It's a lot of men on horses going places. Because that's all a. That's all a Western is.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's all they do.

[Marcus Parks]

Just a man on a horse going to a place and then going to another place and talking to other men on horses in between. That place for Jesus.

[John Wilkes Booth]

I should have brought my coconut so I could have done my horse gas.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, yeah. You know what I could do? I could do old fashioned.

[John Wilkes Booth]

There we go.

[Marcus Parks]

That's not bad.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Rewrite it, Marcus.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's like. That's like if a horse was just made out of folds.

[Marcus Parks]

Cool. Just give me another eight hours or so and we can continue this up. Yeah, it's pretty good, Henry. It's really.

[John Wilkes Booth]

It's pretty impressive.

[Marcus Parks]

It's actually very impressive. Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Thank you.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, rather than take you through the escape of John Wilk's Booth moment by moment, we're going to give you the broad strokes of Booth and harold adventure. See, Dr. Mudd was just the second stop on their journey. So after Dr. Mudd set Booth's broken leg, Booth and Harold began making their way towards Virginia, where they expected to be welcomed by the Confederacy, even though the Confederacy was all but done.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Sorry, you just missed the Confederacy.

[Marcus Parks]

Actually, I hear there's a little bit of a Confederacy going on in a boxcar in North Carolina, but honestly, you.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Want to avoid that too, because that Confederacy is getting pretty intense. All these guys are fighting over the one last stray ca.

[Marcus Parks]

Pet.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Whoever they could do. They're trying to. They all want a pet. Everybody's lonely in there.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Oh, what am I gonna do with all these mouth harps?

[Marcus Parks]

Well, despite Harold's supposed proficiency as a geography expert, he and Booth repeatedly got lost after they left Dr. Mudd's plantation.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I actually am more of a geology expert. Yeah, I can tell you where Cobalt is. Yeah, I should have. There was a bit of. That's why the confusion was there. I should have checked my references.

[Marcus Parks]

This was partly because Harold had overstated his knowledge, and partly because they only had a vague idea of where they were actually going. In a definite instance of irony, though, these two supposed top specimens of the white race came to depend over and over again on the directions and navigation of the free black people they came upon in their travels. Without this guidance, Booth and Harold would have no doubt been caught within days. God damn it if.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Excuse me. I don't want to interrupt your freedom. My white friend and I wanted to ask a question about where we could go. I don't know if you could know we're here to folk. Yes, I'm so glad you're free to answer.

[Marcus Parks]

And these people, they only helped Booth and Harold because it was the right. It was the smart thing to do. Not this is the right thing to do, but it was the smart thing to do if they wanted to fucking survive.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Get the fuck out of here. Yeah.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Did they get lost on a river?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[John Wilkes Booth]

How does that even happen?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Honestly, you'd be super surprised. You'd be crazy surprised how it is to lose that big old geological formation that we just think you were the only. The fucking thing that you had to do was know what the things were and what to follow.

[Marcus Parks]

Are you familiar with tributaries and the what I just. A silt delta? There are many different geological formations.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Excuse me, my fellow free man. Ah, yes, very good. Can I be also be invited to the cookout? Yes, my good man.

[John Wilkes Booth]

This must be one of those newfangled Circle rivers.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, after making their way through a swamp, Booth and Harold arrived at another. I think they lied.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I think they put us through a swamp because they know I'm filled with hate.

[Marcus Parks]

Actually, 1. At one point they did have trouble. Like there was one guy that they had to convince to help them. And so Booth wrote him a nasty letter upon his exit.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You. I hate you. Well, hate you, you jerk.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, after making their way through a swamp, Booth and Harold arrived at another plantation where they hooked up with a Confederate agent who promised them safe passage across the Potomac River. But not just yet. Arrangements still had to be made. So while that agent contacted another agent, Booth and Harold were told to wait in a pine thicket located just outside the agent's property line, lest the military show up and find the president's assassin on the agent's plantation. Booth and Harold therefore huddled in the thicket, exposed to the elements for days, waiting for the word to move on, while the Confederate agent brought them food and newspapers.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I hope you guys doing good in the thicket. All right, you want to keep that bushes on top. Right on top of your heads.

[Marcus Parks]

Here you go.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I got some tacos. And honestly, you're going to want to read this as a super funny article about. About. There was like a fun. You got to read it in the.

[Ed Larson]

Top of the front page and.

[Henry Zabrowski]

But also honestly. And of course, the Mariners won. Not to spoil. I should have said that. Yeah. The score. This course are in there. Good. Yeah. If you're good. All right, so you stay in that thicket, all right? And I'm gonna be right back for you. Don't worry. I'm gonna get you. I'm gonna get you your freedom, all right?

[Marcus Parks]

Sounds wonderful.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You are the thicket.

[Marcus Parks]

I am the.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Okay, I can.

[Marcus Parks]

I can play a thicket.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Stick it in the thicket.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You know what to do.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, much to boost chagrin, the newspapers were not responding to his grand scheme in the way he'd expected. He was stunned when he read that the media had not lauded him for striking down, quote, the greatest tyrant. Instead, the papers were calling Booth's actions, and therefore Booth himself, cowardly and vile.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It bombed. I'm getting bad reviews.

[John Wilkes Booth]

He shot a man in the back of the head. Head with a hooker's gun.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I thought everyone was going to laugh.

[Marcus Parks]

While the man is sitting next to his wife.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I thought everyone was going to laugh and cheer. Oh, I am terribly wrong. It might be my algorithm.

[Marcus Parks]

But while Booth and Harold were hiding in the thicket like animals, their co conspirators were being snatched up by the police and the military in quick order. So even though John Surratt had technically left the conspiracy before the plan had turned to assassinate fascination, detectives had heard that John Surratt was often seen in the company of John Wilkes Booth at the saloon next to Ford's Theater. They'd also received snippets of information from multiple individuals that led the investigation to the boarding house run by Surratt's mother, Mary, who, if you'll remember, had been told by Booth the night before the assassination to, quote, have the shooting irons ready. But in another amazing coincidence, just after five detectives entered Mary's boarding house to arrest her and everyone inside for being involved in the conspiracy to kill the president, who should knock on Mary's door looking for sanctuary but Lewis Powell, who was, of course, the man who had attempted to assassinate Secretary Seward.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I don't know if you guys heard that old saying says, easier than a stab an old man in a bed, but it certainly wasn't. Oh, my God, you guys all coming from.

[Marcus Parks]

Powell was soon identified by the Seward family doorkeeper and arrested. While Mary Surratt's involvement in the conspiracy would eventually make her the Zafunbit of trivia, the first woman to ever be executed by the United States federal government.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Whoa.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, Hanging. If you're curious, sisters are doing it for themselves.

[John Wilkes Booth]

I thought they would have slapped her to death.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Hey, hang her by the hangers.

[Marcus Parks]

Strangely, though, other co conspirators who were even more involved than Mary Surratt would eventually go free. Specifically, Dr. Mud.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Dr. Mud? He always comes out clean.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, despite the fact that a boot with the inscription J. Wilkes written inside was found in Dr. Mudd's attic, Dr. Mudd would claim to the day he died that he was just a simple country doctor who gotten himself caught up in events beyond his control.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Y' all know me. I'm just a. I'm Dr. Mudd. I'm a poo poo scientist. For me, I deal with. I deal with butts and farts and stuff like that. I ain't one of these the nation guys, you know? I mostly deal with poop shoots and. And. And polyps. Butt polyps and hairs.

[Marcus Parks]

Think about it. Why would a man with a broken leg come to a butt Dr. Like Dr. Mudd?

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, unless you. Some people say, well, the leg begins the butt. That's. Again, that's in leg astronomy, if you're part of the butt sciences. But I didn't get that master's degree.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Coffee? Taco Bell?

[Henry Zabrowski]

Cigarette? Want some dates?

[Marcus Parks]

Some plumps? The military commission in charge of trying the conspirators in Lincoln's death, they, of course, did not buy mud. Simple country doctor story. Dr. Mudd escaped execution by just one vote and was instead given life in prison. But incredibly, President Andrew Johnson would pardon Dr. Mudd in 1869, along with Ned Spangler, Booth's inside man at ford's Theater. And Dr. Mudd, despite being one of the key members of the conspiracy from the very beginning, ended up living out his life As a free man.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I just like his name. I like his name, I like his attitude. Think he's a fun guy. And one time I'm going to confess. Yes, I sat on the Robin. It's long story. The Robin took up a bit of a situation inside of me. Had a family in there and I called doctor Mother doctor My got the bar.

[John Wilkes Booth]

It's crazy that he pardoned him because so many people thought that he was part of the assassination.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's why all the conspiracy theories later on would come about. It's like literally these are the things that we even see now. Every single dumb little human interaction that would spin off into a century of conspiracy theories.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, and there's very human reasons behind the Dr. Mudd pardoning. You know, Andrew Johnson was a Democrat, you know, before defecting over to the Republican Party, you know, for his own self interest. And Dr. Mudd's law lawyer was. He was either in Andrew Johnson's cabinet or was very close to Andrew Johnson's cabinet.

[Henry Zabrowski]

So Dr. Mud's lawyer is just something about like, seems like Jerry Farinsky or like I'm trying to think of like a good lawyer, firm name for Dr. Demento Song.

[Marcus Parks]

Dr. M's lawyer.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh God. If you don't like Dr. Mud, what wait to meet his lawyer? You know what I mean?

[Marcus Parks]

Oh yeah. But Dr. Mudd had connections to Andrew Johnson's administration. So that's, that's why Dr. Mob was able to be pardoned.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Yeah. It seems like Spangler was just stupid.

[Marcus Parks]

He was. And he originally gotten a six years hard labor. But Andrew Johnson. Yeah. Commuted the rest of his sentence and, and pardoned him. He's like, ah, he's, you know, he's just an idiot. God.

[John Wilkes Booth]

What? He just shut up.

[Marcus Parks]

Thankfully Johnny Peanut not got nothing.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

Like he was.

[Henry Zabrowski]

They actually was really nice. They just let me go to the Tilted World. They just said you could stay on that. They give me a bunch of different tickets and stuff like that. So I've just mostly been hanging out by the corner and going Subway sand because they're real artist. They real artist. They good sandwiches over there. I don't know what happened in the old theater mess, but everybody's certainly upset about it. If, if Lincoln lived, he would have been President. Walnut.

[Marcus Parks]

As far as John Wilkes Booth's eventual fate. Well, as far as John Wilkes Booth's eventual fate went, he was still stuck in the pine thicket with David Herold. By the time most of his other co conspirators were already behind bars.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Am I some Kind of. Betty, am I some kind of groundhog?

[Marcus Parks]

Booth and Harold laid silent and unmoving for days, wobbling.

[John Wilkes Booth]

We're in the thicket.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Be the thicket.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Be the thicket.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I am leaves. I am branches. I am the thicket.

[Marcus Parks]

That's incredible. Like patrolling soldiers would pass sometimes within yards of Booth and Harold's hiding spot. When their transport was finally close to being arranged, Booth and Harold were moved back to the Confederate agent's plantation. There, Booth pathetically begged to be allowed inside the agent's home, asking, quote, oh.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Can'T I go in and get some of your hot coffee, please? This would be so long. I could be a thicket. Not without coffee, please. I'll be anything. I'll be a bush. I'll be a tree. Anything but a thicket.

[Marcus Parks]

The agent, of course, had to refuse because his servants, who were still enslaved just a couple years earlier, they would have rightfully reported everyone inside.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You know, I'd love to get you that coffee. I really would, but everybody's super on edge out here. Just get you to go back to the thicket. I don't want to go back to the thicket. I want to be.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, but you're gonna have to go. You're gonna have to go, Johnny. You're gonna have to go.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I'll have to respect your judgment.

[Marcus Parks]

Instead, the agent slipped Booth and Harold leftovers from dinner to their hiding spot outside like they were a couple of fucking stray dogs.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Thank you so much. Yes. Very good. I just love old meat. My favorite thing to eat while being in and of. And with the thicket.

[John Wilkes Booth]

What do you think this meal used to be?

[Henry Zabrowski]

I imagine whole was like some kind of gravy and salt. Otherwise, it's just our thicket leaving.

[Marcus Parks]

After nine days of running and hiding, though, Booth and Harold finally made it across the river to Virginia. They did have one little. They did have an instance where they got put on a. A skiff, and then. But then neither one of them knew anything about boats, so they just ended up back on. They could even cross the river.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I am just sick and tired of it. This is the buddy comedy that should have happened with the two of them. It's like, back and forth and, like, he's more and more covered in dirt and leaves. Just being like. It's just not how all of this was supposed to go.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Nobody said there were going to be boats.

[Marcus Parks]

Eventually, they did make it across the river to Virginia to a known Confederate safe house owned by a woke woman with the fantastic name of Elizabeth Quezenberry.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, yeah, she's a.

[John Wilkes Booth]

You know, that sounds like she throws up out of her vagina.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's getting all the extra out.

[Marcus Parks]

Like everyone else, though, Cuisine Berry's loyalty to the Confederate cause was quickly fading, and she wanted Booth and Harold gone from her safe house as soon as possible. And after hopping from one unwelcome location to. To another, Booth and Harold finally ran into some friendly faces. See, there were still plenty of Confederate soldiers wandering around without any real idea of what they were supposed to do next. So Booth and Harold were ultimately helped out by a group of three Confederates led by a man with perhaps the most incredible name we've ever come across, First Lieutenant Mortimer Ruggles.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yes, it is I, Mortimer. I have the first lieutenant of all time. And I made a felt. It's gonna be here, everybody, nicely. Owl comedy. Our Ellis goes.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Let's help.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Let's let the Confederacy work.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Okay.

[Marcus Parks]

Mortimer Ruggles had no more luck finding a place for Booth and Harold to stay than anyone else did.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, nobody. No. Daggers that I don't know. They don't trust me, the Ruggles, but they usually. The people should be gone. Back to the Ruggles like a professional child.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Mal.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I train other pedophiles. I train them all to do it. I train them out of cloak. I train them out of groom.

[Marcus Parks]

We were talking about this beforehand. Like, where did the Ruggles name go?

[Henry Zabrowski]

Seriously, stories. Lpotlmail.com. where do all these fabulous Civil War names go?

[John Wilkes Booth]

Are you a Ruggles?

[Henry Zabrowski]

I would love to meet a Ruggles.

[Marcus Parks]

Do you know a Ruggles? Do you know what happened to the Ruggles family?

[John Wilkes Booth]

I think they became the Ruffles family.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, wow. The Lays Corporation. Tell me this.

[John Wilkes Booth]

What do you. We turned your G's into F's.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I like it. Yeah, I like it. No one will find anybody. Perfect.

[Marcus Parks]

Are you a descendant of Mortimal Mortimer Ruggles?

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Did you continue his legacy of pedophilia?

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, I hope we do. We train pedophiles. We'll make them. And we name them. Yep. Give them new names. I gotta look like this Tony Gripper.

[John Wilkes Booth]

He's just a bunch of other Ruggles.

[Marcus Parks]

Booth was also growing more dramatic by the day. He was reported to complain, quote, if.

[Henry Zabrowski]

They don't kill me, I'll kill myself.

[Marcus Parks]

Not knowing what else to do, Mortimer Ruggles gave over the command of the operation to his subordinates, who were both teenagers.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You're better off with the kids, you know. You're better off with the children.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Do you think I've trained you two boys enough have fun with the teenagers.

[Henry Zabrowski]

The thing about pedophile is a wise pedophile knows when the kid's done. And he knows that when the kid's done, he's gotta go off. And you say, get on out. Get on out.

[Marcus Parks]

These two had equally incredible names. Absalom Bainbridge and William Jett, who I suppose in military terms would have been known as Private Jet.

[John Wilkes Booth]

No.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Whoa. That literally makes him a DJ on Prince fucking Epstein's Island.

[Marcus Parks]

But it was Private Jet who eventually came up with the plan. He led this small group of lost causers to a farm owned by a man named Richard Garrett, who was open to sheltering wounded confederates in his home. It was, however, at Richard Garrett's farm that John Wilkes Booth would soon meet his deserved death. And it's with the end of John Wilkes Booth and the story of the fascinating American character who killed him. That will return next week for the conclusion to our series on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It takes a lot of men to make a gun. Hundreds, many men to make a gun.

[Marcus Parks]

Why isn't there a music musical about Mortimer Ruggles?

[Henry Zabrowski]

Because it would just be like if you about a cartoon dollar with a floppy hat on.

[John Wilkes Booth]

All right, I'll take two tickets, please.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah. What are you talking about?

[Henry Zabrowski]

I'm the only Confederate Labrador.

[Marcus Parks]

My name is.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I love that.

[Marcus Parks]

Right.

[Henry Zabrowski]

My American Cousin Side storiesmail.com Please send us our finished musical, please. Oh, wow. Really great stuff. Really thick and way more entertaining than it has any right to be.

[Marcus Parks]

It's an. It's an incredible story and my God, all the stuff that I left out.

[Henry Zabrowski]

So much stuff.

[Marcus Parks]

It is. It's just there's so many aspects of the story. There's so many people involved in it and there's so many side quests to take on this and. And the next episode. Like, it is a side quest that I think is absolutely necessary. Yes. The man who killed John Wils Booth is incredible.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, yes.

[Marcus Parks]

Like, he is such a nut bar. I can't wait to talk about it. I can't wait to talk. And. And he's also gets himself, himself involved in all sorts of activities in the Civil War, like leading up to killing John Wils Booth, and just has an absolutely fascinating story. So, yeah, very excited for that.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Can't wait.

[Marcus Parks]

Can't wait.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Can't. Away you go to patreon.com podcast on the left. You pay us money. We will perform for you. We also are live with our last stream on left every Tuesday, 6pm PST. You get to see it live if you give to the Patreon and be a part of the chat. It's a lot of fun.

[Marcus Parks]

You can also follow us on socials at Tik Tok and Instagram and we've got a ton of new YouTube channels.

[Henry Zabrowski]

All right, so here we go. This is what I'm. I'm going to. So write this down someplace underneath. That's one entirely under case all. All one word.

[John Wilkes Booth]

You don't necessarily have to write it down. You could just go to YouTube and follow them.

[Henry Zabrowski]

LPN Romantasy. Who's the Bee? The Foreign Report? No Dogs in space Podcast and LPN Dash TV. Go and follow all of our new YouTube channels. This is going to be. This is where we're headed towards and I use. It sounds complicated, but it is simpler for you.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah. We're working on some really cool with no Dogs in space for the YouTube channel. So very much look out for that. And don't forget to come out and see. See us at all of our upcoming tour dates, including Atlanta, later on this month. We're making up that show that we had to skip back in February because of the fires here. And was it snow in Atlanta?

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yes.

[John Wilkes Booth]

There was fire and there was Snow. Yes. Atlanta, Georgia. June 28th, Salt Lake City. July 12th. Charlotte, North Carolina. August 8th. Durham, North Carolina. August 9th, St. Paul, Minnesota. September 20th, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. October 11th, Oakland, California. October 25th, Cleveland, Ohio. November 29th, Portland, Oregon. December 12th and 13th. And don't forget, we're adding a bunch of side stories dates to these shows. So we are not every city gets a little helper side story show. But we're about to announce a whole bunch, so keep your brains with us.

[Henry Zabrowski]

We can't wait to see you out on the ice. And we will find you, won't we? Won't we, boys? We're coming for you. Hail Satan.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Hell Sewards. Not. Not dying.

[Marcus Parks]

Seward.

[John Wilkes Booth]

Se.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Se. Not dying. Sounded like you were just saying.

[John Wilkes Booth]

And may they live forever.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You're right.

[Marcus Parks]

Many dogs you live very long lives.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah. Seems the country you are, the healthier you are.

[John Wilkes Booth]

My country.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Of the sweet land of.

[Marcus Parks]

Liberty, of the it P. VIP I.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Gotta go to the bathroom.

[Marcus Parks]

And vaginas do that.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Hey, I'm Paul Scheer.

[Marcus Parks]

I'm June Diane Rayfield.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And I'm Jason Mantzoukis. And we're the hosts of how did this Get Made? A comedy podcast where we deconstruct, make.

[Marcus Parks]

Fun of, fun of, and celebrate the.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Best worst movies ever made. Have you ever seen a movie that's so bad that it's actually good.

[Marcus Parks]

That's what we're talking about. From blockbuster franchises and made for TV.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Romances to bonkers 80s action flicks and obscure sci fi musicals, we cover it.

[Marcus Parks]

All you can find. How did this get made?

[Henry Zabrowski]

Wherever you get your podcasts and don't forget to follow the show so you never miss an episode. Idiot.

[Marcus Parks]

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