Episode 624: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln Part IV - Madder than a Hatter

Summary

Podcast Summary: Last Podcast on the Left
Episode 624: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln Part IV - Madder than a Hatter
Release Date: June 20, 2025

Introduction and Context

In the fourth installment of their comprehensive series on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, "Last Podcast on the Left" delves deep into the intricate web of events leading up to and following the tragic killing of the 16th President of the United States. This episode, aptly titled "Madder than a Hatter," focuses primarily on the enigmatic figure of Boston Corbett, the man who ultimately ended the life of John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln's assassin.

Boston Corbett's Background

Boston Corbett's Early Life and Apprenticeship

Boston Corbett, originally born Thomas Corbett in England in 1832, immigrated to New York City in 1840 with his family. Growing up in the notorious Five Points neighborhood, Corbett's early life was marked by the harsh realities of America's first slum. In the mid-1850s, Corbett began an apprenticeship with a hat maker—a profession fraught with danger due to the use of mercury in hat production. Prolonged exposure to mercury likely contributed to Corbett's later erratic behavior.

Self-Castration and Religious Zeal

In a dramatic turn of events, Corbett underwent self-castration, influenced by his distorted religious beliefs and mercury poisoning. This act was intended to tame his perceived uncontrollable sexual urges, leading him to adopt the name "Boston" after his religious conversion in Boston. His altered mental state set the stage for his future actions and involvement in the assassination plot.

Corbett's Path to Booth

Military Service and Personal Struggles

Corbett joined the Union Army's 12th Regiment in 1861, motivated by his staunch abolitionist stance. His military career was tumultuous, marked by repeated tours of duty and time spent in the infamous Andersonville Prison Camp. The harsh conditions and his ongoing battle with the aftereffects of mercury poisoning further deteriorated his mental health, making him increasingly paranoid and aggressive.

Encounter with John Wilkes Booth

As the Civil War drew to a close, Corbett found himself in Virginia, where intelligence gathered suggested Booth was in the area. This convergence of fate positioned Corbett to play a pivotal role in Booth's demise.

The Assassination at Garrett's Farm

The Night of the Hunt

On April 26, 1865, John Wilkes Booth, accompanied by David Herold and a group of Confederate sympathizers, sought refuge at Garrett's Farm in Virginia. Unbeknownst to them, Boston Corbett and his regiment were on Booth's trail. After a strategic pursuit, Corbett cornered Booth in a tobacco barn.

The Fatal Encounter

As tensions escalated, Corbett confronted Booth, who was armed and desperate. In a decisive moment, Corbett fired a single shot, striking Booth in the neck. Unlike Lincoln, who was rendered unconscious before his death, Booth remained conscious, suffering a slow and agonizing demise. Corbett's act effectively ended the immediate threat but left lingering questions about the broader conspiracy.

Aftermath and Legacy

Corbett's Continued Struggles

Despite his heroic act, Boston Corbett's life did not stabilize. His mental health continued to decline, exacerbated by societal rejection and ongoing paranoia. Corbett's interactions became increasingly volatile, leading to numerous altercations and eventual institutionalization in a state asylum in Topeka.

John Wilkes Booth's End

Booth's death marked the culmination of a tragic chapter in American history. His actions not only resulted in the loss of a beloved president but also set the stage for the tumultuous Reconstruction era that followed.

Historical Impact

Reconstruction and Its Challenges

Lincoln's assassination had profound implications for the Reconstruction process. His successor, Andrew Johnson, adopted lenient policies towards the South, which undermined efforts to integrate freed slaves into society fully. This leniency facilitated the rise of Jim Crow laws and institutionalized racial discrimination, outcomes Booth and his conspirators had hoped to perpetuate.

Long-Term Consequences

The episode underscores that while the immediate threat of Booth was neutralized, the systemic issues Booth aimed to exploit—racial tensions and societal divisions—persisted and evolved, shaping America's socio-political landscape for generations.

Notable Quotes

• Henry Zebrowski at [05:19]: "There's no place to escape to."

• Marcus Parks at [06:39]: "Corbett truly is one of America's finest weirdos."

• Henry Zebrowski at [15:21]: "This is the origin of the phrase 'mad as a hatter.'"

• Marcus Parks at [28:33]: "I’m gonna see. Is my foot the problem? No, my foot takes me to church."

• Henry Zebrowski at [33:40]: "Boston Corbett was on the right side of history."

• Marcus Parks at [74:10]: "So, Henry, you're totally Steven Seagal. Like everything you're doing looks just like Seagal, so awesome. Look at me. I love China."

Conclusion

Episode 624 of "Last Podcast on the Left" offers a meticulous exploration of the events surrounding Abraham Lincoln's assassination, highlighting the complex character of Boston Corbett. Through engaging storytelling and detailed historical analysis, the hosts illuminate how individual actions can have enduring impacts on a nation's trajectory. This episode serves as a compelling narrative for listeners seeking to understand the multifaceted nature of one of America's most pivotal moments.

Transcript

[Marcus Parks]

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[Henry Zebrowski]

There's no place to escape to.

[Marcus Parks]

This is the last on the left. That's when the cannibalism started. What was that? But honestly, with a lot of them, like, especially. Especially now, the way they make pastratis now is they just push them up.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

If you push the balls up, then what happens is that you just. You just pop them back up in a little hole.

[Ed Larson]

You're talking. You do this to children.

[Marcus Parks]

I mean, if you're at the Vatican. Yeah. And if you're training castratis, then. Yes. Yeah. Because, yeah, obviously you need to next. Last week, someone said that my Abraham Lincoln is turning into Mickey Mouse. And it is. Oh, Minnie.

[Ed Larson]

That makes a lot of sense. He was Disney's favorite president. Do you think that the first animatronic human.

[Marcus Parks]

He was the favorite president of Walt Disney.

[Ed Larson]

That's right.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

What great company.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. It was Lincoln and then Hitler and then people always told him Hitler wasn't a president.

[Marcus Parks]

Let me put my favorite parts of Hitler into this little mouse. That actually sounds really good. Oh, yeah. I was just wondering. Imagine, though, if it was true that Abraham Lincoln was born Jewish. Oh, let's set the scene. Okay. All righty. Please, if you could do some Jewish. Hello. Okay, everybody. Hey, how's everybody doing? First of all, just want to say, feeling guilty. You know how it is being a Jew. And honestly, it's so nice to be here with my home cabal. My home cabal. And I. We really just never get a chance to really hang out, you know?

[Ed Larson]

If his mother would have stayed kosher, she'd still be alive. She died of milk sickness.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, yeah. That's why we're burying plates for six months. I don't know how the rules work. I'm a new Jew. I'm one of those new Jews because I'm hanging out my cabal and my buddies, and they're telling me what to do. And it's super easy because I put my plants under my super long hat. And I tell you what, getting these Jewish guys used to a long hat. Yeah, it's a process.

[Ed Larson]

You could definitely hide a yarmulke under there.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, I got a pile of them. I got like, 45 of them.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Okay, tell us your last podcast. On the left, ladies and gentlemen. Can't let this bit go on for any fucking longer.

[Ed Larson]

They told Lincoln's mother to stop sucking her own tits, but she wouldn't do it.

[Marcus Parks]

Mama, stop. You're not making milk anymore. You gotta leave some for yourself.

[Henry Zebrowski]

My name is Marcus Parks. I'm here. Here with the Cabal. Heavy Henry Zabrowski.

[Marcus Parks]

Hey, I'm big with the cabals. No, I was just trying to illustrate, maybe just a little bit of what it would have been like if some of the conspiracy theories about Abraham Lincoln were true.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Sure.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, okay.

[Marcus Parks]

That he was directed by somehow both the Jewish community and the Pope to treat the south poorly, even though he wasn't gonna.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, I just don't see how being Jewish is a conspiracy.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, the conspiracy is defined as an action that involves multiple people. Who else was involved in Abraham Lincoln being Jewish?

[Marcus Parks]

My rabbi, Herbert Winkelman, who is an amazing tailor.

[Ed Larson]

I've never heard of a good Jewish wrestler.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Goldberg.

[Marcus Parks]

Hey.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, Goldberg.

[Marcus Parks]

David. The David David.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, yeah, he was the slingshot guy, but.

[Marcus Parks]

No, but he wrestled littler guys.

[Ed Larson]

I don't know anything about that.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I don't think so. I don't think that's true at all. And we also have Ed Larson here. The anti milk Ed Larson.

[Ed Larson]

That's right, man.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Kosher Ed Larson.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, I wish. I don't have the patience, you know? But if I. I do love to bury a plate.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. This gullet. Ah, you. You're actually looking good.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, you're looking great.

[Ed Larson]

I feel great.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Good. And we're here. We're all feeling good, because we're at the conclusion to our series on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

[Marcus Parks]

Let's kill him again.

[Henry Zebrowski]

No, can't. We already killed him.

[Ed Larson]

All right.

[Henry Zebrowski]

But there is Going to be death. A lot of people are going to die in this episode.

[Marcus Parks]

Excellent. And a couple of balls are going to be left along the path as we go.

[Ed Larson]

This series is longer than John Wilkes Booth's escape.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So when we last left John Wilkes Booth, he and his co conspirator David Herold, had made it as far as Virginia. Following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln also was not the only assassination that night. There was the attempted assassination of Vice President Andrew Johnson, and of course, the attempted assassination of Secretary of State William Seward. But whilst wandering the countryside entirely unsure where to go next, Booth and Harold had run into a trio of Confederate soldiers who. Who also weren't quite ready for the war to be over. This crew was led by none other than Lt. Mortimer Ruggles, the only Confederate.

[Marcus Parks]

Lieutenant made out of felt.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Ruggles, however, didn't have the faintest idea of what to do either. But one of the two kids under his command, a teenager named Willie Jett, he knew about a farm nearby that was owned by a man with Confederate sympathies. You guys hate too, right?

[Marcus Parks]

I've got a great place for hate.

[Ed Larson]

Come on, my carrots.

[Henry Zebrowski]

This farmer, however, was not sympathetic to the point where he'd be cool with hosting the man who just killed the President and that assassin's buddy. So an idea was hatched to present Booth and Harold to the owner of the nearby farm, not as the two most wanted men in America, but as just a couple of regular ass wounded Confederate soldiers needing a place of respite.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes, and it is finally the role I will play to the hilt.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So Willie Jett led Booth, Harold and his fellow Confederate soldiers to the sympathizer's home, a place called Garrett's Farm. That farm, of course, would be the location of John Wilkes Booth's imminent demise.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Set him on fire. Let's do it.

[Ed Larson]

About fucking time.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Now, the man who fired the shot that took the life of America's first presidential assassin. He truly is an amazing American character. He's just a simple Union soldier who, like so many others in the story, simply found himself swept up in the tide of history. That soldier's name was Boston Corbett. And while one may not think that the story of a simple Union soldier would be particularly engaging, the path that brought Boston Corbett to Garrett's farm on April 26, 1865, is an absolutely f fascinating one, because Boston Corbett truly is one of America's finest weirdos. So before we return to John Wilkes Booth on Garrett's Farm, we're going to tell the story of how Exactly. Boston Corbett found himself in Virginia in 1865, where Boston fired the shot that took the life of Abraham Lincoln's killer.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

What are we doing again?

[Marcus Parks]

Civil War.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Okay. I was. I was doing thus big there through. So that. That doesn't. That doesn't work. Yeah, yeah.

[Ed Larson]

That's a different one.

[Marcus Parks]

Terrible Confederate band. Hey, hey. Who we hate because we like it. We hate because we like it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Good enough. So Boston Corbett was actually born Thomas Corbett in England in 1832 to a taxidermist named Bartholomew. Bartholomew Corbett, like so many other immigrants, was simply looking for a better life for his family, so they made the move to New York City in 1840. Bartholomew, however, chose the notorious Five Points in downtown Manhattan as his family's new home because Bart was riding the wave of Irish immigration that swelled New York City's population following the potato famine. Interestingly, this very same immigration wave was partly what had so inspired the anti immigration conspiracist Know Nothing party that had first gotten John Wilkes Booth interested in politics way back when.

[Marcus Parks]

Great.

[Henry Zebrowski]

But. Oh, good. Oh, good. But concerning the Five Points, Boston Corbett grew up in what's considered to be America's first slum. It was a violent and unruly neighborhood rife with disease and overcrowding, where the unpaved roads were often buried under a foot of mud and excrement, both animal and human.

[Ed Larson]

That's Tribeca, right?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, it's literally Tribeca.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. Right. Now, the Five Points, if I remember correctly, it's just north of the New York Supreme Court.

[Ed Larson]

Okay.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's like just right, you know, that. That area right there. Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Unfortunately.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

He's always there. Yeah. They got a little sign there now that's just like. This is where the Five Points, you know, once stood. And of course, it, you know, bears no similarity to what it looked like back then.

[Marcus Parks]

Of course, this is all Gangs of New York time period, right? Is around.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yes, this is gangs. Yeah. This is very much gangs in New York. Now, at some point in the mid-1850s, Boston Corbett began an apprenticeship with a hat maker. But while this sounds inconsequential, possibly even boring.

[Marcus Parks]

No way, Marcus.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I love hats.

[Marcus Parks]

I love hearing about the history of hats. And that's why we will now begin our two episode deep dive into Milliners.

[Ed Larson]

Hi, I'm Ed Larson. It's summertime. You ever think about going down to Gordon Brothers and get yourself a nice new ball cap?

[Marcus Parks]

Hey, welcome to Hatchet. My name's Henry Zabrowski, and hats are a way for me to look 14, but still have the mysterious air of a 40 year old loser.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Hi. And I'm here. I'm Marcus Parks. I'm here to tell you all about how beavers changed America.

[Marcus Parks]

Tell me. I know one specific beaver that did quite a lot. That one beaver that made the American goddamn flag. Betty Thomas.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Betty Thomas.

[Ed Larson]

Very famous Betty Thomas.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Betsy Ross, I think Betty Thomas. That sounds like a district attorney.

[Marcus Parks]

I think Betty Thomas like made like cookies or something.

[Ed Larson]

I've never heard of Betty Thomas.

[Marcus Parks]

Whatever.

[Ed Larson]

She's not a person.

[Marcus Parks]

Actress.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Wow. Yeah, she's an actress. She was in just one of those actresses.

[Ed Larson]

The original Doctor.

[Henry Zebrowski]

No, no, the 1998 Doctor Doolittle.

[Marcus Parks]

The best beaver this country's ever made. Well, okay, now we'll come back. Sure. Okay. Well, we took a bit of a side.

[Henry Zebrowski]

We took a bit of a side quest. But yes, while hat making may sound inconsequential, Corbett's career as a hatter greatly influenced the rest of his life. See, hat making in the 19th century was actually a dangerous skilled trade because hat makers regularly soaked animal fur in mercury to stiffen it, which made it easier to remove from the skin liquid.

[Marcus Parks]

Just the idea of just vats of liquid mercury just dipping raccoons in and out of it. Just being like. Yeah, we got a good pull. This is a good pull on this one.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It' beavers mostly, but I get your. But I get your point.

[Marcus Parks]

Where'd Dave Crockett get his hat?

[Henry Zebrowski]

I mean, he bought it.

[Marcus Parks]

Do you think he just hollered?

[Henry Zebrowski]

They did also do coons. Did. But they're talking about really nice hats here. And at the time, really nice hats were made out of beaver.

[Marcus Parks]

You're saying Davy Crockett's hat's not nice? Yes, I'll say it right now. You fucking say it. Davy Crockett, American hero.

[Ed Larson]

I think his head smelled like shit.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, very quickly, a very quick side note. A listener actually corrected us on the Andrew Jackson assassination.

[Marcus Parks]

That's the reason why David Crockett's in my mind.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. Apparently it was not Andrew Jackson who beat the house painter with his cane after the house painter's guns misfired. It was actually Davy Crockett who beat the house painter with his cane even though he hated Andrew Jackson.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, he was. He hated Andrew Jackson, but he hated the other guy that was running against Andrew Jackson so much more that he beat the out of the guy that tried to kill Andrew Jackson.

[Ed Larson]

So are we calling Davy Crockett an.

[Marcus Parks]

Sorta.

[Ed Larson]

I've always been a Daniel Boone guy myself.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Wow.

[Marcus Parks]

Wow. We all learned quite a bit just now.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, while they were making these fucking hats.

[Ed Larson]

Okay, let's get to it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Back to the hats. Back to the hat. So these guys, they're soaking the fur and mercury, then they use liquid and heat to press that fur, that mercury soaked fur into basic felt forms in order to actually make the hat. But the pressing process would create a mercury infused mistake that would be inhaled by the hatters. These hatters were therefore poisoning themselves every time they made a hat. And exposure to mercury mist over prolonged periods of time can permanently damage the brain. Hatters who were exposed to mercury poisoning were known to become increasingly irritable and erratic over the course of their career, while those who were most heavily affected became prone to fits of intense paranoia. This is actually the origin of the phrase mad as a hatter, which entered the lexicon after the link between mercury poisoning and abnormal behavior was finally made in 1870, 20 years later. This link, however, was made decades before Boston Corbett began his career in hat making. But while we don't know exactly how much mercury Boston Corbett was exposed to, it's almost certain we could classify it as a fuckton, because as we'll see, the choices Boston made at certain points in his life could only be described as absol. Absolutely insane.

[Marcus Parks]

I'm gonna tell you, I have. I've adjusted so much. Mercury misses a lot of people, a lot of my big nicknames. The people call me the Silver Surfer. Yeah, I'm not a super dependable guy, but if you want a hat, I'll. I'll iron a raccoon until you look like good old Shavy cracking my. I love my favorite porn egg.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Boston met and married a woman named Susan in the 1850s, and the two of them eventually moved to Richmond, Virginia, which of course, just a few years later would become the seat of Confederate power. But Corbett entertained no Confederate sympathies, and in fact, had inherited a staunch anti slavery stance from his father. He was absolutely an abolitionist, far beyond what most people were in America at the time, in fact. But from what it seems like, Richmond was simply a place of opportunity. But Richmond was also where Corbett's life changed paths completely. In 1856, Corbett's wife died in Richmond, finally, and Corbett began drinking heavily and constantly to deal with the grief. But while Corbett was deep in his cups, one day he was accosted by a group of evangelical Christians who were roaming the streets of Richmond and illegally detaining any drunkard they found. These evangelicals were part of the infamous temperance movement, which would one day lead to women's suffrage on the good side and prohibition on the bad. It must be said, however, that their intentions were at the very least, practical in the beginning. See, in 19th century America, the urban population was on a sharp rise. Safe drinking water in the cities was rare, if not non existent. So a lot of men drank fermented beer instead.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

The problem was that the urban growth was due to the industrial revolution. So you had a lot of guys, guys operating highly dangerous equipment while absolutely trashed. And a lot of guys were dying in workplace accidents as a result.

[Ed Larson]

Not to mention, you know, no more fingers.

[Marcus Parks]

Hey, man, what a great ad for Molson's, though. Kind of your job. Nullify it with apples. It's your job. All you got to do. Oh, you. Are you a nine year old whose job it is to crawl up inside a giant threshing machine, have a Molson?

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's really interesting how it worked out. Like the temperance movement. That's actually why we have public drinking fountains, water fountains. Because the temperance movement was like, people need water and. Yeah. Out in the cities, you know, like.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, well, water's like what beers most. Yeah, Bears, mostly water. And you got the seeds in it. You got the beer seeds and the.

[Ed Larson]

Water and I already see, I'm drinking the liquid part.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. Alcoholism was a major problem in 19th century America. Really, really bad.

[Ed Larson]

Well, they had like, it was all based out of a good idea. And I know it created prohibition and obviously it didn't, but it was, the temperance movements was ran by women mostly, Right.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

And so I was, I imagine they were like, these men are drinking and beating us.

[Henry Zebrowski]

That was exactly what it was.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. We need to do something about this. And it actually kind of worked a little bit.

[Marcus Parks]

The thing is, like, I, I, I'm up to be a little bit of a devil's advocate here. Is that why didn't they just start drinking too? You know, like I imagine the portion of they just started drinking too, then everybody just get along.

[Henry Zebrowski]

That's not how it works. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

You can't fucking.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. You can't just put two drunks into a butt into a bottle and shake it up and you're like, okay, it's gonna be fine now.

[Marcus Parks]

I'm the only person with the fucking cojones. The back Davy Crockett. I'm the only person that's asking women to drink more.

[Ed Larson]

This isn't barfly.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, because alcoholism was such a massive problem in america in the 19th century, people began protesting, as is their right as Americans. But the temperance movement crossed the line when they began kidnapping men and forcing sobriety upon them in the hopes that they'd turn their lives around.

[Marcus Parks]

A hungover man is not ready for the truth.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Many men, of course, simply waited it out until the evangelicals let them go. But Boston Corbett was.

[Marcus Parks]

I just love that idea. Obviously they arrest you and be like, guys, I just gonna have to just admit right here that I'm starting to get hungry. I'll whatever the fuck it is that you want.

[Ed Larson]

Which one of you chicks, though? I gotta tell that I believe in God.

[Marcus Parks]

The big, loud, mean one.

[Henry Zebrowski]

But Boston Corbett was one of the men for whom this approach actually worked. While being detained, Corbett underwent a religious epiphany and became a Methodist. His conversion, however, occurred in a time when thousands of other Americans were doing the same sort of thing, because Corbett had found himself caught up in the evangelical movement known as the Second Great Awakening. Basically, this movement was tailor made for Americans to plug themselves in and turn the volume on their Christianity up to 11. Because while America had always been filled to the brim with Christian fundamentalists, the Second Great Awakening is when Americans started to get real fucking weird with the Bible and about the Bible at the same time.

[Marcus Parks]

It was very interesting. This was like a time period where, like the idea of opening up the interpretation of the Bible would. In my mind, I'm always like this. I'm like, who gives a shit, right? I always joke about the differences, that there's no difference between Lutherans and Methodists and blah, blah. Oh, there is, yes. And I know that. But it's so crazy to think that you. They're little clicks over. They're all like little clicks one and over. But it seems that when you let everybody interpret it in any way that they want and they're allowed, all of a sudden, no rules are off. And that's how you get yourself. Mormonism.

[Henry Zebrowski]

That's exactly how you get it. The Mormonism grew out of the Second Great. The Second Great Awakening.

[Ed Larson]

Well, it done.

[Marcus Parks]

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[Henry Zebrowski]

All right?

[Marcus Parks]

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[Henry Zebrowski]

Now on a personal level, the Second Great Awakening gave people like Boston Corbett the idea that they could interpret the Bible any way they wanted. It also led them to believe that they had the right, nay, the responsibility to tell as many people as possible about their conversion and try to get them to convert as well.

[Marcus Parks]

Have you heard about that big fish?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Come here.

[Marcus Parks]

Come here, woman. I want you to vote. I want you to vote. Come here. Have you heard about the big fish?

[Henry Zebrowski]

So after moving to the city of Boston, Corbett began Street preaching at strangers about the evils of drinking, which would become one of Corbett's lifelong hobbies. Corbett also continued his work as a hatter. And with a head full of mercury, Corbett had his second religious epiphany, this one far more dramatic than the first.

[Ed Larson]

Okay.

[Marcus Parks]

God, and he's so trippy, too. You know, he was tripping balls at all times.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. See, Corbett began to see that his biggest personal problem was not in abstaining from alcohol, but rather in tamping down the sexual urges that he felt following the death of his wife.

[Marcus Parks]

My penis has got to be into trouble because everybody's trying to fuck me. So it's hard. I got. I got to think about. Supply and demand is all over the place when it comes to my ding dong.

[Ed Larson]

No one told him it was okay, like, to just marry again.

[Henry Zebrowski]

He had a lot of. He had a lot of problems. Yeah, Yeah. I. I think marrying again was quite difficult. And I think he also wanted to just devote a life to God.

[Marcus Parks]

I want you to vote. Have you heard about the fish? So you think that guy. He might be hard. He's hard in the courting phase.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, Corbett turned to the Bible for answers and found the verse in the Gospel of Matthew that said, if thy hand or foot offend thee, cut them off, for it is better to enter the kingdom of heaven maimed than to be sent to hell intact.

[Marcus Parks]

I'm gonna see. Is my foot the problem? No, my foot takes me to church. My hands the problem? No, my hands mostly are there just at the end of my arms. Just living life.

[Ed Larson]

What's my big problem?

[Marcus Parks]

I think I know what my problem is. I got some devil bumps.

[Henry Zebrowski]

This verse was not meant to be taken literally, but Corbett's mercury addled brain was already turning its gears by the time he found another verse in Matthew. This one said that eunuchs who had made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake would fall under God's good graces. And with that, Corbett decided that he'd found the answer to his problem. In order to better serve God, Corbett grabbed a pair of scissors at the age of 26, mind you, and sliced open the bottom of his scrotum.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, there we go. I need to get a little bit of air in there.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Using every ounce of his willpower, Corbett then reached inside his own ball sack and pulled downward so he could cut them free. Oh, ouch, ouch, ouch.

[Ed Larson]

Get some ice.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Once done with this unpleasant task, Corbett stoically attended a prayer meeting with an open wound gaping beneath his legs.

[Marcus Parks]

Someone give me some newspapers. Somebody give me some newspapers. Honestly, I just want to pray, but this. I'm. I'm messing this pier all up. This whole thing's getting all up.

[Ed Larson]

I'mma go ahead and guess those scissors weren't too sharp.

[Henry Zebrowski]

No, let me actually.

[Marcus Parks]

Let me sharpen them. I do it right on my teeth.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Since he was a hatter, I'd actually guess they were quite sharp.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, okay.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Especially to delicately cut up the wrinkly skin of your balls is actually quite difficult, I imagine.

[Ed Larson]

Scalpel probably be best.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, sure. With a doctor.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Now, eventually, the wound clotted and the blood and fluids backed up into his scrotum, which caused the whole area to turn black and swell to an enormous size.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You found the loophole, bro.

[Marcus Parks]

All the boys are gonna be jealous of me when they see my balls. Blackest night.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So Corbett went to a doctor who cleaned up the wound and tied off the various tubes and vessels that Corbett had left dangling. Corbett was then sent to a local hospital, where he was given an enema because his DIY surgery had clogged up his intestinal tract. Finally, though, about a month after the self castration, Corbett was released from the hospital, where he told his friends that he could now focus on the gospel without being, quote, tormented by his passions.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, warrior man.

[Marcus Parks]

All I think about is that picture of Nicole Kidman coming out of what they said is obviously, now that's been debunked, but they said it was her coming out of her divorce with Tom Cruise.

[Henry Zebrowski]

How happy she looked.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, he just comes out of that gig, like, being like, finally, balls are gone. I can feel the weight off my dick.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Like, he felt like he'd figured it all out. I mean, after his recovery, he was baptized in the Boston Methodist Episcopal Church. And in following with the tradition of apostles changing their names, Corbett left behind his given name of Thomas and took Boston as his first name, because that was the city where he'd had his rebirth. In other words, Corbett was so happy that he dug his testicles out of his own ball sack that he decided to commemorate it in such a way that he would be reminded of the act every time someone said his fucking name.

[Marcus Parks]

I absolutely love Boston. That is one of my favorite places. I love to get. I love a nice, cold bear. And I also. That's where I lost my ball.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Ironically, it's where he lost his beans.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, you don't truly. God, what a great time to not be in, like, Hopkinsville or something. Like. Like a super Long one. Like Cincinnati would have been a long one. Honestly, though, but I do think Cincinnati. Great place to castrate yourself.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, my God. I'm thinking about doing it over break.

[Marcus Parks]

Release me.

[Ed Larson]

He. He was the only guy in Boston who wasn't racist, too.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's nice. Yeah. And Cincinnati Corbett. I know that sounds like a riverboat gambler. Yeah. Now, even outside of the self mutilation, Boston Corbett was a strange, strange man. When Boston proselytized, he would bury his chin down in his chest and for no reason at all, would add an er to the end of every word.

[Marcus Parks]

As in, lorder, hear our prayer.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yep.

[Ed Larson]

So he stayed drunk. Somehow.

[Marcus Parks]

He's mentally deranged. He's soaked. His head is soaked with mercury. Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. Boston also shouted the loudest amens in church and yelled glory to God so frequently and loudly that people began calling him the glory to God man.

[Marcus Parks]

Glory to God. Good to do. Good to do.

[Ed Larson]

I'm just so happy that the person he did kill was John Wilkes Booth.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Cause this. This sounds more like the biography of the man who killed Lincoln.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Like, when you ask, like, okay, if you put these two biographies side by side, like the man who soaked in mercury from head to toe, who screams and castrates himself, or the actor, the famous act, like, who's gonna kill the president?

[Marcus Parks]

Boston Corbett was on the right side of history.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Eventually, Boston Corbett decided to move back to New York City, where he joined the congregation of a man who would inform Corbett's later opinion that Christianity and violence were not mutually exclusive. In New York, Corbett began attending services run by a retired evangelical bare knuckle boxer named Orville Gardner, who'd earned the nickname of awful Gardener because of how many times he'd been put in jail for starting fights.

[Ed Larson]

And he, you know, stepped on a bunch of flowers.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

I technically raped a bunch of tomatoes. I'm an awful gardener. Yeah. They. They call me the awful gardener. Someone get me my hose.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, Gardner had been arrested in 1853 for biting off the ear of his opponent during a bare knuckle boxing match.

[Marcus Parks]

He put the holy in holy field.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. And he was arrested two years later for breaking a businessman's jaw, because the businessman didn't take Gardner's advice on which bar to go to in New York City, which goes to show you, the New Yorkers had just been like that forever. You go to my place? No.

[Marcus Parks]

You want.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, you think you know better than me? I know the best bar in the city.

[Ed Larson]

It's got skeeball.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, nice.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Now, Boston Corbett Was, as you can tell, a man of intense principles. But those principles didn't just limit themselves to drinking and sex. Boston also believed that slavery was a grave sin. So when the Civil War broke out, Boston Corbett joined up with the Union's 12th Regiment by replacing a friend of his who was too sick to fight. A man by the name of James Brown.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, ah, good guy.

[Ed Larson]

Would have been great if he like, he like he got out of it and then someone put a coat over him and he's like, I can do it.

[Marcus Parks]

I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding.

[Ed Larson]

Daniel Bridge.

[Henry Zebrowski]

That's one of the fun things about studying American history is that you really do like notice over like how common of a name James Brown really is. Oh yeah, there's a lot of guys named James Brow American history, but there.

[Marcus Parks]

Only was one godfather of souls.

[Henry Zebrowski]

That's right.

[Ed Larson]

This guy was the least hard working man in all of the Civil War.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. Corbett therefore entered the Civil War on April 19, 1861, just five days after the war began. Against all odds, Boston Corbett would survive the entirety of the war through battles and ambushes and POW camps until the entire affair ended in 1865.

[Marcus Parks]

I just got to congratulate myself for seeing the most of the Civil War that anybody's up. I saw almost every minute of it and I loved every fucking second of it.

[Ed Larson]

Just proved you didn't need balls to win.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You really didn't. I think overall, I think he spent three years and nine months like in act, either in active duty or in POW camps.

[Marcus Parks]

You're going to hear a lot of mixed reviews about the Civil War, but I'm going to tell you right now, I loved it. Couldn't get enough of it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

The fellow soldiers often commented that when Corbett put on his uniform, his round, pleasant face, an abundance of long black hair worn in Jesus style parted down the middle. They said it gave him the appearance of a woman. I'd actually say that he looked like a more feminine Pedro Pascal.

[Marcus Parks]

Thank you.

[Henry Zebrowski]

What? It seems like everyone around Corbett took every opportunity to bust his non existent balls. Because Corbett was very clearly religious and performative weirdo of the highest order. Partly this reputation was earned because Boston Corbett was not shy about telling anyone and everyone all about his self Castration.

[Marcus Parks]

Hey, you want to see it happen?

[Henry Zebrowski]

You want to see it?

[Marcus Parks]

You want to see it?

[Henry Zebrowski]

The funny thing is that you're looking at something that's not there.

[Marcus Parks]

Is that funny? It's like a lapse and weird, right? It's kind of weird. I'm all I'm all stem, no apples. Huh. Weird, right? You want to see it again?

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's really weird. No, I don't need to see it again.

[Marcus Parks]

Jesus made me do that.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Ye.

[Ed Larson]

I did it myself ripping off his pants.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Glory to God.

[Marcus Parks]

Glory to God. Glory to God. Oh, I just caught the. I caught the tip of my bow hole on my fly.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I mean, from what I can tell, it seems like just about everyone who served with Boston Corbett had a story about how big of a pain in the ass Boston Corbett could really be. For example, Corbett once publicly denounced a superior officer simply for saying the word damn. Which earned Corbett a disorderly conduct, arrest and a stint in a makeshift jail. That's how big of a deal he made about the guy saying, damn, someone dig a hole.

[Ed Larson]

Let's put Corbin in it.

[Marcus Parks]

It's a jail. It's literally the Civil War. People are dying of infection. It is the worst place to be. And he's just been like, hey, there's no reason to be cussing. Hey, let's think about this, all right? I cut my own balls off. And when I cut my own balls off, do you think I cursed once? No.

[Henry Zebrowski]

But rather than take his lumps, Corbett went on a hunger strike and loudly sang hymns non stop from his cell out.

[Marcus Parks]

It worked though. They fed him and we'll release them.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, he did get out eventually.

[Ed Larson]

It's more annoying in jail.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. But while Corbett was no doubt an oddball, he was also a ferocious fighter, utterly fearless, and he apparently had a knack for being a good nurse to the other soldiers when they needed it. This is the men made for the military.

[Marcus Parks]

Hey, you got a problem over there. Remember to suck out that bullet. Check out the bullet for you if you want. Let's see how I don't have balls.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Does that make you feel better?

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. I can take care of you, you know. I cut off my own balls.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I cut off my own balls and I'm fine.

[Marcus Parks]

Look at me, I'm great.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I survived. I survived.

[Marcus Parks]

Glory to God.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Thusly, when Corbett's first tour of duty ended, he re enlisted in the Union army and was assigned to defend Harper's Ferry, where John Brown, another man of principle, had made his stand so many years earlier. Harpers Ferry, however, had become an extremely active battle zone. It changed hands between Union and Confederate control no less than throughout the course of the war, which meant that Corbett had been thrown into a situation where the sin of killing could not be avoided. But while Corbett was so afraid of his own sexual desires that he castrated himself to make it stop. He, like so many other committed Christians before and after, had absolutely no problem whatsoever with breaking the commandment against killing. In fact, a fellow soldier wrote that for all of Corbett's fervent Christian beliefs, he was always eager to kill, no matter who the victim, so long as Corbett had a biblical justification for the action. For example, Corbett once threatened to murder two of his own soldiers for picking blackberries on the Sabbath because Corbett felt that his soldiers were committing a sin grave enough for execution.

[Marcus Parks]

Every BlackBerry you pick when they should be in church is sending that BlackBerry straight to hell.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Now, on the positive side of things, Corbett was one of the few white men who were fighting the Civil War on the moral issue of slavery. And he would argue endlessly about the practical use of violence to end slavery. Corbett was so dead set on killing for the cause that when he returned to New York following his second tour of duty, he was ejected from his church following a heated argument over his eagerness to, quote, shoot men like dogs.

[Marcus Parks]

I'm gonna shoot him like a dog.

[Ed Larson]

Honestly.

[Marcus Parks]

Have you ever shot a dog? It's great.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I didn't do it.

[Marcus Parks]

I wanna do it. I want to do it for crates.

[Ed Larson]

I only kill dogs at work on Sunday.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I know you shot a dog, but have you ever shot a dog with no balls?

[Marcus Parks]

Think about what that's like. Have you ever shot a dog on no balls?

[Henry Zebrowski]

And so Corbett returned to the military to serve his mission in his third tour of service, which these multiple tours, not as uncommon as you might think. While some men did have moral issues with fighting the war over slavery specifically, being a union soldier soldier was still a well paid job that was just as, if not less dangerous than certain industrial careers in the mid 19th century.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, it's just so much. And you, you get something and you get to go kill with the, you know, the blessing of the government.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, it's nice if you, if you.

[Marcus Parks]

If you like that.

[Henry Zebrowski]

If all you want to do is.

[Marcus Parks]

Kill, then there's plenty of killing to do.

[Ed Larson]

Honestly, probably would have died earlier if he would have just stayed making hats and covering himself in mercury.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Maybe, maybe, maybe. I think it just eats away at the brain. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He probably still would have made it to his, like, 40s or 50s, but.

[Marcus Parks]

I don't think he. I think that it was good for him to get the break. Yeah, it's the only place where the Civil War was a very good, you know, time away from his job.

[Henry Zebrowski]

During Corbett's third tour of service, he came very close to being A sort of Civil War Forrest Gump, you know, the guy who's everywhere. But as anyone who's seen Kim Burns Civil War can attest, that distinction belongs to Elijah Hunt Rhodes of the 2nd Rhode Island Volunteer Infant, who managed to find himself in almost every major battle of the Civil War.

[Marcus Parks]

I really wish I didn't, though. Honestly, I'd prefer to have hit every circus in America at the time. But no, it was, it was, it was battles.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, it was Gettysburg and Tietum. Like Elisha Hunt Rhodes, like, just had the worst time.

[Ed Larson]

His catchphrase was again, you know what?

[Marcus Parks]

Not as bad as Gettysburg. At least you got to say that all the time.

[Henry Zebrowski]

But as far as Boston Corbett went, he just missed the battle of Gettysburg because his unit was defending roadways in nearby Harrisburg.

[Marcus Parks]

Let me die in Gettysburg.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Ten days later, though, Corbett was sent to New York, where he was one of the many regiments called back during the infamous draft riots. That meant that at one point, John Wilkes Booth and Boston Corbett were in the same city, maybe even the same fucking neighborhood.

[Marcus Parks]

Cool.

[Henry Zebrowski]

But after all these near misses, Corbett's luck finally ran out. After he signed up for a fourth tour of duty in 1864, he found himself assigned to the front lines in Virginia, where some of the most brutal close quarters combat in the war occurred. Quite a bit of the action in this area came as a result of the guerrilla warfare campaigns waged by the Confederate force known as Mosby's Rangers, so named because they were led by John Mosby, AKA the Gray Ghost.

[Ed Larson]

All ghosts are grand gray.

[Marcus Parks]

Some go sir White.

[Ed Larson]

You think so?

[Marcus Parks]

I know so, cuz I've made at.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Least 11 ghosts, I think of the mos green.

[Marcus Parks]

See, that depends on your. Depends on what you're. You're. What you're going for.

[Ed Larson]

It's very frighteners way of looking at it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, yeah. Well, that's when I saw the ghosts go. When I saw ghosts when I was a kid, they were always green.

[Marcus Parks]

They were.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, sure, yeah, mine were blue. Interesting.

[Ed Larson]

So I guess mine reunion.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Booberry.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, booberry. That's who they were.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Booberry.

[Ed Larson]

Now I feel better about it.

[Marcus Parks]

The most hat making actually started in 1749. It's actually one of the more interesting. And if you want to get into the history of boutonnieres, back when heads.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Were attached to feet, well, the Mosby Rangers, they were a terrifying force of teenagers and young men armed with little more than Colt army revolvers who rushed Union battalions in close quarters while screaming at the top of their lungs, the so called rebel Yell. Interestingly, though, Mosby was more or less doing all this just for the love of the game. He didn't really believe in the cause at all. He'd spoken out against seceding from the Union before the war and became a Republican afterward. Mosby even worked after the war as an attorney for none other than the former leader of the Union forces, Ulysses S. Grant.

[Ed Larson]

Man, nothing scares me more than a pack of teenagers.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, still.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

To this day, imagine Civil War teenagers, which were adults.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. And also revolvers is the better weapon back then.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Very much so, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

It was a more consistent weapon.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. I think. Yeah. That's what most be said. He's like, you don't give me a rifle, don't give me a saber, give me me a. A revolver, and I'll. And I'll kill anyone. Yeah. He was a psychopath. Unfortunately for Boston Corbett, his regiment, the 16th New York Cavalry, they found themselves on the receiving end of a highly successful attack led by John Mosby and his Rangers. The Gray Ghost forces managed to kill over 40 men in Corbett's regiment in a single attack. But while Corbett managed to escape that battle, rebel forces ambushed Corbett's regiment again while he and his fellow soldiers were trying to eat breakfast.

[Marcus Parks]

Hey, I'm trying to have my flapjacks. Ow. I only get one meal a month. Leave me alone.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Armed with just a single seven shot rifle, Corbett hid in the woods and kept the rebels at bay over the course of two attempts to capture him.

[Marcus Parks]

That's awesome.

[Henry Zebrowski]

But on the third go round, a rebel corporal rushed Corbett riding a horse and knocked his weapon from his hands.

[Marcus Parks]

Damn horse. That's cheating. Horses fighting the horse.

[Ed Larson]

Don't know.

[Marcus Parks]

Hang on.

[Henry Zebrowski]

By the end of the day, Corbett was one of 34 Union soldiers captured and was soon on his way to one of the worst POW camps in the entire South. And that was saying something in the Civil War. Located just south of Atlanta, this hell on earth was known as Andersonville.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, now we're getting to it.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. You brought this up last week, right?

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. These, man, they. They sucked.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, it's not good. This is a place that reminds me a lot of what we saw when we went to Greyfriars in Edinburgh.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, I am now. Andersonville was a relatively new prison when Boston Corbett arrived in June of 1864. The camp had only been established as a POW facility earlier that year. But by August, the population had exploded to 32,000 Union soldiers. The Confederacy, however, had not the resources nor the desire to treat these soldiers humanely. See, when we Say prison, what we really mean is a 26 acre holding pen. Tens of thousands of Union soldiers were locked up in a field surrounded by 15 foot high fences guarded by sharpshooters who killed anyone who crossed a certain barrier. A barrier that came to be known as the deadline. The deadline would eventually be used by Andersonville prisoners as a sort of poison pill. Cuz many soldiers would come to choose death by sharpshooter over any attempt at surviving the horrendous conditions of the camp.

[Ed Larson]

I'm pretty sure Corbitt can't be killed.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, he can't die. He's a vampire. He's a highlander. But I also wonder in my mind, why do I immediately see them like I know they're not doing this, but like playing kickball, kind of like they're in a field, they're playing kickball. And finally it's been like, man, I'm sick of this. And then just running for the deadline, you know, been like, God damn it, Corbin, you cheated again. Gonna kill myself. Runs at the deadline.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, kickball's fun, but none of these guys had feet.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, that's the problem. It's kickhead.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Many of them had lost it due to gangrene. Yeah, no, it's, it's, it's more like imagine a guy, his brains out for two weeks straight and then finally deciding if I for another second longer, I'm gonna lose my mind. And so he hobbles over the deadline while still and his stomach cramping and you know, a sharpshooter blows his brains out.

[Marcus Parks]

But if I was gonna be having fun with them, what I would be doing is doing the thing being like, one foot out, one foot in, one foot out, one foot in. You ready? You can kill me. One foot out, one foot. Are you going to do it? I'm right now I'm actively shitting.

[Ed Larson]

They would kill you.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, sure.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Now the Confederacy was facing massive problems feeding even their own troops by 1864 because they lacked adequate means to deliver food to the places where it needed to be. So feeding prisoners of war was not high on the Confederate priorities list. And the men of Andersonville starved as a result. Result. This was in fact by design, as the Confederate in charge of the prison system at large often bragged that his camps were killing more Yankees per day than any rebel general on the battlefields. As such, Andersonville really was just an open field with no shelter whatsoever to house these prisoners. So Union men burned in the blistering Georgia, some by day and froze by night.

[Marcus Parks]

Is Anybody, if anybody, y' all. My Atlanta people know what Atlanta and that area of the world is like during the summer.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Jesus Christ.

[Marcus Parks]

It is rough.

[Ed Larson]

There's no breeze. It's so muddy. It's so damp. You could see the air.

[Marcus Parks]

In the summer of 2012, we filmed a bunch of Pretty Face on location in Georgia in July. And it was brutal. And I'm an actor. I can't imagine what a Civil War prisoner felt like.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Water was also non existent in Andersonville because the streams that ran through the camp quickly became filth ridden latrines. Consequently, the camp's water source smelled so much like an outhouse that the prisoners wouldn't even go near it.

[Marcus Parks]

I kind of like it. I don't mind it. I don't mind it. It's kind of like a mineral thing.

[Henry Zebrowski]

As a result of the non existent waste management, the soil itself became quite, quote, a living mass of putrefaction and filth. It was a breeding ground for maggots that reportedly ran a foot deep. Prisoners would dig through these masses of maggots to find roots to feed themselves. But when the roots ran out, the prisoners survived on the maggots.

[Ed Larson]

I was gonna say, yeah, just eat the maggots.

[Henry Zebrowski]

They did. I mean, you don't want to start with the maggots. The maggots are the last resort.

[Marcus Parks]

But I tell you what, honestly, I like the maggots. This whole thing's kind of working out for me. Glory to God.

[Henry Zebrowski]

The maggots were so pervasive that the men who developed open sores from their various diseases would awake to find their wounds infested. And men who were particularly diseased with the smelliest wounds were dragged away to die alone. By the end of it, 13,000 Union soldiers had died in Andersonville by disease, dehydration, or starvation. This was just in the 1500s months that Andersonville was operational.

[Ed Larson]

Geez. So they were killing thousand people a month?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Ed Larson]

That's a wild number.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yes, it is. Absolutely. The number of deaths and the treatment of the survivors was such that the Andersonville commandant would be one of the very, very few Confederate officials to hang for war crimes in the aftermath of the war.

[Ed Larson]

You know, stuffed them with maggots.

[Marcus Parks]

Is it weird to say that, like, I'm looking at Andersonville now and it's like a park or whatever, and that's nice, but like, I feel like for the sake of the ghosts there, they should put a thing that had air conditioning.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

You know what I mean? Like you just put one building that has air conditioning on it so they can experience it. You know, that's what I'd do.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. All right. Well, you know, one of these days.

[Marcus Parks]

You know, I hope to. Once we have our civil war. I can't wait to be on the front lines of the comedians with the flutes at the battle of Bussy Creek. That we're gonna have to do when.

[Ed Larson]

You run for governor of Georg. Like we're bringing air conditioning to Anderson.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

These ghosts have been too hot for too long.

[Marcus Parks]

Slip and slides for the union boys.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Now, Boston Corbett came damn close to being one of the 13,000 Union soldiers who died in Andersonville, But I won't. He became gravely ill with dysentery and scurvy.

[Marcus Parks]

They canceled each other out. It's kind of crazy. So all this crazy shit happened to me, man.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh. His joints swelled up so bad that he couldn't even straighten out his own back. And Corbett, like so many others at Andersonville, also suffered near constant diarrhea. And as a result, Corbett endured a lifelong struggle with hemorrhoids, which were known back then as piles.

[Ed Larson]

Can I say something a little off putting?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Sure.

[Ed Larson]

I kind of like diarrhea.

[Marcus Parks]

We all do. There's nothing wrong with it, really. It's like, as long as you got one water.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

And you're good to go.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Every time. I'm just like, yeah. You know, that's kind of nice.

[Marcus Parks]

But it's because. You know why, Eddie? You're talking from a place of privilege. Because every single time you've. You've had diarrhea, you've chosen it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Same with me. I know when I'm getting diarrhea now.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. I'm proud of it.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. I made that diarrhea I wanted. I chose this.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. If you. If you were having, like, you know, the fatal type of diarrhea. Which people die from diarrhea every day.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, yeah. They really do. They really do.

[Henry Zebrowski]

That would be. Be unfortunate, fortunate.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. But mine's still super fun.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Yeah. Because we're having too much fun at, like, a fair. That's why you're having diarrhea.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Too many funnel cakes. It's different now. News of the appalling conditions at Andersonville had reached the north By November of 1864, just after Lincoln's reelection, and a mass prisoner exchange therefore began, which included Boston Corbett.

[Marcus Parks]

Can't forget about me.

[Ed Larson]

He's the first one. Like, get him out of here.

[Marcus Parks]

Hey, guys, why don't you let some other people out before me? Because honestly, I'M kind of liking all this. Why don't you go, I like this.

[Ed Larson]

My knees are the size of pumpkins.

[Marcus Parks]

It's cute. It's like every day Halloween.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, Corbett returned to New York City and hobbled around on crutches while still suffering from daily diarrhea. Took a long time for it to clear up, but it said that Boston's faith in God and therefore his faith in the Union caused was unmoved by his time in Andersonville.

[Marcus Parks]

I like him more. I like him more. I was like, what a fun opportunity to survive.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Accordingly, after just two months of recovering from the most notorious POW camp in the Civil War, Boston Corbett rejoined the 16th New York Cavalry for a fifth tour of duty at the age of 32.

[Marcus Parks]

You know what's crazy is I, like, just stopped having diarrhea and I realized lives, I miss it, you know.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Thing is, you can't get the good diarrhea in New York City. You got to go down south. You want to get good diarrhea, fly.

[Marcus Parks]

Back in the army, you gotta have that slippery, sloppy, super meat falling off bone, rib sticking, Southern barbecue to really get a good flow going. And that's kind of what I'm all about. That's kind of me.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It was January of 1865, just after Lincoln's second inauguration.

[Marcus Parks]

And hats were still important part of society. And we will talk here on hatchet. We will.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, Corbett was determined to see the war to its conclusion. The war, of course, came to an end just a few months later, along with Lincoln's life. And Corbett's regiment was stationed in Vienna, Virginia, when they got the word that the President had been killed. Killed. About 10 days later, Corbett and his fellow soldiers also got word that the assassin was most likely in their area. So when detectives showed up in Virginia hot on the trail of John Wilkes Booth, the 16th New York Cavalry found themselves in the enviable position of being the unit that would find and kill the President's murderer.

[Marcus Parks]

This is an example of, like when they say how like God chooses somebody, right? Like, God chose Boston Corbett, if he exists, all that, whatever he bought. For some reason, Boston Corbett is all like, fate comes down to this wackadoo.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Even by, you know, going back to the mercury poisoning. Like, that's the thing is that the mercury poisoning, like the castration, absolutely put him along the path to joining the army, to being a fucking weirdo, to being like, to just being an insane everything.

[Marcus Parks]

Honestly, who would ever have thought, cut my balls off will be the smartest decision I've ever Made and again, that's why I love Boston.

[Henry Zebrowski]

But there's also, you know, there's the. The question of what would have happened if John Wilkes Booth had lived.

[Marcus Parks]

But he did.

[Henry Zebrowski]

We'll get back to that.

[Marcus Parks]

We know that for a fact that he did. And that because I've received several emails from his family members, which is true. I've received several members emails that have claimed that they are now fighting hard to verify the. That John Wil Booth lived and had kids.

[Ed Larson]

Isn't he buried on their property? Property? Dig them up if you can.

[Marcus Parks]

Find them.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Cremated.

[Marcus Parks]

Ah, yes.

[Ed Larson]

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[Marcus Parks]

You know what I gotta do, Rob?

[Ed Larson]

I'm gonna get some tiny socks for Robert. We got Robert the doll, and he's got. He doesn't have nice new socks for summer. He's got just normal socks. So when he's got his weekend. So Robert needs little tiny socks to keep his little tiny feet nice. And so that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna hit up Bombas because, you know, we work together now. And so Bombas, please give me some tiny socks for Robert and get him ready for summer. I got myself some tiny socks. I got my wife some tiny socks. Low ankle cut. Oh, they breathe so well. But still with bombas, they get all my sweat and they gather it and they say, eddie, your feet are looking good. And that's what happens when there. So go to bombas. The most important thing that I love about BOMBAS is one purchased equals one donated to someone who needs it. What a good company. All right. That kind of stuff really warms my heart. And so that's why I am going full BOMBAS from now out. So thank you so much, Bombas, for all that you do for everyone, and please support them as well. Well, go buy some Bombas. And know when you're buying BOMBAS for you, you're also buying BOMBAS for someone who needs it. So head over to bombas.com lpotl and use the code lpotl for 20% off your first purchase. That's B O M B A S.com lpotl code lpotl at checkout bombas.com and use code lpotl. You love it.

[Marcus Parks]

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[Ed Larson]

All right.

[Marcus Parks]

You got to get in there. You got to get into your brain. You have to observe your brain yourself because if not, eventually they're going to be doing it with a lobotomist knife. Okay? It's what your family's gonna make you do. So you want to get into therapy plus switch therapists at any anytime. Better helps.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Great.

[Marcus Parks]

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[Ed Larson]

It's summer. Let's face it. You're going to do something. Something. Maybe you're a teacher, you got a bunch of free time, you're still getting paid. What are you going to do? You're going to go somewhere weird that you never been before and leaving the country, it's already stressful. It's good to just know a little bit more about where you're going, whether it's Mexico or France. It's good to know a little bit more about how to communicate with the people where you're going. And plus, you know, you got to know what you're ordering off the menu. What are we even talking about here? At least for the waiters and waitresses across the world. Learn a couple things. Start speaking a new language with confidence thanks to Babbel's conversation based technique that quickly teaches you useful words and phrases about the things you actually talk about in the real world. Languages available on Babbel are English, German, Spanish, Italian, French, Brazilian, Portuguese, Turkish, Polish, Indonesian, Dutch, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, and Russian. So go to one of those places and talk to the people. One thing that I love, and you obviously know that I love this, it's talking and I want to talk to everyone no matter where I am. And so traveling the world is amazing. You learn so much about everyone everywhere, especially if you can actually talk to them. So let Babel help you out with that. Learn another language. Babel is gifting our listeners 55% off [e-mail] left get up to 55% [e-mail] spelled B A, B, B, E L.com left babel.com left rules and restrictions may apply.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And so now that we've caught Boston Corbett up to our timeline, let's return to John Wilkes Booth. Booth had just shown up to Garrett's farm, along with his compatriot David Herald and their new Confederate friends. That's Absalom Bainbridge, Willie Jet, and Mortimer Ruggles. Now Jets. Three names together. It's insane.

[Marcus Parks]

I don't want to have any of them be. That's. I. That. That's my crew.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You're, you know, like, so, yeah, you get. You want to go hang out at the bar tonight? Oh, yeah, maybe. Like, who's coming? Oh, you know, like Absalom Willie, Mortimer.

[Marcus Parks]

Actually, I'm super tired. I'll catch up with you guys next week.

[Henry Zebrowski]

A Jets contact at the farm. Jack Garrett was apparently not a fan of the theater, so he had no idea that he and his family were about to harbor the man who had just shot and killed the president. John Wilkes Booth was therefore treated by the Garrett family as just another wounded Confederate soldier. The plan went off without a hitch. That meant that Booth was able to sleep in a bed for the first time since he left Dr. Mudd's plantation nine days earlier.

[Marcus Parks]

Ha. Wonderful, Ted. Thank you. I can't even tell you what a night Antietam was. I remember Antietam.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, you were at Antietam, huh?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, so very much so. I vacationed there several times, and I did a wonderful rendition of Henry 5. Theater of Antietam, of course, for the boys.

[Ed Larson]

Boys and Gray.

[Henry Zebrowski]

David Herald. And the Confederates, however, they felt the need to blow off a little steam. So while Booth rested, his friends visited a log cabin of ill repute located just down the road. Road. This place run by a woman who pimped out her four daughters to whatever confederate might be in need of companionship. Was known locally as the trap. O.

[Marcus Parks]

You guys want to go down to the trap and have sex with some bog?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, yeah. There's nothing I like better than some underage bog horse. Let's go get them.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Is there. Is there m. Is the mother forcing her daughters to do it?

[Marcus Parks]

Watching the whole time? Let's Go. Come on, Mortimer.

[Ed Larson]

Those girls didn't have the clap. They had the applause.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, yay. Those poor, poor girls.

[Henry Zebrowski]

After spending the night with the ladies of the Trap, David Herold, David Harold and the Confederate Trio. Terrible band, by the way.

[Marcus Parks]

David. That's what we were doing before.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. They returned to Garrett True Farm. There they found John Wilkes Booth on the front porch, having returned to his usual charming self after a good night's sleep. He no longer wanted just to die. He was now full of piss and vinegar once more.

[Marcus Parks]

Have any of you had proper tap lessons?

[Henry Zebrowski]

After pleasantries were exchanged, Mortimer Ruggles, Absalom Bainbridge and Willie Jett, they decided that it was best if they moved. Done. After saying goodbye, Willie Jet took off for the town of Bowling Green, where he was supposed to court a girl, while Mortimer and Absalom traveled to Port Royal.

[Marcus Parks]

We're gonna court each other.

[Henry Zebrowski]

But upon their arrival to the port, Mortimer and Absalom were highly disturbed to find the 16th New York Cavalry docked on a steamship. And apparently, the 16th Cavalry were just told that Booth and Harold had been spotted crossing the Potomac into Virginia. Virginia. Mortimer and Absalom therefore raced back to Garrett's farm. And after Booth and Harold were duly warned, they immediately left the house and returned to hiding in the woods. Thirty minutes later, the 16th came riding by Garrett's farm, galloping right past the spot where Booth and Harold were hiding in the underbrush.

[Marcus Parks]

I thought that yesterday would be the last day I would need to be a bush. I am sick of being in the bush. I am not a berry. I am not a Brussels sprout. I am a star.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Not a member of the course.

[Marcus Parks]

Get me out of the bush.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Considering the reaction that his house guests had just had to the Calvary coming, Jack Garrett was starting to suspect that the two men staying in his home were maybe a little more hot than Willie Jett had led them to believe. But even so, Jack Garrett still promised to take Booth and Harold to another location the next day. And still hadn't figured out their identities, hadn't figured out who these guys were. As fuck it. Calvary's coming through town. Ask for all these guys.

[Marcus Parks]

Guy's like, if I was Jack Aaron, I would be the. I would definitely be like, I have no idea who these gentlemen are. Yeah, I don't know what they do and you want them.

[Henry Zebrowski]

But because Garrett was worried the men would steal his horses while he slept, he locked Booth and Harold in his farm's tobacco barn while Garrett and his brothers kept watch overnight. This, of course, would be the undoing of John Wilk's Booth. Cuz soon after the 16th Cavalry passed Garrett's farm. Farm. They arrived at the aforementioned cabin of ill repute, the Trap, which was located just four miles up the road.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, I just did anal with Mortimer. Yeah, you should go check them out. Yeah, I'm nine. Who gives a right? You want to blow it before you leave?

[Ed Larson]

Ruggle and Tuggle.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You know, it's funny, I didn't mention them being underage at all. I just assumed that was just the picture you painted.

[Marcus Parks]

I view it as a. Let me really paint the picture.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Multi generational.

[Marcus Parks]

Four girls. And it goes from 21, 18, 15, nine.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, okay.

[Marcus Parks]

And so when they all come together, they call the Voltron of trap. Yep.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Trap.

[Marcus Parks]

Voltron.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yep. That is that.

[Marcus Parks]

Are you happy with that?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Are you happy that.

[Marcus Parks]

That?

[Henry Zebrowski]

I'm happy. I. Yeah, I'm happy, but I. I just. I just want to know what picture you were painting. That's it. Sometimes I like to see into the porthole.

[Marcus Parks]

That's. That's all I saw was just like people under the ground having sex with Ruggles while the mother watches.

[Ed Larson]

Do you think they might have called it the Trap after Wilkes Booth was caught there?

[Henry Zebrowski]

No, it was known as the Trap before him.

[Ed Larson]

I'm just trying to give him a little benefit of doubt.

[Marcus Parks]

It is called the Trap because that's where the girls were trapped.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, yes. Yes.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, since the Trap was a Confederate establishment, the ladies who worked there were uncommunicative, to say the least, towards the Union cavalry. But the detectives traveling with the 16th, the ones who were actually in charge of this investigation, they were actually quite clever in their methods. They knew that they would get nowhere with the locals if they said they were looking for the man who'd shot the hated Abraham Lincoln. So they instead told the ladies at the Trap that they were looking for two men who'd beaten and raped a girl. This apparently was the right tactic. It hit just the right chord with them because the ladies immediately spoke up and said that four soldiers had visited the Trap the day before. While they didn't know where the soldiers had come from, one of the soldiers had said he was going to Bowling Green the next day. That soldier was Willie Jett. And so the cavalry raced to the Star Hotel in Bowling Green. And after being roused from his sleep, the 18 year old Willie Jett rolled over on John Wilkes Booth as fast as he possibly could.

[Marcus Parks]

JW's in a bush.

[Ed Larson]

He's in the bush.

[Henry Zebrowski]

He told the detectives that Booth and Harold were holed up in a farmhouse back the way they'd came. And Jett would be willing to lead them there, but only if they made sure that it did not appear as if he was collaborating with the Yankees. The detectives said, sure, who gives a shit? Whatever you want. So Jet led the detectives in Boston Corbett's regiment directly to Garrett's farm, where John Wilkes Booth and David Herold were fast asleep in the tobacco bar Barn. Now, the two detectives in charge of the 16th were under the assumption that Booth and Harold were in the farmhouse. So when the assembled forces arrived at Garrett's farm at 2am the detectives approached alone while the rest of the men hung back. It was not, however, Jack Garrett who opened the door that night. Jack was guarding the tobacco barn with his brothers. So it was Jack Garrett's elderly father who opened the door just a crack to see who it was. The detectives, they didn't give a shit who was on the other side of that door. So they grabbed the elder Garrett and pulled him outside by his night shirt. The old man, of course, got flustered and told the detectives that the men they were looking for, they'd fled into the woods.

[Marcus Parks]

They're flattering the wood like a bunch of butterflies. A bunch of butterflies. I ran into the woods. You gotta go find them with them nets. Go get them, boys. Go get them.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Time for around, however, was over. So one of the cavalry officers ordered one of his men to bring out a rope so they could, quote, stretch the truth out of this damned old rebel.

[Marcus Parks]

Things were different back then.

[Henry Zebrowski]

But just as they were tossing a rope over the branch of a locust tree to hang the old man, Jack Garrett, stepped forward, apparently having figured out in that very moment just exactly who the men were hiding in his tobacco barn really were.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, no.

[Ed Larson]

As soon as he sees the rose, they're in the barn.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Garrett told the calvary exactly where John Wilkes Booth and David Herold were hiding. And Booth therefore woke up in the middle of the night to find himself locked in a barn surrounded by a large force of very angry Union soldiers.

[Ed Larson]

That must have been fun for them.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, yeah. Oh, that's time, huh? Is it time for rehearsal? Oh, what time is it? God, how her government I late. Am I late for the matinee?

[Ed Larson]

Just imagine like though, you know, he's in there, you just banging the side.

[Marcus Parks]

Of the bar and you're like, johnny. Oh, yeah, dude. Johnny, we're going to you, Johnny. We're coming to you, actor boy. And that's why, with the tip of the nose and a flick of the wrist and a wink of the eye. Up the chimney I go. She still work now.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Being an actor, John Wilkes Booth immediately settled into the role of the defiant hero David Herold. Meanwhile, upon seeing the cavalry, suggested that maybe it was time to give themselves up. But Booth told him that he would rather die than surrender.

[Marcus Parks]

Wouldn't it be romantic, my dear good man? Us, you and I, aflame. Burning and burning and burning and burning. Never to live again.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Or we go outside. That's an all. That's an orb. I'm giving us options here.

[Marcus Parks]

I called that the answer is this bravery.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So after Booth and Harold didn't directly respond to any of the cavalry's calls to give themselves up, one of the detectives gave an ultimatum. Either come out within 15 minutes or we're burning down this barn with you inside now. At that point, David Herold lost every bit of his nerve. As the cavalry waited for response, they could hear Booth and Herald. Herald having a hushed argument side.

[Marcus Parks]

Let me.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Fucking God.

[Marcus Parks]

What a fucking hell. You cannot go out.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Let me fucking go out.

[Marcus Parks]

He's fucking stupid.

[Henry Zebrowski]

John, you're building.

[Marcus Parks]

We're building to a dramatic day. I'm not a fucking actor.

[Henry Zebrowski]

John. John. I'm not a fucking actor.

[Marcus Parks]

Jump with me. Jump into this with me. Yes. And with me. Yeah. He's just all being like, we can hear you.

[Henry Zebrowski]

The mood in the barn only got worse when the soldiers began playing. Compiling sticks and leaves against the structure's walls.

[Marcus Parks]

Beginning to build the fire. Now.

[Henry Zebrowski]

When a match was lit and the fire was set, David Herold panicked and raced towards the door. Booth threatened to shoot Harold himself if he left. But eventually Booth relented while Harold screamed, let me out.

[Marcus Parks]

Let me out.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Let me out. Let me out. He was finally let out of the back door by the soldiers. He was handcuffed and tied to a tree. Tree where he whined and cried like a scared little boy until one of the soldiers finally couldn't stand to listen to him whimper anymore, just shoved a gag in his mouth. I can't believe they didn't kill him that well. Actually, they. The goal was to take them alive.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes. John Wilkes was supposed to be taken. He was supposed to. Because. Which is what we have. We're deal. We deal with this all the time. Is because they wanted to try him. Hang them in front of everybody but do the thing. They wanted to make it official and to hold. Hold up in the eyes of the law as things would go forward.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, but not just that. At this point, they had no idea how far the Conspiracy went. They didn't know if it was ordered by, like, you know, former Confederate officials. They didn't know whether it was ordered by someone within the government itself or the military. They wanted to see where this. They didn't know that it ended at John Wilkes Booth at just this moment.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. They thought there was a whole, like, byzantine conspiracy within the cons, within the Confederacy. And this is also the kind of. That led to all the conspiracy theories. Theories after the fact.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. They thought Jefferson Davis ordered the assassination.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes. And that maybe there were guys on the inside of the White House that were helping because there was all this confused confusion about how they were. There was these military parades and all this kind of military actions that were happening around the city that sort of allowed John Wilkes Booth to even leave Washington, D.C. and so they viewed that as a big conspiracy. That was like one of the. Edward Stanton did it again that, you know, he defied Abraham Lincoln because he thought Abraham Lincoln was going to be too soft on the. The South. So he organized the hit on Abraham Lincoln.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. Stan, the Secretary of War.

[Marcus Parks]

And then they actually killed John Wilkes Booth. And there was a double that looked like John Wils Booth is the whole. It's stupid.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

It's not real.

[Ed Larson]

Doesn't even matter because old Corbett was there.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, the fire set by the soldiers had finally grown large enough to clearly illuminate John Wilkes Booth inside the barn, who was seen holding onto his crutch with one hand and holding a cult revolver in the other while a rifle rested against his. His hip. Now, the soldiers hadn't been given any orders to fire, but they also hadn't been given orders to not fire.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, nobody said anything about what exactly we were supposed to do when we got this position. Hold on.

[Ed Larson]

By fire, do you mean set the fire?

[Marcus Parks]

You're setting a fire, and I'm firing as well.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So Boston Corbett had his own.44 revolver aimed square, barely at John Wilkes Booth through a narrow barn slat.

[Marcus Parks]

I'll fix your problem for you. He just opens up, just sticks his gun in there.

[Henry Zebrowski]

If you'll remember, Corbett was always eager for a kill. He thirsted for murder. And here he had the man who had shot down his great leader, Abraham Lincoln. And this man was trapped in, desperate, very likely about to open fire on Corbett and his fellow troops.

[Marcus Parks]

Why none of you guys killing this guy?

[Henry Zebrowski]

So when Booth reached the barn door and raised his rifle, Corbett fired a single shot. And when the detectives flung open the door. This is one of my favorite images in history. John Wilkes Booth fell Face down, as blood spurted from the bullet hole in his neck.

[Marcus Parks]

To be honest, that's the first time I ever done it in one shot. That was amazing. That's crazy. And through the slack, usually I shoot.

[Ed Larson]

Him, and then I beat him with rocks.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, I finish them off. Sometimes a bear comes and finishes them or they get real sick.

[Ed Larson]

How many people you think Corbett murdered?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, man, just rough estimate.

[Ed Larson]

I know there's no way to know.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Rough estimate. I mean, it's impossible to know in this.

[Ed Larson]

It could be, like. It could be 100. It could be 30.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, I mean, it could be one. I know my be six.

[Marcus Parks]

They said my grandfather had, like. Like, a confirmed 10.

[Ed Larson]

And that was World War II.

[Marcus Parks]

That was World War II. And they talk about that he was in there for two years. So it's like, if you track, like, the five years, I bet you he'd probably b about 50. But also, a lot of them didn't die immediately.

[Ed Larson]

That's true.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. Yeah. Who knows? Now, as far as kill shot, that's.

[Marcus Parks]

Got to be so disappointing.

[Henry Zebrowski]

As far as kill shot locations went, Corbett could hardly have picked a more painful spot to shoot John Wilkes Booth. The bullet shattered Booth's vertebrae and severed his spinal cord, simultaneously paralyzing Booth and causing him extreme pain. See, unlike Lincoln, who was unconscious for the hours he lingered on, Booth was fully awake the entire time. He did not die quickly, and he spent the next few hours feebly asking for someone to kill him over and over again as blood filled his throat.

[Marcus Parks]

Will someone please kill my head? Head. My head is the last living part. Will you just please kill my head?

[Ed Larson]

Which would usually be very annoying, but in this instance, was delightful to hear.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Sure, I'm sure. The detectives, meanwhile, tried to interrogate Bo as much as they could, because as I said earlier, they still had no idea how far this conspiracy actually reached or if Booth was the head of the snake. But finally, in his last moments, Booth lifted his head. Hands.

[Marcus Parks]

It's actually. Do you know? He was asking somebody to lift his hands. He couldn't lift his hands. It's why he said useless. Useless was because he asked the guy to lift his hands up to his face, and he wouldn't do it. And then when he didn't, he said, useless. Useless. And then he died.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, so as an actor, even in his last moments. All subtext.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

But at any rate, his last.

[Marcus Parks]

He was paralyzed.

[Henry Zebrowski]

At any rate, his last words. Words were useless. Has to be so dramatic.

[Marcus Parks]

Okay.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

You know, for an assassin, he better be.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, that Is true. And with that, America's first successful presidential assassin died from asphyxia at 7:15am 12 days after he killed one of the greatest leaders our country has ever had, Boston. Corbett, meanwhile, had ridden off to a spot where he could be alone to pray. And after asking God if he'd done the right thing, Corbett claimed that God told him, fuck yeah, bro. Great job.

[Marcus Parks]

Thanks. God, you don't got a lot of people angry at you because you give kids diseases and you do all sorts of things that seem unfair and random, but you're good with me.

[Ed Larson]

God, would you let me cut my balls off one more time?

[Marcus Parks]

Yes, yes, my dear child. After you. You did this most splendid job. Here you go.

[Ed Larson]

My balls.

[Marcus Parks]

My favorite son. I love you more than Jesus Christ. What a pussy, right? Crying and bitching to me when he's on that stick. Handle yourself, son.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Even though the man who'd killed the President was dead, there was still the matter of what to do with David Herold, along with what to do with everyone else who'd been involved in the plot to kill the President. Eventually, the government whittled the conspiracy down to nine defendants. If most people, most of them were caught within five or six days after Lincoln's assassination, I think Harold was the one who took the longest to catch. You know, that was like 14.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah. They weren't Green Berets who he was working with. You know what I mean? This was like a. It was. Was a real rag tag group.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It was. And also the government started off by arresting basically everyone who had ever had anything to do with Booth at any point in Booth's life.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes.

[Ed Larson]

Good.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I mean, well, some of them didn't really deserve it, you know, like, some of them were just like. Like, for example, like the guy who had worked as Booth's agent in, like, 1860, before the Civil War, and before, like, Wilkes really, like, lost his mind. The guy, remember the guy that boots, like, stole his gun and Booth accidentally shot himself in the leg. They arrested that guy.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

It's worth slapping him around and find out what he knows.

[Marcus Parks]

Technically, I know group arrests are rough, but it is a. Technically. You know, we did a lot of. After nine, eleven.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, yeah, Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

I don't remember.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, but that was all totally legal and fine.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, we use that as a lot of ideas.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You know what I mean? Now, these nine defendants, they were all tried in a collective trial that began less than a month after the assassination. This is, of course, once officials were satisfied that the conspiracy had gone no further. Further than John Wilkes Booth. After 50 days, all nine defendants were found guilty by a panel of nine military officers, but only four were sentenced to death. Mostly, that distinction was saved for the men who had directly participated in the mass assassination plot. That would be Lewis Powell, George Atzerodt, David Herold. The one outlier in the executions was tavern keeper Mary Surratt, who, as we said last episode, was the first woman to ever be executed by the United States federal government. It was said that Mary was sentenced to death by hanging because her tavern had been, quote, the nest that hatched the rotten egg. It's been speculated, however, Mary Seurat was actually sentenced to death more as a tactic to lure her son John out of hiding, because John Surratt was the only conspirator that the government wanted but didn't get.

[Marcus Parks]

He was like, you can have my mother.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. John Surratt, he was already long gone by the time his mother was hanged as a traitor. If you'll remember, while John Surat was certainly a Confederate piece of. He had left the conspiracy just before it became an assassination plot because he thought that John Wilkes Booth was too much of a liability.

[Marcus Parks]

He's correct.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Very correct. Surat was therefore already on his way to the Canadian Confederate stronghold of Montreal when Lincoln was murdered. Surat, however, was smart enough to know that he was in deep shit nonetheless. So after a couple of pro slavery Catholic priests. There were plenty of them around. Yeah. After they gave him shelter, Surratt hopped on a boat across the Atlantic to Liverpool.

[Marcus Parks]

Liverpool.

[Henry Zebrowski]

From there, Surratt made the incredibly unpredictable move of going to the Vatican, where he enlisted in the Catholic Church's infantry battalion, which actually existed until 1870.

[Marcus Parks]

Wow.

[Ed Larson]

Hide in plain sight, can have sex with children.

[Marcus Parks]

You go down to the trap.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Surratt was able to worm his way into this battalion through his Montreal connections because hundreds of Canadians had already joined the Vatican's armed forces. But what Seurat didn't count on was the greed of his fellow man. An old acquaintance of Surratt's tipped off the US Consul that John was in the Pope's guard.

[Marcus Parks]

He was in the Pope's fucking guard.

[Henry Zebrowski]

He's in the Pope's guard?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. It's so crazy. Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And a guy, an old friend, like, a guy he used to know, turned him in for the reward money. And I ended up getting, like, 10 grand.

[Ed Larson]

I mean, Catholics love money that.

[Henry Zebrowski]

That they do 10% back to the Church. So after a brief negotiation, a cardinal agreed to take Surratt into custody so he could be turned over to American authorities. But in another unbelievable twist, John Seurat broke loose from his guards during transport and jumped off a fucking cliff. Whoa. He survived and made his way to Naples, where he boarded a freighter to Egypt.

[Marcus Parks]

This man's seen the whole goddamn world. He has just been like, he's having the best vacation I've ever heard of. A man who plotted to kill the President.

[Henry Zebrowski]

My God. Montreal to Liverpool, to the. To Italy, to Naples, to the Vatican, to Naples, to Egypt.

[Marcus Parks]

It's amazing.

[Henry Zebrowski]

But by this point, the Americans were hot on Surat's trail. So the American consul was waiting for Surratt upon his arrival in Alexandria. Andrea.

[Ed Larson]

Jesus.

[Henry Zebrowski]

This was, however, almost two years after Lincoln's murder. So Surat was not tried in the same military court as the other conspirators. Instead, Surat had a normal court trial, which ended in a hung jury. The government then tried for a treason charge, which failed on a technicality. And a third attempt was also thrown out because of the second attempt. And most people, by this point, they just wanted to move on from the war. So John Surat was set free.

[Marcus Parks]

Wow. It worked.

[Henry Zebrowski]

He capitalized on his role in the conspiracy by giving paid public talks about his involvement in the plot to kidnap Abraham Lincoln. And he died of pneumonia as a free man in 1916 at the age of 72.

[Ed Larson]

So we got to see, like, cars and electricity, flight.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, all of it, dude. And. And he got to do the truly most American thing ever, which is double down on your crimes and make money for it later on. It's like, that is the. That is a pinnacle part of the American experience.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And he did it like a true American, too. He made sure to only talk about the stuff that was already made public, that was public knowledge. So that way he could not be charged with anything new. He could be brought in. Like, he. He knew how to do it.

[Marcus Parks]

Yep.

[Henry Zebrowski]

No.

[Marcus Parks]

See, he's the most true American dream of this whole thing.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. Now, while Surat's postscript was action packed, no other person in this saga had a more interesting post war journey than Boston Corbett.

[Marcus Parks]

Of course. Of course it's him.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Corbett, naturally became a celebrity following Booth's death. But then that's the incredible, like, think about this man that we've talked about this entire time. He is now the most famous man in America.

[Marcus Parks]

He's like, you know, this is. This is, like, equivalent of, like, him hanging out with, like, Pete Davidson. Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Ye.

[Marcus Parks]

Like, all, like, doing all this crazy. Just being like, I'm a bit of an influencer. Several people cut Their balls off. They don't. They don't regret. They regret it, honestly. They don't understand the whole. What they're doing and why they're doing it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, yeah. Ul. Ulyses s. Grant is coming to, like, shake this man's hand, and I cut my balls off. Yeah. It's like LBJ shaking Forest Gump's hand. And in the movie and, like, shows him his ass, like, goddamn. So it's that over and over and again.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Now, Corbett naturally got a lot of death threats after shooting John Wilkes Booth from Confederate sympathizers. Constant death threats.

[Ed Larson]

And he loved it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, well, it gave him. It gave him very good reason to carry a gun at all times for the rest of his days. And the threats, that would be enough to make anyone paranoid. But Corbett's career as a hatter and the mercury poisoning he suffered as a result only made that paranoia worse. His paranoia led to constant verbal altercations with people both friendly and hostile. He didn't really make a distinction. And those disputes usually ended when Corbett drew his pistols, long before the argument called for such escalation. As such, Corbett began to seek a more private life.

[Marcus Parks]

I need to chill out. I need to relax.

[Henry Zebrowski]

By 1878, he'd settled in Kansas, where he built himself a dugout carved into a hillside home.

[Marcus Parks]

Just literal dents in a mountain.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Hey, my. My fucking ancestors in Oklahoma, they lived in dugouts. They're fantastic. I used to build. When I was a kid. I loved to build dugouts. That was like, one of my favorite things to do is find a good hill. You fucking dig into the side of it, you make a dugout really lucky. I didn't die doing that.

[Marcus Parks]

You just got done killing the assassin of the President of the United States of America. And he's living in dirt. He's choosing to live in dirt.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's great.

[Ed Larson]

He is Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And Coyote and quite a bit of Daffy Duck.

[Marcus Parks]

This is enough for me right here. This is all. This is enough for me. I have my sleeping rock. I have my sitting rock. And I got my tobacco, and I got my. My brain, which is I could talk to and see in front of my own eyes, actually.

[Henry Zebrowski]

What he loved more than anything was his horse, Billy.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, I love old Billy.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. He lived his days with that beloved horse, Billy.

[Marcus Parks]

Just sleeping in the dirt, hanging out here on the hillside. He's the only one or stans be.

[Ed Larson]

It's those guys. You know, I've met them before. It's like when that dog dies like he's gonna kill everybody.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Let'S just say don't mess with Billy.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, Corbett split his time between cattle ranching and preaching wherever Billy would take him. But his proselytizing got more and more lost in the mercury cloud. As the years went by, his hellfire and brimstone fervor became too much for even the Kansas crowd who kicked him out of their congregation. Corbett wouldn't stop literally screaming about so called eternal burning.

[Marcus Parks]

I'm talking about my piles.

[Henry Zebrowski]

His brain was on fire.

[Marcus Parks]

My ass is filled with devils.

[Henry Zebrowski]

By the time Corbett was in his 50s, he'd become a clear danger to anybody who was in his presence. In 1885, Corbett opened fire on a bunch of local boys who were playing baseball on a Sunday.

[Marcus Parks]

Someone's got to.

[Henry Zebrowski]

He justified the action by saying it was merely that he was merely trying to warn the boys of the spiritual risks of such an activity.

[Marcus Parks]

Sometimes you'll get a bullet from God in your little head, you dumb shit. Fucking little. You think you can play baseball when God's at work?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Corbett also made himself a nuisance at the Kansas House of Representatives. Good. Because he believed the legislature, along with the local county officials, in the courts. And this is such. It shows you, like, paranoia never changes. He was convinced that they were all conspiring to steal his disability pension.

[Marcus Parks]

They're not helping me keep it. They're not filling out the paperwork, they're not showing up to the appointments. And I do all this shit I gotta do.

[Ed Larson]

Those are my $2 a month and no one's taking them.

[Marcus Parks]

That's for me and my brain.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And after Corbett finally pulled his revolvers on some house members, he was finally arrested and declared legally insane by a judge.

[Marcus Parks]

Thank you.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Who sent Corbett to a state asylum in Topeka. Finally, someone had the balls. I did not.

[Marcus Parks]

I am legally insane.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I say that because I don't have balls. And I am legally insane. By 1887, the hospital had declared Corbett to be permanently insane.

[Marcus Parks]

Okay.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I meant that he was un. Unlikely to ever be released. It was like the equivalent of like, a life sentence.

[Marcus Parks]

I want that stamp permanently insane tattooed on your forehead.

[Henry Zebrowski]

The following year, though, Corbett surprised everyone when he escaped captivity after stealing a horse. Just fucking took off. Some guy was visiting with his horse. Left the horse on the unsupervised.

[Ed Larson]

You look like Billy.

[Marcus Parks]

Billy, Remember me? Billy? Really?

[Henry Zebrowski]

The fear was that Corbett was on his way to assassinate members of the Kansas legislature. But Corbett again surprised everyone by instead deciding to visit an old friend.

[Marcus Parks]

Dude, this is the story of the last Rambo movie.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It is.

[Ed Larson]

They're more surprised that he had a friend.

[Marcus Parks]

My buddy. I'm gonna hang out with my buddy, my pep pal.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Quite calmly, Corbett told his old friend that he planned to head to Mexico. Mexico. And after that friend watched Boston Corbett board a train.

[Marcus Parks]

I think that train's going north.

[Henry Zebrowski]

The man who killed John Wilkes Booth vanished from history forever.

[Ed Larson]

I imagine he's just like, I'm gonna get on this train this week.

[Marcus Parks]

Walked off a cliff, you know, like he literally. But he doesn't fall at all. Like he literally. He does the wily Coyote, where he says, all right, see you later on my way to Mexico. You're like, you see him up outside of like. But they do say that they think that he did end up going north, that he told a bunch of people he was going to Mexico and then he just ended up in the Dakotas.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, well, that's actually smart.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, it is. Yeah. No one, seriously, no one has any idea whatso, like, a couple of people did try to come up and say, like, I'm, you know, I'm Corbett. But no, that they were proved to be frauds. He's just gone.

[Ed Larson]

Gotta check them for balls.

[Marcus Parks]

That is literally. I was listening about this, about how many people came forward being like, I'm Boston Corbett. It's like, there, there's an easy test.

[Henry Zebrowski]

As far as the consequences of John Wilkes Booth's actions go, they are both far reaching and impossible to truly quantify. Yes, Lincoln's death did have a massive effect on the reunification of America following the war, a process known as Reconstruction. But it's hard to know exactly how Lincoln would have handled it differently. See, despite what the south thought, Abraham Lincoln was by all accounts a moderate. And most historians agree that leniency towards the the south had always been a part of Lincoln's post war plans. But it's also true that Lincoln's successor after the assassination, President Andrew Johnson, he was a fucking terrible person to handle Reconstruction. Johnson gave pardons to almost all the Confederates who took an oath of allegiance to the Union. That included the Confederate President, Jefferson Davis, who retired to where else but Montreal. After the war, Johnson also returned all plantations to the men who'd previously worked that land with slave labor. But Johnson's worst crime was leaving every former Confederate state to do pretty much whatever they wanted after the war, just so long as they didn't bring back outright slavery.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, and he took away the 30 acres and a mule too.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, well, because he was also supposed to because the idea that one of the big plans was Abraham Lincoln was kind of talking about. About which people take in a bad way, but sometimes. But I actually view it differently where he said, like, we got to teach everybody to read. We got to teach everybody how to do all this. We want them to be a part of society. We want the newly freed black people to be able to vote and participate and do all this. It's going to require these certain steps that they're going to have, of course.

[Ed Larson]

Because it's like, congrats, you're free now you're homeless. Yeah, that doesn't make any sense.

[Marcus Parks]

It doesn't make any sense.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, the educational programs did actually take place. That was one of the few things that got through. But. And that's the thing. But the south, the Southerners got pissed off because they were teaching black people to read. And the federal government was like, you know, anyone can come to these schools. It doesn't have to. Like, we're just teaching anybody who wants to come.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, you should come and learn.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Southerners refused to come because of course black people were there and they did not want them to be on any sort of equal footing.

[Marcus Parks]

And we all know that the north did the worst crime of all. Hypocrisy. We know that for a fact.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. And eventually they just gave up on it. Know there was a compromise, you know that there. It's a lot of American history after this, but because President Johnson took the root of states rights, Jim Crow laws quickly emerged in the south, and a lot of post war civil rights legislation failed on the federal level. What followed was a lot of horrible, to say the very least, which would take an entirely different series of podcasts to cover. As such, I'm not really sure what the lesson at the end of all this really is, because sadly, John Wilson Milk's Booth succeeded despite his best efforts. See, Reconstruction would probably have been far harsher towards the south if George Atzerodt had actually killed Andrew Johnson. And Booth was totally wrong about William Seward stepping into the vacuum of power upon Lincoln's death. Instead, Seward's legacy is buying Alaska, which was known for years as Seward's Folly.

[Ed Larson]

But that's Alaska's cool.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, now we like it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, now we like. Well, we like after the oil. Yeah, yeah. But back then, yeah, everyone's like that. That's what Seward was known for most in American history was fucking Seward's Folly. But that's all to say that while the south still lost the war, the institutionalized Disenfranchisement of black people in the south particularly, has continued to this day, which is exactly what John Wilkes Booth wanted. Booth and those of his ilk are such spineless fucking bullies, so lacking in any sort of self confidence that they only feel good if someone else in society has a permanent boot on their neck. Some of these people are so dependent on this system for their own peace of mind that they will commit murder to keep it alive. Which is what you had in the case of the pathetic wannabe John Wilkes Booth. However, I will say that while there are still plenty of Americans with the mindset of John Wilkes Booth in 2025, many currently holding office, there's also a hell of a lot more Abraham Lincolns than there ever were in. And today those Lincolns are gay as hell and ready to take it to the fucking streets.

[Marcus Parks]

Sucker to the hilt, Lincolns.

[Henry Zebrowski]

While things look bleak right now, I still urge everyone to show up and fight where you're needed. Because while this country always has been and probably always will be fucked up to some degree, there's always the hope that we can someday, somehow make it better. I will therefore be God damned if we lose the chance to one day fulfill the promise of this great but flawed nation. To the shitheads currently in power who want nothing more than to remake this country in the image of pathetic fucking losers like John Wilkes Booth.

[Ed Larson]

My country tis of the sweet land.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Of liberty, of the ic.

[Marcus Parks]

Glory to God.

[Henry Zebrowski]

That's assassination of Abraham Lincoln, ladies and gentlemen.

[Marcus Parks]

I just wrapped all her. Wrapped her up and you know what to say. You did a really good job of just kind like wrapping up like 120 like years of history right at the end there.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, just try. It took some doing.

[Marcus Parks]

You did a really good job on.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Thank you. Thank you. Well, I mean, precarious. It's what?

[Marcus Parks]

It's precarious.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's. Well, I mean, it's extraordinarily complicated in every way whatsoever.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. What did.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Take another series of podcasts to properly explain all that, but yeah, reconstruction is very, very, very.

[Marcus Parks]

That's why instead of comp. Instead of tackling reconstruction, we're coming back now next week with Hatchet. We're getting even deeper into fezes. We're going to talk a little bit about turbans. Is it a hat? We'll find out next week.

[Ed Larson]

The thing about John Wilk's Booth, though, is that I really got to bring up before we close out is like, what if he didn't do it?

[Marcus Parks]

Thank you. Finally.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Somebody said it you are talking sense. You are talking sense. I know, I know. That was the reason we brought you on.

[Marcus Parks]

He had his double that did it. Obviously, he was trained. He was a member of the Union war. He was part of the intelligence groups of the heat Union war. And I guess that was. That was one big part of it. Another one was, which we've said oftentimes his head just did that.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Then there was also theory. Oh, Annabelle. Because there was the ghost that came from England on a boat.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

To see the Civil War.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Killed Lincoln.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Gotcha.

[Marcus Parks]

Went back to England.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Okay.

[Marcus Parks]

Got that little doll.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Sure. And now it's in a basement in Connecticut.

[Marcus Parks]

It's right here.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, hey.

[Marcus Parks]

They stole it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Nice.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. You know what? I haven't learned anything. Last podcast on the Left to give us money for this. Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

To see us live. Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

If you.

[Henry Zebrowski]

If you want to see all the wonderful jigglings and standups and all the fun act outs that we do, go to our Patreon. Doesn't cost, but just a little bit of cash each month. And you also get to see Last stream On the Left Live every Tuesday at 6pm PST, 9pm EST. And you get to interact with us live on the chat. You get to see it uncensored, unlike what comes out later.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, yes. And tonight, if you are so lucky, you will join us on YouTube at LPN TV for the last podcast for the very first production that we can't wait to show you guys. Last podcast and Left presents Beyond the Veil.

[Henry Zebrowski]

June 20th.

[Marcus Parks]

June 20th. Tonight you can come and see what it's like when we peer beyond the veil with professional exorcist R.H. davis. And you might even be involved, if you dare.

[Ed Larson]

We should try to get Lincoln for the seance.

[Henry Zebrowski]

We should.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, he's just gonna be like, yeah, I like to see all that. God, it's nice to see a nice, tight young man walk around with his very top of his pube showing out of his pants. God damn, I wish I was president again. When I was a boy, June was.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Just cholera a month.

[Marcus Parks]

Shalom. All right. Hail Satan.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Hell gain.

[Ed Larson]

Hail you, Marcus. This was great, man. This is unbelievable.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And I'm gonna rebound that hail over to our researchers. You know, I hail Joel and Shaw, who just did an absolutely fantastic job, you know, helping us out with this one.

[Marcus Parks]

They really did. They help walk us through a lot of complicated stuff. And also, I got so many great emails from people with a bunch of different. Like, it is true about the Booth family. I got reached out by several people that claim to be members of the Booth family.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes.

[Ed Larson]

Lots of people think they are.

[Marcus Parks]

They do. Yeah. It's very interesting.

[Ed Larson]

Well, those dudes were.

[Marcus Parks]

Gosh, they better have been.

[Ed Larson]

Show's over.

[Marcus Parks]

Yep.

[Henry Zebrowski]

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[Marcus Parks]

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[Henry Zebrowski]

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[Marcus Parks]

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[Henry Zebrowski]

What you listen to on your run, on your road trip, your kids graduation song, their wedding dance, your retirement party, the soundtrack of your life changes as your life does. Just like a financial plan from Northwestern Mutual, it's a better way to money. Our financial advisors get to know you better. They meet you where you are and help you get where you want to go. Let's get started at NM.com, the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.