591. The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln: Manhunt for the Killer (Part 2)

Summary

Episode Title: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln: Manhunt for the Killer (Part 2)

Podcast: The Rest Is History
Hosts: Tom Holland & Dominic Sandbrook
Release Date: August 13, 2025

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1. Recap and Setting the Scene (00:00 - 06:07)

The episode opens with Dominic Sandbrook expressing gratitude to listeners and briefly recaps the previous episode, highlighting John Wilkes Booth's dramatic entrance into President Lincoln's box at Ford's Theatre. He shares a poignant excerpt from Booth's journal, revealing Booth's conflicted self-perception and justifications for assassinating Lincoln:

"I do not repent the blow I struck I may before my God."
(00:00) - Dominic Sandbrook

Tom Holland sets the stage by emphasizing the profound impact of Lincoln's assassination on American history, pondering how subsequent events—particularly in race relations—might have unfolded differently had Lincoln survived.

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2. The Assassination at Ford's Theatre (04:11 - 17:35)

Detailed Account of the Night:

• Atmosphere at Ford's Theatre: The evening of April 14, 1865, was one of celebration following Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox. The theatre was abuzz with politicians, tourists, and Union soldiers, many of whom had recently served at Appomattox and were now on leave. President Lincoln and his wife, Mary, were in the presidential box, enjoying a British comedy.

• Booth's Entry and Attack: John Wilkes Booth, a renowned Shakespearean actor and Confederate sympathizer, entered the box during a humorous exchange on stage. Dominic narrates the event with dramatic flair:

  "He takes a Derringer pistol from his pocket. He takes a single step towards Abraham Lincoln's rocking chair. He levels it at the back of Lincoln's head and he fires."
  (12:48) - Dominic Sandbrook

  The assassination was swift and brutal. Major Rathbone, sitting with the Lincolns, was violently attacked, and Booth executed his act of violence before making a daring leap from the box to the stage, fracturing his leg in the process.

• Immediate Reactions: The audience was initially bewildered, attributing the chaos to part of the play or a stage malfunction. Mary Lincoln's profound grief is poignantly described:

  "Mary Lincoln is bent over her husband. She's sobbing, she's saying, talk to me, talk to me."
  (17:16) - Dominic Sandbrook

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3. The Aftermath and Medical Response (17:35 - 23:51)

Efforts to Save Lincoln:

• Medical Examination: Dr. Charles Leal, a young doctor, and Dr. Charles Taft, an army surgeon, attempted to save Lincoln. Initially mistaking the gunshot for a stab wound, they eventually identified the fatal bullet wound.

• Decision to Move Lincoln: Understanding the gravity of the situation, Dr. Taft advised against transporting Lincoln to the White House. Instead, they arranged for Lincoln to be moved discreetly to a nearby lodging house owned by William Peterson.

• Emotional Toll: Mary Lincoln's heartbreak is further explored, highlighting her deep sorrow and the complexities of her grief. Her eventual actions, including the removal of personal belongings from the White House, are discussed with a touch of humor and sympathy from the hosts.

"He was a man of whom a nation has a right to be proud. He was a saint of humanity whose name will live thousands of years in the legends of future generations."
(65:34) - William Tolstoy (Quoted by Dominic Sandbrook)

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4. The Conspiracy and Manhunt (23:51 - 57:32)

Executing the Conspiracy:

• Booth's Plan: John Wilkes Booth's conspiracy aimed to decapitate the Northern leadership by assassinating Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward alongside Lincoln. However, not all conspirators succeeded in their missions.

• Booth's Flight: After the assassination, Booth fled Ford's Theatre, commandeering a horse and riding through the night despite his injured leg. The Union Army initiated an extensive manhunt, with a substantial reward offered for his capture.

• Encounters and Arrests:

  • Ned Spangler and Peanut Burrows: Booth sought refuge in the theatre’s premises but ended up abandoning his horse due to discomfort, leading to a series of missteps in his escape.
  • Crossing the Anacostia River: Booth and his associate, David Herold, attempted to cross into Virginia but were constrained by wartime curfews, leading to their eventual interaction with Sergeant Silas Cobb.

• Conspirator Downfalls: George Azerot failed to assassinate Vice President Johnson, while David Herold managed to attack Secretary Seward but was caught shortly after.

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5. Booth’s Final Moments and Death (57:32 - 62:40)

The Confrontation at Locust Hill:

• Booth’s Captured State: Severely injured, Booth sought refuge at Richard Garrett's Locust Hill Farm in Virginia. Despite initial hospitality, Garrett's family grew suspicious of Booth's erratic behavior and false claims of being a Confederate soldier.

• Raid and Capture: Union detectives, led by Luther Byron Baker, surrounded the farm. After a tense standoff involving threats to burn the barn, Booth attempted to surrender but was fatally shot by Sergeant Boston Corbett.

• Booth’s Last Words: As he lay dying, Booth whispered:

  "Tell my mother that I did it for my country."
  (55:56) - John Wilkes Booth

Sergeant Boston Corbett’s Role:

• Background: Corbett, a former Confederate soldier turned Union trooper, had a troubled past, including self-castration and time in a Confederate prison camp. His definitive shot ended Booth’s life.

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6. Reflections on Lincoln’s Legacy and Impact (62:40 - End)

Debating the "What Ifs":

Tom and Dominic delve into the counterfactual scenario of Lincoln surviving the assassination, challenging the popular narrative that his continued leadership would have averted significant negative developments in American history, such as the Vietnam War and entrenched segregation.

• Critique of Mythologizing Lincoln: Dominic argues that attributing Lincoln’s survival to a universally positive trajectory oversimplifies historical complexities.

• Lincoln’s True Legacy: Despite his imperfections and political struggles, Lincoln is lauded for his moral vision and pragmatic leadership. The conversation highlights Tolstoy’s high praise of Lincoln as a "saint of humanity."

"Lincoln was a man of whom a nation has a right to be proud... He lived and died a hero and is a great character. He will live as long as the world lives."
(65:34) - William Tolstoy (Quoted by Dominic Sandbrook)

Final Thoughts:

The hosts conclude by affirming Lincoln's rightful reputation as a pivotal and virtuous leader, while acknowledging the nuanced and multifaceted aspects of his presidency and assassination's impact on American history.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• Dominic Sandbrook on Booth’s Justification:

  "I do not repent the blow I struck I may before my God."
  (00:00)

• John Wilkes Booth’s Last Words:

  "Tell my mother that I did it for my country."
  (55:56)

• William Tolstoy’s Praise of Lincoln:

  "Of all the great national heroes and statesmen of history, Lincoln is the only real giant... He was a saint of humanity whose name will live thousands of years in the legends of future generations."
  (65:34)

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Conclusion

In this comprehensive exploration of Abraham Lincoln's assassination and its immediate aftermath, Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook provide a vivid, detailed narration enriched with analysis and reflective insights. The episode not only recounts the historical events with precision but also engages with the enduring questions about Lincoln's legacy and the broader implications of his untimely death on the trajectory of the United States.

Transcript

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Thank you for listening to the Rest is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad free listening, early access to series and membership of our much loved chat community, go to thereestishory.com and join the club that is thereestishistory.com right now at the Home Depot you'll find storage solutions made to fit your needs. Grab an HDX Tuff tote to protect your tools or keep your sports equipment contained with reinforced snap fit lids. Or stack up and make better use of your space with bins and totes built to last. Whatever your story, we've got the gear to keep it organized and protected at the Home Depot. How doers Get More done this episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. From streaming to shopping, prime helps you get more out of your passions. So whether you're a fan of true crime or prefer a nail biting novel from time to time, with services like Prime Video, Amazon Music and fast free delivery, prime makes it easy to get more out of whatever you're into or getting into. Visit Amazon.comprime to learn more. After being hunted like a dog through swamps, woods and last night being chased by gunboats till I was forced to return wet, cold and starving with every man's hand against me, I am here in despair. And why? For doing what Brutus was honored for what made William Tell a hero. And yet I, for striking down a greater tyrant than they ever knew, am looked upon as a common cut throat. My action was purer than either of theirs. One hoped to be great himself, the other had not only his country's, but his own wrongs to avenge. I hoped for no gains, I knew no private wrong. I struck for my country, and that alone a country groaned beneath this tyranny and prayed for this end. And yet now behold the cold hand they extend to me. I do not repent the blow I struck I may before my God.

[Tom Holland]

So that was John Wilkes Booth. Great Shakespearean actor Dominic you described him in the previous episode as being very much the Brian Blessed school of acting, and he wrote that in his journal on 21 April 1865, while he was on the run for the murder of Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States. And the murder of Lincoln, often framed as being one of the most consequential crimes in American history. People say that it changed the course of the destiny of the United States. People ponder whether the dark and tragic story of American race relations throughout reconstruction into the 1950s and 60s. Might it have been different? Might the story of the former rebel south have been transformed? Had Lincoln lived. And I guess we'll be trying to answer those questions later in today's episode, but for now, you left us at the end of the previous episode on an absolute cliffhanger. President and Mrs. Lincoln are sitting there enjoying a brilliant British comedy about an American hick who has come to lay claim to a stately home in England. I mean, couldn't be more fun. And then suddenly, the party pooper John Wilkes Booth steps into Lincoln's box.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Well, or does he leap, Tom? Because we discussed before that he loves leaping and capering when he's on stage. And that was the one thing, I think, that was missing from an excellent rendition of your reading from Booth's journal. So, just to remind people where we are, we are in ford's Theatre on 10th street in Washington, D.C. on the evening of Good Friday, the 4th of April, 1865, five days after Robert E Lee surrendered at Appomattox. The city is en fete. Everybody's celebrating. Gas illuminations, great flags everywhere, all this. The theater is very busy. The people in the theatre, interestingly, there's politicians, there's tourists, there are a lot of soldiers, Union soldiers. Some of them are actually people who were at Appomattox who are now on leave, officers on leave and have come to the city to celebrate. A lot of them have been drawn to the theatre because they've heard that President and Mrs. Lincoln are coming with General and Mrs. Grant. They didn't show up because they basically hate Mrs. Lincoln.

[Tom Holland]

Or maybe there's a more suspicious reason.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, Tom believes they're part of the conspiracy, which is an unusual view, but I'm happy to indulge it. The Lincolns had arrived half an hour late. They're in the presidential box, decorated with American flags and a portrait of the tax traitor George Washington and dominic.

[Tom Holland]

It's about 12ft above the stage, isn't it?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So were.

[Tom Holland]

Were you, for instance, to be very proficient at leaping? That might be a detail that would interest you.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Might be a temptation, mightn't it?

[Tom Holland]

Just setting that up for later in the show.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So if you went into the box, you would see on your left, Abraham Lincoln in a rocking chair, then his wife Mary in a smaller chair and their friend Clara Harris in an armchair. And behind them, lounging on the sofa, Clara Harris's fiance, Major Rathbone. Now, they have been enjoying the play a lot. They've been laughing. People have been watching Lincoln, of course, all the time, and they've seen him sort of sometimes, you know, in a reverie, lost in thought. Not surprising, given the burdens he has to carry.

[Tom Holland]

And could I just ask about Mrs. Lincoln? I mean, aside from the murder of her husband, does she enjoy the play?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

I think she did enjoy the play. People said they noticed her smiling a great deal. And this is unusual from her because usually, as we discussed last time, she's something of a spitfire, always haranguing the wives of generals and stuff and having tantrums and storming off. So she doesn't do any of that on this occasion, which is nice. So it's a lovely evening out for her, I think, up to a certain point. Twice Lincoln is interrupted by messages during the play. And these are brought by a White House messenger called Charles Forbes, who is sitting outside the entrance to the box. But neither of them are important enough to draw him away, so he's carrying on watching.

[Tom Holland]

What a shame.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Now a lot of the audience are watching Lincoln the whole time. So on the far side of the dress circle there is a local saloon owner called James Ferguson. He's a huge Ulysses S. Grant fan who was very excited about the thought of seeing Grant and was disappointed that he didn't turn up. But he's been watching Lincoln's box through his girlfriend's opera glasses. And so whenever Lincoln leans forward to see the play this boat, Ferguson can see him very clearly. And just after 10 o', clock, Ferguson notices a man with dark hair and a thick moustache, very smartly dressed man, holding his hat in his hand, walking along the back of the circle towards the Presidential box. And the man gets to the door of the box and then he stops as if he's waiting for something. This man is the man you ventriloquized so amusingly, and that is John Wilkes Booth, as we discussed last time, born in Maryland, a white supremacist, big fan of slavery, big fan of the Confederacy, well known Shakespearean actor who has not fought for the south because he's a massive mummy's boy and promised his mother he wouldn't join the army.

[Tom Holland]

But also because his career has been flourishing.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yes, his career has been flourishing. He's a successful actor. He has been alarmed, horrified by the news of Lee's surrender. But he had learned early that day that Lincoln would be at the theater we discussed last time. He's hired a horse, he's smuggled a package out of the city with Confederate agents, and he has contacted three associates of his from a long standing scheme to kidnap Lincoln. And these associates were a German carriage repairman called George Azerot, a pharmacist. Assistant called David Herold and a Confederate secret agent called Lewis Powell. Now, I said last time that he briefed them about the plan, but I didn't say what the plan was. Now is the time to unveil, Tom, the conspiracy. The plan is that Azeroth will kill Vice President Andrew Johnson and Lewis Powell will kill Secretary of State William Seward. In other words, their plan is to decapitate the Northern leadership. Obviously they don't think the Confederates are going to miraculously win the war, but maybe this will result in more favourable terms for the Confederacy now that the war is over.

[Tom Holland]

And Dominic, there is no hint that this is coming from the Confederate leadership itself.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

People have talked a lot about this. Some historians think perhaps there is some greater involvement with the Confederate sort of secret service.

[Tom Holland]

No smoking gun?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

No, there's never been a smoking gun. And I think it's very unlikely that Jefferson Davis or the Confederate absolute high command would have authorised this, actually, because I think they know at this point the war is over, so there's nothing.

[Tom Holland]

In it for them.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Not really. So let's return to that scene outside the box. The messenger, Charles Forbes is still there. The White House messenger, John Wilkes Booth arrives at the box and he hands Forbes a card. We don't know what was on the card, but we do know Booth is of course very well known. So Forbes probably assumed that the Lincolns had asked to see him or that, you know, a well known actor arrives at the President's box, let's say, I don't know. Matthew McFadyn arrives at Keir Starmer's box at the. Does Keir Starmer have any cultural enthusiasms at all? Probably not.

[Tom Holland]

I think if they're famous, he does.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Really? I've been very clear about this, Tom. I do.

[Tom Holland]

I'm very clear. I love Taylor Swift. I will accept a freebie to go and see her.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Brilliant to have Kier Starmer on the show. Actually. He was on your brother's podcast, wasn't he?

[Tom Holland]

He was. My favorite war film is the Longest Day.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Is that what he said?

[Tom Holland]

No, I can't remember what it was.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Bridge Too Far would surely not express a preference out of terror that he'd say the wrong thing. Right. Anyway, Charles Forbes allows Booth to open the outer door and so now Booth goes in. He's in this little vestibule outside Lincoln's box. He bars the outer door behind him with a piece of wood and then he puts his eye to a peephole into Lincoln's box. Now, it's often said that he had bored the peephole earlier that day. In fact, there was a very, very detailed and actually brilliant book on John Wilkes Booth by Michael Kaufman called American Brutus. One for you, Tom. And in that book, Kaufman quotes the son of the theater manager, Harry Ford, who wrote in 1962 that Booth had nothing to do with this peephole. It was always there that the theatre manager had bored it himself, so that bodyguards, if they were there, could see into the presidential box and that Lincoln's entourage could see what he was up to. Anyway, Booth looks through this hole and you can see there are four people in the box. There's Link in the rocking chair. There's Mary, there's Clara Harris. There's Major Rathbone on the sofa. And now Booth waits. He doesn't go in. He has thought about this quite carefully. He has an escape plan. He knows the moment he wants to strike because he's an actor. He knows this play very well. He knows there will be a perfect moment when there's gonna be a great punchline. The stage will be almost deserted, everybody will be laughing, and he can make his move.

[Tom Holland]

And this is the hilarious stretch of dialogue that you rendered in the previous episode. But it's so funny that I think we should hear it again.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Oh, wonderful. So it's 10:15. We're act three, scene two, and Harry Hawke, maybe, Tom, you'd like to do Harry Hawk, and I'll play Mrs. Mount Chessington. So Harry Hawk is playing the American cousin, and he's arguing with this woman called Mrs. Mount Chessington. So Lady Bracknell figure, and she storms off the stage and she says, I am aware, Mr. Trenchard, you are not used to the manners of good society. Don't over. Manners of good society, eh?

[Tom Holland]

Well, I guess you know enough to.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Turn you inside out, old gal, you sock dologizing old man trap you. And everybody roars with laughter at this absolutely tremendous repartee, as they would. It is at that moment, Tom, that John Wilkes Booth, he opens the door of the box. He takes out a Derringer pistol from his pocket. He takes a single step towards Abraham Lincoln's rocking chair. He levels it at the back of Lincoln's head and he fires.

[Tom Holland]

Point blank range.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Point blank range. Now, as soon as the shot rings out, Major Rathbone leaps to his feet. He suddenly realizes what's happening. There's a dark figure in the box. He lunges towards the figure, and then he shrinks back because he sees the glint of a knife in Booth's other hand. And Booth. So he's fired with one hand, and then with the other hand, he strikes with the dagger into Rathbone's arm and he slices through his arm. Rathbone falls backwards towards the sofa. This is all in a second. The two women are so stunned, they're obviously deafened by the shot and just amazed they have not really reacted. So this is when Booth pulls off the really sort of remarkable bit of his plan. He strides past them to the rail of the box. He puts one hand on the rail, and then he vaults over the rail, down 12ft and lands on the stage. Now, it's often said that he caught a spur in his boot on one of the flags decorating the box. Actually, only one witness, this bloke that I mentioned earlier with the opera glasses, James Ferguson. He's the only person who said he saw this happen. Nobody else said they saw it.

[Tom Holland]

Does he hurt himself at all?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yes. So he definitely does. Some accounts say because he did this, caught his spur, he then fell very awkwardly onto the stage. I think if you'd caught your spur, you'd fall much more awkwardly than he falls. I think he falls. He lands slightly awkwardly. It's quite a big drop. And he effectively fractures his leg, as we will discover. But the interesting thing is, at this point, there are many, many accounts of what happened from witnesses at the time. None of them tell the same thing. So for people who listen to our JFK series, who, you know, were struck by the discrepancies in the eyewitness account, this is exactly the same thing as it is so often in history. There's nothing unique about the Kennedy murder. People didn't even agree on what Booth said. Harry Hawke, the actor who is just about to walk off stage, he was convinced that as Booth was preparing to jump, he shouted the words, sic semper tyrannis. Hawk said, Then he jumped onto the stage, he straightened up, he raised his dagger over his head and he shouted, the south shall be free. But other witnesses said, no, that's not right at all. He only shouted, sic semper tyrannis. So always to tyrants. Once he'd landed on the stage, he and other people said, well, he didn't say that at all. He said, the south shall be avenged. Or some people just said, he said, I've done it, and then ran off the stage. So, you know, if you read a definitive account, you know, you paid your money and takes your choice, really, there's no reason to trust one version rather than another.

[Tom Holland]

I suppose the one big difference with The Kennedy assassination is that if he shot Lincoln at point blank range, there's no question about who did it and where the bullet came from.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Exactly. Not at all. The only thing that everybody agrees, everyone really agrees, is that once he's landed on the stage and said whatever he said, he turned, he ran into the wings, into the darkness and he vanished from sight.

[Tom Holland]

Say he ran, but he's fractured his leg perhaps, or so he's fired by.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Adrenaline, or fired by adrenaline, I think, because you'll, as you'll find out, he doesn't just run, he then rides for hours. So we'll pick up when John Wilkes Booth story in the second half, but for now, let's stay in the theater. Most people's reaction is total shock and confusion. Now, at first, most people thought it was part of the play or they thought it was a slightly, yeah, slightly tasteless stunt to mark Abraham Lincoln's presence or a lot of people actually said, I thought something had fallen over at the back. I heard a big bang and I thought something like fallen over in the auditorium, had a bit of the stage fallen over. You know, who knows what it was. The theater staff, who have been half watching through kind of windows and things, they were stunned when they saw Booth, of all people, on stage. One of them actually burst out. He said, by God, is John Booth crazy?

[Tom Holland]

So it's kind of like Brad Pitt suddenly appearing on the stage and waving a gun.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Exactly. Now then they heard people, some screaming from the President's box. When people hear screaming, then they panic and people start to run. So there's a bit of a stampede. Some people are charging onto the stage, trying to get onto the stage after John Wilkes Booth. Some just running out of the theater because they think there's general attack. Other people trying to get into Lincoln's box. In the box, Mary Lincoln is bent over her husband. She's sobbing, she's saying, talk to me, talk to me. All this because he's slumped in his chair.

[Tom Holland]

Are you going to say something horrid about her now or are you going to feel a measure of pity for this poor woman?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

No, I feel sorry for her. I feel sorry for her. She's not really well treated, actually, as Lincoln is dying, as we shall see. You feel sorry for her, don't you, Tom? I do, yeah. Lovely flex very well on you. Major Rathbone is in shock.

[Tom Holland]

He's had his arm chopped off, hasn't he?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Basically, it's a big slice down his arm and there's blood soaking into his sleeve. Now, even Though he's losing a lot of blood, he has the presence of mind to try and open the door of the box. And he realizes that Booth has jammed it. So there are other people hammering on the door. So between them, they managed to get the door open and people burst into the box. Now, one of them is a young doctor who's only been qualified for a few weeks, I think, called Charles Leal. He's in his 20s, and he's joined by an older doctor from the Army, a Signal Corps surgeon called Charles Taft. Leo, the younger man, is the first to Lincoln's body. And he finds the President, his comatose, is unconscious, he's breathing, very labored breathing. And interestingly, although it's point blank range, Leal can't actually find the wound at first because it's only a small pistol. And at first, because everybody had seen Booth lifting, waving this bloody knife on stage, they assume that Lincoln has been stabbed.

[Tom Holland]

And it's interesting that, isn't it? I'd never thought that. But of course, Caesar had been murdered with a dagger.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

So for a Shakespeare actor to stand on a stage and wave a dagger is much more natural than for him, say, to wave a gun.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, I guess so. I guess so. I hadn't thought that actually, that, that's the thing that he waves.

[Tom Holland]

The semiotics of it is much more Shakespearean.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

It is absolutely. It is much more classical. So with some soldiers, Leo gets Lincoln to the floor. They still can't find the wound. They're cutting off his shirt, assuming he's been stabbed. And then Leo runs his hand through Lincoln, Lincoln's hair, and he finds a bullet hole at the back of his head, a small bullet hole with a swelling around it, and the blood's already started to clot. And as Leo ruffles through, kind of Lincoln's hair, the clot opens up and blood pours out. But at that point, Lincoln starts to breathe more easily. Now, at this point, the soldiers are already saying, we've got to get the President back to the White House. And the surgeon, The army surgeon, Dr. Taft, steps in, he says, listen, I know what I'm talking about. We cannot take him there. You can't move him a long way. Where we should take him is the nearest house.

[Tom Holland]

And they want to do this because they feel it would be vulgar for a president to die in a theater. They already know he's basically dead.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

This is so interesting, this is Michael Kaufman's theory, because Kaufman points out at this point, just to be clear, both of these doctors are in no doubt whatsoever that Lincoln is a dead man. There is no way, if you've been shot in the back of the head at point blank range that you will possibly survive. So they know he's dying, but they don't want him to die on Good Friday in a playhouse. It's so indecorous.

[Tom Holland]

Indecorous is the word, yeah.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So they organize a bearer party and they take Lincoln out of the box, down the stairs, through the sort of foyer, and across the road to the nearest house, which is a lodging house, ironically, obviously, because it's close to the theater, very popular with actors, run by a German tailor called William Peterson. And they take him to a back bedroom on the ground floor. And Lincoln is such a long man, very tall man, that he won't fit on a bed. So they have to lie him kind of diagonally across the bed. Now, Mary Lincoln kind of trails behind them. She's in a total daze, not surprisingly, in a state of shock. So are Clara Harris and this poor bloke, Major Rathbone, who's basically comes very close to death because Booth had actually severed an artery and his.

[Tom Holland]

His arm been patched up by this point.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

His arm is eventually patched up, but actually Mary Lincoln could never look at Clara and Major Rathburn again. I think she associated them with that night. Anyway, the soldiers eventually get Mary Lincoln across the street. And for a time she just stands on her own in the front parlor, kind of just standing in shock.

[Tom Holland]

I feel really sorry for her. She's lost her son now she's lost her husband. And all you can do is moan about the fact that she's occasionally a little bit sniffy about very attractive women riding with her husband. I'm totally Team Mrs. Lincoln.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

I moaned in the last episode, but not in this one. She goes down the hall to her husband. People described her sobbing in. In quote, extreme anguish. There's blood and brain tissue slowly leaking out of his head. But she is kissing his head nonetheless, and she's begging him to speak. Now, at this point, tons of people have crowded into the room. Above all, the Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, who takes charge. They all are very clear at this point that Lincoln will die. They call for his son Robert, who's 21. His oldest son, he's been serving on General Grant's staff as an army captain. He breaks down, but he. He feels he has to sort of present a stoical. You know, he mans up as it.

[Tom Holland]

Way, he's now the head of the house.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Head of the house. And he Composes himself and he actually says, I want to get one of my mother's friends and who's a senator's wife, called Elizabeth Dixon to come over here and to calm my mother down. But Mary keeps kind of bursting back into the room and begging her husband to wake up and live for the sake of the children, which actually what Franz Ferdinand said to Sophie, if you remember, when they were dying in Sarajevo. Now we have the doctor's notes, one of the doctor's notes. He made quite detailed notes of Lincoln's sort of decline across the night. He was very quiet. He's just. He's unconscious, breathing with great difficulty. They're really just all waiting for the end. They called for a chaplain from the Senate, the Senate chaplain, who's called Dr. Gurley. And he said his last prayers at half past three. But Lincoln lived for another three hours or so. At seven o' clock in the morning, his breathing became very ragged and they all knew the end was near. And at that point, Mary came back in. She realized he was about to die, and she had a kind of shrieking fit and threw herself onto the ground. And Edwin Stanton, who does not share your view, I think it's fair to say, Mrs. Lincoln, he went ballistic and he shouted, take that woman out and do not let her in here again. Oh, right.

[Tom Holland]

So his approach to the grieving widow is very much yours.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

I've never been in that circumstance with a grieving widow, Tom. I mean.

[Tom Holland]

I mean, I hope for the sake of a grieving widow that you're not.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Mrs. Dixon took Mary out. Mary is sobbing very loudly and actually blaming herself. She says, oh, my God, and have I given my husband to die? Because, of course, she'd persuaded him to go to the theater.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah, it's a tragic story. I think she's the real hero of this.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Well, we'll see. 7:22. Lincoln takes his final breath. And then that's the end. And Edwin Stanton, with properly Hollywood flair, just says, now he belongs to the ages.

[Tom Holland]

So obviously rehearsed. Captain. My captain.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah. Mary's out of the room at this point. The chaplain goes into the parlour and to tell Mary the news. And she shrieks at him. She says, why didn't you let me know that he was dying? Why didn't you tell me? Girlie says to her, your friends thought it wasn't best. You must be resigned to the will of God. You must be calm and trust in your God and in your friends. Now, Tom, you feel very sorry for Mary, but I have to say after this, she slightly disgraces herself because when she moves out of the White house, she steals 70 packing cases worth of stuff. She steals the silver, the spoons, the carpets and the curtains. She is in fact the Lobelia Sackville Baggins of American history.

[Tom Holland]

I think that's harsh.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

I actually looked up Lobelia Sackville Baggins. Yeah, go on.

[Tom Holland]

No, no, about Mrs. Lincoln in the Bodleian. And I read that she wore mourning for the rest of her life like Queen Victoria. And Queen Victoria wrote a very sympathetic letter to her. And I think it reflects well on Queen Victoria that she was sympathetic. Unlike you who has compared her one of the less appealing figures from Lord of the Rings. And I think listeners will draw their own conclusions from this.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Queen Victoria would have changed the tune if she'd found out that stuff about the silver. If she'd known about the flipping spoons, she'd have changed her mind.

[Tom Holland]

I don't think so.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

For me you say she's the real victim. For me, the saddest part is actually Tad or Taddy. Their son Taddy was 12. We talked about him in the last episode. He had a cleft palate, very serious problems with his speech. So he's had a kind of rough deal generally. He's only recently celebrated his 12th birthday. And he didn't come with them to the play. Cause it's a very boring play for a 12 year old. His tutor had taken him to another theater to see Aladdin. And at one point Mary said, oh, let's send for Taddy. Because his father loves Taddy so much. He will wake up when he hears Taddy's voice. But then she thought better of it. Oh no, poor Taddy. You know he'll be too upset now. Taddy. It's a terrible scene. He's at Aladdin when the theater managers stop the play and announce that the president has been shot. I mean, imagine being Taddy. He is hysterical, of course, and he's taken back to the White House in floods of tears. He seems to have convinced himself overnight that his father would live. So when people start returning to the house the next day, he's saying, where's my pa? Where's my pa? And the chaplain, Reverend Gurley, says, taddy, your PA is dead. And Taddy breaks down, oh, my father is dead. What shall I do? Oh, he says he's begging his mother, don't die, Ma, don't die. I'll be left alone. I'll be left alone. And the next day, well wishes are descending on the house. And Tadi Said to one of them, do you think my father has gone to heaven? I have not a doubt of it, the well worship said. And Taddy said, then I'm glad he's gone there, for he never was happy after he came here to Washington. This was not a good place for him. So I'm just to tie up this bit of the story for the next few days. The crowds and crowds of people sobbing outside the White House. The Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Wells, who's a brilliant source on this, was struck above all by the African Americans, by the black people in the crowds. Their hopeless grief affects me more than almost anything else. Those strong and brave men wept when I met them. Lincoln's funeral was held in the East Room of the White House on the 19th of April, which was actually the anniversary of the very first deaths in the Civil War, deaths which happened when a mob in Baltimore had attacked troops that were heading south to the front from Massachusetts. Lincoln's body lay in state in the Capitol. It was escorted by the 22nd United States Colored Infantry. Again, Gideon Wells wrote about the grief of the black people in the crowd, he said, bewailing the loss of him, whom they regarded as a benefactor and a father. And then his body left the capital two days later for the journey by rail to his home state of Illinois, again escorted by black troops. And the black troops were so grief stricken that sort of VIPs, many of them were moved to tears. The rail journey took two weeks and it was retracing deliberately the journey that Lincoln had made when he became president in 1861. Five million people lined the tracks or queued up to see the coffin when it stopped in various cities, people would wave flags, they'd sing hymns, they lit bonfires. But above all, people are struck by the number of sort of onlookers in floods and floods of tears.

[Tom Holland]

And Dominic, can I ask?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

The fact that Lincoln was killed on Good Friday.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

Do people draw the obvious parallel?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Of course. Lots of stuff about him being a Christlike figure. Absolutely.

[Tom Holland]

So there's a kind of religious dimension to all of this.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

There is a religious dimension. And of course, for example, we talked about African American mourners. You know, African American culture is absolutely steeped in scripture at this point in the 19th century. So, yes, very much.

[Tom Holland]

But also the sense of life coming from death, perhaps.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

I guess so. I guess so. At last, on 3rd May, 1865, the train carrying Abraham Lincoln pulls into Springfield, Illinois, and for the last time, he has come home.

[Tom Holland]

Goodness, Dominic, not a dry eye. In the house. But while all this has been going on, there's a manhunt going on as well. I'm presuming that, Dominic, that we will come to this story and the remarkable fate of John Wilkes Booth. And most excitingly of all, the reappearance on the Rest is history of a top eunuch. So all of that is coming after the break. This episode is brought to you by surfshark. Now, had Mary Queen of Scots been just a little bit more careful with her correspondence, then she might well have avoided becoming a cautionary tale of treason. So she slipped her ciphered letters into beer barrels. Methods today have changed, but the risk of interception, of course, always remains. Your information is more vulnerable than ever, and perhaps especially when it's online trackers and advertisers and apps collecting your data all the time. And if you're using public WI fi, then your activity can be monitored by anyone who is sharing the network that you are on. And this is where surfshark comes in. It's a VPN that encrypts your Internet connection, thereby keeps your personal data secure. So you can also change your digital location, giving you access to your favorite sites and streaming services wherever you are. So protect your data. Browse securely from anywhere. No cipher, no courier, certainly no beer barrel required. Go to surfshark.com trih or you can use the code trih at the checkout to get four extra months of Surfshark VPN plus a 30 day money back guarantee.

[William Dalrymple]

Hello, I'm William Dalrymple.

[Anita Anand]

And I'm Anita Anand. And we're the hosts of another goal hanger show, Empire.

[William Dalrymple]

And we are here to tell you about a recent series we've done on partition.

[Anita Anand]

On the 14th and 15th of August 1947, Pakistan and India announced their independence from the British Empire. But as these nations gained their freedom, their rushed and violent division resulted in the deaths of well over a million people and the forced migration of over 14 million more.

[William Dalrymple]

It's a piece of South Asian history that many people are familiar with. But in this series, we want to explore it alongside four less well known partitions, which continue to affect the region in monumental ways.

[Anita Anand]

Yeah, you're quite right. In one episode, we dissect how Dubai almost became part of modern India. And in another, we're going to unpack the history behind the headlines about the conflict in Kashmir.

[William Dalrymple]

We also explore how the separation of Burma from India is linked to the origin of the Rohingya genocide. And how east and West Pakistan separated in 1971 to create Bangladesh.

[Anita Anand]

So if you'd like to hear more about the five partitions that completely transformed modern Asia and how the weight of the memory of partition has been passed down through the generations, we've left a clip of the series at the end of this episode for you to listen to.

[William Dalrymple]

Hello, I'm William Dalrymple.

[Anita Anand]

And I'm Anita Arnand. And we're the hosts of another goal hanger show, Empire.

[William Dalrymple]

And we are here to tell you about a recent series we've done on partition.

[Anita Anand]

On the 14th and 15th of August, 1947, Pakistan and India announced their independence from the British Empire. But as these nations gained their freedom, their rushed and violent division resulted in the deaths of well over a million people and the forced migration of over 14 million more.

[William Dalrymple]

It's a piece of South Asian history that many people are familiar with. But in this series we want to explore it alongside four less well known partitions which continue to affect the region in monumental ways.

[Anita Anand]

Yeah, you're quite right. In one episode, we dissect how Dubai almost became part of modern India. And in another, we're going to unpack the history behind the headlines about the conflict in Kashmir.

[William Dalrymple]

We also explore how the separation of Burma from India is linked to the origin of the Rohingya genocide and how east and West Pakistan separated in 1971 to create Bangladesh.

[Anita Anand]

So if you'd like to hear more about the five partitions that completely transformed transformed modern Asia and how the weight of the memory of partition has been passed down through the generations, we've left a clip of the series at the end of this episode for you to listen to.

[Tom Holland]

Hello, welcome back to the Rest Is History. And this is the second presidential assassination we've done on the show. We've done JFK already, and when we did that, some of our American listeners, I think in particular complained that you had treated the conspiracy theories with such contempt. Now, I have already suggested for this an excellent conspiracy theory that Ulysses S. Grant, who very suspiciously bailed out of the evening that Saul Lincoln shot at the theatre, that he might have been behind it. I've also suggested that maybe Jefferson Davis was behind it. I mean, Andrew Johnson, the vice president who now becomes president, maybe he was behind it. So lots of conspiracy theories to deal with here. What do you say to them?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

I don't think we need them, Tom, because we have a conspiracy already.

[Tom Holland]

Right?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

There absolutely was a conspiracy in this case, and we don't need to put more people in it because we know who was in it.

[Tom Holland]

But it's kind of more Fun to do that, isn't it?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

I suppose it is. I mean, to pile people into it, but just to deal with the conspiracy that actually existed.

[Tom Holland]

So the others definitely didn't exist?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

No, I don't think they did. I think the one possibility is that there were more people who knew about.

[Tom Holland]

It in the sort of Confederacy.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

In the Confederacy, because there is a.

[Tom Holland]

Link to kind of the Confederate secret Service in Washington, isn't there?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

There's a sort of underworld of Confederate sympathizers and agents, and as we will see, they do help the conspirators. So definitely there is a little network. How far it goes is hard to say. The plan, as I've said, was to decapitate the American government. Now, it didn't work out quite as John Wilkes Booth had hoped. So one bloke, George Azerot, who was the German repair man, he was supposed to kill Vice President Johnson. He went to Johnson's hotel. He thought he'd have a quick drink to stiffen his nerves. And then he just thought, actually, soda. I'll just stay in the bar. He completely loses his nerve. He just spends the evening drinking in the bar, and then he wanders the streets. He tries to throw his knife away. He's spotted by a woman throwing a knife down the drain or something, and a few days later, he's arrested. Now, the other bit of the conspiracy was much more successful. This was the Maryland pharmacist's assistant, David Herold, and the Confederate secret agent, Lewis Powell. They went to Lafayette Square, which is the house of Secretary of State William Seward. Seward had had a carriage accident, and he's recovering in bed. Lewis Powell manages to bluff his way inside. He says to the staff, I'm bringing medicine for Seward from his personal doctor. He goes up to his bedroom, he pulls out his knife, he slashes at Seward's neck. But Seward is partly protected because he's wearing a kind of neck brace, sort of splint arrangement because of his carriage accident. So he's protected from the knife wound. There's then an awful lot of scuffling.

[Tom Holland]

And stabbing, I gather, because, again, I was just looking at this in the. In the break.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

Apparently he stabs five people.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Exactly. Exactly.

[Tom Holland]

He's just stab, stab, stab.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

More people are piling into the room. And this guy Powell is, like, scuffling his way down, back down the stairs. He manages to get out of the house. And he leaves the house with the excellent phrase. He's shouting, I'm mad, I'm Mad. Do you think he is? No, but I think it works because he does get out of the house. Oh.

[Tom Holland]

That's why he's saying it. It's not a confession.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

No, I don't think so. Have you ever read that story about. I don't know whether they can repeat this on the show, Anthony Burgess, you know. Yeah. The novelist once said to Kingsley Amis, are you not worried about being attacked in London by ruffians, by muggers? And Kingsley Amis said, no. And Burgess said, well, I've got a brilliant plan if ever I'm attacked by muggers. I think about this all the time. He said, I carry a sword stick with me. If anyone approaches me in the street, I draw the sword stick and I shout at people. I've got cancer.

[Tom Holland]

Goodness. I should try that when I walk down Brixton Hill.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Exactly. You should. Yeah. I do that all the time.

[Tom Holland]

Right.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So anyway, Lewis Powers got out shouting, I'm mad. And he lurks around the city in a very ill advised way, I think it's fair to say, and was arrested on the evening the 17th. So just a few days later now, all three of these men were convicted and hanged, as was Mary Surratt, the woman who ran the Confederate safe house in Washington.

[Tom Holland]

And she's apparently the first woman to be executed in American history.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Really?

[Tom Holland]

Apparently.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So what have they been doing for all those previous decades? Why had they not executed more women? So women had been incredibly well behaved until that point.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah. Or dealt with very softly.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, dealt with very softly. Right. Well, John Wilkes Booth is not hanged, unlike this woman. So what happened to him? As you said earlier, there's obviously no doubt that he's Lincoln's killer. He's shot him in full view of all these people and then jumped onto the stage. Many of these people actually know him by sight right away. Therefore, the police are looking for him. They know he almost certainly will have gone south, because any sane person would have tried to cross the Potomac river into Virginia and then to go south in Virginia and to get past the Union lines into the Confederacy.

[Tom Holland]

But that's where he obviously goes wrong, isn't it? He should have headed for Canada because that's the last thing his pursuers would have expected him to do.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

That's true. Head to, like, the home of abolitionism, Massachusetts or something. Yeah, that would surprise people. Anyway, even before midnight and the night of Lincoln's assassination, the Union army commanders have sent orders to mobilize troops around the city, to seal off the roads leading south, intercept river traffic and so on the Secretary of War, Stanton sends a dispatch to the newspapers and he sends instructions to the front lines. Don't let anybody pass through the front lines of Virginia. They produce wanted posters. You can see them online. The price on Booth's head was $100,000, an astronomical amount of money in those days. Let the stain of innocent blood be removed from the land by the arrest and punishment of the murderers, all this kind of thing. But the days go by and there is no sign of him. So what has happened to him? Well, we actually know what happened to him. They don't know. But we know when Booth had left the stage, he had gone down this unlit passage that led to the back door of the theater. Of course, he knew the theatre really well, so he knows where he was going. Now, remember I said before that he had rented this mare, and the mare, this horse, is waiting for him in the alley behind the theatre.

[Tom Holland]

And Dominic, also in the previous episode, we mentioned how some really top American names will be featuring in the second episode, and listeners should prepare themselves for what is to come.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, Booth, before going to the theatre, approached a stage carpenter called Ned Spangler and said, but there's better. Could you hold my hair for me? And Spangler said, all right. And then as soon as Booth was out of sight, Spangler didn't want it to get rid of this horse, and he gave the horse to a junior person at the theatre called Peanut Burrows. So Peanut Burrows is now looking after this horse. Anyway, Booth bursts out of the back door of the theater, sort of out of the fire exit. The horse is waiting, then is startled and tries to kind of pull away, but Booth manages to kind of clamber into the saddle anyway. And it's a very sort of cinematic moment. Just as the first pursuers are coming out of the door behind him, he spurs the horse and rides off down this alley into the darkness. And he clearly traveled very quickly because by about 11:30, he has reached the wooden drawbridge across the Anacostia river, which is by the U.S. naval Yard. The bridge was guarded by Union troops, now under wartime regulations, because, remember, one of the really remarkable things about the American Civil War is that the Union capital, Washington, is effectively a frontline city. So because of the wartime regulations, there was a curfew and you couldn't enter or leave the city after 9 o' clock at night. So Booth turns up at 11:40 and a guy called Sergeant Silas Cobb is called out and is told there's a rider trying to get across the bridge. And Booth gives His name? He says, my name is Booth. I live in Charles County, Maryland, and I want to go across the bridge home. And Cobb says, what about the curfew? Do you know about the curfew?

[Tom Holland]

And by this point, there isn't a kind of telegraph or anything. So they haven't been notified?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

No, they haven't been notified. Exactly. And Booth says, oh, I didn't know about the curfew. I haven't been into town for ages, so I didn't know about it. Now, Sergeant Cobb hesitates. He finds it weird that the horse has been ridden very hard. So you were asking, could Booth run with his fractured leg? Not only can he run, he can gallop. He has ridden the horse hard. But he's struck by the fact that Booth is very well turned out. He actually comments on his nicely sort of quaffed hair and his manicured nails.

[Tom Holland]

His pomaded mustache.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Exactly. And so Cobb says, well, this guy's obviously, you know, he wouldn't lie. And he says, all right, fine, go across, but you have to walk your horse across the bridge. Which Booth does. A few moments later, a second horseman arrives. This is Booth's co conspirator, the pharmacist bloke, David Herold. And he says, I'm going home to Charles county, funnily enough, as well. And Cobb at this point, thinks, this is kind of peculiar. And he says to this bloke, well, why didn't you leave earlier? And Herold says, you know, there's been a lot of parties in the city. I stopped to see a woman on Capitol Hill, and I couldn't get off before. And the sergeant thinks, actually, do you know that that is quite plausible? You know, everyone's having a party. He might have shacked up with some woman, and you're not going to make it up. And also, the war's kind of over now. Who cares? Leah's been beaten, so it doesn't really matter. And so he lets them go. And so by midnight, both of them across the Anacostia river, and they're heading into Southern Maryland. Now, the first place they head for is the tavern owned by this Confederate agent, or suspected Confederate agent, Mary Surratt. And it's in the village of Surrattsville, which has, I believe, since been renamed Clinton because they didn't want to name it after Confederate traitors. Now, remember, Booth had given her a package earlier that day, and now he picks it up from the tavern, and it contains some binoculars and two carbines, rifles.

[Tom Holland]

This is very Lee Harvey Oswald, isn't it?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, it is. People always carrying curtain rods in American assassinations. They love it. They love it. Ridiculous names and, like, brown paper packages that could be rifles. Yeah. Now, the thing about Booth's leg, his leg is now causing him great pain. And about 4 o' clock in the morning, he goes to corn on a local doctor called Samuel Mudd, of course he is, who's a keen Confederate supporter and was part of his kidnapping scheme. And Mudd says, oh, my goodness, you fractured your calf bone. And he makes a splint and he gets him some crutches, and he says, you two, like Booth and Herold, can sleep in my house. Then the next day, a Saturday, Mud gets up and he goes and does some errands, and he hears in the town or the village, Abraham Lincoln has been murdered. And he obviously puts two and two together. He comes back to the house and he says, you guys have got to go. Like, I can't have you here any longer. They set off through the countryside. Remember that Booth is kind of limping and is on crutches part of the. The time.

[Tom Holland]

He's still got his opera cloak on and.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, yeah, still dressed as the Phantom of the Opera. They get lost in a swamp and they end up having to beg, ironically, a freed black man called Oswald Swan to help them and guide them through this swamp. And they pay him $12 to guide them to a plantation house owned by another Confederate bloke that they know. And there, this bloke who owns the plantation gets his overseer to take them to a pine thicket in the swamp.

[Tom Holland]

Has there been a film about this?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Surely. I think there's been a series, a Netflix series or something of that kind.

[Tom Holland]

Let's watch it.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

I bet there should clearly be another one, a better one, because this is a great story. So they hide in this pine thicket, and basically their friends and Confederate agents are trying to figure out how to get them across the Potomac river into Virginia. So they wait in this thicket for about four days and nights, I think. And a local Confederate agent called Thomas Jones pitches up every now and again with food and in particular, with newspapers. So Booth has not been able to, you know, like any good actor, he's obsessed with his reviews. He wants to read what people have written about him in the papers. And he had written a letter to the newspapers explaining his reasons that he was the American Brutus. And he's absolutely furious that they haven't printed it, they haven't given him the. The airtime, as it were. And it's at this point that he writes his first journal entry. So this is not the one that you read, it's an earlier one. And he explains, you know, why he did what he did. He said, our cause being lost, something decisive and great must be done. But its failure was owing to others who did not strike for their country with a heart. I struck boldly and not, as the papers say. So he's already defending himself against the critics. I walked with a firm step through a thousand of his friends. Now, here's an interesting thing. I shouted Sikh semper before I fired, not afterwards. Every other account says he shouted Sikh semper tyrannis after he fired.

[Tom Holland]

So do you think his memory is playing tricks on him?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Or possibly his memory is playing tricks on him. Yeah, exactly. In jumping, I broke my leg. I passed all his pickets. I rode 60 miles that night with the bone of my leg tearing the flesh at every jump. I can never repent it. Our country owed all her trouble to him, and God simply made me the instrument of his punishment. There is a definite air of sort of hysteria, I think, about this entry. You know, he's not. He's not thinking terribly clearly, I think it's fair to say. Thursday the 20th. Thomas Jones, the Confederate agent, his reports that Union troops are now scouring the woods in a nearby county. And he tells them they have to move. They have to go across the river. He's got a fishing boat down on the Potomac, and he pushes them off into the night on this fishing boat. It's very foggy. The Potomac at this point is very wide. And they get completely lost. They row, and then they land. And then when day comes, they realize they're basically back where they started, but further away. And they're still on the wrong side of the river. So the next night, Friday the 21st, Saturday the 22nd, they have another go. And they managed to row across this time. And they land, of course, they land somewhere called Gambo Creek in Virginia. In the meantime, this is when Booth has written that second journal entry that you read so splendidly. So the tone here, I think you. You did it in a very brilliant style. Bright and blessed style, I think it's fair to say. But actually, I think he's very bedraggled and miserable at this point. Oh, all this stuff about being hunted by, like, a dog and all this.

[Tom Holland]

So I didn't think through what his motivation was.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, it wasn't method acting. No.

[Tom Holland]

Daniel Day Lewis wouldn't approve of that at all.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

No, he wouldn't I?

[Tom Holland]

I should have prepared for it by spending a week being hunted by dogs through brushwood.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right.

[Tom Holland]

And then I could have done it justice. Oh, I've let you down, Dominic. I'm really sorry.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

You should have recorded the previous episode, which we'd just done, in character as John Wilkes Booth, to prepare you.

[Tom Holland]

I should have done.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Damn. So anyway, he feels very sorry for himself. I'm abandoned with the curse of Cain upon me, when if the world knew my heart, that one blow would have made me great, though I did desire no greatness. And then he says, I have too great a soul to die like a criminal. He thinks a lot of himself. I think it's fair to say he does. So for two days, they continue south, and on the Sunday night, the 23rd, he lets himself down. Behaves very poorly.

[Tom Holland]

What do you mean, he lets himself down?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

He's just shot Abraham Lincoln. Of course he's let himself down. I think worse of him for this, actually. I think worse of him for this because he arrives at the cabin of a freed black family called the Lucases, and he and Herold threaten the father, William Lucas, at knifepoint and drive the whole family into the woods so they can sleep in their cabin.

[Tom Holland]

That is poor.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

It is poor, But, I mean, at.

[Tom Holland]

Least he doesn't kill William Lucas. I agree. He's not coming across well from this.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

It reflects really badly on him. Reflects really badly. I said that. The next day, Monday the 24th, he and Herold meet three Confederate soldiers who lead them to a tobacco farm inevitably called Locust Hill.

[Tom Holland]

This is the world's most American story.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

It is Locust Hill, and it's owned by a man who actually has a reasonable name, Richard Garrett.

[Tom Holland]

That's disappointing.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Booth says, I'm a wounded Confederate soldier. And Garrett says, fine, you can stay. Herold actually goes off with his other Confederate soldiers into the nearby town, which is called Bowling Green.

[Tom Holland]

So Garrett doesn't say, if you're a Confederate soldier, why are you wearing evening dress?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, why are you dressed like the Phantom of the Opera? No, he doesn't, actually. And at first, it's lovely, sweetness and light. So Booth has a nice rest, he has a nice breakfast, and then he plays with Garrett's children on the lawn, so maybe his leg is a bit better. But then things start to unravel. Herold and the soldiers come back to the Garrett farm, to Locust Hill, and they say there's Union cavalry in the area. And Booth panics, and he rushes off to hide in the woods. And at this point, The Garrett family become very suspicious. If he's just an ordinary Confederate soldier, you know, why would he have panicked and run away to the woods? The war's kind of over. You know, there's. It's very low risk, strange behavior. When he finally emerges, they say, are you really in the Confederate Army? He says, oh, yeah, I was in. This is where his acting skills come in. He says, I was in Captain Robinson's company of the 30th Virginia. But as luck would have it, Richard Garrett's son Jack is a Confederate soldier, and he knows that unit, and he knows there is no such captain. So they have a massive argument. And the Garretts eventually say, right, okay, you guys can stay one more night. We're not going to have you in the house. You can stay in the tobacco barn. But the garrats now think that these blokes are probably horse thieves. So they lock the barn door once Booth and Herold are inside. Now, meanwhile, in the nearby town.

[Tom Holland]

What's the nearby town called, Dominic?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Bowling Green.

[Tom Holland]

It's unbelievable.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Officers of the National Detective Police and a detachment of the 16th New York Cavalry have arrived to hunt for the fugitives, and they talk to these three Confederate soldiers who had helped Booth and Herold and basically get the truth out of them. It takes them two hours to ride to Locust Hill Farm, and they arrive at about 2 in the morning. They surround the house, they drag the Garretts out of bed, and they basically say to Richard Garrett, if you don't tell us where these guys are, we will hang you right here. Jack Garrett, this Confederate soldier who's still wearing his Confederate uniform, comes out, and he says, father, just tell them. So they go to the barn, and the detectives send Jack Garrett to speak to the fugitives. Say, come out. They won't come out. Then the chief of the detectives, who's called Luther Byron Baker, he shouts into the barn. He says, surrender. Come out. If you don't come out, I'll burn this barn down. You've got 15 minutes. Herold wants to give up. Booth says, no, no, don't give up. Don't give up. Whispering to him, Luther Byron Baker says, I'm going to start burning this barn down. And Booth shouts back. He says, captain, that's rather rough. I'm nothing but a cripple. I have but one leg. You ought to give me a chance for a fair fight. And Baker says, listen, you got five minutes, and I'm going to burn this bloody barn down. Booth is playing for time, making all sorts of complaints and stuff. And eventually they pile brushwood against the barn and one of them sets it alight. At this point, Herold panics. He runs to the door. Let me out. Let me out. He manages to get out and the troopers grab him and tie him up. So now there's just Booth. And Booth, remember, has a rifle. He has one of his rifles from the tavern. The fire is spreading now across the barn, spreads to the rafters. The barn is lit up with this weird glow. And through the cracks in the timbers, the soldiers can see Booth. As Michael Kaufman says in his book, he's trapped like a wild animal, kind of darting around looking for a place to escape.

[Tom Holland]

And Dominic, it is at this point that the moment long term fans of the rest of history have been looking forward to.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

Because it is now that one of history's top 10 eunuchs.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

Makes his appearance in this series.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yes. Sergeant Boston Corbett, which you would say is an AMA.

[Tom Holland]

I mean, it's a classic American name, but actually is English.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

He's a Londoner. The distinctive thing about Boston Corbett, so he's a trooper there with the cavalry, is that he is literally as mad as a hatter.

[Tom Holland]

Because he is a hatter.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right. He had worked as a milliner in New York and he'd been driven mad by the mercury. I think they used mercury for fur, didn't they? To cure the fur in hats.

[Tom Holland]

We did an episode on that.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah. And he became a religious maniac, that is to say, a Methodist.

[Tom Holland]

Apologies to any Methodist listeners for Dominic's.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Abuse while pursuing his Methodism in Boston, Massachusetts. He castrated himself with a pair of scissors, didn't he?

[Tom Holland]

He did.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So. I mean, it's a whole scissors theme actually, in our show, because Remember Charles the 12th of Sweden cut his own foot open with some scissors.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

But this is much more extreme. He unmanned himself with these scissors. Then he enlisted in the Union army, became a prisoner of war at Andersonville Prison. Great sort of notorious Confederates prison camp. And then he was exchanged just in time to serve in the detachment sent to capture Booth. So Boston Corbett is looking through the cracks in the timbers and he sees Booth raise his rifle and move towards the door. Now, almost certainly Booth was surrendering, was planning to surrender. I think their barn is on fire. Boston Corbett just fired. He fired through the gaps in the timbers, his revolver. And Booth is down.

[Tom Holland]

And Dominic, there's never been any kind of notion that he's a kind of Jack Ruby figure employed to silence him.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Working for Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant.

[Tom Holland]

That's not part of conspiracy theory.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Law, I think only by you, Tom.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah, I mean write in if there is a conspiracy theory along that line.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

This is American history, therefore there are almost certainly some mad theories out there, I would imagine. Anyway, maybe that bloke they carry out is not John Wilkes Booth. Maybe the real John Wilkes Booth is somewhere else. Who knows? Anyway, they carry him out. Boston Corbett has shot him in the neck. The bullet went through his neck and through his spinal column. So he's dying. One of the detectives who has the excellent name, Everton Conger. Everton. Oh, what is it with these names?

[Tom Holland]

There's a eunuch and somebody with the.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Name of Conger, Boston Corbett and Everton Congress. There's far too many surnames in those names. That's four people.

[Tom Holland]

They could be a crime fighting duo. The Unicorn, the Conga. Solving crimes in Reconstruction America.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Okay. Everton Conger kneels over him. The Booth whispers, Tell my mother that I did it for my country. Tell my mother that I die for my country. So he's a mummy's boy, right to the end. And it took hours for him to die. He kept repeating that line about his mother and his country. But then as dawn breaks again, perfect for Hollywood cinematographer. As dawn breaks, he whispers, useless, useless. And then he dies. That's the end of John Wilkes Booth. Now the thing is, his story is so rich, actually this book that I mentioned by Michael Kaufman, American Brutus is brilliant. He thinks the key to Booth is that he was an actor. That basically he lived in a world of make believe that his identity as a Southern gentleman was a complete fiction. He'd never lived in the south properly. He came from a border state. He'd never had a great success in the south. All his success was in the North.

[Tom Holland]

He's basically a Yankee.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, he's invented this fantasy life for himself and as Kaufman says, he constructed a dramatic Persona for himself rather than accept the truth that he was a hot headed loser who only talked while others gave their lives. His title is American Brutus. And of course the great irony is that John Wilkes Booth dreamt of being Brutus, but it never occurred to him that Brutus was a failure. Yeah, that Brutus turned Caesar into a martyr and that actually his actions hastened the end of the Roman Republic. That he destroyed his own cause. And of course that's what John Wilkes Booth does to some degree. Now the real question that hangs over all this is, which is a shame to be asking this question after we've spent a lot of time on this. So did it matter? Is it of any importance and of Course, a lot of American listeners will say that it mattered enormously, because as with John F. Kennedy, you know, with John F. Kennedy, there is this sort of fantasy. If Kennedy lives, you don't get Vietnam. You don't get the Vietnam War and the sort of darker turn of the late 60s and Nixon and everything that follows. And the fantasy that's so common in Lincoln's death is Lincoln lives and the south is beaten. But Lincoln controls Reconstruction. Black Americans are given the vote. The Confederates never regain control of the Southern states. There is no segregation, the Jim Crow laws of the 20th century. That actually all is sweetness and light. And personally, I find this unbelievably unconvincing and implausible. I think, first of all, because like the Kennedy sort of fantasies, it massively exaggerates the power of the presidency. What actually happens is Reconstruction ends up being a huge power struggle between the White House and Congress, which Congress actually wins, and Lincoln's successor, Andrew Johnson, ends up being impeached.

[Tom Holland]

So there's a real irony there that Lincoln is murdered for being a tyrant, for being a Caesar.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

But there's actually the problem that he would have faced is that he's not nearly autocratic enough.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Exactly. And that actually, as soon as the war was over, Congress sort of sought to roll back a lot of his, what they saw as his more imperial powers. The second thing, I think the sort of fantasy tributes Lincoln with superhuman political skills that no human being ever possessed, because Lincoln is a lame duck president and he's already facing massive opposition in Congress. Now, lots of people expect that from the Democrats who think he's a dictator. But the really interesting thing that I think would surprise a lot of listeners is the opposition from radicals in his own party. So this is an extraordinary thing that when he dies, a lot of the keenest abolitionists in the Republican Party are actually delighted. They held a meeting after his death, and the Indiana congressman, George Julian, recorded, quote, the universal feeling that his death is a godsend. Because many of them think, quite wrongly, that his vice president will do a better job.

[Tom Holland]

But I mean, imagine if you'd had, I don't know, members of the FBI or the CIA meeting up and saying that Kennedy's death was a godsend.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

You would suspect a conspiracy.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

You think the radical Republicans killed Abraham Lincoln.

[Tom Holland]

The whole thing is just spiraling out of control here.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

I mean, actually, if you want evidence, Tom. So Zachariah Chandler, senator from Michigan. God continued Mr. Lincoln in office as long as he was useful, and then substituted a better man to Finish the work. Benjamin Wade, Senator from Ohio. By the gods, there will be no trouble now in running the government. Mr. Lincoln had too much of human kindness in him to deal with these infamous traitors. In other words, the radical Republicans are much less on Lincoln's team than we often think. And they would probably have fallen out with him in the next few months or years over Reconstruction. But the biggest thing, actually the issue of the south and racism, white supremacy, it can't be fixed by one man because it would have taken, I think, a long term military regime in the Southern states committed to black equality to change things. And the north was never, ever going to accept such a political and financial commitment. The white south would always have resisted. There would always have been paramilitary groups like the Ku Klux Klan. And we actually know from Lincoln's public statements, that's the reason I mentioned them in the first episode. He's desperate to get the white south integrated as quickly as possible, to return to what he sees as harmony and reconciliation.

[Tom Holland]

So the destiny of the United States as a continental power, even to Lincoln, is more significant than establishing racial equality?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yes, I would say so, actually. Now, I don't say that to diminish him. He's a practical politician. He's choosing from different priorities. I think he is committed to racial equality, but gradually. And I think he would have found the challenge just as complex and demanding as his successors did as Ulysses S. Grant did actually, when he became president. So in a way you can argue that, as with Kennedy, his killer actually does him a real favor. You know, John Wilkes Booth turns him into a martyr because there's nothing the world likes more than a kind of slain hero. Right.

[Tom Holland]

As you implied in the first episode, there's nothing you enjoy more than an idol with feet of clay. Yeah, but what we've just been talking about in the relation to Lincoln, do you think that diminishes him? Does that diminish his reputation or not? Do you think Lincoln deserves the kind of. The reputation that he has, not just in America, but really across the world?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, I think he does, actually. Michael Burlingame, in this book that I've mentioned a few times, brilliant biography. He says Lincoln, you know, had a personality that you very rarely find in politics. Somebody who is firmly committed to a vision, who has the practical, pragmatic skills in order to achieve it, but is a fully kind of realized human being, reflective, humble, thoughtful, with a kind of wry sense of his own place in the grand scheme of things. You know, not without ego, of course, none of us are but he's able to hold his ego in check. A really impressive person, I would say.

[Tom Holland]

I don't know huge amounts about his life, but everything that I read about him, two things strike me. One is that he has this incredible ability that all the really great morally profound American politicians have had. So we did series on Martin Luther King. Lincoln has this ability to kind of channel a spirit of biblical prophecy and associate it with a brighter future for America, but also seems to be fun. Yeah, he's an engaging, amusing person.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yes.

[Tom Holland]

And that combination of biblical prophet and somebody who would be fun to be with, you know, they don't always gel, let's put it like that.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

No, you're absolutely right. And actually, you mentioned Daniel Day Lewis. So Tabby, our producer, loves the Lincoln film and actually persuaded me to watch it a few weeks ago. And Daniel Day Lewis does bring this out in the Steven Spielberg film. There is a kind of whimsy to him. A folks in US Sometimes folksness can be very annoying. But I think it's not terribly annoying in this film. I think the last word should go to somebody who's one of Lincoln's great contemporaries. Somebody who wasn't American, you know, didn't actually know that much about America, but was undoubtedly a great figure. And that person, oddly, I think Michael Burningham quotes him in his book is Tolstoy. So for the centenary of Lincoln's birth in 1909, the New York World sent a reporter to Tolstoy's estate, Jasnaya Polyana, to ask Tolstoy because they said he's the world's greatest writer. Let's see what he's got to say about Lincoln. And this is what Tolstoy said. He said, of all the great national heroes and statesmen of history, Lincoln is the only real giant. Alexander, Frederick, the Great, Caesar, Napoleon, Gladstone, even Washington. Frankly, I wouldn't put Washington in that list because, you know, my views on Washington with his other people's teeth in his mouth, even Washington, they stand in greatness of character and depth and feeling and in certain moral power far behind Lincoln. He came through many hardships and much experience to the realization that the greatest human achievement is love. He was what Beethoven was in music, Dante in poetry, Raphael in painting, and Christ in the philosophy of life. There's your Christ comparison, Tom. Lincoln was a man of whom a nation has a right to be proud. He was a saint of humanity whose name will live thousands of years in the legends of future generations. He lived and died a hero and is a great character. He Will live as long as the world lives.

[Tom Holland]

What a tone to end on. Thank you, Dominic. That was fascinating. Thank you, everyone, for listening. Bye bye.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Bye, bye.

[William Dalrymple]

Hi, it's William Drimple here again from Empire. Another welcome to the Goal Hanger podcast. Here's the clip from our recent series on the five partitions that created modern Asia.

[E]

And it was deeply emotional. Sparsh picked up some pebbles from the village which he made into jewellery family heirlooms for his family going down the generations, because he was always saying, you know, my family doesn't have archives, et cetera. We lost everything in Partition and there's nothing that we have from Baela to show where we came from. But so he wanted to pick up something from Baela and make it into heirlooms for the next generations. You know, three, four generations from now, they'll still have a piece of Bayla with them. Even if, you know, the relationship between India and Pakistan worsens again. And, you know, even if his kids can never visit Baila, they'll always have a piece of Bala with them.

[Anita Anand]

This connection with Earth, Dharti, you know, they call it dharti in India and zamin is the Urdu word for exactly the same thing. But it is much more than just the earth. It is who you are, where you have grown from, where your forebears have grown from, and the number of people I know who have been lucky enough to travel across the border. And I count myself as one who find it impossible to leave without a scoop of earth. And I have one too, you know, in Lahore. Picked up a handful of earth and brought it back with me because I thought, you know, this is the stuff my grandfather used to walk on.

[William Dalrymple]

To hear the full series, just search Empire, wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, it's William Dirimple here again from Empire and another Goal Hanger podcast. Here's the clip from our recent series on the five partitions that created modern Asia.

[E]

And it was deeply emotional. Sparsh picked up some pebbles from the village which he made into jewellery family heirlooms for his. His family going down the generations, because he was always saying, you know, my family doesn't have archives, et cetera. We lost everything in Partition and there's nothing that we have from Baela to show where we came from. But so he wanted to pick up something from Bala and make it into heirlooms for the next generations, you know, three, four generations from now, they'll still have a piece of Baila with them, even if, you know the relationship between India and Pakistan worsens again. And, you know, even if his kids can never visit Baila, they'll always have a piece of bala with them.

[Anita Anand]

This connection with Earth, Dharti. You know, they call it dharti in India, and Zamin is the Urdu word for exactly the same thing. But it is much more than just the earth. It is who you are, where you have grown from, where your your forebears have grown from, and the number of people I know who have been lucky enough to travel across the border. And I count myself as one who find it impossible to leave without a scoop of earth. And I have one, too, you know, in Lahore. Picked up a handful of earth and brought it back with me because I thought, you know, this is this, this is the stuff my grandfather used to walk on.

[William Dalrymple]

To hear the full series, just search Empire, wherever you get your podcasts.