Pod Insights The Rest Is History 590. The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln: Death at the Theatre (Part 1) About this episode After passing the 13th amendment, in the closing weeks of the brutal American Civil War, what did president Abraham Lincoln - recently re-elected - do next to inflame his detractors? Crippled with guilt for the death and destruction of the war, was he indeed a unionist tyrant? What did Lincoln decide to do with the defeated rebel states? And, with time ticking for Lincoln’s life, who was John Wilkes Booth, the racist actor bent on Lincoln’s destruction?
Join Dominic and Tom as they launch into the final days of one of America’s greatest presidents; Abraham Lincoln. Who would be his assassin, and where would he meet this tragic reckoning?
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Transcript 11,979 words · 5 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:03 Dominic Sandbrook? This episode is brought to you by TikTok. We obviously love history here. It's always a treat to make a new discovery, especially in unexpected ways.
0:12 Tom Holland? Which is exactly what happens on TikTok. Like, you know coffee, you make it, add milk, drink it. Nothing more. Except...
0:23 Dominic Sandbrook? Except, when you hop on TikTok, you don't just learn how to make an authentic cappuccino, you can also discover videos about how in the 1700s, people would pour their coffee into saucers to let it cool before drinking it.
0:39 Tom Holland? And suddenly, you're imagining how people lived, drank, socialised. Makes you wonder, what will baffle historians about us? And that's the joy of TikTok. You look for one thing, and find yourself somewhere completely different.
0:53 Dominic Sandbrook? Your next discovery is waiting on TikTok. Visit tiktok.com/discovermore.
1:06 Tom Holland? This episode is brought to you by Mint Mobile. Right now, all of Mint's plans are $15 per month, even unlimited. So go to mintmobile.com/history.
1:19 Dominic Sandbrook? Upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for 12 months, plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only. Greater than 50GB may slow when network is busy. Includes up to 20GB of hotspot, capable device required. Availability, speed and coverage varies. See mintmobile.com.
1:45 Tom Holland? This episode is supported by Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Now, history's biggest leaps started as hard questions that people didn't want asked.
1:56 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, there's a classic example of that at the end of the 15th century. And the hard question in particular was, what is out there beyond the Atlantic Ocean to the west? And as you will know, the man who found the answer to that question was the explorer Christopher Columbus. And he- Realises, or rather everybody else realises, that there is a vast continent out there, and it is of course the Americas. So you know, Anthropic knows the importance of questions and it's why Anthropic is founded on one hard question above all. How can we ensure for the AI revolution really goes well for ordinary people?
2:27 Tom Holland? So they asked over a hundred thousand people and what came back wasn't just fear, there was hope as well. People wanted to know, will cancer ever be cured? Can kids have a better future? It turns out that there is hope in hard questions.
2:42 Dominic Sandbrook? Ask yours at claude.ai slash rest is history and keep thinking.
2:58 Speaker 02 My fellow countrymen, fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago. So still it must be said, the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.
3:45 Speaker 02 With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
4:22 Tom Holland? The unmistakable tones there of Daniel Day Lewis, playing Abraham Lincoln, of course, and Abe was speaking there at his second inauguration as President of the United States on the 4th of March 1865. And Dominic, it is a great, supreme moment of triumph, isn't it? Lincoln has just been re-elected and victory for the North, for the Union that Lincoln has been leading throughout the Civil War is just weeks away. But what's amazing about that speech is how muted any sense of triumphalism is.
4:55 Dominic Sandbrook? It's regarded by Lincoln scholars as one of his greatest speeches. There's no sort of sense of boasting and no sense of exaltation and glory.
5:04 Tom Holland? We've won! Yee-hee! I mean, there's none of that.
5:06 Dominic Sandbrook? Well, that would have been very unlike Lincoln, to be fair. There's a great sense of melancholy, I think, to it. Sadness at the cost, humility, I think, in the face of God's divine plan. And this emphasis on Union and reconciliation and binding up the wounds of the war. So his biographer, Michael Burlingame, who wrote, I have to say, I mean, it's genuinely, it's about a 10,000-page biography, and it's so long that a lot of it was cut out. So he put it all online.
5:35 Tom Holland? That is such Sandbrook behaviour.
5:37 Dominic Sandbrook? It is very Sandbrook behaviour.
5:38 Tom Holland? But it's American biographical behaviour, isn't it? Because an American biographer cannot see a life and not write a 10,000-page biography of him.
5:47 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, exactly. They basically want to put down every single fact. That's what I intend to do in this podcast, Tom, actually.
5:55 Tom Holland? Brilliant. Well, that's something for us all to look forward to.
5:57 Dominic Sandbrook? I'll tell you a good fact that's in his biography that gave me great pleasure. Lincoln's inaugural got rave reviews in our own country, England. The Spectator said that in its dignity and principle, it was worthy of the greatest of politicians, namely Oliver Cromwell.
6:10 Tom Holland? Wow, you don't get higher praise than that, do you?
6:12 Dominic Sandbrook? You don't get higher praise. Very much a friend of the show. Right, now, at this moment that Lincoln gives this speech. He has only 42 days to live. So we thought this week, we would tell the story of his final days, of his last theatrical outing at Ford's Theatre, and then the hunt for his assassin, John Wilkes Booth. And we wanted to do it, I think not least, because it would allow us to reintegrate into the show, one of our favourite characters, literally as mad as a hatter, top eunuch, Boston Corbett.
6:45 Tom Holland? I mean, for any fan of eunuchs, this is going to be the high point of the series, I think.
6:50 Dominic Sandbrook? Definitely.
6:51 Tom Holland? And it comes at the end, so stay tuned.
6:53 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly. So if you want to jump ahead, just join the Rest is History Club at therestishistory.com and you can hear that right now.
6:58 Tom Holland? Done it, done like a master.
7:00 Dominic Sandbrook? Okay, so a bit of context for those of you still with us. The American Civil War has been raging since April 1861, but in the last couple of years, the massive economic and manpower and industrial advantages of the North, marshalled by Ulysses S. Grant, have begun to tell. Tom, we were talking about Grant before the show, weren't we? We agreed, both boring and corrupt.
7:23 Tom Holland? It's never a good combination.
7:25 Dominic Sandbrook? No.
7:25 Tom Holland? Because if you have corruption, you want people to be flamboyant and interesting.
7:28 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
7:28 Tom Holland? Not just dull, handing out money to post offices and things.
7:32 Dominic Sandbrook? American listeners might like that because they think Grant is brilliant, brilliant at marshalling industrial resources.
7:37 Tom Holland? Well, I tell you who else went like that is Daniel Jackson, friend of the show, the voice of the North East, who's a big fan of Ulysses S. Grant, because Ulysses S. Grant went to Newcastle, I believe.
7:46 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly, exactly. Anyway, let's get back to the story. At the end of 1864, the Union Army captured Atlanta, a key moment in the war. General Sherman, who people may remember from our Custa series, makes his famous march to the sea that basically tears a hole in the economic and transport networks of the Confederacy. So from that point on, the Confederacy really is on borrowed time. And the one hope the Confederates had, the one hope the slave South had, was that Lincoln would lose his reelection bid in November to the Democrat candidate, George McClellan. Now, the Democrats wanted an end to the war immediately in a negotiated settlement with the Confederacy. But Lincoln won that election pretty comfortably, so now everybody knows that the war is going to be fought to the
8:31 Dominic Sandbrook? bitter end.
8:32 Tom Holland? Is there never any thought on the part of, say, Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president and his entourage, that they might assassinate Lincoln?
8:43 Dominic Sandbrook? That's never discussed. Not among the Confederate leaders, but in Confederate newspapers, as we shall see. There is a lot of talk of this and there is an analogy they use that will please you greatly because it plays to your strengths. Incidentally, I read on the Reddit today, somebody complaining, there's too much talk of Julius Caesar in the rest is history. So there is a spoiler alert about the comparison that will be made. So to get back to the inauguration, the scene, I mean, this is an extraordinary moment for Lincoln. Lincoln is the first president to win reelection since Andrew Jackson back in 1832. So winning reelection is actually quite unusual in American politics in the 19th century. That's interesting because it's the opposite to 20th century, isn't it? Exactly.
9:28 Dominic Sandbrook? Basically, in the 19th century, people just want to throw the president out as quickly as possible, I think, by and large. Now, Lincoln is a very unexpected person to even be president. He'd been born into poverty in Kentucky in 1809. He'd grown up in a log cabin, which becomes a very important part of his mythology. He's self-educated. Initially, he was going to be a blacksmith, but he ends up a kind of prairie lawyer. He becomes active in state politics in Illinois. He then becomes a prominent figure in the new anti-slavery Republican Party in the 1850s. And when he's nominated by the Republicans as their presidential candidate in 1860, it's quite unexpected. He's not really, he's not a top-tier household name.
10:09 Dominic Sandbrook? But he wins the presidency and that's the trigger for the slave-owning southern states who are outraged by his elevation to secede from the Union and to form the Confederacy. So Lincoln is propelled into this position that's unprecedented in American history. He is facing one of the world's first modern industrialized conflicts. So it's a conflict of railroads and steamships and trenches and prison camps, all of these kinds of things that kills about 700,000 people. So something he could never have anticipated before, even before running for president. Anyway, this is his second inauguration. Now, you would expect it under those circumstances to be a very solemn and serious occasion, befitting his rhetoric. But you know what?
10:53 Dominic Sandbrook? What I love about this is it's Charles Dickens would have very much enjoyed it because he's not an admirer of 19th century America. So it's like a scene from Martin Chuzzlewit. It is like a scene from Martin Chuzzlewit. Basically, so it's pouring with rain. There are far too many people, there's massive crowds, the capital is overwhelmed. And the place is packed with women in long, muddy, sodden skirts, sort of wrestling for places in the gallery. Now, Lincoln has picked a new vice president to go and balance the ticket, create a sense of national unity, and this is a guy from Tennessee called Andrew Johnson. So he's a former Democrat and he's actually from a Confederate slave state. And Dominic, it's important that listeners don't muddle him up with Andrew Jackson, isn't it? Who came earlier. Or Lyndon Johnson.
11:37 Dominic Sandbrook? So he's just Andrew Johnson, he's his own man, Tom. He's had typhoid, so he's very weak. And to try and sort of steady himself, he drinks three glasses of brandy. And the brandy goes completely to his head and he absolutely disgraces himself by making this interminable and rambling speech. He keeps forgetting everyone's names. At one point, he grabs the Bible and starts slobbering over it and kissing it. Then he just won't stop talking. So he's like Gussy Finknottle after drinking the vodka, least orange juice in P G Wodehouse. The New York World, the reporter on the inauguration, said, "He defiled our council chamber with the spewings of a drunken bore." Which I like. So then Lincoln gives his speech, brilliant, it tries to raise the tone. Then there's the inauguration banquet and the crowd go completely bonkers.
12:22 Dominic Sandbrook? And I quote, "They pushed the tables from their places, snatched off whole turkeys and loaves of cake, smashed crockery and glassware, spilled oyster and terrapin on each other's heads, ruined costly dresses and made the floor sticky with food." And if you've ever been to an American buffet, you will recognise this behaviour, I think. I've been to an American buffet, I've never seen guests pouring terrapin over each other's heads. And he says heads, you'd have to be holding the terrapin up quite high. Quite a big ask. There's actually one nice moment, which is the great black abolitionist Frederick Douglass turns up at the White House reception. He's turned away because he's black. And Lincoln hears reports of this and he says, no, no, no, have him in, have him in. And then he makes a great show of shaking Douglas's hand.
13:06 Tom Holland? Because he's a great showman, isn't he?
13:07 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, he's a great showman and he's also a nice person. So that reflects well on Lincoln, I think. But everybody is really struck at the time. They say Lincoln looks awful. He looks absolutely shattered. Chicago Tribune, the listeners were painfully impressed with his gaunt, skeleton-like appearance. And this is not because like you, Tom, he spends all his time in the gym.
13:27 Tom Holland? But I don't have a gaunt, skeleton-like appearance. I glow with health. That's the difference.
13:31 Dominic Sandbrook? Oh, is that the difference? Okay, right. I'm glad we've cleared that up. He is like you, he's in his late 50s. Is that fair to say?
13:38 Tom Holland? And working under unprecedented pressure. There is a point of similarity.
13:42 Dominic Sandbrook? What about this bit? He strikes visitors as grey, lined and haggard.
13:46 Tom Holland? No, that's not me.
13:47 Dominic Sandbrook? So he's absolutely shattered. And it's not just about the war. It's about the pressure of Washington politics. So Washington politics, at this point, it's an intensely kind of faction-ridden, disputatious place. And part of this is because the war has placed unprecedented demands on the American system. So, you know, the federal government is being asked to do things this has never done before. But also, they're confronting absolutely existential challenges. What are they going to do about slavery? And what are they going to do about the rebel states of the South? So on slavery, the House of Representatives has just approved something called the 13th Amendment. If you've seen the film, Lincoln, the Steven Spielberg film, this is a big part of that story. So they've passed the 13th Amendment and the
14:31 Dominic Sandbrook? states have just begun to approve it. So about 18 of them, I think, have approved it by the time of Lincoln's inauguration. So the bigger question now is what on earth do you do with the Confederate South, once they've lost? Now, for weeks, Lincoln has been striking quite a conciliatory note. In February, he had met Confederate negotiators on a steamer anchored in the Hampton Roads, and they'd had these talks, and he'd really gone out of his way to seem emollient. He had actually said, you know, if you will rejoin the Union, I will look into ways in which you can be recompensed for the abolition of slavery. Southern slaveholders would be compensated with northern taxes for their financial losses.
15:13 Dominic Sandbrook? And a lot of listeners may find that puzzling, given that they've been fighting the war. But one of his friends said, the one thing that Lincoln feared was anarchy in the South. When the Confederacy breaks up, what he doesn't want is the whole thing to fall apart in chaos. What he wants is to close the war upon such terms as would make the Southern people and Southern soldiers think somewhat kindly of the Union to which they were brought back by force of arms. In other words, we will welcome the prodigal son back into the family.
15:40 Tom Holland? It's what you'd expect, though, isn't it? Because I know that all the various reasons for which the Civil War is fought, but one of them surely must be to preserve the strength and integrity of the United States and keep it as a continental power. So you absolutely have to make the defeated Confederates feel like they are Americans once again. Because otherwise, you've defeated the entire purpose of what you've been fighting for.
16:04 Dominic Sandbrook? Abraham Lincoln would agree with you. Abraham Lincoln would absolutely agree with you. However, a lot of people in his own party would not. So these are people who are called the radical Republicans, and quite a lot of them are actually saying there should be no clemency for the traitors at all. Lincoln's own Vice President, Andrew Johnson, who's not a radical Republican, but I think partly because he is from the South and there's a lot of kind of internal feuding going on among Southerners, he says treason must be made odious. In other words, the traitors must be punished and impoverished. So in other words, go hard on them. That's actually not how it turns out when he's president. So you've got the radical Republicans saying, go much harder on them. Lincoln's too weak. And then on the other side, you've got moderates and Democrats who say, actually, you know,
16:48 Dominic Sandbrook? Lincoln's in danger of being too harsh. We should readmit the Southern states as quickly as possible. Don't expect them to behave in a very nice way to their former slaves. Wind up the military administrations in the South, all of this kind of thing.
17:01 Tom Holland? So Lincoln is the centrist in this?
17:03 Dominic Sandbrook? There are huge arguments going on, which we don't massively need to go into, between Lincoln and the radicals about, you know, what's the oath that you will get the Confederates to swear? How many voters in former Confederate states will have to take an oath of allegiance and pledge to support the Union and all this kind of thing? One other explosive issue, who will get to vote when the Confederacy is readmitted to the Union? Will former slaves be allowed to vote? Because as of 1864, virtually no black Americans can vote at all. There are a handful in New York, but there are very, very strict property qualifications. But of course, if you allow millions of newly enfranchised African Americans to vote, that would completely change politics.
17:46 Tom Holland? And in the Spielberg film, that is how they get the Gettysburg Address in, isn't it? That Lincoln sits there and he talks to a black soldier who says, we know we don't have the vote, and then completes the, you know, he speaks the Gettysburg Address.
18:00 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly. And actually, the black soldier, that's an important point. There have been almost 200,000 black Americans serving in the Union Army, and privately, Lincoln has already told his friends, I think it's completely unreasonable for us to ask these men to fight and die for the Union, but then not to allow them to vote afterwards. So he's got a lot of challenges, because these are very controversial issues. And I think it's partly because of the weight of this burden that he's very keen to get out of the city. So on the 20th of March, General Grant, who has cornered Robert E. Lee, the Confederates' leading general in Northern Virginia, Grant invites Lincoln to the front, says, do you want to come and see the action? You can see this in the film Lincoln, Tabby's favourite film.
18:44 Dominic Sandbrook? The big disagreement between me and Tabby on this is I don't like that piano music that Americans love in, in kind of Civil War documentaries and films. I find it offensively tingly. Anyway, that's by the by. He sails down on this steamer to go and see Grant. Now, the big theme of this whole section is the horribleness of Lincoln's wife. So she's called Mary Todd Lincoln. I think the film doesn't capture what an absolute monster she is, which may sound harsh, but basically, here's the scene. Right, they've gone on this boat, it's called the River Queen. General Grant turns up with his wife Julia. Grant and Lincoln go off to talk about the war, and Julia goes to sit down next to Mrs. Lincoln, and Mrs.
19:27 Dominic Sandbrook? Lincoln shrieks at her, how dare you be seated until I invite you to sit down? And this is typical. This is how she carries on. So a friend of Julia Grant said afterwards, Mrs. Lincoln seemed insanely jealous of every person and everything. So a couple of days later, they go off riding to look at some battle or something. And another general's wife is there, General Ord's wife, who's very good looking. And she ends up riding next to Lincoln. And when Mary Todd Lincoln sees this, she shrieks again. She says, what does that woman mean by riding next to the president? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And Mrs. Grant says to her, I think it's just an accident. Don't worry about it. And Mary says, oh, I suppose you want to go to the White House yourself, do you? Oh, I suppose you see yourself as the president's wife.
20:10 Tom Holland? I think she sounds fun. She sounds sussy.
20:12 Dominic Sandbrook? She's worse than sussy.
20:14 Tom Holland? Dominic, just to ask you, has she, I mean, she has been under considerable pressure, hasn't she?
20:18 Dominic Sandbrook? She has, but I mean.
20:19 Tom Holland? Her son has died, because that's the.
20:21 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, but come on, Tom.
20:22 Tom Holland? But isn't she kind of, she's prostrated by that in a kind of very Victorian manner and?
20:27 Dominic Sandbrook? She is, but it's the 19th century. Hasn't everybody's son died at some point?
20:30 Tom Holland? I suppose so, but I don't know. I mean, maybe she's depressed or?
20:34 Dominic Sandbrook? I think it's generally agreed by other, other wives that she is a bit of a, what would you call, what's the word you use?
20:41 Tom Holland? A baggage.
20:42 Dominic Sandbrook? A baggage. So on this ride, they get to where they're going. And Mary Lincoln goes straight up to this Mrs. Ord. And one of Grant's officers watches and is appalled. He says, she positively insulted her. She called her vile names in the presence of a crowd of officers, and asked what she meant by following up the president by riding next to him. The poor woman burst into tears and inquired what she had done, but Mrs. Lincoln refused to be appeased and stormed until she was tired. Mrs. Grant tried to stand by her friend, and everybody was shocked and horrified. He then went on to say, in the next few days, Mrs. Lincoln repeatedly attacked her husband in the presence of officers because of Mrs. Ord. Lincoln bore it with an expression of pain and sadness, which cut one to the heart, but with supreme calmness and dignity. And to
21:25 Dominic Sandbrook? give you a sense, I have cut down this story from the sort of a billion examples in Michael Burlingame's book. Another general, Carl Shert, said that Mrs. Lincoln was the greatest tragedy of Mr. Lincoln's existence.
21:37 Tom Holland? And does Mr. Lincoln agree with this? Does he think she's awful? Or does he secretly love her?
21:42 Dominic Sandbrook? I think possibly a bit of both, actually. Do you know what I think of? I think of that scene on the French aeroplane when with Emmanuel Macron and his former teacher.
21:52 Tom Holland? Oh, where she punched him in the face?
21:54 Dominic Sandbrook? She punches him in the face. And he has an expression of sort of shock. And then he arranges his features for the cameras.
21:59 Tom Holland? I mean, Macron loves his wife.
22:01 Dominic Sandbrook? So maybe Lincoln loved his wife, I don't know. Anyway, Lincoln spends a few days at the front. He's very sort of melancholy. There's a nice point, which I think is in the film, where he's sitting around a campfire with Grant. And Grant says, Mr. President, do you at any time doubt the final success of the cause? And Lincoln says, oh, never for a moment. Yeah, never for a moment. But most of the time, he's actually saying, oh, the horrors of war. I really hope this is the end now. I feel terrible about all the people that died. He tells the story about seeing a Confederate soldier, a young soldier, dying. When he's telling people about this, he kind of chokes up and he says, oh, I feel so terrible. We've cheated, we've robbed both the cradle and the grave. In other words, both the very young and the very old. We have fed them into our, the mincing machine of our kind of military operation.
22:47 Dominic Sandbrook? And at one point, actually, General Sherman arrives and they're talking about the next battle. And Lincoln says to Sherman and Grant, more bloodshed, really? Can't we avoid this battle? And they say to him, well, you know, it's not really up to us, it's up to the Confederates. If the Confederates surrender, we will be able to sort of crack on and forget it. Now, as it happens, the noose is tightening around the Confederates all the time. On the second of April, while he's going on these trips, the Confederates are forced to evacuate their capital, Richmond, Virginia, which then lies open to the Union forces. And the next day, the Confederate defences at a place called Petersburg are broken and General Lee's army has to fall back across the Appomattox River. So the end is only days away.
23:30 Dominic Sandbrook? And on the fourth of April, so two days after the Confederate evacuation, Lincoln actually goes to the Confederate capital, to Richmond. It is an extraordinary moment. I don't actually remember this in the Spielberg film. Lincoln has been dreaming of this moment all these years and he says to his aides, it seems to me that I've been dreaming a horrid dream for four years and now the nightmare has gone. And he goes with his son, called Tad or Taddy. He is his youngest boy. He's celebrating his 12th birthday. He had a cleft palate and he suffered from a very severe speech impediment. So it's kind of sad story with Tad. And they travel on this boat, the River Queen, with a military escort. And they land in Richmond, quite close to the downtown area.
24:15 Dominic Sandbrook? And it's an incredible scene because all the former slaves of Richmond, they hear the news that Lincoln has come and they rushed down to the landing place. And the journalists who were there described them shouting, hallelujah, hurrah, hurrah, bless the Lord, praise the Lord. One guy from the Boston Journal said, you know, no written description can capture the emotion of the moment, the shouting and the dancing and the thanksgivings and whatnot as they greet this bloke who is their liberator.
24:42 Tom Holland? And Dominic, this guy writes for the Boston Journal, presumably is a war correspondent. And I see in your notes that he's called Charles Coffin.
24:48 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes, that's proper nominative determinism, isn't it? There's a woman there who's shouting like, thank you, Jesus, that I behold President Lincoln. They all get down and they kneel in front of him. And Lincoln, I mean, the thing about Lincoln is you're always looking for the sort of chink in his armour because it'd be amusing to be revisionist, but no such chink ever appears. He behaves with such dignity and grace.
25:09 Tom Holland? And he tells them, don't kneel to me, kneel to God only. And that's kind of has a resonance because the emancipation statue that then gets built after the war shows a freed slave on his knee in front of Lincoln. And that's been, you know, very controversial now, but Lincoln was ahead of the game, really. He wouldn't have approved of that statue.
25:31 Dominic Sandbrook? No, he wouldn't actually. It's a really good point. It's a really good point. Anyway, they walk into the city. It's a war zone still. I mean, it's a city with smouldering buildings. There's a pall of smoke. It is incredibly hot. There's a famous moment, another famous moment, again, very much redounds to Lincoln's credit. They pass an old black man in rags and he's kneeling on the ground and he clasps his hands and he says, may the good Lord bless you and keep you safe, master President Lincoln. And Lincoln takes off his hat and he bows to this man and all the watching journalists and whatnot, the entourage are astonished by this. I mean, it's so telling. And Charles Coffin said, it was a death shock to chivalry, meaning the Southern hierarchical
26:16 Dominic Sandbrook? ideals, and a mortal wound to caste, to the idea of caste. I mean, whether it was a mortal wound, I guess you'd say maybe in the very, very long run, but obviously, as we know, at the time, white supremacy is actually poised to make a bit of a comeback. Anyway.
26:32 Tom Holland? But again, I mean, it kind of, it illustrates the way in which Lincoln in so many ways is. You know, a century and more ahead of conventional thinking.
26:39 Dominic Sandbrook? And his, his grasp of those sort of gestures is unparalleled, I think. Anyway, they reach the White House of the Confederacy. Have you ever been there, Tom?
26:47 Tom Holland? No, I haven't. No.
26:48 Dominic Sandbrook? I have. It's quite, it's quite interesting, actually. It's quite weird because it's a bit like the real White House, but just not as good.
26:54 Tom Holland? Right. Well, I mean, that's the Confederacy for you, isn't it?
26:57 Dominic Sandbrook? And he, he goes and he sits in Jefferson Davis's chair. He's exhausted. He's very haggard. He's described by captains who are there that he looks, a tired man whose nerves had carried him beyond his strength. He asks for a glass of water and then they say, would you like to go around all Jefferson Davis's apartments? And he says, um, no, no, I don't think that'd be right. It's not right to tour another man's home.
27:19 Tom Holland? I admire that.
27:20 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, exactly. And it ends with him giving this speech in Capitol Square in Richmond to a generally black crowd, again freed slaves. And he says to them, my poor friends, you are free, free as air. You can cast off the name of slave and trample upon it. It will come to you no more. Liberty is your birthright. God gave it to you as he gave it to others. It's a sin that you have been deprived of it for so many years. And then he ends by saying, you know, learn the laws, be good citizens, obey God's commandments. Thank him for giving you liberty, for to him you owe all things. It's very moving stuff. He stays in Richmond for another day and then he tours the front and then on the ninth of April, he, um, returns to Washington DC.
28:05 Dominic Sandbrook? And his mood at this point is a kind of odd mixture. At times he's very giddy almost with happiness, but then he can be very melancholy. So when they're sailing home on the River Queen, he actually reads a soliloquy from Macbeth to his, uh, to his companions. Hard to imagine the current president doing that, I think.
28:23 Tom Holland? But it's so interesting, isn't it? Because it's, it's, what is it in your notes? You say it's the soliloquy Macbeth delivers after he's murdered Duncan.
28:30 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
28:30 Tom Holland? So much blood and. That must be expressive of a sense of guilt. I mean, Macbeth is consumed by guilt. What's so interesting, he would choose that speech.
28:40 Dominic Sandbrook? Because Macbeth is actually saying at one point, I'm so troubled by guilt that I envy Duncan, who I've killed, who is now sleeping under the sleep of the just. And I think Lincoln absolutely feels that. You know, he's on this tour of the front. He's said again and again how much he regrets the bloodshed and the killing. You know, he doesn't glory in it. He doesn't glory in victory.
28:59 Tom Holland? But it's more than that, isn't it, surely? It's a sense of, I mean, maybe unrealized even by himself, of worry whether he has been the tyrant of Confederate invective, whether he has spilled the blood of Americans on the altar of his presidency. I don't know.
29:18 Dominic Sandbrook? No, I think you're right, Tom. I think everything we know about Lincoln suggests that he is a man who, while ultimately a very effective politician, very firm, decisive, all of those things, that he is an intensely reflective person. And there is also a kind of, I mean, there is a kind of humility to him. I mean, I don't want it to turn into a kind of Lincoln hagiography, but he is one of those characters in history that you kind of look for an opportunity to be revisionist. And actually, there isn't really one. Now, the one thing I will say is the thing about Macbeth, I think there is a fatalism to Lincoln at this point. He has said many times to people, I wonder if I will ever see the end of the war, whether I will live to see the end of it.
29:54 Tom Holland? He has dreams of his potential murder, doesn't he?
29:57 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly. So, exactly. He said to Harriet Beecher Stowe, however it ends, I have the impression that I shan't last long after it is over. And actually, at this point, when he's reading that speech from Macbeth, it is the 9th of April, and he has only five days to live. But actually, while he's on the boat, there is a very, very dramatic development. Elsewhere in Virginia, at Appomattox Courthouse, Robert E. Lee's army has been cornered and trapped. They've failed to break through the Union lines. And that afternoon, In a place called the McLean Farmhouse, Lee signs the instrument of surrender. It's a scene we described before, I think, in our Custer series.
30:38 Tom Holland? Yeah, because he was there, wasn't he?
30:39 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah. Eli Parker, who was General Grant's adjutant, wrote out the document. And when Lee found out that this bloke was a Seneca Indian, he said, oh, it's good to have one real American here. And in absolute Hollywood style, Parker said, sir, we're all Americans.
30:56 Tom Holland? And everyone clasped their hand over the heart and burst into patriotic tears.
31:00 Dominic Sandbrook? Everybody cries, but nobody more than Tabby watching that in the film version, I think. Anyway, the next day, the 10th, Lincoln is back in Washington. He's actually in great form. And his advisers say, you know, they'd never seen him so happy because he's heard the news.
31:15 Tom Holland? Because he's fun, isn't he as well? He's great sense of humour. So when he's, when he's on a jig, he's, he's all in.
31:21 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly. He's a very, he's an up and down person, I think it's fair to say. When he's melancholy, he's very melancholy. And when he's jolly, he's very jolly. And of course, he's got big challenges now. Now they really have to make up their mind, what do they do with the rebel states? Now, at the time, lots of people said, why don't you give a speech? Go on, everyone wants a speech. But he said, no, no, I need a day to think about it. So it's not until the next day, the 11th of April, that evening, with a huge crowd waiting outside the White House, that he gives this speech. And very unusually, and this is a sign, I think, of the political pressure, he reads from a text. He doesn't deliver his remarks extemporally.
31:57 Tom Holland? Because he needs every word to be finely valued and graded.
32:01 Dominic Sandbrook? He says, I'm going to talk about reconstruction. And sometimes I'm betrayed into saying things that other people don't like. And he doesn't talk really at all about, again, no triumphalism. He says, I would like us to welcome back the rebel states as though they were never out of the Union. In other words, we're like loving parents and we're welcoming the errant child back into the family.
32:21 Tom Holland? Or the prodigal son. Because I imagine that, you know, the language of the New Testament is saturating his prose.
32:28 Dominic Sandbrook? But now comes the kicker. For the very first time in public, Lincoln says, I think it is time to give the vote to some of our black fellow citizens. He says, Would myself prefer that it were now conferred on the very intelligent and on those who serve our cause as soldiers. Now, that may sound like only a small move, but that's how Lincoln always works. It's always, he works with the sort of thin end of the wedge. He's a gradualist, he's always very, it's exactly what he did with emancipation. He moves slowly but steadily towards a more radical position. This is a massive, massive moment. And for one listener in the crowd in particular, these words are like an electric shock or something. And this bloke is a 26-year-old actor.
33:13 Dominic Sandbrook? And when he hears Lincoln say these words, he turns to the man next to him in the crowd and he says, "That means citizenship." Now, by God, I'll put him through. That is the last speech he will ever make. And as we'll find out after the break, John Wilkes Booth means every word.
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36:10 Tom Holland? Hello, everyone. Welcome back to The Rest Is History. And Dominic, just before the break, you mentioned a man in the crowd listening to Lincoln talk about giving black Americans the vote. And this was a young actor called John Wilkes Booth. Who is he? And does he have a link to a famous assassin of Julius Caesar?
36:33 Dominic Sandbrook? He does indeed. He's born in Maryland in May 1838. He's 26 years old. He is the son of a Shakespearean actor from London called Junius Brutus Booth. And this bloke Booth's mistress, Mary Anne Holmes, and they had moved to America 17 years earlier. Now, Junius Brutus Booth was already married to somebody else. So John Wilkes, who is named after the John Wilkes, right?
37:02 Tom Holland? John Wilkes is a Whig MP in Georgian London. Marcus Junius Brutus, of course, is the famous assassin of Julius Caesar. Both of them obviously are radicals, people committed to the overthrow of tyranny. So this presumably is a family tradition.
37:18 Dominic Sandbrook? Totally. I mean, I think John Wilkes Booth grows up with these, this sort of nominative determinism hanging over him. Uh, he now he's illegitimate because his parents aren't married, right? His father was married to somebody else. Now, actually, when he was 13, his parents did get married. But it's kind of too late for him. And the stigma and the shame of this, his biographers often think are massive drivers for him. Like, he always feels this very keenly, that his parents weren't actually married when they had him. Now, he's a very athletic, handsome bloke with kind of leading man looks. He went to boarding school in Maryland. He's steeped in the classics.
37:58 Dominic Sandbrook? So if his father's name wasn't enough, he kind of grows up reading Cicero and Tacitus and all this sort of stuff.
38:05 Tom Holland? So Roman, Roman authors who are essentially opposed to the tyranny of the Caesars.
38:10 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly. He loves all this. Absolutely loves it. Now, his father was an actor. His older brother Edwin was an actor. And when he was 17 years old, he starts out as an actor himself on the stage in Baltimore, 1855. Everybody always said that Edwin, the older brother, was a kind of more nuanced actor, more precise. But John Wilkes, he's more vital. He's a, he's boisterous. He's exciting. He's.
38:37 Tom Holland? He's kind of Brian Blessed.
38:38 Dominic Sandbrook? A little bit, yeah. He's a bit of a ham, but he's a fun ham. And he's a huge scene stealer and he will do, he specializes in leaps. And I, I don't know how much opportunities there isn't Shakespearean soliloquies to do a little, little leap or caper or something.
38:54 Tom Holland? I mean, leaping across a stage will be a feature of the story later on, won't it?
38:59 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly. And he does these leaps and basically
39:03 Dominic Sandbrook? the women in the audience go mad with excitement when he does these kind of acrobatics. And he gets loads of fan mail from women. And on the eve of the Civil War, so 1860, 61. He's in his very early twenties and he is really seen as a, I mean, he's often described actually as a failed actor or jobbing actor. He's quite a big star.
39:23 Tom Holland? I was wondering about this and whether you could give an analogy in today's star system. So is, I mean, is he Timothy Chalamet? Is he a minor part on The Archers? I mean, where is he on the spectrum?
39:37 Dominic Sandbrook? Well, Timothy Chalamet is a very big star. I don't know whether he's quite that big, but he's definitely bigger than a bit part.
39:44 Tom Holland? He'd be a lead on a, on a kind of HBO TV series perhaps, that, that level.
39:49 Dominic Sandbrook? I'd say he would. He would be the lead in Outlander.
39:54 Tom Holland? I had always bought into this thing that he was a minor frustrated actor who never got any jobs or anything. And to realise that actually he's been starring in an HBO series puts a completely different spin on it.
40:05 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
40:06 Tom Holland? He is the, probably the most famous assassin in American history, if you, by which I mean, he's got a profile before he commits the murder.
40:15 Dominic Sandbrook? Right. Oh, he's totally got a profile. He's played Richard III, he's played Romeo, he's played Hamlet, he's played Brutus, he's played Mark Antony.
40:22 Tom Holland? Because it is often said that assassins are losers, isn't it? I mean, we, we talked about this when we did the JFK series, but in this case, it's not true. He is someone who is used to being on the stage. And as we will see, the assassination will see him jump onto a stage.
40:36 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly. Although there are, there are aspects of his life in which he does feel himself very strongly to be a loser. So he is a loser in a sense, but you're right, professionally, he's, he's had quite a good run. Now, interestingly, his heartland is the North and the border states. And he did loads of shows in Washington and New York and Philadelphia and so on. In November 1863, here's a good example, Tom, of how he's, he is a star watched by very famous people. He plays a villainous ancient Greek sculptor in a play that sadly not really endured. It's in the repertoire called The Marble Heart.
41:14 Tom Holland? Is it still around, the script?
41:16 Dominic Sandbrook? I'm sure it is. I bet you can find it somewhere if you want to play it. The theatre he plays at is called Ford's Theatre on 10th Street in Washington. And in the audience in the box is Abraham Lincoln. And at various points Booth is delivering, when he's not leaping, he's delivering these menacing line, villainous lines, and he aims them at the presidential box. And Lincoln actually says to a friend, he does look pretty sharp at me, doesn't he? Now, this is no accident because Booth absolutely loathes Lincoln. I said he was born in Maryland. From the beginning of the crisis, Booth identified very strongly with the South. Maryland was a slave state where a lot of people strongly supported the Confederacy,
42:00 Dominic Sandbrook? but it didn't break away from the Union, so it didn't join the Confederate states. That's partly because the Union troops right away imposed martial law. It's also because Lincoln suspended habeas corpus. Maryland is strategically vital. If you lost that, you would lose Washington. So the Union keeping it was really, really important. Now Booth feels this very keenly. And one reason he feels this very keenly, he hates the fact that Maryland is part of the Union is because he is so racist. He had actually drafted a speech in 1860 when the crisis was really blowing up and he planned to give it in Philadelphia, but he never did. And in this speech, he said, you know, slavery is brilliant. He said, I've been through the South.
42:45 Dominic Sandbrook? I've seen how happy the slaves are. I have seen black people whipped, but only when they really deserved it and never as much as they deserved. And he says of abolitionists, I call them traitors. Treason should be stamped to death. So deep is my hatred for such men, I wish I had them in my grasp. And if I had the power to crush them, I would grind them into dust.
43:05 Tom Holland? So he's very against the woke mind virus.
43:08 Dominic Sandbrook? He's very much against the woke mind virus, it's fair to say. Now, you might well say, come on, mate. I mean, if you really hate it that much, why don't you actually go and fight for the Confederacy?
43:16 Tom Holland? Good point. What's his answer?
43:18 Dominic Sandbrook? He's promised his mother that he wouldn't.
43:20 Tom Holland? So not only is he racist, but he's a racist mummy's boy.
43:23 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, he's a cowardly racist, the worst kind of coward and the worst kind of racist, I think it's fair to say.
43:28 Tom Holland? No, the worst kind of racist is racist P teachers. We agreed on that.
43:31 Dominic Sandbrook? I think we did, yeah.
43:32 Tom Holland? Yeah, but this is the second.
43:34 Dominic Sandbrook? P teachers and cowards is the revenge diagram there, I wonder. Anyway, he is such a massive mummy's boy in a really slightly weird way, which is why despite being very popular with the ladies, he's never got married and never, you know, he's never really settled down. But as the war goes on, he feels guilty about this. As the war goes on, people say to him, you know, will you stop talking about the war? Stop going on about how much you love the Confederacy. And if you like it that much, go and fight for it. Even his sister says this, why not go and fight for her if you love the South so much? Every Marylander worthy of the name is fighting her battles. And at one point in late 1864, he says to his mum. I've begun to deem myself a coward and to despise my own existence.
44:15 Tom Holland? So all this time, he's still doing his plays, is he?
44:18 Dominic Sandbrook? He is, and he's doing quite well. He actually genuinely is playing quite big parts and he's getting a lot of acclaim and stuff. But he's unhappy. His family had a history of mental instability. His father was a massive wife beater. He's drinking loads, he's necking loads of brandy and he can't sleep. And I think a lot of this is actually because he feels so guilty about the war and because the news from the front is, as he perceives it, so bad. So basically, every battle the South loses, he then drinks like another gallon of brandy or something. And he focuses all of this rage and resentment on the figure of Lincoln. So a barber said afterwards that basically whenever Booth turned up for a shave, everyone would kind of sigh and roll their eyes. Because basically for the next 10 minutes, he's going to treat them to a monologue about how terrible Lincoln is.
45:02 Dominic Sandbrook? He said to his sister, "That man's appearance, his pedigree, his coarse, low jokes and anecdotes, his vulgar similes and his policy are a disgrace to the seat he holds." Not enough chat about Lincoln's low vulgar jokes, I think.
45:17 Tom Holland? I mean, it is interesting that there is clearly no notion of any censorship going on, that you can badmouth the president in the depths of a terrible civil war and people just slightly roll their eyes. So any notion of Lincoln as a tyrant is clearly mad.
45:32 Dominic Sandbrook? Well, as we will see, you know, some northern newspapers are absolutely ferocious and they're effective against Abraham Lincoln. So, and actually this brings us to an important point. Booth loves a historical analogy.
45:46 Tom Holland? So do we. So that is an unsettling point of comparison.
45:50 Dominic Sandbrook? To be fair, Tom, the hammy acting.
45:54 Dominic Sandbrook? There's a lot of, I didn't want to go into the parallels, but they're pretty overwhelming. First of all, he sees Lincoln as an American Napoleon, and he does not mean that kindly. So he says to his sister in 1864, "Lincoln rules by robbery, rape, slaughter and bought armies. He is bone apart in one great move, that is by overturning this blind republic and making himself a king."
46:18 Tom Holland? And Dominic, can I ask, is there another figure from world history who is accused by his fellow citizens in a republic of trying to make himself a king?
46:28 Dominic Sandbrook? There is, and this will please that bloke on the Reddit. It's Julius Caesar.
46:31 Tom Holland? Brilliant, hooray.
46:32 Dominic Sandbrook? So Booth actually writes a letter when he's made up his mind to do this dastardly deed. He writes a letter to the newspapers for publication, which is never printed. And he says, specifically says, "Lincoln is like Caesar who menaced the liberties of the people, and I am like Brutus who arose and slew him." Now, Michael Burlingame, in his enormous Lincoln book, has a really interesting section about what a popular analogy this is at the time.
46:57 Tom Holland? It's still a popular analogy. I think we've talked about this, that in a republic that is modelled on the Roman Republic, everyone is absolutely prone to see any presidential figure as potentially a Caesar.
47:10 Dominic Sandbrook? Although, surely much more so at a time when all the opinion formers, politicians and whatnot, have had such a classical education.
47:19 Tom Holland? Of course, and also in a civil war, which is how Caesar comes to power.
47:23 Dominic Sandbrook? Now, and the southern newspapers often use this parallel. So you asked, "Are southerners calling for Lincoln's assassination?" The Richmond Dispatch said, and I quote, "Assassination in the abstract is a horrid crime, but to slay a tyrant is no more assassination than war is murder. Who speaks of Brutus as an assassin? What Yankee ever condemned the Roundhead crew who brought Charles I to the block?" So it's not just Caesar, he's Charles I. And Michael Burlingame points out that in the North as well, and this is your point about censorship, Tom, Lincoln's critics often compare him with Julius Caesar. So in May 1863, so these are Democrats, and some radical Republicans actually, who
48:05 Dominic Sandbrook? think that Lincoln is, you know, too much of a centrist dad. They say he's a tyrant and he's piling up power and whatnot. So in May 1863, at a New York college called Cooper Union, a speaker said in public, "Let us remind Lincoln that Caesar had his Brutus and Charles I his Cromwell. Let us also remind the George III of the present day that he too may have his Cromwell or his Brutus."
48:30 Tom Holland? I don't know, just two questions. The first, I have lurking in the back of my mind, I think I read an article about bioterrorism through history, that there was some guy who sent Lincoln a load of clothes that he tried to infect with yellow fever or something.
48:46 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, his name was Dr Luke P Blackburn, and he was from Kentucky, he was a Confederate agent. I'm laughing because actually I've just Googled it, so I don't actually really know this. He, yes, he was going to distribute infected clothing with yellow fever. And slightly weirdly, it's the soiled...
49:10 Tom Holland? Soiled what?
49:11 Dominic Sandbrook? It was the soiled bedding of people from Bermuda, I think.
49:15 Tom Holland? That's unpleasant. And but apparently it wouldn't have worked because yellow fever spreads via mosquitoes.
49:21 Dominic Sandbrook? He went on a very long journey. He had to go through through Canada, so multiple customs inspections.
49:27 Tom Holland? With his soiled, his soiled bed linen.
49:32 Dominic Sandbrook? Wow, well. So that was your first question. What was your second?
49:35 Tom Holland? My second question is, what kind of security does Lincoln have? So so presumably there isn't a kind of national security service at this point. There are loads of people in suits with dark glasses.
49:47 Dominic Sandbrook? Well, actually, we will get on to this, Tom. I'm delighted to say he has virtually no security at all. He doesn't want security. He doesn't like bodyguards.
49:54 Tom Holland? It's not federally provided.
49:55 Dominic Sandbrook? No.
49:55 Tom Holland? So he has to basically provide it for himself.
49:57 Dominic Sandbrook? Pretty much. Exactly. Pretty much. Yeah. Now, you ask about security. John Wilkes Booth's first idea is actually to kidnap Lincoln, not to kill him. By 1864, Booth has developed this plan to kidnap Lincoln from his summer cottage outside Washington. Now, the details of this plan are a little bit unclear, but what seems to have happened is Booth thought he could kidnap Lincoln and exchange him for Confederate prisoners of war. That seems a mad waste if you've kidnapped the leader of the one of the combatants. Just to hand him over in exchange for prisoners of war is, I think, is demented. Some historians think this is actually part of a wider Confederate conspiracy. The Confederates had a lot of spies in Washington, the secret agents hanging around.
50:42 Dominic Sandbrook? One of them is a man called John Surat, who definitely worked for the Confederate Secret Service. And his mother, Mary Surat, will come on to her. She ran a boarding house in Washington, which was a safe house for Confederate agents. And Booth seems to have been connected with these people. And he has this scheme that they're going to kidnap Lincoln on the road, then take him off into captivity. And as late as March 1865, he's got a group of kind of hangers-on. And he's chatting to them all the time about this kidnap scheme, but it doesn't really come to anything. There's one day when they do actually go, but Lincoln doesn't turn up. So whether they could have pulled this off, who knows? Then in early April 1865, Booth hears the news of the fall of Richmond and then of Robert E. Lee's surrender.
51:27 Dominic Sandbrook? And he is absolutely crushed. And I think this is the point when he comes up with the idea of killing Lincoln rather than kidnapping him. And there's another element to this. You asked if he was a loser. What is undoubtedly true is that John Wilkes Booth feels himself to be a failure and is motivated by a thirst for fame. He says to friends again and again, "A man could immortalise himself by killing Lincoln." He says, "I want to do something that will mean that I'm remembered for all time." So the question is, will he get the chance? And we'll come to that. Now, back to Lincoln. Lincoln had made that speech on the 11th of April. But two days later, on the 13th of April, he comes down with this terrible headache. He was going to go for a carriage ride with Mary to go and see the gas illuminations
52:12 Dominic Sandbrook? that had been put up across Washington to celebrate the victory. He can't go, so they make Ulysses S. Grant go with Mary instead. And guess what? The trip is a total disaster. The crowd cheer Grant and they chant his name. And Mary Lincoln is basically furious. And she actually at one point asked the carriage driver to stop and let her out because she can't bear it anymore that people are chanting Grant's name and not her husband's.
52:36 Tom Holland? I quite like that. I'm coming to respect her.
52:39 Dominic Sandbrook? I think she's awful.
52:40 Tom Holland? I mean, I literally know nothing about her beyond what I read in George Saunders's novel, which made me more sympathetic.
52:45 Dominic Sandbrook? All right, fair enough. So the next day is the Good Friday, the 14th of April.
52:50 Tom Holland? Lincoln is killed on Good Friday.
52:51 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
52:52 Tom Holland? So this Christ-like man is killed on Good Friday.
52:56 Dominic Sandbrook? Couldn't make it up. So that morning, the last morning of his life, Lincoln has a meeting of his cabinet with General Grant in attendance. And they are talking about Reconstruction again. He says, "The great question before us, we must soon begin to act." But he says, "I am not going to take a hard line on the South. We must extinguish our resentments if we expect harmony and union." He goes out of his way to say, "I do not want you to persecute the Confederates after the war, no bloody work." He says, "What I would like is for you to frighten the leaders out of the country, Jefferson Davis and Co. Open the gates, let down the bars, scare them off." As in-
53:33 Tom Holland? Run away to Paris or something.
53:35 Dominic Sandbrook? Run away to Paris. It's a funny thing about Lincoln, he always talks very kindly, almost sort of fondly of his opponents. So he actually called Jefferson Davis, he used to call him Jeffy D.
53:44 Tom Holland? Sounds like a kind of miner singer in the late 1950s.
53:47 Dominic Sandbrook? Jeffy D. Jeffy D. and the Confederates.
53:51 Tom Holland? Woo.
53:51 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
53:55 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, or Bobby Lee, he would call Robert Healy Bobby Lee. Bobby Lee is very much, yeah.
54:00 Tom Holland? Yeah, that's his, that's his girlfriend.
54:02 Dominic Sandbrook? Anyway, everybody at the cabinet meeting said afterwards, Lincoln was actually in great form. He'd had this headache, he had a couple of days off. He seems to have, that seems to have done him good. His Treasury Secretary, Hummer Colick, had said it, I'd never seen him so happy. The burden had been lifted, his face no longer had its weary look, it was bright and cheerful. Now afterwards, he goes for a carriage ride with Mary, and actually they don't have a massive argument on this carriage ride, which is nice. She comments out how jolly and playful he is. And Lincoln says to her, well, for the first time, I really feel as though the war is over. He says to her, we must both be more cheerful in the future. Between the war and the loss of our darling Willie, we have been very miserable. So Willie is the, the boy who died of typhoid. They've got a nice evening out ahead, Tom. They're going to the theatre.
54:46 Dominic Sandbrook? So they've gone a lot to the theatre in the war. There are two theatres in Washington, really two big ones, the National and Ford's. Ford's is on 10th Street. It's a red brick building, it's seen as very modern. It was only opened two years earlier by a theatrical entrepreneur called John T. Ford.
55:02 Tom Holland? So he's a very modest man.
55:04 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, Ford's Theatre, exactly. Now it's putting on, I'm delighted to say, a British play. A British play mocking Americans called Our American Cousin by Tom Taylor. It's a farce, I've actually read the script, I fell down the rabbit hole and read the script.
55:20 Tom Holland? Is it good?
55:20 Dominic Sandbrook? It's terrible. It's, it's very unfunny. It's a farce about basically a boorish hick from Vermont who inherits the, the fortune of an aristocratic British family and he goes to claim it. There's a series of comic misunderstandings.
55:35 Tom Holland? I think it sounds good, you could do a double bill with that and the, the one where Booth played a Greek sculptor.
55:41 Dominic Sandbrook? You could actually.
55:42 Tom Holland? That'd be quite interesting.
55:42 Dominic Sandbrook? Why don't people do more John Wilkes Booth themed entertainment?
55:45 Tom Holland? It's an absolute riddle.
55:47 Dominic Sandbrook? Now, the Evening Star, the Washington Evening Star has already reported that Lincoln's going to go to this play. And they've reported that he will go with General Grant. And the theatre has had a rush of last minute bookings. And they're rushing to kind of get, um, flags and they, they're rushing to sort of do a patriotic line up beforehand of songs and stuff. It's all very exciting. Now meanwhile, while Lincoln's off on his carriage ride and talking to his cabinet, what's John Wilkes Booth doing? He has stayed in Washington. He had gone to see the illuminations, the lights, you know, lit up kind of eagles and stars and stuff. And he said, you know, it was a great display, but I wish it had been a display in a nobler cause. But so goes the world. Might makes right. He's
56:30 Dominic Sandbrook? very sad because the South is lost. Sometime that morning, Good Friday morning, he goes over to Ford's Theatre. Now, he's very well known at Ford's Theatre because he's a, you know, he's a big actor. And he often has mail sent there, kind of fan mail from his female admirers.
56:46 Tom Holland? And so presumably, he knows Ford's Theatre like the back of his hand. Knows all the exits, I mean, crucially.
56:51 Dominic Sandbrook? He knows the entrances and exits. He knows the stagehands even. He knows it so well. And while he's picking up his post, he chats to the manager of the theatre, who's Harry Ford. I think he's John Ford's brother. And Booth says, oh, you've heard the news about Lee surrendering to Appomattox. Says, I'm absolutely gutted. Lee, what a fool. He should have gone down fighting. What a cow, what a, what a mess he made of that. And Ford says to him, well, come on, I mean, he's a general and you're not, you don't know what you're talking about.
57:19 Tom Holland? I mean, I've got to say Booth walked into that one.
57:21 Dominic Sandbrook? He did. He did. Booth is absolutely shocked and downcast by this. And then Ford says, hey, guess who's coming to our theatre tonight? President Lincoln. And he's bringing Ulysses S. Grant with him. And Booth apparently showed no reaction at the time. He just sat down and started looking at his post. But clearly, he's thinking, because in the next few hours, he does three things. First of all, he goes to see a bloke who runs a stable near the theatre, a man called Mr. Pumphrey. And he hires a brown horse, a mare, with a white star on her forehead. He says, I'll come back for this horse later. Hold on to the horse for the time being. Then he goes to that Confederate lodging house, the safe house run by Mary Surratt. And he talks to her in private and he gives her
58:05 Dominic Sandbrook? a package. Later, she goes out of the city to a tavern that she owns in the countryside in Maryland. And she leaves this package there. We'll come back to the package in the next episode.
58:18 Dominic Sandbrook? And then third thing, at some point in the afternoon, Booth contacts three of the sort of hangers-on who he'd been talking about the kidnap plot to. And he makes arrangements for the evening. And these three blokes are, there's a carriage repairman from Germany called George Azerot. There's a pharmacist's assistant from Maryland called David Harold. And there's a former Confederate soldier who's now working as a Confederate agent called Lewis Powell. And Tom, I will keep it in reserve what these arrangements are. So now it comes to the evening. The White House, the Lincolns have had their dinner, they're about to go out to the theatre. They're delayed because the Speaker of the House of Representatives, who has the excellent
59:00 Dominic Sandbrook? American name of Shyla Colfax, is waiting to talk to him about California.
59:06 Tom Holland? And Dominic, it's fair to say, isn't it, that from this point on, fans of mad 19th century American names are going to be in clover.
59:14 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
59:14 Tom Holland? Because there's loads of them coming up.
59:16 Dominic Sandbrook? There is, and there's actually a lot of people I've cut out of the story who, people call kind of Thurlowweed or something, like mad American names have had to cut out. So just assume that, basically assume that in the background are a lot of people with these Baroque ridiculous names. So about 8.30, after talking to Shyla Colfax, the Lincolns are ready to leave. Now, the plan has changed. Ulysses S. Grant has been so burned by his previous encounters with Mrs. Lincoln that he says, there is no way I am going to the theatre with these people.
59:47 Tom Holland? So Ulysses S. Grant was meant to be going on the night that Lincoln is assassinated, drops out. Do people not find this suspicious? I mean, conspiracy theorists.
59:56 Dominic Sandbrook? Gosh, that's a, that's a good point.
59:58 Tom Holland? Does anyone think Grant was perhaps behind the plot to clear Lincoln out of the way so he could in due course become president?
1:00:04 Dominic Sandbrook? I love the idea that you've invented a conspiracy theory.
1:00:07 Tom Holland? Live, while recording a show.
1:00:09 Dominic Sandbrook? Wow. I've never heard that claim.
1:00:12 Tom Holland? I find that quite suspicious.
1:00:13 Dominic Sandbrook? So the other person who doesn't go, who hates Mrs. Lincoln, is Julia Grant. She says, she says to Grant, I will not go if that woman is there. Does this not raise the possibility that the bullet was meant for Mary Lincoln? And actually, it's Mrs. Grant who's behind the conspiracy. That would be a twist.
1:00:29 Tom Holland? That is a twist.
1:00:30 Dominic Sandbrook? So they don't go. Now, Lincoln says, oh, if they're not going, I don't really want to go. And Mary says, you have to go. The press hear that you're going. And if none of us go, they'll be, everyone will be really disappointed. She says, anyway, I've lined up some replacements. My friend Clara Harris. She does have a friend. She does have a friend, which is lovely. I was thinking exactly that. She's got at least one friend. She's got Clara Harris and Clara Harris has her fiance, who's Major Henry Rathbone. So they're going to take these two people. Now, you asked about security. There is very, very little security. They are escorted to the theatre by a police patrolman called John Parker and a White House messenger called Charles Forbes. But they're not professional bodyguards. Lincoln never travels with professional bodyguards.
1:01:12 Dominic Sandbrook? He has said many times, I will not be shut up in an iron cage. Now, he says, when people say to him, do you not want to be careful? You're fighting a civil war. He says, who would want to kill me? No one would want to kill me. It's not in people's nature to want to kill me. Now, that would seem mad to us today. But the fact is that at the time, there's never been a successful assassination in American history. And Lincoln's own Secretary of State, William Seward, said in 1862, assassination is not an American practice or habit, and one so vicious and so desperate cannot be engrafted into our political system. That's aged well. Yeah, how wrong he was. So they turn up at Ford's Theatre at nine o'clock. Now, they're late.
1:01:56 Dominic Sandbrook? The play has been underway for 20 minutes and they go up to their box. So it's actually two boxes which are knocked into one. So the theatre, when they know Lincoln is coming, they have to basically knock two boxes into one. Boxes seven and eight. In the box are a sofa, an armchair and a rocking chair that Lincoln will sit in. The box is very conspicuous. It's been hung with American flags for all to see. Lincoln goes in. The audience turns to look at him. The play stops. It's actually stopped the play. The band plays Hail to the Chief. Everybody applauds. Lincoln smiles. Lincoln bows and the play resumes. Everybody is roaring with laughter. They think this is a brilliant play. Lincoln is watching it. He seems very intent on it. He's kind of laughing to himself.
1:02:40 Dominic Sandbrook? And yet, Tom, all the time, his killer is coming closer and closer. So we get to 10:15. Now onstage, the American cousin, who is played by an actor called Harry Hawke, has been arguing with his British relative, Mrs. Mount Chesington.
1:02:58 Tom Holland? That's a very British name.
1:03:01 Dominic Sandbrook? Doesn't it sound like a great play?
1:03:02 Tom Holland? It sounds brilliant. Do you have an example of the brilliant dialogue from the play?
1:03:06 Dominic Sandbrook? I do. Mrs. Mount Chesington says to this bloke, "You don't know the manners of good society," and she storms off. And Harry Hawke, playing the American cousin, says, "I don't know the manners of good society, eh? Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal, you socrativeizing old mantrap." Everybody laughs.
1:03:27 Tom Holland? Yeah, of course.
1:03:27 Dominic Sandbrook? The whole theatre erupts in laughter. Onstage, this bloke Hawke, Harry Hawke, he turns to walk offstage. And at that moment, the door of Abraham Lincoln's presidential box swings open, and standing in the doorway is John Wilkes Booth.
1:03:47 Tom Holland? Well, if people want to know what happens next, there's literally only one way to do it. And that is either to wait until Thursday to find out what happens to President Lincoln, or, if you're a member of The Rest is History Club, you can go straight ahead and listen to it now. If you're not a member of The Rest is History Club, but you would like to find out whether President Lincoln survives or not, you can go to therestishistory.com. And on that gunshot, goodbye.
1:04:16 Dominic Sandbrook? Goodbye.
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Previous 589. Mary, Queen of Scots: Downfall (Part 6) Next 591. The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln: Manhunt for the Killer (Part 2) Page updated November 1, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
