After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Final Days of Abraham Lincoln

Episode Date: May 22, 2025

One split second - and one individual - can upturn an entire nation.This was definitely the case when John Wilkes Booth shot President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre on the night of 14th April 1865.What were the final days leading up to this huge moment like? How did the nation, and the future of enslaved African Americans, hang in the balance? And how did that long night after the gun was fired unfold?You can now watch After Dark on Youtube: www.youtube.com/@afterdarkhistoryhitProduced by Stuart Beckwith. Edited by Tim Arstall. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal is a History Hit podcast.

Hi, we're your hosts, Anthony Delaney and Maddie Pelling. And if you would like after dark myths, misdeeds and the paranormal ad free and get early access, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries with top history presenters and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. We just wanted to take a moment to tell you about one of our favourite podcasts, Plant Murder. Now Plant Murder is not about how I kill every plant that ever comes into my house. Oh no, it is about the deadly intersection of plants and true crime. Yes, you heard that correctly.

And it is truly as fascinating as it sounds. Did a Roman Emperor really die from a mushroom? Why did the Victorians invent a deadly pear? And what happened during the last days of Edgar Allan Poe? We love the show so much because it mixes history and true crime, which is obviously something we thoroughly approve of here at After Dark. Not only this, but the sound design is so immersive it transports you back in time. Also, it's a true crime podcast with a difference. It looks at history through the world's most dangerous plants. And as a result, it makes us think more about humankind's

relationship to the natural world then and now. It is perfect if you like history and true crime, but also horticulture and plants. Search for plant murder wherever you listen to your podcasts or visit RustyQuill.com for more information. You won't regret it. Hello and welcome to After Dark. I'm Maddie. And I'm Anthony. And in today's episode we are talking about the assassination of the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. His presidency happened at a time of huge change in America.

And take us to this story. Here's Anthony. It's April 14th, 1865. Not long after 10pm on a spring evening in Washington, D.C. Just across the road in Ford's Theatre, the play Our American Cousin has been interrupted by a gunshot. It quickly emerges that in the presidential box, Abraham Lincoln has been shot at point blank range. He sits slumped, unconscious, paralysed. His wife, Mary, pleading for help. Guards clear the crowds as he's urgently carried across the street, here to William Peterson's house. The first doctor on the scene, Charles A. Leal recounts his experience. As soon as we arrived in the room offered to us, we placed the President in bed

in a diagonal position. As the bed was too short. A part of the foot was removed to enable us to place him in a comfortable position. As soon as we placed him in bed, we removed his clothes and covered him with blankets. While covering him, I found his lower extremities very cold from his feet to a distance several inches above his knees. At 1am his pulse suddenly increased in frequency to 100 per minute, but soon diminished gradually becoming less feeble until 2.54am, when it was 48 and hardly perceptible. At 6.40am his pulse could not be counted. The inspirations now became very short, and the expirations very prolonged and laboured,

accompanied by a guttural sound. Six-fifty a.m. The Surgeon General now held his finger to the carotid artery. Colonel Crane held his head. Dr. Stone, who was sitting on the bed, held his left pulse, and his right pulse was held by myself. At seven-twenty a.m. he breathed his last. And the spirit fled to God who gave it. With that, Lincoln's Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton declared, of Abraham Lincoln. Well, that was an emotive opening to an episode. Wow. There's so much to unpack here. There's

the historic moment itself. There's the man, his death, the way his body is treated in this medical moment of emergency and at the point of death itself. There's the ramifications, there's the assassin, there's just so much to get into here. What do you know of Abraham Lincoln? What's the version that you have of him? Because, I mean, obviously there's the image of him with the top hat, he's incredibly tall. We heard there in the opening that the bottom of the bed has to be taken off because he is that long. He is, in my mind, something of an emancipator. He is someone who leads the Union and the American Civil War and he promises emancipation to enslaved African Americans. He is fighting for liberty and justice. Is this the version

that you have of him? What do you know of him? Yeah, I suppose it would have been, yeah, initially something, someone very fatherly, probably had a very similar vibe to George the third in some ways. But I think more recently some historical work has helped to nuance that and to complicate that a little bit, especially in terms of his role when it comes to enslaved people and the emancipation of enslaved people. But he's complex, even now, I think. The other thing I think I know about him, and I did hear this on another podcast, No Such Things Are Fish, so credit where credit's due, but apparently he had a really high pitched voice.

Oh, how do we know? Don't ask me that. That's as far as this piece of information is able to go. But apparently he had a really high pitched voice. So there we go. Okay, let's dive in with some context because we've heard those dramatic beats of his death already. Let's put him into his historical moment, please. Okay. So we are at, in 1865, we're at the end of, or towards the end of the Civil War. The Confederate states are on the brink of collapse really. Union forces have captured Richmond and Robert E. Lee, who is towards the end of this period of the Civil War, he has kind of become the

general over the Confederate states and he has been captured, well he surrendered on April the 9th, 65. So things are really changing. Things are changing and they're wrapping up after a pretty tumultuous few years in terms of the Civil War. Things are starting to, we're not quite sure how they're going to iron out by the way. That's all still to play for and that's important in this history, but certainly there's a shift towards an end in the Civil War here.

And then there's, as I was saying, like trying to iron out what this end is going to look like. We're talking about reconstruction here. And that is how to reintegrate those Confederate states into a new idea, in many ways, of the United States. And Lincoln is looking at shaping what is known as the 10% plan, which is offering amnesty to those Confederate states, and as long as they would pledge loyalty to the union and recognizing that there is now an end to slavery. And we'll talk about that in a little bit later, but we're reshaping what America is

going to look like. And also what its economy is going to look like, right? Because it's been based for many decades at this point, if not centuries, on enslaved labor. Yeah, absolutely. And this is one of those kind of complexities that we've been talking about in terms of Lincoln's legacy, where we talk about the 13th Amendment, which is supposedly to abolish slavery. And that's what Lincoln is advocating for, and what the Confederates are against, which their argument is that it will upend America's economy. However, within that, we have to be aware that there is not necessarily a clarity on what the rights of freed people will be if there is the abolishment of slavery, and what their rights are going to be, what their employment opportunities are going to be like, and what their safety is going to be, what their employment opportunities are going to be like,

and what their safety is going to be like. And that's been highlighted in the Confederate states. And also all these decisions being made by a white man in the White House. Yes, he is the man in the White House. He was elected in November 1860. The Union, as it was known, was unraveling. It was not the same the Southern states had left at this point. And this idea of slavery is at the very center of national identity and how that's fractured. It's the great debate at this moment, yeah. And you know, in one sense, it's very difficult for us to try and place ourselves within the

context of those conversations, but their legacy is absolutely present and plain to see even today. So you can see how it fractured America and is absolutely present and plain to see even today. So you can see how it fractured America and I think it's plain to see how it fractured even now. The civil war began on the 12th of April 1861 and it ended in April 65. So you're looking at a four year time span there. And a bloody period. A bloody and transformative period. Just to give you some of the kind of landmarks in that conflict, the Gettysburg Address was in 63, November 63. And this was when the

term of government of the people by the people and for the people was first put into parlance. And these Abraham Lincoln's words, this is an incredibly famous moment of his performance really in front of those people. And performance is key here. I mean, that's no surprise when we're talking about heads of state and presidents in America specifically. Yeah, and I think with Abraham Lincoln, he's such a striking individual, isn't he? That he's so tall, he wears the top hat to make himself taller. He's quite conscious of that branding almost.

Yeah, absolutely. And it is branding. And that fatherly branding actually. And it's really interesting because the conversation around fatherhood is very pivotal to this idea of whether or not to abolish slavery. So for instance, there is a conversation around our family, black and white, in the the Southern States and the Confederate States, where they see their roles as slave owners in a fatherly way, which of course is complete tosh. But this is one of the ways in which slavery is being defended at this time. So his idea of fatherhood is an emancipatory thought. So he's co-opting that language that's used by the other side and sort of changing it up.

Yeah, embodying it, kind of as you say. But he's re-elected, and this is kind of important, I guess he's reelected in 64. Yeah, so he's elected initially in 1860. Obviously presidents only serve four years, but he gets the second term. Yes. And that is when it's really seen that he has a mandate to end slavery because of that reelection. So that that kind of brings us up to term with his presidential journey. Yeah, talk to me more about his relationship with slavery then. Yeah, so before the Civil War, Lincoln was focused on preventing the spread of slavery, not necessarily abolishing it outright. This wasn't always his goal, but it became a gradual

point on which he rested his political ambitions. He wanted to preserve the Union at all costs, and so initially he didn't want to be seen as being too radical in his approach to slavery. The Emancipation Proclamation was given on the 1st of January 1863, And this then declared all enslaved people in Confederate held territories to be freed. Now that was not honored. It's really important to kind of highlight that. That was not understood by Confederate states. On the ground. No, no. And that's not the experience of enslaved black people. It's all well and good to make

these proclamations, but the lived reality is very different. Yeah. And the other thing of course that that proclamation did was it allowed black men to enlist in the Union Army. So it's a, it's a pretty clever, savvy move as well. Yeah. If you look at what's going, if you look at the ploy, if you look at it as a tactic, a war tactic, which essentially it could be seen as, then there is, it's not necessarily this very people focused, very freedom focused thing. It's a way in which to get more bodies into the army. Yeah, and you see this throughout history as well. I can think about in the 1780s in

Britain you get legislation ending restrictions on Catholics in the country so they can join the army to go and fight the Americans during the American Revolution. So we have a complicated, this isn't a black and white issue really. This is, I mean, it is. At the time on the ground. Yeah, there's a sort of a nuanced gray area in between really. Yeah, and I think a lot of confusion. You know, you're talking about that experience of people there at the time. I think there's a lot of confusion. There's a lot of confusion. You're talking about that experience of people there at the time. I think there's a lot of confusion, there's a lot of rhetoric, there's a lot of heated

argument debate. And at the centre of this is a huge population of enslaved black people who, to a certain extent, can't even determine their own futures because these conversations are being had about them, not necessarily with them. So it's a fractious time and a confusing time for people on the ground as we kind of keep saying. Bring me to the days leading up to his death then. Yeah, so these are the final days. So we go, let's start at April the 9th when Robert E. Lee, who was the Confederate general, so he surrenders then. So that's the kind of beginning. That's a kind of beginning.

That's a huge turning point. Yes. And if you are on the Confederate side, you are seeing that things are not going your way now. So maybe there's feelings of desperation starting to creep in there. April 11th is Lincoln's final, well, what turns out to be Lincoln's final public speech. And he gives this from the balcony of the White House, hinting at citizenship for Black Americans. Now, remember I said to you about things not being quite clear, there being a bit of confusion, but he says that there might be some kind of elective rights given to, he uses the word like very intelligent, Black people who are very intelligent and who serve, I'm paraphrasing, and who serve the cause. So to a certain extent it feels like it's, it's not a widespread.

If you're loyal to me, you can vote. Yeah, and also very intelligent. What does that mean? Yeah, exactly. It's problematic. Yes. However, if you're on the Confederate side, this is a huge warning and this is a huge, you absolutely do not want to hear this because it's a threat to your way of life. And a man called John Wilkes Booth happened to be-

Never heard of him. Never heard of that man. He happens to be in the crowd that day and he heard this speech and he is alleged to have said, now by God, I'll put him through. That is the last speech he will ever make. So he is obviously on the Confederate side. So there are just people in the crowd who heard this and- What was that John? Yeah, let me just try this. Can I just get your name as well? Yeah, I feel like this could be important. So it's, you know, a bit of storytelling there.

Oh, I'm going to make so much money in the papers in the next few days. I know nobody, actually I was going to say, I know nobody knows who you are, but you know, he's an actor, he has a bit of a profile. He's not famous. He's an actor. Yeah. So he delivered that line perfectly. Importantly, audibly. He may have made that up himself afterwards as a bit of like playfulness. But yeah. So that's the 11th of April.

That's the 11th. Let's go to the 14th then. Lincoln meets with his cabinet to discuss reintegrating the South and rebuilding the country. So there is this idea that we're moving forward, but what we kind of have to keep in the back of our minds is that men like Booth don't necessarily like the idea of what they're moving forward with. Yeah, there's huge resentment and frustration and anger. Okay, so what do you do in the evening after you've had a long, hard day of discussing the future of your nation with your government? You go to the theatre to see a comedy and actually that doesn't sound like too bad an idea. Sometimes that is a good way to just let off a bit of steam. So he and his wife, Mary, and by the way, talking about theatre and Mary, there's a play called Oh Mary on Broadway right now and it is about Mary Todd Lincoln and it is in no way it's comedy,

it's in no way based on any historical fact whatsoever. And it is just, I haven't seen it, but I am planning to go to New York in autumn and if it's still on, I am definitely going to go and see it. But it's based on no historical fact. Fishing for some free tickets. Yes, by the way, oh Mary, you're watching this. I'm a historian and I'd like to come and see your play. They both head off to see Our American Cousin, which is- Yeah, not Oh Mary, but Our American Cousin. Oh God, that would have been amazing. But it's playing at Ford's Theatre in Washington, DC. And it's a comedy of manners. It's basically about this kind of rough American visiting aristocratic English relatives and how he is kind of, his rough manners don't fit in with the proper English way of things.

It's interesting that it's a play about, I suppose it's highly obvious that it would be a play that the zeitgeist at the time would be concerned with what is America, what is it to be an American, but it's interesting that the president is sitting and watching something that's about the definition of America against its forefather slash great enemy, Britain. Yeah, really, really interesting. And how this roughness is appealing as well. How this, you know, yes, it's a form of comedy, but actually what it's, we're laughing together and we're in on the joke. I always wonder though, in that moment, when the curtain goes up and the play begins, how

much Abraham Lincoln is actually taking in of the story? Is he sat there just going through what's happened during the day? You know, and you're absolutely just been focused on something so much and then you sit down to watch Netflix and you're not taking it in. Yeah, well I'm usually on my phone scrolling. Shame on you. Yes. Terrible. Yeah, it's a good question actually. So I hadn't really

thought about that because- Like is he laughing along? Is he- Well, yes. We know that he is actually and Mary is as well. They are enjoying it, but it is a good- Here's why I think it's a good question because you talk about this self-fashioning and he has cultivated this idea of kind of a fatherly figure, whatever. But at this moment in time, there is a self-fashioning also in heading to the theater that night because yes, the country is fractured. There, there was all these tensions. Oh look, I'm just going to the theater. Actually there's normalcy here too.

It's a public appearance as well, right? He's like, father is here. Everything is okay. We can laugh like there's, oh, there's a break in the tension. Like we're moving on. So, but he did genuinely love theater. So like he probably is enjoying it. And this is probably something that he is happy to be able to go and do. Little does he know that things are not necessary. He will become the main attraction, the main act. Who else is in the box with them? It's Abraham and Mary. Yeah. And then we also have Major Henry Rathbone and his fiance, Clara Harris, and they are in the presidential box.

But they absolutely regretted taking that invitation. Yeah, that brings them into history forever, doesn't it? I mean, sitting with the president one night is one thing, but sitting with him on the night he, spoiler, gets assassinated, well, that's cementing your place in history then. We just wanted to take a moment to tell you about one of our favourite podcasts, Plant Murder. Now, Plant Murder is not about how I kill every plant that ever comes into my house. Oh, no, it is about the deadly intersection of plants and true crime. Yes, you heard that correctly.

And it is truly as fascinating as it sounds. Did a Roman emperor really die from a mushroom? Why did the Victorians invent a deadly pear? And what happened during the last days of Edgar Allan Poe? We love the show so much because it mixes history and true crime, which is obviously something we thoroughly approve of here after dark. Not only this, but the sound design is so immersive, it transports you back in time. Also, it's a true crime podcast with a difference. It looks at history through the world's most dangerous plants, and as a result, it makes us think more

about humankind's relationship to the natural world then and now. It is perfect if you like history and true crime, but also horticulture and plants. Search for plant murder wherever you listen to your podcasts or visit RustyQuill.com for more information. You won't regret it. Let's talk about the assassination. Let's. That's what we're here to do. We probably should. We've taken long enough to get to it. So this is, this all happens now, this happens at 10.15 during Act 3, Scene 2. I'm going

to say this. If I was still in Act 3, Scene 2, I know we're in the third act, but it's still Scene 2, I'd be like, guys, I need to get home. This is late. I want to be home. I want to be done. I want to be out of the theater by 10 at the very latest. I like an hour and a half through. Do you know what I thought you were going to say? As an actor who's done a lot of stage work, I thought you're going to say, if someone got assassinated only in act three scene two, I'd be so annoyed. I'd be like, you've taken the limelight, excuse me. Oh, yeah, well, that. We have the rest of the play to go. Yeah, so it happens at 10.15 and it's very late,

it is quite late in the thing. And it's John Wilkes Booth, of course, who is in his home territory as an actor, like he's familiar with this space and he knows exactly what he's doing and how to move around it. So where is he in the theatre? We don't know exactly where he's come from. I mean, he's concealed himself or he's probably, I would imagine he was just in the general rabble, but has now made his way up behind the presidential box. Okay. So he's going to enter into the great 19th century security there. Yeah.

President. This is where his thing as an actor and where the popularity of this show comes into play because he uses a pivotal point in the show where there's a huge roar of laughter and it's a guaranteed roar of laughter every night and he uses that to mask the sound of the gunshot. So he has absolutely done his research, he's seen this play before at least once. He understands how the theatre works as a space, as a performance, the role that the audience has within that, how people behave. He understands human behaviour. He's able to predict it.

Yeah, it's definitely calculated. I mean, and it just gets more, so he creeps up behind Lincoln, right? So that's dramatic in itself. That's almost theatrical, imagining this figure coming up behind the president. He shoots him with a.44 caliber derringer pistol point blank and the bullet enters through Lincoln's left ear and it gets lodged behind his right eye. And so instantly, because it's a brain injury, instantly he is slumped, he's unconscious and he's paralyzed straight away. So that happens very, very quickly. So we talked about earlier, didn't we, Rathbone being in the presidential box with him and securing his place in history. Yeah, a military man, no less.

Military man. He reacts really quickly. So despite the laughter, he's obviously going to hear this because he's sitting in the box with them. He jumped- And this probably as well, like it's not too fine to point out, but there's probably some blood splatter and the president is slump yeah. If you're in the box, you're very aware of what's happening. Yeah. So he jumps up to kind of intervene and to try and protect him. But Wilkes Booth slashes him with a dagger and he runs, which cuts him from his elbow to his shoulder, but he survives, but it's a pretty, pretty, you know,

gory gash. Yeah. And interesting that Wilkes Booth has brought not only the pistol, but a knife as well. He is armed to the teeth. He is getting this job done. And anticipates that there's going to be somebody around the president, of course, who is going to try and get him afterwards. He's not doing this initially, it would appear as a form of self-sacrifice though. He's not willing to sacrifice himself because he's in the presidential box. This is the famous moment, right? Other than the president game. So he jumps 12 feet from the presidential box down onto the stage. Cue crunching and snapping.

Cue crunching and snapping. The spur on his shoe gets caught in an American flag, breaks his leg. The symbolism. Oh my God. And he still gets up and flees and still gets away. Like how is a man with a brogue? I guess all of the attention is now adrenaline on the president. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, adrenaline. And yes, the fact that everyone is looking at the box. So the combination of all of those things. There's a horse waiting for him at stage door. This is planned, well, of course it's planned. It's very obvious. It's so theatrical, literally.

Stage door. There's a horse at stage door. Like, that's crazy. Exit stage door on a horse. Yeah, no, it is. Like, it's. Yeah, it's too good to be true. It's perfect. Yes.

You can see why. You can see his theatricality in this execution. The fact that he literally gets on the stage. Yeah, he's like, by the way, I'm definitely going to get on stage after I do this. I'm not going to just run back down the way I've come. No, no, no. And I get on stage. Yeah. And you know, also that speaks to his knowledge of the geography of theatres, right? Because that's probably the best way to get out is to get onto the stage and then go out of the stage door, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. Because there will be an exit behind the stage. He understands how those buildings work. He knows where he's going. Even if he's never

been behind stage in that particular theatre, which he probably was, he understands the route out of there. I mean, you sort of half expect him to take a bow. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, is that partially what he's doing by taking to the stage in many ways, like taking his moment. But yeah, it does. It feels very like that. But it's, and you know, I said that the laughter is masking the gunshot. People do hear it because it's not that masked totally, but they think it's part of the play. But very quickly, Mrs. Lincoln is screaming. Yeah. And can you imagine the desperation of that scream?

Yeah. And it's this really horrible moment, isn't it? This juxtaposition of the laughter and the screaming and this is very cinematic, that kind of flipping reversal of what's happening and something there about the way that the audience is reacting to the scene on stage and then they're reacting to this scene. I wonder if it would have been almost a little bit difficult to perceive what was going on if you're just sat in the stalls watching the show and you're laughing along and you're in a sort of communal, emotional space that is safe. You're experiencing something that everyone else is and then suddenly it's like, what's happening up there? Oh, okay. Now this guy's jumped up. Oh, he's broken his leg. Is that real? Is that part of the act? He's on the stage. So you're probably thinking, where's he come from? If you didn't see him in the box, he's just fallen onto the stage. You're probably thinking, is he a character in this? Is this funny? I don't know what's going on. And then there's some kind of kerfuffle going on in the box up above you. Like, it must

have been so confusing. One thing that I find so interesting about this is that on the same night, there is another assassination attempt taking place elsewhere, right? This isn't the only attack that evening. The Confederates are unhappy. So Lewis Powell is one of the associates of John Wilkes Booth, and he has made an assassination attempt on the Secretary of State, William Seward. So there are a group of people involved in this, as you can imagine, because there's not just a horse waiting outside the back door, somebody has to arrange all of these things. So Wilkes Booth is not acting alone.

Yeah, and Booth isn't, he's not, yeah, he's not an isolated figure. Exactly. Which is interesting because so often with assassination attempts, it is the narrative at least is that it is a single person. I guess that speaks to the idea that this is kind of some hangover from the Civil War, right? This is the final remnants of that bubbling along the edges of it. So that there still is some bit of collective action happening from the Confederate side.

But you were talking there about the kind of idea of what the experience was like in the theater. So we do have renderings of this and there's quite a few, but I want you to describe this one here. We have a colored image called the Martyr of Liberty. Okay, so I'm looking at this image. It is of the presidential box. There are five figures in it. We have Lincoln himself, centre stage, he's sat on a sort of throne-like, very big red and gold chair. He is falling forward, his hands have fallen onto the rail at the front of the box. We've got Mary next to him, her hand is shot up in the air, she's looking at him, her eyes are wide open, she's absolutely shocked. And then to the right of her we've got Clara, who is the fiancee of Major Rathbone, who is on the other side of the scene. And behind the

four of them seated down, of course, standing behind them is Wilkes Booth himself, and he's holding the pistol up. It's a really little weapon, actually. It's not a big gun. And there's smoke rising from the shot that's just been fired. What strikes me about this, and looking at the title of this work, The Martyr of Liberty, as one would expect in the presidential box, there is a red theatre-like curtain with gold tassels that frames the scene and it is like a mini theatre in and of itself. And what you just said there about the fact that there are thousands of people who witnessed this, this is a moment of theatre that is to a large

extent choreographed, not by Lincoln, but it is done in the theatre because it is meant to be seen by people. This is the way to express the anger of the Confederates in public, to show the consequences of going against them. It is an act of rebellion, of resistance in that way. And also, it will spread the word that the president's dead. If you kill the president in front of a bunch of people, people can't go around saying, oh, it's a rumor, don't worry, it's fine, he's okay, he's okay. That news is going to leak out of that theatre as people start to run out into the street. There's no controlling that narrative from these people.

There's no potential for a power vacuum straight away. I mean, there's obviously a system and we'll talk about that but... It's to create panic. Yeah, for those few minutes, there's going to be panic. And if you look underneath as well, there's a little piece of text which comes from Act 1, Scene 7 of the Scottish play, which is apparently Lincoln's favourite. It says that he hath borne his faculties so meek, has been so clear in his great office that his virtues shall plead trump-tongued against the deep damnation of his taking off. So it doesn't matter that he's dead. He was so incredible. He was so virtuous that we can't help but lament and shout from the rooftops how amazing he was,

despite the fact that he is martyred, basically. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's exactly it, isn't it? That this, you know, Lincoln wasn't given the opportunity to live out the rest of his presidency. We talked about some of those nuances and complications that were happening. Is there a world in which he would have become less popular? Is there a world in which he ends his presidency not with the legacy that he is now guaranteed to have? He's been made a martyr. Yeah, absolutely. In some ways, he becomes, as you say, we don't know what would have happened had he been there know what would have happened

had he been there because he would have had to oversee such a tumultuous time that maybe he would have fallen out of favor or whatever. But now he is secure in his martyrdom, essentially. So we know then that he is taken across the road. He is attended to by Dr. Charles Leal, as we said, and other people too. Like there's loads of military people coming in. There's people from his cabinet coming in. there's a lot going on. And is someone saying at this point, he is not dead? No, no, no, he is. Nine hours of being attended to by several people. Just to let you know what's happening in his body during this time, there is external and internal hemorrhaging,

he's losing a lot of blood. This continues throughout the night. The guards are patrolling not just outside the room but outside the house as well. We don't want another attack of course. He does not regain consciousness however. The theatre was the last thing that he was alive for. And he does die then as we said at the very beginning at 7.22am on the 15th of April 1865. He's only 56 actually. He always appears older to me in renderings that we see. But yeah, he's only 56. Younger than recent presidents anyway. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. But come here to me, I have another image for you, which is

apparently the what's going on in the room, right? As he's dying. Just describe it to us. It's not that complex. Just see what the setting is. And then we'll just see how this is also feeding into this kind of idea of martyrdom. Okay, so we're looking at the bedroom scene essentially of Lincoln's death and he is at the center of it, as you might expect. He is in the bed with his eyes closed. Is this the moment of death itself or maybe just before? All around him are figures. We've got men in black evening suits, all weeping, looking on at him, all in a state of mourning already. And then off to the side of the bed, we've got Mary Lincoln still in her finery from the theatre. And behind another woman who I assume is Clara from the presidential box who's

witnessed all potentially and weeping onto Mary's lap into her skirts is her son with Lincoln, just a small infant really. What I think is so interesting about this is that all the figures, bar Mary and her husband in the bed, are in black. And so Lincoln himself, he's been stripped down to his white undershirt, which has been loosened around the neck. And he's in this very white, crisp bedding. And he looks saint-like. He is, and again, thinking about this idea of him as the martyr president, right? That he's sort of illuminated. He's quite Christ-like almost. Yeah. There's a few interesting things, right, everything that you just described, but also the fact that this room is a depiction of a room that didn't exist even though it's

supposed to be in the Petersons house, but the Petersons room was nowhere near this big, it could not possibly have fit all those people in. And also, I will say that in the account we heard at the beginning, they talked about how they took the bottom of the bed away, And in this, there's a very heavy, very American 19th century looking carved bed. And it has a bed head, but also the bottom of the bed is still there. The room definitely has more dignity than the description gives, right? Because this seems like he almost planned to die. And one of the things which is in the other image and this image, there is no blood anywhere near Abraham Lincoln. It's very deliberate that they've kept that

out of all the images. He does not look like a man who's been shot in the head at all. There's no blood, there's no injury even depicted. Yeah, I mean, this is the thing that we have to remember. He's just taken into a random house opposite the theatre. It just happens to be there. And this version, I mean, there's nice art hung on the walls. There's this very elaborate, beautiful, I suppose maybe woollen carpet on the floor. There are these nice fixtures and fittings. We've got the carved bed. There's a side table off to one side that's got beautiful lace covering, hung on it with a jug and a cup

of some water. Like this is depicted as a sort of at least a middle class, nicely appointed space, not someone's random house opposite a theatre. Yeah, yeah. So it's a totally made up thing in order to facilitate his martyrdom. And of course, it says that under the picture, doesn't it? It says the deathbed of the martyr president Abraham Lincoln. So he is now the martyr president. Yeah. And it's, it's interesting as well that we talk about the theatre space itself and then the presidential box being its own sort of miniature theatre. And here again, this is like another scene from a play. This is another sort of theatrical space, if you like. It's

an arena in which this narrative is going to be played out again and again. The space is going to be reimagined and it becomes sort of symbolic as much as a literal site. Yeah. No, it's a real deliberate rendering. But of course, and we said this, one of the things that America has and most infrastructures of power have is a very clear lineage of where that power goes should that power structure be disrupted. And of course, Vice President Andrew Johnson is sworn in on the very same day that Lincoln dies. He will have been waiting in the wings, of course. Just so you know, just so we have kind of wrapping up the whole narrative, Booth himself is located in Virginia two weeks later. He is shot in a barn by one of the Union soldiers,

Sergeant Boston Corbett. That is the most American name I've ever heard my entire life, Boston Corbett. And he dies within three hours of having been shot. Sorry, Sergeant Corbett, not a very good shot if the person you shoot in a barn, presumably at close range, takes three hours to die. And I don't know, but I wonder if it was a case that they didn't necessarily want him to die, that they wanted to have some kind of a public hearing or something and maybe it wasn't a shoot to kill instruction or something. I don't know.

Yeah, that's interesting. But I'm just wondering maybe it's that. Yeah, I suppose it speaks as well to just, you know, this is a landscape in America that has been so saturated with violence and bloodshed during the Civil War and that Booth kind of flees out into the country and then is shot in a barn. It just seems like a sort of extension of that cross-country back and forth, the fighting over borders and boundaries. I think it really is. It feels very sort of suitable that that would be his end. Tell me this, are the other co-conspirators caught? Because we know obviously there's the other assassination attempt that night.

There are presumably more people involved in this than just those two men. Yeah, eight of them were arrested and tried by military tribunal. Because remember, we are in wartime essentially still here. And four of those eight are hanged, including by the way, Mary Surrett, who is the first woman executed by the US federal government. I didn't know that. No, neither did I. I need to know everything about her. Oh, we should do an episode on Mary.

We should. That is absolutely fascinating. That's an interesting one. So what is Lincoln's legacy in the years afterwards? Because he's fought for the reunification of the states. He leaves, he's made it to part, his presidency in a way that makes him into a martyr, that elevates him, that elevates the cause he was fighting for, that maybe glosses over some of the nuances that

we've kind of highlighted and that in the centuries since, people have done a lot of work to kind of look at, for example, his relationship to slavery. But what happens to the efforts to reunify? You might think that because he's made this martyr, things might absolutely flow down the alleyway that he would have wanted it to go and that actually his wishes then become almost impossible to ignore. But that's not really what happens. They lose that unifying figure and his vision becomes derailed, I suppose. So he was the glue holding it all together.

Yeah, certainly he was somebody who was, and because he had been re-elected, I think, you know the way he also, like that election victory is a mandate. And now nobody else has that mandate. I know there is a vice president, but it's not quite the same thing. And of course, to keep in mind that Johnson, the now president, is, yes, he's a Democrat, he's a Southern Democrat and it's often the Confederate states are in the South. And so he is more hostile to black equality than Lincoln was. So if Lincoln was nuanced, this guy is- And Lincoln was also quite vague in terms of what he was offering post-war to freed enslaved people.

Whereas Johnson just goes ahead and pardons thousands of Confederates and he returns land to ex-slaveholders. So he's very much courting the Confederate vote and the Confederate states. And then in terms of the freed and enslaved people, he opposes certain protections that Lincoln would have offered them. So it really is an about turn in terms of what Lincoln would have done. And he's removing some of those safety nets then that Lincoln wanted to put in place to ensure not only equality, but safety of people who've been freed from slavery. Yeah. And as a result, there is further confusion. And in that confusion, violence just

surges in the South, particularly. So this kind of derails what Lincoln, in many ways, and it's probably difficult to say this in some ways, but John Wilkes Booth achieved what he set out to do in many ways. Okay, not ultimately, but in that immediate time period. As we mentioned at the top, we've done a lot of the final days of series now and often the people that we look at are, as happened so much throughout history and certainly in British history, are usually being executed by the state, if not murdered by political enemies. But we haven't done many assassinations. I'm very, very interested in assassinations. I'm interested in the people

who carry them out, the people who are the victims of them, the aftermath, the conspiracies that rush into that void of confusion. All of that, all the sort of discourse around them absolutely fascinates me. Why do you think we are interested in historical assassinations? Is that something that you're drawn to? Yeah, I think there might be something in it about proximity of two individuals. Who otherwise wouldn't meet. Yeah, yeah. And it's also the thought of an assassination is not murdering someone in cold blood. And by that I mean it's not a crime

of passion. It's not something that's done on a whim. It is calculated. It is deliberate. It is targeted. And often, as you were kind of saying, by an individual, there's usually an individual behind this, although we know that there are eight other people who are arrested and very much in on this plot. But that brings two human beings together in a very violent and deliberate interaction. And it is the, there's something thankfully intangible about being that close to somebody and deliberately ending their life in such a violent and calculated way that is utterly fascinating and assassinations so often then go on to dictate the course of history in so many different ways. Yeah, I'm interested in the ones that worked and the ones that didn't because it's a crossroads, that moment, and it can go one of two ways often if it succeeds, if it fails and the ramifications of both of those actually are huge. I think what interests me as well,

and I think we talk so much about how history is, the practice of history, the discipline of history is often storytelling and I think these offer us a way to tell stories, they're such fascinating stories because you have these moving parts, these two, until that moment, separate storylines, these two people who are just moving through the world and they're coming closer and closer together, but at least one of them does not know that that's going to happen. And then you have this moment, this spark, this big explosive point in history. And then you have the sort of the, you know, the debris falling as it were and this aftermath and working out the lay of the land beyond that point. Yeah, I think there's real power in them and I think as well, as you say, it's the meeting

of two people in a place who otherwise wouldn't come into contact, often someone in a position of power and someone who is from quite regularly the lowest ranks of the society, who has some kind of gripe or grievance to air a political point to make. And that is just so compelling. And it also highlights the fragility of humanity, doesn't it? Where in one split second, one individual can upturn an entire nation. I think particularly with Lincoln, actually, because he was symbolically and physically such a giant. You know, and he's seen as this father figure, he's got a big hat on, he's a presence in the world, giving these

speeches, you know, even when he when he steps out to give some of his famous speeches, he's so tall in the crowd, everyone can see him. He is this something that, you know, everyone's eyes are drawn to him. And yet, when we talk about the injuries in the aftermath of the gun being fired, he seems so small and so vulnerable. And it's hard not to feel sort of terror for him and to feel traumatized by the details of those injuries and the suffering that he would have gone through. I mean, you mentioned that he's unconscious, but presumably he was aware of what had happened to him to a certain extent, I don't know. But there's something so vulnerable about that. Yeah, absolutely. And that's that spark going out. And I think this is an unusual recommendation

to maybe take us out on, but if you are interested in kind of reliving some of this to a certain extent, there is a musical by Stephen Sondheim called Assassins and it's about all the assassination attempts on, well, not just presidents in America, but various American people in history. And Abraham Lincoln is featured and John Wilkes Booth sings a song about it. And it's really good. It's it's really good. It's really, really good. Go and listen to the Assassin's Soundtrack. You're not going to sing it right now? I was in that musical a long time ago. So I played David Herod, who was one of the co-conspirators.

Sing us out please. I can't remember what it was. I genuinely can't remember one single song from it, but it's good. I remember it was very difficult because sometimes it's hard to sing, but anyway, it was there. But yeah, so you can do, I'm not singing, you go and do some work now. You tell everyone goodbye. Well. You sing. But anyway, it was there. But yeah, so you can do I'm not singing you go and do some work now you tell everyone goodbye. Well, you sing. Anthony's refusing to sing. So there we are. We are at the end of the episode. Thank you so much for joining us. If you want to leave us a five star review, we would be very, very grateful. It helps

other people to find us. If you're watching this on YouTube, do like and subscribe. We are adding to the list of videos there constantly. So do do that. If you want to suggest an episode on a different historical assassination or indeed any other topic, you can get in touch at afterdark at historyhit.com. We just wanted to take a moment to tell you about one of our favourite podcasts, Plant Murder. Now, Plant Murder. Now, Plant Murder is not about how I kill every plant that ever comes into my house. Oh no, it is about the deadly intersection of plants and true crime. Yes, you heard that correctly.

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