Doomed to Fail - Ep 171: Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play? - John Wilkes Booth

Episode Date: February 5, 2025

Here's the way to explain how famous John Wilkes Booth was BEFORE - imagine, it's 1996, you are 14, Leonardo Dicaprio is the most handsome person you have ever seen AND we just learned that he can do Shakespeare (We are are SURE that understanding Shakespeare in any way makes you smart, so you are trying) -- THEN Leo kills someone. You have to take down your Teen People pictures of him as you sob and listen to "Young Hearts Run Free." Does that make sense? John Wilkes Booth came from the most famous family of actors, he was literally called 'The most handsome man in America' - today, we talk about the Booth Family, John's southern leanings, and the decision to kill our dear Abe.  SourcesJohn Wilkes Booth Goes from Actor to Assassin (feat. Adam Scott & Will Forte) - Drunk History - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAVInu2TE7on- it’s fine. Booth - by Karen Joy Fowler - https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/08/books/review-booth-karen-joy-fowler.htmlhttps://www.belairmd.org/Calendar.aspx?EID=3886https://lincolnconspirators.com/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Opxub7ASf_Q&t=455s - John Wilkes Booth: Assassin In The Spotlight | Full Documentary | Biography Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

It's a matter of the people of the state of California versus Orenthal James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Boom. We are live and recording. Taylor, how are you? Good. How are you? So, I'm sick, actually, but I like my voice when I'm sick. It's very radio. It's very deep. It's very deep. It's very.

guttural some might say masculine some might say that but nobody nobody listening to this probably um so cool we are recording and today's a fresh day and taylor's got a fresh story i do wait let me say welcome to doom to fail i'm taylor joined by farz we bring you histories most notorious disasters and epic failures and earlier this week far as told us a scary story about planes colliding and i have i don't know it's not a scary story but it's a fun one you got a fun story we'll we'll define the word fun later i learned a lot does that count fun okay that's fun great so i had mentioned a couple weeks ago that i was reading a historical fiction book and this is this is the one that I'm going to make you guess so the author of the book

that I read which I'll tell you the name later if I told you now you would know who I was talking about her name is Karen J. Fowler and in the afterward of the book she said what she was trying to understand in her research and so like stuff she wrote some of it is fact some of it is like her extrapolating obviously that's what historical fiction is but she wanted to try to understand what the family of someone infamous for doing something really awful was like in her example she said like the family of a school shooter how do you who are you before this happens to you who are you after how did the family react what made this one person in the family like this was the rest of the family like this like what what happened and how the family reacts to learn a lot about the

family of this person and then a lot of it like have picked out what was true or not based on like other research and can you think of someone who was famous for shooting someone uh i have three i have three hints that's hint number one three um go god oswald booth um um oh you got it booth it's booth it's booth okay yeah so my other two hints were he was the most handsome man in america and he was a very famous famous professional actor. I thought you were to say me, but... No.

And I was going to also say that it... I'm trying to express to you how famous the Booth family was. And so I was like, it's like the Baldwin brothers. But then Alec Baldwin actually did shoot someone. So I took that example away from my example. So I was like, it's like if the president of the United States was a huge fan of L. Fanning. He was like, I love the great.

I love her work. And then Dakota Fanning shot him. that's a that's probably a good example there's the whole metaphor is like rife with issues that like could get caught in some sort of like filters on the radio because trump didn't get shot at no totally but i don't think but i think that the point is like yeah but like who is the person who shot at trump i have no idea you know so i will say like when you started talking about this my immediate thought was that you're talking about dylan clebel's mom because she is super active on the circuit

talking about like basically she was like terrorized and like obviously she's living in complete hell because she lost her kid her kid did something horrible a bunch of people lost her kids like and she's made a point

to be very vocal about it so I thought we're gonna go in that direction but it's like the exact same concept it sounds like gonna be yeah yeah but I also just I just want to stress like how famous he was and not just him but his family

like these are famous people everybody in America who like how famous could you have been that it was America in like the 1860s there's only like a hundred of us isn't there no there's a lot of far as we had a civil war during that time so there were enough people to have a civil war

and have most Americans die in a war than any other war maybe like a million there are a lot of people here fine and anyone who knew the theater existed knew about the booths basically like that's they knew them so let me tell you about them they weren't necessarily rich but they were like super famous so we'll go to England

to where his parents were born and we need to know Shakespeare to understand this I do not know Shakespeare I don't know what happens in Richard the 3rd I know what happens in Macbeth I've seen Macbeth

I know what happens in Romeo and Juliet because I went to middle school but like I don't really know a lot I know the Claire Forlani and oh my God Leonardo DiCaprio version Yeah I know the

Wait the Claire Deans Claire Danes. Who's Claire Forlani? Where did that come from? I have no idea. I've never heard that one before. Is that a real person? I'm going to like that.

We're going to straighten this out before you do it. Anyway, that movie's great. Other things I know. Wait, I also love the much to do about nothing with Canada Reeves. Oh, I remember. Yeah, okay. So I remember. I had a crush on Claire Forlani when I was a kid.

So she was the girl in Meet Joe Black that Brad Pitt's character fell in love with. Mm-hmm. No, I know exactly you're talking about. She was very pretty. Sorry, it says nothing to do with your story. Please keep going. No, no, no, it's fine. Oh, while I was over there for some reason looking at Claire Forlani Online, I wanted to also add that John Wilkes Booth is 5-8.

I think I'm going to say that later, but I just want to tell you that. So, okay, let's go over to England. Think about this Shakespearean family. So the father of the family is Junius, J-U-N-I-U-S, Junius Brutus Booth. which is a great name. He was born on May 1st, 1796. So he's born in England. His father was a huge supporter of the U.S. Revolution.

So his parents, his family was kind of like, we don't love England anyway. His mother was related to a man named John Wilkes. So about 75 years before all of this, John Wilkes was a journalist who wrote bad stuff about the king. And he also was like, the Lord Mayor of London. and like was in the government but was definitely like anti-royalist and like kind of a just like a journalist who was like doing stuff you know they sound like a shit stirring family like he's got

beef with the king and he has beef with lincoln well not the same guy but so well that's fair and so obviously john wilkes booth is named after john wilkes this relative of his grandmother um but also i thought was interesting is john wilkes was notoriously ugly and he was called the ugliest man in england which is funny that his namesake is the handsomeest man in America. Weird. You know? So if you think of what an actor looks like, and the good thing about this family is that we have pictures of them, it was like, I'm very grateful that they did this during the time of photographs, because it's helpful to see if they look like. But Junius Booth looks like an actor.

You got to go, actor. He has this face that you can imagine has like. a ton of expression and all the pictures of him he's wearing like a toga or like a beautiful costume and he's like oh he's like very he's like a passionate actor when he dies later um a journalist will say of his death there are no more actors like Junius was like the peak of actors in the in history are you looking at him um I am so he he does give me like Sean Penn probably takes himself a little too seriously for being like a play like I imagine every single thing that you say to him he responds to you with a quote from Shakespeare yeah I know he sounds like the kind of guy at a dinner party you'd want to like get away from I feel like it'd be fun for like an hour I have to go so imagine he's your dad you know he's a lot so he would do things like so when he was acting like

he never was rich. Like you were saying, like how many people know him? Because the way it would work is he would play Richard the 3rd the most often. That was his biggest role that he would play the most often. So there would be towns.

So like my town of Joshua Tree would put on Richard the 3rd and he would come and be Richard the 3rd. But everyone here, like we'd build the sets, we'd be all the other actors. He'd come in and do Richard the 3rd for like three days.

Then he'd go to San Diego and do their Richard the 3rd, the whole different cast, a whole different set of people but he would be like a traveling character so he would like come home from these trips dressed like Richard the 3rd you know he owned his own costumes like him

his wife would make his costumes like it was like the house was full of swords and capes and like very dramatic stuff if that makes that be kind of fun yeah I mean well it's not the best for his family but like it's like a fun job it sounds like he was also

an alcoholic he was drinking a ton there is one time where he a theater manager locked him in a dressing room before a performance so he would stop drinking because he would often get on stage drunk and the audience would know obviously it was like there was like a it was like a peak where it was like just enough drunk to be really great at Richard the 3rd and then like really bad at Richard the 3rd if it like if you went over that hump and while he was locked in his in his dressing room he bribed a stagehand to buy whiskey, and he put a straw out the keyhole and drank the whiskey that way, which is funny.

Lover. So a little bit of it happened in England and then it happened in America. So in 1831, he moved with his wife, Marianne Holmes, who was a flower girl at the theater, someone who sold flowers at the theater. They met there and they fell in love, and they moved to the United States, and moved to Maryland. incidentally a lot of famous people are in this story like he knew a lot of famous people like he knew lord byron he knew Andrew Jackson like he connects the dots of a lot of folks that like we know as well he wrote a letter to Andrew Jackson at one point um and threatened to kill him

and then later he said it was a joke but like so it sounds like he's like drunk testing people via mail I did I did read that part and was like I think there's just something genetically wrong with this family. Yeah. I mean, I think he's just like, he's a lot. So Mary Ann, the wife, the mom of John Wilkes, is brought to the United States with this man. And she's like, he's an actor. He's famous. I'm going to have this lavish life. And essentially he left her on a farm because his job was hard. And he had to like travel around. And once she started having kids, she couldn't go with him, you know. So he kind of left her there. His dad came to. So she was found the farm and it was a lot of work to maintain the farm and they would like you know bring

their vegetables to like different towns to sell it and things like that and they would like you know they had crops um they also had a fair amount of enslaved people on their farm so they were like poor but like not poor enough to not have enslaved people you know that was like part of their growing up right so marianne has 10 children and some of their actors some of them aren't. The first one is Junius Jr. He was sometimes an actor and a theater manager. He moved to San Francisco, which was like really hard to get to. So at one point, like Junius and another son, they go visit him and they have to go down before the Panama Canal is made. You have to walk across Panama and like go on rivers and stuff and then go up. So it's like a terrible, terrible journey.

But he moved to San Francisco, was doing stuff there. Junius, they called him June. He was sometimes an actor. He wasn't as good as his brothers, but he gets married. And later, his son is an actor in the movies, like the very beginning of the movies, like the 20s and 30s, which is fun. Sweet. There's Rosalie. Rosalie is called the Forgotten Child.

We don't know much about her. She was kind of like a spinster. She lived, you know, with her mom until her death. She never got married or did anything. Part of the reason that she stayed with her mom so much is after Rosalie was born, three other children were born, Mary Ann, Frederick, and Elizabeth, all three of them died of cholera when Rosalie was nine. So her mom's grief just kept Rosalie really close to her, and then she just stayed with her mom for the rest of her life. So we don't know a ton about her,

but that was it. There was another child named Henry Byron, because they knew Lord Byron. He died when he was 11, when the family went back to England just to, like, visit. So four of the kids died pretty young. The next son is Edwin Thomas Booth, and he is our L. Fanning in our metaphor. He's a great actor. Yeah. So he's a fantastic actor. He is America's Hamlet and probably the best Hamlet of all time. I don't know what that means. Exactly. Yeah. Big praise. You know, the best at it. He also had his dad's nose and looked like an actor. You know, he also looks just like his dad has that same look um and in the nicest way possible

edwin and julius in particular look like they can be on a roman stage you know like they look like they could be in like the i don't know whatever like one of those big theaters in ancient rome they have that look to me i didn't see it you know what i mean i also think it's because every picture you look at them they it could also be like a statue yeah no totally that's fair that's fair that's fair There's a painting of Edwin when he's a little bit older by a famous painter that is nice.

He looks just like his dad. He's like standing up in a suit. So Edwin is going to be the one who spends time going with his dad when his dad gets too drunk to go around and do things. So he has to like go different stages with him and chase him around and get him to perform on stage. You know, like things like that. Like his dad would like hide in a bar drunk and he has to go find him and bring him to the stage and make him do these things. he edwin also has drinking problems he eventually stops drinking but he does get and he gets married twice the second time he marries a young actress and she dies shortly after childbirth in like i think we talked about this before where i'm pretty sure she died just because a doctor like put his dirty hands in her when when she was like having a baby um and so um but that's edwin is like edwin's the famous one um the next daughter is a girl named asia so she's going to marry Edwin's friend John Sleeper Clark and eventually they'll move to England because John

Sleeper is going to be arrested for because he knows the family after Lincoln's assassinated and then they moved to England after that. He wasn't a part of it but they like arrested him under a suspicion just because he was around. Asia did write a lot of writing. So she wrote a book about John Wilkes Booth and being his sister. So I didn't read it but like that exists. So she wrote about it like firsthand and she was very very close to John Wilkes in the book. that I read the historical fiction book they were like she's also kind of a bitch I don't know that's true or not

but like strong-willed and obviously like the girls are not actors because a woman being an actor is like shameful you know so were men did men portray women I don't think so at this time that's a good question

but I think the women who were in the theater were considered like not that reputable but the men were fine I don't make the rules I think that's why I think you might yeah And now look at us and now look at the world we live in.

No, just look at it. Just look at it and revel in Blake Lively's lawsuit. Oh, God. So then John Wilkes Booth. So he's the ninth of the 10th, 10 children. He was born on May 10th, 1838 in Bell Air, Maryland. Let's get back to him in a second. And the youngest son is named Joe.

I don't know much about him, but when I googled him, there was a talk that you could attend that was in 2008 in Bel Air, Maryland, about him. But alas, it's too late for me to go to that. Right. But that's it. So they live in Maryland, which is close to Virginia. They live on their farm. There is a house there called Tudor Hall that the dad built when he did make a little bit of money.

It was also one of the things were like, you kind of had to cross your fingers if dad brought the money home. you know instead of just drinking it yeah exactly like he may go up to New York to do Richard III for a weekend and come back with nothing you know or whatever

so it was definitely like up to him but eventually he built a house called Tudor Hall it's still there you can visit it on selected Sundays it's a national historic place kept by the Junius B booth society so you can still visit the house that they lived in in Maryland

so we're in Maryland the kids are living their life some of the older sons are out living their lives June is already gone. Edwin's following dad around the country, getting him to get on stage, not totally drunk. And

there's a secret. Family. Totally different family. Totally different family. Yep. From before. So Junius was married before he met Marianne. To a woman

named Marie Christine Adela Deloney. He married her in 1814 when he was 19 years old in England. He met her in Belgium and they moved to England. He had also fathered a child in 1811 with someone named Sarah Blackbeard, which is cool. And there's nothing about that child. No one knows what happened. When Junius left England to the United States with Marianne, he told Marie that he'd be right back. And he'd go sent her money and he did send her money. He did keep this up and not forever, but for a while he did send her money and be like, I'm going to be right back. Meanwhile, he's building this life with Marianne in Maryland. So they had two children before he left. The daughter died when she was

young, but the boy lives and he, you know, grows into a man and he's 25 years old and he comes to Maryland and he's like, oh, hello, is there a secret family here? You know, and they started making he's like oh i haven't seen you in 25 years dad do you perhaps have 10 children and they started making a scene starting in 1846 like following around the family being like you know this is this isn't a real family blah blah blah like yelling like embarrassing the family eventually and june and junez isn't there during this so like he's always on tour while his family's being followed around baltimore by this woman who's like pissed obviously and but really she should have like known 25 years ago that it wasn't coming home right but whatever so she has to live in maryland for three years before she can get a divorce which again is ridiculous like you can't just get a divorce in this man who's been with another family for 25 years no yeah well you know but she got it she ended up getting her divorce and in 1851 on john wilkes's 13th birthday his parents were finally married fun um so

that was like obviously like you know it's probably a weird and confusing time for the children for those seven years when that woman was like falling around um so that's family I think it's chaotic and like the way it's chaotic like live with a bunch of artists um and then like

family secrets and lots of drinking and the dad was often like I don't know criticized or described as like kind of living half in the world of Shakespeare half out you know so just like but that's what you want out of a guy who's like just a stage his entire life and kind of a drunk. Exactly. Exactly.

So, let's talk about John. Two weird things. When he was born, his mom had a vision. So she had a vision when Edwin was born. She saw like a shooting star. Like, he's going to be a star. And like, I don't know if that's true or not, but he was.

So great. And then when John was born, she was up late with him and she saw the fire in the living room come out of this fireplace and it spelled the word country and then went back in.

Oh, okay. Which, you know, is a bad omen considering the things that we know happened. Yeah. But she was like, I don't know what that means. I also think there's mold in the wall and that's why she keeps seeing shooting stars in the world country.

I know. I mean, it's like two in the morning and you're holding your baby and it's dark and like you're exhausted, so there's that. But anyway, and then when he was in school, he went to like a military school a fortune tell teller read his poem and said he had a grim destiny a short life and he was doomed to die young meeting a bad end so did I pay for this that's not what you want to hear from your fortune teller for sure but she was right so he starts getting interested in acting in politics when he's 16 he becomes a delegate for the a delegate for the no nothing party so that was like one of the parties that was around that time so that's the one that he was like officially a part of.

And at 17, he becomes an actor, actor, like his father. I mean, they didn't necessarily want him to do it, but he was like, he had a different style than Edwin and the dad. They're just like, he was also pretty good at it. Like, not the best, but like good at it. So, like, his father was the actor.

June was fine. He stopped being an actor. Edwin was exceptional and John was good. Does that make sense? Okay. So he starts doing small roles. So he actually, he was the Steve, Baldwin.

Yes. Edwin was the Alec. Yes. Okay, got it. Not in who they shot, not in who shot someone, but just in their acting abilities. Yes.

Right. Yeah. That's why I was like L in Dakota because I feel like that. Anyway, so he starts doing small roles. He does, when Edwin does Hamlet in 1858,

John is Horatio. His favorite role was Brutus in Julius Caesar. which we know Brutus ended up, you know, killing a tyrant is his claim to fame. And then he was also handsome. So it's something you have to think about when you're looking at pictures of Drummond Books booth. Like tastes change. But like a Civil War reporter called him, quote,

a muscular perfect man, curling hair like a Corinthian capital. And like, okay. And I think there's one picture of him and Edwin. and their dad where they're doing a play together where he doesn't have a mustache and there I feel like I can see it a little more you can't really see his face for that big mustache no I think

I think he was probably I mean he's probably a good looking guy like because I think at the time everybody had some deformity because life was so horrible back then that he just

looked like he wasn't deformed so he was handsome that's fair that's fair and he was a good actor as people were like ooh he definitely had a lot of like girlfriends like maybe got some people pregnant and definitely people like thought they were engaged to him when they were definitely not you know what but like I mean think about it like would we think like if who's an actor you think is really good looking my first thought was like Leonardo DiCaprio oh no Patrick Wilson um um you know what Patrick Wilson actually is pretty good looking Leonardo DiCaprio I think that if you were to see him today on the street and he was just like walking around and like new balances and just like living his life like you wouldn't it's fair i am thinking i am thinking romeo and juliet leonard caprio and then he stands out because he's doing romeo it's true that's true you know my i'm going off with some of my cousins said when i was a kid i had a huge crush on briny spears

and she was like she's not like you think she's good looking because she's famous like she's actually not like exceptionally good looking. It is. Yep. I think you're right. But I think that's probably, I mean, yeah. It's a case in a lot of cases. So like, yes.

If he was like, if he was like, if he was a butcher, he wouldn't be the handsomest butcher in America. But like. Taylor, do you realize that when this podcast is famous, we're going to be so hot? Yes. That is such a good point. I'm so happy for us. Great.

So fame makes you handsome. Good call. So he's traveling and acting and people love it. At 1861, when the Civil War begins, he is in Albany, New York performing. And he says kind of out loud that the South was heroic for what they did. He thought that the abolitionists were the problem because they were righteous and intolerant to the South. His personal views were that people of different races are inherently different and that slavery was good for them because they were lucky. to be taken care of, essentially. In most of his work is in the North. So even during the Civil War, though, he's going to be going up and down the country to perform. His, in 1864, the three booths do Julius Caesar together. That's the one picture we have in without a mustache. And they raise enough money.

Edwin, in particular, he did 100 nights of Hamlet in New York, which was a record until John Barrymore broke the record in 1922, doing 101 in a row. But the money that they raised was for a statue of Shakespeare that is still in Central Park today. Oh, cool. So they raise it mine. So here's another fun, weird thing that I don't know if you knew. So in 1864, Edwin is in New York. He's actually in Jersey City.

So he's like close to New York in Jersey City. And he's getting out of train. And a young man was on. the platform of the train station. And he said, quote, this young man said, there was some crowding and I happened to be pressed by it against the car body while waiting my turn. In this situation, the train began to move and by the motion I was twisted off my feet and had dropped somewhat with feet downwards into the open space and was personally helpless when my coat collar was vigorously seized and I was quickly pulled up and out to secure footing on the platform.

so it was edwin who saved this young man from falling through the platform of the train and he saw him and looked at him and said edwin booth i know who you are thank you so much and edwin said you're welcome he didn't recognize the boy and he left guess who the boy was thomas sadison robert todd lincoln lincoln's son that is crazy that's what that's my point there was only 50 people in the whole country back then maybe but i think that's wilds i don't know who it was but like he knew that edwin booth had saved his life which is you know and you know the lincoln's had a lot of bad luck they lost a couple sons like later so it could have been another son dead but edwin saved him so another friend they have is a man named john t ford who owns some theaters there's one in baltimore and eventually one in dc the ford theater is a 1500 seat theater that was open on November 9th of 1960 something.

I can't, not sure. Anyway, John was one of the first people to perform in Ford's Theater. He was in a play called The Marble Heart, and he was a Greek sculptor in a costume, making marble statues come to life. At some point during that play, there's a point where he says something that is, like, I don't know, it's harsh or whatever the character says. And while he's saying it, he shakes his finger in the direction of the, um, of the balconies because Lincoln is there. Lincoln sees John Wilkes booth in this play. And while he is delivering this line, he kind of shakes his finger in Lincoln's

direction. And Lincoln's sister-in-law was there. And she looked at him and she said, Mr. Lincoln, he looks as if he meant that for you. And Lincoln said, he does look pretty sharp at me, doesn't he? so like in public he was like I hate that guy you know and Lincoln was there if Facebook existed back then he'd have a lot of like strongly worded memes and posts about him oh my god he's totally like all memes on his thing some of them are some of them are great out because they're proved to be not true you know like that's the kind of guy he is

um Lincoln actually saw Edwin perform more he's but he saw him perform about six times he really Lincoln as we know loved the theater and saw both Booth Brothers perform. John does a little bit of an investment in oil out west, which could have been good, but he left because he was impatient, and he ended up losing a lot of money. He lost about a million dollars in today's money.

So John's successful at this point. Like, he has enough money to invest a million dollars in something and lose it as well. He starts to be more sympathetic to the South. He loves Virginia when he's there. He's like, this is my home. It's very close to Maryland, but he's like much better here because obviously Maryland

was in the union, and Virginia was in the South. His family was divided. Edwin voted for Lincoln. It was the first time he ever voted, and John was pissed at him. He was really mad. He told Asia, his sister, that he was smuggling medicine to the South. So he was part of a spy network that was bringing stuff to the South from the North because he could easily go through both of them because he was still performing during

the last time. Like, it's different, but he's still performing. In 1863, John Welk was arrested in St. Louis because he was, He was heard saying that he, quote, wished the president and the whole damned government would go to hell. But he was arrested for a little bit and then let go. He was also probably part of a group called the Knights of the Golden Circle, which were people who wanted to have a country that was centered in Havana and did like a circle around the southern United States, Mexico, and like the northern South America. And so Havana would be in the center and that golden circle would all be in the center. and that golden circle would all be slave-owning territories.

So he's probably a part of that group as well. So the country is the ship they float on? No, no, the country's capital is in Havana, Cuba. So think of, like, take a protractor, stick it on Havana and then, like, go out to, like, Georgia and then make a circle. This is incredibly stupid. Yeah, it's mostly water. If it's not continuous, how do you, the whole point, you do this because it's continuous, they can defend it. anyways

I know bad idea so John will get engaged to a woman in Lucy Hale who's a union senator's daughter

but he doesn't tell her that he's a part of all of these things obviously you'll also notice that he's not in the war because he's in his early 20s

you would imagine that he would be he promised his mom he wouldn't be but we can also assume that he paid to not be in the war like most

yeah he had bone spurs yeah exactly so a ton of people dislike Lincoln, of course, during this time. A lot of people want to kidnap him and do things. When I was reading something else about Lincoln, like when he gets to D.C. for his inauguration, he sneaks in at night on a train and he like pretends to be someone else and like sinks in and afterwards he regrets doing that because he was like,

I kind of showed that I was afraid when like I should have just like done it. But like people were obviously, rightly, very worried about his safety. Also, it's like, sir, you're the only seven-foot-four man with acromegaly in the world. I don't want to be an asshole, but the handsomest man in America is 5-8. So Lincoln is going to stand out. So John Wilk said that Lincoln was making himself a king, and he said, quote, he said this to Asia, to his sister. He said, Batman's appearance, his pedigree, his coarse, low jokes and anecdotes, his vulgar similes, and his policy are disgraced to the city he holds. He has made the tool of the North to crush out slavery.

And then I wrote, say that to my face, John Wilkes. So that's the mood. He's mad. He has a group of friends, and they're kind of like planning something, and they're like, you know, riling each other up. There's a man named David Harold, George, Azzaro, Louis Powell. and John Surrott. So they start meeting in John's mom's house to kind of talk about what they can do to like stop Lincoln.

So the Civil War ends in 1865 in April. In that, right around that time, John Wilkes is out somewhere and Lincoln is in town wherever they are. Lincoln does a speech about how he wants to, now that the war is over, give the freed inslate people the right to vote. And that makes John even more mad, obviously. And obviously, when he said that, he meant men. He didn't mean women. He meant the men.

And so in 1870, actually, men of any race could technically vote, but it's obviously complicated because of like poll taxes, and that wasn't fixed until like 1970s. So whatever. Sorry, you said 1870? That was in 1870 when men of any race could vote. Oh, cool. Okay. Women voted in like 1917, but whatever.

but that made him even more mad. He hears that the war is over and he's pissed. And on April 14th, 1865, so just a few days after the war has ended, he goes to the Ford Theater in D.C. to get his mail because that's where he gets his mail. Like, he's moving around a bunch. He knows John Ford.

He's always there. He's so familiar with that theater that he gets his mail there. He, Ford's brother, when he's, they're getting his milk. He says, hey, are you coming to the theater tonight? Because Mary Todd Lincoln and Lincoln will be here to see the play, Our American Cousin, Are You going to come? And he was like, oh, I don't know. I didn't know they were going to be there. And our American cousin is a comedy play about a person named Asa Trenchard, who is a American who travels to England to claim his inheritance. And it's like funny because he's American and he's

like rough and the British are pretentious. People like it. It's funny. Humor must have been a lot different back then. So it says it leads to humorous misunderstandings and cultural clashes. I bet it's funny. So it's April 14th. It's the day. So John starts making some plans with his kidnapping co-conspirators and they're going to do three assassinations in one day. John's going to kill Lincoln.

Powell is going to assassinate the Secretary of State William Seward and Asteroot is going to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson. the idea is to like as many people who are in line to be the president as possible grant was supposed to be a part of the plot because he was also supposed to go to the theater but he decided not to go um probably because he was like not a theater guy he's just like maybe he just didn't get the humor of that yeah that's not yeah he's not he's not a comedy guy so grant doesn't go he's already gone by the time the play is on he leaves town to do something else. So John Wilkes talks to some friends. He has a getaway plan, like someone's bringing a horse around, and he can walk into the theater whenever he wants. He's a Baldwin. He's Dakota

fanning. Everybody knows who he is. He doesn't have to get past security. He doesn't have to find out where the back rooms are, in the back staircase is. He knows it like his house, his house and everybody. It's not weird that he's there. He's supposed to be there. You know? So, It's during intermission of the play, he goes to a bar, and then he comes back to the theater around 10.10 p.m. and he shoots Lincoln at 1014. The people that are in the box with him are Mary Todd Lincoln, and then Mayor Rathbone, the mayor of D.C. and his wife, the mayor tried to stop him and was stabbed. And then he jumps from the balcony to the stage. And he's holding his gun and his knife. Maybe he dropped the gun, but he's holding his knife. And he yells, six Semper Tyrannus, which is Latin for thus always to tyrants. And meanwhile, he's the most famous guy there. And everybody's like, is that John Wilkes Booth?

You're like, is this part of the play? What is happening? That's got to be so confusing. Seriously, what is happening? I just heard a gunshot. People are screaming. All of a sudden, this famous person who's not a part of this production

is on the stage yelling. It's like Lynn Manuel Miranda, but not in Hamilton, but jumping on the stage. hearing Hamilton it's like right yeah yeah yeah like during the lion king and being like ah you're like what like so it must have been just absolutely chaos and and horrible me know lincoln died you know a couple hours later i think he died in the morning but you never like were gaining consciousness after that um Powell was was able to stab seward um but he was bedridden and he was seriously

wounded but survived and then azardat who was supposed to um kill the vice president spent the evening drinking and never even tried. Which is what everybody should have done. That is the best, the best of the three. So now, John Wilkes runs. And he, and sometime in this,

he breaks his ankle, either jumping from the balcony to the stage or later on his horse. So at some point, his ankle's injured, and he's, like, injured and it's harder for him to leave. But he has a horse getaway,

whoever he gets on it, and is, like, out of town. There's a show that I didn't even know as a show called Manhunt on Apple Plus about the hunt to find him um which i feel like i want to watch now that we all had to restart apple plus subscriptions to watch severance maybe watch that i never got an apple subscription um you have to watch severance i never watch severance you have to watch severance i guess i'm watching severance

okay so i'm going to watch that because that sounds fun um but edwin stanton is a secretary of war he's one of lincoln's like team of rivals who was sewered you'll you can learn about them if you read that that doris karen's good goodwin book um but edwin stanton is a person who's in charge of the manhut to find him. And by 4 a.m. The next day, he's 25 miles away at his friend's house. There is a, in today's money, a $2 million reward for him, but they want him alive. You know, just like Oswald, like they want to talk to him.

Historian Dorothy Coonhart said, quote, almost every family who kept a photograph album on the parlor table owned a likeness of John Wilkes Booth and the famous Booth family of actors. after the assassination Northerners slid the booth card out of their albums some threw it away some burned it some crumpled it angrily

so like in this time like you have a family album and you have like your playbills in it you know so like he's famous it's like my binder of the picture

of Leonardo Caprio on the front of it from 1996 I probably still had my Weasur ticket from when I was 16 yeah so like people still have the stuff

and then they were obviously like oh my God like we cannot believe this happened all that less people were excited than he thought he also thought like I guess it kind of reminds you Jack Ruby where he thought he'd be a hero

and people were like a lot of people were like no like that's not not good so he had like less support than he thought he was going to but he was headed south Lincoln's body incidentally does a tour of a bunch of different cities that goes up the east coast

when Lincoln's body is in New York there is a photo of a very young Teddy Roosevelt leading out a window watching it, like watching the coffin go by, which is fun. And then also, incidentally, my grandfather marched in the parade with FDR's body when the FDR testimony. I see it in World War II. Which is fun.

So John Book's booth is near Bowling Green, Virginia, with his friends. Their name is the Garrets. They're saying, well, they're like friends of friends. And they're like, we don't know who, we didn't know who it was. But, like, I don't believe you that you didn't know who it was. you know like they're just like harboring this person they're in the south they probably you know were tell like how would news travel like well not that he did that but like they said they didn't know he was at all and they like had him stay in the barn you know and you're like well you

wouldn't have you wouldn't have baldwin stay in your barn you'd invite him in yeah maybe i mean yeah well i think you would because you would i mean minus the shooting someone yeah keep guns away from him but he can come inside him I'd let Dakota Fanning inside. She's harmless by comparison. I know what I'm saying if she was like the person who did it. You just wouldn't know. You wouldn't know.

But you'd know this person, but you wouldn't know what they've done. To your point, probably makes sense. So he's in the, he's in a barn and they track him down. I'm going to watch Manhattan. I can tell you how they did it later. But they track him down.

The barn's on fire. And so they're trying to, he's like, kind of like walking back and forth and yelling. Like he knows he's trapped. He's in the barn. He is yelling. And,

And a police officer named Boston Corbett shoots him in the neck. And he said that he shot him because he thought that he was going to shoot back at him. Like he was defending himself. But people were mad at him for killing him. But he was like, you know, I felt like I had to defend myself. He shot him in the neck and he was paralyzed. They pulled him out of the burning barn. He died three hours later.

His last words were useless, useless. And he was 26. We think he meant by useless. I feel like he meant because, like, people didn't appreciate him. Yeah. But it was only like, it wasn't like. How do you? He wouldn't know.

He wasn't in the South yet. I don't know. That's what he said. Maybe they loved them. Maybe they were going to give a parade for him. Yeah. He said, tell my mom I did it for my country. Useless, useless.

Useless. Also, like, I don't actually get the point of killing Lincoln in that situation. Don't you want to kill the generals who were just destroying? Well, actually, you know what? The generals weren't. destroying the South. I think the South was doing pretty good. There was like a few moments when like No, the South was doing horrible. He was smuggling medicine down there because people were

dying of like malaria. No, I know they're doing horrible economically. They had to print their own bullshit money. But I think that in terms of like their ability to like, because wasn't Stonewall Jackson? Yeah, Stonewall is the South, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Anyways, I would assume you'd want, if you're trying to win the war, you'd probably want to kill the generals. Then the probably, like, no, I think you I want to cut the head off of the snake. But was Lincoln deciding where to put troops?

Like, do, President's don't know. I mean, the war's over. The war's over. Oh, the war's over. Oh, you know what? I should have asked that first. The war just ended. Like a week or two before. Got really wrapped around the axle there.

Yeah. It just ended. There's just a weird spot in Charlotte because my in-laws live in Charlotte, in downtown Charlotte, which is super fun. But there's like in front of this like steak restaurant, there's a plaque on the ground that says, this is where Jefferson Davis was standing when he heard that Lincoln was killed. I'm like, it's weird.

Yeah, weird. Why do you know that? But whatever, his fiancé had gotten his diaries and we see what he wrote in his journals. And during that time, he had written our country owed all of her troubles to him. And God simply made me the instrument of his punishment. So he, like, believes that he had to kill Lincoln because Lincoln was a one. who had done all this stuff to America. His body was taken to the Washington Navy Yard

for identification and autopsy. For some reason, some of his like vertebrates were removed, and those ended up being in a museum, which I think is strange. His body was buried in a penitentiary cemetery, and eventually his remains were given back to his family, where he's buried in the family in the family plot. That was in 1869.

He also was identified because he had, had a tattoo on his hand with his initials on them. It was JWB. Really? Yeah. Maybe that's, um, they have to do that if you travel quite a bit because then if you die on the road. I read that his dad died of just drinking water that was like, oh, I've read to tell you

his dad, his dad did die. His dad died in, on a boat going between San Francisco and back to the East Coast. We got to drink water, right? Potentially. Or he just was like super drunk and he kept trying to jump off the side. I think that you're the way of dying back then was so it could just happen for any or no reason at all and so you tattoo your initial so people know who you are but again this guy was famous so maybe that was most handsome man in America I don't know I don't know so his family obviously is kind of going through it so during the booth book I recall booth obviously again historical fiction but essentially like a lot of a family like heard Lincoln was assassinated and then they were like oh my god that's terrible. And then they were like, John Wilkes Booth did it. And they were like, there's no way.

You know, like, what do we do? You know, and then having to like barricade themselves. People were obviously upset with them, which totally makes sense. So Asia, his sister, had left him a letter that was secret. And she opened it after he died. And the letter said, I know how foolish I shall be deemed for undertaking such a step as this, where on one side, I have many friends and everything to make me happy to give up all seems insane. but God is my judge.

I love justice more than I do a country that disowns it, more than fame or wealth. So he was just like, so this is just, this is what God wants me to do. Edwin, his brother said, fuck that guy. And he said, think of him no more as your brother. He's dead to us now,

as he soon must be to all the world. But imagine the boy you loved to be in that better part of his spirit in another world. So he kind of was like, absolutely not and totally disowned him. his co-conspirators lewis powell david harold and george adze wrote were all hanged at the old arsenal of penitentiary on july 7th 1865 so a few months later um later edwin is going to go back to acting um he took a couple months off but in 1866 in january he goes back to being hamlet and again he's america's hamlet he's like going to keep doing that forever and he dies in 1891 so his brother just kind of went back to acting and like forget that guy he's only hamlet i know only hamlet america's ever had um you really radicalized himself

right he radicalized himself like reminds me now of like people just spend their entire lives on social media where it's like i don't think it's possible to spend all day on social media and not become radicalized one way or the other absolutely but back then he had no social media so he was real go-getter like he really went and found the content himself he would have been deep into like a internet rabbit hole in some trench one with the other but that's that's the beauty of like

the modern era and about like social media is you can become radicalized in like so many different things now just like cool because you have variety that is such a glass half-full answer to the world right now good for you yeah you can really find anyone on the internet these days you can really find whatever belief you have you can find it on the internet oh gosh um well thank you for sharing yeah um it was fun it was interesting i didn't know a lot about about him i do want to do i do want to do i do i do i want to do a podcast on like on like So have you ever seen the movie? There's something wrong with Kevin? Yes, I read the book, I think, also. But yes, that was so good. Yeah.

Awful. Awful. But also... It also just introduced this whole angle of, like, yeah, there's a life that nobody wants to know what it's like to have. There'll be really interesting to find out what that's like. Yeah. Because if you did that, if your kid did that, you could end up like the guy I covered. Having him a Tully hunt you down because Ronald Schwarzenegger.

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. I'm sure there were people who never saw an Edwin Booth play again. You know, plenty of you did, but I'm sure playing didn't. Yeah. Yeah. Their loss. He's America's Hamlet. I know, for real. You should watch Hamlet. I'm going to look. There's one from 2009.

Perhaps. I'm not, I, I disdained Shakespeare. All things Shakespeare makes no sense to me. It's very hard to wrap your head around. and if I'm being totally real I think people that love Shakespeare are lying they're lying they don't get it either they're just trying to be smart

potentially okay if you like Shakespeare I don't disagree with you on that here's what I'll say I like Shakespeare as a concept because his stories are what like most folklore like stories that we know now are like

built off of like oh you know we should watch the the Mel Gibson one because remember in Clueless when she's like I remember Mel Gibson

accurately remember Mel Gibson what did he do him he was Hamlet in 1990 version I'm still not going to watch that it was yeah I'll let you watch it and you tell me

because I think we have the same feelings towards Shakespeare but Write to us to Dunifal Pond at G1.com if you actually think Shakespeare is good. Tell us more. If you actually sit down and read a book, a Shakespeare book.

Right. If you tell me you've read all of them, I don't believe you. That you like understand all that you've read. Yeah, that'll be crazy. Prove us wrong. Tell us more. Sweet. Anything else, Taylor?

That's it. Thank you. Thank you. Find us to Doom to Philpod on social media. Email us. Doompell pod at Gmail. If you have any ideas. That's cool

Hey Miles It's Miles It's Miles It's Miles It's Miles It's Miles Oh And it's Miles signing us off

It's Miles signing us off I'm going to go ahead and stop recording Okay