Infamous America - BOOTH 8 | "Rathbone and Robinson"

Episode Date: May 20, 2020

This bonus episode tells two short stories: the tragedy of Major Henry Rathbone and his fiancee Clara Harris, and the brave tale of Private George Robinson. The attack on President Lincoln haunted Rathbone for the rest of his life and drove him to madness. The attack on Secretary of State Seward turned Robinson into a hero. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The tragedy of Henry Rathbone and Clara Harris and the heroism of George Robinson. General Ulysses S. Grant and his wife Julia. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and his wife Ellen. Major Thomas Eckert. Speaker of the House, Skyler Colfax. Former representative of Massachusetts, George Ashman. Governor of Illinois, Richard Oglesby. Former Governor of Illinois, Richard Yates.

Isham Haney, Governor of Idaho Territory, William H. Wallace, and his wife Luzanne, journalist Noah Brooks, Robert Lincoln, son of the President. Those were the 14 people who were invited to attend to play with President Abraham Lincoln and his wife Mary on the night of April 14, 1865. Each time the President asked, the potential guest said no, and the President kept working his way down the list. That's how Major Henry Rathbone and his fiancée Clara Harris ended up in the president's private box at Ford's Theater on the night that changed all their lives forever. Clara met Mary Lincoln through the social circles of Washington.

As guest after guest turned down the invitation, the first family finally asked Henry and Clara. The young couple happily said yes. The Lincoln's picked up Henry and Clara at her family's residence at 8.20 p.m. on the night of the assassination. They rode to the theater in the president's carriage and arrived while the play was already in progress. Henry Rathbone and Clara Harris were an interesting couple. Clara's father was a senator from New York. When her mother died, her father married Henry's mother. So, Henry Rathbone and Clara Harris were stepbrother and step-sister.

They fell in love and got engaged just before the Civil War started. Henry joined the Union Army and fought in the battles of Antiet. and Fredericksburg and many others. When his wartime service ended, he returned to Washington with the hope of finally marrying his fiancé. No one, of course, was even remotely prepared for the assassination of the president. After Booth shot Lincoln, he slashed Henry Rathbone's arm with a knife. Then Booth jumped down to the stage and ran off into the night to begin his 12-day Odyssey. Booth had sliced Henry's arm almost to the bone.

Henry was able to let a flood of people into the box to begin tending to the mortally wounded president, and then he passed out from blood loss. Rathbone was taken to Clara's family's home while Clara stayed with Mary Lincoln. Mary stared in horrified shock at the blood that covered Clara's dress. She thought it was the president's blood, but it wasn't. It was Henry Rathbone's.

At the Harris residence, Rathbone was delirious from the loss of blood. He babbled continuously about the attack on President Lincoln. Beyond the physical damage of the attack, the assassination caused irreparable mental and emotional damage to both Mary Lincoln and Henry Rathbone. Mary Lincoln was inconsolable after the loss of her husband. She remained despondent and depressed for the rest of her life. A similar, yet worse, face.

awaited Henry Rathbone and Clara Harris. Henry's knife wound eventually healed and the couple got married two years after the attack. They had three children, and Major Rathbone resigned from the army in 1870. That's when things really started to get rough. The assassination haunted Rathbone. He began to think Clara would leave him and take the children.

When he left the army, he had trouble finding a job. He was mentally unstable. Clara was obviously worried about Henry. She wrote to a friend that she was doing her best to forget about the assassination, but Henry couldn't move past it. A few weeks after the attack, Clara posed for a picture in the studio of famous Civil War photographer Matthew Brady. She wore the blood-stained dress, and the dress eventually had a story of its own. According to her family's history, she kept it in a closet in the summer home in Albany, New York, for many years.

The legend says she had the closet walled up with bricks after she thought she saw Abraham Lincoln's ghost. But that wasn't the end of the dress's story. We'll get to that in a minute. In 1882, 12 years after Henry left the army and nearly 20 years after the assassination, President Chester A. Arthur made him a U.S. console in Hanover, Germany. The family packed up and moved to Europe. And by that time, Henry's mental state was in double. drastic decline. Henry Rathbone couldn't escape his connection to the assassination. He claimed he suffered from mysterious illnesses the doctors had trouble diagnosing.

He began to have hallucinations, and the downward spiral took a terrible turn in Hanover on Christmas Eve, 1883. One account says he grabbed a knife and a gun and walked toward the bedroom of his three children. Clara was able to maneuver him away from the kids' room and into their own bedroom. She closed the door behind them, and then Henry attacked her. He killed her with the knife and the gun, and then turned the knife on himself. He tried to take his own life, but failed. When his crime was discovered, he was charged with murder, but he was declared insane and never prosecuted. He lived out the rest of his years in an asylum. He died in 1911 and was buried next to Clara in Germany.

Their children were sent back to the United States after the tragic murder. They lived with an uncle, and the eldest son, who was also named Henry, grew to become a U.S. senator. According to family lore, he was the one who had the final say on the bloodstained dress that his mother wore on the night of the assassination. Supposedly, he said it had always been a curse on his family, and he burned it. I don't want to end this episode on such a down note, so here's the quick story. of another person who was present during the attacks and fought with one of the attackers.

But unlike the case of Henry Rathbone, the case of George Robinson has a positive outcome. Rathbone briefly battled John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theater, and Army Private George Robinson battled Lewis Powell at Secretary Seward's home. On the night of the assassination, conspirators Lewis Powell and David Herald rode to the home of the Secretary of State, William Seward. Seward was confined to his bed after surviving a terrible carriage accident. Powell forced his way into Seward's home. He rushed up the stairs and fought with Seward's two sons in the hallway.

He pushed his way into Seward's bedroom and shoved aside Seward's daughter Fanny. Then he came in contact with Private George Robinson. Robinson was a 32-year-old soldier from Maine. He joined the 8th Maine infantry in 1863, and he'd reached the 8th Maine infantry in 1863, and he'd received a leg wound in a small battle in 1864. While he recovered, he was assigned to attend the Secretary of State during the Secretary's own recovered. When Powell threw Fanny aside, Robinson engaged the assassin. Powell punched and stabbed Robinson and eventually knocked him to the ground. Then Powell attacked the Secretary. George Robinson pulled himself up and dove on

Powell. He stopped Powell from killing the secretary. Then one of the secretary's sons hurried into the room and Robinson and the son fought with Powell until they forced the would-be killer out into the hallway. At that point, Powell fled the house. Robinson ran back into Seward's bedroom, despite his stab wounds, and helped Fannie Seward give first aid to her father. Private George Robinson was largely credited with saving the life of the Secretary of State. Six years after the attack, the United States Congress awarded a special medal to Robinson in recognition of his valor.

Congress gave him the Congressional Gold Medal in 1871. It's a medal that can be awarded to soldiers and civilians alike. It began as something similar to the Congressional Medal of Honor, which is awarded to soldiers for acts of extreme bravery. But the gold medal evolved to honor anyone, who makes an extraordinary contribution to society. The first recipient was General George Washington. Since then, it's been awarded to a wide range of distinguished persons, including some in the arts.

Recipients include Thomas Edison, Winston Churchill, The Wright Brothers, Charles Lindbergh, Robert Frost, Bob Hope, General Douglas MacArthur, Walt Disney, John Wayne, Louis Lomore, Boxer Joe Lewis, General Colin Powell, Rosa Parks, the Navajo Code Talkers, and many more. And one of the things that makes the Congressional Gold Medal unique is that each medal is one of a kind. Each one is created to honor the recipient's specific achievements. So George Robinson's medal shows a fight scene. It shows Secretary Seward lying in his bed in the background while Robinson fights with Powell and hand-to-hand comments. in the foreground.

In addition to the medal, Congress gave Robinson $5,000 for his bravery. He was honorably discharged a month after the attack, but he rejoined the Army 14 years later as a major and stayed in for another 20 years. He finally completed his service in 1896 at the age of 67. Major George Robinson passed away 10 years later in 1907 in Pomona, California. Pomona, California. Thanks for joining us for this bonus episode connected to the story of John Wilkes Booth. This was supposed to be the first episode of our new bonus content system, but the system isn't quite ready yet. It seems like a rule that whenever I think I'm ready to

announce some new feature, we hit a snag and it gets delayed. We're very, very close to having the system up and running, but it's just going to take a little more time. So, we decided to release this episode on the regular podcast feed. I hope you liked it. Joey McAdams provided the research for this episode, as he did for the full series. As always, I'm your writer and host and all other things, Chris Wimmer. We'll see you soon for more bonus episodes.