3: John Wilkes Booth -- Part 1: Setting the Stage

In this two-part historical odyssey, Allison and her guest Jayson Blair of the Silver Linings Handbook podcast weave through the transformative year of 1865, where the final throes of the Civil War and the ratification of the 13th Amendment are only a couple of the events that factored into John Wilkes Booth's fateful decision to murder the President of the United States.

But who was Booth, exactly? And how deep were his ties to the Confederacy? And what modern actor would you compare Booth to? We were thinking Nicolas Cage or Charlie Sheen. All that and more in Part 1. The conclusion follows next week.

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Additional Music Credit:
"Southern Gothic" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
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RESOURCE LINKS:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wilkes_Booth

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Booth

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Abraham_Lincoln

https://www.loc.gov/collections/abraham-lincoln-papers/articles-and-essays/assassination-of-president-abraham-lincoln/timeline/

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/lincolns-missing-bodyguard-12932069/

https://www.nationalparks.org/connect/blog/gun-shot-lincoln

Credits:
Main Theme Music -- Ken Dickson
Main Graphics -- Nathaniel Dickson

Transcript

Allison Dickson: 0:00

This week I took my time machine back to the year 1865 and I found a bad guy, a bit of a celebrity for his time in fact. The story of this bad guy is so complex, so fascinating, so consequential to American history that I needed to bring a guest along for the ride this time. So hop aboard and we'll whisk you off for a night at the theater to witness the performance of several lifetimes. We're talking about John Wilkes Booth on this two-part episode of Vintage Villains. Welcome to the show everybody. I am Allison Dixon and, as I said before, this week's villain is a bit of a historical heavyweight. As my guest and I will detail over the next couple episodes. The actions of John Wilkes Booth alone were enough to alter the fabric of time in such a way that we feel those wrinkles increases even now. But as you'll see during our cruise on the zeitgeist Zeppelin, as I am now calling it hat tip to my buddy Chris the year of 1865 was already teeming with activity things, in large part to the fact that the United States had been in the grip of its own civil war for the last four years. Things were not looking too good for the South by January and Robert E Lee would officially surrender in April, but we'll be talking a whole lot about that in the coming episodes. So what else was going on in 1865, while the war raged on and later the country reeled from the assassination of its president? What was life like for Americans during this time? Well, on January 4th the New York Stock Exchange opened its first permanent headquarters on Broad Street, which isn't too far from Wall Street. On January 16th, general William Tecumseh Sherman issued field order number 15, which redistributed roughly 400,000 confiscated acres of land in Low Country Georgia and South Carolina and 40 acre plots to newly freed black families. You might recognize the phrase 40 acres in a mule. While it was born here, the freed men's bureau was established in March of 1865. It gave legal title for 40 acre plots to African Americans and white Southern Unionists.

Allison Dickson: 2:51

The freed men's bureau was just one of many attempts to create a more egalitarian system after the war, but was repeatedly undermined by lack of funding and other political roadblocks, mostly whites who didn't want to cede any ground to their fellow black citizens. It was intended to be temporary and it did help a lot of people. At its peak, during Reconstruction, the freed men's bureau had 900 agents across 11 southern states, and they handled everything from distributing clothing and food to building schools and protecting the freed men from the Ku Klux Klan. In the years following the war, however, president Andrew Johnson would return most of the land to former white slave owners during the Reconstruction, or those whites found other ways to continue to subjugate freed blacks by enacting various vagrancy laws which would allow them to imprison those who they believed led idle or disorderly lives, or it would allow white employers to take the children of black workers if they found them to be destitute or unfit. This was, of course, after creating a system of complete economic disenfranchisement in the first place. So if you think for one moment the abolition of slavery led to the end of the problems here, well, I doubt you're still listening to this anyway, and you're going to be needing a way deeper education than you'd be getting from me. So let's roll on and speaking of the abolishment of slavery, at least on paper, on February 1st 1865, president Lincoln signed the 13th Amendment of the Constitution abolishing slavery in the United States.

Allison Dickson: 4:34

On April 27th, only two weeks after Lincoln's death, the steamboat SS Sultana exploded on the Mississippi River, killing around 1800 of the 2400 passengers on board in what would become the worst maritime disaster in US history. Most of the passengers were paroled Union POWs on their way home, on May 10th, president Andrew Johnson issued a proclamation declaring the end of armed resistance in the South, making this date the most commonly accepted as the end of the American Civil War. But hold your horses. A lot of fighting was still going on, and Robert E Lee was only one general. There were many others, and they didn't all get the memo from DC, nor did they want said memo. It would take well over a year before fighting finally stopped across the South. On June 19th, union General Gordon Granger declared slaves free in Texas. This date of June 19th, as you may know, is now officially celebrated across the US as Juneteenth.

Allison Dickson: 5:39

On July 2nd, a brand new army was formed over in the UK that would soon spread across the world. It was started by a Methodist Reform Church minister, william Booth, and his wife Catherine. It was first known as the East London Christian Mission, but you all now know it as the Salvation Army, and it is the largest non-government provider of social services in the United States, and not without a whole lot of controversy. A few days later, on the 5th of July, the US Secret Service began operating under the Treasury Department. As you can imagine, we'll be talking about the Secret Service in these next couple episodes. They weren't protecting the President at this point, but were mainly tasked with the tracking of counterfeit cash.

Allison Dickson: 6:25

In artistic news, on November 26th, lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland began taking people on a delightfully surreal trip through the looking glass, and that should do it for our short trip in time. After all, we have a guest waiting, and that guest is one you've heard before on my other show, ding Dong Darkness Time, where we spoke about Werewolves in one episode and the book Gone Girl in another. That's right, my friend Jason Blair from the Silver Linings Handbook podcast is with us today, and it just so happens he's a perfect guest for this topic because he was born and raised and currently lives in the general area where this all went down, and he brought with him a whole steamer trunk full of geographical and historical insight. So without further ado, let's jump into the conversation, shall we Doing?

Allison Dickson: 7:19

The dive that I did for this episode was really my biggest dive into the topic at hand. I had the general gist of the John Wilkes Booth assassinates Abraham Lincoln at the theater in my head throughout most of my childhood and schooling and everything, but I didn't really know how wide ranging and complex this story is and how absolutely wild it is. A story that would make an incredible movie. If you didn't know, it was already a real thing, oh absolutely, you know.

Jayson Blair: 7:54

so I am a Marylander by birth, southern by the grace of God, and I went to high school in Virginia. So, and then my mom's family's from the northern neck, where our story is going to sort of end, sort of end. So so I've been hearing about Booth my entire life, just like I've been hearing about Poe my entire life?

Jayson Blair: 8:14

Oh of course, yeah, so it's always been a fascinating thing for me and it's very funny. So recently, I don't know, this was like November, november I was actually down in the northern neck of Virginia and King George County and, you know, took a wrong turn, totally and literally passed the spots that he crossed. And then, you know, a year before that, near the Garrett farmhouse, a year before that, I was, you know, at Fort McNair in Washington DC, just walking around and tripped across the, the Grand Hall where the trial was there. So John Wilkes Booth has been stalking me a little bit recently for this perfect timing Because, of course, as I drive by literally Allison, I'm not even kidding I drive by and I'm like poor Conway, oh, this is so familiar, oh, booth. So I pull off in this new subdivision, I start like reading articles on it sitting while I'm supposed to be home any time now. So that's a very typical Jason moment.

Allison Dickson: 9:20

It is awesome that you're here for this because I noticed your acumen on the topic. You know, months before I even decided to do well, a this podcast and B an episode about John Wilkes Booth, you were bringing up all sorts of players that we'll mention today, like Mary Surrott and Samuel Mudd, and again, we'll get all into that. I knew that you had a brain for this topic. And then learning, of course, yeah, your birthplace. John Wilkes Booth was born in Bel Air, maryland, not far from Baltimore. So being able to get a sense of the lay of the land, because I haven't been up to that part of the country myself yet and you know it's such a concentrated area of American history, early American history and I imagine you can just sort of feel it everywhere you go.

Jayson Blair: 10:08

Yeah, it's very fascinating area. It's, you know, a rural area. A lot of it's on the Chesapeake Bay so it's like flat farms and it's I mean, it's unbelievably gorgeous. They have the Susquehanna River and all of those things north of Baltimore. I think a lot of people don't realize how nice it is. But Bel Air itself is an interesting place. So it's a town in Hartford County and it's like a bedroom community of Baltimore now. But really like at the time that Booth was born, there were like under 200 residents in the area. Its claim to fame was, and may still be, home to Elijah Bond, the maker of the Ouija board.

Allison Dickson: 10:51

Oh, interesting.

Jayson Blair: 10:52

So they've got him and Booth. But like it has, it has a very interesting history. The county is home to Harvard and Grace, which is, like both, the home to Hall of Fame Baltimore Oriental Shortstop Cow Rip in Junior, and it was once considered for capital of the United States before DC was selected because it's on the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay so you could get weapons and other things in and keep it well defended. But the area I think a lot of people because Maryland was on the Union side in the war. Some people think of it as an anti-slavery state, but it was a slave state that stayed in the Union, in part because they voted that way, but also in part because they wouldn't have had a choice, because with the capital in DC, Lincoln would have forced it, but like it's also an area where in the 1810s and the 1820s, it was the home of, like Patty Cannon, who was, like an illegal slave trader, serial killer.

Allison Dickson: 11:56

Wow, she might have to be on this show at some point.

Jayson Blair: 11:58

Yes, I think she would be great. Actually, another thing about that I totally come back for that episode. She was the co-leader of this thing called the Cannon Johnson Gang and they roamed Maryland and Delaware and, among other things, they abducted like hundreds of fugitive slaves and free black people and then went around and sold them, including the free black people into slavery, in Alabama, mississippi and other southern states. They called it actually the reverse underground railroad.

Allison Dickson: 12:31

Oh my gosh.

Jayson Blair: 12:31

And yeah, and so it's a very interesting mixed history. To this day, there's a debate about Maryland's flag because what it represents right now is the Union and the Confederate side coming together. Post-civil War.

Allison Dickson: 12:46

The politics of Maryland really struck me when I was researching this and I will cover that here in a second because again I didn't realize too a lot of people really do think in the binary when it comes to the Civil War, that North Blue or Union, south Red, south Confederate, but there, that line between North and South, especially where it meets around the Virginia Maryland area, you're going to find a lot of blurring of those lines in that part of the country and in a lot of parts of the country in fact, the Civil War. I want to really nail the environment and the time. I feel like a lot of people don't like to study this part of American history because they feel that it's a little too far removed. They feel that it's a little boring. Unfortunately, they were probably forced to watch awful film strips on it or listen to a droning history teacher in middle school and they just developed sort of a blockade of interest.

Allison Dickson: 13:47

But I tell you what this part of American history is, both a fascinating in that it's not that long ago, to be honest with you, and it really brings home the fact that this country is still very much in its overall infancy and we're still reeling from the effects of this war.

Jayson Blair: 14:07

Here's the thought for you. It's like in American. There are lots of upsides to America, but one of the difficult things in America is we have no binary culture. There is no American culture. It's a bunch of different cultures. When they First named it, the United States, the you in United was always written out as small, because they really did see themselves as sovereign, independent states. Yes and so, yeah and so it's. It's kind of an interesting. It's an interesting element of it because you get there and not to jump ahead in the timeline, but boots, born in 1838 I think, and 1850, the fugitive slave act is passed as a part of the compromise of 1850, where you know, it's really at that point, this compromise between the southerners and the northern, what they called freesoilers, who are like a political party at the time, and the law basically penalized officials who didn't arrest fugitive slaves and you could get fined for like a thousand dollars. And it raked havoc on Maryland because, as a slave state, it was the conduit to get to the north.

Allison Dickson: 15:25

Yes, what the north?

Jayson Blair: 15:26

really was was if you were a slave trying to escape. You really wanted to escape to Canada, yes, and that was the place to go. And Maryland is not only a safe slave state with Northern sympathies or abolitionist sympathies, it's also the conduit Right from the deep south to the north and from the north back down to the deep south as your future slave.

Allison Dickson: 15:50

You know it's really interesting too. And you mentioned Canada. I would love to Look more into Canada's role in the American Civil War, because you have Quebec playing a role with the Confederacy and you know Quebec is Its own version of sort of we're part of this country but not we're sort of our. You know they, they probably will have some sympathies in a lot of ways with the Confederates yeah, you know side, and so, as we'll see, there's some play back and forth between sort of the brass of the Confederate army and then so, knowing that, you know, freed slaves would want to flee to Canada, but maybe not Quebec, I don't know. I'm just curious to see how all that interplays, because you can't just have a war, like our civil war was, and not have the borders, the border countries, kind of Wondering. Okay.

Jayson Blair: 16:46

What's going on. And it also had the implications for them too, right?

Allison Dickson: 16:50

Oh for sure, but I mean trade and you know all these things. And so here we are in the year 1865. This is Really when it's all starting to pop off here. The the war ended in 1865. Lincoln, you know just as a foreshadowing here, will be assassinated by April. So it's a hell of a year, and at a time when you really think about it. The last four years the country has been plunged into a battle with itself and it spared no expense when it came to casualties.

Jayson Blair: 17:31

more in Antietam than any other war, except for Vietnam, I think yeah, they said that.

Allison Dickson: 17:39

You know, according to our own national parks, yeah, that's Approximately equal to the fatalities in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Spanish American War, world War one, world War two and the Korean War combined combined and. I like to think about it this way if we fought the civil war today, in 2024, and lost the same percentage of lives to the current American population, we would have six million dead, mm-hmm.

Jayson Blair: 18:11

Yep out of like 350 million. Is that where we're at now? Yeah, yeah, so roughly 2% of the population that would be more people than we have in our military today.

Allison Dickson: 18:23

We only have like two million Unbelievable and we've lost in perspective here 1.1 million to COVID over the last three or so years. Three, 1.1 million Americans. And when you think about the disruption that that alone caused, that on a paint a pretty reliable picture of what that much death Did to our country, to our people, to our generations. To so much death. And it becomes sort of Engrained in the the soul of a country to have that much death and destruction. So to really think about what the psychology of this country was going through at the time, we'll just say things were a little Frail well, and you have that enormous level of animosity Going on at the time and also fear, right, right, when people.

Jayson Blair: 19:23

People will say things like the southern way of life was threatened. But it's not just the racism, it's the economic way of life yes it's all the fears that are associated with that.

Jayson Blair: 19:33

There's the fear of, like, race mixing and fears of all these different things and, regardless whether these fears are legitimate or not, like they are huge factors. Fear often will drive these these types of things. You know, and one of the things about booth and how it impacted his family During the Civil War they were an acting family and I'm sure we'll dive into this, but you know they were well-known actors All over but you know an interesting thing about him Are you roll back to the beginning, back in 1838? This is a fun fact or no not 38.

Jayson Blair: 20:11

I'm sorry, it's 1850s right.

Jayson Blair: 20:14

Yeah he's trying to. I've always said this about John Wilkes Booth he's like Hitler. If Hitler had gone to art school, if Booth had been a better actor. But one of the things that they say about him that got in the way of his ability to be a good actor Was that, you know, he showed a little bit of a temper, a little emotional instability, but they said it was his ego centricity. Yes, so he basically struggled with seeing other people's Perspectives, which makes it really hard to see the big picture, and I think we'll see that in the story that he's kind of like missing the big picture.

Jayson Blair: 20:55

Oh yeah and yeah and things like that, and I'm sure we'll dive into his little competition with his brother.

Allison Dickson: 21:01

Oh, oh, the the sibling rivalry was real. And to really get a sense of this story and sort of the very Cosmic fate feeling that sort of surrounds all of this, we're talking Very big personalities, we're talking very consequential things that are all kind of popping off at the same time to really culminate in the death of an American president at the end of a conflict that killed, has killed 620,000 Americans over four years. So imagine coming out of World War two or or VNR, any other big American conflict. Imagine coming out of the pandemic and or something and having say Nicholas Cage, assassinate the president of the United States. So just, I'm trying to put modern people in the mind frame, because when I say Nicholas Cage, it is about that absurd.

Jayson Blair: 22:03

Or like Charlie Sheen, yeah, charlie.

Allison Dickson: 22:05

Sheen, you know what? I almost want to go back because I use Nick Cage for my guide.

Jayson Blair: 22:09

You're like the idiot of the acting family kills the president Right, yes.

Allison Dickson: 22:16

I'm gonna say Charlie Sheen. Now I'm gonna. I have Nick Cage in my outline, but, jason, I am switching to Charlie Sheen. This is perfect because these two men share something in common, and that is something that I refer to as dynastic celebrity, or what Gen Z might call Nepo babies, and so we have like say the legendary copula clan from which Nicholas Cage hails, or the Baldwin's, or the Arquettes, the Barrymore's, the Sheens.

Jayson Blair: 22:45

Angelina Jolie and John Boyd the Scars Guards, yeah these, these acting families.

Allison Dickson: 22:50

the Booths were very much of that ilk. There were nine siblings in this family. Three of those nine from the Booth family would go on to become actors. That would be Edwin, john Wilkes Booth and Junius Jr. And we'll get to Junius Sr in a second, because if we're talking about vintage villains here, we're going to talk about the villains and we're gonna learn about what maybe makes them tick. John and Edwin Booth would become the most famous of the brothers. Edwin was hailed and is to this day by many theater historians as probably the greatest actor of the 19th century, depending on who you ask. And in fact Edwin was known all over the world. He held the record for playing Hamlet in 100 performances and that record would later be broken in 1922 by John Barrymore, again another legendary acting family here I could go through that, yeah, and the brothers' parents.

Allison Dickson: 23:51

Now we have Junius Booth and their mother, marianne Holmes, and she was actually Booth's mistress and he was able to get a divorce after that, mary Her and they were both well-known Shakespearean actors from Great Britain.

Allison Dickson: 24:05

Tisk, tisk, tisk, tisk tisk the Shakespearean, and this is probably the most Shakespearean American history story of all time, really, when you think about it Absolutely that's another good point and they would eventually relocate to the United States and settle on a 150-acre farm outside Bel Air, maryland, where they would have 10 kids. John Wilkes Booth was number nine in that lineup, so talk about middle child times, however many. At this point. I think, when you're at the tail end of nine siblings, you're mostly raising yourself or being raised by one of your other siblings at that point.

Allison Dickson: 24:40

And I think that plays a lot into John's immaturity and that sort of inability to I don't know, I think that See outside of himself Right you know you're fighting to be noticed by any means necessary. I think when you have nine other siblings around you vying for the same two parents, the love of those same two parents, I think it's going to create some interesting challenges. I'd love to hear from more people who are siblings from massive families.

Jayson Blair: 25:09

Well, both of my parents. Both of my parents are like nine plus families, yeah, and I do think there's. So my mom's on the older end, my dad's on the younger end of his family and I do think that plays out. And I think it plays out with Booth in a very interesting way, because if you look at his trajectory, he first goes to Baltimore, is very unsuccessful trying out as an actor there, ends up in Philly but then ends up in Richmond eventually.

Jayson Blair: 25:42

So like second tier, third tier, it would be like off off off, off, off, off off Broadway today. Yeah, like small town theater, but I think Booth A wanted to be dramatic so in a weird way he created his own giant play with the assassination. But I think the other thing is he wanted to be accepted.

Jayson Blair: 26:02

And you would see his sympathies. Once he moved to Richmond started to shift significantly, cause I think it was 1850, 1859, he joined the Shakespeare stock company in Richmond and then, by later that year, when John Brown was after not really showing much of a sort of pro-slavery attitude although a little bit you know when John Brown, the abolitionist who took Harper's Ferry, was executed, john Wilkes Booth volunteered for the militia to be a part of it and became outspoken anti-Lincoln even before the before the civil war. I think a lot of it was just to conform. I mean, I don't know, I haven't interviewed him, would love to, but my time machine is not built yet.

Jayson Blair: 26:58

Word knows there are a lot of things I would do if I had that time machine.

Allison Dickson: 27:01

Oh, you and me both.

Jayson Blair: 27:04

But I do think like some of that is at play in all of it.

Allison Dickson: 27:09

It is interesting to see how he's described by his teachers and those who knew him as a teenager that he was very athletic, he was very strong and witty. His teacher said he was smart. But he just again, as a lot of teachers say what they said to me, what they said to both my kids, my husband, they just don't apply themselves Smart. But I was a raging C student all through high school and I was just happy I graduated. So he ended up dropping out of school at age 14. And he would begin again, like as you said, he would begin acting in earnest around age 17. And there was a lot of trial and error. His brother, Edwin, though sort of, I think, would help grease the skids a little bit and his father. These were 10 kids underneath this roof, but this family was not poorly off in any way. No.

Allison Dickson: 28:04

They were very, they were wealthy, they were living a pretty nice life.

Jayson Blair: 28:09

Pretty prosperous for that area.

Allison Dickson: 28:11

I know they had like black servants and slaves and whatnot on their farm. So that pro-slavery mentality I think was kind of winding through that family. A good dip. But Edwin not so much. Edwin was the abolitionist, edwin was pro-union, yep, and that created a bit of a feud. Because what would happen is you'd look at Edwin, who was this luminary, himself known all over the world and very much beloved on the stage in theaters of New York and Chicago he pretty much told his brother why don't you head south? Yes.

Allison Dickson: 28:44

And secure the theaters down there. Little bro and head pat and off you go. Where you belong. And if right, and I think that okay, you're gonna head south where there's already some more strong Confederate sentiments. You're sort of ingratiating yourself among the culture down there and maybe you already have that bent in you. But you're also probably driven a little bit by the fact that you're sort of quote unquote liberal douche actor. Brother, you wanna be unlike him.

Jayson Blair: 29:12

And so, like you mentioned, they had that very large farm I think the way it seems to have played out is that if you look at the parents you wouldn't necessarily call them proslavery, as much as they were necessary evil. And then naturally you have one child who's like why would you do this? Who becomes Edwin the abolitionist and then to sort of distinguish himself, once Booth goes down to Richmond in 1860, he does this tour of the deep south. Where he gets, it's the first time he's really acclaimed as an actor.

Jayson Blair: 29:50

And he really buys into. By the time you get to April 12th 1861, when the Confederate forces fire on Fort Sumter for the first time and that begins the Civil War, booth was already a vigorous supporter for the Southern cause, like outspoken advocacy for slavery, outspoken hatred for Lincoln who was elected that same year at 1861, but also kind of played both sides of it. He was in New York briefly, he you know Lincoln saw him perform in a play in 1863.

Allison Dickson: 30:31

Yeah, there were so many star-crossed moments between those two men leading up to that assassination that it feels again like there is something you can feel the fabric of the universe winding around this story in a way that makes you believe in fate.

Allison Dickson: 30:51

Even if you are generally not that kind of person, I found myself mesmerized by so many of the coincidences that we will see in foreshadowing moments Again, that Shakespearean sort of somebody in the kind of like off-screen, you know, the somebody warning you of what's happening ahead. You know, as tends to pop up in some of those old plays. You feel that at work in this story and with Edwin, he was a fixture in those theaters to the north and of course he also traveled the world. So he was well-known in Australia and Hawaii and he also traveled extensively in Europe. So when you think about how slow information traveled back in those days and like you said, jason, I mean it takes days to get a newspaper going there was no quick information spread back then it was particularly impressive to achieve the level of fame where people would recognize you on the street. I imagine.

Jayson Blair: 31:52

See your face. Yes, yes.

Allison Dickson: 31:53

And you know, john would come to achieve such fame as well, which played a great deal into how Lincoln's assassination was carried out, and of course we'll get to that. But Edwin managed several theaters and acting companies in New York City and a statue of William Shakespeare which was paid for by the funds raised by the three brothers, edwin, junius Jr and John. They did a Julius Caesar performance and the funds from that performance paid for the statue that stands in Central Park to this day. So if you've been to Central Park in New York and you've seen a statue of William Shakespeare, john Wilkes Booth helped get it there.

Jayson Blair: 32:33

Trust me, man, John Wilkes Booth is everywhere. He really is. People have no idea.

Allison Dickson: 32:37

Yeah, and that was another thing I wanted to talk about this so badly is because I think a lot of people do not realize it, and you can find a statue of Edwin Booth as well, playing his signature character of Hamlet, in the Manhattan's Gramercy Park and there are memorials to him all over his Maryland birthplace and stuff too.

Jayson Blair: 32:58

But Alison, which brother won the competition?

Allison Dickson: 33:02

Was it John? Wait, I don't know, he's famous. Oh, no, no, no, okay, that competition. I was like, okay, well obviously.

Jayson Blair: 33:11

The real competition you know.

Allison Dickson: 33:13

In a way, I just want Edwin to be remembered and you know, like come on, let's let Edwin prevail here, that poor man you sounded.

Allison Dickson: 33:21

But he isn't just being included here to illustrate the sort of feuding brother dynamic which was very much there. And it also isn't because Edwin was by all accounts this kind and graceful man and, in addition to his acting talents, or that he was a staunch unionist as well as brother John was a strident supporter of the Confederacy. But Edwin Booth, brother of John Wilkes Booth, also unwittingly saved the life of Abraham Lincoln's son, robert, only months before John would assassinate Abraham Lincoln.

Jayson Blair: 33:55

Which let's just pause for a moment and think that one through, think it through.

Allison Dickson: 33:59

Think it through the older brother of the assassin of. Abraham Lincoln saved the son of Robert.

Allison Dickson: 34:09

Lincoln, and this was completely by accident. So this is according to some articles I pulled up here. The incident occurred on a train platform in Jersey City, new Jersey, and the exact date is unknown, but it's believed to have taken place in either late 1864 or early 1865. And Robert Lincoln himself recalled the incident in a 1909 letter to Richard Watson Gilder, who was the editor of the Century Magazine. So basically, they were on the train platform, there was a big crowd, everybody was kind of crushing to get onto the train. The train started to move and Robert sort of fell into the gap between the train platform and the car. He was pulled up and secured onto the footing platform by none other than Edwin Booth, and of course Robert looks up at this man. Imagine again seeing Charlie Sheen no, charlie Sheen's brother, the glorious Emilio Estevez. Imagine looking up and seeing Emilio Estevez saving your life, and imagine that surreal moment, though the equivalent of this very famous, well-known actor has saved your life on a train. And so it ends.

Allison Dickson: 35:21

Booth didn't know the identity of the man whose life he had saved until many months later when he received a letter from a friend, colonel Adam Badoe, who was an officer on the staff of Ulysses S Grant, and he heard the story from Robert Lincoln, who had since joined the Union Army, was also serving on Grant's staff. So this was all verified. This isn't some urban legend. It feels like something that should be, but it would only be a couple months later that John Wilkes Booth would assassinate Abraham Lincoln. So I just think that it's again that sort of moment, one of those ripples in time and in all the times and in all the places here where these two families intersect, and I don't know like let's, let's again go back in time. Would this be like in terms of odds, given where they were in the population being what it was? Is it weird that the Booths and the Lincolns have these kinds of intersections, do you think?

Jayson Blair: 36:19

Yes, I would say yes because if you, even if you think there's a smaller population, you also have to consider just the mere geography. Yeah, like if all of a sudden you were to go to Atlanta I was to go to Atlanta right now what would the odds be? That we would run into each other.

Allison Dickson: 36:37

Yeah, they would be very infinite and unfortunate. That's phenomenal. I'd love to run into you in Atlanta.

Allison Dickson: 36:44

Hey next year probably. Heck, yeah, dude, let's do it. So, other than hailing from famous families, what else would you say that John Wilkes Booth and either Nicholas Cage or Charlie Sheen have in common? Well, it's also, again, the level of celebrity and how recognizable these guys are. If you ran into Nick Cage, for instance, in public, chances are you'd recognize him immediately. He's just that iconic. His face is on reversible sequined pillows for crying out loud. By the time John Wilkes Booth would come to assassinate Lincoln, he too would be one of the most well-known faces in the country and, similar to Cage, booth also had a penchant for energetic and eccentric stage performances. He liked to really chew on the scenery. His athleticism and his apparent thirst trap status people thought he was really hot. I've looked at pictures. He was all right. I mean, whatever Was he 1865 hot.

Jayson Blair: 37:45

I suppose. Oh, I did judge.

Allison Dickson: 37:47

I mean, he didn't appear to have tuberculosis and he looked like he was doing okay. So I don't know, by the standards of the time, sure he looked like he was really fit. I will say that he was very muscular guy. You could see how he pulled off some of the feats that he did the night of the assassination. But, unsurprisingly too, booth would often claim that his favorite character to play was Brutus from Julius Caesar, because he slayed a tyrant. But I think you know, when it comes to Booth and Cage or Sheen or any of these guys, is it for every person who thought he was brilliant there would be another who thought that he was just a nut. That was just. He was just a. He's just. This outrageous personality he's not really like.

Jayson Blair: 38:38

Again Charlie Sheen man.

Allison Dickson: 38:40

Yeah, or or yeah, where where your acting abilities are secondary to your persona?

Jayson Blair: 38:47

Dramatic persona.

Allison Dickson: 38:49

And you know. But I will say, this is where I'll probably back off on those comparisons because despite what they do have in common, the Nicholas Cage hasn't killed anyone yet, right.

Allison Dickson: 38:59

You know, Nicholas Cage is awesome by all accounts. It seems like, I mean, he's a little eccentric, but he, yeah, he hasn't assassinated anyone that we know of. And Booth, honestly, kind of a terrible guy. He was a very racist, he had very high charisma, but he had a lot of hatred and jealousy in him and that kind of grew as the war kind of came to an end and it looked like the South wasn't going to fare terribly well. And he also he got involved in a lot of financial investments and things that let's just say like mineral rights, stuff that wouldn't wouldn't benefit people during a civil war.

Jayson Blair: 39:36

Well, and also I honestly think he loved just provoking people.

Allison Dickson: 39:40

Yeah.

Jayson Blair: 39:41

Like have you ever heard the story of when he went to New York State? What he said was that the Southern states that had left the union it was an act of bravery.

Allison Dickson: 39:54

Yes, yes.

Jayson Blair: 39:55

That's right. New York State.

Allison Dickson: 39:57

Right, he did do that right in the middle of that, you're absolutely right, right at the beginning there. And there were quite a few people sort of in his trade and in the entertainment trade that did have confederate sympathies. So he was, I think, able to skate by with the help of a lot of those people.

Jayson Blair: 40:17

But I just want you to think that through for a second right. He's making this announcement in the middle of upstate New York.

Allison Dickson: 40:27

Yeah, yeah. And I think that's one of those people who just likes to start S he really does and again, I think it's that ninth brother energy, you know that sort of. I mean, you're that kid at the dinner table that is just. You know nobody's listening to you and you're just going to say whatever you want and whatever happens happens. I think that's kind of but to your point despite his views, like critics loved him.

Jayson Blair: 40:55

You know, critics loved him and it was an interesting thing, and I think we run into this right now too, with actors like Matthew McConaughey who have political leanings or other people like that.

Allison Dickson: 41:07

Yeah, how do you?

Jayson Blair: 41:08

judge the artists and their political views? Can you judge them together? Do they need to be judged separately? How do we you know when they're using their acting as a platform for political views like? Do we judge it together?

Allison Dickson: 41:23

It always for me like depends on how outspoken they are. And then not only how outspoken they are, but how I guess what they're saying. But you know, like, for instance, I don't know that I have any desire to watch another movie with James Woods in it, just because I that's interesting, he has.

Jayson Blair: 41:43

I still can take him.

Allison Dickson: 41:45

He has crossed a line for me, but.

Jayson Blair: 41:47

I agree.

Allison Dickson: 41:48

You know like for this, for some reason, clint Eastwood's okay to me still.

Jayson Blair: 41:53

I got you know, Mel Gibson.

Allison Dickson: 41:55

Oh yeah.

Jayson Blair: 41:56

And I have total sympathy for Mel Gibson. I do because that's like mental health stuff, but I still can't watch him.

Allison Dickson: 42:03

No you're right. What that, what those leanings coming in? And I think even back then, I think it was such a new phenomenon of having, like a, these very famous actors and all this like ability to spread news around, even if it was still pretty slow at that time, you know, at least we had an information spreading device called a newspaper. Word would eventually spread, and so we had this opportunity then to kind of line up an actor with their political beliefs and in a way that may be previous in previous centuries. We didn't.

Allison Dickson: 42:39

Yeah, you know to do, and so or slower or, like any good gossip mill, less accurate it is interesting to read sort of his reviews from people of that time because it's almost like reading the reviews of a Mark Wahlberg or like, again, a Charlie Sheen or something like, where it's like, yeah, you know, he made a spectacle of himself and it was entertaining, but he's not like. He's not Daniel Day Lewis for crying out loud. That was Edwin, and although I, you know it's interesting Daniel Day Lewis played Lincoln in the Spielberg biopic, which I didn't have time to watch. It's good but a little fanciful, a little fanciful.

Jayson Blair: 43:18

Okay, yeah good to know. I think you know Lincoln's a bit like Martin Luther King. While there are great things about them, people love to leave out a couple parts here or there.

Allison Dickson: 43:28

Yes, yes.

Jayson Blair: 43:30

And that in current popular view wouldn't necessarily fit.

Allison Dickson: 43:33

And we'll talk about some things about Lincoln, that I'm not saying that the Confederacy was correct, but he did some things that I think that if you were, Especially if you were a Marylander. Maryland, exactly If you were a.

Allison Dickson: 43:48

Marylander, or you're just not big on big government or this idea of somebody over on the far end of the country trying to dictate your life out in the middle of you know, the Midwest or whatever, or further out, then I can see why he pissed some people off. Let's just say that because he took some steps. But he was also in a very unique position as the president during an American civil war. No other president has had to deal with this problem since. If anything, they've been trying to prevent another civil war. But John Wilkes star as an actor would really rise in the early 1860s and in fact in 1863,. This is calling back to something we mentioned earlier.

Allison Dickson: 44:32

Lincoln would see his own future assassin in a play at Ford's Theater, where the assassination took place from the same box where he would be shot. And at one point during the performance, booth was said to have shaken his finger in Lincoln's direction as he delivered a line of dialogue. Lincoln's sister-in-law was sitting with him in the same presidential box where he was later slain. She turned to him and said Mr Lincoln, he looks as if he meant that for you. And the president replied he does look pretty sharp at me, doesn't he? Once, on another occasion Lincoln's son Tad saw Booth perform. He said the actor thrilled him, prompting Booth to give Tad a rose. Booth ignored an invitation to visit Lincoln between acts. So again, this was in 1863. So a couple years or a year and a half or so before the assassination. This moment where imagine, if you're looking down at the stage and you see this impassioned delivery taking place and the play, by the way, was Charles Selby's the Marble Heart and apparently he had this monologue during it that seemed rather symbolic.

Jayson Blair: 45:47

What's the Marble Heart about? You know?

Allison Dickson: 45:49

what? That is a good question. It's where he portrayed a Greek sculptor making statues come to life. That is the general gist of the Marble Heart. And so during this period, though, booth would also this is talking about his business ventures Um, he tried to get into the oil business, and most of these ventures would fail due to the constraints of the war, particularly with the struggles the south was having at winning. And by 1864, booth would lose $6,000, which is the equivalent of $1.1 million in today's money, and his failed oil venture. And that would only fuel his anger toward Lincoln, who was reelected by a landslide in November of that same year. So can I?

Jayson Blair: 46:36

jump back for a second, Of course, and take us to two little uh, one of which is sort of like a less known um, the first assassination attempt of Lincoln.

Allison Dickson: 46:48

Oh, that's right. So, uh, didn't that go through his hat, or something like that? Well, so, it was.

Jayson Blair: 46:54

It was February of 1861. Okay, and Lincoln was in like um what they call like a whistle stop tour and route to his or inauguration. Oh yes, you've done this topic, alan Pinkerton the founder of the picket, he played a role.

Jayson Blair: 47:12

He was managing, uh, the Lincoln security, and this is why we have the Secret Service now and we don't let private security protect them. And so, you know, lincoln thought like that uh, I think his advisors believed that there was a threat against him, and so they really were concerned as they were going through Baltimore which tells you something about where Baltimore was and he got there secretly, I think, at some point, like a couple. I forget what day it was that he got there, but there actually was a plot, uh, to assassinate um Lincoln, and it's part of what led to, ultimately, the, the creation of the Secret Service. But there's another thing that happened during the Civil War that's particularly relevant again to Marylanders and give you an idea of where the sympathies were In Maryland during the Civil War Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus, yes, yes, and the that writ is what allows citizens to petition the court about whether they're, to determine if they're being detained lawfully, and the whole point was to impose martial law, be able to detain any Southern sympathizers.

Jayson Blair: 48:30

Yes, Now one of the things that I learned of reading about this that so many people were detained and unable to file a writ. That and think about. Think about that very basically, like without the writ of habeas corpus, the cops could come knock on my door and say, hey, you're charged. Yeah, charged with what, whatever, we want you in jail and there's nothing I could do, there's nothing I could absolutely do, and so this impacted the environment in Maryland during the time and it was all. It's probably the most strong armed thing Lincoln did.

Jayson Blair: 49:03

Yes, because it was clearly unconstitutional, led to the 1878 Posse Comitandus Act, which said the military essentially couldn't come in.

Allison Dickson: 49:12

Yes.

Jayson Blair: 49:13

And impacted reconstruction. Right, it set back. Set back reconstruction as well. So I say all of this to say that among Marylanders there was enormous animosity toward Lincoln for how unbelievably strong armed. In retrospect a lot of people say, well, it was necessary to protect the capital, and in difficult times you do difficult things. But like, yeah, the victors tell those stories Right. So it was very much against what the US Constitution was designed to do. And so if you look at Maryland as a state that decided to stay in the Union, it did it with a gun to its head.

Allison Dickson: 49:54

Oh, very much so. The Maryland legislature voted 53 to 13 against secession, so they didn't want us to see it. However, they didn't want federal troops passing through their state and they were kind of there. They were kind of the, like you said, the conduit. They wanted Lincoln to remove those federal troops.

Jayson Blair: 50:15

Yeah, the alternate route is through Canada or Western Pennsylvania, you know.

Allison Dickson: 50:21

but the legislature seemed to have wanted to stay in the Union, but they just didn't really want to be involved in the war, and so that just they're really in a difficult position here, and yeah. So when Lincoln suspended that the writ of habeas corpus, and impose martial law in Baltimore and other portions of the state, there were political leaders that were imprisoned at Fort McHenry. There were stationing of federal troops in Baltimore.

Jayson Blair: 50:45

I mean it was kind of like Russia, like we imagine Russia now and again.

Allison Dickson: 50:50

Booth is from Maryland. So again, if you're the president of the United States and you're leading the civil war against the South, which for you.

Jayson Blair: 51:00

You say it's a moral cause. Yes, and you're suspending the writ of habeas corpus and allowing people to be locked up for no reason whatsoever.

Allison Dickson: 51:11

And there are so many instances in this whole thing where it's like, yeah, I could see why somebody would be angry enough to try to kill Lincoln because they tried to do it. You know, even before he did all this, yes, and so they're already sensing the problem. So once he does something like this, whether or not you agree with it, that's not the discussion I'm looking to have. It's the fact that he did it. And you know, unfortunately a lot of presidents have had the opportunity to do this again. I mean, george W Bush did it during the Iraq War, did he not?

Jayson Blair: 51:45

Yep Overseas. Well, it was the war on terror.

Allison Dickson: 51:48

Let's say and really the Guantanamo Bay and all. I mean all those not necessarily here, but you know they kind of it kind of did open that door. So you know it's one of those discussions.

Jayson Blair: 51:59

In the Bush case, the Supreme Court had the time, because the war went on so long, to absolutely repudiated. And what did they repudiate it with the Plastic Commitatus Act that was passed in 1878 and other laws that are similar, so the Hamadan decision.

Allison Dickson: 52:18

There is no, I would say no room for debate really on the subject of whether Lincoln overstepped his bounds, as we keep on doing it.

Jayson Blair: 52:27

Yes, Think of Japanese internment camps where we intern Japanese people, interned German American citizens during World War Two. Yeah, simply because of their national origin or their ethnicity. Like this is a very American thing, which is like we have ideals until something becomes existential. Well, to me, what's the point of an ideal? It is to exist when things are existential Absolutely. What's an ideal when I don't have to sacrifice for it Right yeah. So anyway, I love Lincoln. Don't get me wrong, I'm free because of him right now, but that's it Not ideal at times.

Allison Dickson: 53:10

No, and I think there are discussions that could be had, though, of extraordinary circumstances requiring extraordinary measures, in a sense of where your nation is quite literally tearing itself apart. But don't expect to make friends.

Allison Dickson: 53:26

No, and also maybe don't be so flagrantly in disregard of your own security. But we'll get to that in a little bit. So all this was happening at the time the Civil War, with Lincoln winning his reelection by landslide in November of 1864 on a platform that advocated abolishing slavery altogether. Booth, meanwhile, was devoting his energy and his money to developing a kidnapping plot. They were going to kidnap Abraham Lincoln.

Jayson Blair: 53:59

And William Seward, the Secretary of War, and Andrew Johnson, Southern Simplifizer Ruiners of Reconstruction. Yeah, the man who ensured that the South actually won the Civil War.

Allison Dickson: 54:13

And also, let us say, by the way, every presidential election that happens, there's always this notion of they should pick a VP from the opposing party, or that they have complete opposite. Let us remember this lesson of Lincoln and Johnson and the Reconstruction, please. This is why you do not do that. It's not the wise move, we'll just say, and honestly, kennedy and Johnson to a certain extent, although they kind of squeaked out the Civil Rights Act.

Jayson Blair: 54:43

Yeah right.

Allison Dickson: 54:44

You know it was a bit of a battle, but Booth was hell bent on kidnapping Lincoln, and so he had this band of buddies. We have David Harold, george Azzarat, lewis Powell, who's also known as Lewis Payne. I found that in a couple of things and a rebel agent named John Serrat, where there's Mary's son. She was part of this as well. She was the endkeeper, essentially this boarding house. They owned that. A lot of people sort of passed through. So the reason they wanted to kidnap Lincoln was to force the release of POWs.

Jayson Blair: 55:22

There are a couple different rationales that pop up over time, but essentially releasing prisoners of war, allowing, if there is even stopping the war, was a part of it. Like they kept on. They had many different reasons why they, why they wanted to do it, but over and over time the number of people they were going to kidnap grew.

Allison Dickson: 55:44

I think, too, they wanted to do it in order to Well, when they knew that the war was winding down, I think they wanted to try to prolong it, so that they would have an opportunity to say, rebuild the forces and keep fighting, because they weren't ready to give up yet.

Jayson Blair: 55:58

Here's an interesting historical fact that I think a lot of people gloss right over. So April 9, 1965. Robert E Lee signs the Articles of Surrender and the Appomattox on behalf of the Army of Northern Virginia. But people consider that the end of the Civil War. But General Joe Johnston was still down in North Carolina and South Carolina trying to run for his life from Tecumseh Sherman. Yes.

Jayson Blair: 56:24

And so I think part of the reason why they wanted to kidnap or really assassinate by that point, lincoln was it would give Johnston a chance to not surrender and continue fighting, which was, by the way, absurd. Yeah, he knew what was actually happening down there. It was not going to happen. But also think about some of the things that had happened during that time. Sherman had burned Atlanta to Savannah.

Jayson Blair: 56:51

He had you know there it was not looking good for the South if they lost that war. General order 50, 40 acres in a mule for the slaves they were going to take the the whites land.

Allison Dickson: 57:03

It was not looking good. And to give you an idea too of how much loss the South had had suffered through this war, it's believed that there really wasn't a single household in the South that had not experienced a death from this war not a single one. In some ways, you can't be surprised when you still see those sentiments still down there today. I mean, I mean, you travel in the deep South especially and you could still very much feel that I'm surprised when I see Confederate flags in Pennsylvania, yes, or Ohio.

Allison Dickson: 57:39

Hey guys, we were never in the Confederacy. Maybe they just wishful thinking, but there's a reason why.

Jayson Blair: 57:44

Down south, when I was living down south, they called it the war of Northern aggression. Our friend Brett Talley and I still call it the war of Northern aggression. Yes.

Allison Dickson: 57:55

Yeah, it's a whole other, different way of thinking about things down there and, at the very least, because, regardless of where your sympathies lie, I think it's important to know these things so that at least you understand, like you know, when we have an election or when we have a crisis of some kind and it's like why are we behaving this way? Why are we doing this? Well, look no further. Well, there's a point.

Jayson Blair: 58:20

Put yourself in the shoes of other people, like even when you don't understand why they have their views, even when you adamantly disagree with them. And I'm not saying any of this would have stopped John Wilkes Booth, right, I mean, but if John Wilkes Booth could have put himself in other people's shoes and other people could put themselves in the shoes of the John Wilkes Booth, yeah, I think we probably would have had a more reasonable road to reconstruction. Something like Grant, something like you know some of the fears. I mean, you know, if Robert E Lee hadn't been sneaky, they would have prosecuted him, if there were. There are a number of things that were going on that made it feel very existential to the South that they were going to become subservient states to the North.

Allison Dickson: 59:06

Right, and there is that you know that constant fight of states rights versus federal. We still see that interplay. You know we're watching this happen live right now, this whole battle that actually we're getting ready to have at the moment in the courts with relation to allowing Trump on their state ballots. Yes. And them kicking him off. You know, ordinarily presidents have said you know states rights matter when it comes to voting.

Jayson Blair: 59:34

Got bad news for the states. The? U is big now. Yes, exactly, and it's going to again.

Allison Dickson: 59:40

You're feeling that echo of that, that tug of war that led to a very, very bloody battle and a dead president. So, montreal, canada we got to talk about Montreal a little bit because, again I mentioned before, the Confederacy brass had a relationship and had an establishment In fact up in Montreal and Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, would actually wanted to use Montreal as a base where he could then attack the north through a series of guerrilla tactics. And many historians theorized that Booth met with members of Davis's secret service up there to plot the Lincoln kidnapping Though I guess it's debated how much Davis and other top officials knew about this plot and many believe that most of Booth's interactions were sort of limited to like a upper management or a lower level and that Davis himself wasn't interested in pursuing those underhanded tactics, which I found fascinating because Jefferson Davis seems like he wanted to win as a gentleman. Oh yeah.

Allison Dickson: 1:00:50

We're not going to do these underhanded tactics of, you know, kidnapped the president.

Jayson Blair: 1:00:54

Well, and it was interesting. So there's the Confederacy Secret Service is also very interesting because people don't talk about it no. It was both official and semi official because of you know, the unwillingness of some of the southern leaders to do the really dirty stuff led to all these unofficial actions. By you know, when people say the CIA was rogue, the Confederate Secret Service was totally rogue. So oh yeah, hold me, they plotted the whole thing. We eventually find out. I'll be like sure Makes sense.

Allison Dickson: 1:01:26

Do you know what like did it dissolve pretty much with the Confederate army? Or is there anybody that kind of oh no?

Jayson Blair: 1:01:34

no no, no, so it's very interesting. So post civil war, you know, if you like, break it up into different groups and think of today, they had like their national security agency, which did all the signals intelligence. Then they had their like foreign intelligence agency, like the CIA, that did their foreign intelligence. And then they had their US, which operated in the Confederacy and operated in what we would call the Union. But one of the interesting things about it is the signals core and the foreign part dissipated, but the agents who operated with the United States actually ended up being a part of it.

Jayson Blair: 1:02:17

And as you get into the John Wilkes Booth escape story, one of the things Is that Samuel Mudd and this is disputed, just like his role in its disputed was agent or officer of the Confederate service. And then when they got across the Potomac, I think it was Pope's Creek, the boat that was hidden there, that they used across the Potomac. Another Confederate, either sympathizer that some people believe was in the Confederate Secret Service in Maryland is who they went to to help get them across the Potomac.

Allison Dickson: 1:02:59

So that is very believable because I think they would have needed all the help they could get. And it's also widely believed that Booth himself was a spy and a courier for the Confederacy. And that makes total sense because he was desperate to kind of get in with these people and engineer plots with them. He would be willing to carry messages, he would be willing to facilitate any sort of intel and he was a man of influence. So even if he wasn't high up the chain, he was definitely a player within the Confederate government.

Jayson Blair: 1:03:31

Well, back in like let's see this would, in the late 1980s, to retired CIA officers with this book on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Come what is it? Come retribution. And in that they made the circumstantial argument right, which we all know are actually better than the direct arguments. But the circumstance, as we'll find out soon in the story, the argument that an intelligence, confederate intelligence officer in Gordonsville, virginia Booth, was an agent of this officer and he actually came up with the idea of kidnapping and holding Lincoln hostage in in order to pressure the north to give up the world, and the name of the book, come retribution, is the supposed code name for the operation and the theory behind it is, when the kidnapping wouldn't work, their second plan they make this argument was to actually bomb the White House. Wow.

Jayson Blair: 1:04:35

And when that didn't work, when that also failed, the Confederate Secret Service dropped the whole thing, which then left Booth as a rogue agent, leading to the assassination. So that's, that's their, that's their theory.

Allison Dickson: 1:04:50

It makes sense because, as we'll see, with the conspirators, a lot of them were I, and I mean, of course, a lot of them would make this claim just to save themselves, but I think it's it's quite believable that they wouldn't know that Booth had flipped the script, because it's not like they had, you know, cell phones to instantly communicate this stuff. They were not in the same company doing a lot of the things. I mean, they have the boarding house that they would kind of meet at or exchange messages at, things like that, but this is not the kind of thing that you can instantly communicate a change in plans like hey guys, correct.

Jayson Blair: 1:05:25

Or you do and your agent still so invested in it that they carry it on their own. Right, I think, one thing to keep in mind. One thing historically to keep in mind, because we like to look at a black and white the Civil War was not over for Robert E Lee, or?

Allison Dickson: 1:05:40

no, they were still fighting yeah because you know what.

Jayson Blair: 1:05:44

They were both looking at the gallows. Yes, so there were still reasons, even once Confederate military victory was impossible for them to still not to say there's any evidence that they were involved in it. But it's one of the things to just keep in mind, that it's not like a war ends, you click your fingers and it's all over.

Allison Dickson: 1:06:06

Right, right, even even in World War Two, that you still had fighting going on in the Southern Pacific even after Japan surrenders. I mean, it takes time, and the further back in time you go, the longer it takes to get the memo that hey, we can stop fighting. You know, I think they were still fighting in, like Oklahoma and stuff, even after most of the war had been considered done. Yeah, so they were still fighting. There were still tiny little skirmishes and fires put up for many years to come, and you know the kidnapping plot. It did seem to be abandoned when it became clear the South was about to surrender in early 1865.

Jayson Blair: 1:06:45

Do you know when the last Japanese soldier resigned? I mean, surrendered. Surrendered.

Allison Dickson: 1:06:53

No, I don't.

Jayson Blair: 1:06:54

Okay, you know, when World War Two ended 1945. Right, yeah, 1974. He was in the Philippines jungle, yes.

Allison Dickson: 1:07:05

No, so that ought to tell you, hero.

Jayson Blair: 1:07:07

Onado yes.

Allison Dickson: 1:07:09

And I would wonder, I'm pretty sure, 29 years, and when it comes to the Civil War, many, what are you? There are many that still have not surrendered. They're carrying the flags today. That's true, that's true, but yeah on. So, on April 11th of 1865, lincoln gave a speech where he indicated his intent to grant former slaves the ability to vote, and Booth apparently became enraged, and that's when he flip flopped over to an assassination plot.

Jayson Blair: 1:07:41

He became more enraged.

Allison Dickson: 1:07:42

More enraged, as if there's, you know it's possible to become more enraged. He, yeah, he was like this I'm done with this guy, we're not kidnapping anymore. And so the following day, on April 12th, was when General Robert E Lee surrendered. And then, two days after that, on April 14th 1865, good Friday to be exact, booth would learn that Lincoln and his wife Mary would attend a showing of our American cousin at Ford's Theater with General and Mrs Ulysses S Grant.

Jayson Blair: 1:08:15

And do you know how crazy this is? He just happened to be walking by the mailbox. Yes, when the theater owner, who was friends with his family, happened to mention Lincoln was coming.

Allison Dickson: 1:08:27

Yeah, and Booth was a regular player at this theater. He could come and go as he please and again to talk about all the star-crossed elements here. This is one of them, and it was at this event that American history would tilt again on its axis with the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. What a week, what a week that was indeed, and I think this is a good time to wind things down. We've hopefully set up for you a good picture of the time, the place, the culture and the overall mood of a man so angered by the losses of his beloved Confederacy that he was willing to kill a president for it.

Allison Dickson: 1:09:09

There are so much more waiting in next week's episode of Vintage Villains what all went down in Ford's Theater and elsewhere that fateful night when not only Abraham Lincoln's life was on the line but that of two others in his line of succession, and what all went down in the wild days that followed Lincoln's death. Join Jason and me for the conclusion of the story of John Wilkes Booth here next week. Though, while you're waiting, if you wanted to pop over to Apple and give Vintage Villains and Jason's show, the Silver Linings Handbook, a five-star review, we would both love you for it. The show notes also contain links to our websites and other social media where friendly faces await to welcome you into our shared community of friends and enthusiasts. Take care, my friends and I'll see you next week in another century.