Today in the Lincoln Conspiracy:  June 8

Abraham Lincoln, 1864

In the summer of 1864, John Wilkes Booth began to formulate his plot against President Abraham Lincoln.  On June 8, Lincoln was nominated for a second term by the National Union Party convention in Baltimore.  Within weeks, Booth was recruiting conspirators.

Today in the Lincoln Conspiracy: July 8

There were three killings planned on April 14, 1865.  John Wilkes Booth targeted President Abraham Lincoln, George Atzerodt went after Vice President Andrew Johnson and Lewis Powell attacked Secretary of State William Seward.  Booth succeeded and Powell almost did.  When he entered Seward's house that night, he confronted the cabinet officer's son, Frederick, who served as an assistant to his father in the State Department.

Frederick William Seward

Frederick put up a fight, even though Powell had a gun.  The pistol misfired and Powell used it to beat the younger Seward severely.  He suffered a fractured skull but -- like his father -- survived Powell's vicious assault.

Frederick William Seward was born on July 8, 1830.  He would serve as a diplomat under three presidents -- Lincoln, Johnson and Hayes -- and was elected to the New York State Assembly in 1874.  He died in 1915.

Today in the Lincoln Conspiracy:  June 26

Two days after Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered, President Lincoln spoke to a crowd of well-wishers at the White House.  During his remarks, Lincoln strongly made the case in favor of equal voting rights for newly freed slaves in the Southern states.  Among those listening was John Wilkes Booth.  He was so enraged by Lincoln's words that he declared it was the last speech the president would ever make.  But it wasn't the first time Lincoln had addressed the issue.  That had happened almost eight years earlier.

On June 26, 1857, Lincoln gave a speech in Springfield, Illinois harshly critical of the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision.  Specifically, he was responding to a speech made at the same venue two weeks earlier by Stephen A. Douglas, the Democratic U.S. Senator from Illinois.  Douglas had endorsed the court's ruling that -- in essence -- African Americans had no rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution.  Lincoln presented a spirited counter-argument, by turns legal, philosophical and moral.  He concluded:

Abraham Lincoln, 1860

"The Republicans inculcate, with whatever of ability they can, that the negro is a man; that his bondage is cruelly wrong, and that the field of his oppression ought not to be enlarged. The Democrats deny his manhood; deny, or dwarf to insignificance, the wrong of his bondage; so far as possible, crush all sympathy for him, and cultivate and excite hatred and disgust against him; compliment themselves as Union-savers for doing so; and call the indefinite outspreading of his bondage 'a sacred right of self-government.'"

The next year, Illinois Republicans nominated Lincoln to challenge Douglas for re-election.  He lost.  Two years after that, Douglas and Lincoln faced off for the presidency.  Lincoln won.

Today in the Lincoln Conspiracy:  June 12

Ford's Theatre

The assassination of the president was a profound shock to the nation.  It was an even more profound shock to the employees of Ford's Theatre.  Several of them actually lived at the theater.  After the assassination, the building was under the control of the U.S. Army.  Employees were required to get passes from the military to stay in their own rooms.

On June 12, 1865, Ford's employee Louis J. Carland appeared before Lincoln conspiracy tribunal.  He testified that, on the night of the assassination, he went in search of Ned Spangler, the theater employee charged as a conspirator.  Carland went to the room of another theater hand, Jacob Ritterspaugh, to ask where Spangler had gotten off to.  Ritterspaugh was quite shaken, according to Carland.  The man said he had been backstage when President Lincoln was shot.  He had seen John Wilkes Booth dash across the stage and out the back door.  Ritterspaugh said he pointed out the fleeing figure to Spangler and said that it was Booth. 

According to Carland, Spangler slapped Ritterspaugh across the mouth.  Then he thundered, “You don’t know who it is; it may be Mr. Booth, or it may be somebody else.” 

The Plan:  John Wilkes Booth and the Plot to Destroy the U.S. Government

John Wilkes Booth

For generations, schoolchildren have learned that the assassination of Abraham Lincoln was the act of a deranged failed actor.  As we have seen, John Wilkes Booth was quite the opposite of a "failed actor".  He was one of America's biggest stars.  But surely he must have been out of his mind to attack Lincoln at Ford's Theatre.  The idea seems like madness, considered in isolation.

But Booth was not acting alone.

At the moment he entered the State Box at Ford's, he was convinced his fellow conspirators were taking coordinated actions that would paralyze -- perhaps even destroy -- the government of the United States.  Booth was a hothead, to be sure, and an egotist.  He imagined every state in the Confederacy would raise a statue of him after he struck his blow for Southern freedom.  But he wasn't irrational.  His actions were motivated by cold calculation and desperation, not madness.

Lewis Powell

This was the plan, then, for April 14, 1865.  Booth would got to Ford's Theatre, where he would kill President Lincoln and Union commander General Ulysses S. Grant.  Conspirator George Atzerodt would go to the Kirkwood House hotel, the home of Andrew Johnson, and kill the Vice President.  Conspirator Lewis Powell would go to the home of Secretary of State William Seward and kill him.


The plan was brilliant in its audacity. If successful, it would leave the United States government paralyzed, without its president, vice president, senior cabinet officer and general-in-charge of its army.  Their deaths would precipitate a full-blown constitutional crisis that would take days, if not weeks, to resolve. Booth and his conspirators could use the confusion to mask their getaway.  At least, that was the thinking behind the plan.

George Atzerodt

In actuality, things worked out quite differently.  Booth was operating on faulty intelligence.  General Grant did not accompany the president to the theater that night, so one of the targets escaped cleanly.  Atzerodt lost his nerve.  He took the revolver Booth had given him to kill Johnson and threw it in a gutter, then went off and got drunk.  Another target missed.  Powell came closer to success.  Claiming he was delivering medicine, he burst into Seward’s house, beat the secretary’s son, repeatedly slashed an army private who was there to guard the cabinet officer, then stabbed Seward so savagely everyone assumed he was dead.  A metal brace around Seward's neck saved his life.

Secretary of War Edwin Stanton

The United States government, although stricken by the loss of its leader, was far from paralyzed.  Its response to the assassination was immediate and unrelenting.  War Secretary Edwin Stanton stepped into the power vacuum and launched a massive manhunt that would ultimately track down Booth, Atzerodt, Powell and six other conspirators.

Today in the Lincoln Conspiracy: June 8

John Wilkes Booth

Conspirator John Surratt insisted that his involvement with John Wilkes Booth was limited strictly to a plan to abduct President Lincoln, not to kill him.  But testimony at the Lincoln assassination conspiracy trial casts doubt on that assertion.  Marcus P. Norton of Troy, New York, stayed at the National Hotel from January through March 1865.  He testified to the military tribunal that he witnessed several meetings Booth had with conspirators George Atzerodt and Michael O'Laughlen at the hotel.

George Atzerodt

He recalled one in particular.  It happened a day or two before Lincoln's second inauguration on March 4.  Booth and Atzerotd were sitting in the hotel's "rotunda office".  Norton was sitting nearby and could overhear their conversation.  He was probably eavesdropping, since he had seen Booth on stage many times.  Perhaps he was hoping to pick up some juicy tidbits of celebrity gossip.  Norton recounted that Booth and Atzerodt expressed hope that "the matter...with Mr. Johnson" would not succeed "as it did with Old Buchanan" or "their party would get terribly sold.". At the time, Norton admitted, he had no idea what the men were discussing.

On June 8, 1865, Norton told the military tribunal that the assassination of the president -- coupled with the attack on the Secretary of State and the bungled scheme to kill the Vice President -- brought that conversation back to his mind.  So what were Booth and Atzerodt talking about?

In 1857, a horrifying illness swept through the guests at the National Hotel -- twice.

President James Buchanan

Vice President Andrew Johnson

On both occasions, President-elect James Buchanan had been in residence there.  The scuttlebutt in Washington was that someone had tried to poison Buchanan.  That was never proven, but was widely believed to be true.  If Norton heard correctly, it seems that Booth and Atzerodt were discussing an attempt on the life of Vice President Andrew Johnson and noting that if they didn't pull it off, things would go very badly for them.  The conversation took place two weeks before the conspirators tried -- and failed -- to kidnap Lincoln.  Based on Norton's testimony, it seems their plans at that time also included murder -- if not of the president, then of the vice president.

Today in the Lincoln Conspiracy:  June 7

During the Lincoln assassination conspiracy trial, prosecutors went to great lengths to paint Mary Surratt as an active member of the plot to kill the president.  Witness after witness described the fervid pro-Confederacy sentiments of Mrs. Surratt and members of her family.  They painted the Surratt boardinghouse in Washington as a nest of murderous vipers bent on destroying the United States.

Mrs. Surratt had three children.  Her elder son Isaac was a soldier in the Confederate Army.  Her younger son John was a Confederate spy who had schemed with John Wilkes Booth since the earliest days of the conspiracy.  Her middle child, Elizabeth Susanna (known as Anna), lived at the boardinghouse from November of 1864 until her mother's arrest.

Elizabeth Susanna "Anna" Surrattv

Defense lawyers called Anna as a witness to dispute testimony that her mother was consorting with the other conspirators.  She testified that both George Atzerodt and Lewis Powell (whom she knew under the name of "Wood") had visited the boardinghouse and had on some occasions stayed the night.  She said both men were there to see Lewis Weichmann, the War Department clerk who was the government's chief witness.

Anna Surratt also admitted she owned two photographs of John Wilkes Booth, whom she had met through her brother John.  She kept them hidden on the back of a painting given to her by Weichmann.  Anna told the tribunal her brother was furious when she bought them and demanded she tear them up.  She insisted that her acquaintance with Booth was casual, limited to a few brief encounters at the boardinghouse.

On June 7, 1865, a defense lawyer showed Anna a card bearing the state seal of Virginia.  She admitted she owned the card.  She testified a woman had given it to her two and a half years earlier.  Printed on the card was the state's motto, "Sic semper tyranis" -- the very words Booth shouted as he fled from Ford's Theatre the night he shot Abraham Lincoln.

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Mr. Lincoln's Getaway

It's hard to imagine the president of the United States traveling freely around Washington.  But Abraham Lincoln did, even though he knew he was a target for any Confederate sympathizer in the city.  And he didn't think twice about traveling to the outer reaches of the Federal District, often ditching his unit of cavalry bodyguards along the way.

The Lincolns' cottage at the Soldier's Home

During the brutal summer months, Lincoln usually stayed in a cottage on the grounds of the Soldier's Home.  The elegant mansion in the far northeast part of D.C. had been donated as a retreat for retired soldiers before the Civil War.  The Lincolns -- especially the First Lady -- enjoyed its atmosphere of wide open spaces as a getaway from the choking squalor of the capital city during wartime.  And they weren't the only ones.  Secretary of War Edwin Stanton also moved his family to a nearby cottage during summertime.

The president would then commute to the White House.  If Mary was with him, they'd ride in a buggy.  If he was alone, he'd usually just hop on a horse and ride into town.  During those months, Lincoln kept bankers' hours.  He'd arrive at the Executive Mansion at nine or ten in the morning and head back to the Soldier's Home by 4:00 PM.  He followed that routine for weeks at a time, traveling -- unprotected, for the most part -- across Washington.

The Lincolns also made it a habit to visit the military hospitals that sprouted all around Washington during the war.  The First Lady was a regular visitor to the three dozen facilities caring for the war wounded.  She would read to the patients, pass out fresh fruit and flowers.  And the president frequently popped in, unannounced, to spend time with the casualties, the nurses, the doctors and the staffs.  The Lincolns would often plan their afternoon rides around the city so they could stop at one or more hospitals along the way.

Campbell General Hospital, Harper's Weekly, 1861

When the Campbell General Hospital invited the president to attend the play Still Waters Run Deep, which was being staged for the patients on March 17, 1865, Lincoln readily accepted.  The president was an ardent fan of the theater.  And Campbell was less than two miles from his "country White House" at the Soldier's Home.  When the day arrived, alas, duty called.  Lincoln was reviewing a unit of Indiana soldiers just back from the battlefield at the time of the play.

John Wilkes Booth didn't know that, however.  He and his co-conspirators laid in wait on 7th Street, not far from the hospital.  They planned to abduct Lincoln and spirit him off to Richmond.  But the president didn't show up.

"The History of the Nation Was Made There"

In 1865, the most fashionable address in Washington, D.C. was on the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and 6th Street, NW.  There stood the center of Capitol society -- the National Hotel.  It had been the hub of Washington's political and social wheel since it opened in 1827.  The original owner, John Gadsby, started small.  He first built a collection of bungalows around a central courtyard.  Then he expanded the building until, by 1857, it stood as an imposing five-story edifice just four blocks from the U.S. Capitol and ten blocks from the White House.

The National Hotel

When the English writer Charles Dickens visited Washington in 1842, he stayed at the National. The great orator Henry Clay, who served as Speaker of the House (on three different occasions), U.S. Senator and Secretary of State, lived at the National for many years.  He died there in room 116.  Clay's nemesis Andrew Jackson stayed there too, as did President Polk.  Abraham Lincoln was also a guest at the hotel and held his inauguration banquet there.

In January of 1857. President-elect James Buchanan checked into the National.  During his stay, several of the guests became violently ill.  Some of them died.  When Buchanan left Washington, the illnesses stopped.  He checked back into the National just before his inauguration.  Once again, a mysterious illness swept through the hotel.  Buchanan heeded the advice of the locals and took his meals elsewhere.  After he moved into the White House, the illness again vanished.  Was someone trying to poison the new president?  No one knows.  The cause of the outbreaks was never determined (though a foul sewer opening in one corner of the building was considered a likely culprit).

During the Civil War, the office of the military's official news censor was in the National Hotel.  Senator John P. Hale of New Hampshire lived there with his family, including daughter Lucy.  In Room 228, Lucy's beau, John Wilkes Booth, plotted to bring down the United States government.

By all accounts, the National served its guest on a grand scale.  Its dining room was legendary for sumptuous dinners.  The hotel hosted balls, banquets and meetings of all sorts.  The Washington Post reported in 1930, “Apart from the Capitol and the White House, there is no building in this city so historic as this.  For more than half a century the history of the Nation was made there.” But times change. 

By the early 20th Century, the National was having trouble competing with its more contemporary and lavish neighbors, the Raleigh and the Willard.  In 1921, fire heavily damaged the National.  It never recovered.  The District of Columbia government bought the building in 1929, closed it in 1931 and tore it down 11 years later.

Spinning the Web: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Assassination Conspirators

David Herold

During the summer of 1864, John Wilkes Booth convinced two old friends, Samuel Arnold and Michael O'Laughlen, to join him in a plot to kidnap President Abraham Lincoln and hold him until the United States released thousands of captured Confederate soldiers.  Within months, Booth was actively recruiting other conspirators.

"Ned" Spangler

He enlisted a young drug store clerk named David Herold.  A native Marylander living in Washington with his widowed mother and a household full of sisters, Herold knew his way around Washington’s back alleys and Maryland’s back roads.  He also knew how to handle a gun.  Booth also renewed his acquaintance with Edmund (or Edman) "Ned" Spangler, who had once worked as a carpenter on the farm where Booth grew up. Spangler was a handyman at Ford’s Theatre.  Generous doses of the actor’s charm (plus generous doses of liquor) convinced him to run errands and do odd jobs for Booth.  While Spangler is often identified as a member of the conspiracy, it's quite likely he didn't really know what was going on and was little more than a “gofer” for his famous patron.

Dr. Samuel Mudd

By autumn 1864, after another trip to Montreal (and perhaps more contacts with the Confederate underground there), Booth took up more or less permanent residence in Washington.  He used his room at the elegant National Hotel as a base for his expanding operations.  He went for long rides in the Maryland countryside, sometimes claiming he was looking to buy horses or a piece of rural property.  In truth he was scouting potential escape routes.  He was also asking questions, learning who in the area supported the Confederate Cause and who was actively involved in clandestine Confederate operations.  On one such mission in November, he visited a Catholic church in Bryantown and was introduced to Dr. Samuel Mudd, a Southern sympathizer who also farmed, traded horses, bought and sold land.  Booth used Mudd as a sounding board about people living in the area.

John Surratt Jr.

Booth wanted to meet one of them in particular.  Along the way, someone somewhere whispered the name John Surratt in the actor’s ear.  Another native Marylander, Surratt ostensibly held a job at a Washington express company.  But after hours he quietly carried coded messages, led Confederate agents and directed smuggled medical supplies along the treacherous route from Canada to the Confederacy.  Surratt was in reality what Booth fancied himself to be – a bona fide agent of the Confederate secret service.  He was just the type of man Booth needed to pull all the loose ends of his plot together.

George Atzerodt

Surratt brought the last two conspirators into the fold.  George Atzerodt was a short, dumpy, ne’er-do-well most often described as “seedy.”  He lived in the Potomac River town of Port Tobacco (which also was his nickname), where he worked on carriages during the day.  At night he paddled a small boat across the Potomac, helping smugglers evade Union patrols.

Lewis Powell

Finally, there was one of the most enigmatic and fascinating members of Booth’s band – Lewis Thornton Powell.  A young former Confederate soldier with a strong chin, broad forehead, riveting stare and immense physical strength, he enlisted in a Florida infantry regiment early in the war.  He was wounded in 1862 and after his recovery, he returned to the Confederate Army until he was wounded again -- and captured by Union forces -- at Gettysburg.  He later escaped confinement and a murky 18-month period followed, during which he served under Col. John Singleton Mosby, the “Gray Ghost of the Confederacy.”  In January 1865 Powell arrived in Alexandria, Virginia and signed a loyalty oath to the Union under the alias Lewis Paine, the name history would remember him by for the next 140 years.

Louis J. Weichmann

Not everyone who was approached joined the conspiracy.  Actors Samuel Chester and John Matthews rebuffed Booth’s approaches and Dr. Mudd declined to take an active role.  Meantime, Surratt did his best to keep one man out of the plot – his roommate and former seminary classmate Louis J. Weichmann.  While he was a low-level employee in an obscure section of the War Department, Weichmann was also nosy and self-important.  He sensed Surratt was up to something but never figured out what it was.  (Later, after his own arrest, Weichmann would tell investigators he thought all secret comings and goings had something to do with Booth’s oil speculations.)

John Surratt was also responsible for another element of the conspiracy – a central location where the plotters could meet from time to time. He convinced his widowed mother Mary to open her boardinghouse at 541 H Street in Washington to his co-conspirators. There, frequent, unexplained comings and goings hardly seemed unusual.  The Surratt boardinghouse became the center of the conspirators' web.

Surratt Boardinghouse in Washington

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Today in the Lincoln Conspiracy: May 24

An evening at the theater in 1862 meant just that.  Audiences were entertained for the entire evening.  There would generally be two complete plays performed -- a tragedy and a farce.  There would also be an orchestral overture and, between plays, a musical interlude featuring one or more vocalists.  Not a bad deal for 25 cents.

On May 24, John Wilkes Booth closed his 1862 Boston Museum engagement with a Saturday matinee.  Booth once again portrayed Claude Melnotte in the melodrama The Lady of Lyons.  The curtain rose at 3 o'clock.

Today in the Lincoln conspiracy: May 23

Many scholars dismiss John Wilkes Booth as a second-rate actor.  Some even place him in the third rank of his own family, behind his brothers Edwin and Junius Brutus Jr. 

But the evidence is clear that the youngest of the acting Booth brothers was a shining star of his age.  It's instructive to note that at the beginning of his May 1862 engagement at the Boston Museum, his name appears at the bottom of the handbills promoting each play.  By the end of the run, the name "J. Wilkes Booth" was emblazoned across the top.

On May 23, Booth gave the final evening performance of his engagement in Boston.  He played the lead in Shakespeare's Richard the Third.

"A Lady, Very Dear to Me"

The Romance of John Wilkes Booth and Lucy Hale

The soldiers who killed John Wilkes Booth thoroughly searched his body.  From his pockets they recovered an appointment book he'd been using as a diary.  They also found five photographs.  Four of them depicted beautiful young actresses.  That was no surprise.  The stage star had a national reputation as a ladies' man.  The fifth photo, however, was a surprise.  It also depicted a young woman, but she was hardly beautiful.  Indeed, she seemed rather plain, even a little doughy.  Who was she?

Lucy Lambert Hale photo found on Booth's body

Her name was Lucy Lambert Hale.  "Bessie", as she was sometimes called, was the daughter of  John Parker Hale, a vocal abolitionist who served 20 years as a Congressman and U.S. Senator from New Hampshire.  And there is strong evidence to suggest that in April of 1865, she was engaged to marry Booth.

It's hard to imagine, from looking at her photo, that she was the type of woman who would attract -- much less ensnare -- a playboy like Booth.  But looks can be deceiving.  Lucy Hale had been breaking hearts since she was 12, when she started receiving love poems from a Harvard student named William Chandler.  She also captured the fancy of Oliver Wendell Homes Junior when she was 17.  After her father moved the family to Washington at the beginning of the Civil War, Lucy became a belle of Capitol society.  One of her more ardent admirers was Robert Todd Lincoln, the new president's son.

On Valentine's Day, 1862, Lucy received an anonymous letter.  The writer confessed, "You resemble in a most remarkable degree a lady, very dear to me, now dead and your close resemblance to her surprised me the first time I saw you...I shall always associate you in my memory, with her, who was very beautiful, and whose face, like your own I trust, was a faithful index of gentleness and amiability."  The missive was signed "A Stranger".

Her correspondent was none other than John Wilkes Booth, who was -- at that time -- preparing for a lengthy engagement at the Boston Museum.  Among the roles he would perform was the title character in the play "The Stranger".

In late 1864, Booth settled in Washington, taking rooms at the National Hotel.  It may not be a coincidence that among the other tenants was the family of Senator Hale, including his daughter Lucy, who would turn 24 on New Year's Day.  During the first months of 1865, Booth and Lucy were seen regularly in the hotel's public rooms.  She got him a ticket to attend Abraham Lincoln's second inauguration on March 4th.  Booth notified his mother that he was engaged to be married (her approval was grudging, at best) and his sister Asia confirmed the match.

National Hotel, Washington D.C.

John Parker Hale

Lucy's father had no use for his daughter's suitor.  John Parker Hale was a staunch Union supporter.  Booth was an acknowledged Southern sympathizer.  Hale hoped his second-eldest daughter would marry the president's son, not some mere actor.  After he lost his 1864 bid for re-election, Hale petitioned President Lincoln for an appointment as U.S. Ambassador to Spain.  Lincoln agreed and signed his formal commission to the post on the fateful day of April 14, 1865.  Hale may have been impelled to seek the job as a way to get Lucy away from Washington -- and Booth.

Robert Todd Lincoln

The couple met on the morning of the 14th at the National Hotel.  Lucy may have informed Booth that her father's appointment was now finalized and the family would soon sail for Spain.  She spent the afternoon brushing up on her Spanish (assisted by Robert Todd Lincoln).  Booth spent the rest of the day rousing his co-conspirators to action.  That night, he shot the president.

For a century and a half, historians have debated the Booth-Hale relationship.  Was the actor sincerely in love with the politician's daughter?  Was he merely using her to gain entree to the highest circles of society and government?  Did he see Lucy as his ticket not just to Lincoln's inauguration but to a close approach to the president himself?

Columnist J. Dennis Robinson offered an enticing conjecture that may illuminate the relationship.  He notes  there are several reports that Booth and Lucy exchanged rings.  And he recounts a story that, one night, Booth sat in a bar with an actor friend, repeatedly kissing Lucy's ring and cooing her name.  Robinson speculates that the anecdote sheds light on the assassin's final words.  After he was shot in Virginia on April 26th, Booth -- paralyzed from the neck down -- asked his captors to lift his hands toward his face.  "Then," the columnist writes, "Booth mumbled something that has been misquoted ever since.  It sounded like, 'Useless, useless.'  But they were garbled, gurgling sounds, whispered, barely audible according to witnesses."  Robinson points out there was a ring on the dying actor's hand, one he had kissed again and again.  "Booth was repeating his lover's name," Robinson concludes.  "He said, 'Lucy -- Lucy.'  He moved his dry cracked lips as if to kiss the ring a final time -- and died."

Matthew Brady photo of Lucy Lambert Hale in 1863

The government questioned everyone who had been associated with Booth before the assassination, and arrested many of them.  Lucy Lambert Hale, however, was never interviewed by investigators.  Her father issued a statement denying she'd ever been engaged to the assassin.  Then the family went to Spain.  Lucy spent five years in Europe, visiting France, Italy and Switzerland along the way.  She returned to the United States in 1870 to attend to her father, who was in failing health.  In 1874, at the age of 33, she finally married.  Her husband was William Chandler, a corporate attorney whose heart she had stolen when she was 12 years old and he was attending Harvard.   Chandler went on to serve as Secretary of the Navy and, in 1886, was elected to the U.S. Senate from New Hampshire.  She died in 1915.

Rear Adm. Theodore E. Chandler

Footnote:  Lucy's grandson, Admiral Theodore Edison Chandler, was a career Navy officer.  After serving in World War I, he helped outfit the Navy destroyer Chandler, named for his grandfather.  During World War II, he commanded ships in both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters.  He died in January of 1945 during a kamikaze attack on his flagship, the U.S.S. Louisville, about 100 miles from Manila Bay in the Philippines.






 

Today in the Lincoln Conspiracy: May 22

The Boston Museum's breathless promotion of John Wilkes Booth continued through his final appearances during May of 1862.  Theater management urged patrons to buy tickets early for the remaining performances by "the young American tragedian".

On May 22, Booth portrayed Claude Melnotte, a gardener's son who falls for a wealthy young woman, marries her and then loses her, in The Lady of Lyons; Or, Love and Pride.  The play was written by Edward Bulwer-Lytton in 1838.  Today, Bulwer-Lytton is best known for the prize named after him and awarded annually for particularly (and intentionally) bad writing.

Twisted Roots: The Family of John Wilkes Booth

The short life of John Wilkes Booth is filled with drama, not all of it on stage.  Indeed, his personal story reads like fiction, from his birth as the son of a theater legend to his death as the most wanted man in America.

Junius Brutus Booth

His father, Junius Brutus Booth, is a towering figure in the history of the American stage. Within months of his 1821 debut in the United States, the British-born tragedian was hailed as the greatest classical actor in the country, even though he was only in his mid-twenties. He settled in Baltimore and invested his growing fortune in a 150-acre spread in rural Maryland, which he dubbed "The Farm". There, he and Mary Ann Holmes would raise their children.


The elder Booth was universally regarded as brilliant. He was also universally regarded as “difficult”. He was prone to deep bouts of what we now know to be depression. He was also given to behavior characterized, charitably, as eccentric – crowing like a rooster from a theater balcony during a love scene, or strolling naked down a city street. And his capacity for liquor achieved legendary status. Theater owners tried to control his access to alcohol, sometimes locking him in a hotel room between performances in the hope of maintaining his sobriety. Booth overcame such obstacles, in one instance by pushing a straw through the keyhole in his hotel room door to sip from a bottle on the other side.

Mary Ann Holmes Booth

Back at "The Farm", Mary Ann presided over a growing brood of children. She would give birth to ten, six of whom survived childhood. The ninth entered the world on Thursday, May 10, 1838. He was named in honor of an English Member of Parliament who was a vocal supporter of American Independence. John Wilkes Booth, like Abraham Lincoln, was born in a log cabin.


The younger Booth and all his siblings were prohibited from attending his father’s plays. Even so, the household was steeped in the traditions of the classical theater and the figure of the often-absent Junius Brutus towered over it. The children and their mother spent summers on "The Farm" (later expanded and re-named "Tudor Hall") and winters in Baltimore.

It was in the city, when John Wilkes Booth was just eight years old, that a real-life drama shook the foundation of the Booth family. A young man arrived, claiming to be the son of the country’s most prominent actor. Local residents dismissed his claim, since the Booth family was well known in Baltimore. What they didn’t know was Junius Brutus had left a wife and son behind in  Europe.

The young man summoned his mother. Adelaide Delannoy Booth was so incensed to learn of her husband’s second life, she booked passage on the first ship to America. It sank. Undeterred, she jumped on the next available ship and finally arrived in Maryland to lay claim to her son’s birthright. Once in Baltimore, Adelaide learned her husband was not only famous, but also prosperous. She wrote her sister in Brussels, “I don’t want to do anything to prevent him from making money, so I shall wait till he returns… then my lawyers will go off on him like a bomb.”

Tudor Hall, the Booth country home, was constructed by the same contractor who built Ford's Theatre

The truth finally came out, aided by the rightful Mrs. Booth parading up and down before the Booth house on Exeter Street, screaming that the children inside were “bastards”. One can imagine the trauma such a display caused the young John Wilkes. To his credit, Junius Brutus had consistently provided financial support for the wife and son he had abandoned to run off with Mary Ann Holmes (who was a flower girl outside a London theater when they met).

Junius Brutus Booth with son Edwin, age 13

It took two years for the shocking drama to unfold. Adelaide finally agreed to a divorce, paving the way for Junius Brutus and Mary Ann to wed on May 10, 1851 – John Wilkes Booth’s thirteenth birthday.  A year and a half later, Junius Brutus Booth was dead, the apparent victim of his own excesses.