The Major and his wife.

We all know the story.  Abraham Lincoln, 16th president of the United States of America, attending a play called My American Cousin in Ford’s theater in Washington D.C, was attacked by thespian turned assassin John Wilkes Booth on April 14th 1865.
Booth snuck into the Theater box that evening at 10.00 P.M and shot Lincoln in the back of the head with a Derringer pistol.

Daring Major Henry Rathbone, with his betrothed looking on in horror, attempted to block Booth from leaving the scene. Booth took out a knife and stabbed him, seriously wounded Rathbone in the arm and neck area. Booth must have leaped onto the stage because he could not exit the way he came in.

Once on stage, he yelled death to tyrant’s and ran off stage. It is now believed that Booth did not actually injure his leg in the jump, but was injured later by a belligerent horse that he took to make his escape. Booth knew the theater quite well, and it is open today and one of the most popular attractions in our capital.

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Ford’s Theatre History
In 1861 theatre manager John T. Ford leased out the abandoned First Baptist Church on Tenth Street to create Ford’s Theatre. Over the next few years, the venue became a popular stage for theatrical and musical productions. On April 14, 1865, Abraham Lincoln visited Ford’s for his twelfth time for a performance of Our American Cousin. At this performance, Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth; he died the next morning in the Petersen House, a boarding house located across the street. Ford’s Theatre remained closed for more than 100 years.

Ford’s Theatre officially reopened in 1968 as a national historic site and working theatre. It is operated through a public-private partnership between Ford’s Theatre Society and the National Park Service. But back to out story…

One can only imagine what it was like for Mary Todd Lincoln and young Clare Harris to have suffered such a shocking scene. One might also ask if the events of that evening carried shadows long after morning had come and President Lincoln expired……
Although Rathbone’s physical wounds healed, his mental state deteriorated in the years following Lincoln’s death as he anguished over his perceived inability to thwart the assassination attempt. He married Clara Harris on July 11, 1867 and the couple had three children. In 1882, Rathbone was appointed U.S. consul to Hanover, Germany, and his family accompanied him there. His mental decline culminated in his murdering his wife by gun on December 23, 1883. After he killed Clara, Rathbone attempted suicide by stabbing himself. Their children, who were also almost killed by their father, were taken to live with their uncle, William Harris, in the United States. It was rumored that until the day he died, Henry couldn’t hear the name Lincoln, without suffering flashbacks. He also did not remember either his children or what he had done to their mother. But he had used the two instruments of terror both his wife and he had been exposed to that April night long ago, a gun and a knife. The good news is that the children Rathbone intended to kill were spared because of the attempted suicide.

When the police arrived, the bleeding Rathbone claimed there were people hiding behind the pictures on the wall. The irony of that dark Christmas evening gives the reader chills. Rathbone spent the rest of his life in the asylum for the criminally insane in Hildesheim,Germany. He died in 1911 and was buried next to Clara in the city cemetery at Hanover/Engesohde. As time passed, the cemetery management, looking over records concerning plots without recent activity or family interest, decided in 1952 that Rathbone’s and Clara’s remains could be disposed of.They were both disinterred and cremated. So ends the sad lives of two of the other three spectators to the horror of Lincoln’s assassination.But what of his widow? Did she escape the dire fate of either murder, suicide attempts or insanity? Not quite.

Mary Todd Lincoln’s equally tragic end.

Experiencing the sad death of her son Thomas (Tad) in July 1871, following the death of two of her other sons and her husband, led to Mary Lincoln’s suffering an overpowering grief and depression Her surviving son, Robert Lincoln, a rising young Chicago lawyer, was alarmed at his mother’s increasingly erratic behavior. In March 1875, during a visit to Jacksonville, Florida, Mary became unshakably convinced that Robert was deathly ill. She traveled to Chicago to see him, but found he was not sick. Having lost every one of her family but Robert, the obsessiveness on Robert is understandable.

In Chicago she told her son that someone had tried to poison her on the train and that a “wandering Jew” had taken her pocketbook but would return it later. During her stay in Chicago with her son, Mary spent large amounts of money on items she never used, such as draperies and elaborate dresses; she wore only black after her husband’s assassination, so some mental illness clearly seemed to be at hand. She would walk around the city with $56,000 in government bonds sewn into her petticoats. Despite this large amount of money and the $3,000 a year stipend from Congress, Mrs. Lincoln had an irrational fear of poverty. After she nearly jumped out of a window to escape a non-existent fire, her son determined that she should be institutionalized.

On May 20, 1875, he committed her to a private asylum in Batavia, Illinois. Three months after being committed to Bellevue Place, Mary Lincoln devised her escape. She smuggled letters to her lawyer, James B. Bradwell, and his wife Myra Bradwell, who was not only her friend but a feminist lawyer and fellow spiritualist. She also wrote to the editor of the Chicago Times. Soon, the public embarrassments that Robert had hoped to avoid were looming, and his character and motives were in question, as he controlled his mother’s finances. The director of Bellevue at Mary’s trial had assured the jury she would benefit from treatment at his facility. In the face of potentially damaging publicity, he declared her well enough to go to Springfield to live with her sister Elizabeth Edwards as she desired.

Mary Lincoln was released into the custody of her sister in Springfield. In 1876 she was declared competent to manage her own affairs. After the court proceedings, Mary Lincoln was so enraged that she attempted suicide. She went to the hotel pharmacist and ordered enough laudanum to kill herself, but he realized her intent and gave her a placebo. The earlier committal proceedings had resulted in Mary being profoundly estranged from her son Robert, and they did not reconcile until shortly before her death.

Mrs. Lincoln spent the next four years traveling throughout Europe and took up residence in Pau, France. Her final years were marked by declining health. She suffered from severe cataracts that reduced her eyesight. This condition may have contributed to her increasing susceptibility to falls. In 1879, she suffered spinal cord injuries in a fall from a stepladder.

Death

Mary Todd Lincoln’s crypt
During the early 1880s, Mary Lincoln was confined to the Springfield, Illinois residence of her sister Elizabeth Edwards. She died there on July 16, 1882, aged sixty-three. She was interred in the Lincoln Tomb in Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield alongside her husband. So ends the tragic tale of the other victims of Lincoln’s assassination.