>> From The Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. [ Silence ] >> Georgia Higley: Welcome to this program. I'm Georgia Higley. I'm head of the newspaper section in the Serial and Government Publications Division. And I want to welcome you all to our latest program that we're sponsoring. We're very fortunate today to have Thomas A. Bogar share with us the results of his research project that resulted in the book, Backstage at the Lincoln Assassination. We considered Tom a friend of the Serial Division. He did part of his research in the newspaper and current periodical room taking advantage of our incredible collection of newspapers from around the United States and from around the world. Tom has taught theater history, traumatic literature, and theatrical production for 40 years. Most recently at Hood College in Frederick, Maryland. And has directed over 70 theatrical productions. He holds a PhD in theater history, literature, and criticism from Louisiana State University. An M.A. in play directing and a B.A. in educational theater. Both from the University of Maryland. In addition to Backstage at the Lincoln Assassination that was originally published in hardback in 2013 and just last month in paperback. He's the author of American Presidents Attend the Theater from 2006 and also a biography of a 19th century actor manager, John E. Owens, that was published in 2002. He's also the recipient of two national endowment for the humanities fellowships and has served as a judge for Washington's Helen Hayes Theater Awards. He lives in Silver Spring, Maryland. Backstage at the Lincoln Assassination dramatic lives behind the headlines has been very well received. Critics have described it as innovative, engrossing, and definitive. As one reviewer put it, even the most ardent of Lincoln assassination addicts will find much to savor and learn in this terrific book. High praise and he lives up to it. I also think that the preface has one of the best beginnings I've read in a history book. And because it immediately immerses you in the world of April 14th, 1865. And so I want to take the liberty of reading that first beginning few sentences. Imagine for a moment that the President of the United States has just been murdered in your workplace by one of your most admired and charismatic colleagues as you stood nearby. Picture the chaos that erupts around you as your mind races. Fearing for your own safety and of it being thought complicit. Recollecting and panic in the ill chosen words you ever uttered that could be construed as hostile to the President as well as the times you were seen socializing with the assassin as recently, in fact, as the drink you took with him a few hours in the bar next door. From that instant onward, your world would never be the same. I mean I'm in. [Laughter] After hearing -- after that start, right? So I'm delighted that he's going to be speaking in great detail about his book. Following the program there's an opportunity to ask questions and also to purchase your own copy of the book. So please welcome Tom Bogar and his discussion of Backstage at the Lincoln Assassination, Dramatic Lives Behind the Headlines. Thank you, Tom. [ Clapping ] >> Tom Bogar: Thank you, Georgia. And thank you to Terry and to really everyone on the staff from the Newspaper and periodical room and to Michelle from the manuscript room. I have to say before I even begin any of my actual talk, this especially the newspapers room has become my home away from home. For 35 years since I started doing my dissertation. If anyone were to hunt for me other than my house, if my wife needed me, I think that that's where she would come to find me in the newspaper and periodical room because the knowledge of the staff, the professionalism, the dedication is just second to none anywhere. So many times the help that I've gotten, the direction. The help with finding things that didn't want to be found. That and I really wanted to address especially after the semi-slur in The Post recently how happy I've been with the technology. It's been wonderful. [Laughter] The technology and the things that we have available to us is really just astounding. So I'm so grateful for all of them and all that they do for us. One hundred 50 years ago next week, an event of monumental importance occurred which really has resonated through that last 150 years. And I think not just the immediate period of reconstruction but really I think down to the present day. It's certainly one of the most easily written about subjects in all of American history. And one of the questions that I always get asked in interviews is how did you come up with a topic with all the books that had been written about the Lincoln assassination that nobody thought of? And really the answer is that I'm a theater historian. And so everything that I look at is through the prism, the eyes, of theater people. And we know that context is everything in history but what people forget is that this infamous act on April 14th, 1865, occurred in a theater. In front of a live audience committed by an actor who was close personal friends with many of the people who were backstage. And so I found myself thinking what would it have been like? I came across this iconic playbill which we've -- most of us have seen for Our American Cousin for that night. And I think if you asked anybody on the street, they would certainly know the events of that night. They had lines about Lincoln and Booth. And they might know the headliner herself, Laura Keen but how many of them know any of these other names? John Dyot, Harry Hawk, Ned Emerson, John Matthews, Will Ferguson, Billy Withers. These were 46 all too human people and this event, the event of that night, events that took place in less than 30 seconds caused them to arrested, interrogated, imprisoned. Most of them not charged except for one. Charged with anything. And it headlined their obituary. This became the event that defined their life. And I found myself thinking what would it have been like to be trapped inside the theater? And I started looking when I was doing the research really on my previous on American Presidents Attend the Theater. When I was writing the Lincoln chapters, I found myself thinking there must be sources somewhere about the theatrical aspect. And every single book that I picked up either followed Booth out the back door to his horse and the alley and his death in the burning tobacco barn on the Garrett farm. Or it followed the mortally wounded President as he's carried out across the very muddy 10thh Street over into the Peterson House and nobody -- not one book, hardly even any articles anywhere talked about the people who were trapped inside the theater as the soldiers marched in. Took up their stations. The crowd in the street is chanting burn the place down. And they're terrified especially the ones who were -- and many were -- close personal friends with Booth who had taken a drink with him. It's funny. Next to Ford's Theatre there were two saloons. The Star Saloon to the South was where all the Unionists -- the Confederates, sympathizers hung out. The Greenback Saloon to the North is where the Unionists hung out and you just picked your saloon depending on where you wanted to have a drink and what your sentiments were. One of the best quotes that I've found after John Matthews said in the days following the assassination, those of us who were the wisest knew the least. In other words, you just kept a low profile. You didn't talk about it. And I think for in most cases, I found myself thinking as I resolved to tell their story of that wonderful quote from Macbeth. And Macbeth was Abraham Lincoln's favorite Shakespearean play. Ironically about the assassination of a king and the aftermath of that assassination. But in Act 5, Macbeth's moment of realization in true Greek tragic style, he realizes that life is but a walking shadow. A poor player that struts and frets hour upon the stage. And then is heard no more. And it occurred to me that's what these people are. These are 46 walking shadows. Their lives irrevocably changed. In fact I wanted to call the book Walking Shadows as it went to the publisher. It was going to be called Walking Shadows until my agent said, you know that sounds an awful lot like another vampire book. [Laughter] And then Bresser [phonetic], the history buyer for Barnes and Noble said you know, people search for titles of books by certain keywords. I think you should call it Backstage at the Lincoln Assassination. And when the history buyer for Barnes and Noble suggests a title, you're thinking oh, it's probably a pretty good idea. And she really was right with that. The trouble with trying to track these people down really ending up being a much greater challenge than I thought. First of all, their names in many cases were not their real names. They acted under stage names. One of Booth's friends who was an actor backstage at Ford's was Edwin Hunter Brink but he acted as E.H. Brink or as Edwin Hunter. So you have all these variations. The permutations of their names, their stage names. Also the actors move around so much because of their nature of their business. In fact, they would travel freely through the North and South through the war. John Wilkes Booth himself used to say my name is my passport. I can go anywhere through the lines as he was smuggling quinine to the Confederates. So the census didn't always track them. Census records didn't help that much. The dates weren't always right either. They would change their birthdates. In fact, one of the oddest things that I found was that the actresses for each 10 years that they aged, they would move their birthdate of 5 years. [Laughter] So that that through them off on the records also. [Laughter] Also I found that there were so many false claimants. I -- one of my first searches in these wonderful search engines that we have in the newspapers, I put the search terms of Ford's Theatre and acting and Lincoln assassination. I got all of these names. People whose -- their obituary said they were acting at Ford's Theatre that night and they weren't. There were twice as many false claimants as there [laughter] people who were actually involved. In fact, there's a drama critic in 1916 who said it's estimated that enough players have been credited with acting at Ford's Theatre the night of April 14th, 1865, to have filled the playhouse itself. [Laughter] In many cases too, there are errors in their names. National archives or the M599 files which are the handwritten interrogation of all of the people arrested for the assassination or thought to be complicit. It's all in that 19th century calligraphy. And reading through that is difficult enough but the soldiers who were taking the names down and the information down, were often taking it from people who themselves were illiterate. When you go to their own signature at the bottom, it's just an x that was witnessed by the soldier. So there's one guy backstage, Dake Rittersbock [phonetic], where I would Ritters Paw, Ritters Back, Ritters Boch, Batch, all these variations of names that I then had to enter into search engines to try to get information on them. And another thing that I found was that the crew isn't listed. You go to any play today at Rhea Stage [phonetic], Kennedy Center, and in the back of that program is the name of every person who put every prop on the stage or did anything with the scenery but not in that time of 1865. The crew wasn't listed. So it was only by reference from someone else. In the interrogation they would, oh I was standing opposite of Spangler. Or opposite of Rittersbock. And then I would get some sense of what to do in terms of who to follow up on. The best part, though, and I have to say going back to this again, are these digital search engines. How amazing is it and those of us who are of a certain age can remember the endless microfilm that we would just read through by hand, to know that you can enter search terms in and find hits of names. The best example I can think of is 42-year-old Edwin Hunter Brink. Had just married in December before the assassination. And his new 14-year-old bride, Kittie Brink, was working backstage that night. Kitty Brink only told her story once. She told it thoroughly and well. And it's substantiated by other accounts but she told it in 1926 to the Huron South Dakota newspaper. [Laughter] Whoever would have thought to look at the Huron South Dakota newspaper? Had it not been the hit that popped up and I had been misspelling her name as Kittie Brink with a y. And it was -- I only knew it was i e because her application for a military widow's pension she had signed it i e. So once I entered that in, I was able to get the information of her but it's just phenomenal the search engines that we have. I also started realizing that the people backstage that night were an absolute random assemblies of people. They hardly knew each other. There wasn't any sense of a bond or cohesive among them. John Ford have 5 different theaters. Philadelphia, Cumberland, Alexandria, Baltimore, and Washington. So he was constantly circulating his actors among all of them depending on what was needed for that particular performance that night. So there were quite a few who could thank their lucky stars the rest of their lives that they were assigned to Alexandria that night or to Baltimore other than the ones who were there. But there wasn't a sense of a bond that had a theater company usually has to be able to be supportive of each other in case of an emergency backstage. Another strange thing is how young they were. Of all the people who were backstage, the average age of the cast was under 30. Almost half was under 20. Almost all of the crew was in their 20s. And as I started reading their family letters and their interviews and things, I realized what a volatile place Ford's Theatre was because half of them had strong connections to the Union. One had a son who had died fighting for the Union. Another one had a brother who died fighting for the Confederacy. They were working backstage building the scenery, putting the scenery up, changing it, working together. Night after night with a different show every night with that kind of atmosphere backstage. And I began to realize that an important factor in Ford's Theatre was the fact that -- and this is draped, I was taking the days after the assassination with the funeral mourning draping on it. What a tender box that place was. The Ford brothers themselves even lived in those 3 windows in the second floor of the building next door above what used to the old box office of Ford's Theatre. Now it's been moved over to the other side. But many of them at Ford's Theatre had a home base in Baltimore at the Holiday Street Theater. And if you remember your history, Baltimore was a hot bed of secessionist thought. Maryland was nominally a border state but in February of 1861 there's an assassination attempt on President Lincoln as he's coming through Baltimore to -- in order to take office. And then in April of 1861 of the Pratt Street Riots we have 12 citizens and 4 soldiers who are killed when the Massachusetts Regimen comes through Baltimore to protect Washington. So people from Baltimore had very strong successions leadings and even more startling to me was to find how much secessionist thought there was in Washington. How much sympathy there was for the Southern cause. It was also evident after a while that these people were living very different lives than the actors today. They were rehearsing in the morning and performing a different show every night and then going back to their boarding house or hotel rooms and memorizing the script for the next day. So it's the constant turnover. The pressure of that. You only played what the star who came in like Laura Keen wanted to perform that night. And you were trapped in a narrow -- what they call a line of business. If you were the heavy, you played the villain in every single show. If you were the leading man, you were the leading man or leading lady in every show. If you were the first old man or heaven forbid, the first old lady, that's the part you played in every single performance. So they were trapped in these at a time when theater was not looked upon very well. It was not a profession that was particularly respected by people. And so they kind of kept to themselves. And the building itself, the stage was in such an odd configuration. To have the Presidential box that close to the actual stage. Now this is the set. This picture was taken. It's a Brady Studio photograph of Act 3 Scene 2. This was the stage as it was set at the moment of the assassination. Very far down stage. That's the curtain line right there where that alcove with the draperies hung. The stage is actually slanted. So when you walked up stage, you're actually walking upstage which added to the fact that when Booth leapt to the stage, he landed off balance because of the sloping stage. And the leap from the edge of the box is 11 feet 6 inches. Eleven feet 6 inches in an 8 foot room, think what that would have meant for him. He vaulted it kind of like a gymnast hurdles over landing off balance. But the fact that they're sitting that close to the stage is difficult for a number of people to realize today. What's important to is that all of them talk about that night. In all the interviews they gave in terms of what was going on on stage, they would say well I was -- I saw Booth in the back when we were playing the dairy maid scene. Or I remember Lincoln coming in just as we gave the joke about why does a dog wag its tail? Things like that but not the time. Nobody took their watch out backstage because first of all there were no lights backstage. This was all pre-electric light. So it's dark backstage. The stage manager would signal his cues with a Bosun's whistle. And so they can't look at their watches. So what I did is I find the 1860 -- here at The Library of Congress, I found the 1865 edition of Our American History. And there were about 9 different editions. I read it out loud pausing for laughs and every 5 minutes put a mark in my copy of it to get a sense of the time. So I would know that the dairy maid scene was at, perhaps, 8:17 p.m. And thus I was able to get a timeline and really -- I have to say Our American Cousin's still reads pretty well today. You don't see productions of it. I have seen it done. It's pretty funny. It's a fish out of water of this rural yokel for a Monty Yankee who goes over to mingle with his rich affected British cousins out in the British countryside but it does play pretty well. Finally after all of that was set out for me, I was able to calculate from their remarks and from their interrogation of the 46 people where they were backstage at the moment of the shot and what they were doing for each of them. The strange thing is what each of them thought it was depending on the acoustics. Laura Keen herself was pretty sure it was a gunshot and she sent her dresser to tell the stagehands to stop firing guns backstage. [Laughter] Somebody else thought it was a paint can that exploded in the prop room. Another person said it was celebrations out on the street because a celebration for the war being over as of April 9th, just right before that. One of the actresses said it was like a champagne cork popping and someone else said it sounded like one hand clapping out in the audience. So all those different accounts were interesting. You get a sense of what it sounded like. So what I'd like to do is to quickly introduce a few of these walking shadows to you because they've been so lost. And I have to admit I've actually been to the graves of some of them and told them I'm going to tell your story [laughter] because you know, you're writing. And you look out the window sometimes in the darkness of winter and you feel like you're talking to them. I'll say John Ford why did you do that? What people don't realize is that yes it was John Ford's Theatre but he had only come down from Baltimore twice that spring. And the last time had been in early March. The person running the theater that night, in charge of everything, was Harry Ford. Harry Clay Ford was 21 years old that night. Boyish, gregarious, close personal friend of John Wilkes Booth. Could joke with him. And Harry Ford is arrested and released 3 times in about a 6 week period following it. His interrogation record over at archives is over 30 pages long. They grilled the poor guy. And yes he was friends with Booth but didn't know anything about the plot or even the abduction. There had been 2 failed abduction plots that Booth had before the assassination. And Harry Ford really wasn't privy to any of that but he had the responsibility for the theater. The least known of the 3 is probably Dick Ford. Dick Ford's 25 that night. He's reticent, kind of shy, defers to Harry. At the time of the moment of the shot, Dick Ford's train is just pulling in to -- the train station at the time was where National Gallery of Art is now, coming down from Baltimore because John had said to him, I need you to go from Baltimore and check on the Holiday Street Theater. So his train had just pulled in. He rushes back to Ford's Theatre and he sees this figure being carried out of the theater into 10th Street. And he grabs a bystander and he says what drunken loafer is that? [Chuckling] Thinking that some drunk is being carried out of the theater. And then asks the doorkeeper and finds out about the story he is and that's when the night turns really hellish for him and all of them. The best known, of course, is John T. Ford. John T. Ford turned 36 on April 16th, the Sunday after it. He actually didn't know anything about it. Didn't hear anything. He's down in Richmond checking on relatives, family members. His wife's family especially was from Hanover, Virginia, and he had also managed the Marshall Theater in Richmond. So he went down to arrange for some scenery and some props to be shipped up now that the war was over and the blockade had ended to have them brought around the Chesapeake Bay up to his theater in Baltimore. And the word got to him on Sunday morning that Edwin Booth had shot the President. He said that couldn't be. Edwin Booth would never do that. And then he said I remembered that John Wilkes Booth was in Washington and that boy had pluck. He could have done it. And John Ford, unbeknownst to most people, and this has not made me hugely popular, I think, with fans of Ford is he was a secessionist up until the war started. He was an arden [phonetic] secessionist when he ran the theater in Richmond but he was smart. When the war broke out, he knew enough to trim his sales and he really stayed neutral. He allowed the Union Army to build a fort in the front yard of his Gilmore Street home in Baltimore. His wife came out and fed the soldiers regularly. And so I wouldn't say he converted but he knew enough to keep himself really strictly neutral during the time of the war. John Ford, however, is still arrested as soon as he comes back to Baltimore. On Monday, the 17th, he's arrested. And taken to Old Capitol Prison. Old Capitol Prison was a fierce some place that had been originally constructed after the War of 1812 to temporarily house the Capitol after the burning of the Capitol. And it had just been subjected to very rough wear. It stood -- this building stood where the Supreme Court does today. To the right of it, you see that little wall. There's was another building right next to it. It was a series of row houses that is where the Jefferson Building of The Library of Congress is now. That was the old capitol annex that was an equally rat infested place. One was called Duff Greens row in the '40s. It was the home where Congressman Abraham Lincoln lived during his one term in Congress in Duff Greens row. It went -- became the Capitol Prison. John Ford is held there for 39 days. Never charged. He mounts an aggressive campaign against Secretary of War Edwin Stanton to be able to reopen his theater. He's losing thousands of dollars a day because he can't open his theater. And Stanton is determined, you will not open. He absolutely will not open it and resist any effort on Ford's behalf. In fact, finally they do think that by mid-July they get temporary permission to reopen the theater. They bring the actors back together again. They announce they're going to do the play. It was going to be the next night and low and behold, Stanton changes his mind and says no. And shuts it down again. And as we know, it's 100 years before Ford's Theatre ever sees productions of theatrical productions again. And time and again, you have to admire John Ford's tenacity. Fortunately, John Ford's papers are where? The Library of Congress and they are here. And to go through them, he kept a jailhouse manifesto. He wrote down every day what was going on, who was coming in, who was going out, the treatment of things. A beautiful floor plan that actually I was able to put in the book because I could use the beautiful new scanner downstairs. The scanner was in the manuscript room to be able to capture that image. He had nothing else to do for a while so he drew floor plans for Ford's Theatre. Easily the biggest headliner that night was Laura Keen. And this was Laura Keen's benefit night. On a benefit night, the actor chosen received all the box office except for minor expenses. And Abraham Lincoln loved -- first of all, he loved Laura Keen's performances. He had seen her perform before. Loved her. Loved the kind of play this was. This folksy humor was Abraham Lincoln's kind of favorite humor. And on her benefit night, he wanted to go because he knew that his appearance there would boost box office. So it'd be better for her if he's announced as being there. This picture is previously unpublished. I got it -- they dug it out for me at the Harvard Theater Collection. This is the gray moire silk dress that she wore in Act 3 of Our American Cousin. It later became the famous blood stain dress that was cut up into millions of pieces and every now and then a piece will still surface somewhere on eBay. Claiming to be like part of the true cross, part of the dress of Laura Keen. She had been one of the most feared, respected theatrical managers in America in the 1850s in what was essentially a man's world. She was tough. They called the duchess behind her back but she really ran things wonderfully, efficiently, and as soon as the shot occurred, her managerial instincts kicked in. And she walked to the edge of the stage and tried to quiet the audience. She said keep your places and all will be well. And it wasn't well. And it didn't work very well. Excuse me. [Clears throat] But one of the actors knew a way to get up to the booth -- the Presidential Box a backstage way and took her out the stage door. Not the one that Booth escaped from but the other stage door, stage left. And went up the back stairs of the Ford's brothers apartment through their apartment, back around through the lounge, and into the front door of the Presidential Box. And there cradle the wounded President's head. [ Background sounds ] And this is controversy today. There are people and there are a few groups more fanatically argumentative than the Lincoln assassination scholars. And there are those who say Laura Keen never could have made it up into that box that night. Never -- Mary Lincoln never would have let her cradle her husband's head. But one detail that Laura Keen said really clenched it for me. She said as I held his head, he resembled Montano's dead Christ. The painting of Montano, that four shortened perspective if you see it. And that's such a striking image. So that stuck in my head that she would have seen that. And then she's descending the stairs and numerous people, eyewitness reports describe her descending the stairs in the lobby of Ford's Theatre with the blood stained dress. But she has an engagement to keep the following week in Cincinnati. Sunday night, she with her husband who was in the box office at the time, and the two other actors who toured with her got on a train and left. And were arrested in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania because they were told not to leave Washington but she felt that her professional instincts would prevail. And Laura Keen's is one of the saddest tales. She's 39 the night of the assassination but ever since that night, she can't perform in the North because they associate her with the assassination. She can't perform in the South, they still thinks she's a Yankee. Her life from that moment on is a sad, downward trajectory into poverty and death by 47 of tuberculosis. So many of them, the lives afterwards are really sad. John Dyot was traveling with her. There's a misconception that it was Laura Keen's acting company that night but really it was just Laura Keen and two other performers. One of them being John Dyot. And Dyot was a tragedian. He was very stiff, very formal, 53 years old. And he had performed with all the greats. He was kind of out of place in plays like Our American Cousin but he had enough of the old business. As soon as they got to Cincinnati afterwards finally, he left Laura Keen abruptly. Went to New York. Got a job at the Winter Garden Theater where low and behold on January 3rd, 1866, his playing Polonius to Edwin Forest -- excuse me, Edwin Booth's Hamlet on the night that Edwin Booth returned to the stage after really not thinking he would ever be able to because of what his brother had done. The interesting thing is Dyot was never arrested. Never questioned. There were a number of them who really -- it's -- I think bad interrogation or crime scene investigation procedure were never questioned at all. Dyot never mentioned the incident ever again. Nothing appears in his obituaries. He wrote a brief autobiography that's up at the Harvard Theater Collection. He never mentioned it but enough people were there and saw him perform. That we know he was there that night. He just was -- took the option of not wanting to talk about. Never granted any interviews. Performing with them as they traveled along with Keen and Dyot was Harry Hawk. And Harry Hawk spoke the last words that Abraham Lincoln ever heard. He was alone on stage. He was playing the title role of Our American Cousin, Asa Trenchard. And he was kind of a goofy, shambling Yankee. Low comedian. Just the kind of humor that Lincoln loved. And he had just been discovered as being poor. And they thought he had wealth and this douserer [phonetic] was trying to fix him up with her daughters. And had just discovered how poor he was. And told him off and left. And he turned that curtain door way and he said I know enough to turn you out inside out you sockdologizing old man trap. And that got the -- I mean imagine being called sockdologizing old man trap. [Chuckling] That was the biggest laugh in the show. And John Wilkes Booth knew that because he had acted the part of Lord Dundreary himself 11 times. So he knew the play well. There is a mythology that he fired the shot during the laughter but Harry Hawk maintained the rest of his days that he didn't get the line quite finished when the shot rang out. And that he had turned to see what the disruption was. [ Background sounds ] Excuse me. And he saw his sometime friend and he was friends with Booth as he was turned upstage to that curtain alcove. He saw Booth land right in front of him holding a gigantic buoy knife striding toward him. His face white in a snarl. His eyes practically cartoonishly popping out of his head. And what does Harry Ford do but runs off stage and runs up a flight of stairs to his dressing room that most of the historians had thought was just out of fear. But I dug up an account of why he ran so fast. It turns out that Harry Hawk had been seeing one of John Wilkes Booth fancy women who lived over in the brothels on Ohio Avenue there by the Jefferson Memorial now. And Booth had said to him several days before if I ever catch you with her again, I'll kill her. So when Booth leapt, Harry Hawk thought he was coming to kill him and that's why he runs off the stage. [Laughter] John Matthews is fascinating. He's a member of the Ford's Theatre stock company. So he's actually based in Baltimore and Washington. They called him crazy John Matthews. He played the heavy, the villain in all the roles. He was a very close friend of John Wilkes Booth. In fact, when he -- when Matthews played in Washington, he used to rent a room in the Peterson house across the street. Not the night of the assassination but on -- in March of 1865, he had rented the very room that Lincoln would die in and his friend, John Wilkes Booth, and some other actress came to visit him in that room. And in March of 1865, John Wilkes Booth sprawled on the very bed Lincoln would die on and just took a nap. And smoked a cigar in that same room. Booth trusted Matthews so much that that afternoon he had accosted him on Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the -- where the National Theater was then and it is now -- and gave him a letter. And he said, John, I need you to put in the newspapers. Get it to the newspapers tomorrow morning and it was a description, a justification of why he -- Booth did what he did. And Matthews was actually on his way to the liquor store. It amazes me how much drinking was done that night. [Laughter] By my calculation, Booth himself had 7 or 8 drinks by the time he arrived on a horse in the alley way to when he actually shot the shot in the Star Saloon next door. But Matthews, even though he was a friend of Booth, didn't want to be caught up in those abduction attempts. And wouldn't help Booth but Booth locked him in by giving him that letter. So Matthews gets back to his rented hotel room that night, the boarding house room, reads the thing through, is terrified. Tears it up. Burn the pieces in the grate of the fireplace of his room and when he's arrested that night, they don't find any evidence of the letter. And yet he was able later because of his actor training to recite most of it during the Johnson impeachment hearings when they brought all of them back in again for more testimony because they thought other people might have been involved or connected with the theater. Matthews, though, was smart. He went to his priest and asked -- a little ominous. [Laughter] Asked his priest what he should do? And the priest said get out of town which Matthews did and went to Canada. George Spear [phonetic] who was the first old man of the theater company. He was 55. In and out of alcoholic asylums most of his life. In fact, some accounts have him being drunk that night when he played the role of the butler, Binny. And he had a long acting career out West especially. John Ford had kind of taken. His wife threw him out. He was in alcoholics asylum. John Ford took him in. Hired him at the theater. Spear was an old friend of the Booth family. In fact he was the one who had to notify Edwin Booth in 1852 of the death of his family. Of his father, the senior Julius Brutus Booth. Spear lost his son. His son was wounded fighting for the Union. When he died, his wife got all of the benefits. Spear's another one who dies a slow and poverish death in the Edwin Forest Home for destitute actors in Philadelphia. Ned Emerson was the leading man at Ford's. He's on the verge of real greatness. This was his first big role playing Dundreary that night. He's a Virginian who had really known John Wilkes Booth well since the late 1850s in Richmond. Often mistaken for Booth. This was a picture that the Emerson family allowed me to use. That they shared with me. And you can see in this the resemblance to his friend, John Wilkes Booth, that actually resulted in a misidentification that caused Emerson briefly to be arrested. People who thought that he was Booth. He's a Virginian. He's the one whose older brother had died fighting for the Confederacy. He had four other family members who had been in the Confederate Army but eventually he's, of course, released and found not complicit. Actors Helen Truman, that night is 19 years old. She's a Memphian. She had come North to Washington because her brother was arrested. He was a Confederate blockade runner. And he had been arrested, he was being held at Norfolk, Virginia, threatened with hanging. And Helen and her mother went there begged for his life unsuccessfully. They went to Abraham Lincoln personally and begged to save the brother's life. And Lincoln did. He interceded and pardoned the brother. Then John Ford hired her and from that night on, she kept a detailed list of every time that Abraham Lincoln came to the theater. Often the audience wouldn't even know it. He'd sit so far back in the box that the audience wouldn't even know he was there but Helen Truman did. And her list that I found through the search engines of The Library of Congress gave me this complete list that double checked with everything that other people had in their lists. And I was able to forward that list on to the Lincoln Presidential Library in Illinois which they hadn't had before. Actress Helen Muzzy is the one who played the douserer [phonetic] who uttered the next to last line which Lincoln heard. You might know the sad story of Ned Spangler. Spangler's the scene changer, the stage hand who was a friend of Booth's. Kind of a slow witted drudge. His wife had died the year before. Taken heavily to drink. He had helped build Tudor Hall, the Booth home suite. Known Booth ever since Booth was a kid really. And he's arrested on what I'm convinced was subordinated testimony by a stage hand named Jack Rittersbock. He's arrested. Taken -- sentenced to 6 years of hard labor at Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas. And I've been down there. It's a pretty bleak place. This is the fort down in Dry Tortugas. The 3 windows above the sally port there, the entrance way are the cell and I took this picture sitting on the floor of the cell trying to get the feel of what it was like for Spangler and Dr. Mudd and the 2 others in that cell at that time. Mudd, unfortunately, tried a pretty stupid escape attempt, was caught right away, and then thrown into an underground dungeon cell into which the moat flooded whenever it rained. The moat into which all of the waste of the prison was always thrown. The interesting thing about Spangler is that the testimony against him was based on him keeping the wing space abnormally wide and they actually -- Stanton gathered all the actors together the week after the assassination and made them reenact the entire play pausing every scene change to take measurements to see if that wing space was kept unusually wide open. And John Ford kept saying the actresses are wearing hoop skirts. They have to be wide wing spaces but they still arrested Spangler on the grounds that he had kept the wing space unusually wide. And that's these poor actors having to go through that, that recreation. That and also for briefly holding Booth's horse. The stage manager that night, John Wright, was responsible. He stayed with his wife. Stayed in the theater through that whole night and Billy Withers is the conductor. Billy Withers was a stolist [phonetic] Unionist. He had served 2 enlistments in the Union Army bands but doing much more than playing instruments. He also helped the surgeons with the amputations and carrying litters of wounded. And Withers is unique in that for the whole rest of the time until his death, he told increasingly lurid embellished self serving accounts of the assassination. Now he almost single handedly prevented it had Booth's knife slashed him almost to the heart, almost to the neck, almost to the throat. The coat -- Withers' coat just has a couple of little slashes and I found Withers' military pension application in which the doctor had written no visible scars. [Laughter] So you knew that it was a little bit too embellished. But throughout the search for all of these 46 walking shadows' lives, I have up on the wall next to my computer a quote from film director Martin Scorsese that kept me motivated. Your job, he said, is to make your audience care about your obsessions. [Chuckling] And I have to say these 46 walking shadows became my obsession and so I thank you for caring about my obsessions, these walking shadows. Thank you. [ Clapping ] I would be happy to entertain any questions. [ Background sounds ] I should plan some ahead of time. >> Georgia and I did a little agile case display which for people at the Library knows these are these little one month displays. And our center case is about Ford's Theatre and we're displaying the map that John Ford did. >> Oh that's great. >> If everybody has a chance to go over -- >> Over in the Jefferson Building, the display about the assassination. That really -- and he hired to do that floor plan that's exhibited over there. He hired a young 19 year old prompter boy, Will Ferguson, to help him draw it out and they did it at his attorney's office. So that's great that they could see that over there. Yes? >> The individual who was in the Capitol Prison, how long was he there? I think it was Ford. >> John Ford was there 39 days. Spangler was held on one of the ironclads, Marigold, down in one of the water closets below deck. But most of them, the Ford brothers, all the actors who were arrested, they were held at Old Capitol. Ford was one of the longest at 39 days. Wouldn't even let his wife come see him for a while. Pretty bleak conditions. Never charged. >> What was the Ford's Theatre used for after [inaudible]? >> Question was what was Ford's Theatre used for afterwards? That's one that I probably could have planned. It's a great question because it was used a storehouse for Confederate war records. And the ironic thing there is they kept filling it up with file cabinets and clerks. More and more and in 1893, the day of Edwin Booth's funeral in New York, Ford's Theatre collapsed pancaking down and killing about 2 dozen of the clerks who were working there. And then Stanton actually hired his brother-in-law to do the revision, the renovation of it. And Gifford who had built it with John Ford converted it for the Baptist church. Didn't want anything to do with it. He said that the foundation was set so poorly that he was going to collapse one of these days and it did. Yes in the back. >> I have two questions. You are presenting that Laura Keen did climb those stairs [inaudible]. Then on the side came into that room, is that correct? >> The question was of Laura Keen accessing into the booth? Yes because I've actually walked that route. And she could have fit through. She would have moved quickly. Remember that there's some give on those hoop skirts because it's a lightweight metal frame. And she would have pushed through especially because Tom Gourlay, the actor, was ahead of her. Will Ferguson was behind her. They could have -- I mean knowing her personality, she would have gotten there. She was a fiercely determined woman and she wanted to be in charge of keeping things under control. So both her personality, I'm convinced, the route of it being accessible, and her description of it. >> Two, [inaudible] did he hear what Booth said? [Inaudible]. >> The question was Harry Hawk, what did hear Booth say? There's a number of different versions of that. Harry Hawk who was moving stage right, he clearly heard sic simper tyrannis and then as Booth got over to stage right, he said the South is avenged. I mean he heard -- he said I have done it. The South is avenged. Just to the stage right before he pushed Withers out of the way who was talking with his new almost fiancee, Jenny Gourlay. They weren't married. There were 3 marriages within days of the assassination among the crew and cast backstage which is kind of odd. All of which it ended in divorce. The Brinks had done it just before. Jenny Gourlay and Withers just -- and Mae Hart also. I guess for security because maybe only the people who had gone through that with you would understand what it meant. >> And at what point, was Mudd guilty? >> I'm not in a position to really say. The question was about Dr. Mudd's guilt. And I just went in March. So I attended the annual conference of the Surratt's Society which is the SCARA's Lincoln assassination and their people argue at length every point and that's still being debated. There's evidence that Dr. Mudd knew who Booth was. And he was fulfilling his Hippocratic oath by fixing his leg but he forgot to tell anybody. So to that extent, he's guilty but certainly should not -- shouldn't have gotten the life sentence that he did. Yes? >> For the Booth conspirators, how many of them had a theatrical background? >> Sam Arnold. O'Laughlen did. They were the 2 went down with Mudd and Spangler to Dry Tortugas. None of the others. Davey Herald [phonetic] was the pharmacist apprentice. Payne, Powell was a Confederate soldier so none of the ones who actually did it were theatrical connected. Some of the others, I'm convinced like that someone like Spangler and some of the others knew about the abduction attempts because the first thing Spangler does, he grabs his pet puppy runs out into the rain. It was raining by then looking for Booth for an explanation. I think so many of them, the reaction was wait a minute that wasn't supposed to happen. That wasn't the plan because they originally going to kidnap Lincoln at Ford's. Lowering him over the edge of the box at 11 feet 6 inches and then spirit him out the back door and get him up to Baltimore and then down the Chesapeake Bay to Richmond without being caught. [Laughter] Yes. >> Maybe others know their history real well. Was Lincoln -- how regular of a theater goer was he? I mean weekly, monthly, [inaudible]. >> The question was how regular a theater goer for Lincoln? Very regular. He was one of the most regular attenders of the theater of any of our Presidents. He had been to Ford's Theatre 18 times prior to that. He went with Mary when there were operas. He went with Hayes and Nicolai [phonetic] or other people when it was comedies. More with male company but he really enjoyed going to the theater so often. I put him in my pantheon [phonetic] in the previous book, Presidents of Theater Going, one of the top 5. You'll never guess though what President attended the theater more than any other? Woodrow Wilson who attended 223 times while he was in office alone. So he's up there in that pantheon along with Taft and a couple of the others. So was James Garfield. Oh that he had lived. Other questions? Yes. >> So, when Ford's Theatre was shut down in D.C. were the other Ford's Theatres shut down and did the Ford's brothers end up dying destitute like Laura Keen did? >> You know John Ford always landed on his feet. >> Even after this? >> Even after this. He shut down the one in Alexandria quickly. Shut down the one in Cumberland. The one in Philadelphia he was just leasing. So he let that go to somebody else but he threw all of his efforts into the Holiday Street Theater. He had a great stage manager, Tom Hall, Wright who was the stage manager at Ford's. Went back to Boston where he lived but Hall kept Holiday Street going. And Ford in the 1870s even opened here in Washington Ford's Grand Opera House and ended up being quite wealthy by the time of his death. His biggest disappointment was the suicide of his daughter. He had some real tragedies in his life. A biography of John Ford needs to be written. His grandson, John Ford's grandson only died in 1986. And was writing -- he wrote his dissertation on John Ford and he gave a partially completed biography to the Ford papers that are here in manuscript. >> Was the play sold out? >> That -- the question was Ford's Theatre sold out. The accounts say it was a full house but the box -- other boxes were -- no one was sitting in the other boxes which also made Stanton suspicious. You know, why did that happen? It was coincidence. By all accounts, it was. If not sold out, very close to a full house largely even more than Lincoln's presence it had been announced that General and Mrs. Grant would be there. And at that point, he was a pretty big draw. In fact, there were a number of people who were interviewed. In Tim Good's [phonetic] book we saw Lincoln shot who said they had come to the theater to see Grant but you may know that Mrs. Grant was not hugely fond of Mary Lincoln. And they also wanted to see their children. Their children were up in New Jersey at Long Beach and they were heading up there. He was on the train near Philadelphia when he found out. And headed back to Washington. I would say a full house if not sold out if that makes sense. Okay. >> Thank you -- >> Thank you. >> -- very much Tom. >> Thank you. 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