Did Lincoln receive death threats before he was shot? If so, how many?
-Ms. Gamble's 8th grade History Class, Piccowaxen Middle School, Newburg, MD
Lincoln received many death threats before he was shot by John Wilkes Booth. I don't know how many he received, although it could well have been hundreds. Partly because there had been so many threats and by 1865 no one had yet made a serous attempt on Lincoln's life, many people, including Lincoln, did not take the threats very seriously. Another reason people did not take these threats as seriously as we do now is that Lincoln was the first U.S. President to be assassinated, and it seems that until it happened for the first time, people did not believe it would happen. A few years before Lincoln's assassination William Seward (his Secretary of State) was asked by a reporter how he felt about the threats against Lincoln's life. His response was that it was not in the character of the American people to assassinate our president. Therefore, he did not really believe that it would happen. Lincoln was also concerned about not letting it appear to the American people that he was afraid of being killed.
Frank Hebblethwaite
Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site
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One of my students has asked if there was a conspiracy to assassinate Lincoln, not just by John Wilkes Booth, but by a larger group?
-Chris Gannon, Herndon High School, Herndon, VA
Numerous conspiracy theories that go way beyond the people mentioned above have been proposed in the 144 years since the Lincoln's death. These conspiracy theories have attempted to lay the blame of the plot to assassinate President Lincoln on high-ranking members of the Confederate government (including President Jefferson Davis, cabinet members & the Confederate War Department), Lincoln's own Secretary of War (Edwin Stanton), Lincoln's own Vice President (Andrew Johnson), members of the U.S. Congress, the Pope (two books blame Lincoln's murder on a Catholic conspiracy), a conspiracy of Jewish bankers led by the Rothschild family, Lincoln's wife who was supposedly having an affair with the White House gardener, Henry Rathbone who was Lincoln's guest in the Presidential box at Ford's Theatre, and anti-Lincoln Democrats. I hope you get the idea from this list that the vast majority of these conspiracy theories are far-fetched and bear little resemblance to reality. Your students would be best advised to stick to those people known to have participated in Booth's plot (mentioned in the question above), rather than going off onto one or more of these wild conspiracy theories that are, almost without exception, based on wild speculation; highly biased, very weak, or fabricated evidence; and, in many instances, outright lies.
Frank Hebblethwaite
Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site
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How old was Lincoln when he died?
-Ms. Gamble's 8th grade History Class, Piccowaxen Middle School, Newburg, MD
-Adrian Z., C.H. Decker ES 327, Las Vegas, NV
Lincoln was 56 years old when he died.
Frank Hebblethwaite
Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site
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What play was Lincoln watching when he was shot?
-6th grade students at Zeigler-Royalton Jr. High School, Zeigler, IL
The play was called "Our American Cousin", written by Tom Taylor, a British playwright. It was a comedy that depended a lot on topical humor, puns, and jokes that were tied into the current events and the comedy preferred by people of that time. That's why most of us from our own time don't get the jokes and find "Our American Cousin" to be quite boring.
The story line of the play is that Asa Trenchard, a backwoods, unsophisticated American goes to England because his British cousins mistakenly think that he inherited a great deal of money when one of their relatives died. Because of their mistaken belief that Asa Trenchard will soon become a very rich man, his British cousins try to marry him off to their daughters, despite their perception that he is a boorish "hick" who does not know the manners of good society.
The star of the play that night was a British actress named Laura Keene, who held the American copyright for "Our American Cousin", giving her an incentive in attempting to insure the success of that particular play. It was advertised that by April 14, 1865 Ms. Keene had performed in "Our American Cousin" more than 1,000 times. The performance that Lincoln attended was a benefit for Laura Keene, who was finishing a two-week star engagement at Ford's Theatre. It was a common practice at that time that playhouses would engage a star, who would perform in a number of different plays (to show his or her versatility) during a two week period. At the end of the star engagement it was traditional for the playhouse to make the last performance a benefit for the star, as a way of thanking him or her for the two-week engagement. Since it was the last night of her two-week engagement at Ford's Theatre, ticket receipts over house expenses were to go to Laura Keene.
Ironically, when John Wilkes Booth rode towards the Campbell Soldier's Hospital, north of Washington, DC on the Seventh Street Road, on March 17, 1865 in an attempt to kidnap Abraham Lincoln, the play that they thought Lincoln was going to attend at the soldier's hospital was "Still Waters Run Deep", also written by Tom Taylor. As it turns out, the kidnapping attempt failed because Lincoln changed his mind. Rather than attending "Still Waters Run Deep", the president went to the National Hotel on Pennsylvania Ave. to receive a captured Confederate battle flag from the governor of Indiana, Oliver Morton. In another little piece of irony, whenever he was in Washington, John Wilkes Booth stayed at the National Hotel. So, if he had just stayed at his hotel, Booth may have had an excellent chance to kidnap Lincoln on March 17.
Frank Hebblethwaite
Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site
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Why were there no police guards outside of the theater booth?
-6th grade students at Pine Street Elementary, Wayland, MI
In 1865 presidential protection did not in any way resemble what we are used to. The Secret Service was created as part of the Treasury Department in 1862, during the Lincoln administration. Its main function was to counteract the activities of counterfeiters, who were running rampant during the Civil War. This is still one of the main functions of the Secret Service. Full-time protection for the president was not established until 1901 after two more U.S. presidents had been assassinated (Garfield & McKinley). The job of protecting the president was assigned to the Secret Service because at that time they were the only federal agency authorized to carry firearms. The FBI, for example, did not yet exist.
By the end of the Civil War a small number (about 6-8) Metropolitan Policemen (Washington, DC police) were assigned White House detail. That did not mean that their job was to protect Lincoln's life 24 hours a day. For example, they did not stay at the White House when Lincoln went to sleep at night. Their main job was to insure good order in the line of ordinary citizens waiting to speak to the president. At that time anyone could line up at the front door of the White House and wait their turn to talk to the president, usually to try to persuade him to give them a government job. On the night of the Lincoln assassination, one of those policemen (John Parker) was assigned to escort the Lincolns to Ford's Theatre and then back to the White House when the play was over. His job was not to "protect" the president's life the way we are used to the Secret Service doing nowadays. During the performance of "Our American Cousin" Parker left his post outside the presidential box either to have a drink in the Star Saloon next door or to find a better seat to watch the play. According the owners of Ford's Theatre, on a number of other occasions, Lincoln had said to the policeman assigned as his escort something along the lines of, "You don't have to stay here. Why don't you go find a better seat and watch the play?”
The main thing to remember is that in 1865, Washington, DC, the White House, and the whole concept of presidential protection were completely different from what we are used to.
Frank Hebblethwaite
Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site
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Why didn't Lincoln's security staff watch him better at the theater?
-13 year old student, Livorno E/M School, Livorno, Italy
No American president had ever been assassinated before and despite occasional attacks (one on Andrew Jackson, for example) and many threats (Lincoln’s aides kept a bulging file), there just was never a sense of much urgency about the threat of assassination. The fact that he did have a military escort and off-duty police detectives assigned to watch over was considered by many (including Lincoln himself) to be excessive. There was not yet any official security staff or secret service and no tradition at all of guarding the presidential body.
Dr. Matthew Pinsker
Dickinson College
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Who was involved in the assassination attempt besides John Wilkes Booth?
-6th grade students at Pine Street Elementary, Wayland, MI
It is difficult to say for sure exactly how many people were involved in the Lincoln assassination or exactly who they were. What we can say for sure is that in addition to John Wilkes Booth (who murdered the president), Lewis Powell attempted to murder Secretary of State William Seward, David Herold waited outside Seward's home when Powell entered the house and attempted to kill the secretary of state & he then met up with Booth outside of Washington, DC on the night of April 14, 1865 and rode with Booth until they were surrounded by Union soldiers while hiding in a tobacco barn on the farm of Richard Garrett near Port Royal, VA, and George Atzerodt had been assigned the job of murdering Vice-President Andrew Johnson (although he did not make the attempt on Johnson's life). These four men were clearly involved in a conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln, along with Andrew Johnson, and William Seward.
Beyond Booth, Powell, Herold, and Atzerodt, it's difficult to say for sure who else was involved and what they agreed to do, when they agreed to do it, or whether they agreed to participate in Booth's plot at all. Michael O'Laughlen, Samuel Arnold, and John Surratt, Jr. all admitted that they were involved in what was initially a plot to kidnap Abraham Lincoln, but they all claimed that when it turned into a plot to murder the president, they backed out of the conspiracy. To this day, it is unclear whether or not Mary Surratt or Dr. Mudd were involved in the kidnapping conspiracy or the murder plot, or if they were, exactly what their roles were and how deeply involved they were.
Edman Spangler, a stage hand at Ford's Theatre, was convicted of helping Booth escape from the theater and was given a sentence of six years at hard labor while imprisoned in Florida at Fort Jefferson. His conviction came despite the fact that the only evidence presented in the trial against Spangler was a large coil of rope found in his room, which the prosecution contended had originally been intended to be used to try up Abraham Lincoln if they succeeded in their original goal of kidnapping the president. But, it would not have been unusual for a stagehand to have a coil of rope in his room.
Frank Hebblethwaite
Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site
