Backstage at the Lincoln Assassination

The Untold Story of the Actors and Stagehands at Ford's Theatre

Thomas A. Bogar

• Publisher: Regnery History
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9781621570837
• eBook ISBN:
  9781621571742
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: American Civil War History
• Index: History

April 14, 1865. A famous actor pulls a trigger in the presidential balcony, leaps to the stage and escapes, as the president lies fatally wounded. In the panic that follows, forty-six terrified people scatter in and around Ford's Theater as soldiers take up stations by the doors and the audience surges into the streets chanting, "Burn the place down!"This is the untold story of Lincoln's assassination: the forty-six stage hands, actors, and theater workers on hand for the bewildering events in the theater that night, and what each of them witnessed in the chaos-streaked hours before John Wilkes Booth was discovered to be the culprit. In Backstage at the Lincoln Assassination, historian Thomas A. Bogar delves into previously unpublished sources to tell the story of Lincoln's assassination from behind the curtain, and the tale is shocking. Police rounded up and arrested dozens of innocent people, wasting time that allowed the real culprit to get further away. Some closely connected to John Wilkes Booth were not even questioned, while innocent witnesses were relentlessly pursued. Booth was more connected with the production than you might have known—learn how he knew each member of the cast and crew, which was a hotbed of secessionist resentment. Backstage at the Lincoln Assassination also tells the story of what happened to each of these witnesses to history, after the investigation was over—how each one lived their lives after seeing one of America's greatest presidents shot dead without warning. Backstage at the Lincoln Assassination is an exquisitely detailed look at this famous event from an entirely new angle. It is must reading for anyone fascinated with the saga of Lincoln's life and the Civil War era.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• The Forty-Six Actors, Managers, and Stagehands
• Note about Theatrical Terms
• Preface
• CHAPTER 1: “Is John Booth Crazy?”
• CHAPTER 2: “A Hotbed of Spies and Seditious Plots”
• CHAPTER 3: “It Is a Lottery, This Profession of Ours”
• CHAPTER 4: “Our American Cousin”
• CHAPTER 5: “The Handsomest Man in Washington!”
• CHAPTER 6: “Have You Got the Key?”
• CHAPTER 7: “I Guess I Know Enough to Turn You Inside Out”
• CHAPTER 8: “Burn the Damned Place Down!”
• CHAPTER 9: “One of the Last Places to Which a Good Man Should Go”
• CHAPTER 10: “Dreadful Uncertainty”
• CHAPTER 11: “Ignorance and Innocence”
• CHAPTER 12: “Good Bye. Sometimes Think of Me”
• CHAPTER 13: “Actors, in Order to Live, Must Go On with Their Business”
• CHAPTER 14: “To Open All My Wounds Afresh”
• CHAPTER 15: “The Merest Shadows of Truth”
• EPILOGUE: “Walking Shadows”
• Acknowledgments
• Bibliography
• Notes
• Index