>> Trevor Plant: It is 11:59, so I can still
say "good morning." (laughter). Welcome to the National Archives. Thank you
for joining us on this wonderful afternoon. It's great weather outside and thank you for
those that ran across the street in the middle of the parade to get here.
I'm Trevor Plant, chief of the Archives One Reference Services Branch, which means this
building, National Archives building. Today we welcome back - because he has been here
many times - Harold Holzer to discuss "President Lincoln Assassinated!!: The Firsthand Story
of the Murder, Manhunt, Trial, and Mourning." Harold has authored, coauthored and edited
more than 40 books. His most recent book prior to this one was "Lincoln and the Power of
the Press." It came out last fall and got very good reviews. It is most wellknown for
"Lincoln at Cooper Union." I will not go into Harold's bio. It is in the pamphlet you received.
I can guarantee you he has been on many or channels listed in that program. If you don't
know who Harold Holzer is by now, shame on you.
When he comes up, I'll let him talk about the small obscure museum that he works at
in New York City. The last few years we've been celebrating
various 150th anniversary milestones for the Civil War. Several anniversaries are happening
rapidly right now. Last week it was Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox. Today we
marked anniversary of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theater.
As recently at yesterday's morning at 7:22 a.m., the mourning of his death at Peterson
House. We are in the 150th hunt for his assassin, John Wilkes Booth. If you haven't already
done so, please take time to view the featured document that we have on display upstairs.
We have on temporary display the report of the doctor that treated Lincoln the night
he was shot, entitled "a doctor in the house, Dr. Leale's report on the death of President
Lincoln." It is in the east rotunda gallery. That will be on display through April 29th.
It has a very short time frame. Please be sure to check that out on your way out.
We have two copies of the report at the National Archives, the one that's on display that is
signed by the doctor upstairs currently and then the other one that is actually cited
in Harold's book. Would like you to join us this Saturday. We have several presentations
beginning at 11:00. This is mentioned in the program. A finger in Lincoln's brain, marching
home by Brian Jordan, their last full measure, Joseph Weelan, and this Monday night, the
women of Washington by Cokie Roberts. So I know you didn't come to hear me speak. You came to hear Harold speak, so, ladies andgentlemen, Harold Holzer. (applause). >> Harold Holzer: Thank you. How great to
see all these people here. I thought when I saw the sunshine and the parade and the
floats that no one would make it into the entrance. I'm glad to see you. I'm also glad
because I was worried a little bit Ford's Theater that the morning after April 15th
would be somewhat anticlimactic. I hope it is not. I hope this interest continues to
sustain itself and it is not just pegged to sesquicentennial anniversaries. There will
be other ways to remember, other ways to explore. I hope we can do it throughout '15 and '16.
I see my friend Peter here. He has a gallery in Georgetown that you should look for because
in May - it will celebrate the 150th anniversary of the grand review with an exhibit of Ulysses
S. Grant material and other materials. So things go on. Of course, that is pegged to
anniversary and contradicts everything I just said. Please ignore it. Anyway, we know what
the subject today and this week is. I want to start with a quote. Which will clean up
a little bit. "That means Negro citizenship." That's the last speech he will ever make.
That's what infuriated John Wilkes Booth as he listened to Abraham Lincoln deliver a speech
from the second floor of the White House, 150 years and five days ago on April 11th,
1865. That's what Booth vowed. Or did he? You know, Lincoln's address that night was
sort of benign ironically. It was not all a kind of flagwaving victory speech that winners
of wars that are prone to make that are likely to infuriate the losers of the war. In fact,
it was the spirit almost an epilogue to his rather Pacific inaugural address delivered
six weeks earlier. Lincoln really did bear malice toward none. He really did propose
to extend charity to all, even to rebel to preserve slavery.
He also really did mean to help exslaves who had fought most of their own freedom and for
the sanctity of the Union that had enshrined slavery in its Constitution for so long. And
technically, of course, the Constitution still did protect slavery, although that was on
the way to change with passage of the Thirteenth Amendment coming quickly unfortunately not
in Lincoln's lifetime. So Lincoln gives his speech. It is not his
most, you know, triumphant speech. It is not his greatest speech by any means. It was a
long and detailed speech. Part of to the end, the democratic newspapers criticized it. One
of them charged that Lincoln had groped around the reconstruction issue like a traveler in
an unknown country without a map. It took a Republican newspaper, of course, they were
all part of it in those days to recognize this speech as wise in sentiment and paraded
by the logic of the heart. Well, Booth would not have agreed that April
11th evening because he was there, watching Lincoln's Haggard face illuminated by bomb
fires as the President pronounced the words that Booth and other white supremacists had
long spread, voting rights were, indeed, coming for the colored man as Lincoln put it. Albeit
for the very intelligent and those who serve our cause as soldiers. Limited rights, limited
charity, and certainly not for all. But as far as John Wilkes Booth was concerned enough.
That means Negro citizenship. That's the last speech he'll ever make. Just as Booth promised,
it was. Could even Lincoln's favorite diarist, William
think of as the loved leaders staged high up in a welllit window, the multitudes of
sort of a wave before him like a sea of carpet of lulls. Victorious at last relieving his
grateful subjects, people who whose liberties had been denied and now offering the grandest
of gestures extending liberty as no other leader had before and standing below him because
it had to be quite dramatic on the White House lawn, otherwise joked with admirers, his face
contorted with rage was his future murderer, a small confederate, that means Negro citizenship.
That's the last speech he will ever make. I repeat mantra that, of course, Booth did
not use the word "Negro" when he said that. Just a few months earlier in a screen he wrote
for the presidential campaign he never recited - he thought he would be making a speech or
publishing it in the paper. He never did. He had been clear. This country was formed
by the white, not for the black man to strike at wrong and oppression was the teaching of
our fathers, the study of our early history will not let me forget it. And he didn't.
That means Negro citizen. That the last speech he will ever make. Now this famous line sounds
especially familiar to those of you who have been reading about new assassination sesquicentennial
books, and there are a lot of them. And for good reason. Always part of April 1865 literature
and lore, it has resurfaced in recent months all over. To put it in context as far as 30
years ago, the late William Hanchett made it his motive in his book "The Lincoln Murder
Conspiracy." That most respected of recent assassination experts Edward Steers exhumed
it in 2001. Michael Kaufman in his book"American Brutus" used the quote, too. And then interestingly questioned
its authenticity in the footnotes. Even James McPherson used it in "Battle Cry" and the
list goes on. Terry Alford in his new book quotes it without offering any sources at
all. And then major book reviews published on the
very same morning just a few weeks ago in both "The New York Times" and the "Wall Street
Journal" on the same Saturday. One by Jill Lepore, the wonder woman historian, one by
Michael Burlingame both writing about the Alford book and another book called "Mourning
Lincoln," another very good book. Each began with the identical lead. And guess what that
was? That means Negro citizenship, et-cetera, et-cetera.
And like Booth, neither Jill Lepore or Michael Burlingame, they used the N word I won't use
today. Well, if we know that Booth was a racist,
literally terrorized by the impending doom of white supremacy and we are recently sure
as well - and Alford reiterates this that the actor was kind of unhinged confusing his
stage roles with real life, especially his final stage role as Marc Anthony would not
only kill his Caesar but to deliver the funeral oration, then why quibble? Well, because I
think the devil is in the details. And as the two most recent books about Lincoln's
death and aftermath show us, Americans have largely looked to expunge their own devils,
their own history, their own guilt in the way when we're now remembering Lincoln's murder.
We've seen the best and worst of ourselves in Lincoln's life and death and in how we
think Lincoln might have bound up the nation's wounds and cared for those who bore the battle,
the way we lost him in a careless moment of jubilation. The way we lament his death and
sanctify his memory since, as a liberator. But did people really know that Booth was
attacking Lincoln because of the prospect of, quote, Negro citizenship? So let's dispose
of the quote, if it can be disposed of at all 150 years and layer upon layer of use
and reuse later. We do know for certain that Booth attended
what he, indeed, made sure was Lincoln's last speech a few blocks from here at the White
House on April 11th and what's the source? Well, the only real source is a 1867 transcript
of testimony before the House Judiciary Committee by assistant - former Assistant Secretary
of War Thomas Eckert, 1867. And it is in the Johnson impeachment hearing, not anything
to do with the assassination. And they brought Eckert to testify to try to find out if Andrew
Johnson was complicit in the attack on Lincoln, a ridiculous avenue of investigation. But
they did it. And Eckert testified that he had spoken to
Lewis Payne before his execution two full years earlier. Even that's not a great source.
But it is the only source. And this is what Eckert said: Booth tried to get me to shoot
the President the night of the celebration after the fall of Richmond. We think that's
April 11th. Could have been a couple of days before.
The President made a speech that night from one of the windows of the White House and
he, meaning Powell, and Booth were in the grounds in front. Booth tried to persuade
him to shoot the President while in the window but Powell told Booth he would take no such
risk, that he left then and walked around the square and that Booth remarked "that is
the last speech he will ever make." That's quite a different story. Booth asked
Payne to shoot Lincoln maybe even before he calls for black voting rights. No mention
of the line at all "this means Negro citizenship." And the vow is not made daringly, almost recklessly,
in front of hundreds of admirers but whispered in the darkness, I presume, of Lafayette Square,
even maybe while Lincoln is still speaking. Maybe you can even hear a little bit of his
voice as they're walking away. So where does this "that means Negro citizenship"
part come in? Well, apparently it comes from a Civil War newspaper correspondent named
George Alfred Townsend whose reports on the Lincoln assassination and the capture of Booth
were eventually collected in a very wellrespected book. It's considered an original onthespot
on the manhunt to the trial. And guess what? The Negro citizenship line doesn't appear
in that book at all. During the war, by the way, he was known as
GAT. His made up of his first initials plus H, a play on the line from the Bible from
the book of Samuel, tell it not in Gath. It was a home to Goliath. Don't tell a whopper.
Got it? In those days people would have gotten it. (laughter).
The question is whether Gath ended up telling a giant whopper of his own when he got the
chance. He did get the chance in 1895 when he published a turgid novel, not a memoir,
not a history. It was a story called Katy of Katocton, a national romance. No wonder
no one cited his source. Historical fiction, 19th century style. As one point Gath's characters
go to the White House, go to the White House lawn on April 11th to hear President Lincoln
speak. Townsend remembers Lincoln uttered these very words: If universal amnesty is
granted to the insurgents, I cannot see how I can avoid exacting in return universal suffrage
or at least suffrage based on intelligence and military service.
Lincoln hadn't said that, said a version of it. If we understand he's making that up,
let's go to the next part. Townsend goes on in the novel: Booth was standing before Mr.
Lincoln on the outskirts of the large assembly. That means Negro citizenship, he said to little
Harold by his side. Now, by God, I'll put him through. Not that's the last speech. Now,
by God, I'll put him through. It is Harold, not Louis Powell, during the speech, not after.
If Townsend invents the words of the speech, why not the reaction? There it is, that's
the real source for the legendary vow to prevent black voting rights, an invented line of dialogue.
Though to be fair Townsend, he does offer a thirdhand source by putting an asterisk
on the section of his novel. And he writes on the bottom: Frederick Stone, counsel for
David Harold after Booth's death told me that this was the occasion of deliberate murder
being resolved upon by Booth and in the words above.
I don't know. But that's maybe why Ed Spears put all three declarations together from two
sources, House testimony, Gath's fiction, and came up with one conjoined dubious quote:
That means Negro citizenship. Now, by God, I will put him through. That will be the last
speech he will ever make. And I've spoken to Ed spears about this. And
he said, oh, my God, maybe I shouldn't have done that. Anyway...
(laughter). So there's my attempt at myth busting for
the day. And I know I'm not going to win this fight. I have a feeling that if civilization
ended 20,000 years from now, explorers would come and find two things. A cockroach and
"that means Negro citizenship." It is that hard to squash. I have to admit that I wanted
to use the story myself in the new book, "President Lincoln Assassinated!!: The Firsthand Story
of the Murder, Manhunt, Trial, and Mourning," attributed to the novel. But it was irresistible.
I have to admit, until I started doing the book and assembling the book and doing the
research and the testimony and the lamentations by poets and orators about Lincoln's death,
I use the quote. I got people to cry. I have used the bird and I will take the hit myself.
I think we can get into Booth's motives without over-dramatizing. That he was grandiose, I
don't think anybody can doubt especially in the wake of Terry Alford's convincing malice
and breakdown, that he was deeply racist heart and soul is evident in everything he said
and did. The trouble is: He didn't publish it. So we can't know that people knew it as
a motive. And that I think is why they ascribe to exact everything from Jefferson Davis'
leadership and influence to the Pope to the knights Of the Golden Circle. To the Masons.
I heard that yesterday at Ford's Theater. He saw Lincoln as a tyrant, morning deserving
of violent overthrow. That cannot be denied. And Martha Hodes in particular, among all
of authors I have talked to, has made a good case that we have tended to oversimplify the
reaction to Booth and the public response to Lincoln's death. And I wanted to spend
a few minutes talking about that as well because. As James Swanson has pointed out, there were
two emotional responses occurring at the same time from mid April to early May. And that
is grief and a thirst for revenge in the manhunt for Booth.
But as Martha has reminded us, lamentation for Lincoln was not universal. And we'll get
to that, too. How do we balance all of this out? How do we seek out not only motivation
but a true sense of public reaction? And Martha Hodes has asserted that there is a huge indifference
or exaltation, not only in the South but among copperheads in the north, glad that Lincoln
was dead. How do we count the real ways? I'm going to try.
First, let's think of Lincoln, absence of malice to be sure. The second inaugural which
Booth actually attended, menaced, also prevented. He tried to break through a stanchion, a line
that had been created in the rotunda to give his speech. According to Benjamin Brown French,
commissioner of public buildings, Booth lunged forward and was held back by policeman. Frank
said he never saw such a wild eye in anybody's eyes. No metal detectors in those days.
Lincoln's total absence of fear, assassination is not in the American lexicon. The fear should
have come with the trip to Richmond on April 4th before the war is over. Greeted by a liberator
by exslaves and somehow survives the hateful stares of the white people of Richmond.
Absence of bravado, just a few days before his final speech, Lincoln jokes he is reclaiming
the song Dixie. A couple of days before that, he appears at the national hotel and received
a captured confederate flag from a regiment. And as he takes the flag, it snags on the
balcony - the outdoor balcony of the hotel. John Wilkes Booth is in that crowd, too. He
wants to shoot him there because he's shown disrespect to the confederate flag. All these
public occasions where they meet each other. Just a moment on the cruel irony of the religious
calendar, because that plays a huge part in our emotional attachment to the Lincoln assassination.
Shot on Good Friday. Mourned on Passover Saturday and Easter Sunday by almost everyone in the
United States, certainly everyone in the north. And I once found a letter to him by a bishop
in New Hampshire who wrote to him a few weeks before to please appoint Good Friday, the
14th of April, as a day of fasting and prayer throughout the United States. Had Lincoln
heeded the bishop's case, he would have been fasting, not attending the theater on that
night. After years of prayer, he didn't want prayer
that night. He wanted relief. But the religious connotations would not go away. Those funerals,
those orations on Easter Sunday left a powerful impression. As Herman Melville wrote, I have
the complete poem in the book - Melville is not famous for his poetry, but Good Friday
was the day of the prodigy and crime when had he killed him in his pity, when they killed
him in his prime of clemency and calm when yearning he was still to redeem the evil will
and though conquer, be kind. Not everyone agreed. Booth certainly didn't
agree. He believed hiding out in a swamp in Maryland that when the first newspapers arrived,
he would be vindicated, validated. Instead, even Maryland newspapers thought he had made
a terrible mistake and exposed even white southern sue Supremacists indignation from
northern Victors of the war. Many I know, Booth wrote in his diary, the bold are heard
will blame me what I have done. But posterity I'm sure will vindicate me. There is that
conflation. To his horror, the newspapers described him
as a savage that slain a President. I'm here in despair, he writes in his diary. Why? For
doing what Brutus was honored for. What made Wiggin Tell a hero and I for striking down
a greater tyrant they ever knew and looked upon. Booth said clinging to the hope that
he would become a hero. It seems absurd now but it would have seemed less so at the time
because, remember, Lincoln was a partisan figure and he was certainly not popular among
Democrats in the north. He had won 56% of the vote in the November election. It was
very good. He won almost all of the state. But 44% voted against him, and that's just
in the lower Union states. He would have been under 50% again if he had been four years
earlier if the south had voted. They shot Abe Lincoln, one Massachusetts Democrat
shouted to his neighbors. He's dead and I'm glad he's dead. That's when local police began
acting on authority to arrest people for accessory being accessories after the fact simply for
stating their awful opinion. Even on the Republican side, the Congressman named Julian said that
the feeling among the radical; that death is a Godsend. They thought Andrew Johnson
would be a tougher reconstruction man than Lincoln. Not that manifestations of mourning
did not appear. City after city, adorned public buildings with so much thick black ribbon,
that recognizable architecture vanished under the sea of bunting and oversized black cloth
sold out completely. Somebody had to make money who did this project. The people who
manufactured black cloth did very, very well. In New York City, a young merchant named Abraham
Abraham, long before he and a partner founded the retail empire now dead called Abraham
and Strauss. I don't know how many of you remember that brand. Put a Lincoln bus in
his shop window. One of many the shopkeepers to make gestures to honor him.
This is a couple of pages from a diary that someone, we don't know who it is, walking
up Broadway, simply wrote down all the designs and all of the handmade tributes to Lincoln
that he saw in New York City. Amazing. The time for weeping, vengeance is not sleeping.
Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood. A glorious career of service and devotion
is crowned with death. When word of Lincoln's death reached a Union
Army camp in Virginia, a Pennsylvania soldier observed a gloom fell on us. What a hold old
honest Abe had on the hearts of the Army. They showed their mourning for him. Of course,
there were people who disagreed. The Chattanooga newspaper said: Editorialized " Abe has gone to answer before the bar of God for the innocent blood which he has has been permitted to be shed in his efforts to enslave free people." The Galveston newspaper said Lincoln had "sowed the wind and has reaped the whirlwind" in a plenitude of power was struck down and is so ushered into eternity with sin to answer for. Jefferson Davis was later accused of leading the conspiracy to kill Lincoln, allegedly
said when he heard the news, when he was on the run, he quoted Macbeth, Lincoln's favorite
play, if it were done, better it was well done. Later he allegedly said I fear it will
be disastrous for my people. And in his memoirs he admitted for an enemy so relentless in
the war for our subjugation, we could not be expected to mourn. Yet, in view of its
political consequences, it could not be regarded otherwise than as a great misfortune for the
South. Now, this new book "Mourning Lincoln," which
I will do a little bit of a critique of but I still recommend because its author Martha
Hodes went through 1,000 diaries to collect the thoughts of real order people, north as
well as south. Certainly she found things, some of which we knew and some entirely new,
Sara Morgan, the famous diarist wrote, the man who was progressing to murder countless
human beings was interrupted in his work by the shot of an assassin. Not very nice words.
Mary chestnut, the most famous confederate diarist writes: The death of Lincoln, I call
that a warning to tyrants. He will not be the last President put to death in the capitol,
though he is the first. But even if such fervor comment was being
recorded, that's where we have to keep the balance. These magnificent funerals are taking
place in Washington, in Baltimore. He got 2% of the vote in Baltimore in 1860. Harrisburg,
Philadelphia, New York, Albany, buffalo, Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, Chicago, and finally
Springfield, grief was playing out repeatedly. New York City, a scene of vicious racist riots
two years earlier host a grand funeral, 100,000 New Yorkers were in the building, city hall,
where my wife used to work, to view. That's the only photograph that was taken and confiscated
by Edwin Stanton. Millions of people participated in the funeral. Even the democratic press
which had criticized him said, it was an extraordinary showing.
Of course, I have to be honest about my city. The arrangements committee said no African
Americans could march in the funeral. They appealed to Edwin Stanton, the secretary of
war. He said you have to allow African Americans to march in the funeral. I order it. It's
interesting that he thought he had authority. But they said, okay, we're listening to you.
The African American delegation can march but they have to march at the very back of
the parade. And they did, so far back that when they reached the depot where Lincoln's
remains were being placed to ship to Albany, they say his body had already reached West
Point. That's how long the parade was and how indifferent they were.
Nowhere do I find the reaction to the death of Lincoln more bizarre than the fact that
I learned that in Charleston, South Carolina, a photo vendor began hocking photographs of
John Wilkes Booth. Now, Charleston is the place where the Civil War had begun. What
does it mean? Was it a resurgence of sympathy for the lost cause? Was it the hope that Booth
had actually destroyed the Union government and maybe the war could be rekindled?
Well, guess who owned this copy, this very copy that I'm showing here? The Lincoln family.
When the Lincoln family album was rediscovered in the 1980s, it included just a curiosity
piece that was still in this album that Mary Lincoln had begun assembling when she reached
Washington. A photograph of the man who had murdered the family patriarch.
So I've offered a real crosssection of written evidence here with special attention to the
new books which I think deserve mentioning, even my collection and these new books have
to come with caveats. They're a sampling. They're a slice. Mourning was certainly not
universal but it was huge. I don't think you can equate 100,000 people visiting Lincoln's
remains to 1,000 people writing unpleasant things in a diary. They're not the same. I
don't think we can do revisionist history on the mourning of Lincoln.
But I want to end this talk don't get too excited, it is not really ending. But I want
to do the final section of my talk turning to an aspect of history that I really is the
beginning of my study of Lincoln 40 years ago. And that's in Lincoln imagery. Because
as I found when I began to study, these are not just pictures. They tell you a lot. Engravings
and lithographs, pictures that people could hang on their walls, not put away, bore an
almost sacred value for their owners, to their manufacturers, there were no more than a product.
Items in the inventory. Now, that may sound heartless but it cuts to an essential truth.
If a great many of these images survive, a great many of them were made. If a great many
of them were made at the time, it was because a great many customers clamored for them and
purchased them and treasured them. So in a sense, very little else, not an isolated headline,
not a drunken comment by a neighbor in Boston, not even an eulogy in church, not a diary
entry can reflect public opinion and public reaction better than public and popular print.
So here's my own Lincoln assassination look now that I think gives you an example of what
I'm talking about. So just a few months earlier, it was said,
he was not the best man to run the country. Only George McClellan can save us. That ends,
of course, when this print is recorded just a few days after the assassination. Record
production time, of course, it is not completely accurate, how can it be? It conflates the
flag. People were going to buy anything they could get their hands on because there is
no CNN, there is no MSNBC, there is no Instagram. People had to imagine these things and they
wanted them. Even this particular piece was a chance of interfering and Lincoln is a little
bit bulked up, shall we say. (chuckles).
Here he's not even sitting in the right place. This is an unknown print. And I like it because
it gets a quote out of Macbeth. I don't know if they knew Lincoln loved Macbeth. I suppose
this is my favorite because it's got you know, Booth could not have broken his leg if he
just stepped off a little balcony like this. It has got Lincoln standing up after he was
shot and holding his eye. The musicians attempting to attack him. I love the guy who is trying
to look at the whole thing through his flute. (laughter).
This is a Lincoln look alike. They should have put him in the box. Now, if I had to
do - find the suspect who was a collaborator in this offense, I would do this guy. He is
the only one who is not looking at the scene. What does this show? It shows that people
would buy anything in this period. And here is a real indication of this - the motive
issue, Satan tempting Booth to the murder of the President. Some of you who were at
Ford's may have heard this print being discussed. What could be the motive? It is not Negro
citizenship early on. This man had to be pushed by the devil himself. Now, that's only one
genre of memorializing Lincoln. And I've shown you just a sampling.
There are hundreds and hundreds of surviving prints. There's also the quest to be at the
deathbed, in the dying moments of Lincoln. Mary Lincoln shown weeping here was actually
barred from the room by an unsympathetic secretary of war Stanton who thought she was crying
too loudly, tad, bring tad to this room. Surely he will speak to him. And tad was never brought
from the White House. But they have him in the print.
And you have, you know, a small collection of people in the room which is appropriate.
But when the print first came out, some people noticed perhaps that Andrew Johnson was not
in it. And that was not a good thing for the transition. So if you see General Halleck,
he is expendable. So he becomes Andrew Johnson. They just replaced him.
And then maybe people realized Mary was not in the room. In this third version, this is
all by Courier. You have an ever growing number of people. Now Andrew Johnson is right up
here weeping at the bedside. He actually just paid a perfunctory visit to the bedside.
Prints come out for his German admirers, too, English and German captions. Alexander Gardner
who took some of the greatest photographs of Lincoln wants to get in on the act. This
very realistic picture, it is an engraving, although for a while leading his story in
photography insisted that was an autopsy photograph. But I don't think it is. One of the few prints
to show actual blood. The most bizarre tribute of all... (laughter).
Here he gets to hold Lincoln's hand as he dies. Minister in full regalia is doing the
tribute. What Mary and Robert Lincoln are doing here, I really don't know.
(laughter). Now, here's my favorite.
(laughter). Alonzo Chapel, I think 46 people in the room,
all of them were there at one point. All of them posed, many of them posed for their images
here. Robert Lincoln posed with the handkerchief with a photographer. Johnson did. Hue McCulloch
did. All of these survived in the Chicago Historical Society. This gentleman is focused
in the New York historical society new exhibition. Dr. Lieberman, who was summoned to the scene.
This is published with a key so that you can identify all the people in the print.
A painting that became a print. And, of course, people were not satisfied just for this. They
wanted to know that Lincoln had the kind of afterlife he deserved. Rising, being called
to heaven from his deathbed. Honored in funerals across the country. Or, indeed, welcomed by
faith, hope and charity into heaven. People looked at this print and I don't know what
they thought. Why is there a Native American here in this print? Why a Masonic symbol?
Lincoln was not a member of the Masons. That's because there was such a rush for these pictures,
these tributes, that people copied anything they could get their hands on. And this is
actually a print that was issued in 1800 to George Washington for whom these symbols were
absolutely appropriate. Faith, hope and charity, I knew they were here. These were obviously
angels. They took out Washington's head, changed the words on the tomb and they got Lincoln
coming out. Gone were the vision much emancipation that
reigned in 1853 and '4. It was said in a print that Lincoln was dipping his pen in the ink
well when he wrote the Emancipation Proclamation. Gone was this image, if Lincoln is reelected,
it will be a topsy-turvy society when white men including Lincoln bowing to mixed race
couples, black and white couples spooning. Most horrendous of all, a white driver driving
a black couple. This was the society Lincoln was ushering in.
Now the few of emancipation was that of a great liberator and people collected these
prints as well. They collected images of the Lincoln family, many of them, they didn't
start coming out until 1865 when Lincoln was already dead. People needed assurances, even
if they weren't true that Lincoln had enjoyed the support of his family during the horrible
years of the Civil War, even though Robert Lincoln wrote he had five minutes alone during
the entire war and Mary wrote she was lucky if she saw him at 11:00 at night for a brief
talk about the events of the day. Civil War White House was not (inaudible).
So the murder had changed everything. And I think we should not be too generous about
Booth's motives. We should not think he was even a crusader for white supremacy, even
if he was. I think he was - it was a vengeance act of a deranged person. I think there was
a racist element in it, but I think it is important to keep the - keep our words precise,
keep our sources precise, and use visual evidence which is almost as good as the written evidence.
Here is one particularly instructive image. It is actually the cover of Martha Hodes book.
Crude as though it looks today, racial stereotypes acknowledged showing a Lincoln memorial tablet
engraved with an image of the martyr, the dragon of cession is finally slain. The Emancipation
Proclamation engraved on an officiallooking scroll. The chains of slavery are broken.
Columbia is in mourning. And a newly liberated African American is holding his head in tears.
So maybe this means Negro citizenship or at least points to a future that Lincoln and
his sacrifice would make better than the past. Thank you.
(applause) So I think we have 10 or 15 minutes for questions,
if anyone has them. There are two microphones. >> Hi, Carl, JFKvigil.com. If I could ask
you to please comment on a very important participant brigadier General Thomas Harris
entitled "Roam's Responsibility for the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln." And Brigadier General
Harris pointed out the Pope had corresponded with Jefferson Davis and recognized him as
the President of the confederate states of American. When Lincoln heard that it was all
very publicized, he felt that his death warrant had been signed because by acknowledging the
confederate states, the Pope was essentially deeming Lincoln a tyrant who was unjustly
making war in the south. Also that John Surratt, Brigadier General Harris says that Surratt
was hidden out by bishop of Montreal and his priests with afore knowledge of the event
and, of course, Surratt then fled to London and on to where he joined the Pope's Army
in the Vatican. And John's argument cancelled the death a warrant and avoided having him
arrested in London. >> Harold Holzer: Let me comment. You have
asked me this question before. >> But not in front of this audience.
>> Harold Holzer: Right. So I have to try to remember all your points. I will try to
go in descending points. John Surratt was a serious Catholic who was shielded by priests
and wound up in the papal guards. European reconstruction mission of the confederacy
including Vatican recognition was always a dicey thing for Lincoln. And it was an issue
that he confronted and largely overcame during his presidency basically by virtue of issuing
the Emancipation Proclamation at the last possible minute to prevent major European
recognition. But I've said this to you before that I don't
believe that there was a plot managed by the Pope to eliminate Lincoln. I point to his
interest relationship with Bishop Hughes, the archbishop of New York, who was so mortified
by the overwhelming number of Irish Catholics who participated in the draft riot and who
personally stood in front of Presbyterian and Methodists and Episcopalian churches in
New York City and ordered the rioters to not touch Protestant churches and was pretty heroic.
I know you believe in this. And I don't. And let's leave it at that.
>> Not that I believe in it. Again, general brigadier Harris made it very specific. He
felt it was the Roman Catholic church that was at all responsible, it was the political
the hierarchy. >> Harold Holzer: Right. Okay. We disagree.
But thank you. >> As did General Harris.
>> Harold Holzer: And I disagree with General Harris, I guess. (laughter).
John? >> Yeah, hi, Harold. As you know, I'm very
interested in medical aspects of the assassination. And I'm really glad that you brought up the
Booth quote for a couple of reasons because as you also probably know, there's a new book
out called "A Finger in Lincoln's Brain." And the Author Is Going to Be Here Saturday
"actually in which he uses that quote but" not by God I'll put him through "to use the
premise that he was going to stab the President and not shoot him.
But even worse than that in this book, he uses the motive of syphilis, Booth having
syphilis and mental changes brought about by syphilis to be the reason his personality
changed from the sweet boy he was to this aggressive murderer. And I have even asked
Terry Alford about this. I can't find any other credible historian to believe in this.
So my question is: What's your take on that? >> Harold Holzer: Okay. You asked some interesting
questions. Terry Alford says he wasn't such a sweet boy. He said when nobody was looking,
he tortured cats. That means therapy is called for so he wasn't such a good kid apparently.
We've heard the syphilis story. He certainly had a lot of, a lot of girlfriends in his
young life. But there is also a syphilis story about Lincoln, there is a reason that his
children died. People like to ascribe changes in personality and illness to syphilis in
those days. >> As you know, I am an infectious disease
specialist. Booth was 26 years old. Even untreated it takes many years to develop those kinds
of mental changes. And he uses the freckling and the boils and all that.
>> Harold Holzer: Let's not get too graphic. On the "finger in the brain" thing, I want
to tell you a story that happened to us in New York. When the article was published in
"American Heritage," 15 years ago, I don't remember - I'm not good at anything after
1865. (laughter). So this article was published saying that
the doctor who stuck his finger in Lincoln's brain in the box in Ford's Theater which he
did to relieve the clot so he started breathing again, that had Lincoln recovered he would
have killed him by the diseases he caused by sticking an unwashed, ungloved finger in
his brain. This doctor happened to live in the same Westchester town that my wife and
I lived in. I thought why not invite him to a group in New York to discuss this ridiculous
theory. He is going to die, what difference does it make, let's let him live so he won't
die in the theater box which is what they were horrified about.
Guess who came to the New York group when she heard about it? A woman named Helen Harper,
the granddaughter of Dr. Leale. Boy was she angry. It turned out to be a debate, a huge
debate. How dare you accuse my grandfather who rushed into the box and resuscitated this
great man and prevented him from dying on the spot and the circumstances in which Booth
had left him. Neither of these people ever spoke to us, neither the neighbor nor Helen
Leale harper. You are an infectious disease specialist. Did he kill him?
>> I think that's absolutely correct, that he would have certainly had infection. But
what Dr. Leale did do is allow him to leave at least another 9 1/2 hours so things could
be done and people could be gathered, et-cetera. So I think he did it. I am a big fan of Dr.
Leale. I lecture on him. Anybody who wants to take Dr. Leale to task, I don't like.
>> Harold Holzer: Thanks, Doctor. Do we have time for a few more?
What happened on this side? The right wing is not being...
(laughter). >> Yes. Hello. My interest in all this is
of an avid amateur. And I just recently stumbled upon the story of Lucy Hale. I'm curious,
given her connections at least that I've read about, I don't know if they are accurate or
not, with Booth, Robert Lincoln and John Hay, the fact she had dinner with Booth that night
and spent the day with Robert Lincoln, why wasn't she called as a witness when they were
arresting everybody? >> Harold Holzer: You know, Alford's spends
a lot of time with this. Hale was a daughter of an abolitionist senator. Supposedly Booth
and she were actually engaged, although Booth's promise of marriage is probably worth very
little because he was such a ladies' man and so unfaithful. That what Bill O'Reilly makes
a big case of in his book, that there is a triangle between Robert Lincoln and John Wilkes
Booth fighting for the same woman and Booth shoots Lincoln - it is complicated. Really,
if Lucy Hale is truly infatuated and is disregarding her family to run away with John Wilkes Booth,
that's news to me. It's also the idea - O'Reilly's idea that Booth was jealous of Robert. That's
sort of crazy. Booth is like a movie star. He is very famous, very handsome guy. And
Robert, with all due respect, is not a movie star. He's a very prim and proper kid and
he is no competition for John Wilkes Booth in the glamour department. So I don't know
if that's true. I think Booth sort of ran - I was going to
say ran rampant. That's not the right word. But ran rampage through the girls in town
and Lucy was supposed to be very pretty. But I don't know what the final verdict is on
that. Yes?
>> Hi. I'm a new member of the Lincoln group in D.C. I have always been serious, in 1935
when Heey Long was assassinated, lots of people thought it was maybe their brother or father
or whoever that was the assassin. Yet, in the Civil War, we only have a couple of plots
or alleged plots against Lincoln. He was maybe going to be assassinated before he even got
to Washington for the assassination, 10,000, 20,000 confederate soldiers would have loved
to assassinate him? How did it only take Booth and it didn't happen on the way from a soldier's
home? >> Harold Holzer: It was a very good question.
Lincoln was shot at reportedly on the way to the soldier's home. He never again traveled
alone and he found the hat and showed it off rather proudly. He had a file on his desk
labeled A for assassinations. He kept death threats. He had hideous, vulgar death threats
that were sent to him beginning with his election in 1860. He collected them in Springfield.
He burned some of them allegedly, called the hot stove letters because he put them in the
stove. Some of them survived. There's one not in the Lincoln papers here, it is in Chicago
because Robert probably didn't want it, that had curse words and sexual references and
tomorrow call references. I didn't know it existed until the '60s, the 1960s. He brushed
them off. He thought it wasn't going to happen. These groups that got together to plot didn't
concern him. Baltimore concerned him enough, as you mentioned, for him to agree uncharacteristically
not to make it public. He was told by two or three different people that a credible
threat by a group existed in Baltimore. And went through the city in the dark of night
in some kind of unfamiliar costume, not a Scotch cap but probably a soft hat to avoid
the fate that was waiting for him. So plots, yes. Confederate agents, yes. I
was on MSNBC with someone, both in the makeup room - that sounds very macho - but he was
a lieutenant colonel so I think it was okay. And he was a special forces veteran. We were
talking about these assassinations and plots and dangers to all of our Presidents. And
the consensus that these professionals say is plots are interceptable. It is the lone
wolf like Booth who is a danger. >> But he wasn't a lone wolf.
>> Harold Holzer: But Booth was a lone wolf. You know, I think that's - the idea that he
had a big conspiracy and a plot. He had a bunch of losers with him who were under his
thrall. That's his conspiracy plot. Of course, he engaged people that he thought would do
a little bit more. Anyway... not officially sanctioned according to Mr. Alford.
One more question. >> I just wanted to defend Dr. Frasier from
the comment that he was causing Lincoln to die of sepsis. Never made that argument. What
his argument was that sticking the finger. >> Harold Holzer: Is that the name of the
doctor? Tell his name? >> Dr.Frasier. When I called up, he was very
ill. So I don't know if he is still alive. But, anyways, never made that point. What
his point was that by sticking his finger into Lincoln's brain, he was causing further
damage. That was one point. He isn't the only one who stuck his finger into Lincoln's brain.
About four other physicians did so. Let me finish.
Yeah, exactly, he wasn't supposed to do that. Wasn't supposed to do that. Manual specifically
said don't do that. The doctor who trained Leale specifically said, don't do that. It
was contrary to the medical advice at the time.
But, the fact that he stuck his finger was not the thing that he should be censured before,
it doesn't mean in receipt - in retrospect it was the wrong thing. But at the time that
was the medical training so that's what he did. The other physicians that came behind
him, nobody - just like today's physicians and neurophysicians, they don't believe the
other guys that work with them, everybody has to do that procedure themselves. And so
they stuck one finger in, two fingers in, eventually causes a lot of damage. So had
he a chance to survive, nobody really knows. But by the fact all those guys did it, no
chance at all. >> Harold Holzer: Right. Well, it's interesting
how many aspects still keep our attention. And I'm glad we kept yours today. Thank you.
(applause).
