 Good afternoon. Welcome to the National Archives. My name is Michael Berlingame. I'm a Lincoln biographer and I'm here to moderate a program with my good friend and esteemed fellow toiler in Clio's vineyards, Terry Alfred, too, and he will be talking about his new terrific book, which I commend to your attention in the most hearty terms, and it's called In the Houses of their Dead, The Lincolns, the Booths and the Spirits. And so, Terry, take it away. Well, thank you, Michael. Thank you, Susan, and thanks to the National Archives for for this program. I've got some great slides I'd like to share with you now. We're going to get them up and they'll help us go through the remarkable story of the Lincoln family's interest in spiritualism, the family of John Wilkes Booth's interests and how that joined the two families together in in kind of an odd way, more than one odd ways, I would say. What we see in our first image is an old woodcut label house in which the spiritual wrappings originated. This is the home of the Fox family of Hidesville, New York and in the late 1840s, two of the teenage girls who lived in the house said they began to hear noises from the spirit of a murdered man who was buried in the cellar of their home. And they were able to get messages from this fellow and pretty soon from other people through wrapping noises, which they share with their family, their community, and pretty soon in various churches and meeting halls. And the first thing you know, this movement really began to spread around the idea again that the dead were actually ever present and accessible to us. You know, if we were if we were sensitive to sensitive enough to know how to contact them and the very simple Fox family home was transformed into this amazing structure. This is the house, but in a later engraving, a very rare engraving called the Donning Light in which we see spirits descending from the heavens, entering the Fox home to pick up and carry on the communications that the Fox sisters and pretty soon many, many others were reporting that they experienced. Say ounces began to spread by 1850. They were going all over the country. They certainly must have tapped into a real hunger that the people had. And they made their way in pretty quick time to Springfield, Illinois. This is a pre war image of Springfield. And to some extent impacted with the Lincoln's a little bit, spiritualism did. This is an early the earliest light is, I believe, of Abraham Lincoln, probably take it around 1846 or seven when he was on his way to Congress. He certainly doesn't show in this image, you know, the rough and tumble, hard, scrabble childhood that he had in Kentucky and in Indiana. He looks to me and this at least to me like a prosperous merchant of some kind. But I would say his good look there reflects the hand of his fashion conscious wife, Mary Todd. Shown in a companion photograph, taken at about the same period of time. And then these again from 1846 to seven, the earliest known photos of the couple. They had two children while living in Springfield at this time. This is the second of the two. This is Eddie Lincoln. Tragically, when he was three years old, he died. That was in 1850. Of course, there are no official death records like we have today. But, you know, what sources we do have indicate he most likely died of pulmonary pneumonia tuberculosis, I'm sorry. There are there are stories that the Lakers were interested in spiritualism even at this time. They're not nearly as well documented as the experiences of the period 10 years later. But nevertheless, you do hear that. And that brings up if true, that brings up an interesting question. Both Mary Todd and Abraham Lincoln were superstitious people. In fact, William Herndon, Lincoln's long time law partner, said he was incredibly superstitious. And one thing that show show this was his kind of anxiety about the number 13. Someone who knew him in the prewar years, said he was coming to a table to join some colleagues for a meal. And Lincoln realized he would be the 13th person at the table. And he wouldn't sit down with one of those presidents that I'd rather be dead than be that superstitious. Mary Lincoln was equally superstitious. She was raised in part by a nurse, the classic Mami Mami Sally, as she was known, who told her that every Friday, the devil made a list of all the bad things the child had done during the week. And of course, the worse you had been, the better he liked it. You know, he laughed and delight while his absence scribes throw down your misdeeds. Notice this is on a Friday. Friday was always a problem, a problematic day of the week for people in the mid 19th century, probably going to Good Friday. But thoughtful people would not start a long trip on Friday. They wouldn't plant crops on Friday. They wouldn't sign important business papers on Friday. It was just the one day that you just couldn't do those things. And interesting enough, little Eddie Lincoln died on Friday. Thomas Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's dad died on Friday. Abraham Lincoln was shot on Friday. So that does seem to be a fraught day, I think we could say. Have you, as we look at this earliest image of Tudor Hall, the Booth family home, I might say something. Have you ever noticed? You noticed just a second ago that I was speaking by spiritualism, then I began to talk about superstition. And the relationship between those two are sometimes as my students, what is the relationship between spiritualism and superstition? And I noticed something, at least with many of my students, when I ask her question, I have to ask it twice. The first time they become aware that someone else is in the room with them. And then the second time, they may have answered the question. But here we. We could say that spiritualist of the 1850s and 60s adamantly denied that their practice had anything to do with superstition. You know, they saw themselves as a new scientific, a progressive movement. You know, they rejected concepts like hell. They had no plague clergy. You know, they let women take an equal part in the movement with men. They were very progressive in their social agendas. And as for this thing about the religious aspects or phenomenas of spiritualism, how could anything be a superstition when it could produce physical manifestations? It could produce noises, voices on occasion, apparitions or do things that defied common sense. I put this image of the Booth family home up. It's taken in 1865, just a few weeks after the murder of Lincoln. There's a family on the porch. They're not the Booth. They're an unrelated family just posting at the time. But the Booths were equally interested in spiritualism, I think, as the Lincolns became. This is a remarkable image of one of my favorites of the Booth family. We see on the left, Junius Brutus Booth, senior of the father of the Booth kids. And on the right is son Edwin Booth, later a famous actor, taken when it was around 12. This is the only image of the Booth father with one of his kids. The elder Booth was a believer that every living thing had a spirit. This included animals. This included, you know, cats and dogs, butterflies, yes, birds, yes, rats. Yes, you know, they all had a spirit and they should be respected. And for many years of his life, he practiced vegetarianism. There's a famous story about the elder Booth. This is a little hard to see, but this perhaps you could tell us a dog. The deal is here. The elder Booth was finishing a performance in Petersburg, Virginia. The night was too terrible weather wise to travel. So he settled around a fireplace at a tavern with some friends and they were all reciting their favorite poems. And one of Booth's favorite poems was the ode that Byron wrote to his newfoundland dog who had died of rabies. This became a very famous poem because Byron also put forward the idea that his pets, his dogs, like this wonderful dog, Botswain, who died in 1808, had a soul that would go to heaven as surely as that of his master would, hopefully. And he wrote the following famous lines. This is Byron's ode to his epitaph, as you'd say to his dog, Botswain. The poor dog enlights the firmest friend, the first to welcome, foremost to defend, whose honest heart is still his master's own, who labors, fights, loves for him alone, unhonored falls, unnoticed all his worth, denied in heaven the soul he held on earth. This is John Wilkes Booth's mother, Mary Ann Holmes. And she had something that I noticed in portraits of her. There's one portrait of her. There are a number of old age photographs of her. But if you look carefully at this image, you'll see she is afflicted with extropia. In other words, her left eye deviated outward. There was a story that anyone with this condition was unusually gifted, because seeing in two directions, they were able to see twice as much as most people in life. She was very given to dreams and divisions, including a famous fireplace vision, that she told so often one of her daughters, Asia Booth, turned it into a poem that still exists. And the story went that when John Wilkes Booth was a baby, about six months old, winter was coming on. It was just about this time of year, perhaps. She was sitting at a fireplace nursing the baby, and she would just sweat, just sweat with this anxiety to know what his future would hold. And she asked God to give her some vision of what this would be. And the story she told, that was rendered later in the portrait, the fire flared up in front of her. The word country shone in its flames. Those letters dissolved to the word of her baby son, John Wilkes Booth, and then the fire died back to its normal size. And she understood this to mean that he would have some involvement with his country's future. And as we all know, he died at a burning barn, which many of the family thought was, that was a fulfillment of the prophecy. This is John Wilkes Booth's brother Edwin Booth, shown of the childhood photo a minute ago. You can always tell pretty much how old Edwin is by that haircut of his. This is early Civil War years, 61, 62. Edwin was born in 1833 on the night of the greatest Leonid meteor shower that's ever been recorded. If it was anything at all like this, it would have scared me to death. And I know it certainly startled an allure on many people in 1833. But the fact that Edwin was born on this night led servants on the place to say that he was gifted to see ghosts. That was their phrase. He was also born with a call on his face. That was supposed to bring you good luck. And also the legend was in folklore that a person born with a call could not drown. John Wilkes Booth, shown here in a, probably a photo from 1862 or right three maybe. This is one of, in my opinion, one of the more handsome photos of him, was extremely superstitious person like Edwin. And he would also get into spiritualism like his brother did. There were some chimpsies who, and say the period 1850, 55 would pass through that part of Maryland. And this part is north just north of Baltimore. They came, they put up their camps. One of the ways they made of living was to sell and trade horses. So they often camped near a blacksmith's shop very close to the Booth family home. And John Wilkes Booth went down to have his fortune told, along with a lot of others I'm sure, to have his fortune told by the gypsies. Now, I snagged this photo from the 20th century. This is obviously not the gypsy that he visited. This is the remarkable Maria Ostenskaya Academy Award-winning actress, very famous, very talented, 1930s and 40s. And the same from the Wolfman. But, you know, she gives us, you know, kind of a visual image of the old fortune teller that John Wilkes Booth, age 12, went to see. And she told him when she started reading his plomb, she said, this is the worst hand I've ever seen. I've never seen a worse hand than yours. I wish I hadn't seen it. And he said, you want me to pay you money for telling me that I've got a terrible future ahead of me? And she said, well, all I can tell you is, you know, you'll live fast, live hard, many will love you, and you'll die without a friend to your name. And John Wilkes Booth said, is there a new way to escape that? And she said, well, you know, you could try being a missionary. I don't really have a lot of ideas for you. And when he told this story to his sister, Asia, she said, don't put that just stupid talk. She doesn't know anything. You know, you can't believe anything. And he laughed, said, you're right. But she also noticed that he never shook that. He kept that piece of paper in his wallet. You know, he was always a little bit haunted when his mind turned in that direction by the old gypsy's fortune. Another thing that would always catch people's attention were meteors. This is a very famous meteor procession, where a meteor breaks up in the atmosphere, streaking over New York City in 1860. And something like this was to many people a portent. It was a sign of some great change or turmoil that was coming. The night before Caesar was assassinated, there was a meteor in war and peace told story, talks about her meteors like this, pre-sage, great events. And sure enough, this thing, it was so close to the city of New York, some people thought it was fireworks. It was the only thing they talked about the next day. Many, as I said, were sure this was bad news. And of course, nine months later, the American Civil War started. Now, when it started, the Booth family was essentially apolitical. You know, they were actors. They were, they were from the border state of Maryland. You know, they had some mixed feelings about the right or wrong of this side or that. Only John Moore's Booth had strong political feelings. And in 1861, you know, he gave some serious thought to becoming a Confederate soldier. His mother, though, talked him out of it. She had already lost three children. And she had no intention of losing a fort, especially the one that was, you know, the most tender and affectionate to her. So, you know, she just pitched a fit, laid down the law, screamed, cried, prayed. And in the end, she won the battle and he stayed out of the war and went into acting during the war. But I've often thought that was a big mistake for him because, you know, he went against his very deep impulses and instincts. I put the flag up because this is not just a generic early Confederate flag. We see 11 stars on it towards early. But this is John Moore's Booth's personal Confederate flag. When he decided to stay out of the war and to act in the northern states, he gave it to a friend in Bel Air, Maryland. It's now in the American Civil War Museum down in Richmond. Not often seen, I don't think. I thought you might enjoy seeing that image. The third Lincoln son was Willie and he was living in the White House with his family when he died in 1862 of typhoid fever. This was a heavy blow, of course, to the family. I mean, really stunning and terrifying blow to them. The loss of any child would be tremendous. But I have to say that, you know, most people who talked about this boy who said that he had the good features of his mom and the good features of his dad. He was smart. He was personable. He was intelligent. He was kind and affectionate. And the loss of every child is a theft from the future. I don't think there's any way to deny that. Certainly Mary does so. In fact, she often said that this would be the child that would take care of her when she was an old woman and he was grown. He would be the one. She was sure they would be there for him. And the family, of course, was just devastated by the death of this child in early 1862. They brought in ministers to comfort them. This is John Pierpoint. Someone not as well known as I think he should be. If the name sounds familiar, Pierpoint, this is the maternal grandfather of J.P. Morgan, the financier. He was the Unitarian minister, but had gotten into spiritualism in the spirit of time. Ed did another Lincoln familiar. And this is Isaac Newton. Michael Berlingame has discovered and told some wonderful stories about this character, a Pennsylvania farmer who wound up as commissioner of agriculture, basically because Mary essentially badgered her husband into pointing Newton to the shot. He was imperfectly educated. And while his lack of education may not have been his fault, it was his misfortune, because it often put him in laughable situations. His famous story, Michael, found where a congressman said, you know, your spending for your department has been exorbitant, can't believe it. And Newton said, essentially, thank you very much. I appreciate the remark. Yeah, I mean, Newton just was a little bit over his head, although a pretty capable boss. You know, he was a little bit, someone that people made fun of in Civil War, Washington. He was actually called by his critics, Sir Isaac Newton, having, of course, no relation to the famous mathematician. And in fact, it was done a little bit as a tease for his own lack of knowledge. But Pierpont and Newton and others would go with Mary Lincoln to seances. Here we see a kind of well-known ambige. The woman at the piano is Belle Miller. Belle was a Georgetown hussist. And Belle was a, what's called a test medium. She could actually make things move allegedly. Here we see an engraving of Lincoln and some friends trying to hold a piano on the ground. As Belle, the spirits, I might better say, threw Belle, started levitating the thing. Belle is a controversial figure. There's another spiritualist woman, friends with Belle, friends with Mary, and certainly a queen with Abraham Lincoln. This is Nettie Colburn. Nettie was short person. You see Lincoln putting his hand on her head. She was one of those kind of diminutive sweet individuals that you just kind of want to reach out and touch. Although I will say, if you compare the image on the left with the image on the right, Nellie seems to have grown a little bit. Abraham seems to have shrunk. But at any rate, short, trans medium. Now, her seances with the Lankans would essentially have her sitting in a social setting, lapse into a trance. A voice would speak through her. Sometimes it would be an alleged estate princess on another occasion, an old New England family friend. But this gives me an opportunity to say something about these seances. Look at this now. This, of course, as the spiritualist in later years depicted the scene. But they're certainly correct in one way. They're not sitting in a circle holding hands. There's no spooky music. There are no skulls. There are no candles in the White House. Many of these seances were held in the middle of the day, or brightly lit sunny days, or in rooms split with fireplaces and gas lights. And you'd be kind of sitting around having some music, maybe people reciting poems chit chat, and then Nettie would lapse into her into her seance. Now, don't think that spiritualism and spiritualists were behind criticism. There are a lot of criticism of spiritualists. Here we see one avenue of approach. You'll notice people sitting at a seance table. Essentially a wolf is conducting the seance. But notice how the artist depicts the sitters. Dumb clocks, idiots, people ready to be plucked, over believing, self-indulgent individuals. In other words, the message here was that these people basically are being taken advantage of by Charlotte. The other criticism of spiritualism was a little darker. And that was that spiritualism was ungodly. In other words, what was this? Good person be a Christian and also be a spiritualist. The scriptures provided a very clear picture of what happened to you after you died. There's no need for you to try to hold a person onto earth by the leg when they can go to God and be in a very positive place, far better than they were when they were here on earth with you or I. Now, the criticism of spiritualism that the Lankans received was pretty much partisan. It came from the Democratic, especially the hardcore Democratic press. Others kind of just discounted it, indulged it, but thought, hey, everybody's going to see what this all is about. You go to a sanctitude, doesn't really mean anything. It's kind of entertainment. This is a portrait of the beautiful Molly Devlin. This was the wife of Edwin Booth. They married in 1860 at the end of the, just before the beginning of the war, I'd say. She died in 1863, pregnant. And of course, Edwin was devastated by her loss. He was a believer in spiritualism and also very superstitious himself. Edwin was afraid of ivy vines. He was afraid of peacock feathers. I mean, it would take the rest of the program to list every anxiety and superstition Edwin had, but he began to go and visit spiritualists in an effort to get in contact with the spirit of Molly, his late wife. He visited Charles Foster, who was one of the leading spiritualists of the Civil War era. Foster also was visiting Mary Lincoln at the same time and conjuring up for her the spirit of the dead Willie Lincoln. John Wilkes Booth was very fond of the Davenport brothers who were physical mediums or test mediums. They had a thing where they would, with ropes, be locked into a cabinet, tied up, I might say first, locked into a cabinet. And then you would hear music come through the cabinet. And then when you open the doors, they'd be sitting there tied up just like you left them. So it was an absolute mystery how they were able to produce noises from inside the cabinet box, the cabinet dilution. Excuse me. Harry Udini met one of the brothers later in life and said that he thought they were the most remarkable magicians he had ever seen. They had exceptional flexibility with their risks and they could actually lay a wrist all the way flat back on their arm, explaining how they were able to slip out of knots in which they were placed. Take a look at this engraving. This is an illustration of apparently a true story because it was told by Robert Todd Lincoln himself, Robert the eldest of the Booth sons. He was at a train station in Jersey City, New Jersey. The crowd moved forward toward the train. As it began to move off, Robert fell down in that narrow little gap between the train and the platform and was in, you know, serious liability of injury, if not worse than an injury. When someone reached out and graded and pulled him back and that someone was Edwin Booth. Robert knew Edwin on site. Edwin, of course, did not know what Robert Todd Lincoln looked like because he wasn't a household name like Edwin or John Woods was. So Edwin was some time finding out that he had saved the life of Robert Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's eldest son. It is curious, isn't it, that the brother of the man who assassinated Abraham Lincoln saved the life of his son in 1864. This is Jackson Sealeby who practiced spiritualism in America under the name of Charles Cochester. He's from the English Lake Country, well educated, came to the United States in 18, in the mid 1850s when he was 16 years old and entered practices of spiritualist and medium in the, around the time the Civil War was beginning. He was a very interesting guy, very colorful. He loved life. He was charming. He was talented. You know, he was a person who loved attention. And to remind you of the old story that when the composer Richard Strauss was giving advice to a young conductor, Strauss said, whatever you do, don't look at the trombones. It only encourages them if you do it. So Cochester was one of those people, you know, that you had to think twice about giving attention to. But he was a very, very talented, talented spiritualist. He met with Mary Lincoln, was able to summon to her satisfaction the spirit of her son Willie. She brought him into the White House to meet with the president who was mystified by his ability to, by Cochester's ability to summon noises from the wall. So he asked, Cochester, look, would you, oh, here's, I'm sorry, I wanted to show this. This is a little advertisement, a very modestly phrased advertisement I would say for Cochester and his practice. And Lincoln said, would you go over to the, to the Smithsonian and let Joseph Henry, the Smithsonian secretary, see you do what you're doing. I decided to get his stake on it. And of course, Cochester agreeably went, this is the original building. It was the only building at the Civil War era, right? It's called the Castle in Washington. And Joseph Henry, the secretary of the Smithsonian, met with him. Now this is problematic for Cochester because Henry was a noted critic of spiritualism and he was an expert on acoustics. That was his scientific expertise. So he put Cochester through a series of tests. And, you know, he cocked his head left and right, trying to understand what was going on there. And then he told Cochester, look, I don't know how you, how you're doing what you're doing. I know you're doing it, but I don't have any explanation right now for it. And that's satisfied Cochester. And Henry was forced to report back to Lincoln that I don't, for the president, have an explanation for what I'm seeing here. I really can't say what this is. Here's Mary in a Civil War photo with Willie on the left and Ted, the youngest of the four sons on the right. She met with Cochester, I guess, one time too many because he demanded that she give him a pass to travel on the railroads for free. She realized that she had put herself in the hands of a black meter because in a seance, naturally, you would be revealing all sorts of things about yourself that an unscrupulous person could use. And you had one, I think, with Charles J. Cochester. So horrified by the situation she had gotten herself into, she called in Noah Brooks to California journalist. Brooks met with Cochester. He said, look, I know you're a fraud. You know you're a fraud. If you're not out of town in 24 hours, you will be in a military prison. And Cochester was smart enough to realize that was a very positive invitation to get out of town. And he promptly took it. The National Archives has wonderful, wonderful things. And here's a document in the archives I wanted to share with you. Now, I hear from every side that people are forgetting how to recurse it. And it's got to be an extinct form of writing before long. And I'm sure there are people looking at the screen who are struggling with here or there, but others I'm sure who can read it readily. But this is a police record of Cochester that was gathered certainly after the murder of Lincoln when they were looking for him because he thought he might have something to do with the murder. He just reads an associate of Booth and Cochester. Last at the Washington House, about five feet, seven inches high, weighs 150 pounds, just gives a description of him as you see. Booth was constantly in Cochester's company and the weeks before the murder. At the same time, Cochester was going to the White Allison meeting with the Lincolns. So you really have to wonder what their relationship was. But my final take on it was Cochester majored in misdemeanors, not felonies. And he had nothing to do with the murder and was game enough to tell Lincoln that he should really take care of himself. He never named Booth as a problematic person for Lincoln, but did say be careful. Somebody else mentioned that to Lincoln. Lincoln said, you know, Cochester has been telling me that has been telling me that for months. Cochester left Washington and was probably arrested but for something else, he had refused to pay taxes. War taxes basically under the excise tax he was supposed to get a license to be a juggler. The government insisted that what he was doing was just magic word. Cochester was indignant. Cochester said, no, no, spiritualism is a religion. It explains life after death. It offers the usual religious tests and varieties. And you cannot tax me for being a minister of spiritualism any more than you can tax anybody else. So Cochester went on trial in Buffalo, New York. The jury promptly found him guilty, you know, and, you know, he was left with a court cost and legal fees that he was in no shape of paying. Abraham Lincoln was an ax. As we've learned recently, Abraham Lincoln was a hell of a slayer of vampires, but he was also a very determined individual. He was seeing the war through to the end. And of course, it began to really impact Booth in a negative way, the sense of guilt he felt for doing, nothing to help the South. And he began to scheme up a plot to kidnap Lincoln, then finally to murder him. Notice in this image, one that's very, very familiar, but I don't think anybody really took a good look at that ring on Booth's finger. It's in the shape of a snake. Booth had gone on a hike in New Hampshire. On the hike, a rock had been found that showed a serpent path. He took it, he had it made into a snake shape and he wore it. And he said, when he wore it, it had kind of an occult influence over him was the way that Booth expressed that. He began to plot with a small group of associates to murder the president and actually went through with the deed, as we know on April 14th, 1865. Now this is a scene that's not common and of course it's pretty fanciful because whoever did this never witnessed the incident personally. But I like it because it's an image on a fan that was made for the Cuban and Latin American market. It shows the assassination, but what I really, and of course, notice the devils around the edge, encouraging Booth and his evil schemes. What I like about the fan is, you wouldn't know it unless you looked at a real fan, but it has a four inch knife concealed in the fan so if you get in trouble with anyone, you can whip out the knife and protect yourself. Booth successfully shot Lincoln and escaped the theater, shot him with this small Derringer pistol. As you can see, it is quite small, small enough to be concealed in a person's hands. There's a cast on barrel, it's very top heavy, a single shot. So of course, once you've used it, you don't have time to reload it. Booth just dropped it on the floor where it was found. The box was later thoroughly searched. Booth was on the run for about 12 days, tracked down and shot through the neck. Lincoln for quite a while then finally died. He was brought back to Washington. The body was autopsy. There are no photos of this, some were taken or not taken, depending on your source, but an engraving was done. And you would have to say, Booth is one of the most identified bodies of the 19th century. There's no question or whatever that the person who died is John Wilkes Booth. I mean, the person had Booth's tattoo on him, Booth's diary on him, Booth's neck then, a check made out to Booth's name, and he was known personally by two of the three officers who were leading the search party. So I'm pretty sure we have John Wilkes Booth in 1865. He was caught and finally in 69, his body turned over to the family, Booth family, taken to Greenmont Cemetery in Baltimore, taken right through the skate, and buried in the Booth family plot. There's a shot of me standing to kind of the south of the monument, and Booth is buried right below my feet. There are other family members in the grave, a brother, a sister, his parents. Booth has no individual marker. So people who go to the cemetery there now put Lincoln pennies around on the headstones and footstones of his family members. Of course, they've got nothing to do with the assassination, except to witness it, but they've got to leave these pennies somewhere. And the fact I like to think that they'll have face-up shows that Lincoln, at the end of the day, won the battle of history. This is a serial cord of Kyoko, Iowa, an early, maybe one of the earliest images of the city. That's where a cochester went. I mean, after he had been essentially run out of the east, he moved there, was doing various sounds, holding various sounds. In 1867, when he died, and was buried here in Kyoko Cemetery. Now, there is no gravestone for him. He may never have had one. In fact, he is essentially, when he was there, he was a stranger. He was not known or connected with anybody local, which led to a ghoulish speculation. And that was that he was up for grabs. There was a medical school in Kyoko. They needed cadavers for a class. And so, it's called Chester. Couldn't say no and had no family to eject. The possibility is raised that he was dug up and hauled off by the grave robbers. These prankish medical students in Kyoko. Now, you may or may not recognize this image. We jumped ahead now to 1893. We're right at the end of our program. This is the interior of Ford's Theater. The government grabbed Ford's Theater from the Ford family. They did find they pay a decent price for it. But remodeled it inside, turned it into an office suite, different floors with clerks. And in 1893, the interior of the building just gave way. People on the top floor suddenly found themselves falling on the third floor, which hit the second floor and cascaded down into the basement, killing 20 or so people, injuring many, many more. It's a nightmare, as you can guess, for the people. It was a terrible tragedy, one of the worst in Washington. And somebody said, it's the ultimate bureaucratic nightmare. You're killed by your office. You're killed by your files. You're killed by your documents, your filing cabinets, and your desk as they all crunched down upon you. So today, when we go to Ford's Theater, everything we see inside is a reconstruction. You may know that or may not. The exterior walls are original, but the inside, as you can see, is not. Oddly enough, this catastrophe happened on the day of Edmund Booth's funeral in New York City. In other words, at the minute, his funeral procession was heading up Fifth Avenue, Ford's Theater collapsed, leading many people to say, what a connection the Booth and Lincoln have, families have, what a connection, what a tragedy, and how eerie indeed it is. Thank you very much. That's the presentation. Okay. Well, thank you. Thank you very much, Terry, for that characteristically informative and entertaining summary of your book, which I commend to our audience, because there's a lot in that book that we didn't cover today, including very colorful characters, and it's brilliantly written like a novel. It really reads like a fast-paced novel. And I should have told our audience, Terry, that you are the world's foremost authority on John Moog's Booth, the author of the only truly scholarly biography of Booth, and our readers, our viewers may have been able to infer that from your comments about the Booth, but let me, as a Lincoln scholar, ask you and all your research that you did. And by the way, there's never been an attempt by any serious scholar doing traditional research in unpublished sources to deal with the question of Lincoln and spiritualism. So this book is not only a valuable and entertaining book, but it's also shed light on a subject that Lincoln scholars have shied away from. And so, Terry, would you share with us what evidence do we have that Lincoln actually attended Seance's, and what evidence do we have, if any, that he really believed in spiritualism? I think the evidence is there that he attended Seance's. It just comes from too many people, even from people that were not spiritual themselves. I mean, Daniel Sickles acknowledged that he attended John Hay, I think, obliquely acknowledged. Hey, remember, and I put in the book where Hay says, the thought that Lincoln was a spiritualist is too ridiculous to command refutation. And then he sat out and did it, right? He said, okay, we don't need to refute this, but I'm gonna do it anyway. And of course his critics were quick when they had something to point out that he was receiving counsel, you know, not from his cabinet and not from the war office, but, you know, from Attila the Han and other spirits, they could be summoned up. And all that is awfully, rightfully silly. I think he was, like a lot of people curious. I mean, Queen Victoria went through these things. You know, the poets, the artists, and everybody went. Many used to see what is this thing. It was kind of curious, and people wanted to know what it was. And they could be entertaining. You know, I found that many sayances started off as a center in the presentation. You know, so many would play a piano, they'd be portrait reading, they'd be chit chat. It was a social occasion that you could have. And I think that Lincoln was just kind of curious about it and curious, of course, about what his wife was up to in all of this. But, you know, he, it would have been very comforting. He told a friend, I believe, to believe this, but, you know, it's awfully hard to do so. He thought it was kind of delusional, really. I mean, that was the word that I found, the adjective that I found. Mary now, that's a different case. You know, and let's me come back to a point that I think is really good, and I try to make it the book. You know, she was interested in spiritualism and a bit of believer, but she considered herself a perfectly proper Christian at the same time. And I know that the Lincoln, the booze went to a woman named Laura Edmonds in New York City. She was a devoted Catholic, but also a spiritualist at the same time. So there were people who thought you could hold both of those police. They weren't contradictory. Others thought they were very much contradictory. But I think the thing with Mary was, and it's a big difference, and I hate to even look at you when I'm saying this because you know more about this than I do. But, and I'd like to get your take too, please. She just simply loved life and loved living. And I don't think she spent a lot of time thinking about what comes next. And when life dealt her a blow, I think she was stunned, you know, and she wasn't spiritually prepared for bad news, I think. Is that how you read her? Or what do you think? Yeah, well, yes, I think that's a very accurate take on Mrs. Lincoln. And I think one of the reasons that Lincoln attended seances was to humor his wife. And I think Sickles actually says that, doesn't he, is my recollection. And that, well, Nicolet, his principal White House secretary said, that was the one who said that, it was nonsense to even think about it, but what the heck, you know, he might have been oddly curious like any reasonable person. But that the reason that Lincoln was willing to indulge his wife and to go to seances was that he was terribly worried about her mental health, that she might have a mental breakdown. And that she had displayed in many years before she became First Lady, erratic behavior, signs of mental instability. And so even before Willie dies, they've already, as you pointed out, they lose Eddie's. Eddie's three years old, 1850, and Mrs. Lincoln goes into very deep depression and Lincoln is so worried about her. He says, Mother, we have to eat. You have to eat that she was so depressed that she was starving herself. And then when Willie died, he was the favorite son, hands down. And she acknowledges that in a letter. And she says it forthrightly. And so when Willie dies, she is deeply, deeply depressed and feels terribly guilty because he lay on his deathbed. It was just a few days before his actual death that she threw an enormous party during the middle of the Civil War with all kinds of fancy food and fancy guest list. And it wasn't open to the public. And she then felt that God was punishing her for having indulged in this frivolity in the midst of suffering and civil war. And so Lincoln was quite concerned about her mental health. And anything that could be done to help shore up her rather fragile ego, he went out of his way to encourage and one example is that she had a favorite sister, Emily. And you tell the story very well in your book about how Emily comes to the White House. She's a great comfort hope to Mary. Then she wants to go back home and Lincoln begs her to stay on because of Mrs. Lincoln's extreme fragility. And Emily tells the president, Mary is pretty fragile. So I think that it was insofar as she attended those, it was partly a result of his curiosity just in general and also a concern to make sure his wife, he was doing something to help his wife. One thing that is very well put, one thing I like was you look at her letters and you can see that she says some of the, I don't mean this in a bad way, but the platitudes and the pious attitude, but she doesn't reflect that in her life. Right? I remember she told one of the nurses, a woman named Pomroy, that if I could be as acceptive of God's will as you are, I'd gladly live on brand of water for the rest of my life. And I just, I don't have a heart. She's willing to struggle with God basically, where she's willing to fight fate, as one of her sisters said one time. But I think we owe you a big debt of gratitude and uncovering and working up these incredible people like Isaac Newton and some of the spiritualists. These are the people who accompanied Mary to say ounces or were always around on the fringes, gossiping and bringing her flowers and fresh strawberries and winning her friendship. And when did they did, I think. Right. And so she was easily affected by gifts that people gave her like fresh vegetables and fresh fruits. And then she works on her husband to give him a cushy appointment. And she does that with a lot of other people too, who are much less admirable. Although Isaac Newton is really a hoot. Do you recall the stories with his malapropisms? Sure, one of those. Okay, well, he's asked by Congress why he's spent so much money importing hydraulic rams from Europe because he wanted to improve the quality of sheep in the United States. Hydraulic rams, of course, being machines. And then he's presented with a bird, a stuffed bird, and he says, oh my goodness, what beautiful foliage. We're a tree. Oh, Lordy. Well, speaking of remarkable coincidences involving Lincoln's near and dear, tell the story about Sarah Bernhardt and Mary Todd Lincoln. Well, Mrs. Lincoln went to Europe twice in the years after Resmond's death. She thought this wasn't a friendly controversy. She needed to get away from malicious people and gossip. And she was coming back from one trip, of course, on a steamboat, and a wave suddenly lurched and the vessel threw her forward right at the top of a stairwell. She was in very real danger of just falling head first. Down some metal stairs, barely killing herself. Someone reached out to grab her and it was the famous actress, Sarah Bernhardt. And, of course, Bernhardt knew who Mrs. Lincoln was. She said, you had a narrow escape there, Mrs. Lincoln. And she said, yes. And Bernhardt later said, I probably did her the favor I shouldn't have done. That's why she didn't. Mrs. Lincoln was not enjoying living, right? And maybe it would have been a bit earlier ago. But how odd is that? Edmund Booth says Robert Todd Lincoln's like, then Sarah Bernhardt says Mary's like, that two actresses saved two Booths now, in the course of a few years. And I'm sure that our audience would appreciate your take on why Booth killed Lincoln. Well, it's both rational and irrational. My take is the rational part was that Lincoln was the commander-in-chief of the Northern Army. And again, and I think it's important for us to remember, this wasn't just one deranged government. If he's deranged, he's not alone. You know, he has an associate attacking Seward. He has one who's supposed to be attacking, you know, other members of the government, even a detact planned on grant. So this is part of a move to cut off the head of the federal government, if you could put it that way. You know, the irrational part of it, of course, is Booth's failure to see that what many of his Southern friends saw at this point, this did the South absolutely no good. The war was lost in spades at this point. And so it brings up the motive of revenge. Now, revenge is not a very noble motive, but it is a very human and compelling one. We see that every day, right? The out here being, I'm hurting and I want to share the pain with you. And I think that was a big element in it. So I think, you know, it's a compound of motives, some understandable, you know, some not so understandable, none of them very high merited. Because obviously, you know, an assassin, by definition, shoot somebody from concealment, someone has no chance to protect themselves, defend themselves. It's hard to see any nobility in the act. Although, you know, we could say that at the same time, it took a lot of courage, because mad courage, I might say, because many people had threatened Lincoln over the years. The day only one person was bold and crazy enough to actually do it. And the precipitating incident that he was very hostile to Lincoln, deeply hostile to Lincoln for a long time, planted a kidnap him and had all kinds of hostile plans. But then one day he decides that he really wants to murder him. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that episode? Well, I think, and I think you agree with me, don't you, that it was the speech Lincoln gave on the Tuesday before the Friday of his death. In which, you know, he came out to speak to a crowd. There was really demanding that he come out. And it wasn't spontaneous. He had actually written these remarks out and prepared them. So he had thought about what he was going to say. And he proposed the beginning of Black suffrage, national Black suffrage, right? He said that it would be totally wrong, you know, not to let those who had defended Black, African Americans who had defended the country under arms to have the vote. And people, you were educated and ready to vote, you know, and knew what they were. The issues and everything were that they deserve the vote. And Boo said, that's the last speech. Total friend, Boo said, the audience had not. Total friend, that's the last speech he'll ever make. And that actually turned out to be a better prophecy than some of co-chesters, I would say. And there are two sources, are there not, for the response that Boo had to that speech, in which Lincoln calls for limited Black suffrage, publicly, for the first time. And one is by, that's the last speech he'll ever give by God I'll run him through. And the other was, that means N-word citizenship. And so those are from two independent sources, are they not? And therefore, credible, yeah. Yes, two different sources. And they both also agree, like, Boo's was in the crowd with several of his people. It was a big crowd, and it was actually lightly raining. Everybody had umbrellas. And Lincoln was speaking from a window where often speeches were given. I think that was understood to be a special window. The crowd was dark but stretched from the White House all the way back to Pennsylvania Avenue. You can hear the drum of the rain on their umbrellas as Lincoln spoke. So it seems kind of a gloomy setting, but I think from that point on, Boo's was just looking for the opportunity to get to Lincoln. He had tried and been close maybe once to kidnapping him, and you often wonder where that road would have led if that had happened. And the story that we have about Boo's on Lincoln's second inaugural occasion, that was a serious threat. Well, didn't he boast that he could have done Lincoln in that day and regretted that he didn't? He did. There's a famous photograph of Lincoln's second inauguration. Many people profess to see Boo's up in the crowd. I'm certain that's not John Wilkes Boo. We have a description of him wearing riding clothes, a slouch hat. He's not dressed like the character with the top hat. I mean, that's almost laughable description of Boo's. Boo's was in the rotunda when Lincoln passed through. I think there's a pretty good consensus of facts on that, and actually kind of broke away and joined the parade of Lincoln and the official party handing out to the portico to speak. And Boo's insisted he had a right to go. There were a lot of new congressmen and senators in town, and officials didn't know them all yet because a new Congress was starting that day. So somebody thought, well, maybe this is some congressman guy. You know, maybe he does have a right to be in the party, but Boo just seemed unnecessarily excited and revved up, so they just kind of threw him back in the crowd. And Lincoln went on unmolested. But I think Lincoln was in danger that day because Boo's was a very impulsive character. It's hard to say, and reckless by his nature, and it's hard to say what he might have done if given the opportunity to follow him out in the public space. And what led you to undertake this particular subject? Well, I think you'll agree with me that Lincoln's family's interest in spiritualism, that's been known for two or three generations, and there's been some small writing about it, nothing too extensive. But when I was working on the Boo's, I realized not only were they contemporary interest in spiritualism, but they share many of the same people, like Colchester, like Charles Foster, and others, even I could mention. And there was some overlapping there of their joint interest in spiritualism, and these characters bring the Lincoln's together even more closely than they had been before, I think. And it was just a good story to tell. And it's a wonderfully told story, by the way. Thank you so much. And the link that I found most spooky was the link between Colchester and Booth and Lincoln, and Lincoln saying, Colchester's been warning me about this. Wow. When I encountered that, I had never come across that. Well, when I encountered it in your book, my blood ran cold. Well, this was a... Go ahead, Terry. I was just going to say, thanks. The Booth Colchester experience, again, we have confirmation from that document at the archives. And looking further, I saw that Booth got Colchester a role at Ford's Theater one day, and Colchester got to play and played that Booth was familiar with. With several hundred lines, not just an entrance and an exit, right? Yeah, so they were tighter than I think people had realized. Well, well, thank you very much for this presentation. And I thank the archives on our behalf for hosting this and making this possible. And as a Lincoln scholar, I can testify that the archives is the source of lots and lots of new information about Lincoln, because there are enormous amount of... There's an enormous amount of correspondence that Lincoln received that went to the White House and was immediately farmed out to the Navy Department or the War Department or the State Department or the Interior Department. And to wade through all those acres, it seems like cubic acres of documents, to find which ones Lincoln received and even some that he responded to, has been undertaken by the Abraham Lincoln Association and the Lincoln Papers Project. And so the National Archives continues to be a gift that keeps on giving. So we're grateful for this today and we're grateful for all that the Archives does to preserve the record of our nation's past. So thank you all for joining us.