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A Better Life New York
Lincoln Part 2: His Last Journey (Audio): The Assassination and Funeral of a President. With Jack Stanley
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Abraham Lincoln's assassination at Ford's Theater on April 14, 1865, was more than just the murder of a president—it was a pivotal moment that launched an unprecedented national ritual of grief that would forever transform how Americans viewed their 16th president.
What many don't realize is that John Wilkes Booth wasn't just any assassin—he was arguably the most famous actor in America, a genuine celebrity heartthrob "with women tearing at his clothes." His star status gave him complete access to Ford's Theater, where Lincoln had gone to see "Our American Cousin" despite looking physically ravaged by the war at just 56 years old. While Booth succeeded in killing Lincoln, his co-conspirators failed in their attempts to assassinate Vice President Johnson and Secretary of State Seward (though Seward was severely wounded and disfigured).
The three-week funeral journey that followed stands as one of the most extraordinary public spectacles in American history. Lincoln's embalmed body traveled by train through city after city, retracing in reverse the route he had taken to Washington in 1861. At each stop, his body was displayed for public viewing while an embalmer fought a losing battle with decomposition—by the final stops, Lincoln's lips had shrunk to reveal a ghastly grin that required constant touching up.
Perhaps most fascinating is what happened after the funeral. For decades, Lincoln's remains faced repeated theft attempts, including a brazen 1876 plot that failed only because the robbers couldn't lift his 500-pound lead-lined coffin. For years afterward, his coffin was hidden under a pile of garbage in the tomb's basement. His son Robert eventually had his father permanently secured by encasing the coffin in ten feet of concrete—ensuring that the martyred president would remain eternally undisturbed, much like the mythologized image of Lincoln that Robert carefully curated by destroying personal papers and controlling his father's narrative.
The funeral procession didn't just bury a president—it birthed an American icon, transforming a deeply controversial wartime leader into the marble figure we revere today. Subscribe to hear more forgotten stories that reveal the complex humanity behind our nation's most mythologized figures.
Good morning everyone and welcome back to A Better Life, new York. This is part two of our conversation with Jack Stanley regarding Lincoln's assassination and the facts and circumstances that surround the assassination, as well as his funeral. I hope you enjoy this as much as you've watched and listened to part one. Please know that video is available on YouTube and audio is also available by all the major podcast services, which is Apple and Spotify. Those are the two main ones, but there are many others and we're on them all. So part two of Lincoln Assassination and the Surrounding Circumstances with Jack Stanley. Thank you all for listening. Please like and subscribe, and we look forward to your comments for future subjects of conversation. Thank you for future subjects of conversation.
Speaker 2:Thank you. I have to imagine that, and you see it, the physical change in Lincoln, that the toll of just endless death, endless horror, endless hatred for him, had to have its effect on him and he looks like a very old man by the time we get to 1865. He's only 56 years old, but he looks like hell. He looks like hell and he visits the South and then April 14th, goes to Ford's Theater. He saw the show before and he convinces his wife to go see it again.
Speaker 1:Then he loses interest and she's the one that pushes him to go my American cousin, our American cousin.
Speaker 2:Our American cousin. And our American cousin is a comedy and it's famous for a great line in the play where everyone loses it. And of course John Wilkes Booth is very familiar with the play. He's part of that whole group under Mrs Surratt, that would meet at her home. They were thinking of kidnapping Lincoln, but eventually he just says, let's just, let's just go. And then he sets the other guys up to also kill Johnson and also Seward.
Speaker 1:Right. It's funny, is, I think, what people was lost in our teaching of history is that how famous John Wilkes Booth was, him and his family at the time. He is probably the most recognizable man in America.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he was a heartthrob at the time. He's the first actor to have women tearing at his clothes. Okay, he was that kind of personality and he was from the Booth family, going back to his father and his brother, Edwin Booth. I used to spend some time at the Players Club in New York City Right. That was founded by Edwin Booth and the Booth Theater is still on Broadway.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 2:And up. It's an interesting thing up on the top floor of the Players Club is Edwin Booth's apartment and they have saved it as it was since the time of his death in, I think, 1893. And there, next to his bed, he kept a picture of his brother, John Wilkes. Of his brother, Because it was a painful, painful thing for Edwin Booth when this happened, because his name was totally sullied and he stops performing immediately and steps away from the stage and writes a long letter of apology to the American people. But he feels that his career is over and it's, I think, about a year or possibly a little later than that. He is convinced to come back on stage and he is absolutely terrified. He's afraid someone will shoot him and he says he was ready and the curtain opened and he appeared and the entire audience stood and applauded it wasn't him it wasn't him, but he was terrified and the audience let him know.
Speaker 2:We understand, it wasn't you. And also there's a little interesting story with Edwin Booth. It was in New Jersey at a train stop where Robert Lincoln fell onto the tracks and Edwin Booth went down and helped him up from the tracks before the train arrived. It wasn't as big a deal as they made it out to sound like he saved his life. The train was roaring by, he fell and he helped him. Yes, and the interesting thing is that Robert Lincoln was helped by a booth and Abraham Lincoln was also killed by a booth. It's interesting, the two different sides there.
Speaker 1:So it's interesting, the two different sides there. So I'm sure everybody's heard out there and exactly what happens. I mean, booth can walk around the theater like a god because everybody knows him. So it wasn't like he had this secret that he slid past everyone and hid. Everyone knew him, he was famous, he went in there and no one thought a second thing about having him there. Then of course he he gets into the, the, the booth excuse the expression where where um lincoln is, and he pulls out a gun to the back of his head and kills him. Yeah, but then of course he jumps down and apparently his spur gets caught on the on the flag on the flag and he breaks his leg um and uh.
Speaker 1:You know it's reported that what he says is six semper tyrannis is that what it is the motto of virginia yeah is yeah To all tyrants right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, being an actor, he couldn't help himself. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I know that's the thing.
Speaker 2:It's Shakespeare out of the thing. And the interesting thing is as well, you know, booth had been there in the afternoon at Ford's Theater and cut a hole in the door and also fixed things so he could get in, and so he had everything all set up in advance and he had a single shot, derringer and a knife and I mean I mean it's a point blank range.
Speaker 2:I mean he pulls it right up to the back of his head and fires and the bullet lodges right behind his, I believe, his right eye. And there are some that say and I don't know how true this is, was it the right eye or was it the left eye? I'm always trying to remember. I think it was the right eye, but if it's the left eye, I'm sorry, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1:One of the eyes.
Speaker 2:The thing is, I've heard from some historians that Lincoln sensed something and started to turn his head, which would make it the left eye. I don't know whether that's true or not, but nonetheless the deed was done. The deed was done. Rathbone, who is with Lincoln with his fiance, jumps up and tries to attack Booth, and Booth slashes him with his knife, cuts open an artery and blood is flying all over the place. And Mary Lincoln, who's still holding her husband's hand, you know suddenly realizes he's been shot because he basically just falls forward because of the force of the shot, and then she lets out with one of her bullets, hurtling screams.
Speaker 2:People in the audience are thinking is this part of the show Right? And it takes a few moments for everyone to realize that the president has been shot, especially when Booth comes up on the stage and does his great and then hops away because he can't run, because he's got the broken bone, and then he slashes his knife toward people coming near him and they all have to get out of the way. His horse is waiting for him outside because he had a fellow waiting, and off he goes and everyone is like confused for a few moments and stunned into silence, until finally one of the doctors that happens to be in the audience realizes what's going on, tries to get in. The door is locked. The booth had locked the door to the booth and they have to bash it down and they get in there.
Speaker 1:So originally he cut that hole. He was going to shoot him through that hole, wasn't he?
Speaker 2:No, he wanted to be able to observe what was going on.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, to shoot him through that hole was no, he wanted to be able to observe what was going on.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay so he knew and he waited. As I was mentioning before, there's a great line in that. In that play you saccadigitalize an old man, trap you or something like that, and the audience went crazy laughing. That's when he fires right. Um, lincoln is pretty well dead at that point. He's hardly, he's not even breathing at that point.
Speaker 2:And the doctor puts his finger in into the wound in the head where he finds it Right, and breaks the clot and it starts to bleed and then he starts breathing again. Wow, that's pretty brilliant, yeah. And then he announces that the wound is mortal. And then they try to figure out what to do with him. Because they don't want to leave him in the booth there. They take him outside, which is interesting.
Speaker 2:They take him outside before anyone knows where to put him and finally someone yells bring him here. And it is right across the street. And they bring him into the house, take him all the way through the house to the back room and lay him on a bed. He doesn't quite fit in. Now, they don't know where he's wounded besides the head, so they completely strip him of his clothes and basically examine him and find it's just a wound to the head, but it's, it's mortal, I mean it's, and he lingers for quite a while. Until what is it? 722 in the morning and then Stanton, who was basically running the show, who basically says I'm in charge. He's like he takes over the government. Very much familiar when Reagan got shot, if you remember that, that whole thing, alexander Higgs.
Speaker 2:Yeah, alexander Higgs, I'm in charge. And he proclaims now he belongs to the angels or now he belonged to the ages no one's quite sure what he said and two coins are put over Lincoln's eyes as he's laying in that bed the Peterson house, as I recall. I have something here actually from that. This is a photograph of the bed he was in and the pillow, with the bloodstained pillow, taken by the occupant of that room who happened to be a photographer, and next to it is a strip of wallpaper from that room. Wow, is a strip of wallpaper from that room.
Speaker 2:Wow, that wallpaper was taken out in the 1890s and was from a collection owned by a professor Latimer of Columbia University and he had a lot of Lincoln stuff that he had and that came up for auction and I was fortunate to get a little chunk of it, which was kind of cool, nice and. But that Peterson house becomes a place of pilgrimage and anything dealing with it. The place is ravaged. People are tearing pieces of this and everything else.
Speaker 1:Who else was attacked that night simultaneously?
Speaker 2:Seward. Seward was attacked. Seward was attacked by pain and it's an interesting thing, the thing that saves Seward he had been injured a few weeks before in a carriage accident, that's right, and he was wearing the steel cage that was holding everything in place and pain came announcing. He was from the drugstore delivering medications for Seward and they said well, you can't see him. And so he attacks Seward's son with his gun, doesn't shoot him, he hits him with it and basically fractures his skull and tears the skull right to the bone.
Speaker 2:Really, this guy, payne, is a monster of a guy Monstrously strong, not exceedingly bright, but he goes in, works his way into the bedchamber where Seward is lying in his bed in this cage, and then just starts slashing him and the only reason that he isn't killed is because of that cage. The cage deflects the knife and he slices part of his face away. Terrible injuries and they were thinking he was going to die. But he survives. But he is disfigured the rest of his life and he will only pose with one view that totally hides the other side of his face, which is just very disfigured from all the knife damage.
Speaker 1:So and someone else was attacked. I mean, there were plans to get everybody, but some people backed out, right?
Speaker 2:Yes, the guy who was going to attack Johnson. I can't think of his name off the top of my head.
Speaker 1:But he got scared and backed out right.
Speaker 2:He got drunk oh happens and then chickened out, although he did leave a note for Johnson with his name, which was kind of interesting. Just the brightest thing. I'll get you next time. Yeah, and it's an brightest thing, I'll get you next time. Yeah, and it's an interesting thing. Think, had he done it, it would have put the entire government in chaos, and I forget who would be next in line at that point. Speaker of the House. Yeah, okay, the Speaker of the House. Okay, I don't know who in line at that point. Speaker of the House. Yeah, okay, the Speaker of the House. Okay, I don't know who that was at that point. Off the top of my head, I can't think of it either.
Speaker 1:And then the President of the Senate and then it goes after that.
Speaker 2:But Secretary of State goes around Lincoln's dead and his body's collected and brought to the White House and he is embalmed and I think he's the first president to be embalmed, because other presidents beforehand were basically just cleaned up and buried Right Lincoln's embalmed. He was very fascinated with it because his son, willie, had died in 1862, and he has Willie embalmed. And he has Willie embalmed and Lincoln would go to the cemetery often and go to the mausoleum where his son was basically put for a while, open the casket and just look at his son and he would do that over several months and just talk to his son. It's kind of macabre if you think about it.
Speaker 1:Oh, he was that, well, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, lincoln could depress a hyena. I mean there is that kind of thing. I mean he had that in him. So he is dead. He is embalmed. They find the bullet when they basically open. They do an autopsy and they open the cavity of the brain and they weigh the brain and everything and the brain, the bullet falls out of the brain, making a clicking sound. Lincoln, who always had issues, emotional issues, what?
Speaker 1:She had lost, had them before the death of her son, oh yeah, she had them before the death of her son.
Speaker 2:But Willie really kind of pushed her almost over the edge to a point where President Lincoln took Mary to the window and he pointed over and he said do you see the asylum down, yonder, mary, If you get much sicker we might have to take you there. I mean she was a, she was a basket case once, once her husband was killed. I mean she's never right after that. It's sad. I mean she is a very sad case. Brilliant, brilliant, very well-educated, spoke several languages. Um, she just uh.
Speaker 1:The white house, the presidency for which she was such a strong putcher for, uh, he didn't want it was the greatest detriment to her life. Even their whole courtship was bizarre, if I remember correctly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, he takes her out dancing and says you know, I, I, you know I guess I'm dancing in the worst way. And she said, yes, mr McGee, but she was also courted by Douglas, right, you know, she was a pretty hot tomato in her time, you know, hot tomato in her time, you know, and she was very rich in her very wealthy family and beautiful in those days and she had very pretty shoulders. She would always show off her shoulders, which was very daring in those days.
Speaker 1:She was very short, right, she was 5'4" and she was, was it him? He was infatuated with some other woman before her and that sort of broke him up the first time or something. I don't remember the entire story.
Speaker 2:He got kind of cold feet.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And you know he often did what his friend Speed did. Speed got married and told him he's very happy and that kind of pushed Lincoln along to finally get married. But Lincoln had problems before with other women and I can't think of the names off the top of my head. But here's something very interesting here. Here's another set of books. This is the three-volume set by William Hernon, who was Lincoln's law partner, and it's called Hernon's Lincoln and a lot of people didn't like the book because it made Lincoln a little too human.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Now, the fellow that worked with Herndon was Jesse Weik Weik W-E-I-K. How do you pronounce that? I guess Wieck. This is autographed by him, which is kind of interesting. And in these books he suggests lots of things about Lincoln and he interviewed everybody. Lots of things about Lincoln and he interviewed everybody and a lot of people didn't like these books because it just made Lincoln seem very human, which I see no problem with. But he also suggests that Lincoln might have caught some venereal disease from seeing various women. He suggests that in the book here that he might have passed to Mary.
Speaker 1:And that's what could have made her yeah, right.
Speaker 2:It's just a suggestion. We don't know.
Speaker 1:Who knows? No one knows, but not even sure they knew at the time.
Speaker 2:But this is a fascinating there's a little bit of a caveat to these books which I got these from the library of the entertainer Jimmy Durante. Really he was an avid history fan and these were from his personal library. Just kind of cool.
Speaker 1:So just to finish up on the funeral.
Speaker 2:Oh sorry.
Speaker 1:Just to finish up on Booth for a minute. So Booth runs away, has a broken leg. Sooner or later he finds a doctor to set it right. Yeah, and his name happens to be Mudd. Yes, and that's really where the phrase comes from. You know, at that time period no one wanted to be called Mudd. That's a kind of unfortunate story.
Speaker 2:You know, you think about it. He had no idea, but he knew that Booth wanted to get rid of Lincoln. He was aware of that but he had no idea that anything had happened. I don't think Booth told him anything had happened. He set Booth's leg and was basically charged as a conspirator. And he does get released early because he does help a lot of prisoners during an epidemic and he doesn't live that much longer after that. A very fascinating thing the commentator, the newsman Roger Mudd, was a direct descendant.
Speaker 1:I did not know that. I did not know that. Well, what's interesting about Mudd too is, if you think about it, you know, the oath of being a doctor is to treat the patient. That's right in front of you, right? Yes, indeed. So to pick and choose you don't pick and choose patients that basically, you're going to face more than criticism. You're going to face prosecution by following your Hippocratic oath, and that's the deal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, indeed, indeed.
Speaker 1:So Now I know you want to get to the part where we came here to talk to the funeral. This is our preamble. Yeah, it was our preamble An hour and 20 minutes in, and now we're going to talk about what we came here to talk to the funeral. This is our preamble. Yeah, it was our preamble An hour and 20 minutes in, and now we're going to talk about what we came here to talk about.
Speaker 2:This is fun. I enjoy this. This is great to talk about this stuff and I hope we can do this with a number of presidents and historic events, because it's great to share the knowledge back and forth and have this kind of a wonderful conversation.
Speaker 1:Well, I think about at this present time. I think a lot about presidents ignoring the United States Supreme Court's edict, and I think about the American Indians yes, I'm thinking of Andrew Jackson Andrew Jackson, correct, and I think about that him telling the United States Supreme Court well, you may have, but how are you going to enforce it? It's unbelievable. So I think about that, but I can edit that out too. So the funeral, yeah, well, lincoln's unbelievable. So I think about that, but I can edit that out too. So the funeral, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, lincoln's dead. He has a special casket made for him it's called a coffin in those days because it's wedge-shaped and he is, as I said, embalmed, made up, dressed in his second inauguration suit and laid out in the White House. And then there's a period of public grief. Also, it is well known at that point that Robert E Lee is terrified over the fact that Lincoln's been killed and he starts sending letters to people saying you know, this is not a good thing, this is the worst thing that could happen to us, because it looks like the South has done this. And he tells don't do guerrilla warfare, don't fight, just give up, end, stop this. And he does all this In 1865, the whole country was absolutely in shambles.
Speaker 2:You know, lee surrenders on April 9th, April 14th, 15th, lincoln's murdered Seward is nearly murdered. You have a vice president who is strongly disliked by the political class. He had a little issue at the inauguration. He was suffering from the flu and someone suggested that he have a couple of few snoots of alcohol to help him feel better, and it goes right to his head and he becomes a Tennessee rambler hall to help him feel better. And it goes right to his head and he becomes a Tennessee Rambler. You know, and it was said it was interesting to watch Lincoln at that. He was trying to find a way to fit his six foot four frame under the chair so he couldn't be seen. And Lincoln never speaks to Johnson. I mean he's just there for window dressing, basically, and Lincoln never speaks to Johnson. I mean he's just there for window dressing, basically, and suddenly he's the president and Lincoln, as I said, is dressed up and then we start the three weeks of funeral.
Speaker 2:Think about that Three weeks Lincoln travels with an embalmer Because the body doesn't hold up that well. Right, you know he's dead and therefore all of the wounds, the face keeps turning black from the wounds and they're constantly chalking the face. And they had done this a little bit before with two individuals John Quincy Adams had done many stops and they kept him under ice, and Henry Clay. Henry Clay had done somewhat the same thing, but nowhere near as long as this. And what the funeral route was was a reversal of his route, coming from Illinois to Washington in 1861, with all the basic same stops. And so in each one of these stops he is brought out, cleaned up the changes, collars and stuff like that to make him look presentable and then thousands and thousands of people view the body.
Speaker 2:This goes on from state to state to state to state till May. And by May Lincoln is looking a little bad. In fact the lips had kind of shrunk a little bit, so there was kind of a toothy grin starting to show and they had to kind of fix that. It was really getting kind of horrendous. And so finally and I think it was in early May, may 4th or so he's finally interred in a temporary revolt in Illinois. There was a big battle in Illinois when are we going to bury him? And they said Chicago. And Mrs Lincoln gets her stuff together more or less to argue and she said no, it's going to be Springfield, illinois. And they said no, it's going to be Chicago. And she said if you keep this up, I'll have him buried at the Capitol. She basically tells him to shut up. And she said he was there at the opening of the cemetery and said this was a beautiful place and this is where he will be interred. And eventually he was.
Speaker 2:He was interred in a temporary tomb. He was interred in a temporary tomb and right from the start there are threats and weak attempts to steal his body. Now this goes on for years and what they do periodically. Every few years they open up his coffin and look inside to see if he's still there. They look at him and they say that's him. And then they close it.
Speaker 2:They finally create the tomb and he's interred there and then, on election night, 1876, when everyone's busy politicking and voting, a team of grave robbers breaks into the tomb. Now they had found out about it because they were loudmouths in the bar. Now, they had found out about it because they were loudmouths in the bar and they were in Springfield. They were telling people this is what we're going to do. Blah, blah, blah. And they break in, they get into the tomb and he's in a sarcophagus, basically in the tomb, and they break it open and then they start pulling his coffin out. What they did not know was that his coffin was lead-lined, it was heavy, it was like 500 pounds, and it just falls to the ground. They can't really. They're just dragging it. They can't get anywhere.
Speaker 2:And at that point they're captured. But this was rather upsetting. And there was the old guard at the tomb decided we have to hide him. So what they did? They struggled and brought his coffin to the basement of the tomb and there was a pile of garbage and they put him under the pile of garbage and that's where they keep him and nobody knows where he is. And people are coming to the tomb and looking at the empty sarcophagus and he's not there. He's down in the basement under the garbage, broken pieces of wood, this, that and anything else.
Speaker 2:When Mary Lincoln dies, she is put under the garbage as well, and then Tad is buried already I shouldn't say I should say entombed already in the wall. Eventually Mary Lincoln is put into the wall and then Abraham is kept where he is and eventually, since there are lots of problems with the tomb and the tomb starts falling apart, now they got to take all the coffins out again and they take them all outside and put them in an underground vault and they keep them there for 15 years or so and they totally tear down the entire tomb and rebuild it again. Finally, in 1901, september of 1901, to be exact they take the coffins out of the ground again and put them in front to make sure they get everything all together. And what they do in 1901, think about this this is 36 years after he has died. They open his coffin again and they bring all the people around to take a look at him, including a young boy, by the way. And Lincoln is recognizable. The pillow has shifted, his head's fallen backward. He's changed kind of color. He's become kind of dark. It was said he looked like a statue of himself and he had no eyebrows at this point, but the beard was there and the mole was there and the young fella and I can't think of his name lives until 1963, 64. They did a thing in Life magazine and he said as a young boy I slept with Mr Lincoln many times after seeing that. I kept seeing that image. But he was the last living individual to have looked upon the face of Lincoln and that was in the 1960s. He died, if you think about it, nearly 100 years later after his death.
Speaker 2:Lincoln is buried, incidentally, in his mausoleum and it all deals with Robert Lincoln and also with Pullman. The Pullman Coach Company is a very successful train company bringing train cars, sleeping cars, and the Pullman strikes of the 1880s and 1890s are terrible. They bring the National Guard and they just shoot employees that are striking. Mr Pullman thought that when he died people would steal his body, so he had a special cage made for his coffin, his casket, which is put 10 feet into the ground and then coated completely with cement. Coated completely with cement. Then on top of that was a 10-foot square piece of limestone marble, whatever it may be over that to basically make sure no one got near him.
Speaker 2:Okay, now here's the interesting thing to basically make sure no one got near him. Now here's the interesting thing. Robert Lincoln was so impressed by that, that burial which took place right here in Chicago. I've been to the tomb, the Pullman Tomb. I'm always thinking about it every time I go there. I'm sitting there saying there he is, mr Pullman. He's 10 feet down underneath all that stuff encased in cement. Robert Lincoln says this is the perfect thing to do with my father. So they examine the body one more time just to make sure he's in there, and then they put him in a cage, fill that whole void with cement and then build the floor over that. He has never been touched. Since he never will be touched, he is encased in probably about 10 feet of cement. He's safe, never to be touched again and never to be bothered and looked at again, which I find rather macabre, actually again, which I find rather macabre actually.
Speaker 2:Right, that's more or less the funeral. I mean there's a lot of things that do take place. I have something here.
Speaker 1:I remember a picture on a documentary on Roosevelt. There's a picture of the Lincoln funeral in New York City, yes, yes, and in the background you see the Roosevelt Mansion. In the background in the window you see Teddy Roosevelt sitting there and he talks about it a great deal as an adult. The effect that seeing the Lincoln funeral had on him.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's very true. And you know, the interesting thing was his Secretary of State was John Hay and John Hay was Abraham Lincoln's private secretary and he always would sit and talk to Hay about Lincoln, sit and talk to Hay about Lincoln. And when Roosevelt won the election in his own right in 1904, for his inaugural speech on March the 4th, John Hay presented Roosevelt with a ring and in the ring were hairs of Abraham Lincoln and he wore that when he gave his inaugural speech. A fascinating thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I knew he was obsessed with Lincoln, but I didn't know to what extent.
Speaker 2:And Hay really liked Roosevelt. You know they live right across the street. It was the Adams and Hay Mansion and they lived together. I think they called themselves the Four Hearts or something like that. It was a name for their group and they would sit and play cards all the time. All kinds of various personalities would come there.
Speaker 1:Roosevelt hated Italians, so I can't be too. Though I really like him and everything he did, I can't really support that all that much.
Speaker 2:But the thing is that he would constantly talk to Harry about Lincoln and hey Loved in many regards Theodore Roosevelt he thought he was, he was just fascinating. And he said he always had dreams and in his dreams he always heard the voice of Roosevelt in his dreams. And he said and this is a fascinating thing, he wrote about it. He said I have always dreamt about everybody and I'd never dreamt of Lincoln. And then in 1905, he said I dreamt about being in the White House and he said the voice wasn't the voice I was used to. He said, but I recognized it, it was Lincoln. And he said John, you look terrible.
Speaker 1:Now, that sounds like Lincoln.
Speaker 2:And you need to take a rest. But John Hay would die a few months after that. But he is very famous as a secretary. There's a photograph of Lincoln with his secretaries, nicolay and Hay, who wrote a book about Lincoln. And this is one thing I just want to mention quickly because I know we've talked a lot here, and that is that Robert Lincoln becomes more or less the Hayes Bureau for Abraham Lincoln. He wanted to basically have the approval on anything written about his father. He controlled the narrative. Yes, the Nikolai Hayes biography of Lincoln was carefully purged by Robert of anything he disagreed with, carefully purged by Robert of anything he disagreed with. And they didn't dare do anything that would offend Robert because then they wouldn't get any more material. Not only did he have that effect, but the president of Columbia University went to visit him one day and found him by a roaring fire burning his father's papers, and he finally convinced Robert to stop. But how long had he been burning papers?
Speaker 2:We know he destroyed all the letters between Mary and Abraham. What did he destroy? He finally destroyed everything that didn't make his father look like the God that he's been made into, lincoln. It's hard to look at Lincoln as a human being. You think about it. I mean, we've kind of made him into, as I said before, he's been pasteurized, all the disagreeable elements have been kind of removed.
Speaker 1:His humanity has been removed.
Speaker 2:Yes, it was said about Lincoln with his photographs that they're all Lincoln and there's many pictures of Lincoln but there's no portrait history, his available history, that we have lots of images of Lincoln throughout his life but we really have no great portrait because it has been expunged of various parts that people felt were not necessary to the narrative. And I think that's important. With Robert, robert Lincoln carefully, basically curated his father's collection to such a degree that the only thing that remained was what Robert thought should remain. It would be fascinating to be able to look at what Robert destroyed. It would be fascinating to see a little bit more of who Lincoln was.
Speaker 2:Lincoln kept no diary. Lincoln basically kept his cards close to his chest. He was very private on his own thoughts excuse me, own thoughts. He never let people truly know who he was and he would be different people in front of different groups. It's an interesting thing. I mean Lincoln has become and he's got his own temple more or less a god to the American ideal, the American history, the history of America, of the United States, I should say we have made him one of the gods in its pantheon.
Speaker 1:Well, it's funny you say that to some extent. I mean, we remember all the things that he did. And when you look at and I thought it was always interesting in Spielberg's film of Lincoln, where he doesn't really portray him as this, you know, flag waving, always do the right thing kind of guy, but more like that He'll. He'll do whatever it takes to accomplish the goal he's after and what he thinks is in the best interest of the country. He'll make a deal, He'll pay a guy off, and that's how politics was done in those days.
Speaker 2:So it's a little bit taken out of context.
Speaker 1:You know, paul, what was the guy's name? You know the guy that had the bridge or the toll? I forget that. You see in the movie that he talks about and there's all kinds of people that he tries to get to vote his way to pass that amendment.
Speaker 2:Oh yes, as I said early on, he's a master of doublespeak. Oh yes, as I said early on, he's a master of doublespeak. And when he met with the Confederate delegation.
Speaker 2:He made sure he wasn't in Washington. And the interesting thing, there are no official notes to that meeting. But Alexander Stevens, who was the vice president of the Confederacy, was at that meeting and the fellow with him, I can't think of his name, did write down things that Lincoln said and it's interesting when you read it. It's like basically he's sitting there doing a little horse trading, you know, and he said tell you what, drop your arms and come back to Congress and vote against the 13th Amendment and we can put slavery off. We can put slavery off, you know, for a couple of years. I think he even offered the fact to 1900. We can gradually do slow emancipation. If you folks come back right away. Now that's what Lincoln was saying. He probably might not have meant it, he was probably doing his thing. It's fascinating because what he was doing was saying let's just stop. We're old friends, let's just stop this. Come back in Now. We're lost on this because Lincoln is removed.
Speaker 2:We'll never know how Lincoln would have dealt with the radical Republicans, how Lincoln would have dealt with the South, how Lincoln would have dealt with many things. He said let him go, easy boys. Lincoln would have dealt with many things. He said let them go easy, boys. But would he keep to that? He said he gave a parable, as you said, with Jefferson Davis. He says let them run away. Basically, let them run away. He said don't hurt them, that'll just make things worse. And his idea of reconstruction was quick, basically, get 10% of the population to agree to the union and bring them back. Now, of course, that didn't happen at all and basically they became an occupied nation which created animosity which well continues to this day to a degree.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, I don't go there.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, one more thing I'd like to say about the funeral. So I don't know if I mentioned this to you, I may have. So a friend of mine actually a friend of my ex-father-in-law grew up in Boston and his mother was one of the infamous secretaries to John F Kennedy and all through the White House years, and all through the White House years through when he was in Congress, his mother worked for the Kennedys as they were back then, and when Kennedy was assassinated, jacqueline looked to her to help her figure out. And this is this is a story, goes from what I hear from him his mother's past, but I've seen her papers and her photographs and notes and their, their unbelievable artifacts that, um, they had long conversations about and long investigations into.
Speaker 1:The only funeral of an assassinated president they looked to was Lincoln, and that's why it was so similar the funeral procession, the casket, the horse, the whole thing. Obviously he was buried in Arlington and he was buried in the spot that he actually picked out, that he said he would like to be buried there, which was a little weird in itself. Yeah, but, and she also helped Jackie write all the condolences. Thank yous for the condolences. So she was involved in that whole situation and they really looked to Lincoln.
Speaker 2:Yeah, lincoln's funeral, and there again, I mean, it was very grand and it was a great spectacle, let's put it that way, right. And Kennedy's? Yes, I've heard that before. I've heard about the that as soon as she was riding back in the jet with her husband's body, she was already, and it's interesting, here she is in this bloodstained outfit and she's already figuring out what to do. You know she's already figuring how to create the illusion of Camelot and how about that.
Speaker 1:She has a birthday party for her son. The next it was the next day or two days later, so that business would, so things would be as normal. Now you're still in the White House. You have a new president Johnson, whatever his role, I mean, I still can't get over the picture of him winking at his friends in the airplane when he's getting sworn in. So that's a whole other and we've talked about that at length already, but I'm glad to talk about it with you. So I think that just demonstrates and a good place to end it is the effect that Lincoln had on the future, on future presidents. Lincoln had on the future, on future presidents, on future America and how we deal with things of great, great turmoil and disagreement.
Speaker 2:I'd like to close with just two things here. Sure, these are from the time. This is the memorial address to Abraham Lincoln, read before Congress. Wow, all of this was done because we had a civil war going on. Still, to a degree, everything was done in 1866. And this is the funeral program in New York City. And if you let's see if I can do this gracefully it's kind of fragile. I gotta kind of. This is the wow, wow. This is an amazing book and it's filled with images and they're all drawings. Of course they couldn't they couldn't reproduce the photographs and printing in those days very well, but all the various things taking place and pictures of the funeral, etc. And this whole book was put together after the event and it's just filled with every bit of information about his funeral. And in closing, the last thing to show you is what I'm going to be working on, a documentary on. Is this? This is Abraham Lincoln's funeral march and the martyr president. Pretty amazing. We're going to have this orchestrated and it's going to be played. It'll be interesting to hear.
Speaker 2:I look forward to it. Yeah, and with Lincoln, in closing, with you, I just wanted to say Lincoln, as I said, is very much like, basically, the base of a tree and there's a million branches going out in every which direction, and in every one of those you could find something to talk about or share or investigate with Lincoln. He was an amazing individual, put into a situation that no president has ever been put into before or since, and basically kept the nation together through pure tenacity. If you think about it, as he said to Horace Greeley, if about freeing the slaves, if I can save the union and free the slaves, I'll do it. If I can save the union and free some of the slaves, I'll do it. If I can save the Union and free some of the slaves, I'll do it. And if I can save the Union and free none of the slaves, I'll do it. Lincoln was focused on saving the Union and for that we should be very thankful.
Speaker 1:Well said. Thank you very much. That's the end. It's probably going to be a two-parter, I think, and I appreciate it. We're at an hour and 52 minutes. My goodness, so it went very quickly in my mind.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know.
Speaker 1:There's so much more to talk about. Right, it feels like we just scratched the surface. I'm not sure we talked about anything we wanted to talk about, but it was a real pleasure. I really enjoyed it and I think that's a great idea. I think we should do one on other presidents, sure.
Speaker 2:I think that would be great, that would be great. The McKinley funeral. Interesting thing I have the funeral booklet for William McKinley put together by the minister who officiated the funeral.
Speaker 1:It's amazing, it's a one-of-a-kind item, so that will be our next thing. So I thank you all. Thank you, jack, for the hundredth time. It's awesome to talk to you over those things. I'm so happy to put this out. I'm going to try to do it in a two-part, and we look for other conversations of historical events. Right now we're on assassinations, but there are many other things, because the history of America is what we need to get through the times we have. There's no question about it. So thank you again. All right, speak soon. Thanks, take care, bye, bye.
