The Glenn Beck Program - August 15, 2026


Lincoln’s Assassination and the Hunt for John Wilkes Booth ｜ The American Story ｜ Ep 18


Episode Stats


Length

45 minutes

Words per minute

154.21

Word count

6,946

Sentence count

530

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Toxicity

20

sentences flagged

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
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00:00:07.100 Friday, August 14th to Wednesday, August 19th.
00:00:10.280 Valid in-store and online.
00:00:20.640 It's the night of April 11th, 1865.
00:00:24.480 It's just two days after Robert E. Lee surrendered his battered army
00:00:27.680 at Appomattox Courthouse.
00:00:30.000 Washington, D.C. is now erupting in celebration.
00:00:33.920 The streets overflow with soldiers and citizens
00:00:36.420 and newly freed black Americans waving flags,
00:00:39.700 singing, dancing around blazing bonfires.
00:00:43.440 And the city glows under thousands of lanterns and illuminations.
00:00:47.580 It was relief, triumph, and hope that was permeating the spring air.
00:00:55.060 Thousands now gather on the White House grounds
00:00:57.720 under a sea of flickering torches.
00:01:00.000 On the north side of the mansion, a second-story window opens, and a tall, gaunt figure steps forward into the glow of torchlight.
00:01:09.220 It was President Lincoln.
00:01:11.040 He grips several pages in his hands, the speech he had written for this occasion.
00:01:17.220 The crowd quiets.
00:01:19.680 As soon as Lincoln begins speaking, it's clearly not the kind of speech the crowd expects, because it's not a victory speech.
00:01:28.200 He doesn't celebrate. He doesn't gloat.
00:01:31.280 Instead, he speaks carefully about the immense task ahead,
00:01:35.900 reconstruction.
00:01:37.980 In the speech, Lincoln said,
00:01:39.460 It is fraught with great difficulty.
00:01:43.820 Unlike a case of war between independent nations,
00:01:47.480 there is no authorized organ for us to treat with.
00:01:51.680 No one man has authority to give up the rebellion for any other man.
00:01:57.780 We simply must begin with and mold from disorganized and discordant elements.
00:02:05.460 He outlines a plan already underway in Louisiana for a new state government
00:02:10.000 committed to being part of the United States again.
00:02:13.280 And then Lincoln says something that slices through the night.
00:02:17.100 He publicly endorses, for the first time, extending the right to vote to literate black Americans
00:02:22.980 and to black Union troops.
00:02:25.940 Well, seething among the crowd on the White House lawn is the famous actor named John Wilkes Booth.
00:02:31.540 He was flanked by two men, David Harreld, a young drugstore clerk, and Lewis Powell, a former Confederate soldier.
00:02:39.880 For months, their plan had been clear.
00:02:42.860 Kidnap Lincoln, smuggle him south to Richmond, and ransom him for Confederate prisoners of war.
00:02:49.880 But with Richmond's capture and Lee's surrender, the Confederacy had almost completely collapsed.
00:02:55.040 their leverage had evaporated. Booth writes in his diary. Our cause being almost lost,
00:03:02.280 something decisive and great must be done. Booth had been waiting, planning, biding his time.
00:03:08.860 He even stood in a crowd at Lincoln's second inaugural address one month earlier. Historians
00:03:13.620 have identified him in a photograph standing on the portico staring down at the president.
00:03:20.000 You can see that one and only copy of that photograph, the original,
00:03:23.640 at the American Journey experience in Dallas, Texas.
00:03:27.800 When Richmond fell, Booth was drowning in his sorrow
00:03:31.540 in a New York City saloon when he lamented to a friend.
00:03:35.060 What an excellent chance I had if I wished 0.99
00:03:37.160 to kill the president on Inauguration Day. 0.95
00:03:40.240 I was on the stand as close to him nearly as I am to you. 0.84
00:03:44.140 But now, with the Southern cause gasping its final breath,
00:03:47.760 Lincoln's speech infuriates Booth
00:03:50.780 As Lincoln's words about black suffrage drift across the lawn,
00:03:55.500 Booth sneers that it would mean full citizenship for blacks.
00:03:59.360 He turns to Harold and Powell, his voice cold and final. 0.57
00:04:02.960 By God, I'll put him through. 0.97
00:04:04.580 In a surge of fury, Booth urges Powell to draw his pistol and shoot Lincoln right there, 0.99
00:04:10.140 perfectly framed in the window.
00:04:12.300 But Powell hesitates, refuses.
00:04:15.040 The risk in the dense crowd was too great.
00:04:17.160 The president finishes speaking and the exuberant crowd cheers and applause.
00:04:23.160 Booth, his eyes ablaze as he says,
00:04:26.000 That is the last speech he will ever make.
00:04:28.420 Little does the celebrating city know,
00:04:30.980 this is the night John Wilkes Booth determines Lincoln must die.
00:04:39.820 This is the American story, The Beginnings.
00:04:44.100 Adapted from the book of the same title by David Barton and Tim Barton.
00:04:49.960 Episode 18, Lincoln's Assassination and the Hunt for John Wilkes Booth.
00:05:02.140 April 14th, 1865.
00:05:05.320 It was Good Friday.
00:05:07.220 President Lincoln and his wife took an afternoon carriage ride.
00:05:10.600 They laughed, and they talked about the future.
00:05:13.460 Mary had not seen her husband in such a carefree mood
00:05:16.520 since they moved into the White House four years earlier.
00:05:19.600 That night, they were set to attend a play at Ford's Theater.
00:05:23.580 Lincoln liked attending plays.
00:05:25.360 It was really one of the only things in his life as president
00:05:27.560 that offered any break from the relentless pressures of the Civil War.
00:05:31.900 The White House had alerted Ford's Theater early in the day
00:05:35.020 that the Lincolns would attend with General Grant and his wife.
00:05:39.040 This notification was customary,
00:05:40.900 so the theater could advertise the president's attendance and spur ticket sales but it is also
00:05:46.660 how john wilkes booth found out precisely where lincoln would be that night later in the day the
00:05:53.060 grants changed their plans leaving washington to visit their children in new jersey so clara harris
00:05:58.820 a close friend of mary lincoln's and clara's fiancee major henry rathbone were invited instead
00:06:06.260 The theater was almost full, about 1,700 people.
00:06:10.260 The Lincolns, Major Rathbone, and Clara arrived late.
00:06:14.200 The play was a comedy called Our American Cousin, and it had already started.
00:06:20.680 Before they settled into their seats in the presidential box, the actors on stage stopped performing,
00:06:25.820 the orchestra struck up hail to the chief, and the audience erupted with cheers and applause for the president.
00:06:36.200 Not far from Ford's Theater, three men met at the Herndon House Hotel.
00:06:41.580 They were reviewing the final details of their new plan.
00:06:45.160 John Wilkes Booth was a dashing 26-year-old celebrity actor.
00:06:49.200 Lewis Powell was a 21-year-old former Confederate soldier, and he was built like a boxer.
00:06:54.520 And George Azeroth was a 29-year-old German immigrant who painted carriages for a living.
00:07:00.840 Their goal?
00:07:02.120 Take out the top three men of the executive branch in one synchronized strike at 10 p.m. that night. 0.91
00:07:08.560 Booth would kill President Lincoln,
00:07:10.520 Powell would finish off the Secretary of State, William Seward,
00:07:14.000 and Azeroth would eliminate Vice President Andrew Johnson.
00:07:17.840 Booth believed this would throw the Union government into chaos
00:07:21.240 and revive the Confederate cause.
00:07:24.160 About 8 p.m., the men split off to carry out their assignments.
00:07:28.100 Just nine days earlier, Secretary of State Seward had almost died in a horrific carriage accident.
00:07:34.680 He, his son Frederick, and daughter Fanny had been out for a spring ride when the horses bolted.
00:07:40.760 Seward tried to grab the reins.
00:07:42.120 He tumbled out and slammed into the street, shattering his jaw in two places and breaking his right arm.
00:07:49.060 By April 14th, he was still bedridden at his home in Lafayette Park, not far from the White House.
00:07:55.280 He was in constant pain, but he was still alive.
00:07:58.240 That night, 20-year-old Fannie and an Army nurse named George Robinson kept watch on Seward's room.
00:08:06.040 The family thought the worst was behind them.
00:08:09.200 And then, 10 p.m., Lewis Powell, carrying a small package, rang the doorbell at Seward's house.
00:08:16.540 Another of Boos conspirators, David Herold, held Powell's horse on the quiet street.
00:08:22.140 Powell told a young black servant, William Bell, that he was a messenger from Dr. Verde with medicine for Seward.
00:08:28.940 Powell insisted on personally handing the medicine to Seward.
00:08:33.160 Bell resisted, but after arguing for a few minutes, finally, Bell showed him up the stairs.
00:08:38.800 Frederick Seward met him there on the landing, and now he blocked the way, insisting that his father could not be disturbed.
00:08:46.580 Powell's eyes narrowed, and he suddenly drew a revolver.
00:08:49.840 He aimed it at Frederick and pulled the trigger. 0.98
00:08:53.520 Misfire. 0.66
00:08:54.880 In a blur, he pistol whipped Frederick across the head, cracking his skull, crumpling him to the floor.
00:09:00.620 Sergeant Robinson, the Army nurse, rushed out into the hallway and was immediately struck by Powell in the head.
00:09:06.280 Powell then burst into the bedroom and lunged at the sleeping Seward.
00:09:10.140 Powell slashed downward with his Bowie knife.
00:09:13.020 Once, twice, a third time.
00:09:15.180 One blow sliced the left side of Seward's face.
00:09:18.660 Then another ripped a five-inch gash across Seward's right cheek and neck, blood spraying the pillows and the walls.
00:09:25.520 As Seward rolled desperately to the floor, Sergeant Robinson regained his senses, rushed back into the room, and tackled Powell from behind.
00:09:35.300 They grappled, with Powell stabbing Robinson repeatedly in the shoulder.
00:09:40.000 Seward's daughter, Fanny, screamed for help, waking her brother, Gus, who was asleep in the other room.
00:09:44.760 She ran to the bedroom window, flung it open, and screamed into the street.
00:09:49.440 That's when David Harrell mounted his own horse and fled, leaving Powell's horse behind.
00:09:56.200 Now Gus rushed in.
00:09:58.160 With Sergeant Robinson, they wrestled Powell out of the bedroom and into the hallway.
00:10:02.360 But Powell was tall and strongly built and managed to punch his way out of the brawl.
00:10:07.540 He finally thundered down the stairs, out the front door, and into the night.
00:10:11.800 David Harrell was nowhere to be found.
00:10:13.700 So Powell threw away his bloody knife, swung onto his horse, and rode away in the darkness.
00:10:20.280 Secretary Seward, he lay in a pool of his own blood, writhing in pain.
00:10:26.180 Yet somehow, he was still alive.
00:10:31.020 Just a few blocks away, George Azeroth sat at a bar in the Kirkwood House Hotel.
00:10:37.240 He had a room there.
00:10:38.940 So did new Vice President Andrew Johnson.
00:10:42.300 Azeroth was almost uncontrollably nervous.
00:10:45.720 He was way out of his depth.
00:10:47.620 He kept asking the bartender suspicious questions about the vice president's habits.
00:10:52.000 He walked the halls.
00:10:53.160 He drank more whiskey.
00:10:54.280 He procrastinated.
00:10:55.800 He had signed on for what he thought was a kidnapping plot, not murder.
00:11:00.340 He had another drink.
00:11:01.700 Then Azeroth completely lost his nerve.
00:11:03.840 He never even knocked on Johnson's door.
00:11:06.060 He finally stumbled into Washington's gas-lit streets,
00:11:09.820 mounted his horse, and vanished into the night.
00:11:13.620 The vice president, he slept undisturbed.
00:11:21.820 Ford's Theater was like a second home to John Wilkes Booth.
00:11:25.920 Even had his mail delivered there, he had a personal stable in the back.
00:11:29.780 He knew every nook and cranny of the place.
00:11:32.760 All of the workers and the stagehands, they treated him like royalty.
00:11:35.760 And that night, during the play's intermission, Booth finished up a drink at the Star Saloon next door.
00:11:42.240 And then he walked to his stable and took his horse to the alley at the back of the theater where he had a stagehand hold the reins for him.
00:11:50.160 Booth had performed countless times on the Ford Theater stage, and he knew the rhythms of the play, Our American Cousin.
00:11:57.860 He knew the line in the final act that always got the biggest laugh.
00:12:01.920 And that would be the line that would be his cue.
00:12:05.760 10.15. Booth slipped upstairs.
00:12:09.320 There was only one man sitting near the entry to the small vestibule outside the presidential box.
00:12:14.920 It was Charles Forbes, Lincoln's valet, who had ridden to the theater with the Lincolns.
00:12:20.900 Booth approached Forbes and handed him something, most likely his calling card.
00:12:25.360 Booth was famous enough that his calling card opened most doors wherever he went.
00:12:28.860 So Forbes didn't suspect anything when, just a moment later,
00:12:32.040 Booth continued through the vestibule door outside Lincoln's box. In the darkness, Booth
00:12:38.120 felt along the floor for the wooden bar that he had left there earlier. Then he used it to wedge
00:12:43.400 the door shut. He then crept toward the inner door and pulled his weapon from his coat pockets,
00:12:50.740 small single-shot derringer in his right hand, a large bowie knife in his left. He listened to the
00:12:57.380 slightly muffled dialogue of the play and pulled back the hammer quietly of the Derringer. Booth
00:13:03.620 eased open the inner door. There, Lincoln, right in front of him. Mrs. Lincoln sitting on the
00:13:13.040 president's right, then Clara Harris and Major Rathbone. Booth was close enough now to reach out
00:13:19.520 and touch Lincoln's shoulder. An actor named Harry Hawk was now alone on stage, addressing a female
00:13:26.080 character who had just left the stage, and he delivered the line that Booth had been waiting for.
00:13:31.280 Don't know the manners of good society, eh? Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out,
00:13:36.880 old gal. You sock-dologizing old man-trap. At that exact moment, the audience erupted into laughter. 1.00
00:13:45.280 Booth stepped forward, pressed the Derringer toward the back of Lincoln's head, and fired.
00:13:50.480 A muzzle flash lit up the box, then a small cloud of smoke.
00:13:55.480 The president slumped forward, his chin resting on his chest.
00:13:59.760 For a split second, confusion, then Major Rathbone lunged at the assassin,
00:14:03.900 but Booth slashed him viciously with his knife, cutting deep into his left arm.
00:14:08.700 Booth quickly swung himself over the railing of the box, but Rathbone grabbed at Booth's coat,
00:14:13.600 just enough to cause the assassin's boot spur to catch on the flag draped below the box.
00:14:19.740 Booth managed to leap to the stage, landing on his feet,
00:14:22.860 but the fall snapped a bone in his left leg.
00:14:26.280 Booth then rushed to center stage and faced the audience.
00:14:29.420 Thrusting his bloody dagger in the air, he cried,
00:14:32.500 Six Semper Tyrannis.
00:14:34.320 It was Virginia's state motto, which means,
00:14:37.100 Thus Always to Tyrants.
00:14:39.460 Then he yelled,
00:14:40.480 The South is avenged.
00:14:41.800 For a brief moment, some in the audience thought this bizarre spectacle
00:14:45.480 might be part of the play.
00:14:47.820 But as Booth hobbled across the stage and out of sight,
00:14:50.980 Major Rathbone shouted,
00:14:52.600 Stop that man!
00:14:53.680 followed immediately by the anguished voice of Clara Harris, 0.82
00:14:57.000 who yelled,
00:14:57.700 He has shot the president!
00:14:59.740 Panic engulfed the theater.
00:15:01.440 Booth burst through the back door of Ford's,
00:15:03.680 where his horse was still being held for him.
00:15:05.420 He managed to haul himself into the saddle,
00:15:07.920 and within a few moments, he was gone.
00:15:10.880 Lincoln was unconscious, but he still had a pulse.
00:15:14.180 Barely.
00:15:15.400 He was carried directly across the street to a boarding house
00:15:18.000 and placed on the only available bed that was too small for his tall frame.
00:15:22.680 Doctors did their best, but there was little to be done.
00:15:26.500 He had been shot behind his left ear, and the bullet lodged in his brain.
00:15:32.140 Mary Lincoln insisted on staying,
00:15:33.960 though she was too distraught to be kept in the room with her husband.
00:15:37.900 Secretary of War Stanton arrived and kept watch all night,
00:15:40.700 giving orders to pursue the killers as word filtered to him of the attack on Seward.
00:15:46.560 Early the next morning, Abraham Lincoln breathed his last.
00:15:52.260 Stanton wrote out a telegram.
00:15:54.440 It was to be rushed to the War Department, where it could be dispersed across the nation.
00:15:58.800 The telegram read simply,
00:16:01.280 Washington City, April 15, 1865.
00:16:05.900 Abraham Lincoln died this morning at 22 minutes after 7 o'clock.
00:16:10.700 Edwin M. Stanton.
00:16:13.820 With that, the celebration of the war's end turned to mourning.
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00:18:02.740 as john wilkes booth spurred his horse through the streets of washington just after the shooting
00:18:10.140 of president lincoln he was convinced the whole south would celebrate him as a hero
00:18:14.880 booth reached the navy yard bridge where sentries had orders to stop everyone after curfew booth
00:18:22.060 just flashed his famous smile and gave his real name and spun a quick story about heading home
00:18:26.860 to maryland the sentries hadn't heard yet about the assassination so they just waved him through
00:18:32.460 Ten minutes later, his 23-year-old co-conspirator, David Harreld,
00:18:36.800 showed up at the bridge claiming he was headed to Charles County, Maryland.
00:18:40.540 He was also let through.
00:18:42.700 Harreld then met up with Booth, and they rode into Maryland.
00:18:46.740 They reached the Surratt Tavern just after midnight,
00:18:49.720 where they grabbed guns and field glasses that they had stashed there earlier.
00:18:53.200 Then around 4 a.m., they arrived at the farmhouse of Dr. Samuel Mudd.
00:18:58.260 it. Booth was in extreme pain from riding with his broken left leg. Dr. Mudd then set the bone,
00:19:06.660 put a splint on it, and gave Booth crutches. Later, Mudd gave his account to investigators.
00:19:12.860 I do not remember of their having assigned any reason for their great haste, other than that
00:19:17.180 they had made an early start and were anxious to get to Washington as soon as possible.
00:19:22.080 These men remained at my house until about between four and five o'clock in the afternoon.
00:19:28.260 I never saw either of the parties before, nor can I conceive who sent them to my house.
00:19:33.340 Mudd was lying.
00:19:35.460 He had met with Booth and the other conspirators multiple times before,
00:19:39.540 during the planning of the original plot to kidnap Lincoln.
00:19:43.060 Back in Washington, Secretary of War Stanton slammed the city into lockdown.
00:19:48.240 He dashed off telegrams, ordered roads to be watched, and trains inspected.
00:19:52.280 Posters went up, offering a $100,000 reward for Booth and his accomplices,
00:19:56.520 a staggering sum at the time. Stanton enlisted Union Army cavalry and New York City detectives
00:20:03.740 to hunt down Lincoln's killer. Lewis Powell, well, he made Stanton's job easy. After Powell's attack
00:20:10.300 on Seward, he wandered around Washington for a few days before ending up at a boarding house
00:20:15.200 owned by Mary Surratt around 11 p.m. His clothes were still covered in blood and he carried a
00:20:21.440 pickaxe, claiming he was just a handyman there to dig a ditch. But authorities were already there
00:20:27.480 questioning Surratt. She had supported Booth and his conspirators by using her boarding house as
00:20:34.060 a frequent meeting place, as well as storing weapons and supplies for them. She tried to claim
00:20:39.660 she had never seen Powell before, but Powell was arrested and shortly after identified by William
00:20:45.020 Seward's servant, the one who had let Powell into Seward's house. George Azeroth, the guy who was
00:20:52.240 assigned to kill Vice President Johnson but didn't go through with it, he made his way north out of
00:20:57.640 Washington. And after a tip from a suspicious drinking buddy, authorities found weapons and a
00:21:03.500 map in his hotel room. On April 20th, troops dragged him out of bed at his cousin's house
00:21:09.020 in Germantown, Maryland.
00:21:10.880 The news around the conspiracy was tightening.
00:21:14.800 By this time, Booth and Harold were hiding
00:21:17.400 in a pine thicket near Belle Alton, Maryland,
00:21:20.500 with help from a Confederate spy named Thomas Jones.
00:21:24.440 For four nights, they slept in the woods.
00:21:26.980 Jones brought them food and newspapers.
00:21:29.380 Booth brooded over his treatment in the papers,
00:21:31.480 which called him a monster.
00:21:33.100 He wrote in his diary,
00:21:34.260 I am hunted like a dog through swamps in despair.
00:21:38.300 He was still convinced that history would vindicate him.
00:21:41.500 But there was no sign of the South rising up to renew the rebellion like he dreamed.
00:21:46.680 On April 21st, Jones informed Booth and Harold that Union soldiers and detectives were scouring the area south of them.
00:21:54.080 That night, using a small rowboat supplied by Jones, Booth and Harold attempted to cross the Potomac River towards Virginia.
00:22:01.960 In Booth's mind, Virginia was the key to their safety and their freedom.
00:22:05.740 but they got lost in the foggy darkness and veered way off course. By morning, they discovered they
00:22:12.860 were still in Maryland, nine miles upriver from where they had started. Harold managed to find
00:22:19.300 them food and shelter at a friend's farm nearby, and they tried again to cross the Potomac that
00:22:23.840 night. This time, they were successful. Now, once in Virginia, they visited the homes of two separate
00:22:30.360 southern sympathizers, one of them a woman who was a member of the Confederate Secret Service
00:22:35.520 spy network. Both contacts provided food, but no shelter. So instead, Booth and Harold threatened
00:22:42.060 a free black family at Knife Point, forcing them out of their own cabin where the two men spent
00:22:47.780 the night. Booth was charming or cold-blooded, depending on what the situation required to get
00:22:55.220 what he wanted. On April 24th, they hitched a wagon to ride to Port Conway, where they bumped
00:23:01.360 into three Confederate soldiers. One of them was just a smooth-talking private named Willie Jett.
00:23:07.360 The men crossed the Rappahannock River on the ferry together, where Harold proudly told Jett
00:23:12.740 who Booth really was. Jett was starstruck and took them to Richard Garrett's tobacco farm near
00:23:20.020 Port Royal, Virginia. There, Booth introduced himself as John W. Boyd, a wounded Confederate
00:23:26.620 soldier. The Garrett family welcomed Booth, who spent the night, while Harold continued to the
00:23:31.860 next town with the three Confederate soldiers. At the Garrett farm the following morning, Booth
00:23:36.900 relaxed for his first time in days. That afternoon, Harold returned. A short time later, two of their
00:23:43.520 new Confederate soldier friends arrived warning of Union troops searching the area. They had no idea
00:23:49.940 that Willie Jett had already cracked under questioning from Union troops. By the night of
00:23:55.800 April 25th, the Garrett family had developed suspicions about their two guests. The Garrett's
00:24:00.660 sons thought they might be horse thieves. So that night, Booth and Harold were told to sleep in the
00:24:06.300 tobacco barn. Once in there, the Garretts locked it from the outside. At 2 a.m., following the tip
00:24:14.500 from Willie Jett, 29 troopers from the 16th New York Cavalry burst onto the farm. Guns drawn.
00:24:22.000 They questioned Richard Garrett on his front porch.
00:24:24.800 Then one of Garrett's sons, John, spoke up and said,
00:24:27.800 the men you're looking for are in the tobacco barn.
00:24:30.220 The soldiers quickly surrounded him.
00:24:32.760 At first, Lieutenant Luther Baker forced John Garrett into the barn to collect Booth and Harold's weapons.
00:24:38.640 Garrett timidly told the fugitives that they were surrounded and they should surrender.
00:24:43.660 Booth growled. 1.00
00:24:44.920 Damn you. You have betrayed me. 1.00
00:24:47.680 If you don't get out of here, I will shoot you. 1.00
00:24:49.800 Get out of this barn at once. 1.00
00:24:51.620 Booth raised his pistol. Garrett sprinted out of the barn.
00:24:55.640 Lieutenant Baker then gave the fugitives a warning.
00:24:58.540 Surrender, or we will burn down the barn in 15 minutes.
00:25:02.820 Well, that was enough for David Harold. He was ready to give up.
00:25:06.180 Baker demanded that Harold hand over the weapons first.
00:25:09.960 Booth refused. Harold said,
00:25:12.020 Let me out. Quick. I do not know anything about this man.
00:25:15.920 He is a desperate character, and he is going to shoot me. 0.97
00:25:18.680 To which Booth added, 0.98
00:25:19.600 Let him out. That young man is innocent.
00:25:23.060 The soldiers eased open the door and Harold rushed out.
00:25:26.780 Now Booth was inside the barn, alone, on crutches, armed with two revolvers,
00:25:32.840 a Spencer repeating carbine, and a Bowie knife.
00:25:36.540 A few days earlier, he had written in his diary,
00:25:39.440 I have too great a soul to die like a criminal.
00:25:42.320 Booth heard the man outside arranging kindling against the barn walls.
00:25:46.480 He made a desperate plea to go out on his own terms.
00:25:49.600 Captain, I know you to be a brave man, and I believe you to be honorable.
00:25:54.600 I am a cripple. I have got but one leg.
00:25:58.600 If you will withdraw your men in line 100 yards from the door, I will come out and fight you. 0.98
00:26:03.600 Captain, I have had half a dozen opportunities to shoot you, but I did not.
00:26:08.600 Lieutenant Baker replied,
00:26:10.600 We did not come here to fight you. We simply came to make you a prisoner.
00:26:14.600 Booth haggled for some more time, but Baker stood firm. Finally Booth said,
00:26:18.600 Well, my brave boys, prepare a stretcher for me.
00:26:22.760 The order was given, and the soldiers set fire to the barn.
00:26:27.840 Inside, Booth still clutched his rifle,
00:26:30.540 clearly prepared to try to shoot his way out,
00:26:32.560 playing as a tragic hero to the bitter end.
00:26:35.460 And then, against explicit orders not to shoot,
00:26:38.920 Sergeant Boston Corbett spotted Booth
00:26:41.100 through a crack in the boards.
00:26:43.140 He aimed his revolver and fired.
00:26:45.300 The bullet ripped through Booth's neck, severing his spinal cord.
00:26:52.240 He collapsed, paralyzed from the neck down.
00:26:55.280 Soldiers dragged him from the engulfing flames and laid him on Garrett's porch.
00:26:59.580 Booth looked at the detectives and said,
00:27:02.320 Tell mother I die for my country.
00:27:05.340 Colonel Everton Conger demanded to know who had shot Booth.
00:27:09.520 Sergeant Corbett immediately stepped forward.
00:27:11.920 He said he was the one that pulled the trigger because he thought Booth was about to shoot at his fellow soldiers.
00:27:18.200 Booth's life lingered for a few hours and then begged the soldiers to kill him.
00:27:23.660 But Secretary of War Stanton wanted him alive for questioning and, if possible, a trial.
00:27:29.680 But it was apparent to all those present that Booth would not survive.
00:27:34.080 Shortly after dawn, the assassin died.
00:27:37.440 Exactly 12 days after he forever altered American history.
00:27:42.400 Stanton ordered that Booth's body be returned to Washington and buried in secret,
00:27:46.860 the old arsenal penitentiary. It was a military prison.
00:27:50.480 With Booth dead and his co-conspirators in custody,
00:27:53.040 Stanton turned his attention now towards the other most wanted rebel in the land,
00:27:57.520 Confederate President Jefferson Davis.
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00:29:21.440 Two and a half weeks before he was murdered at Ford's Theater,
00:29:24.900 President Lincoln had a meeting with the generals, Grant, Sherman, outside of Petersburg, Virginia.
00:29:30.480 With the end of the war in sight, Sherman asked Lincoln what should be done with the Confederate soldiers and political leaders when it was over.
00:29:37.160 Lincoln didn't want retribution.
00:29:40.300 He told the generals,
00:29:42.020 Let them have their horses to plow with,
00:29:44.340 and if you like, their guns to shoot crows with.
00:29:47.740 I want no one punished.
00:29:50.240 Treat them liberally all round.
00:29:52.600 We want those people to return to their allegiance to the Union
00:29:55.940 and submit to the laws.
00:30:00.240 Sherman now wondered if that principle extended
00:30:02.700 to the Confederate president, Jefferson Davis.
00:30:05.720 Lincoln understood the unique conundrum posed by Davis.
00:30:10.020 If the federal government executed Davis, he would become a martyr in the South, perhaps reviving the conflict.
00:30:16.420 If he was put on trial for treason and somehow acquitted, it would be the court admitting that secession wasn't treason after all.
00:30:24.020 Lincoln could not admit this in public, but privately he expressed hope that when the war finally ended,
00:30:30.740 Jefferson Davis might just conveniently escape the country.
00:30:34.860 Part of the strange phenomenon of the Civil War is how it caused capable men like Jefferson Davis
00:30:40.240 and Robert E. Lee to switch sides and suddenly war against the government that they had served
00:30:44.760 their whole lives. Davis was a graduate of West Point. He was a respected U.S. Army officer who
00:30:50.680 was wounded during the Mexican-American War. He served as the U.S. Secretary of War under
00:30:55.660 President Franklin Pierce. He was a U.S. Senator from Mississippi. And as secession talk consumed
00:31:01.760 the Senate, he was one of the so-called Committee of 13 that tried to put together yet another
00:31:07.920 compromise and avoid war. But when Mississippi seceded, he resigned his Senate seat, and just
00:31:15.220 a month later, the new Confederacy named him as president, though he didn't want the job because
00:31:21.080 he preferred a military role. As a slaveholder, Davis, like so many other Southern leaders,
00:31:27.400 let his racist devotion to that institution override all other loyalties.
00:31:37.800 On the night of April 2nd, 1865, as mobs looted warehouses and fires consumed the Richmond skyline,
00:31:45.620 Jefferson Davis and his cabinet loaded the last train out of the Confederate capital.
00:31:51.480 Davis had sent his wife, Verena, and their four young children out of the city days earlier.
00:31:57.180 Before they left, he gave his wife a revolver and taught her how to use it.
00:32:01.440 He wanted her to flee as far away from him as possible.
00:32:04.880 The government of the Confederacy, what remained of it, was now on the run.
00:32:09.520 But for Davis, it wasn't about saving his own skin or that of his cabinet members.
00:32:14.120 He was determined to keep the Confederate government going.
00:32:17.140 He expected that he would likely be killed by Union soldiers at some point,
00:32:22.320 but he was not going to surrender.
00:32:24.580 Davis and his cabinet fled south by rail,
00:32:27.500 carrying what was left of the Confederate archives and the Treasury
00:32:30.540 towards Danville, Virginia, where they set up a temporary capital.
00:32:35.500 There, Davis immediately wrote an address to the people of the Confederacy.
00:32:39.800 It is equally unwise and unworthy of us,
00:32:43.760 as patriots engaged in a most sacred cause,
00:32:47.620 to allow our energies to falter,
00:32:50.100 our spirits to grow faint,
00:32:52.420 or our efforts to become relaxed under reverses however calamitous.
00:32:58.960 We have now entered upon a new phase of the struggle,
00:33:02.840 the memory of which is to endure for all ages.
00:33:07.560 Let us meet the foe with fresh defiance,
00:33:10.840 with unconquered and unconquerable hearts.
00:33:14.540 Just five days after that address came the devastating blow.
00:33:18.840 General Lee's surrender at Appomattox.
00:33:22.420 Davis moved his government then to Greensboro, North Carolina.
00:33:26.940 There, his remaining generals laid out the harsh reality about their badly outnumbered forces.
00:33:32.540 Still, Davis refused to accept defeat.
00:33:34.920 He believed a core of resistance could be rallied west of the Mississippi River.
00:33:40.200 Even after Lee's surrender, President Lincoln made no move to capture Davis.
00:33:44.820 But Davis was clearly on the minds of Northerners.
00:33:48.720 And judging by the press, they weren't thinking as charitably as Lincoln.
00:33:53.720 The New York Times wrote, quote,
00:33:55.860 It's doubtful whether Jeff Davis will ever be captured.
00:33:59.180 He is probably already in direct flight for Mexico, but if he is caught, he should be hung.
00:34:08.380 The morning after Lincoln's assassination, Davis had no idea what had happened. 0.86
00:34:13.460 He wouldn't get the news until four days later.
00:34:16.740 In the meantime, northern newspapers, they were already accusing Davis of being the ringleader of the conspiracy to kill Lincoln.
00:34:23.640 But Davis didn't know John Wilkes Booth. He had no knowledge of Booth's plan.
00:34:29.700 Lincoln's death only deepened Davis' resolve to keep the Confederacy alive
00:34:34.160 because he expected that the South would be dealt with much more harshly under a new president, Andrew Johnson.
00:34:40.780 If Davis had wanted to avoid capture himself, he likely could have by reaching a coast and
00:34:46.880 sailing to Europe or the Bahamas or Cuba or Mexico, all options that were presented to him.
00:34:52.300 But instead, he stubbornly insisted on keeping the Confederate government going.
00:34:57.180 By April 27th, that seemed less likely because the day before John Wilkes Booth was killed.
00:35:04.000 Now, Secretary of War Stanton ordered Union cavalry units to fan out across the South
00:35:09.260 in pursuit of Davis.
00:35:11.460 Davis moved his mobile government
00:35:12.900 to Charlotte, North Carolina,
00:35:14.240 then to South Carolina.
00:35:16.020 He had developed a new aim
00:35:17.340 to reach Texas,
00:35:18.360 where the Confederacy
00:35:19.120 could regroup there,
00:35:20.580 form a new cavalry force,
00:35:22.600 and keep fighting the war.
00:35:24.900 But the South was collapsing
00:35:26.160 faster than Davis could ride.
00:35:27.840 By early May,
00:35:28.640 Davis had made it into Georgia,
00:35:30.140 where he reunited
00:35:31.420 with his wife and children.
00:35:33.140 He stayed on the move
00:35:34.080 with his family,
00:35:34.840 traveling with the ever-shrinking escort
00:35:36.620 and a few remaining cabinet members.
00:35:39.260 And at the same time, President Andrew Johnson signed a proclamation offering a $100,000 reward for Davis' capture.
00:35:46.380 Despite the lack of evidence, Johnson's proclamation implicated Davis in the conspiracy to kill Lincoln.
00:35:52.860 The Union troops scouring the South for Davis now had an extra financial motivation.
00:36:02.160 Union forces tracked Davis down using intelligence gathered from captured officials,
00:36:07.320 intercepted communications and local informants, especially newly freed slaves.
00:36:13.700 The net was tightening.
00:36:15.720 Two hard-charging cavalry units closed in on Davis,
00:36:19.040 a 400-man force from Michigan and a separate 150-man unit from Wisconsin.
00:36:24.780 On May 10th, Davis and his party camped in the woods near Irwinville in southeast Georgia.
00:36:31.600 The Michigan and Wisconsin units had been tracking Davis independently,
00:36:35.060 neither knew that the other unit was in the area.
00:36:37.320 Early in the morning darkness, they mistook each other for Confederate forces and opened fire.
00:36:45.140 Blue uniforms firing on blue uniforms.
00:36:48.420 Two soldiers were killed, several wounded, before officers managed to stop the chaos.
00:36:53.500 Davis' camp was startled awake by gunfire and a sudden storm of troops on horseback.
00:36:58.440 Davis was sleeping in a full gray suit and riding boots, just in case he had to make a run for it.
00:37:04.040 As Union troops closed in, Davis' wife handed him a raglan overcoat, known as a waterproof.
00:37:11.580 It was a loose-fitting cloak that he threw over his shoulders.
00:37:15.360 He glanced around desperately for his hat, but when he couldn't find it, his wife draped her shawl over his head.
00:37:21.440 Davis then bolted from the tent, sprinting towards the woods, but he didn't make it far.
00:37:26.740 A Union soldier galloped into his path and leveled his carbine at Davis.
00:37:31.100 His wife saw the soldier take aim, ran from the tent, and threw her arms around Davis.
00:37:37.180 It was over for the Confederacy's first and last president.
00:37:42.020 The image of Davis wearing a cloak during that capture quickly spread through the northern press.
00:37:48.000 But it was exaggerated into claims that he was disguised as a woman wearing his wife's dress.
00:37:53.040 Newspapers were filled with cartoons of Davis in a hoop skirt.
00:37:56.980 Within a week, the famous showman P.T. Barnum wrote to the Secretary of War, Stanton,
00:38:01.820 requesting to buy the supposed dress that Davis was wearing when he was captured.
00:38:06.480 He wanted to add it to his American Museum in downtown New York City, but Stanton denied the
00:38:11.620 request. Stanton stashed Davis's overcoat and shawl in a safe inside of his Washington office.
00:38:18.440 It was clearly not a dress and a bonnet, but he didn't necessarily want the public to know that.
00:38:24.540 If they wanted to believe that the Confederate president was caught trying to escape in his wife's clothes, that was really pretty fine with him.
00:38:35.520 Got PC Optimum points? Visit Shoppers Drug Mart for the bonus redemption event.
00:38:40.360 And get more for your points. Friday, August 14th to Wednesday, August 19th. Valid in-store and online.
00:38:46.600 For more of the history that inspired this podcast series, be sure to read The American
00:38:56.240 Story, The Beginnings, by David Barton and Tim Barton. Available now at wallbuilders.com.
00:39:11.320 Jefferson Davis was transported under heavy guard to Fort Monroe, Virginia.
00:39:16.440 There, he was locked in a casemate prison cell, indicted for treason, and held for two years without trial.
00:39:24.460 Just as Lincoln had anticipated, Davis' case was problematic for the federal government.
00:39:29.700 It couldn't quite decide what to do with a man who would help tear the country in two.
00:39:34.040 If he was put on trial, either verdict would bring its own turmoil.
00:39:39.780 In May 1867, the government let Davis walk free on a $100,000 bond.
00:39:45.720 One of the men who signed that bond was the abolitionist Garrett Smith, a member of the
00:39:51.480 Secret Six who had helped fund John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry. Smith and other Northerners
00:39:58.040 argued that Davis deserved either a speedy trial or his liberty. The country needed healing,
00:40:03.960 not endless grudges. For the Lincoln conspirators, justice moved much faster.
00:40:11.800 President Andrew Johnson and the Secretary of War, Stanton, they ordered a military tribunal.
00:40:16.400 Eight defendants were tried at the old Arsenal Penitentiary in Washington, D.C.
00:40:21.060 Three of them got life in prison.
00:40:23.400 One got a shorter prison sentence.
00:40:25.820 And the remaining four, including Lewis Powell, who tried to kill Secretary of State Seward in his home,
00:40:31.200 David Harreld, who traveled with John Wilkes Booth as he tried to evade capture,
00:40:35.540 George Azeroth, the man who was supposed to kill Vice President Johnson,
00:40:39.100 and Mary Surratt, who owned the tavern in the boarding house
00:40:43.240 where Booth held meetings and stored his weapons.
00:40:46.580 Together, the four of them were hanged on July 7, 1865.
00:40:55.500 Surratt's execution was controversial.
00:40:58.760 Five members of the nine-man military tribunal
00:41:01.640 asked that President Johnson grant her clemency,
00:41:04.600 but Johnson denied the request.
00:41:07.560 She was the first woman executed by the U.S. government.
00:41:12.180 Dr. Samuel Mudd, who had treated Booth's broken leg,
00:41:15.680 he was sentenced to life in prison in Fort Jefferson
00:41:18.260 on an island 70 miles off the Florida coast.
00:41:21.480 But in 1869, President Johnson pardoned him,
00:41:24.380 in part because of his help in stopping the spread
00:41:26.980 of a yellow fever outbreak at the prison.
00:41:30.700 Miraculously, Secretary of State William Seward
00:41:33.280 survived Lewis Powell's vicious knife attack.
00:41:35.940 So did his son, Frederick, whose skull was cracked in his struggle to keep Powell out
00:41:40.800 of his father's room that night.
00:41:42.940 But Seward's wife, Frances, who was already fragile, died two months after the attack.
00:41:48.820 Seward's daughter, Fanny, who took care of him through the horrible injuries, died a
00:41:52.820 year and a half later of tuberculosis.
00:41:56.180 Clara Harris, who had sat in the presidential box at Ford Theatre with her fiancé, Major
00:42:00.680 Henry Rathbone, later married him.
00:42:03.820 Strathbone had bravely grappled with Booth that fateful night.
00:42:07.660 But over the years, guilt and paranoia consumed him.
00:42:11.500 In 1883, he shot and stabbed Clara to death in a fit of madness
00:42:15.860 before trying and failing to take his own life.
00:42:19.520 Doctors declared him insane, and he was committed to an asylum.
00:42:27.040 A special funeral train carried Abraham Lincoln's body on its solemn journey
00:42:31.660 from Washington, D.C. to his home in Springfield, Illinois.
00:42:36.220 The 1,600-mile trek became a rolling national wake,
00:42:40.920 with over 7 million Americans lining the tracks in grief.
00:42:48.040 In 1871, just six years after Lincoln's assassination,
00:42:52.020 Tad Lincoln died of tuberculosis.
00:42:54.980 He was just 18 years old.
00:42:57.460 Having lost three sons and her husband,
00:42:59.920 Mary Todd Lincoln battled crushing grief and declining health. She wore mourning black for
00:43:06.460 the rest of her life. Her eldest son, Robert, had her briefly institutionalized, something she never
00:43:12.780 forgave him for. She was living with her sister in Illinois when she died in 1882 at the age of 63.
00:43:20.420 Robert Lincoln lived until 1926. He became a successful attorney, a businessman, and a U.S.
00:43:27.020 Ambassador to England and Secretary of War under Presidents James Garfield and Chester
00:43:32.120 Arthur, the bloodiest, most tragic period in American history, was finally over.
00:43:39.040 Now the nation turned back to the problem of how to put so many broken pieces back together
00:43:44.040 again.
00:43:45.700 As President Lincoln had put it just weeks before his death, to do all which may achieve
00:43:50.520 and cherish a just and lasting peace
00:43:53.780 among ourselves and with all nations.
00:44:00.080 Coming up on the American Story, The Beginnings.
00:44:04.200 Suddenly, the police and armed white attackers open fire. 0.93
00:44:09.120 Black men fall by the dozens, 0.97
00:44:11.360 blood pooling out on the streets. 0.96
00:44:13.640 The marchers scatter, many rush into the Mechanics Institute
00:44:16.960 and barricade the doors, but the attackers follow.
00:44:20.440 Policemen smash the building's windows and pour gunfire inside, where delegates huddle for cover.
00:44:26.560 Some men leap from a second-story window only to be shot the moment they hit the ground.
00:44:31.620 Police break inside the building.
00:44:33.700 Some delegates wave white handkerchiefs and surrender,
00:44:36.300 only to be shot, trampled, beaten with clubs, and stabbed repeatedly as they lie wounded.
00:44:43.000 Some, on their knees, begging for mercy, are killed on the spot.
00:44:50.440 Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people.