The Untold Story at Ford's Theatre
Excerpted from Backstage at the Lincoln Assassination: The Untold Story of the Actors and Stagehands at Ford’s Theatre by Thomas A. Bogar.
Imagine for a moment that the president of the United States has just been murdered in your workplace by one of your most admired and charismatic colleagues, as you stood nearby. Picture the chaos that erupts around you as your mind races, fearing for your own safety and of being thought complicit, recollecting in panic any ill-chosen words you ever uttered that could be construed as hostile to the president, as well as the times you were seen socializing with the assassin — as recently, in fact, as the drink you took with him a few hours ago in the bar next door.
From that instant onward, your world would never be the same. You would be interrogated, perhaps imprisoned; you would have to provide testimony — scrupulously accurate and consistent — and endure interview after interview for weeks, months, years, constantly retelling and reliving every detail of an event that occurred in less than thirty seconds. For the rest of your life, you would move frequently, avoid reporters, and perhaps change your name. “That night” would define the rest of your life and headline your obituary.
Precisely that scenario became the terrifying new reality for forty-six all-too-human individuals employed by Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., on the night of April 14, 1865. The events of that night have been told and retold ever since, etched deeply into our national consciousness. But this is not the story of its two central figures, John Wilkes Booth and Abraham Lincoln, and the catastrophic four years that brought assassin and martyr together. Rather, it is that of the largely anonymous actors, managers, and stagehands of Ford’s Theatre on that fateful night and what befell them afterward.
Most of the forty-six were completely innocent — unsuspecting of any plot, regardless of whether it was the original plan to abduct the president or the final one to assassinate him — yet they were nevertheless caught up in a terrifying round of arrests, interrogations, and life-altering consequences. Some unquestionably were complicit in one or the other of the plans; evidence suggests that Ford’s Theatre was a hotbed of secessionist thought and sympathy. But most of those involved shrewdly managed to escape detection and punishment. A few exceptionally fortunate ones had the night off or had finished their parts early and left for the evening, and thus escaped infamy.
Previous retellings of the events of that night have followed either Booth out the back door to his fate in a burning barn at the Garrett farm, or Lincoln out the front to his, in a bedroom across the street in Petersen’s boardinghouse. Those left behind, huddling in fear on the stage, listening to cries of “Burn the place down!” filtering in from the furious crowd outside as soldiers took up stations throughout, deserve to have their story told.
Some of these actors, managers, and stagehands never spoke of that night again except privately; others were considerably, almost competitively, voluble. Several divulged pieces in various interviews over many years but never provided one coherent narrative. Their reticence or insistence in telling their version of its events would vary over time and according to their audience.
Any definitive account of the details of the assassination must by necessity incorporate the most credible and objective fragments from all of these accounts, which emerged anywhere between one hour and sixty years after the fact. I have consciously given preference to the perceptions and words of those who experienced that night, and its subsequent harrowing days, from backstage, rather than to accounts by audience members, as has largely been the case to date.
Sadly for the historian, these were not public figures who left their papers to posterity. Quite the opposite: think how many letters were thrust into fireplaces in the days immediately following the terrible event, and how many correspondents held their breath waiting for the knock on the door that indicated the discovery of letters they had written to the murderer. Certainly, the loss of any normal paper trail, coupled with the silence of those involved and the questionable veracity of those who did speak out, has made it exceptionally difficult to uncover and relate their stories.
Most of these unfortunate figures have faded into obscurity. After strutting and fretting their hour upon the stage, they have become “walking shadows” from whom we have “heard no more.” If anything is remembered of them, it is usually, erroneously, that they were members of “Laura Keene’s Company,” which in reality was only three visiting actors: Keene, Harry Hawk, and John Dyott; the rest were members of the resident stock company of Ford’s Theatre. But they were all casualties, collateral damage from Booth’s rash act.
They were, for the most part, “war actors” and recently hired workers, a ragtag group who had only worked together a few months, in some cases a few weeks or even days. While some were seasoned professionals with Broadway credits, others had barely set foot on a stage. A handful of the backstage staff were skilled craftsmen and shrewd businessmen; a few were simply supplementing day jobs, performing menial tasks.
The lives of those who were present backstage that night would forever be divided into Before and After. They would always feel a surreal bond with those they had worked beside that night, even a few they had met only days before. Whenever they encountered each other again, or dared to speak of it, it would always be “that night,” with no further reference needed.
For some, the assassination meant the end of their careers, and for more than one, nearly the end of their lives. Others forged ahead, coping as best they could with being imprisoned and interrogated as suspected co-conspirators. A few were able to put it all behind them and go on to fulfill successful careers for forty, fifty, even sixty more years. Several of the forty-six kept in touch with each other, monitoring publicly and privately who would be “the last survivor.” Most of them carried to their graves the extent of their friendship with John Wilkes Booth, that most charismatic of fellow actors. But without question, he haunted their lives from that fateful moment forward.
