The Man Who Witnessed the Assassination of Abe Lincoln

On this episode of Our American Stories, Ford's Theater reenactor Mike Robinson tells the full unknown story through the eyes of A.C. Richards, Washington's Superintendent of Police.

Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories. Ac Richards was
the Chief of Police for Washington, d c. In eighteen
sixty five. He attended a play called Our American Cousin
at the Ford's Theater on Good Friday. But the Chief
wasn't there for the performance. He was there to see

(00:31):
the President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, who the
papers had announced would be there that night. But Richards
saw more than just the President. He witnessed the assassination
of Abraham Lincoln. The Chief story is told by Mike Robinson,
a reenactor who inhabits Chief Richard's experience to share with

(00:54):
audiences the memories of that fateful night. Here is Mike
Robinson is the character of the Chief, to tell the
story of the assassination of America's greatest president.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
My name is Ac Richards. I was a superintendent of
Metropolitan Police from eighteen sixty four until eighteen seventy eight.
You may address me as Chief, and I was in
the audience that night of Friday, April fourteenth, eighteen sixty five.
Would you be at all interested in what I recall
from that evening? Well, the Washington you see today is

(01:31):
much different than the Washington of my time. In fact,
Charles Dickens came here in the eighteen forties and he said,
Washington is a city of magnificent intentions. It has grand
boulevards that started nothing and go nowhere. Indeed, we had
not a single paved road. In fact, the avenue just
down here, which was intended to connect the executive branch

(01:55):
with the legislative branch, was unpaved. It was built on
a floodplain. Every time it rained, it would fled out.
In eighteen sixty our entire population was a mere seventy
five thousand people, and none of us locked their doors
at night. And then the war came and our lives
were changed forever. By eighteen sixty five, our population had

(02:18):
grown to well over two hundred thousand people, and we
all locked our doors at night. The people who came
here during those war years were petty foggers and scoundrels.
They were people trying to get something out of the
federal government. I'm sure that's no longer true in your time,
is it. But they required a great deal of entertainment.
So Washington became a very exciting place to live. By

(02:41):
eighteen sixty five, we had over thirty five hundred saloons.
If you did not like the Star Saloon on this
hide the Ford's theater, you could well go to the Greenback.
On this side we had more than four hundred elchil
phrases houses of ill fame. In fact, early in the
World War one of the generals who was here liked

(03:01):
to segregate all of the ladies of the night on
the south side of the avenue. The general's name, by
the way, was Hooker. We called that Hooker's Division. Indeed,
those war years were very exciting years, and there was
no more exciting time than that week in April of
eighteen sixty five. That week started with palm Sunday April ninth,

(03:25):
eighteen sixty five, when Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army
of Northern Virginia, and we started to think that perhaps
this terrible time was finally ending. Now I know that
many of you in the audience think of our war
the Rebellion as a remarkably romantic period, beautiful ladies in
hookskirts and handsome, brave young gentlemen in military uniforms. And indeed,

(03:49):
we all enthusiastically marched off the war in sixty one
after all this war would last for only three months
or so, They told us what fools were we. By
eighteen sixty five we had all seen the elephant. By
eighteen sixty five we knew what war was. By eighteen

(04:10):
sixty five we had lost more than seven hundred and
fifty thousand of our finest young men, So many young men.
This was a whole generation of future leaders that have
been taken from us. There was hardly a household in
the nation, north or south that was untouched by Mourning.

(04:31):
It was a cruel, cruel war. So you can imagine
how we felt that following Monday when we learned that
Robert E. Lee had surrendered the army of Northern Virginia.
Now there were still over one hundred thousand Confederates in
the field, and the Confederate government had not yet been captured.
Everyone knew that Bobby Lee had the most important army

(04:52):
in the Confederacy, and we started to think that perhaps
this was the beginning of the end. So a group
of us Lincoln and I must admit I was a
Lincoln man. Then I am a Lincoln man now, and
I shall always be a Lincoln man. A group of
us got together and we marched up to the White
House to serenade the President. As we were singing, he

(05:15):
came out on the balcony and we shouted speech speech.
There was no one better speech of find than Abe Lincoln,
and we expected something very special this evening. After all,
he was the man who had led us through this
terrible time. But old Abe he hated to speak off
the cuff. He told us if we would come back
the following evening, he would be sure to have a

(05:37):
few words prepared to say to us. Of course we
did that. Well. I must tell you that he surprised
us by what he had to say. It was not
at all an inspirational speech. It was a very technical
talk about how he would reunite the nation, what would
come to be called reconstruction. He said that he would
emancipate all the slaves. Now that's certainly surprised, no one is.

(06:00):
Many of you know, in January sixty three he had
issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which treated all the slaves in
Secession territory. And indeed, by February sixty five we had
passed the Thirteenth Amendment. It had not yet been ratified,
but we were well on the way to eradicating this
terrible blot, the blot of slavery, which lay upon our constitution.

(06:22):
What he said, in addition was that he felt that
intelligent black men and those who fought for the Union
cause deserve the right to vote. Now, he had certainly
come a long way from the time when he was
advocating colonizing all blacks outside of the nation. But upon reflection,
it seemed only just more than two hundred thousand brave

(06:44):
black men fought for the Union cause. Two thirds of
them were former slaves. They were fighting for their families,
but they were also fighting for our country. Without them,
we could not have won the war had they not
earned the right to vote. Many of us sought so,
but not all. There were three men standing on the

(07:05):
periphery of the crowd, one dressed all in black, turned
to the other too, and he said, and now, by God,
I'll put him through. That's the last speech she'll ever make.

Speaker 1 (07:16):
And you're listening to Mike Robinson. The story of Lincoln's
assassination continues here on Our American Story. Liehbib here the
host of our American Stories. Every day on this show,
we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country, stories

(07:38):
from our big cities and small towns. But we truly
can't do the show without you. Our stories are free
to listen to, but they're not free to make. If
you love what you hear, go to Ouramerican Stories dot
com and click the donate button. Give a little, give
a lot. Go to auramericanstories dot com and give. And

(08:09):
we returned to our American Stories and to make Robinson
in the character of Chief A. C. Richards, who witnessed
the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, let's listen to what he saw.

Speaker 2 (08:25):
Friday, April fourteenth, eighteen sixty five, when I learned that
Abraham Lincoln would be here at Ford's Theater that evening,
I decided I should be too. Now this was good Friday.
I would not have normally come to the theater on
that evening. Indeed I came that evening not to see
to play our American cousin. I came to see that

(08:47):
great man, Abraham Lincoln. Well, the play was scheduled to
commence to date that evening. The presidential party was nowhere
in sight. The show started anyway. It was not until
about half past eight to President Lincoln and his party
came into the building. They climbed the spiral staircase and
were seen walking across the dress circle. The leading lady

(09:08):
stopped the play. The band rose up and played Hail
to the Chief, and the audience went mad. This was
the man who had saved our nation. We watched him
as he walked around the dress circle and went through
this yellow door. He next appeared just here, turned to us,

(09:30):
smiled at us. Obviously he was enjoying us as much
as we enjoyed him. Duffed us hat, and the play recommenced.
About nine that evening, another actor in this drama came
into the theater, but not through the front door. This
time he entered through the stage door, dropped through a trapdoor,
proceeded beneath the stage, remember the play was ongoing. Emerged

(09:53):
from a trap door on this side, went down the
alley and into the star saloon. He would fortify himself
for the dirty your work yet to come. Came back
into the theater shortly before ten that evening. He was
seen talking to some of the patrons in the back
of the theater. Can anyone tell me what Wilkes Booth's profession was?
He was an actor indeed, and this was the largest

(10:15):
role he had ever played. This evening, he was playing
on a world stage. He was not about to hide anything.
He would do this evening he sought to achieve his
place in history. Shortly after ten, he climbed the spiral staircase,
walked around address circle to a man sitting just outside
the presidential door. The man's name was Charles Forbes. He

(10:36):
was a presidential messenger. Booth walked up to Forbes, reached
into his pocket, and presented Ford with a calling card,
upon which it said Jay Wilkes Booth. Lincoln had seen
Booth on this very stage in sixty three and admired
his acting talent. Forbes the labed Booth with this yellow
door into the outer vestibule of the box. Booth closed

(10:58):
the door and propped it shot. He was waiting for
something he knew would take place during the third act,
second scene of this play. The play was Our American Cousin.
It was a comedy about a bumpkin from Vermont who
went to England to marry an English girl and then
her mother found that he had no money. Well you
can imagine what happened to that marriage. It would be

(11:20):
a point in his play, third act, second scene, when
the leading man would be the only man on stage,
leaving it unobstructed for an escape. He has just been
told by his potential mother in law that he cannot
marry his fiancee, and he addresses her as she walks
off stage. Not familiar with the manners of good society, Hey, well,
I guess I know enough to turn you inside that

(11:42):
old gal. You sockedologize an old man trap, at which
point the audience burst into laughter. That was Who's cue.
He entered the inner box, approaching president rapidly from behind,
reached in toys pocket, pulled out of forty four caliber darrenger,
and fired once into the back of the president's head.
The first man to realize what had happened was Rathbone.
He had been sitting in the corner. He jumped up

(12:02):
and struggled Booth, threw the gun down, pulled out at dager,
and tried to stab Wrathbone in the heart. Wrathbone defended himself,
but he was sliced to the bone. Booth leapt to
the stage, landed awkwardly on his right leg, went down
on that knee. As he rose up, he brandished the
bloody dagger above his head, turned to the audience and shouted,
sick sip for tyrannus. It's the state model of Virginia.

(12:23):
We had used it in our war against old King George.
It means us always to tyrants. Not coincidentally, it's what's
reputed to have been said upon the assassination of Julius Caesar.
That was Booth's statement. He was saving the country by
assassinating a tyrant. He was brutus to Lincoln's Julius Caesar.
He ran across stage and out the state tour madejor Rathbone,

(12:46):
came to the edge of the balcony and shouted, stop
that man, Stop that man. That's when I first realized
something was terribly amiss. I left my seat in the
audience and made my way to the stage. That whole
period of time from when the gun was fired until
when I arrived on stage was only slightly more than
a minute, but it seemed an eternity. I searched the

(13:06):
darkened stage for the collprit, but could find no one. Eventually,
I made my way to the stage door and opened
it just in time to hear the sound of receding
hoof beats. It was not until I came back into
the theater that I was told that the president had
been assassinated. I was the first officer on the scene,
so I immediately started the investigation. The first person I
interviewed was Miss Laura Keene. She was a star of

(13:28):
the show. She told me, I know not who shot
the president, but the man who ran across stage was
Wilkes Booth. We knew within half an hour that John
Wilkes Booth was the assassinate. Subsequent to that, I talked
to mister Ferguson, who had been sitting just here. Ferguson
on the Greenback Saloon on this side of Ford's Theater.

(13:49):
He told me he had frequently seen Booth associating with
Davy Harreld, Louis Payne, George Atsrot, and John Surratt. Shortly thereafter,
we learned that this was a much larger conspiracy. We
heard in an attempt to be made on the Secretary
of State's life. This was not just to assassinate our
beloved president, it was to destroy our very nation. We

(14:10):
launched the largest man hunt in American history to run
the Miss grandsta Ground twelve days later, outside of Port Royal, Virginia,
Booth was caught in a tobacco barn in the early
hours of the morning of April twenty sixth, eighteen sixty five,
long before sunrise. The cavalry set the bar in the
fire to force him out. He could be seen moving
about inside When he reached for his rifle and headed

(14:31):
for the door. Sergeant Boston Corbett, fearing for the lives
of his men, pulled his pistol, took game and fired once,
striking Booth in the neck and severing his spine. He
would die within two hours, a slow, miserable death appropriate
to a dastardly assassin. But do you know what his
final words were? Tell my mother, I die for my country.

(14:57):
In his own mind, he was the hero this tragedy
he himself had authored. He had saved the country by
assassinating a tyrant. John Walkes. Booth ought to achieve a
place in history, which indeed he did. But do any
of you think of John Walkespooth as a great American hero.
He shall be condemned through eternity as the assassin of

(15:19):
Abraham Lincoln. That night of Friday, April fourteenth, eighteen sixty five,
our beloved President lay dying in his box. He was
attended by three physicians. They concluded almost immediately that the
woe would be mortal, but the theater was not an
appropriate place for such a man to die. They carried

(15:40):
him around the dress circle, down the spiral staircase, and
out into the street, looking for a place to make
him as comfortable as possible. In a few hours he
had remaining to him. One of the boarders at the
Peterson House just across the streets recognized their dilemma and
invited them in there. They brought the President in took

(16:00):
him straight back to the back bedroom words seven twenty two.
The next morning, April fifteenth, eighteen sixty five, Abraham Lincoln
passed into history. As he died, a light, cold rain
began to fall over Washington. It was as if the
very heavens wept at the loss of our beloved President.

(16:23):
I shall always remember that terrible evening. It started with
a small comedy and ended as a large tragedy. Good
day to you all.

Speaker 1 (16:45):
And a terrific job on the production editing and storytelling
by John Elfner, and a special thanks to Mike Robinson,
who played the part of a C. Richards, the chief
of police for Washington, d C. And he does this
at the Ford Theater. And what a story it is, folks,
Good Friday of all days for this to happen. When

(17:08):
he gets to the theater thirty minutes late, the play stops,
Hail to the Chief is played, and there's a thunderous ovation.
America has finally been relieved of war, and the future
beckons without it. And what a life that John Wilkes
Booth lived, And what a decision to make. And he

(17:28):
made it thinking he was saving the country, and he
was tracked down just days later and killed. We have
that story on our website, as I shared with you earlier,
James Swanson's remarkable book Manhunt, The Twelve Day Chase for
Lincoln's Killer, the story of Lincoln's assassination as told by

(17:50):
the Washington DC Police chief here on our American Stories