Terry Alford - In the Houses of Their Dead: The Lincolns, the Booths, and the Spirits

OTHER BOOKS BY TERRY ALFORD

Fortunes Fool: The Life of John Wilkes Booth

Prince Among Slaves

Abraham Lincoln with medium Nettie Colburn (seated, center).

IN THE

HOUSES

OF THEIR

DEAD

THE LINCOLNS, THE BOOTHS, AND THE SPIRITS

Terry Alford

TO

L. L., BESS, JOHN, AND NATHAN ALFORD

AND TO

JOYCE AND MORTON STEWART

LOVING IN LIFE. IN DEATH, NOT DIVIDED.

CONTENTS

I n the 1820s two families, unknown to each other, worked on farms in the American wilderness. The Lincolns had a homestead in the backwoods of Indiana. The Booths lived in a forest clearing in Maryland. The former farmed because that was the way Lincolns had always made their living. The latter, an acting family, sought the rural life in order to restore mind and body.

The Lincoln family consisted of Thomas, his wife Nancy Hanks, daughter Sarah, and son Abraham. When Nancy died, Thomas remarried. His second wife, Sarah B. Johnston, came with three children of her own. Together with a cousin who lived with them, the Lincolns were a family of eight.

Junius Brutus Booth and Mary Ann Holmes had ten children. Four died of illnesses, but their beds were filled when Juniuss sister Jane arrived from England with her husband and seven children. The Halls, a large African American family of hired servants who worked for the Booths, swelled the farms numbers even more.

The Lincolns were frontier people through many generations. They worked hard, earned little, and moved on. Thomas Lincoln, poorly educated and rough at the edges, was a farmer, carpenter, and hunter. He was a simple man, popular with his neighbors. Nancy Hanks, whom neighbors believed more intelligent than her husband, was pleasant, thoughtful, and easygoing.

The Booths were easterners. Recently arrived from London, they were comfortable in the cities where Junius made his living on the stage. The father had a brilliant mind, a kind heart, and an erratic nature. Impossible to know, he was respected for his talent and intelligence. Mary Ann Holmes, his wife, was a homebody, seemingly as uncomplicated as her husband was complex.

Although they resided in the same country, the Lincolns and the Booths actually lived in different worlds. In a nation as physically vast as the United States, it seemed unlikely the families would ever connect among its millions of people. And yet they did. The son of one family killed the son of the other in the most infamous and consequential murder in American history.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN S LIFE on his own began in earnest in 1831 when he was twenty-two and newly arrived in the village of New Salem, Illinois. Working a variety of jobs, he established himself there and was elected to the state legislature in 1834. After a winter spent studying law, Lincoln moved to Springfield, the new state capital, in 1837. His professional progress continued, placing him on track for a legal and political career. Never short of self-confidence, he told friends that he felt the future held something exceptional for him. At the same time, he believed it held something terrible, too.

In 1842 Lincoln married Mary Todd of Lexington, Kentucky. A bright and attractive woman from a prominent family, she shared the future presidents interest in politics. To all appearances the groom was lucky to land her. He married up, as they said. But Mary had her own agenda. She wanted a husband who was going places. She said she would marry a great man, and she did, with all the glory and the grief that came with such an aspiration.

Lincoln opposed slavery, and he was stunned when the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed by Congress in 1854. This law opened (at least theoretically) the free lands in the west to slavery. Northern anger over the act led to the formation of the Republican Party, and Lincoln was its nominee for Illinoiss senate seat in 1858. Although he lost the election, he gained national acclaim by his spirited campaign. Two years later, as the new partys candidate, he was elected president.

Few people cared less about these developments than the Booths. Junius felt that actors should stay clear of politics. It made no sense to alienate half the audience before the curtain rose by being a political partisan. For all his success, Junius didnt want his children on the stage. It was a punishing life. He recommended they do something else. Perhaps become undertakers.

The Booth sons turned to acting against his advice. Junius Jr. (called June), Edwin, John Wilkes, and Joseph all trod the boards. Billed as The Father as He Lived, June was a modest success. Joe took one look at the audience, froze with fear, and was hauled off to the wings. Edwin and John were exceptionally talented, however, and they became stars. Their company was sought, their autographs collected, and their photographs sold in stores. By the time of the Civil War the two brothers were among the nations top actors.

Lincoln never met either man personally. He did see them act in Washington, DC. The president attended eight performances by Edwin and an undetermined number by John. He liked meeting actors and once asked that John come out from backstage to visit him between acts. The young Southerner, who was passionately pro-Confederate, said coldly that he would rather have the applause of a negro.

Johns fear of a Lincoln dictatorship and his growing hatred of African Americans obscured the reality that he and the president had much in common. They were devoted to their mothers and ambivalent about their fathers. They loved children but had complicated relationships with women. They were extremely ambitious yet able to earn the affection and loyalty of others. They enjoyed poetry and the theater. They revered Shakespeare.

They also shared something else. Born in the first half of the nineteenth century, they lived in an era of remarkable progress. Advances in medicine brought forth anesthesia, the glass hypodermic syringe, and plastic surgery. Electromagnetic induction, absolute zero, and the cellular basis of plants were discovered. Propellers, vulcanized rubber, sewing machines, and the mechanical calculator were invented. Steel and petroleum came of age. Nature was being harnessed and rationality applied to lifes challenges. As a benefit, people traveled faster, read more, ate better, and lived longer. Such progress was the stride of God, wrote novelist Victor Hugo.

Regrettably, the new technology meant the end of the limited warfare of professional armies of the past and the beginning of the devastating world wars so familiar in the twentieth century. Rifled weapons, repeating rifles, land and river mines, ironclad ships, and hand grenades tore through soldiers in a manner unprecedented in history. Reconnaissance balloons (the first step in aerial warfare) spied on the armies, telegraphs carried their messages, railroad trains transported their soldiers, and photography documented their dead, while the first submarine raised its head from the deep and the first machine gun rewrote the nature of combat.

These advances changed the way people lived, thought, fought, and died. But would they change people? For all their progress, millions of Americans clung to beliefs that seemed irrational. They believed in ghosts. They studied omens, dreaded comets, and feared witchcraft. Apocalyptic writing flourished, and credence was given to visions, spells, and curses. Prophets and mystics abounded.