Posts Tagged With: Media

The Ides of April Podcast

Posted on July 30, 2025 by Dave Taylor

In the world of podcasts, there are many episodes and series about the Lincoln assassination. I’ve been a guest on a few podcasts talking about this history. My favorite has been the series of Vanished episodes that dealt with the Booth escaped justice theory. Admittedly, part of what makes it my favorite is that it is how I met my wife, Jen, who is one of the podcast’s co-hosts. But we also spent a lot of time diving into the history of the Finis Bates story and ripping it to pieces, which was cathartic in the same way reading Frank Gorman’s recent book is. I’ve also enjoyed speaking with the duo of Mary and Darin on The Civil War Breakfast Club podcast about all things Lincoln assassination.

While these are examples of good podcasts that work hard to present accurate history, not all podcasts are created equal. The format is open to anyone with a microphone and the ability to upload their audio file to the internet. Because of this, there is a wide range of quality in podcasts that suit different tastes and levels of knowledge. Not too long ago, a somewhat “known” podcast did a series on the Lincoln assassination that received a lot of exposure. Though I don’t listen to many podcasts myself, I decided to give it a listen. After 10 minutes, I had to turn it off. It was the format of one guy essentially reading Wikipedia about the Lincoln assassination and his “bros” cracking jokes about it in a crass manner. Definitely not a style for me.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, I saw this announcement from Variety that actor Alec Baldwin would soon be hosting an eight-part podcast series about the Lincoln assassination and the hunt for John Wilkes Booth. As of this post’s publication, three episodes of the series have been released. It’s called The Ides of April, and while the majority of the narration is done by Baldwin, the show does feature audio clips from historians Harold Holzer, Walter Stahr, and Terry Alford. It was hearing and recognizing Dr. Alford’s voice in the trailer for the podcast that got me interested. As the author of the biography, Fortune’s Fool: The Life of John Wilkes Booth, and a member of the group that defended Green Mount Cemetery in 1995 from conspiracy theorists who wanted to exhume Booth’s body, I’m always interested in what Dr. Alford has to say about Booth and the assassination.

The Ides of April isn’t a perfect podcast. The graphics used for the title and episode cards have that soulless look that all AI-generated art does. The text that Baldwin reads can be a bit repetitive at times and isn’t always historically accurate. The podcast highlights many of the same questionable conclusions that many online sources do, such as Edwin and John Wilkes being bitter rivals. The episode titles, while evocative, are never explained or referenced. With that being said, Alec Baldwin, as a narrator, has a compelling voice that keeps you engaged, and the clips from the historians really help round out the rough spots in the text.

All in all, I’ve been casually enjoying the podcast so far. I don’t think it will break any new ground, but it’s a good-sounding, condensed account of the story we all know, featuring some impressive historians in the Lincoln field like Dr. Alford. If you want something to listen to while driving or doing chores around the house, you might enjoy the show as well. Perhaps you’ll be like me and play the game of “that’s not quite right” as you listen.

The Ides of April can be found wherever you listen to podcasts. They also have a YouTube channel where you can listen to the episodes. Here’s the link to the YouTube playlist of episodes. Remember that the series is still ongoing, with new episodes dropping on Wednesdays until the last one is scheduled to be released on September 3, 2025.

Categories: History, News | Tags: , , , , | 4 Comments

Lincoln Movie Lobby Cards by Richard Sloan

Posted on July 9, 2025 by Dave Taylor

I’m so fortunate to have a wealth of friends and colleagues willing to contribute posts here on LincolnConspirators.com as I spend more time working on my book. This post is written by Richard Sloan. He has been involved in the assassination for decades. In many ways, this blog is following in Richard’s footsteps as he wrote and mailed out his own Lincoln assassination newsletter from 1976 to 1981. Called The Lincoln Log, Richard’s Xeroxed sheets were filled with new articles and reports from fellow researchers on their discoveries. Richard was essentially blogging about the Lincoln assassination before the internet was a thing. I met Richard at the first Surratt Society conference I attended. Just a couple of years later, he took a chance and had me take part in a panel discussion in New York alongside Michael Kauffman and Kate Clifford Larson.

Richard acted as our moderator, and I was definitely out of my league compared to those two great historians, but it was a truly wonderful experience. Since then, Richard and I have been regular email correspondents. After I published my post last year about The Twilight Zone episode, “Back There,” Richard inquired if I’d ever write something about Lincoln lobby cards. Knowing his expertise in Lincoln in the media and his own large collection of Lincoln lobby cards, I told him that only he could do the matter justice. I’m so pleased to present Richard’s piece about Abraham Lincoln movie lobby cards, illustrated with some selections from his vast collection.

Lincoln Movie Lobby Cards

By Richard Sloan

Readers of Dave’s blog may wonder why this topic could be of interest. Since 1955, when I was eleven years old, and read the Reader’s Digest version of Jim Bishop’s The Day Lincoln Was Shot, I’ve been very interested in both our 16th President’s life and his assassination. In 1976, I became passionately interested in how both subjects have been depicted in the theatre arts –  early melodramas, radio, movies, and television. My penchant for collecting items on these subjects began shortly thereafter.  It now includes videos, reviews, clippings, autographs, scripts, playbills, publicity photos, and movie lobby cards.  For those of you too young to know what lobby cards are, they are colorful scenes from silent movies and “talkies” that were printed on heavy 11” x 14” card stock. With the aim of luring pedestrians into buying movie tickets, posters were displayed outside theaters with banners reading “NOW PLAYING!” Scenes from upcoming features were displayed inside the theatres’ lobbies, (hence the term “Lobby cards”) with the banners reading “COMING SOON!” These cards were usually framed and covered with picture glass to protect them, but sometimes a lazy theatre manager would merely have them crudely pinned upon a wall with thumb tacks.

Lobby cards were produced in sets of eight. Back in the days of black & white silent movies, the studios colored them to make them more attractive to would-be theatre patrons. Film historians estimate that 90 percent of silent films have been lost, simply because they were made on nitrate stock that caused them to eventually disintegrate. They are called “lost films.” Lobby cards from these films are the only evidence of what they looked like. Mark Reinhart’s encyclopedic book Abraham Lincoln on Screen (now in its third edition) lists fifty-three silent films in which Lincoln is depicted, and he writes that over half of them are “lost.”

When a first-run film played out its engagement in one theatre, its lobby cards were returned to the film’s distributor together with the films for use in another theatre. And when a movie completed its run altogether, the lobby cards no longer served any purpose. They were either thrown out or given away. Sometimes, dealers in movie ephemera would get their hands on them. Others survived by sheer chance, tucked away in an attic or kept by an actor as a memento of their careers. No one could imagine that some of them would ever become valuable collectibles. The most valuable of all the Lincoln lobby cards are the one from The Birth of a Nation (1915), showing Joseph Henabery praying as Lincoln, and the one from The Littlest Rebel (1935), showing a charming (but fictitious) scene between Shirley Temple and Frank McGlynn, who played Lincoln. When these cards were sold at auction, collectors with deep pockets (that’s not me!) won them. Fortunately, faithful reproductions of these two cards can now be purchased easily on eBay for very affordable prices.

Some movie distributors contracted for films to be re-released a decade or so after their initial release (before television came along), giving new audiences the opportunity of seeing them for the first time. In such cases, an entirely new series of lobby cards were issued, usually containing different scenes than the original cards did. For collectors who can’t afford the originals, these re-issues can sometimes be more affordable.  Small words in red at the bottom of these cards state either “re-release” or just the letter “R.”

I was first introduced to the lobby card genre by William Kaland, a retired executive producer at Westinghouse Broadcasting. Bill was a student and collector of Lincoln and the Civil War. In 1958, he and Mathew Brady biographer Roy Meredith produced an award-winning TV series about the Civil War. Twenty years later, he became a dear friend and the guiding spirit behind the founding of the Lincoln Group of New York. During one of my visits with Bill in his Manhattan home, I mentioned to him my interest in Lincoln movies. He got up and pulled out a huge folder from a cabinet. Inside were a dozen old lobby cards that included four extremely rare ones from Benjamin Chapin’s nine “Lincoln Cycle” silent films. Six of them were from D.W. Griffith’s 1930 “talkie,” Abraham Lincoln.

They had all been from black & white movies, but they had been tinted by the studios. The one from Griffith’s film showed Ian Keith as Booth about to shoot Walter Houston as Lincoln. It was beautifully colored. I had never seen lobby cards before, and I was immediately “hooked” on the genre. Sadly, Bill died in 1983, and his widow sold his entire collection at auction. I’ll give you one guess who bought his lobby cards.

I then set my sights on finding the remaining three lobby cards from the Griffith film, as well as those that promoted my two favorite Lincoln films. These were the 1936 film, The Prisoner of Shark Island (which was directed by John Ford and starred Warner Baxter, Gloria Stuart, and John Carradine), and Ford’s 1939 film, Young Mr. Lincoln (which starred Henry Fonda). I expanded my search for all the other Lincoln movie lobby cards. It was a great treasure hunt. Over the next many years, I found all of the lobby cards from the “talkies” in which Lincoln appeared, with one exception — a colored one for Young Mr. Lincoln with the name of the movie prominently displayed at the top. Such cards are known as “title” cards, while the other seven cards in the sets are called “scene” cards.

The first card I located was the title card for Prisoner of Shark Island, although it was only a photocopy. The corners on the original had a dozen holes, the result of it having once been mounted in a theatre lobby with thumbtacks. The original title card eluded me for thirty-five years. In the meantime, I found the other seven cards. Then one day, I finally found the original title card on eBay. I bought it immediately, and when it arrived, I found it to be in mint condition except for one thing –it had a dozen pinholes in the four corners. I raced upstairs to get my album of cards from the movie, and lo and behold, not only did it have the same number of pinholes in each corner, but they were in the same haphazard arrangement! It was my newly acquired title card that had been used to create the photocopy I had bought over thirty-five years earlier!

I also have original lobby cards from the “lost” 1924 silent film, The Dramatic Life of Abraham Lincoln, the very first feature-length movie about Lincoln’s life. It starred Lincoln look-alike George Billings, a house painter who had to be given acting lessons! I found them on eBay, too. The lobby cards for it were issued in both black and white and in color, which is most unusual. I have some of each. Modern-day copies of two of the tinted ones from this “lost” film can now be bought on eBay for only $3.28,  from a seller in Australia. Included among my other Lincoln-related lobby cards are the original set of cards from Griffith’s Abraham Lincoln and the ones from the later re-issue, all with different scenes than the original cards. I have Abe Lincoln in Illinois, which starred Raymond Massey, The Tall Target, in which Lincoln only appeared in the last scene, and Prince of Players, which was the first time the assassination and Booth’s capture appeared in color – and in Cinemascope.

Lobby cards are now a thing of the past. They’ve been replaced in theatre lobbies by seven-foot high cardboard cutouts! However, there are still plenty of them for sale. If you should ever come across my missing title card for Young Mr. Lincoln, please let me know!

– Richard Sloan

Categories: History, Richard Sloan | Tags: , , | 3 Comments

A Filthy Fortunes “Find”

Posted on March 29, 2025 by Dave Taylor

While chatting on the phone today with my mom, she told me about seeing a show on the Discovery Channel recently called Filthy Fortunes. The reality show revolves around a team of people who clean out extremely cluttered rooms and homes, selling the items contained to hopefully pay for the clean up and make some profit. It’s essentially the TV show Hoarders but with an emphasis on looking for some treasure in the rough.

My mom said that in the episode she watched, the crew came across a John Wilkes Booth card of some sort that they were very excited about. She said it was signed by him and apparently went for a lot of money. I decided to look into the show and see what treasure they had found.

Here’s a clip from the show that they put on social media showing the discovery of the Booth card:

As I had suspected, what the clean-up crew found was a carte-de-visite photograph of John Wilkes Booth. These are not all that rare, as Booth was a famous actor who regularly had his picture taken. While there was a temporary halt on the sale of Booth’s photographs after the assassination, when this order was rescinded, many photographers flooded the market with photos of the assassin. There are many pictures of Booth, and the pose found by the cleaners, where he is wearing his fancy jacket, is one of the most common images of him.

The host of the show was very excited because he said the photo was signed by Booth at the bottom. Now, a genuine signed CDV of John Wilkes Booth would be worth quite a lot of money. An oversized clipped signature of Booth’s sold for over $17,000 a decade ago. Unfortunately for the host, this is clearly not signed by John Wilkes Booth. The writing looks nothing like Booth’s handwriting and is in print, not cursive. This isn’t the first person to confuse a labeled image of John Wilkes Booth with a signed one; they regularly pop up on eBay and other places. There is also some random text written on the top of the card, but again, not in Booth’s hand. This writing actually detracts from the value of the otherwise average Booth CDV. On eBay, you could maybe get $100 for it.

I found the rest of the episode online and got to the point where the host was revealing to the homeowner how much money they made selling the things they found in the house. The host documented the other things they had sold from the home, including misprinted stamps, a Mustang, and a coin collection. He then stated to the homeowner:

“The item that really put us over the hump was a signed John Wilkes Booth card. We sent it to auction and they estimated that it’ll be worth $10,000.”

He then stated that with the cash sale of the other items and the auction estimation, they made $28,000 from the items in the house. The cleaning cost was $10,000, leaving $18,000 profit. This was then split between the homeowner and the cleaning crew, 60-40. The host handed over a stack of cash to the homeowner, saying it was her $10,800 share. She was, of course, ecstatic to not only have her house cleaned out but to have made $10k in the process.

But did she?

Well, let’s look and see how much that “signed” John Wilkes Booth CDV actually brought when it was sold at auction in July of 2024.

It sold for $80. Not $8,000. Not $800. $80. And, actually, that is a pretty fair price for an average Booth CDV with random writing on it. Interestingly, the auction house that sold it did not attempt to portray this as a signed CDV. The description documents that John Wilkes Booth’s name on the bottom is “(not in his hand).” We can also see that the starting price for this CDV was set at $40, hardly an amount you would start at for a priceless relic like a genuine signed Booth item. So, where in the world did the host get the estimation of $10,000?

My guess is that when they shot the end of the episode, the production company had not yet reached out to any auction house. Instead, they just looked at some recent auction prices of genuine Booth signatures and letters and made a guess. If they did reach out to a real auction house, the auctioneers must have given them the $10k valuation sight unseen. I have a hard time believing any legitimate auctioneer would have thought this photograph had a genuine signature. Even a quick Google search would show that the printed name has nothing in common with the assassin’s autograph. You have to wonder how that homeowner felt when the production company eventually informed her that she was getting less than half of what they told her on camera since their $10,000 item only sold for $80.

This Booth CDV makes an appearance in the pilot episode of Filthy Fortunes. When I was trying to find a video of the show online, I came across a few interviews the main host had with media people and YouTubers during the promotional period before the show debuted. In some of those interviews he makes mention of this great John Wilkes Booth find. But his recollections of the actual item are wildly incorrect. The biggest issue is that the host clearly does not know the difference between a picture and a playbill. Here’s an assortment of his comments on the item from different interviews:

“…the most interesting thing we found this season was a John Wilkes Booth playbill, like an actual picture of John Wilkes Booth that he signed like not too long before he shot Lincoln…”

“…it’s a play- it’s a picture, basically like a tintype, so like a Polaroid, of John Wilkes Booth. It’s dated. He signed it. Cause he was an actor at the Ford theater there in D.C. And so we found like a playbill, with John Wilkes Booth’s signature, like three months before he shot Lincoln…”

“…a John Wilkes Booth card…it’s a playbill from the Ford’s theater with a picture signed by John Wilkes Booth and it was like six months before he shot Lincoln…Let me tell you that’s worth some real money…”

“…the coolest thing for me this season was a John Wilkes Booth playbill that was signed by John Wilkes Booth at the Ford theater…When I found the John Wilkes Booth card, I was like ‘I got a guy’ [to sell it to]…”

Perplexingly, in a far more casual and expletive-laden interview the host gave to a Twitch streamer, he recounts how he sold the Booth CDV to a private individual for $40,000. I’m going to embed that video below, but I am warning everyone that there is a lot of cursing throughout (because that’s how you get in cool with the youths, apparently). The video should start right at the beginning of their discussion of the Booth item:

I honestly have no idea what to make of this video and the claim that the host sold the CDV for $40,000. Fraudulent and fake things sell all the time in the auction world to people who don’t know any better. I know of one eBay seller who regularly has CDVs of Booth, the other Lincoln conspirators, and other famous people for sale that are terrible forgeries made by putting a modern printed picture in between two halves of genuine portrait or vignette-style CDVs with the original images removed. I highly doubt the Filthy Fortunes host acted in a malicious way like that. It’s far more likely that he truly thought he had a genuine signed Booth CDV when he found it because he doesn’t have the expertise to know the difference. His confusion over what a playbill looks like demonstrates that this area is not his forte.

In the end, all I can do is point to the auction listing showing that this labeled but not signed John Wilkes Booth image sold for $80. If the host actually sold it for $40,000 to a private individual, then he made the deal of a lifetime off of a real fool who didn’t do any due diligence. But I suspect that all of this story is bluster, intended to make the show seem more exciting by having an item appear far more valuable than it is. To borrow a phrase the youths on Twitch will understand, “it’s cap, fam.” (For my fellow non-Gen Zers, “cap” apparently means “a lie.”)

The lesson here is, as always, don’t believe what you see on “reality TV.”

Thanks, Mom, for giving me something to gripe about on the internet.

Categories: History, News | Tags: , , , | 3 Comments

Become a Patron!

Posted on March 10, 2025 by Dave Taylor

When this blog first started in March of 2012, it was little more than a shelf where I could show off small research oddities and tidbits of information I came across during my own exploration into the subject of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. I was still very new to the history field and unsure whether this hobby would turn into anything constructive. Since then, the community around this site has grown far beyond what I ever expected. As my followers have grown, I have worked hard to provide new and varied content, all with the aim of educating others about the events surrounding Lincoln’s assassination. I am very proud of what I have accomplished here on LincolnConspirators.com and, particularly, of the growing scholarship behind the posts and videos I have produced.

LincolnConspirators.com is not a commercial entity. I make no money to write or produce content for this site. I do not make any money from advertisements. In fact, I actually pay to keep ads off of this site. This website is a hobby and truly a labor of love for me, but there are real costs associated with owning, maintaining, and producing content for LincolnConspirators. In webhosting fees and research subscriptions alone, I spend $850 a year. This does not include the costs of new (and old) books or research and duplication fees from historic sites and museums. In addition, some of my special projects, especially my recent documentary series about the life of the Lincoln assassination conspirators at Fort Jefferson, have been quite costly to put together.

As many of you know, my background is that of an elementary school teacher. This is why LincolnConspirators.com is, and always will be, an educational resource open to all. Knowledge is power and even our uncomfortable past should be accessible to all. As I told my students when I was teaching, everyone has the capacity to enrich the world around them by sharing their unique knowledge, abilities, and stories with others. Over my career, I taught first, second, and third grades in Illinois and Maryland and worked as a reading interventionist here in Texas. Unfortunately, my teaching career ended when I was fired from the private school I worked at here in Texas because I spoke out against the banning of LGBTQ+ books at our local public library during a library board meeting. Since then, I have become a stay-at-home dad while trying to make some money on the side to help support our family.

To help offset the cost of running this website and to financially support my goal to write a book about the Lincoln assassination, I have launched a Patreon page for LincolnConspirators.com. Patreon is an online system that allows followers to provide financial support for the work being done by their favorite creators. The website operates a bit like TV  infomercials where you pledge to donate a certain amount each month. Patrons choose whatever amount they would like to give, and once a month, Patreon will charge that amount to your credit card and give it to your chosen creator. In essence, Patreon is a subscription service where your chosen monthly payment goes to a specific creator whose work you enjoy.

By becoming a patron of LincolnConspirators.com you will provide financial support for the work that I do. A pledge of any amount would help lift some of the financial burden of creating content for this site and help provide me with some financial breathing room as I actively work on my book. I am not expecting that I will ever be able to break even regarding the costs of my work, but every little bit would make it easier to continue sharing with you all the history that we find fascinating.

“But what’s in it for me?”

The great thing about Patreon is that it is more than just charity. The platform allows creators to provide exclusive, patron-only content for those who make a recurring monthly donation. By becoming a patron, you will receive access to content you won’t find anywhere else. This is a way for creators to thank the people financially supporting them and ensure they receive something in return for their support.

Patreon allows for a tiered system of support. Creators can provide more exclusive content based on how much a patron gives monthly. For my Patreon, I have created three tiers of support at different price points. Note that the tiers are cumulative, meaning that if you give at the highest priced tier, you not only receive its unique benefit, but all the benefits from the tiers below it. Here is a breakdown of the different tiers and the benefits patrons receive in each:

Tier 1: Family Circle

For $3 a month, you are a member of the Family Circle level of support. Patrons in the Family Circle will gain access to a weekly post on Patreon called, The Telegraph Office, in which I curate and share recent news stories relating to the Lincoln assassination from the past week and beyond. You’ll be well-informed of different talks, articles, auction items, and other connections being made out in the world to the death of Lincoln and the hunt for John Wilkes Booth. This post will be different each week as I comb through the news to find interesting stories to share and recount some upcoming anniversaries for the week ahead. For a free dispatch example from The Telegraph Office, click here.

Tier 2: Dress Circle

For $7 a month, you are a member of the Dress Circle level of support. In addition to the weekly offering from Telegraph Office, you will receive access to The Vault, a fortnightly post that highlights an artifact relating to the Lincoln assassination story. Objects in the vault are often more than they appear to be, so learn the history behind some of the hidden objects locked away in museums, private collections, or even those lost to time. Every so often, you will find yourself visiting a different kind of vault altogether, as the curator takes you on a field trip to the grave of a person connected to Lincoln’s death. The Vault is open to all for just the price of admission.

Tier 3: Orchestra Chairs

For a recurring donation of $15+ a month, you are a member of the Orchestra Chair level – the top tier of supporters to LincolnConspirators.com. Not only will you receive weekly dispatches from The Telegraph Office and fortnightly tours of The Vault, but you will also gain exclusive access to monthly videos from me, Dave Taylor, as I discuss my ongoing research for my book and other projects. You will receive exclusive early access to information and new historical discoveries well before anyone else. In addition, you can submit your own questions about the Lincoln assassination, which I will answer as a sort of community Q&A. At this tier of support, you will be an invaluable member of my history team.

Now, some of you longtime followers might be thinking this seems a bit familiar. That is because back in 2018, I started a Patreon when this website was still called BoothieBarn. Shortly after starting that Patreon, I was accepted into a Master’s degree program. The combination of my own classes on top of my job as an elementary school teacher significantly curtailed my ability to provide content to my patrons. I started to feel guilty for accepting donations when I just didn’t have the time to provide much in return. So, after only nine months, I shut that Patreon down.

It is now six years later, and I am in a much better position to provide consistent and valuable content to those who choose to support me financially. In these preliminary stages of my book research and writing, I’ve already come across many interesting side characters and stories I would love to share, especially since I don’t know when (or even if) my book will come to fruition. Having some financial support will help me and my family greatly as I devote so much of my time to a book project with so much uncertainty.

Thank you for considering becoming a patron of LincolnConspirators.com. To learn more, please click the “Become a Patron” button below to be taken to my Patreon page to read my story. There you will find information on how the Patreon system works and how to sign up to become a patron.

Even if you don’t have the means to contribute, I appreciate your continued support of my efforts exploring the history of the Lincoln assassination.

Sincerely,

Dave Taylor

Categories: History, News | Tags: , , , , , | 9 Comments

Manhunt Review: Episode 7 The Final Act

Posted on December 17, 2024 by Dave Taylor

I conducted reviews of the seven-part AppleTV+ miniseries Manhunt, named after the Lincoln assassination book by James L. Swanson and released in 2024. This is my historical review for the seventh episode of the series “The Final Act.”  This analysis of some of the fact vs. fiction in this episode contains spoilers. To read my other reviews, please visit the Manhunt Reviews page.

Episode 7: The Final Act

The final episode of the series opens with a flashback to 1862. Edwin Stanton attends a party at the White House thrown by the Lincolns. The first family is concerned about the poor health of their son Willie, who will soon die from typhoid fever. Stanton agrees to take over as Lincoln’s Secretary of War.

We then flash forward to the first day of the trial of the conspirators. Stanton talks with reporters outside before seating himself to watch the proceedings. Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt lays out the charges against the conspirators who are seated on a bench in the front of the courtroom. When Holt announces that the government is also charging Jefferson Davis in Lincoln’s assassination, audible gasps and rumblings are heard throughout the courtroom.

Next, we see Stanton talking to Jefferson Davis in his prison cell. The Confederate president denies any involvement in Lincoln’s death and is defiant that the cause of the Confederacy will live on.

In the War Department, Stanton and Holt ask Lafayette Baker what evidence his agent, Sandford Conover, has implicating Davis. Baker admits that Conover has been two-timing them and has also been acting as an agent for the Confederacy. However, Baker plays this as good news as the Confederate Secret Service now knows that Conover has betrayed them and he is now willing to tell everything he knows. Among the information Conover now wants to share is a letter the CSS calls “the pet letter.” Baker tells the men that “pet” was Jefferson Davis’s nickname for Booth, and Stanton announces that Conover will now be their star witness.

There is a brief scene of Holt and Stanton working with Mary Simms to prepare her for her time on the witness stand before we return to the trial for a mash-up of testimonies. William Bell testifies about Powell’s attack on the Seward household, Joseph “Peanut John” Burroughs testifies about Edman Spangler’s assistance to Booth at Ford’s Theatre, and Thomas Eckert misrepresents the importance of Booth’s “Confederate” cipher, as instructed by Stanton in the previous episode.

The testimony then turns to Dr. Mudd, with Jeremiah Dyer defending the doctor’s reputation and accusing his servants (Mary Simms) of having been poor. Baptist Washington, having taken a bribe from Dyer in the previous episode, also speaks favorably of Dr. Mudd and accuses Mary Simms of being a liar, much to the distress of Simms, who sits watching the proceedings. Outside of the courtroom, Simms expresses her concern to Stanton that she won’t be enough to put Dr. Mudd away. We then see her talking to her brother, Milo, at the freedmen’s camp, begging him to testify about Mudd’s treatment of him. Milo is hesitant but is next shown in Stanton’s office in the War Department, listening to Stanton explain how important his testimony would be.

After some more talk between the siblings, Milo agrees to testify. As the Simmses prepare to depart, Mary talks with Louis Weichmann, who is also practicing with Stanton for his upcoming testimony against Mary Surratt. Mary Simms gently accuses Weichmann of not saying everything he knows and asks him to back her up on the stand when she states that Dr. Mudd, John Surratt, and John Wilkes Booth all knew each other before the assassination. Also, Sandford Conover arrives at Stanton’s office and produces the “pet letter” described earlier by Lafayette Baker.

We then jump back to the trial where Milo Simms is on the stand, and he recounts having been shot in the leg by Dr. Mudd when he was enslaved by him. Mary Simms then takes the stand and talks about Dr. Mudd’s disloyal sentiments and having harbored Confederate on his farm in 1864. Mary recounts that John Surratt was a common visitor to the farm and that Mudd had known Surratt and Booth before the assassination. When Dr. Mudd’s defense attorney, Gen. Ewing, attempts to discredit Mary, she tells them to ask Louis Weichmann about it.

Weichmann, next on the stand, describes having seen the conspirators in and around Mary Surratt’s boardinghouse. He describes his friendship with John Surratt and how John was often on trips to Montreal and Richmond. Weichmann also defends Mary Simms, acknowledging that he and John Surratt first met John Wilkes Booth through an introduction made by Dr. Mudd.

Then, it’s time for Stanton’s key witness, Sandford Conover. He admits to having worked for both the Union War Department and the Confederate Secret Service, leveraging information on both in order to make a living. Conover states that when Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered, the CSS in Montreal received orders from Richmond via John Surratt to set “pet” in motion. Conover claims that Jefferson Davis referred to John Wilkes Booth as his “pet.” He implicates George Sanders in the assassination plot explicitly but states that Sanders did not have confidence that Booth would succeed. Conover then reads part of the “pet letter” addressed to Sanders, which states that “pet has done his job well and old Abe is in hell.”

On cross-examination, Conover admits that he has several other aliases, including James Wallace and Charles Dunham. When asked when he saw Booth, Surratt and Sanders together in Montreal, Conover pauses before giving the date of October 17, 1864. Defense attorney Ewing then counters with a record establishing that Conover was in jail during the month of October. Conover admits his mistake over the date but is adamant that Jefferson Davis knew of and ordered the assassination of Lincoln. After accusing Conover of deliberate perjury, Gen. Ewing rests his defense.

Back at the War Department, Stanton, Mrs. Lincoln, and others await the announcement of verdicts in the case. Mrs. Lincoln tells Stanton he has done well, regardless of the outcome involving Jefferson Davis. Thomas Eckert then gets word that the judges have finished their deliberations, and pretty much the whole cast of characters makes their way back to the courtroom.

General David Hunter, the president of the military commission, first addresses the courtroom, noting his belief that Jefferson Davis is as much guilty of the conspiracy against Lincoln as John Wilkes Booth. However, Hunter states that the commission was unable to conclusively reach a verdict on such a grand conspiracy due to tainted evidence. He leaves it to history to prove the Confederacy’s culpability.

Hunter then turns to the conspirators in the courtroom, all of whom are still standing. He hands the verdicts over to Secretary Stanton to read. Stanton reads through each name and verdict, one at a time. After announcing that Mary Surratt, Lewis Powell, George Atzerodt, and David Herold have all been found guilty, Hunter interposes with the news that these four will be hanged tomorrow. Stanton then announces Spangler’s guilt and sentence of 6 years in prison. An impatient Mary Simms whispers to Eddie, asking about Mudd seconds before his father declares Mudd guilty and sentences him to life imprisonment. Mary and Milo Simms embrace, and the conspirators are led out of the room.

Outside the courthouse, Lafayette Baker and Edwin Stanton confront Sandford Conover about his faulty testimony. Conover says he told the truth but admits that he had received a suspicious package from London that morning. Baker concludes that George Sanders got to him. In a brief montage, we witness David Herold pulled from his cell, situated on a scaffold, and a rope placed around his neck. He is standing alongside the other condemned conspirators before we cut to a photograph in Stanton’s hand showing the execution.

Thomas Eckert informs Stanton that the National Archives collected the pieces of evidence from the trial but noted that pages from Booth’s diary are missing. Eckert warns Stanton that they might open an inquiry. Stanton lies, saying that Lafayette Baker had the diary last. A knowing Eckert then tells Stanton that he had the secretary’s fireplace cleaned recently, showing his loyalty to his boss, who destroyed the diary pages in that fireplace the episode before.

We flash forward to a future date. Elizabeth Keckley is hosting a fundraiser for the Freedmen’s Bureau by selling copies of a book about her time in the White House. Mary Simms is there and is encouraged to apply to Howard University, a new college for Black Americans. Secretary Stanton speaks favorably of the Freedmen’s Bureau and complains of President Johnson’s lack of support for its mission. To this party, the President arrives, accompanied by General Lorenzo Thomas, an adversary of Stanton’s. Johnson informs Stanton of his intention to remove troops from the Southern states. Knowing that Stanton will oppose him, Johnson tells Stanton that Gen. Thomas will be replacing him as Secretary of War. Stanton notes that trying to remove him will trigger an impeachment investigation by Congress, but President Johnson is unconcerned.

A fuming Stanton offers General Thomas a tour of the War Department. As he shows his replacement around, Stanton recalls a conversation he had with President Lincoln the day before the assassination. Stanton attempted to resign now that the war was coming to a close, but Lincoln denied his request, noting that he needed Stanton more than ever to fight for the future of the nation during Reconstruction. Remembering his promise to Lincoln, Stanton locks his office door and barricades himself into the War Department, determined to preserve Lincoln’s plans for Black suffrage and a united nation.

Through text on the bottom of the screen, we are told that Stanton barricaded himself in the War Department for three months while Andrew Johnson faced impeachment. In the end, Johnson avoided removal from office by a single vote. We also learn that John Surratt was eventually returned to the United States but was not convicted. He is shown giving a speech about his involvement with John Wilkes Booth. Mary Simms is also shown preparing for her first day at Howard University as the text tells about the adoption of the 13th and 14th amendments, which officially ended slavery and granted citizenship to Black Americans.

We then jump to Christmas Eve of 1869. It’s clear Stanton’s asthma has gotten worse over the intervening years as he inhales vapors through a medical device. Eddie Stanton brings news to his father that the elder statesman has been officially confirmed as a new justice of the Supreme Court. The younger Stanton is confident that, as a member of the Supreme Court, his father will continue to ensure Lincoln’s vision for the country and congratulates his father. Even in his weakened state, Stanton is noticeably pleased. After Eddie excuses himself, a teary-eyed Stanton looks out the window and announces, “We finish the work now. We have to.”

However, as the former Secretary attempts to rise from his chair to join his family downstairs for a meal, he becomes weak and collapses back down into his chair. His papers fall to the ground, and we see that Edwin Stanton has died. A voiceover from Eddie Stanton laments his father’s death from asthma-related organ failure before he was able to serve on the court. A similar voiceover from Mary Simms relates the ratification of the 15th Amendment two months after Stanon died. Finally, the series ends with an echo of Stanton’s words that the work still needs to be finished.

Here are some of the things I enjoyed about this episode:

  • The Trial Room

As someone who has spent quite a bit of time giving tours to visitors at the trial room of the Lincoln conspirators at Fort Lesley J. McNair, I was impressed with how well the production managed to duplicate the look and layout of the room. The set designers clearly studied the engravings of the trial room that were published in the illustrated newspapers and did their best to recreate them.

For the sake of filming and space, not every detail of the room is the same, but my hat goes off to the crew for this admirable recreation.

  • Mary Simms’ Testimony

As I have noted throughout these reviews, the Mary Simms shown in this miniseries is a fictional representation of the real person. Mary Simms had been enslaved by Dr. Mudd but left the farm after emancipation came to Maryland in November of 1864. She was not present at the Mudd farm when John Wilkes Booth stopped there after assassinating Lincoln.

Despite the entirely fictional nature of the Mary Simms shown in this series, the writers actually provide a fairly realistic portrayal of Mary Simms’ trial testimony in this episode. Rather than being asked about Dr. Mudd setting Booth’s broken leg and letting him stay the night (something the real Mary Simms never witnessed, but this fictional one does), Judge Advocate Holt asks Mary about Dr. Mudd’s Confederate sympathies. This is in line with the testimony of the real Mary Simms, who described how a group of Confederate soldiers found refuge at the Mudd farm during the summer of 1864. The real Mary Simms also discussed how John Surratt had been a visitor to the Mudd house, establishing a connection between Mudd and clandestine Confederate activities.

Aside from the ending appeal to the judges to ask Louis Weichmann about the relationship between Booth, Surratt, and Mudd and the claim that she had tried to leave the Mudd farm but couldn’t, the testimony presented by Mary Simms in the series is surprisingly close to accurate. You can read the real Mary Simms’ testimony for yourself here.

  • The Ending

I have to give credit to the series for providing an emotional and compelling ending. Watching Stanton fight tooth and nail to protect the dream of a truly unified country in which citizens of all races are treated equally, only to die right after achieving a position where he could make a sizable difference, is heartbreaking and inspiring. In truth, it was clear that the miniseries was always intended to be about Edwin Stanton’s fight with President Johnson over Reconstruction and the Freedmen’s Bureau. You can tell that the writers had so much more that they wanted to include about the fight over Reconstruction and how its failure negatively impacted our nation for a century.

Let’s dig now into the fact vs. fiction of this episode and learn about the true history surrounding these fictional scenes.

1. Stanton (and others) Never Attended the Trial

There’s quite an assortment of familiar faces attending the trial of the conspirators on its first day. In addition to Edwin Stanton, we see  Mary Lincoln, William Seward, Fanny Seward, and Lafayette Baker. In reality, none of these people ever visited the conspiracy trial in person.

William and Fanny Seward at the conspirators’ trial

Secretary Stanton had far more important things to attend to as the head of the War Department to spend his days in the courtroom. He trusted JAG Holt and his assistants to take care of things without his presence. Mary Lincoln would have never entered the courtroom where her husband’s murderers were on trial, though she remained in the White House until about May 23 before departing for Illinois. Tad Lincoln was the other member of the Lincoln family who attended the trial of the conspirators, and he did so on May 18, shortly before leaving the city with his mother. William Seward was still too badly injured by the attempt on his life to have attended the trial. The Secretary of State was forced to wear a mouth splint to heal his broken jaw all the way up to October of 1865. There is no evidence that Fanny Seward attended the trial either, though her brother Augustus Seward did testify about the attack on their father on May 19. While Lafayette Baker took an interest in the trial and even inserted some of his own men to act as guards and keep an eye on things, he never attended the trial himself.

In truth, practically no one attended the trial during the first few days anyway. Stanton had originally ordered the trial to be conducted behind closed doors with no access to the press and public. However, after General Grant testified behind these closed doors on May 12, he visited President Johnson personally and lobbied for the proceedings to be opened to the public for the sake of transparency. Johnson acquiesced and ordered the press and public to be granted access. The first outside visitors were allowed in after lunch on May 13, the fifth day of the trial.

2. The Missing Conspirators

When Joseph Holt is naming off the conspirators on the prisoner’s bench during the first trial scene, there are two noticeable missing faces. These would be the figures of Samuel Arnold and Michael O’Laughlen, two of Booth’s childhood friends who took part in the actor’s initial plot to abduct the President but were not actively involved when that plot changed to assassination. The miniseries never really addresses this abduction plot, which ultimately brought all of the conspirators together in the first place. As a result, Arnold and O’Laughlen do not appear at all in the series.

I think it is a bit regrettable to have not included these men, for while they may not have had much to contribute to the manhunt for Booth aspect of the show, a letter written by Arnold to John Wilkes Booth is actually a rare piece of tangible evidence connecting the Confederacy to Booth and his abduction plot. During a search of Booth’s room after the assassination, investigators found a letter written by Arnold to Booth in which Arnold expresses his apprehension in continuing with the abduction plot. Arnold is concerned that the men have waited too long to act and questions whether anything good could now be accomplished by kidnapping Lincoln. It’s essentially a “Dear John” letter with Arnold announcing his intention to bow out of the whole affair.

Arnold includes one intriguing caveat, however. He writes to Booth to “go and see how it will be taken at R—-d, and ere long I shall be better prepared to again be with you.” In short, he tells Booth that if he is able to visit the Confederate capital of Richmond and get their approval for the plot, he would be willing to come back into the fray. Even today, historians point to this letter and Booth’s involvement with Confederate courier John Surratt in their debates regarding how involved the Confederacy may have been with John Wilkes Booth and his plots.

3. The Prisoners’ Dock

In addition to the absence of Samuel Arnold and Michael O’Laughlen, the way in which the conspirators were arranged on the prisoners’ dock during the first day of the trial does not match the actual arrangement. Over the course of the eight-week trial, the conspirators were seated in multiple arrangements. For my project thoroughly documenting the trial of the Lincoln conspirators, I commissioned a talented artist named Jackie Roche to sketch out the different seating arrangements in which the conspirators were placed. Here, again, are those drawings:

May 9 and 10

During the first two days of the trial, both Mary Surratt and Dr. Mudd were placed in chairs in front of the prisoners’ dock. The reason for this was that the bench seating that had been created for the prisoners was not long enough to seat each conspirator with a guard between them. When General Winfield Scott learned that Dr. Mudd had been given a seat outside of the prisoners’ dock, he wrote to General John Hartranft, the commander in charge of the conspirators, asking why Mudd was being given preferential treatment. General Hartranft explained Mudd’s preferential seating was accidental as he and Mrs. Surratt had merely been the last prisoners to enter the courtroom on the first day and were given chairs since there was no more room.

May 11 – 13

In order to prevent the appearance of Dr. Mudd receiving preferential treatment, on May 11, General Hartranft altered the seating arrangement in order to squeeze Dr. Mudd in on the bench. This was done by removing the guard who had been seated between Samuel Arnold and the window and placing Mudd at the other end. The conspirators stayed in this position for the remainder of the first week of the trial while Mrs. Surratt was still seated in a chair in front of the other prisoners.

May 15

On the first day of the second week of trial, Mrs. Surratt was moved to be placed in line with the other conspirators, though she still occupied a chair of her own. A seated guard was also placed between her and the rest of the prisoners. Conflicting accounts also state that Dr. Mudd was moved to a spot between Arnold and Atzerodt on this date.

May 16 – June 17

After the court adjourned on May 15, additional carpentry work was done to extend the prisoners’ dock. A small raised platform was created on the other side of the door through which the conspirators entered and exited. The railing in front of the conspirators was also extended all the way to the wall, with a small gate created near the door. For the bulk of the trial, this was the seating arrangement for the conspirators. Mary Surratt sat on a chair on her small platform with a seated guard in a chair on the floor between her and the long raised bench seating occupied by the men and their guards.

June 19 – 21

During the testimony on June 19, Mrs. Surratt became ill, resulting in an early adjournment for lunch. When the court resumed an hour later, Mrs. Surratt was allowed to sit in a chair in the passageway between the courtroom and one of the adjoining rooms. In this way, Mrs. Surratt had better access to airflow in the hot third-story room. Due to her ill health, this adjoining room became Mrs. Surratt’s new prison cell from that day on. She sat between these two rooms for the next few days when the court was in session.

June 23 – 28

During the final days of the trial, Mrs. Surratt’s condition prevented her from appearing in the courtroom. Instead, she remained behind the closed door in what had become her new cell. She likely listened to the closing proceedings through the door.

You will also note in the drawings that Mrs. Surratt wore a veil throughout her time in the courtroom. While the miniseries shows Mrs. Surratt being forced to wear a hood over her head, she never had to endure the hoods like most of the male conspirators did. Dr. Mudd was the only male conspirator who was also not forced to wear a hood when not in the courtroom. Except for the very first day of trial, the hoods were always removed from the conspirators’ heads before they were filed into the courtroom, as the military judges disliked seeing them.

4. The Testimony Against Spangler

During the testimony portion of the episode, we see the return of Joseph “Peanut John” Burroughs as he bears witness against Edman Spangler. Burroughs recounts how Spangler told him to hold Booth’s horse at the rear of Ford’s Theatre on the night of the assassination. When Burroughs said he couldn’t due to his other duties, Spangler replied threateningly that he didn’t have a choice. Burroughs also swears “on the Bible” that Spangler opened the rear door of the theater for Booth to escape.

While all of Burroughs’ testimony aligns with what was portrayed in the first episode of the series, I just wanted to repeat that the series in no way represents the truth behind Spangler and his supposed culpability in Booth’s crime. It is true that after riding up to the back of Ford’s Theatre Booth asked for Spangler by name to hold his horse and that the stagehand passed the duty off to Peanut John. However, beyond this fact, the series is way off. Rather than threatening Burroughs when the latter mentioned he had his own duties to perform, Spangler told Peanut to lay the blame on him if anyone should object to the young man not being at his normal post. The subsequent idea that Edman Spangler was outside of the theater when the shot occurred and then opened the door for Booth is completely inaccurate. Spangler was carefully tending to his duties backstage and preparing for a scene change when the shot rang out.

Spangler may have been friendly with Booth and done small handyman work for the actor when he visited Ford’s Theatre, but practically all historians agree that Edman Spangler was innocent of any knowledge of Booth’s plot against the President.

5. Louis Weichmann’s Testimony

Louis Weichmann was a key witness at the trial of the conspirators and testified at length on multiple occasions. His main benefit to the prosecution was to document the movements of some of the conspirators in and around Mary Surratt’s boardinghouse in the time leading up to the assassination.

Weichmann also testified about his introduction to John Wilkes Booth by way of Dr. Mudd. This is the introduction that Mary Simms references in her conversation with Weichmann before the trial and what Weichmann testifies about on the stand. The miniseries has Weichmann state that this introduction occurred in January of 1865, which is what he did testify to at the trial. However, the real Weichmann was mistaken about this date, as the actual day of Booth’s introduction to John Surratt via Dr. Mudd occurred on December 23, 1864. Dr. Mudd’s defense seized upon the discrepancy in Weichmann’s timeline and produced a litany of witnesses to prove that Dr. Mudd did not visit D.C. in January of 1865. While I appreciate that the miniseries had Weichmann swear to January on the stand, the lack of any follow-up muddies the history a bit (no pun intended).

The far more questionable aspect of the miniseries’ portrayal of Weichmann’s testimony, however, is the attempt to add some scandalous drama where it does not exist. When asked about how well he knew John Surratt, Wiechmann states that they had both attended seminary school together and remained close after both had dropped out. Wiechmann recalled how he came to move into Mary Surratt’s D.C. boardinghouse and how he and John Surratt shared a room and a bed. Then, a hesitant Weichmann states that the two men had “slept together,” which draws gasps and murmurs from the crowd, and we are given a shot of Mary Surratt showing her apparently traumatized by the news her son might be a homosexual.

It is true that Weichmann testified about having slept with John Surratt. Here’s that part of his testimony.

However, the idea that Weichmann’s words here are an admission to having a sexual relationship with Surratt is an example of painful historical illiteracy on the part of the writers of this series. The sharing of beds was a very normal part of life during this period of time. Space was at a premium in Washington during this time, especially with the huge influx of visitors and new residents on account of the war. Unless you were wealthy enough to secure truly private lodgings, it was expected that you would share a room and bed with someone else when staying in a boardinghouse or hotel. When you checked into a hotel, you were paid for a spot in a bed, not for your own room. To illustrate this, after George Atzerodt failed to assassinate Vice President Johnson, he eventually took a late-night room at the Pennsylvania House Hotel. The room was already occupied by others, and George merely joined the other male occupants in the bed that night. Men “sleeping with” other men and women “sleeping with” other women was not a euphemism for having sex; it was a common sleeping arrangement that would have been perfectly understood by those living in the 1800s. No one would have gasped or even thought Weichmann was referring to anything sexual during his testimony. This scene, and the implication that Weichmann was testifying against his own lover, is perhaps the cringiest part of the entire series.

6. Sandford Conover’s Testimony

Sandford Conover’s appearance in this trial episode is the only one in which his inclusion makes any historical sense. Despite having been portrayed as an active member of the manhunt over Lincoln’s death, including a trip up to Canada in a failed attempt to snag John Surratt, Conover is little more than a lying footnote in the grand scheme of things. This episode has Conover take the stand, which the real man did three times, including on the last day of testimony. Rather than try and untangle the unique tapestry of partially true and fictitious statements sworn to by the miniseries’ Conover, here’s an excerpt from my trial project documenting the real Conover’s final time on the witness stand. This comes from the June 27 session, the last day in which witnesses testified.

Sandford Conover, a key one of the government’s main perjurers, was recalled to the stand after previously testifying for the prosecution on May 20 and 22nd. During his earlier times on the stand, Conover, whose real name was Charles A. Dunham, claimed that he saw John Wilkes Booth and John Surratt in Canada plotting the assassination of Lincoln with known Confederate agents. His testimony, along with that of James Merritt and Richard Montgomery, was the prosecution’s main evidence that the plot to kill Lincoln had originated with Confederate officials. In 1866, James Merritt would testify before a congressional committee and admit that his testimony had been false. Conover had paid both Merritt and Richard Montgomery to commit perjury. In November of 1866, Conover would be indicted for perjury, found guilty, and sentenced to ten years in prison.

After giving his original perjured testimony in May, Conover returned to Canada where he was known as James Watson Wallace. He was sent there, ostensibly, to uncover more vital information regarding the origins of the plot. While in Canada, Conover’s previously secret and withheld testimony was prematurely published in the press. Though he had been outed as a spy of sorts, Conover/Wallace/Dunham decided to double down on his lies. When confronted in Canada, “Wallace” swore under oath that he had never used the name of Conover and that he had never testified in Washington. He accused “Conover” of impersonating him and denied that he knew Jacob Thompson, one of the Confederate agents that Conover had claimed to have had discussions of Lincoln’s assassinations with, intimately. He also swore then that he never saw John Wilkes Booth in Canada. Wallace went so far in his denials of “Conover’s” testimony that he offered to come to Washington to prove to the commission that he was not Conover and offered a reward of $500 for the capture of the man who had impersonated him. His lies in Canada did not seem to get him as far as his lies in the U.S., however, as by June 16, Wallace was in jail in Montreal, where the newspapers reported, “he now confesses he is Sanford Conover, and wishes to disclose how and by what means he was induced to go to Washington at the instance of Federal pimps for perjury, but that Southerners here scorn to go near him to receive his disclosures.” Not wanting Conover’s arrest and possible confession to perjury to sully his vital testimony at the conspiracy trial, the U.S. War Department arranged for Conover’s release from prison in Montreal and brought him back to D.C. to re-take the stand and explain himself.

Back on the witness stand in Washington and away from Canada, Conover testified on June 27 that the affidavits he swore to in Canada and his offers of reward for the arrest of himself were false. He claimed that Confederate agents confronted him with a pistol to his head when his May testimony at the conspiracy trial was released and that the only reason he swore under oath that he was not Conover was to save his life. Conover also spent a large part of his testimony on June 27 claiming that the official transcript of the trial of the St. Albans raiders did not provide an accurate copy of his testimony and that what he had testified to at this trial was the truth. In reality, very little of what Conover/Wallace/Dunham testified to was truthful. Conover was continuing to lie and perjure himself so that he could keep “investigating” his accusations for the U.S. government in order to milk it of funds. He told the authorities exactly what they wanted to hear in order to stay in their good graces as long as possible. The prosecution’s insistence on sticking by Sandford Conover even after the evidence of his perjury was made known demonstrates how the Judge Advocate General was willing to “use tainted evidence to gain his ends.”

To be fair to the miniseries, Conover still comes across as unreliable and shifty by the end of this episode, even if the writers did make it seem like he was being threatened by the boogie man of George Sanders to justify his failure to deliver on his promises.

7. The Pet Letter

Much is made about “the pet letter” in this episode. It is first hinted at by Lafayette Baker, who portrays it as definitive proof that Jefferson Davis authorized his “pet,” John Wilkes Booth, to kill the president. When Sandford Conover reappears in Stanton’s office, the Secretary of War hungrily reads the letter that Conover has recovered from the Confederate Secret Service. During the trial, Conover claimed that the letter was addressed to George Sanders but that he never picked it up. From the way the miniseries talks about it, this “pet letter” seems to be one of the most important pieces of evidence at the trial.

In reality, however, the “pet letter” was not connected to either George Sanders or Jefferson Davis and is just another example of how the prosecution was so desperate to connect Booth to the Confederacy that they brought forth the most spurious pieces of evidence available. Here is an explanation of the “pet letter” from my trial project. This first section is from June 5, when the letter was first entered into evidence.

Charles Deuel, a member of the Construction Corps, Railroad Department, testified that he had been working in Morehead City, North Carolina, during the month of May. On May 2nd, while he and another man named James Ferguson were near the government wharf in that city, he noticed a letter floating in the water. He picked it up and discovered it was written in code. Deuel stated that through a little trial and error, he managed to decode the note. The letter was supposedly dated April 15th and was in an envelope bearing the name John W. Wise. The letter spoke of the work “Pet” had done well and that “Old Abe” was now dead. The writer lamented that “Red Shoes” lacked nerve in “Seward’s case.” The writer also appealed to the intended recipient to “bring Sherman” and commanded them not to “lose your nerve.” The letter continued in a coded, conspiratorial fashion and was ultimately signed by “No. Five”. At this point, the defense had very few questions about the letter as they deemed it unrelated to their clients’ cases and assumed the government was admitting it in the same manner they had presented evidence against the Confederate government. Only Frederick Aiken cross-examined Deuel, asking how he decoded the letter and whether the original letter had suffered a great deal of blurring from being found in the water. Deuel stated his belief that it did not appear to have been in the water long and was, therefore, not blurred. In his book, The Lincoln Assassination Encyclopedia, author Edward Steers, Jr. states that “The letter appears to be a fabrication, but by whom and for what purpose is not clear.” Later, on June 7th, Thomas Ewing would make a motion to have this cipher letter stricken from the record.

The coded letter, found in the water in Morehead City, NC, was entered into evidence as Exhibit 79.

James Ferguson, a laborer working under the previous witness, Charles Deuel, testified that he was with Deuel in Morehead City, NC. Ferguson claimed he was the one who noticed the letter in the water and called it to the attention of Deuel, who retrieved it. Ferguson identified the letter submitted into evidence as the same one he had seen.

So the “pet letter” was a random coded letter found in the waters of Morehead City, North Carolina, on May 2, 1865. It was addressed to a “John W. Wise” and appeared to make references to the assassination of Lincoln. Here is the full, decoded “pet letter” for more context:

“WASHINGTON, April the 15, ’65.

DEAR JOHN,

I am happy to inform you that Pet has done his work well. He is safe, and Old Abe is in hell. Now, sir, All eyes are on you. You must bring Sherman: Grant is in the hands of Old Gray ere this. Red Shoes showed lack of nerve in Seward’s case, but fell back in good order. Johnson must come. Old Crook has him in charge.

Mind well that brother’s oath, and you will have no difficulty; all will be safe, and enjoy the fruit of our labors.
We had a large meeting last night. All were being in carrying out the programme to the letter. The rails are laid for
safe exit. Old — always behind, lost the pop at City Point.

Now I say again, the lives of our brave officers, and the life of the South, depends upon the carrying this programme into effect. No. Two will give you this. It’s ordered no more letters shall be sent by mail. When you write, sign no real name, and send by some of our friends who are coming home. We want you to write us how the news was received there. We receive great encouragement from all quarters. I hope there will be no getting weak in the knees. I was in Baltimore yesterday. Pet had not got there yet. Your folks are well, and have heard from you. Don’t lose your nerve.

O. B.
No. Five.”

As was seen, the defense attorneys didn’t have much to say about the “pet letter” when it was first entered into evidence. However, that changed two days later, on June 7, when one of the defense attorneys decided to bring the matter back up:

Defense lawyer Thomas Ewing then made a motion that the cipher letter found in the waters of Morehead City, NC, and entered into evidence on June 5th be stricken from the record. Ewing explained that he had been absent from the courtroom at the time the cipher letter was introduced after being assured that the testimony concerning it would only deal with the larger Confederate conspiracy the government was pursuing. It was only after seeing the record concerning the cipher this morning that Ewing learned more about it. Ewing stated his belief that the cipher was undoubtedly fictitious, and even if the prosecution thought otherwise, it was still wholly inadmissible under the rules of evidence. As Ewing noted, the note was not signed, its handwriting was not proven to be one of the conspirators, it was not shown to be connected to any of the conspirators, nor was it in the possession of any of the conspirators. Ewing stated that the cipher was the declaration of an unknown person not shown to be connected in this conspiracy, and, therefore, the letter was as unconnected with this case as “the loosest newspaper paragraph that could be picked up anywhere.”

Assistant Judge Advocate John Bingham countered that part of the charge and specification against the eight conspirators now on trial was that they had entered into a conspiracy with parties named and others unknown. Bingham then went into a long description of the evidence already presented, which formed the foundation for the admission of this cipher. In the end, he stated that this letter was proof of the additional unknown conspirators the charge and specification spoke about. Ewing replied that for such a letter to be admissible, it would have to be proven to have been written by a co-conspirator. Bingham stated that based on the other proofs in the case, the prosecution believed that this cipher was written by an otherwise unknown co-conspirator.

Walter Cox, the lawyer for Michael O’Laughlen, then joined Thomas Ewing in his motion against the cipher. He reiterated that, originally, the defense team had no objections to the letter because they were under the impression that it would relate to the machinations of agents in Canada with possible connections to authorities in Richmond. Cox made it clear that the defense had never opposed testimony of this kind in order to ferret out the truth. They merely wished to show that their own clients had no involvement with any such Confederate plans. The defense, therefore, did not preview this cipher before it was read into court. After it was read, however, and it was purported to have been written by someone immediately connected with the assassination, that changed the nature of the evidence. Cox agreed that the law allowed the declaration of one conspirator to be used against another conspirator, but he insisted, like Ewing, that the connection must first be made showing that the alleged conspirator making the declaration is actually connected to the conspiracy. Until other evidence proved the author of the cipher’s connection to the conspiracy, Cox stated that it was inadmissible to use it as evidence. Cox reiterated that the letter was not proven to be connected in any way to Booth or any of his associates. Cox criticized Bingham’s explanation as to why the cipher was proper evidence.

According to Cox, Bingham’s logic was that: Booth was engaged in a conspiracy with some unknown persons, this cipher letter comes from an unknown person, and therefore this letter is from somebody connected with the conspiracy and constitutes admissible evidence. Cox referred to this as “chop logic” on the part of the prosecution and reiterated that the rule of law stated that the author of a declaration must be shown first when a letter is entered into evidence.

Cox then went on to explore the idea first mentioned by Thomas Ewing concerning how the cipher was undoubtedly a fabrication. The testimony stated that the letter was picked up out of the water in Morehead City yet the letter was not blurred from its contact with the water. Cox expressed his belief that it had been written and dropped into the water immediately before it was found by government agents for the very purpose of it being used as evidence. Cox then looked at the text, noting that it was dated April 15th, the day after Lincoln was shot. The text stated that “I was in Baltimore yesterday” and that “Pet,” assumed to be Booth based on the context of the letter, “had not yet got there.” Since, in context to the letter, “yesterday” would have been April 14th, the day of the assassination, it made no sense that “Pet” would be in Baltimore before his work of assassination had been done. Cox also laughed at the letter’s claim that on the night of April 14th, “We had a large meeting,” when it had been shown that most of the conspirators were fleeing for their lives.

John Bingham, continuing his objection to the motion, noted that the cipher letter and its corresponding testimony could not be struck out or erased by anybody through any motion. He conceded that Ewing could ask the court to disregard it but stated that the proper time for him to do so would be during his closing arguments. Bingham stated that asking the court to disregard this evidence now was akin to asking the court to try part of the case now and the rest of it later. Bingham also came to the defense of the letter and its contents, attempting to repudiate the words of Walter Cox. Bingham pointed out that the references to Sherman and Grant showed evidence of a conspiracy, one that was not known to anyone in America except the conspirators themselves, on April 15th. Cox then countered that they did not know what day it was written. Bingham stated that Cox, himself, had given credit to the date of April 15th during his criticisms of the letter. Cox still pointed out that it was not found until the 2nd of May, three weeks after the assassination, when knowledge of the conspiracy was well known to the public. He insisted that the evidence suggested the cipher was a forgery, “written by somebody who possessed himself of sufficient knowledge of the facts charged against the conspirators to enable him to fabricate a letter specious on its face and appearing to have some bearing on the conspiracy itself.”

In his own closing, John Bingham maintained that the contents of the letter proved it was genuine and that it had been in the possession of an unknown conspirator. Bingham believed that all other evidence in the case regarding the larger conspiracy (a large portion of which was later found to be perjury) corroborated the truthfulness of the cipher letter.

In the end, the commission sided with their advisor, Bingham, and overruled Thomas Ewing’s motion to strike the letter from the record. During the course of this excited debate over the cipher letter, “a lady fainted, and was carried out of the court-room.”

The “pet letter” was an obvious fake with no proven connection to Booth or his conspirators. Its admittance into evidence was yet another embarrassing error of judgment on the part of the government in its blind quest to connect the assassination of Lincoln to the Confederate government by any means necessary.

Quick(ish) Thoughts

  • I’ve mentioned it before, but the government was not aware of Lewis Powell’s real name until about halfway through the conspiracy trial. Up until that point, he was a mystery man known only by the alias Lewis Paine. To learn more about Lewis Powell’s history and life up until his involvement with Booth, check out this post regarding his early life.

  • I will give credit to the writers for doing their research on the trial exhibits. When Judge Advocate Holt is asking Eckert about the Confederate cipher cylinder recovered from Richmond, he notes that this is “exhibit number 59.” That is actually the correct exhibit number from the trial. Holt then switches to the handwritten Vigenère cipher table found in Booth’s room and calls it “Exhibit 7,” which, again, is the correct exhibit number for that piece of evidence.
  • Jeremiah Dyer, a witness for Dr. Mudd, is portrayed as a pastor in Bryantown and speaks highly of Mudd’s reputation. In reality, Dyer was no pastor but Dr. Mudd’s brother-in-law. The doctor was married to Jeremiah’s sister, Sarah Frances Dyer.
  • In much the same way that the series created a fictional Mary Simms, they also merged her two brothers into one character. While Mary’s brother Milo did testify at the trial (and at around 14 or so, was among the youngest to do so), he had never been shot by Dr. Mudd. Like his sister Mary, Milo had left the Mudd farm after emancipation came in 1864 and so he was not around when the assassin showed up. Dr. Mudd had shot the Simms’ older brother, Elzee Eglent, in June of 1863 when he felt the enslaved man was not working hard enough. Mudd also threatened to send Eglent to Richmond in order to help build defensive fortifications for the Confederacy. Eglent, along with a group of around 40 others, escaped from the farms belonging to Dr. Mudd, his father, and Jeremiah Dyer in August of 1863. Elzee Eglent did testify at the trial, just like the real Milo and Mary Simms, but there was no large reaction or an outburst from Mudd when he mentioned having been shot by the doctor.
  • Despite Mary Simms appealing to the court to ask Louis Weichmann about the relationship between Dr. Mudd, Surratt, and Booth, in reality, Weichmann had testified about the connection between the men several days earlier. The real Mary Simms had no knowledge of any connection between Mudd and Booth.

  • Edwin Stanton’s dramatic reading of the conspirators’ verdicts inside the packed trial room makes for compelling drama but is nothing like what occurred. There was no extra court session for the public during which the verdicts were read. After the commissioners finished their deliberations on June 30, their findings were sent over to the President for final approval. President Johnson officially approved the commission’s verdicts and sentences on July 5, and the condemned conspirators learned of their fates when the commander of the prisoner, General John Hartranft, brought them the news on July 6.
  • For the sake of time, the conflict between Stanton and President Johnson, which resulted in Stanton’s ultimate removal from office, was sped up. For an overview of the full story, I recommend a quick read of the latter part of the Reconstruction section and the Impeachment section on Edwin Stanton’s Wikipedia page.

  • The text stating that John Surratt held “rallies across America” about his connection with Booth is a bit misleading. John Surratt tried his hand at becoming a professional lecturer after his own trial ended in a hung jury. However, he only gave his talk about his connections with Booth three times. Once in New York City, once in Baltimore, and once in Rockville, Maryland. When he announced an upcoming talk in D.C., there was outrage, and he was reminded that he was never acquitted of the charges against him and that further lectures could provide evidence that the government could use if they decided to put him on trial again. This ended John Surratt’s short-lived career as a speaker.

Thus, we arrive at the end of Manhunt, the miniseries. Was this series an accurate adaptation of James L. Swanson’s nonfiction book documenting the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the search for his assassin? No, it wasn’t. From the historian’s viewpoint, this series was a turducken of factual tidbits stuffed inside dramatic license, all stuffed inside imagination.

Looking back on my own reviews, it’s clear how my opinions became more jaded as the series went on. In the beginning, I so badly wanted to give the writers the benefit of the doubt as I understood that I was the worst critic for this series because of my knowledge of the actual events. As the series went on and continued to deviate so extremely from the actual history, the excitement and hope I once felt for the series waned quickly. This is why it has taken me 8 months since the release of the final episode to finally review it.

Even as I criticized each episode, I strove in each of my reviews to point out aspects of the series that I liked, such as my enjoyment of many of the supporting actors in the series, particularly the portrayals of David Herold, Andrew Johnson, Mary Simms, and Thomas Eckert. At times, the series pleasantly surprised me by including a fact I did not expect them to bring up. This is to say that despite my groaning about some things, there is still much to like about the series. When I turn off my brain and watch the series as the piece of historical fiction that it is, I enjoy the compelling drama.

In the end, I know my opinions of this series would likely have been kinder had it been called anything other than Manhunt. If the series were called The War Secretary or something like that, there would no longer be any expectation in my mind that the series would stay true to a non-fiction book about the Lincoln assassination. The writers of this series were clearly stuck between a rock and a hard place. They wanted to write a series about Stanton, Johnson, and the fight for the future of the country during Reconstruction, which is a noble and worthwhile idea. The best parts of this series are the times when it is allowed to explore this aspect of history. Unfortunately, the attempt to merge this series idea with another about the hunt for John Wilkes Booth resulted in a mismatched marriage where neither history got the attention that it deserved.

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Manhunt Review: Episode 6 Useless

Posted on December 12, 2024 by Dave Taylor

I am (still) conducting an ongoing review of the seven-part AppleTV+ miniseries Manhunt, named after the Lincoln assassination book by James L. Swanson. This is my historical review for the sixth episode of the series “Useless.”  This analysis of some of the fact vs. fiction in this episode contains spoilers. To read my reviews of other episodes, please visit the Manhunt Reviews page.

Episode 6: Useless

At the Garrett farm, Julia Garrett is concerned about her absent father finding her alone with Booth and Herold. She tells the men they have to spend the night in the tobacco barn, and no amount of flirting by Booth is able to shake her resolve. Once inside the barn, Julia locks the men in, leading Herold to immediately fear the worst. Booth, meanwhile, is unphased and tells stories to Herold in an attempt to convince him that he has been through worse scrapes than this.

Back at the Star Hotel in Bowling Green, Secretary Stanton is being cared for by a doctor after the recent collapse that prevented him from riding off with the 16th New York Cavalry. Eddie Stanton and Thomas Eckert lament the toll the manhunt has taken on Stanton and worry about the Secretary’s health.

After another interlude between Booth and Herold in the barn, the 16th NY come riding up to the Garrett house. At the point of Boston Corbett’s gun, Julia Garrett admits that the fugitives are hiding in the tobacco barn and produces the key. Booth and Herold see some cavalrymen approaching the barn and debate opening fire when the barn door is opened. Everton Conger and Luther Baker step partly inside and order the men to surrender.

Booth refuses to surrender and instead offers to settle things with a duel. Baker tells the men that they have five minutes to come out or else he will force them out. The barn door is closed again. Booth fruitlessly attempts to break through the back wall, all while cursing at Herold for being useless to him.

Outside the barn, Corbett offers to attack the barn alone in order to draw Booth’s fire. Conger reminds Corbett that they have all survived the war and that he will not lose another man now. He then orders the other soldiers to lay brush around the barn. The barn is then lit on fire, much to the chagrin of Julia Garrett.

Inside the barn, Herold decides to give up. Booth opens the door and proclaims Davy innocent of the assassination saying that he alone planned it and made his escape. Herold exits the barn and is immediately tied to a tree, while Booth remains inside the smoke-filled barn.

In Bowling Green, Eckert comes into Stanton’s room with the news that Booth will not surrender and that the cavalry is smoking him out. Despite his still weakened condition, Stanton insists on heading out to the Garrett farm to see that Booth’s capture is done right. Stanton, Eckert, and Eddie head out en route to the Garrett farm.

Even though the barn continues to burn, Booth refuses to come out. Conger approaches David Herold and asks him to go back into the barn and convince Booth to surrender. Davy finds a coughing and weakened Booth, who has seemingly accepted his fate to go out in a blaze. Davy pleads with Booth to live, even if it is only one more day. Booth appears to agree, and Davy helps lift him up.

On the outside of the barn, Boston Corbett discovers a small hole and peers through it at the men inside. Davy leads Booth towards the door of the barn when Corbett aims his pistol through the hole and fires, striking Booth and causing him to collapse. Davy turns to Booth and announces that he has been shot. Conger and Baker pull Booth from the barn as Booth deliriously states that Jefferson Davis will save him. Corbett appears, stating that Booth was about to shoot, so he fired first. Herold screams that this is a lie as Corbett looks to the heavens in amazement for having become God’s instrument.

Booth is moved further away from the flames and placed on the porch of the Garrett house. Though Julia Garrett does not want him inside, she still provides a pillow for his head and laments that a “great man deserves the hospital.” The soldiers state that Booth won’t survive the hour. Booth spits up blood, makes a few statements, and dies.

The next scene shows Stanton’s arrival at the Garrett farm after daybreak. Luther Baker apologizes to the Secretary for not taking Booth alive but repeats Corbett’s story that Booth was about to fire. Stanton is led to Booth’s body, which is wrapped in a blanket and lying on a cart. He pulls the blanket off of Booth’s face and sees his quarry face-to-face for the first time. Everton Conger appears and shows Stanton all of the items found on Booth, including his diary, which piques the Secretary’s interest. After Eddie covers Booth’s face back up, Stanton orders Eddie to have Booth’s body fully identified by a coroner and then disposed of in a place that even he doesn’t know.

We then cut to the White House, where Stanton and Judge Advocate Holt prepare to inform President Johnson of their plan to try the remaining assassination conspirators using a military tribunal rather than a civilian court. Johnson is in favor of the idea. Stanton also announces his intention to formally charge Confederate president Jefferson Davis with Lincoln’s death, drawing an uncomfortable look from Holt. President Johnson agrees but tells Stanton he better be able to prove it.

The hunt is then on for crucial witnesses to be used in the trial. In Bryantown, Oswell Swann refuses Luther Baker’s request to testify, countering with, “Talk to me when I’m considered more than three-fifths a man.” From Dr. Mudd’s cell, he pleads with his visiting neighbors to testify on his behalf and tell of his good deeds as a neighbor. Later, Edwin Stanton meets with Mary Simms at a freedmen’s camp in Arlington, telling her how important her testimony would be against Dr. Mudd.

At the War Department, Holt and Eckert express their doubts to Stanton about their ability to prove a grand conspiracy plot against Lincoln involving Jefferson Davis, George Sanders, and the Confederate government. They beg Stanton to reconsider, but he refuses, saying that the trial is his call. A visit to David Herold, looking for a connection to something bigger, proves fruitless. There is a scene showing the capture and arrest of Jefferson Davis and a discussion in the War Department about how to share it with the press.

Near the end of the episode, Eddie Stanton informs his father that the inquest over Booth’s body is finished. Before departing with Luther Baker, Eddie notices his father reading Booth’s diary and inquires about it. The Secretary tells his son not to worry about it and dismisses him to his task. Once alone in the room, Stanton tears pages from Booth’s diary and throws them into the fire.

The episode ends with the Secretary announcing his readiness to prepare the next witness, while Eddie Stanton and Luther Baker are shown disposing of three bodies.

Here are some of the things I enjoyed about this episode:

  • The Final Dream

This episode opens with a dream sequence that shows Edwin Stanton walking up to Booth’s horse as it grazes in a wood. The Secretary is moving slowly with a pistol drawn and cocked. As he approaches a large tree, Stanton puts his ear close to it before his mouth turns into a wide smile. As we rotate around the tree, we see Booth on the other side, with a revolver in his hand, but his face showing signs of concern. The scene ends with the dreamer, Booth, waking up in bed at the Garrett house. This is the third episode to begin with a dream sequence. Episode 2 started with Stanton dreaming of stopping Booth at Ford’s Theatre. While successful in the dream, the assassin reacted to Stanton’s punches by laughing in the Secretary’s face. In episode 3, Booth dreamed of his ascendance to the Presidency of the Confederacy. His swearing-in ceremony was interrupted by real-life Oswell Swann, who quickly brought Booth out of his fantasy. It’s interesting how the dream in this episode is so different than the ones that came before. Booth is no longer in control or wrapped up in his own glory. Here, near the end, Booth’s dream tells him how closely tracked he truly is. His unconscious mind is telling him the end is near, even if he doesn’t want to accept it. Just a scene later, he reassures Davy that their success is assured and that a night in a barn is nothing. But that is his ego talking. Booth’s subconscious appears to know the truth. I enjoyed all three dream sequence openings.

  • Booth and Henrietta

This episode pleasantly surprised me for a bit during Booth and Herold’s time locked in the Garrett barn. Immediately after the title sequence rolls, we see Davy banging on the locked barn door like a caged animal, convinced that the pair are done for. Booth, still ignoring his subconscious mind, assures Davy that he’s gotten out of worse scrapes. To prove his point, Booth shows off a scar on his left cheek. He tells Herold the wound was given to him by a “dancer by the name of Henrietta,” who attacked him with a knife after she found Booth in bed with her sister.

This is a true story of an event that occurred on April 26, 1861, exactly four years prior to the events in the Garrett barn. The 1860-61 theatrical season marked JWB’s first tour as a leading star actor. Theater manager Matthew Canning acted as Booth’s agent and started him in the Southern states before moving north to New York in January of 1861. After arriving in Rochester, Booth met his leading lady for the engagement, an actress by the name of Henrietta Irving.

Henrietta Irving in 1864

Five years older than Booth, Henrietta was a native of New York and said to be a niece of author Washington Irving of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” fame. I have tried to verify this with genealogical records but haven’t been able to prove it. Still, there may have been some family connection. Henrietta made her stage debut in 1855. Now six years into her career, Henrietta wasn’t a big household name but was still an accomplished working actress. Henrietta was most appreciated in smaller-sized cities across the country that were bereft of true “star” power. She played the leading parts well and wasn’t above playing supporting roles or sharing billing.

In 1859, Henrietta’s younger sister, Marie, made her debut on the stage. When the next season began, Henrietta and Marie joined forces and were advertised as the Irving sisters. While Henrietta’s career in the theater would last decades before her death in 1905, Marie’s foray only lasted a couple of seasons.

On January 21, 1861, John Wilkes Booth made his debut in Rochester, playing Romeo to Henrietta Irving’s Juliet. After the Shakespearean play was done, Marie Irving starred in the comedic afterpiece, the Rival Pages.

The engagement proceeded normally for two weeks, with Booth and the Irving sisters performing various plays together in different combinations while supported by the local theater company. Booth was very well received in Rochester, with the newspapers comparing him favorably to his revered father, Junius Brutus Booth. Booth’s time in Rochester ended on February 2, but his next engagement in Albany didn’t begin until February 11th. His whereabouts during this week are unknown, but he may have stayed in Rochester. It has been claimed that during this period in Rochester, Booth was engaged in a tryst with his leading Juliet, Henrietta Irving.

The details of Booth and Henrietta’s romance are difficult to know for certain. It is the stuff of gossip with conflicting sources. In the years after Lincoln’s assassination, columnist George Alfred Townsend (GATH)  dug up as much dirt about Booth’s life and career as he could. In his 1865 book, The Life, Crime, and Capture of John Wilkes Booth, GATH described Booth and Henrietta’s relationship thusly:

“They assumed a relation creditable only in La Bohéme, and were as tender as love without esteem can ever be.”

Years later, GATH interviewed Matthew Canning, Booth’s agent during this tour. Canning stated that Booth’s “chief passion was for women.” We must remember that Booth was a rising star during this period. Womanizing and sex followed naturally from his growing success. During the same period in Edwin Booth’s life, the elder brother had also lived the Bohemian lifestyle of casual sex. In 1858, Edwin wrote a letter to his brother, June, bragging about bedding a supporting actress at the theater, saying, “can’t brag on her acting so much as what we do in secret.” The fact that Dr. Ernest Abel was able to write an entire 400+ page book about John Wilkes Booth and the Women Who Loved Him demonstrates that JWB was also not short on female companionship during his brief 26 years of life.

Without naming names, Canning recalled to GATH that Henrietta was “Booth’s temporary mistress” during their time in Rochester. Eventually, Booth had to leave for Albany. He performed at the Gayety Theatre in Albany from February 11 through March 16, with one week off during the run. After this engagement ended, JWB headed to Portland, Maine, just as  Henrietta arrived in Albany for her own engagement at the Gayety Theatre. Even though Marie is not listed in the newspaper advertisements, she likely appeared alongside her sister in Albany.

Lucille and Helen Western

John Wilkes Booth was in Portland from March 18 through April 13. During the first week, he performed alongside another pair of acting sisters, Lucille and Helen Western. Booth had acted alongside the pair a year earlier when he was still a lowly stock actor in Richmond, Virginia. The “Star Sisters,” as the Westerns were known, made ample use of their good looks. They often put on more exotic shows with costumes that showed off their figures or even saw them dressed as men. Some of their regular plays were filled with sexual innuendo, and they thrived on courting controversy.  However, as successful as the “Star Sisters” had been, the duo was at the end of their time together. Their engagement with Booth marked the last time the Western sisters would appear on stage together. In his book, Dr. Abel writes that John Wilkes Booth likely made a “temporary mistress” out of seventeen-year-old Helen Western during their time in Portland together, but the evidence to support this claim is lacking.

After his time with the Western sisters in Portland was over, Booth returned to Albany for a repeat engagement at the Gayety Theatre starting on April 22. Henrietta Irving had just concluded her own run at the theater and had last appeared on April 19. Whether she performed supporting roles to Booth in April is unknown. The newspaper advertisements for this engagement only mention Booth sharing billing with “Signor Canito, the Man Monkey.” The “signor” was a New York actor by the name of Samuel Canty, who dressed as a monkey and performed in acrobatic plays he wrote himself.

Booth’s engagement with the monkey man was going well until April 26, 1861, when Henrietta Irving made her attack. The details are unclear, but the incident occurred at the Stanwix Hall hotel in Albany, where both Booth and Irving were staying. Irving stabbed at Booth with a dagger, aiming at his face – the stock and trade of any handsome actor. Booth managed to parry the blow, but not before receiving a bloody gash on his cheek. Having failed in her attack, Irving returned to her own hotel room at the Stanwix and stabbed herself. The attempt at suicide proved non-fatal, and both the victim and the attacker survived their knife wounds.

The newspaper articles that popped up about the incident were vague. Most seemed to believe that Henrietta Irving’s attack on Booth was due to a love affair gone wrong. The short blurbs that popped up in papers about the incident blamed the stabbing on “disappointed affection,” “misunderstanding,” “jealousy,” “or some little affair of that sort.”

Henrietta Irving

The miniseries suggests that the stabbing may have been due to Booth taking an interest in Henrietta’s sister, Marie, during this time. There is some evidence to support this. In the same 1886 interview between GATH and Matthew Canning, Booth’s former agent recalled:

“There were two sisters in the company [in Albany], and neither of them very considerate. One of them was Booth’s temporary mistress, and he got a fancy for the other one, and the first sister kept watch on him, and as he was coming out of the other one’s room she jumped on him and stabbed him.”

This recollection from Canning implies that Booth had shifted his desires from Henrietta to her sister Marie and that Henrietta attacked him as a result. Whether this attack was from jealousy on Henrietta’s part or an attempt to protect her sister from a lothario she knew all too well is uncertain.

The incident marked the end of Booth’s debut touring season. The wound was not severe, but the latest of several misfortunes that had befallen the novice star, and Booth was ready for a break. From Albany, he returned home to Maryland and spent ten weeks at the family home of Tudor Hall memorizing and practicing plays for his next season.

Henrietta Irving

Henrietta Irving’s career was not hampered by the bad press. She continued to act and married fellow actor Edward Eddy in 1867. We’ll probably never know her true motivation for stabbing Booth and then turning the knife on herself in 1861. In an autobiography she wrote before her death in 1905, Henrietta Irving makes no mention of John Wilkes Booth.

  • The Favorite

While in the barn talking with Davy before the authorities arrive, Booth goes into a monologue regarding his relationship with his mother and father. I’ll cover more of this in the sections that follow, but I did enjoy one part of it. During his monologue, Booth recounts that his mother “didn’t play favorites like my father.”

Despite Booth’s claim that Mary Ann Booth “didn’t play favorites,” it was well-known among the Booth children that she did and that Wilkes was the favorite. Granted, this had not always been the case. The original favorite had been Henry Bryon Booth, the fourth of the Booth children. He had been named after the famous poet Lord Byron, whose words helped Junius woo Mary Ann into leaving England with him. Henry Byron died of smallpox at the age of 11 in December of 1836, while the family was on an extended visit to England. The Booths were devastated by the loss of this boy, with Junius writing back to his father in America:

“We have at last cause and severe enough it is, to regret coming to England. I have delayed writing till time had somewhat softened the horror of the event. Our dear little Henry is dead! He caught the small pox and it proved fatal – he has been buried about three weeks since in the chapel ground close by. Guess what his loss has been to us – So proud as I was of him above all others.”

John Wilkes Booth was the first child born after the death of Henry Byron. When he came in May 1838, it helped put the light back into a still-mourning Booth household.

In addition to the timing of his birth, John Wilkes possessed a strong loyalty to his mother. He acted as the man of the house while his older brothers, June and Edwin, traveled west on their acting careers. After Junius, Sr. died in 1852, John Wilkes tried his best to work the family farm and provide for his mother and siblings. Eventually, a successful Edwin came home and saved the family from their poverty, but it had been Wilkes who had stuck by his mother’s side during these hard times.

The fact that Mary Ann favored Wilkes over her other children was not resented by the other siblings, either. In her own book about her brother, Asia wrote that she was closer to John than any of her siblings. When Mary Devlin Booth, Edwin Booth’s wife, died in 1863, John Wilkes canceled his engagements to rush to his grieving brother’s side. He regularly corresponded with his eldest brother, June, and took a great interest in the lives of his nieces and nephews. Wilkes even tried his best to provide some guidance and structure to his youngest sibling, Joe, whose lack of purpose and melancholy greatly worried their mother. As historians William Edwards and Edward Steers, Jr. concluded: “John was everyone’s favorite.”

With all this being said, I actually enjoy this part of Booth’s monologue in which he relates that his father played favorites, but his mother did not. Wilkes is either purposefully misrepresenting or completely ignorant of the fact that he is his mother’s favorite child. The former would demonstrate Booth’s manipulative nature and ability to lie to make himself look better, while the latter would show how selfish and narcissistic Booth was. The entire family knew and acknowledged that Wilkes was his mother’s favorite child, but his own self-pity and hurt ego over the idea that he wasn’t also his father’s favorite blinds him to the truth of his elevated status. I like this line as it is yet another example of something the miniseries accidentally gets right when you know the true context.

  • His Mother’s Prophecy

In the same monologue mentioned above, Booth recalls being the victim of a cutting insult on the part of his father and that his mother then came to his aid. Mary Ann looked at the palms of Booth’s “beautiful hands” and predicted that one day, her son would do something important with those hands. To Booth, his shooting of Lincoln was the fulfillment of his mother’s words, and that prophecy, not the soothsayer’s prophecy from episode 3 predicting his early demise, gave him comfort now.

This little story of Mrs. Booth having a vision of her son’s future actually has some basis in fact, though it comes from well before Wilkes could speak. In Asia Booth’s book about her brother, she recalled a family story told to her by her mother. It revolved around a night, not long after the birth of John Wilkes, when the mother was trying to coax her newest child to sleep as they both sat in front of a fire. According to Mary Ann, while thinking about the future of her young boy, she witnessed a vision. The story of what she saw was repeated so often that, in 1854, Asia wrote the story as a poem and presented the piece as a present for her mother’s birthday. Asia’s poem of “The Mother’s Vision” is as follows:

THE MOTHER’S VISION

Written 1854, June 2nd, by A.B., Harford Co. Md.

‘Tween the passing night and the coming day
When all the house in slumber lay,
A patient mother sat low near the fire,
With that strength that even nature cannot tire,
Nursing her fretful babe to sleep –
Only the angels these records keep
Of mysterious Love!

One little confiding hand lay spread
Like a white-oped lily, on that soft fair bed,
The mother’s bosom, drawing strength and contentment warm –
The fleecy head rests on her circling arm.
In her eager worship, her fearful care,
Riseth to heaven a wild, mute prayer
Of foreboding Love!

Tiny, innocent white baby-hand,
What force, what power is at your command,
For evil, or good? Be slow or be sure,
Firm to resist, to pursue, to endure –
My God, let me see what this hand shall do
In the silent years we are tending to;
In my hungering Love,

I implore to know on this ghostly night
Whether ’twill labour for wrong or right,
For – or against Thee?
The flame up-leapt
Like a wave of blood, an avenging arm crept
Into shape; and Country shone out in the flame,
Which fading resolved to her boy’s own name!
God had answered Love-
Impatient Love!

The story of Mary Ann Booth seeing the flames of a fire spell out “Country” and then John Wilkes Booth’s name is a compelling one that would have been perfectly suited for a dramatic recreation. While I wish that the miniseries had been more exact in recounting the details of this vision, I appreciate their hint at the family story.

  • Explaining the Trial

In the second half of this episode, we see Secretary Stanton preparing for the trial of the Lincoln conspirators. The series actually does a good job of showing Stanton’s strong belief that Jefferson Davis and other leaders of the Confederate government were behind the actions of John Wilkes Booth. We’ll talk more about this belief and how Stanton’s devotion to this theory ended up compromising the government’s case in the review for the final episode of the series.

However, I did appreciate how well the series showed a fictitious yet conceptually accurate discussion between Sec. Stanton, Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt, and President Johnson regarding the way in which the trial of the conspirators was to be conducted. The participants aptly explained the “danger” of attempting to try the conspirators in a civilian court where a jury of their peers might rule in their favor. JAG Holt explained how a panel of military judges would be better suited to the task and, of course, explicitly chosen by the War Department for the task. The scene also had Johnson lay out a basic but historically correct argument for why the conspirators should be tried by a military court for their assassination of the commander-in-chief. The whole scene was well written and explained a controversial decision using very human and understandable terms.

I also appreciate how Both Stanton and President Johnson were shown to be united in this area. One of my critiques has been how the series has shown the two to be at odds far too often this early in their relationship. Johnson wanted vengeance for Lincoln just as much as Stanton did. It was only as Johnson’s presidency went on that his deviations from his predecessor’s actions and beliefs caused an irreconcilable fissure between the men.

  • Will Harrison as Davy Herold

Back in my review for episode 3, I recounted how much I was enjoying how the writers managed to make David Herold a complex figure and how impressed I was with Will Harrison’s performance of this often-overlooked conspirator. My admiration for both Harrison’s acting and the interpersonal writing of his character only increased with the stand-out performance in the penultimate episode of the series. Herold experiences a whole gamut of emotions in this episode. In the barn, he finally refuses to entertain Booth’s ego and delusion any longer, and he is the only one of the two who truly acknowledges the severity of their circumstances. Herold is then noticeably wounded when Booth turns on him and projects his own inadequacies onto the pharmacist’s clerk, who had been nothing but loyal to the assassin up to now. Even though Booth is not worthy of his devotion, he still begs the assassin to live and not give up his life unnecessarily. Then, from his lonely prison cell, Davy acknowledges the powerful influence Booth had on him, yet is still unable to completely free himself from it, begging to read Booth’s diary once more.

Both Herold and Sec. Stanton reflect on their friends Booth and Lincoln, and how they made each feel important. Yet Herold fails to realize that his relationship was one-directional and with a narcissist who could only take. Though Tobias Menzies’ Sec. Stanton was correct that David Herold can’t be forgiven for what he did, Will Harrison’s portrayal of the conspirator in this episode returns a much-needed humanity to this historical figure.

  • An Equivocal Code

I was pleasantly surprised by part of the scene in the War Department where both JAG Holt and Thomas Eckert expressed their concerns to Stanton about the strength of the evidence to support the idea of a grand conspiracy involving the Confederate government. Stanton manages to acknowledge these shortcomings but is still unwilling to change his mind. He relates how the other side has shown its willingness to bend the rules and suggests his team do the same (as if trying the conspirators in front of a military court wasn’t bending the rules enough already).

As part of their equivocal evidence connecting Booth to Jefferson Davis is a coded message from Davis to John Surratt stating, “Come Retribution,” and the discovery of a cipher table in Booth’s room. As Holt and Eckert note, they can’t prove that the coded message related to the assassination or that Booth ever even saw it. To this, Stanton responds, “Very few, if any, understand how code works,” before ordering Eckert to “make it sound more definitive than it is.”

While I was not a fan of the miniseries creating a fictional coded message from Jefferson Davis to John Surratt just for the sake of intrigue, I am very happy that they are explicitly showing that the existence of Booth’s cipher table has been greatly misconstrued as being evidence of a connection between Booth and the Confederacy. I wrote as much in a blog post here back in 2019 entitled Booth’s “Confederate” Cipher (which you should all read). Given how very few others have ever written about Booth’s cipher table, I’d like to think one of the writers of this series read my post. In summary, the cipher table found in Booth’s room is in no way evidence of connection to the Confederate secret service. If you want to learn more, read the post.

Let’s dig now into the fact vs. fiction of this episode and learn about the true history surrounding these fictional scenes.

1. Booth’s Other Wound

In addition to mentioning the stab wound he received from Henrietta Irving, Booth shows Davy another wound he survived in the past. He points to a scar on his right hip and tells Davy that it was caused by a crazed fan who shot him in Columbus, Georgia. Booth then goes on to state that if Davy were to visit Columbus, he might hear some gossip of, “Booth’s own pistol going off in his pocket.” But Booth denies this story and assures Davy it was a deranged fan who shot him “demanding an autograph while I was taking home an ingenue.”

I appreciated how the miniseries clearly shows that Booth is making up a story to protect his vanity. However, even the “true” story that we are supposed to infer from this exchange – that Booth accidentally shot himself with a gun – is not exactly accurate.

The event in question happened on October 12, 1860, during Booth’s ill-fated debut season that would end with him being stabbed by Henrietta Irving. A concise version of what occurred can be read in this newspaper article.

I’ve written at length about Matthew Canning accidentally shooting his lead actor in a 2012 blog post entitled “Shooting Booth,” which I encourage you to read if you want to know the full story. While Booth may have had a hand in his own shooting, it would not be accurate to say that his own pistol went off in his pocket.

2. “Boy, you are useless.”

In the part of Booth’s barn monologue where he talks about his relationship with his parents, he recounts a time when he approached his father and asked the elder tragedian to train him as an actor. According to Booth, Junius responded cuttingly with, “Boy, you are useless,” dashing his hopes.

In this way, the miniseries is once again returning to the idea that Booth’s choice to assassinate Lincoln was motivated by an intense inferiority complex. While I have no doubt that the Booth family dynamic had an impact on John Wilkes Booth, I still find the belief that Booth did what he did because his father and brother were better actors than he was to be too contrived and simplistic.

I would agree that Booth likely felt that his father played favorites and that his brother Edwin had been given chances he had not. Part of this, however, was due to the age difference between Edwin and Wilkes. Their father’s alcoholism increased greatly in his later years, deeply impacting the family’s income stream. In earlier years, Mary Ann traveled with Junius to keep him sober, but her household was far too big for this to continue. She assigned her eldest boy, June, to the role of his father’s guardian for a time, but soon, June had a family and life of his own. In 1848, Junius needed a new traveling companion. The options were limited. While daughter Rosalie was 25 years old, it would not have been deemed appropriate for a daughter to become her father’s keeper. The only remaining Booth boys were Edwin, Wilkes, and Joe.  Of these, Edwin was the oldest at 14, followed by Wilkes, who was 10. By necessity and by age, Edwin became his father’s assistant. Wilkes was no doubt jealous of the opportunity and theatrical education his brother received in watching their father perform in cities across the nation. However, he was also ignorant of the immense struggles Edwin endured trying to keep their father out of the bottle and on the stage night after night. For both brothers, the grass was greener on the other side. While Wilkes was jealous that Edwin got to travel with their father, Edwin lamented his lost childhood and his lack of a formal education.

There is no evidence that Junius ever called Booth “useless.” The idea that Junius did not want to train Wilkes as an actor might be true, but likely not because of the old man playing favorites. In reality, Junius attempted to dissuade all of his sons from pursuing acting as a vocation. Junius knew firsthand the difficult lives actors lived. They were constantly away from their homes and families, and even the most successful of actors often struggled to make ends meet. Junius desperately desired for his children to go into respectable careers with stability. Actors were celebrated for their histrionic talents, but the applause was fleeting. It wouldn’t be until Edwin Booth established The Players Club in his later years that actors were welcomed as equals amongst men of power and influence.

In truth, had Junius been able to control his drinking and manic bouts, he may have been successful in preventing his sons from becoming actors. Without a need for a guardian, his two sons, June and Edwin, could have continued their studies and found other careers. Instead, they had to accompany their father, and their education and job training became that of the theater to which Junius was bound. While John Wilkes Booth was never tasked with being his father’s keeper in this way, his rose-colored interpretation of his brothers’s experiences led him to also want to be an actor.

3. The Garrett Family

One of my particular interests in the Lincoln assassination story is John Wilkes Booth’s time at the Garrett farm right before his death. He interacted quite a bit with the Garrett family, who were ignorant of his identity and agreed to take him in under the belief that he was merely a wounded Confederate soldier in need of assistance. The assassin spent about 39 hours at the Garrett farm before meeting his demise. He spent the first of his two nights sleeping comfortably in a bed inside the Garrett home as the family did not yet have any reason to suspect their houseguest was anyone other than what he claimed to be. It was only after the re-arrival of Davy Herold on the second day and the two men’s subsequent reaction to members of the 16th NY Cavalry riding by the farm that gave the family pause and resulted in the men’s banishment to the tobacco barn for Booth’s second night. Practically all documentaries and dramatic series fail to accurately portray this timeline. They all make it appear as if Booth showed up at the Garrett farm and was almost immediately condemned to the barn, where the troops cornered him a few hours later.

In truth, I had high hopes for Manhunt to finally show an accurate representation of the Garrett farm, Booth’s interaction with the family, and his death. Unfortunately, most of what is shown in this episode regarding the events at the Garrett farm is fictitious and only loosely based on fact.

The episode opens with Julia Garrett, fresh off of her awkward “bathing Booth” duty from the prior show, telling the men that they can’t stay overnight as her daddy will question her honor if they are found in the house. After some wooing by Booth, Julia agrees to let Booth and Herold take their horses in the morning, but only if her daddy approves. Julia leads them to the barn, and Booth once again tries to work his awkward magic on her, but she rebuffs him and locks the men in the barn, leading to the barn discussions between Booth and Herold that were previously mentioned.

Apparently, Julia’s daddy never comes home, as she remains the only member of the Garrett household that we ever see. While one of the children born to Richard Henry Garrett was named Julia, the real Julia Frances Garrett died in 1851 when she was less than a year old. The miniseries never shows the many other Garrett family members who interacted with Booth during his time at the farm, nor does it cover the actual series of events that led to Booth and Herold being locked into the barn and guarded by Jack and Will Garrett. The Garrett family did not know the true identity of the man they had been entertaining until he was already shot and dying on their porch. Booth was locked into the barn because he and Herold told the Garretts that they had gotten into a scrape with the Union cavalry over some horses, and so the Garretts were fearful the men might be horse thieves. They were locked into the barn to protect the Garrett horses, not because the Garretts suspected they were involved in the assassination of Lincoln.

4. The Fire Is Started Too Quickly

As is common in these types of dramatic portrayals, the miniseries shows the troopers lighting the tobacco barn on fire seemingly within minutes of their arrival at the Garrett farm. In reality, quite a lot of time took place between the arrival of the 16th NY Cavalry and the act of actually setting the tobacco barn housing the fugitives on fire. The act of dismounting the horses in groups of two and situating the horses away from where the blaze was planned took over a half hour as the cavalry was careful to maintain an unbroken line around the tobacco barn. Even after the dry brush was placed next to the barn in preparation to smoke them out, another hour went by as the soldiers tried to convince Booth to give himself up. The whole affair was a relatively patient one, as the soldiers wanted to capture Booth alive and were not out to destroy the Garrett property if it could be avoided. In the end, though, the trooper’s patience wore thin, and Luther Baker told the men that the barn would be set on fire in five minutes if they did not surrender themselves.

It was after this final ultimatum, given over an hour and a half after the arrival of the troopers, that David Herold finally surrendered himself. He did so before the barn was set on fire, and he came out alone with Booth verbally downplaying Herold’s involvement to the troopers as a way to protect his trusted conspirator. It was only after Herold’s surrender and his being secured to a nearby tree that Everton Conger lit the barn on fire, and Booth was shot within a matter of a minute or two.

5. The Shooting and Death of Booth

In the miniseries, David Herold is sent back into the burning barn in order to convince Booth to live another day by giving himself up. After telling Booth that his only chance is a day in court, Booth rises and begins to walk out of the burning structure with Davy leading the way. At this moment, Corbett finds a hole in the side of the barn, aims his pistol through it, and fires. The bullet strikes Booth, causing him to collapse. From Davy’s entreaties for help, the soldiers pull him from the barn, and Corbett appears to take credit for his actions, noting “what a fearsome God we serve” when told he struck Booth in the back of the head, “just like Lincoln.” The delirious and partially paralyzed Booth asks about Jefferson Davis before being placed on the porch of the Garrett house. Julia Garrett places a pillow behind Booth’s head and says he needs a hospital, but a soldier notes that he won’t survive the hour. In reality, the assassin doesn’t survive the minute as he chokes and spits up blood while calling for Davy. Booth then turns to Julia, mistaking her for his mother, and tells her, “Don’t look at my hands.” After a few more gasps, Booth mutters, “Useless, Useless,” and dies.

From a global view, this portrayal of the shooting and death of Booth is fine. They have most of the highlights from the story: Booth is shot by Boston Corbett as he heads towards the barn door, the mortally wounded assassin is placed on the Garrett house porch, and Booth says, “Useless, useless” before he dies. All of these things happened, but not so quickly, and, of course, many other things also happened.

John Wilkes Booth was shot at around 4:00 am on April 26th and died a bit before 7:00 am. During the last three hours of his life, he regularly floated in and out of consciousness. While lying on the porch of the house, a mattress was placed under him, and the soldiers and Garrett family members took care of him as best they could. On more than one occasion, Booth asked the soldiers to kill him, but they refused, saying it was their hope he would recover. The detectives emptied Booth’s pockets and took stock of his valuables. A doctor was sent for and arrived from Port Royal to examine Booth and announced his wound as mortal. After making his prognosis, the doctor departed. Talking was difficult for the assassin as the bullet had passed through the back of his neck. Booth’s final conscious act was to ask the soldiers to raise his hands in front of his face so that he could see them. It was to his hands that he directed his final words of “Useless, useless.” After this exchange, he fell back into unconsciousness and died not long after.

6. The Disposition of Booth’s Body

At the Garrett farm, Edwin Stanton entrusts his son Eddie with the disposal of John Wilkes Booth’s body. He orders that a coroner fully document the body first and for Eddie to then dump it into a body of water. The Secretary states he doesn’t even want to know where the body is dumped. He insists that there should be no place where people could go to honor the assassin and tells Eddie to also dispose of decoy corpses in case he is followed. While mention is later made that an autopsy has been performed, we never see this on camera. However, we do witness Eddie following his father’s disposal instructions at the very end of the episode as he and Luther Baker dump a body in a river and then bury two others in random locations.

In reality, Booth’s body was never condemned to a watery grave. After an autopsy was performed, his body was placed in a boat and rowed to the grounds of the Old Arsenal Penitentiary, the same place where the conspirators would shortly be imprisoned and tried. Booth’s remains were buried under the floor of a storeroom. Edwin Stanton, himself, kept the key to this storeroom. In 1867, that part of the old building was slated to be demolished, so Stanton sent the key and men over to move Booth’s remains. Booth was buried in a different warehouse on the grounds, in a common grave in which David Herold, Mary Surratt, Lewis Powell, and George Atzerodt were also reburied. During the final days of Andrew Johnson’s presidency in 1869, the lame-duck president authorized the removal of the bodies and turned Booth over to his family. They transported him to Baltimore and buried him in the family plot at Green Mount Cemetery. While John Wilkes Booth does not have his own headstone in the plot, his name does appear on the back of the Booth obelisk, noting him as a child of Junius Brutus and Mary Ann Booth.

To be fair to the miniseries, there was a lot of misinformation out there about the final disposition of John Wilkes Booth. So many rumors swirled that Booth really was sunk into the Potomac that Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper devoted the cover of their May 20, 1865 edition to a supposedly “authentic sketch” of the deed. In the decades that followed, more than one former sailor/soldier claimed to newspapers that he was the last remaining member of the “sinking detail.” However, the actual whereabouts of Booth’s corpse have been well documented, and we can rest assured that he lies in Green Mount Cemetery, not at the bottom of the Anacostia or Potomac Rivers.

7. A Reluctant Baptist Washington

There is a brief scene in which Dr. Mudd is shown conversing with a group of his neighbors and his brother-in-law, Jeremiah Dyer, asking which of them would be willing to testify on his behalf at his trial. Dr. Mudd correctly recounts that he is not permitted to testify on his own and that he needs them to swear to his good character.

After making his appeal, each of the gathered crowd raised their hand in support of the doctor, save one. This lone holdout is Baptist Washington, the only Black man present among his white neighbors. Wordlessly, Dr. Mudd signals to Jeremiah, and the doctor’s brother-in-law slips Washington a collection of dollar bills. After pocketing the bribe, Washington raises his hand in support like the rest.

Baptist Washington was an actual person who testified at the trial of the Lincoln conspirators. Washington had been enslaved by Jeremiah Dyer before emancipation came to Maryland in November of 1864. While he was still enslaved to the Dyer family, Washington had been hired out to Dr. Mudd and worked at the Mudd farm during carpentry work between January and August of 1864. Washington was one of the few African Americans who testified on behalf of Dr. Mudd, mainly to counter the claims of the real Mary Simms, who stated that Dr. Mudd had harbored Confederate agents like John Surratt at the farm. There is no evidence that Baptist Washington was paid for his testimony.

However, as I wrote in my piece recounting the Formerly Enslaved Voices in the Lincoln Assassination Trial, there were reasons other than monetary why people like Baptist Washington may have felt pressured to testify in favor of an enslaver like Dr. Mudd. While many Black residents left the regions where they had been enslaved when emancipation came, many others did not have that option. Even when freedom came, people like Baptist Washington, his wife, and his children remained living among the people who had once enslaved them. Washington faced difficult choices in 1865 and beyond. Even if he didn’t want to testify on Dr. Mudd’s behalf, failing to abide by the wishes of his white neighbors in Charles County would have had lifelong negative repercussions for him. Many other formerly enslaved people who didn’t move away after freedom likewise chose appeasement rather than conflict. This appeasement became misconstrued by white authors as the “loyal slave” and “good master” narratives, contributing to the myth of the Lost Cause. But Dr. Mudd was far from the oxymoronic good enslaver, as evidenced by Elzee Eglent, who testified about Dr. Mudd shooting him in the leg for not working hard enough. It’s not surprising then that Baptist Washington and many others spent their whole lives appeasing the white folks around them and telling them what they wanted to hear. During Reconstruction and beyond, such appeasement was sometimes the only way to survive.

8. Burning the Diary Pages

Near the end of the episode, we see Edwin Stanton reading through the pages of Booth’s diary, which was recovered from his body at the Garrett farm. Eddie Stanton sees his father reading it and asks him, “Did Booth write down his motives?” followed by, “Is there anything in there that could stain your reputation?” The elder Stanton tells his son not to worry about it, and Eddie leaves. We then watch as Sec. Stanton approaches the room’s fireplace, kneels down in front of the flames, rips pages from the diary, and burns them to ash.

This scene was actually previewed in one of the teaser trailers for the series, so I knew it would come eventually. Still, it was my fervent hope that this series would not indulge this completely unsupported conspiracy theory that Stanton altered John Wilkes Booth’s diary. It is a truly baffling choice on the part of the writers of the series to include this completely fictional scene, especially since it has been their goal to show Edwin Stanton in a noble and heroic light.

The idea of Stanton destroying pages of Booth’s diary is based on the writing of chemist-turned-author Otto Eisenschiml. In 1937, Eisenschiml wrote his most famous work, Why Was Lincoln Murdered?, in which he claimed that Edwin Stanton was the chief architect of Lincoln’s assassination. According to Eisenschiml, Stanton worried that Lincoln was going to be too lenient with Confederate leaders after the war was over, so he had his boss killed as a result. Much of the “evidence” Eisenschmil provides to support his thesis is blatantly false or highly circumstantial. Still, the controversy over his claim grabbed the attention of the public, and there are still those today who falsely believe that Stanton had a hand in Lincoln’s murder and that he destroyed the pages of Booth’s diary that incriminated him.

In reality, there is no evidence that Booth’s diary was altered after it was recovered from him. Booth’s diary, as we know it, is actually a pocket date book for 1864. The pages that have been removed from the book correspond with the pages for January 1 – June 10, 1864. It is important to remember that, during the first half of 1864, John Wilkes Booth was still a working actor, traveling from city to city performing on stage. This book was likely used by the actor to keep track of his engagements, travel expenses, his percentage of the box office, and other assorted personal affairs. This diary was never intended to be his last manifesto. Booth had written his true motivations and given the papers in a sealed envelope to his friend John Mathews with instructions to turn the papers over to the newspapers the next day. After Mathews witnessed his friend assassinate the President, the Ford’s Theatre actor read the manifesto and then burned it out of fear it would incriminate him in Booth’s plot. While on the run, Booth was distraught to find that his words had not been published in the papers. He attempted again to make his thoughts known and was forced to make do with this otherwise forgotten 1864 datebook, which he still had tucked in his coat pocket. The most likely and logical reason for the missing pages in Booth’s diary is that the assassin ripped them out himself in order to remove the mundane details of a traveling actor in 1864 and ensure a clean slate for his last manifesto.

If you’re interested in reading the text of John Wilkes Booth’s diary, I transcribed it in a post here.

No reliable evidence supports the idea that Edwin Stanton, or anyone other than John Wilkes Booth, altered his 1864 datebook. This miniseries does a great disservice to history by portraying this completely fictitious scene, which only succeeds in spreading a long-debunked and baseless conspiracy theory to the masses. I’m still shocked that this otherwise pro-Edwin Stanton miniseries embraced the ugliest of conspiracy theories against him. I’m no Edwin Stanton fan, but he deserved better than this.

Quick(ish) Thoughts

  • While I really liked the opening dream sequence, the shots of Booth’s horse grazing in the woods reminded me that there was never any follow-up to Davy’s horse galloping away from the pair in episode 3. You’ll remember that Booth shot his horse in the pine thicket and ordered Davy to do the same to his. But Herold was unable to kill the animal, and it ran off. At the time, I was convinced that the horse would be found in a later episode. But this never came to be, likely because the following episode had nothing to do with the actual manhunt and dealt with the fictional George Sanders intrigue. I supposed it’s all for the best anyway since, in reality, both horses were shot and sunk in the Zekiah Swamp by Davy Herold and Franklin Robey.

  • When Booth shows Davy the scar from his 1860 Columbus gunshot wound in his right hip, Davy suggests that this wound was why Booth’s “leg broke on that side” when jumping from the box at Ford’s Theatre because the “bones were still fragile.” We’ve already discussed that the real Booth broke his left leg, not the right, as the miniseries portrays. But even overlooking this fact, a bullet in the hip would not make the bone in your lower leg just above the ankle “fragile.” I know Davy was not a doctor, just a pharmacy clerk, but this claim makes no sense. Even the miniseries Booth seems to think this suggestion is nonsense, dismissing Davy’s idea with a “yeah, possibly.”
  • Booth recounts to Davy that his “mother had many children. Four passed away. Three to cholera. One fell swoop.” It’s true that out of the ten children born to Mary Ann and Junius Brutus Booth, four died before reaching adulthood. They were Henry Bryon, Mary Ann, Frederick, and Elizabeth. But it was only two children who died of cholera at the Booth family farm in “one fell swoop.” These were Mary Ann and Elizabeth, who both died within days of each other in 1833 at about the ages of 5 and 2, respectively. Both sisters had been predeceased by their brother Frederick, who died in Boston in 1828 at the age of 16 months. In December of 1836, eleven-year-old Henry Byron Booth died of smallpox while the family was visiting England. With the exception of Henry Bryron, who was buried in England, the other three Booth siblings were buried at the family farm of Tudor Hall. In 1869, after the government agreed to release John Wilkes Booth’s body to his family, Mrs. Booth had the remains of her three young children disinterred and moved to Green Mount Cemetery, where Edwin had purchased a large plot. The remains of Frederick, Mary Ann, and Elizabeth were placed in a single coffin and buried on top of their younger brother, John Wilkes, in the family plot.

  • While I still enjoyed the portrayal of William Mark McCullough as Boston Corbett in this episode, I feel that the writers made him a bit too zealous in this, his big climatic episode. Corbett, the lowly sergeant, single-handedly leads the cavalry, busts down the Garrett House door, pulls a pistol on and then chokes Julia Garrett, and later offers to go on a suicide mission into the barn to draw Booth’s fire until the assassin is out of ammo. Corbett certainly was a zealous and eccentric man, but he did not have a death wish. Nor would he have overstepped his role as a sergeant. The miniseries never shows Captain Edward Doherty, the leader of this detachment of cavalrymen, but even without him, Everton Conger and Luther Baker were in charge. Corbett is just a bit too crazy in this episode.
  • After the barn is set on fire, Julia Garrett rushes towards it and tells the soldiers they have to get Booth out of there. Again, the Garretts never knew that Booth had been their guest until after he was shot. After this comment, Corbett tells Julia, “This is a federal investigation. You’re obstructing.” These words sound painfully modern and out of place in this historical context.
  • As quickly as the troopers in Manhunt are to set fire to the tobacco barn, the structure itself burns at an amazingly slow pace, and the fire never seems to catch on anything inside the barn. For a barn that was filled with dried tobacco leaves and hay, this is beyond belief. But I suppose an asbestos-lined barn was necessary so that the news of the barn being lit could reach Stanton back in Bowling Green and for him to think he could make it to the Garrett farm before it was over.

  • When looking over the corpse of John Wilkes Booth at the Garrett farm, Edwin Stanton touches Booth’s hair as he states, “You’re no one now.” This is reminiscent of the many locks of hair that were cut from the assassin’s head. While lying on the Garrett porch, one of the Garretts cut a lock of Booth’s hair, and part of that lock was later sent to Mary Ann Booth. When Booth’s body lay on board the USS Montauk during his autopsy, locks of hair were snipped by visitors who identified him. Just before his final burial in Green Mount Cemetery in 1869, more hair was cut from his head as a keepsake for his family. Keeping locks of hair of the deceased was a very common Victorian mourning custom.
  • Oswell Swann is partially redeemed in this episode. After Booth’s death, there is a scene in Bryantown between Swann and Luther Baker. Swann tells Baker that Booth and Herold had passed that way, with Baker replying, “Yeah, we got your tip,” implying that Swann had alerted the authorities at some point. However, Baker next complains that this tip did not come earlier, leading Swann to defend himself and the dangers posed to him living in an anti-Lincoln community. While this sentiment is fair enough, I still don’t feel this redemption is enough to undo the damage done to the real Swann in prior episodes in portraying him as an active agent for the Confederate underground.
  • After this episode features the capture of Jefferson Davis, there is a scene between Eckert and Stanton in the War Department where Stanton orders that the press be told Jefferson Davis was captured while wearing his wife’s dress rather than just her shawl. According to Stanton, the reason for this is because, “they humiliated Abe when he wore women’s clothes to avoid death threats in Baltimore.” It’s a bit unclear who the “they” are in Stanton’s sentence. It could be a reference to Confederate plotters like Davis or perhaps even the press itself. Regardless, the point is moot, as Abraham Lincoln never dressed in women’s clothing, nor was he said to have dressed in women’s clothing to avoid assassination. The event references an event in 1861 to possibly assassinate President-elect Lincoln as he made his way by train to Washington for the first time. There were threats that an attempt might be made on Lincoln’s life in Baltimore, so he changed his plans at the last minute and essentially snuck through Baltimore ahead of schedule and arrived safely in D.C. After this was learned, Lincoln’s political enemies ridiculed him for cowardice. One reporter basely claimed that Lincoln moved through Baltimore wearing a scotch cap and a long cloak. While Lincoln was never disguised in such a way, this lie stuck, and many political cartoons were made of the new President slinking into or panic-strickenly dashing into Washington. The event did damage Lincoln’s ego a bit and may have contributed to his later distaste for guards and security.

I apologize for the six-month delay between my review of episode 5 and this one. In truth, my frustration with the series really zapped my motivation to continue with these in-depth reviews. Since Booth’s time at the Garrett farm and subsequent death is my favorite aspect of the story, seeing how much the miniseries botched this aspect really made the prospect of writing this review seem like an unwanted chore. However, I made a commitment to review all seven episodes of the series, and that is what I am going to do, even if I have to take lengthy breaks between each one. I will do my best to write my review of the final episode before another six months go by. I would really like to cross this project off my to-do list. Thanks for sticking with me.

Dave

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The Lincoln Conspirators at Fort Jefferson Documentary Series

Posted on November 23, 2024 by Dave Taylor

Slumbering in the midst of the Gulf of Mexico at the very end of the Florida Keys is a unique relic of the past. It is the largest brick masonry fort in the Western Hemisphere, built to guard America’s shipping lanes through the Gulf. During the Civil War, this southern fort stayed in Union hands and found a new purpose as an isolated prison. In 1865, Dr. Samuel A. Mudd, Samuel Arnold, Michael O’Laughlen, and Edman Spangler were convicted of assisting in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and found themselves condemned to this lonely fortification. While all four men would eventually leave this place, one did so in a coffin.

In 2023, my wife Jen and I visited the Dry Tortugas and shot footage for a homemade documentary series about the Lincoln conspirators’ lives at Fort Jefferson. After sitting on the footage for over a year, daunted by the prospect of how to put it all together, I finally commenced editing. I’m happy to announce that the project is now ready to be shared.

The end result is a documentary series of over an hour and a half in length. For ease of viewing, I have split it up into eight parts. Today, I am releasing the first in this eight-part series. I will continue to release new parts a few times a week until they are all published. In addition to these individual posts, the videos can also be found on the new permanent “The Lincoln Conspirators at Fort Jefferson” page on the top menu bar.

I hope that you will enjoy learning about the history of Fort Jefferson and the time the Lincoln conspirators spent there.

So, without further ado, here is A Fort is Built, the first part in the series The Lincoln Conspirators at Fort Jefferson.

I hope that this first entry has whet your appetite for more. In a few days, I’ll publish part two of the series titled A Prison for the Lincoln Conspirators.

Categories: History, The Lincoln Conspirators at Fort Jefferson | Tags: , , , , , , | 10 Comments

“Back There” with The Twilight Zone

Posted on October 22, 2024 by Dave Taylor

Last month, I published a post containing an episode of The Twilight Zone Podcast in which the host, Tom Elliot, included two radio shows based on the concept of time travel and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. That podcast episode was a prelude to Tom’s regular review of “Back There,” an episode of The Twilight Zone, which deals with the very same topic. I very much enjoyed listening to both of Tom’s podcasts, and they inspired me to do my own analysis of one of my favorite episodes of this iconic series. What follows is an exploration of “Back There,” containing an overview of the episode, biographies of the actors who took part in it, a look into the production and editing, some trivia, and a discussion of some other adaptations of this unique Lincoln assassination-related show. While the following post isn’t quite as “vast as space, or as timeless as infinity,” it is still quite a deep dive. If you’re ready for such an adventure into the fifth dimension, then read on as we travel “Back There” with The Twilight Zone.

Contents

Episode Overview

“You’re traveling through another dimension. A dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That’s the signpost up ahead. Your next stop, The Twilight Zone.”

The episode opens with an establishing shot of a building bearing the sign “The Potomac Club. Established 1858.” We fade to the interior of the club and find it to be a traditional gentlemen’s club in the year 1961. The decor is ornate, with various sculptures and paintings throughout the room. There are several seated men around the periphery of the room reading newspapers and playing chess. The club attendants dutifully move around the room, serving drinks to the members. Near the center of the drawing room is a round table with four men seated around it playing cards.

The camera pushes in on these men, and we begin to overhear their conversation. One of the members at the table named Millard has espoused his belief that if someone had the ability to travel back in time, nothing would stop them from changing the past. Specifically, Millard suggests traveling to the day before the stock market crash of 1929 and taking action to prevent financial disaster. A younger member of the group named Peter Corrigan is skeptical of the idea, noting he would be an anachronism in the past and that he really wouldn’t belong back there. He comes to the conclusion that an event like the stock market crash of 1929 is a fixed event in history that couldn’t be altered. Millard disagrees and continues explaining what actions he would take if he were to travel to 1929. The camera then pans over to reveal that one of the seated gentlemen reading a newspaper is none other than Rod Serling. He then gives the show’s opening narration:

“Witness a theoretical argument, Washington, D.C., the present. Four intelligent men talking about an improbable thing like going back in time. A friendly debate revolving around a simple issue, could a human being change what has happened before? Interesting and theoretical because who ever heard of a man going back in time? Before tonight, that is. Because, this is, the Twilight Zone.”

When we fade back in, Corrigan tells the group that he is going to retire for the evening, noting that he will leave the subject of time travel to the likes of H. G. Wells. Whitaker, one of the card players, bids him goodnight by joking, “Don’t get lost back in time, now, Corrigan.” After Corrigan bids farewell to the other gentlemen, he exits into the foyer of the Potomac Club. On a side table rests a bust of Abraham Lincoln. Corrigan turns and glances at the Lincoln bust. At the same time, one of the club’s attendants, William, is carrying a plate with a teacup of coffee. With Corrigan focusing on the Lincoln bust and William on the cup, the two men accidentally collide, causing William to spill the coffee over them both.

William is very apologetic and attempts to clean off Corrigan’s suit jacket with a handkerchief. Corrigan understands it’s an accident and takes it in stride. William offers to get Corrigan’s coat, but Corrigan states that he was rushing the season and came out without one. Through their conversation, we learn that the date is April 14, 1961.

After bidding William a good night, Peter Corrigan steps out of the door of the Potomac Club. Then, a strange sensation comes over him. The camera blurs and comes back into focus as Corrigan checks his watch. The camera blurs again, and Corrigan reaches for his head.

After the second blur effect on Corrigan, the camera pans over to a light on the club’s stair landing. Before our eyes, the light changes from an electric bulb to a gas-powered flame.

When the camera pans back to Corrigan, his outfit has changed to a more Victorian style and his watch has disappeared off his wrist. He is confused by these changes, turns, and knocks on the door of the club he just exited. After a beat, Corrigan turns around and tells himself to go home. He slowly walks down the steps of the Potomac Club landing and notices other changes have occurred. On the street are horse-drawn wagons. All of the pedestrians are also dressed in Victorian garb, with the men wearing top hats. He rushes across the street and walks to his home, but the building now has a sign in front that says “Rooms to Let.” Finding the door locked, he knocks on the door. It is answered by a woman named Mrs. Landers. Corrigan looks around the inside of the house, thinking he has come to the wrong address.

Looking at the period decor in the building that was once his home, Corrigan starts to realize that something is greatly amiss. He asks Mrs. Landers if she has a room in which he can stay. She replies that she does, but only for acceptable boarders. She proceeds to ask Corrigan a series of questions, including inquiring if he is an army veteran. This comes as a bit of a non-sequitur to Corrigan, but he still replies in the affirmative. When he tells Mrs. Landers that he is an engineer, her demeanor completely changes at the thought of a “professional man” lodging in her home. She begins to offer Corrigan a room upstairs when they are interrupted by a couple coming down who greet Mrs. Landers. The elegantly dressed woman confirms that she and her husband, a soldier in a Union officer’s uniform, are having dinner at Willard’s and are then “off to the play.”

Mrs. Landers tells the couple to have a good time and to “applaud the President for me.” She then starts up the stairs with Corrigan in the lead. After a few steps, however, Corrigan abruptly turns and asks Mrs. Landers what she just said. Mrs. Landers is confused, so Corrigan heads back down the stairs and asks the officer to repeat what Mrs. Landers said about the President. The officer repeats the comment but is now suspicious. He asks Corrigan where his sympathies lie and Mrs. Landers inquires which army he was in. Corrigan begins to answer but pauses to take in the officer’s uniform. He eventually states he was in “The Army of the Republic, of course.” The soldier then rhetorically asks why Corrigan would make a big deal about applauding President Lincoln.

Finally, Corrigan appears to understand what has happened. He has somehow traveled back in time to a point during the Civil War. Corrigan starts putting it all together. This couple is going to a play tonight, and Abraham Lincoln will be there. Corrigan asks what theater and what play. The couple replies that the venue is Ford’s Theatre and the play is Our American Cousin. We can practically see Corrigan accessing his memory of historical events as he slowly realizes the significance of what he’s being told. He asks about the date, but he already knows the answer. He moves to exit the house, announcing, “It is April 14, 1865.”

Through some mysterious and unknown means Peter Corrigan has traveled back in time to the night of Lincoln’s assassination. Armed with the knowledge of what is to come, he is now on a mission to stop this national tragedy from occurring.

As the dramatic music swells, we cut to Baptist Alley behind Ford’s Theatre. Corrigan rushes past posted theater broadsides and makes his way to the nicely labeled “Stage Door.” Finding the door locked, he proceeds to bang on the door. He yells repeatedly to be let in and says, “The President is going to be shot tonight!”

The scene then dissolves into the interior of a metropolitan police station. Corrigan is led into the room by a patrolman and is stood before a police sergeant behind a desk. Corrigan is nursing a wound on his forehead. When the sergeant asks what Corrigan is in for, the patrolman recounts how he was trying to pound down the door at Ford’s Theatre while shouting nonsense about how the President was going to be shot. The patrolman states that the doorman at Ford’s Theatre had “popped him on the head” for his mania. Corrigan repeats to the sergeant that Lincoln is going to be shot tonight and that a man named Booth is going to do it. When the sergeant asks how Corrigan knows the President is going to be shot, Corrigan demurs, saying that if he told the sergeant how he knows, they would never believe him. Convinced that Corrigan is drunk, the police sergeant orders him to be locked up so that he can sleep it off. As he is dragged to a backroom that contains cells, Corrigan begs the police to put an extra guard on the President and yells out to everyone in the station that Lincoln will be shot by a man named John Wilkes Booth.

Right after Corrigan exits, an elegantly dressed man enters the station. He approaches the police sergeant and introduces himself as Jonathan Wellington. He inquires about Corrigan and suggests to the sergeant that the man may not be drunk but mentally ill. He asks the sergeant if Corrigan could be remanded into his custody as he would hate to see a possible war veteran placed in jail. Wellington assures the sergeant that he would be perfectly responsible for Corrigan and that he might be able to help him. The sergeant agrees and asks Corrigan to be sent out while Mr. Wellington waits outside.

Before the prisoner is released, one of the other patrolmen who had been present for the whole affair and heard Corrigan’s protestations, approaches the sergeant. He humbly suggests that perhaps something should be done in regard to Lincoln. The sergeant on duty dismisses the idea of sending police over to Ford’s Theatre on the word of some crackpot who likely lost his mind at Gettysburg.

The patrolman continues to advocate for sending a special guard to Ford’s Theatre, drawing the ire of the sergeant, who recounts to him that Lincoln has the whole federal army at his disposal and if they are satisfied with his protection, he should be too. The patrolman watches as Corrigan is brought out from the back room and exits out the door to a waiting Wellington.

The scene then changes to the interior of Mr. Wellington’s room, where Corrigan’s benefactor pours the time traveler a glass of wine. Corrigan drinks it down, thanking Wellington for the courtesy. Corrigan then asks Wellington about himself. Wellington states that he is in the government service, and as a young man in college, he dabbled in medicine of the mind. He asks Corrigan how he came to believe that the President was to be shot that night. Again, Corrigan demurs, saying that if he told him the truth of how he knows, Wellington would surely believe him to be insane. Corrigan begs Wellington to help him prevent the assassination by reiterating that a man named John Wilkes Booth will commit the act.

In the midst of their conversation, Corrigan becomes light-headed. Wellington notes that his head wound hasn’t been treated properly and that Corrigan had best cover it. Wellington hands over his handkerchief to Corrigan, who holds it against his head. Corrigan proceeds to sit and explains how faint and strange he suddenly feels. After a beat, Corrigan looks at the wine on the table and draws the conclusion that Wellington has drugged him. He gets to his feet and grabs Wellington by the collar, but in his weakened state, he is barely holding on.

Wellington tells Corrigan that he had to drug him for he was a very sick man who needed sleep and rest in order to regain his composure and reason. He lets Corrigan down slowly to the sofa below and encourages him to rest. Wellington announces he will be back soon. Corrigan, struggling against the effects of the sedative, begs Wellington to believe him that Lincoln will be shot. Before exiting the room, Wellington replies, “And that’s odd…because I’m beginning to believe you.”

With that, Mr. Wellington bids good night to Corrigan, telling him to rest well. Corrigan then passes out on the sofa, and Wellington makes his exit.

The next shot shows the stage of Ford’s Theatre. A lively audience is laughing and clapping along to the actors performing Our American Cousin. We then get a side view of the audience and stage, with the passageway leading up to the door of the President’s box in full view.

The Ford’s Theatre footage only lasts for a few seconds before we go return to Corrigan in Mr. Wellington’s room. Corrigan attempts to rouse himself off the sofa but only succeeds in falling to the floor near the fireplace. He pulls himself around the floor, attempting to get himself into a chair, but knocks it over instead. He flails and knocks away the empty glass on the table from which he had drank the drugged concoction. He crawls to the door and manages to get a hold of the knob, but it is locked, and he is unable to open the door. He calls for somebody to let him out before falling back down. Right before he passes out again, Corrigan states, “I know…I know…our President’s going to be assassinated.”

Sometime later, we hear a female voice on the other side of the door telling an officer that she has a key. The door unlocks, and in comes a chambermaid and the same patrolman who had suggested sending an extra guard to Ford’s Theatre. The patrolman wakes Corrigan and asks him what’s happened before admitting that, madman or not, Corrigan has convinced him that Lincoln is in danger. The patrolman recounts how he had been all over the city trying to get an extra guard for the President to no avail. Corrigan tells the patrolman to go to the theater himself if that’s what it takes.

The patrolman helps Corrigan back to the sofa, and Corrigan recalls how Lincoln was shot from behind and the assassin jumped from the box to the stage and out into the wings. The patrolman says, “You’re telling me this as though it’s already happened.” Corrigan, desperate to stop the tragedy and no longer worried if this man will think him crazy, replies, “It has happened. It happened a hundred years ago, and I’m here to see that it doesn’t happen.” Corrigan then asks the chambermaid where Wellington is. The chambermaid replies that there is no one here by that name. Corrigan dismisses this remark and insists on the location of Wellington, the man who brought him there and lives in this room. The chambermaid replies again that no one named Wellington resides in this place. Exasperated, Corrigan raises his fist to shake it at the chambermaid when he sees he is still holding the handkerchief Wellington gave him. He opens up the handkerchief to reveal the stitched initials “JWB.”

The chambermaid confirms that Mr. John Wilkes Booth lives in this room and he was the man who brought Corrigan there. The realization comes to Corrigan that Booth lied about his name and had drugged him to prevent Corrigan from interfering with the assassination. With a bubbling anger, Corrigan gets to his feet and tells the patrolman that he has to get to Ford’s Theatre and stop it all.

However, just then, voices are heard from the street outside. Mournful voices proclaim that “The President’s been shot” and that “an actor shot Lincoln.” We cut to a gathered crowd mumbling over the news. Back inside the room, the occupants fall into a state of grief and shock. The chambermaid weeps into her hands. Corrigan collapses dejectedly back down onto the sofa. The patrolman removes his hat and mutters to himself, “You did know. Oh, my dear God,” before he and the chambermaid leave the room. A defeated Corrigan stands and walks to the window of the room. With righteous anger, he proclaims, “I tried to tell you. I tried to warn you. Why didn’t you listen?” He repeats his rhetorical cry, “Why didn’t you listen to me?” while banging on the window. Then suddenly, the shot shows Corrigan, back in his 1961 garb, banging on the door of the Potomac Club instead.

An older attendant opens the door of the club, and Corrigan rushes in. The attendant asks Corrigan if he has forgotten something, as he had only left a moment ago. Corrigan is confused by this remark and then asks the attendant for William, the attendant who had seen him out. The older attendant is perplexed and tells Corrigan that there are no attendants named William on duty at the club. Corrigan heads back into the drawing room, but not before taking a sad glance at the bust of Abraham Lincoln on the table.

The drawing room of the club is just like before, with Corrigan’s friends still seated around the card table. They make a remark about Corrigan being back so soon and invite him to join them, though his original seat is now occupied by a new fourth. Corrigan shakily says they had been talking about time travel, to which another member of the group, Jackson, says they are on a new tack now, “Money, and the best ways to acquire it.” Corrigan begins to address the group, noting that he has something important to say. However, before telling his friends about his trip into the past, he loses his nerve. Corrigan touches his head, implying that he now believes everything he has experienced has been in his mind. His friends ask him if he is alright, and Corrigan replies in the affirmative.

The group again invites Corrigan to pull up a chair and join the conversation about amassing a fortune. Jackson points out that William, the new fourth card player, has the best method. The camera focuses on William, and we see it is the same man who spilled coffee on Corrigan at the beginning of the episode, except now he is richly dressed and smoking a cigarette.

A gobsmacked Corrigan listens as this elegant and well-spoken William explains that the best way to amass a fortune is to inherit it. William discusses how his great-grandfather had been on the Washington police force on the night of Lincoln’s assassination and that he had gone around trying to warn people that something bad might occur. The details of how William’s great-grandfather knew something tragic might happen is not known, but the publicity surrounding his attempt to get extra security for Lincoln that night made him a known figure in Washington. He eventually became chief of police and a D.C. councilman before amassing a fortune in real estate. William’s wealth came to him in a beribboned box, courtesy of his notable great-grandfather.

Having previously written off his trip into the past as a hallucination of some sort, Corrigan is still shocked to find the much-changed William. He asks William questions like, “Didn’t you used to work here as an attendant? Didn’t you spill coffee on me?” These questions draw strange looks from all the men at the card table. William puts Corrigan in his place, telling Corrigan that he was a member of the club while Corrigan was still in prep school. He also snobbishly laughs off the notion that he would have ever been an attendant.

Now unsure of what he experienced, Corrigan tries to make sense of it all. He decides to return to the group’s prior conversation on time travel and announces that, “Some things can be changed. Others can’t.” The group returns to their card game as Corrigan walks away, still processing everything that has occurred. The men at the table remark how strangely Corrigan is acting and that he looks unwell. The camera stays on Corrigan as he pulls a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe his brow. Looking down at the handkerchief, Peter Corrigan sees the now familiar stitched initials, “JWB.”

As a shocked and confused Corrigan walks out of the drawing room with his historic handkerchief in hand, Rod Serling’s voice provides the closing narration.

“Mr. Peter Corrigan, lately returned from a place “back there.” A journey into time with highly questionable results. Proving, on one hand, that the threads of history are woven tightly and the skein of events cannot be undone. But, on the other hand, there are small fragments of the tapestry that can be altered. Tonight’s thesis to be taken as you will, in the Twilight Zone.”

The Players

Let’s take a look at the actors and actresses who make up this episode:

  • Russell Johnson as Peter Corrigan

The protagonist of this piece is played by Russell Johnson. He was 35 years old when this episode was filmed. While not an army man like the character he portrayed, Johnson was a veteran, having served in the U.S. Air Force during WWII. A lifelong actor in both film and television, Johnson is best remembered for his role as “The Professor” Roy Hinkley in the syndicated TV show Gilligan’s Island. He also appeared in a number of Westerns and B-movies in his early career. Fellow fans of the show Mystery Science Theater 3000 will likely recognize Johnson for his supporting role in the 1955 film This Island Earth, which was lampooned in the 1996 movie version of MST3K. “Back There” was Johnson’s second of two appearances on The Twilight Zone. On March 31, 1960, he appeared in the first season episode entitled “Execution.” In that show, Johnson played a professor named George Manion, who had invented a time machine. He reaches back in time to 1880 and plucks out a man from the past and brings him to the present. Unbeknownst to the professor, the man from the past is a convicted murderer who was pulled through time just as he was to be executed for his crime. With fresh rope burns on his neck from the hangman’s noose that hadn’t quite finished the job, the murderer from the past eventually attacks and kills Johnson’s character before rushing out into a very modern and confusing world. In an interview he gave later in his life, Johnson fondly recalled his time in the “Back There”:

“That was a terrific story. It was interesting and it was a unique take on the time travel theme. I really enjoyed filming it, too. It was a period piece and I’m not a fellow who enjoys putting on false hair and beards and all of that, but thank God I didn’t have to  do that in this one. This was just costumes, and costumes are no hassle at all… I’m grateful for having had the opportunity to be in two Twilight Zones. I’m very proud of them and love to see them every time they have a marathon.”

Russell Johnson died in 2014 at the age of 89.

  • John Lasell as Jonathan Wellington/John Wilkes Booth

Fellow Lincoln assassination researcher Richard Sloan once interviewed John Lasell regarding his role in “Back There.” The actor told Richard that he was incredibly nervous filming the show, as The Twilight Zone was his first film role. His credits seem to bear this out as only a likely live production for the Armstrong Circle Theatre in March of 1960 predates the recording of “Back There.” Lasell had a background in live theater and was 32 during the filming of this episode. He worked pretty consistently from the 1960s through the mid-1970s in supporting television roles. His only recurring role was that of vampire hunter Dr. Peter Guthrie in the cult soap opera series Dark Shadows from 1966 – 1971. From 1964 to 1974, Lasell was married to actress Patricia Smith, another Twilight Zone performer. Smith appeared in the second season episode “Long Distance Call,” which was filmed three months after “Back There.” In that episode, a young boy, played by child actor Billy Mumy, is able to communicate with his dead grandmother over a toy telephone, and the grandmother tries to convince the boy to join her in death. Smith plays the mother of Mumy’s character in one of the most audacious episodes of the series. John Lasell’s last acting credit was in 1985. Like his co-star, Lasell had good memories of being on The Twilight Zone, telling an interviewer:

“I came out from New York in 1960 or so and ‘Back There’ was my first piece of film. Not the first to air, but the first one I shot out in California. I was always very fond of it. I was lucky to get the part and they were very nice people there, they really knew how to work with a young actor. But I can’t stand to look at it today. I was so uptight in my performance!”

The main catalyst of this post was the news that John Lasell just passed away on Oct. 4, 2024, at the age of 95.

  • Bartlett Robinson as William

Bartlett Robinson started his career as a stage and radio performer. He was the first person to voice the character of lawyer Perry Mason when the radio series debuted in 1943. His first screen credit occurred in 1949 during the first season of an anthology series sponsored by the Ford Motor Company called, somewhat ironically, the “Ford Theatre.” Robinson worked consistently in television for the rest of his career, often playing characters of authority. He made two appearances on The Twilight Zone. His second appearance occurs in one of the most famous episodes of the series, “To Serve Man.” In that episode, Robinson plays the army Colonel who tasks the main character with deciphering the book that the alien Kanamits have left behind. One of Robinson’s final roles was in the 1974 miniseries Lincoln, which starred Hal Holbrook as the 16th President. Robinson appears briefly as a “bewhiskered Senator.” Bartlett Robinson died in 1986 at the age of 73.

  • Paul Hartman as the Police Sergeant

The child of two vaudeville actors, Paul Hartman took to the stage at an early age. He was a notable dancer and comedian who performed on Broadway with his wife, Grace Hartman, and had a few early roles in movie musicals. In 1948, he and Grace both won Best Actor and Actress Tony Awards for their performances in their own musical revue show “Angel in the Wings.” In the 1950s, Hartman exchanged the hectic life of live theater for television. He moved to Los Angeles and made a living as a character actor. He is most likely remembered for his regular role of Emmett Clark, the fix-it shop owner on the final season of The Andy Griffith Show and its spin-off, Mayberry, RFD. Hartman died in 1973 at the age of 69.

  • James Lydon as the Patrolman

James was known as “Jimmy” Lydon from his early days playing child and adolescent characters. This included a series of nine films from 1941 – 1944 where a late teenage Lydon played the lead role of Henry Aldrich, a popular radio character. The following decade was filled with many young man roles for Lydon. By the 1960s, Lydon continued to act while also working in television production. His last acting credits were a handful of guest spots in the 1980s. James Lydon died in 2022 at the age of 98.

  • Jean Inness as Mrs. Landers

From 1920 until 1942, Jean Inness was exclusively a stage actress. She was a member of multiple touring companies that traveled around the country. In 1942, at the age of 41, Inness made her first film appearance. In 1952, she started a television career in which she played supporting roles like Mrs. Landers in “Back There.” Her only recurring role was that of Nurse Beatrice Fain in the medical drama Dr. Kildare, which aired from 1961 to 1966. Inness appeared in 37 of the show’s 191 episodes. Jean Inness died in 1978 at the age of 78.

  • Lew Brown as the Lieutenant

Lew Brown was an Oklahoma native who served as a Marine corporal in WWII. After the war, he taught English literature in Missouri before moving to New York to pursue an acting career on the stage. He eventually relocated to California and made his television debut in 1959 as a soldier in an episode of Playhouse 90. “Back There” was Brown’s first of three appearances on The Twilight Zone. He had a small role as a fireman in “Long Distance Call,” the same episode that featured John Lasell’s future wife, Patricia Smith. He also appeared in the fifth season episode, “The 7th is Made Up of Phantoms,” as a sergeant in General Custer’s ill-fated cavalry at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Brown also appeared in an episode of Rod Serling’s follow-up series, The Night Gallery, in 1972. A common character actor from the 1960s onward, his only recurring role came in 1984-1985 when he appeared in 40 episodes of the soap opera Days of Our Lives as Shawn Brady. Brown died in 2014 at the age of 89.

  • Carol Rossen as the Lieutenant’s Wife

Carol Eve Rossen is the daughter of Hollywood screenwriter and director Robert Rossen. She made her screen debut in 1960, the same year “Back There” was filmed. Less than a year after filming The Twilight Zone, Rossen reunited with her costar, Jean Inness, when both women appeared in the first episode of Dr. Kildare. In 1966, Rossen married actor Hal Holbrook, and the couple was still married when Holbrook appeared in the Lincoln miniseries with Barlett Robinson. Rossen and Holbrook divorced in 1983. Rossen made her film debut in 1969, and in 1975, she appeared in the original The Stepford Wives movie. Tragedy struck Rossen on Valentine’s Day in 1984. While taking a morning walk through Will Rogers State Park in Los Angeles, Rossen said good morning to a random man jogging past her down a trail. Not long after, that same man turned around, ran back up to Rossen, and violently attacked her with a 3-foot-long hammer. She fought back against her attacker as he swung at her with his hammer. Rossen suffered a violent blow to the top of her head and was knocked down into a ditch. Rossen played dead, and her attacker fled. She miraculously recovered from the incident and wrote a book about her experiences in 1988. Sadly, Rossen’s attacker has never been identified. Since that time, Rossen has only had two other acting credits, both in the 1990s. In addition to her book about her attack, she has also written a biography about her father, which was published in 2019. Rossen is the last surviving cast member of “Back There,” having celebrated her 87th birthday in 2024.

Update: I reached out to Ms. Rossen through her website, asking about any memories she had in filming this episode. She replied with:

“Twilight Zone was one of the first shows I did in California. Truly, the only thing I remember about the very brief shoot was almost tripping on a camera cable as I walked down the staircase. A somewhat haphazard directorial attitude when working with young actors. There was no discussion of the Lincoln assassination or its historical context.”

  • Raymond Bailey as Millard

It’s fitting that the most vocal of Corrigan’s rich friends at the posh Potomac Club, Millard, was portrayed by Raymond Bailey, as his most famous role was that of the miserly banker Milburn Drysdale from The Beverley Hillbillies. Bailey portrayed Mr. Drysdale in 248 episodes of the show from 1962 – 1971. Bailey had made his screen debut in small uncredited film roles back in 1939. During WWII, he served in the United States Merchant Marines. His first television role occurred in 1952. “Back There” was Bailey’s second of three appearances in The Twilight Zone. He had earlier appeared in season one’s “Escape Clause,” playing the abused doctor of the hypochondriac main character. He later returned in season five’s “From Agnes – With Love,” playing the supervisor of the master programmer who takes love advice from a computer. In 1956, Bailey played the role of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton in the live television production “The Day Lincoln Was Shot” on the anthology series Ford Star Jubilee (my thanks to Richard Sloan for cluing me in on this fact). Raymond Bailey began experiencing memory issues near the end of The Beverly Hillbillies and only appeared twice more on screen after the series ended. He died on the anniversary of Lincoln’s death, April 15, 1980, at the age of 75.

  • Raymond Greenleaf as Jackson

Raymond Greenleaf was born in 1892, the oldest credited cast member in “Back There.” He had been a traveling stage actor since the early 1920s. He performed on Broadway in the 1940s before making his film debut in 1948. In 1949, he appeared in the movie All the King’s Men, which was written, directed, and produced by Robert Rossen, the father of Greenleaf’s costar in “Back There,” Carol Rossen. By 1952, he had started taking on television roles, and these came to outnumber his film credits as time went on. Greenleaf was often cast in the roles of judges, doctors, and sheriffs. He died in 1963 at the age of 71.

  • Nora Marlowe as the Chambermaid

Nora Marlowe’s first screen credit dates to 1953. A hard-working character actress in television and film, she has over 130 credits to her name. She appeared in two episodes of The Twilight Zone. Her second is in the season five episode, “Night Call,” where she plays Margaret Phillips, a caretaker for an elderly woman who begins receiving unsettling and otherworldly phone calls in the middle of the night. That episode was originally scheduled to air on November 22, 1963, but all regular programming was canceled on that date due to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. “Night Call” eventually aired in February of 1964. Marlowe is likely best known for her recurring role as the boardinghouse owner, Mrs. Flossie Brimmer, on The Waltons. Her 27 episodes of The Waltons marked her final acting credits. Nora Marlowe died between season 6 and season 7 of the show on December 31, 1977, at the age of 62.

  • James Gavin as the Arresting Patrolman

James Gavin was a TV character actor working consistently from the mid-1950s until about 1970. Much of Gavin’s work was in Western shows, but he did have a few film credits to his name. His last screen credit was in 1975. Gavin died in 2008 at the age of 88.

  • John Eldredge as Whitaker

Like many of his costars, John Eldredge got his start as a stage actor in New York. He appeared on Broadway and secured a contract with Warner Brothers. He made his first film appearance in 1934. He was a prolific character actor in film, appearing in over 80 movies between 1934 and 1950. In 1950, he took his first television role and continued to split his time pretty evenly between TV and film roles in the years that followed. His only main role was on a short-lived television show called Meet Corliss Archer, which aired for a single season in 1954. Eldredge appeared in all 39 episodes of the series as the father of the titular teenager. John Eldredge died at the age of 57 in 1961, just eight months after the airing of “Back There.”

  • Pat O’Malley as the Attendant

Born in 1900, Pat O’Malley was the most prolific actor in “Back There.” He started his career in entertainment as a child vaudeville performer before moving into film. In 1914, he made his first screen appearance in the silent film The Best Man. The silent era was the most successful for O’Malley, as he appeared in over 90 films over a 15-year period. During this time, he often played lead roles. When talking pictures came in the late 1920s, O’Malley’s leading roles came to an end, but he continued to be a prolific character actor in supporting and often uncredited roles. He made his first appearance on television in 1950 and evenly split his time between film and TV for the next five years. Starting in 1956, he worked exclusively in television. “Back There” was O’Malley’s second of three appearances on The Twilight Zone. He earlier appeared in the nostalgic episode “Walking Distance” from season one, where he played the slumbering Mr. Wilson in the stockroom of the soda shop revisited by the main character. He returned in another nostalgic episode, “Static,” which is one of the videotaped episodes in season two. In that episode, O’Malley played Mr. Llewelyn, one of the older residents who witnessed Dean Jagger’s character get sentimental over an old radio that only he could hear. O’Malley made his last appearance on screen in an uncredited film role in 1962. He died in 1966 at the age of 75. Pat O’Malley more than doubles any of his “Back There” co-stars’ screen appearances, racking up just under 450 screen credits during his nearly 50-year career.

Production Facts

The Script

Out of the 156 episodes of The Twilight Zone, Rod Serling wrote the scripts for 92 of them. “Back There” was one of these Serling-penned stories. In his book, The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic, media historian Martin Grams, Jr., writes that Serling had originally intended this to be an hour-long teleplay. Serling offered the hourlong version of this script, then called “Afterwards,” to the Armstrong Circle Theatre, but they decided against buying it. Serling attempted to convince the sponsors of The Twilight Zone to expand the show to an hour, but the second season was already over budget, which led to some of the shows being recorded on videotape instead of film as a cost-saving measure. Serling was forced to cut his script down to 23 minutes, and he retitled the show “Back There.” Serling eventually got his wish for an hour-long timeslot during the fourth season of The Twilight Zone. One of his scripts for that season, “No Time Like the Past,” also deals with the concept of traveling back in time in an attempt to change history. That episode even has a plot point about the assassination of a president, but it is about President Garfield, not Lincoln.

In volume 10 of the series, As Timeless as Infinity: The Complete Twilight Zone Scripts of Rod Serling, edited by Tony Albarella, a working script for “Back There” dated July 28, 1960, can be found. This script differs somewhat from the final shooting version of the script that was finalized on September 14. Some of the changes in the script are small, like “The Potomac Club” originally being called “The Washington Club” and the fact that the script has Corrigan gaining a hat when he appears in the past. There are also a few extra lines here and there, and altered versions of other lines. The largest change from the July script and what was eventually shot was the introductory scene between Corrigan and William. In this earlier version, William does not spill any coffee on Corrigan. Instead, their interaction goes like this:

As Corrigan heads toward the front door

WILLIAM
(going by)
Good night, Mr. Corrigan.

CORRIGAN
Good night, William.
(then he looks at the elderly man a little more closely)
Everything all right with you, William? Looks like you’ve lost some weight.

WILLIAM
(with a deference built of a forty year habit pattern)
Just the usual worries, sir. The stars and my salary are fixed – it’s the cost of living that goes up.

Corrigan smiles, reaches into his pocket, starts to hand him a bill.

WILLIAM
Oh no, sir, I couldn’t-

Corrigan forces it into his hand.

CORRIGAN
Yes, you can, William. Bless you and say hello to your wife for me.

WILLIAM
Thank you so much, sir.
(a pause)
Did you have a coat with you…

From there, the scene continues like the show, with Corrigan saying he felt spring in the air and William telling him the date is April 14th.

The Director

According to Martin Grams, Jr., rehearsal for “Back There” occurred on September 16 and 19, 1960, and filming took place on September 20, 21, and 22nd.

“Back There” was directed by David Orrick McDearmon. He had been a television actor in the 1950s before making the switch to directing. This was McDearmon’s third and final directorial outing for The Twilight Zone. Earlier in season two, he directed “A Thing About Machines” about a recluse narcissist tormented by the mechanical objects in his house. McDearmon’s first directing job in The Twilight Zone was season one’s “Execution.” That is the same episode that featured Russell Johnson as the professor who brings a murderer from the past into the present. He would direct Russell Johnson twice more on Gilligan’s Island in 1967. David Orrick McDearmon died in 1979 at the age of 65.

Filming Location

When not out at a field location like Death Valley, The Twilight Zone was filmed at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios. While the interior scenes could have been filmed at any number of MGM sound stages, I decided to take a crack at trying to pin down the location of the exterior scenes in “Back There.” These scenes consist of Corrigan walking from the Potomac Club to his home, turned 1865 boardinghouse. The city landscape of the scene led me to Lot 2 of MGM Studios in Culver City, CA.

One of the sections of Lot 2 was known as the “New York City Streets” section. This can be seen in the top right area of the map above. This section was used in a number of films and TV shows to represent any metropolitan city. While different streets in this section usually represented different periods of time, all of the existing exteriors could also be easily redressed to fit a desired time frame.

In the episode, the door of The Potomac Club building is accessed via a decorative landing with two sets of stairs running up either side. After walking down these steps onto the street level, Corrigan observes the horse-drawn carriages and the clothing of the passersby before running across the street. The words “Mantel Clocks” can be seen on the top of the building across the street.

In the next exterior shot, Corrigan walks on a sidewalk in front of some buildings to the front of what he expects is his home, but in 1865, is a boardinghouse instead. At the beginning of the shot, we can still see the steps of the Potomac Club in the background, showing that this was shot on the same street (and that Corrigan lives extremely close to the club).

This street layout perfectly matches Wimpole Street on the MGM Lot 2 map.

During my search, I came across an interesting website from a former “Phantom of the Backlot” – a person who used to trespass and explore studio backlots back in their heyday. In a post where the Phantom recalled playing baseball in this section of the lot, they included an image of Wimpole Street. I’ve highlighted the matching features.

From this photographic evidence, we can conclude that these scenes were filmed on Wimpole Street.

The only other exterior shot in the episode is when Corrigan rushes to the back of Ford’s Theatre and starts pounding on the door to be let in. Unfortunately, there isn’t enough detail in this shot for me to determine where it was filmed. As can be seen from the map, however, there were plenty of small alleyways and nooks where such a scene could have been shot on Lot 2.

Editing

In addition to having to winnow the original script down to fit the half-hour timeslot, even more cuts were made to “Back There” during the editing process. In the scene where Corrigan first interacts with Mrs. Landers at the boardinghouse, a jump cut can be seen between Mrs. Landers’ question, “Whom do you wish to see?” and Corrigan’s next line, “I used to live here.”

According to the script, after Mrs. Landers’ question, Corrigan replies with “I’m just wondering if…” before trailing off. Then Mrs. Landers repeats her question, “Whom do you wish to see, young man?” which is where the episode picks back up. Interestingly, according to Rod Serling’s script, all of this conversation is supposed to be taking place with Corrigan standing outside the door on the stoop. Mrs. Landers does not allow him into the house until after he tells her he is an army veteran. Obviously, filming constraints led the director to move this dialogue inside.

Another more significant edit occurred in the moments after Corrigan appeared in the past. After checking out his change of clothes, Corrigan turns to bang on the door of the club. In the episode, a subtle cut is made here, and then Corrigan turns around and mumbles about going home.

However, this edit actually removed an entire character from the show. According to the script, when Corrigan bangs on the door in the past, it is opened by a club attendant in 1865. The two men then have the following conversation:

ATTENDANT
Who is it? What do you want?

CORRIGAN
I left something in there.
He starts to push his way in and the attendant partially closes the door on him.

ATTENDANT
Now here you – the Club is closed this evening.

CORRIGAN
The devil it is. I just left here a minute ago.

ATTENDANT
(peers at him)
You did what? You drunk, young man? That it? You’re drunk, huh?

CORRIGAN
I am not drunk. I want to see Mr. Jackson or Mr. Whittaker, or William. Let me talk to William. Where is he now?

ATTENDANT
Who?

CORRIGAN
William. What’s the matter with you? Where did you come from?
(then he looks down at his clothes)
What’s the idea of this –
(He looks up. The door has been shut. He pounds on it again, shouting)
Hey! Open up!

ATTENDANT (voice from inside)
You best get away from here or I’ll call the police. Go on. Get out of here.

This scene was filmed but cut during the editing process. The 1865 attendant was portrayed by actor Fred Kruger. A television character actor, Kruger had also appeared in the first season Twilight Zone episode, “What You Need.” In that show, he played the “Man on the Street,” who received a comb from the elderly peddler who foresaw he would be getting his picture taken.

His cut work in “Back There” would be among Fred Kruger’s final roles as he died on December 5, 1961, at the age of 48.

Borrowed Footage

There are four shots in “Back There” that utilize footage from another production. These consist of two shots showing the interior of Ford’s Theatre during Our American Cousin and two shots of a crowd ostensibly on the street outside Corrigan’s window announcing the news that the President has been shot.

I knew that these scenes had to have come from somewhere else, so I reached out to Richard Sloan, an expert on Lincoln in film and TV, and asked him if they looked familiar. He quickly recognized that Frank McGlynn, Sr., a regular Lincoln actor, portrayed the Lincoln in the box. Richard determined that the Ford’s Theatre scenes came from the 1936 film The Prisoner of Shark Island, which tells a largely fictional tale about the arrest and imprisonment of Dr. Samuel Mudd. With this lead, I was able to determine that the crowd scenes also come from The Prisoner of Shark Island and depict the crowd that arrives at the White House at the beginning of the film to hear McGlynn’s Lincoln speak about the surrender of Robert E. Lee.

Interestingly, all of the footage from The Prisoner of Shark Island used in “Back There” is supplemental footage that wasn’t used in the film. While the film has similar shots using the same angles and actors, the footage used in The Twilight Zone is slightly different, showing that the production acquired unused material, likely from the film’s own cutting room floor.

Richard emailed Martin Grams, Jr., asking about this, noting that The Prisoner of Shark Island was released almost 25 years prior to the filming of “Back There.” Grams replied that Twilight Zone producer Buck Houghton likely contacted 20th Century Fox looking for Lincoln assassination footage, and the studio licensed the use of stock footage from the movie.

The Score

This episode features a custom musical score that was written and conducted by noted composer Jerry Goldsmith. The different tracks of this episode bear titles such as “The Club,” “Return to the Past,” “Ford’s Theatre,” “Mr. Wellington,” “The Wine,” “The Assassination,” and “Old William,” to name a few. As budgetary and time constraints prevented each episode of The Twilight Zone from having its own custom score, the tracks from “Back There” became part of the studio’s stock music collection and were often reused. In all, music from “Back There” can be heard in ten other episodes of the show*. Most notably, “Return to the Past” is heard when the Kanamits make their first appearance to the U.N. in the classic episode “To Serve Man,” and “Ford’s Theatre” is played at the climatic moment of “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” when William Shatner’s character opens the door of the plane to shot at the gremlin. I’ve created a short video highlighting these examples:

The Trailer

In addition to his normal opening and closing narrations, Rod Serling also appeared at the very end of each episode in a short trailer highlighting next week’s episode. These casual trailers are not included in reruns or on streaming services. However, the episode trailers do appear on some of the physical releases of the series. Here is the trailer for “Back There,” which appeared at the end of the prior episode, “Dust:”

The total cost for the production of “Back There” was $47,090.82, with the cast pay consisting of $4,518.46. Despite Russell Johnson’s character giving the date as April 14, 1961, “Back There” originally aired on January 13, 1961. It was the thirteenth episode of The Twilight Zone‘s second season.

Trivia (historical and otherwise):

  • A healthy chunk of the show occurs at The Potomac Club in Washington, D.C. The sign outside of the club states that it was established in 1858. There actually were a few Potomac Clubs that existed in D.C. during the pre-Civil War years. In 1854, one Potomac Club was founded by members of the local Vigilant Fire Company and acted as a fundraising arm for the fire department. In 1857, the Potomac Fishing Club was established and hosted its first-ever picnic. In 1858, the Potomac-Side Naturalists’ Club was founded, devoted to the study of natural history. Unlike the Potomac Club in the show, however, none of these organizations had fancy clubhouses of their own. The Potomac Club in “Back There” is a purely fictional gentlemen’s club, but not unlike the club Edwin Booth later founded in New York City, The Players.

  • When the camera pans over to Rod Serling as he gives the opening narration, he is seen seated in an armchair and reading a newspaper. The newspaper he is reading is “The Daily Journal,” a fictional prop newspaper. We’re all familiar with the TV and movie trope of a shot of a newspaper with a headline about a plot point in the drama. While this main story is often unique to a specific production, the same secondary articles can be found over and over again across many movies and shows. In Serling’s newspaper, some of the article titles include “Three Persons Die in Crash,” “Northside Hospital Building Fund Nears Goal with State Support,” “Bids Given on Bridge Project,” “Move to Ban Office Mergers is Begun,” “Fire Destroys State Aresnal, “$60,000 Damage in Gigantic Eastside Warehouse Fire,” and “Firemen, 18, Hurt as Engine Upsets.” If you image search any of these article titles, you will find their appearance not only in other Twilight Zone episodes but in many other shows and movies. For example, fictional newspapers containing the story “Northside Hospital Building Fund Nears Goal with State Support” can be found in movies like The Day the Earth Stood Still, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and The Godfather.

  • The bust of Abraham Lincoln that is displayed at the Potomac Club was sculpted by Max Bachmann, a German-born sculptor who resided in New York. Bachmann lived from 1862 to 1921. As early as 1901, he sculpted two busts of Lincoln, identical except that one featured the bearded President and the other was clean-shaven. These busts were distributed by P.P. Caproni and Brother and became very popular. Bachmann’s Lincoln busts were credited as being the most life-like recreations of the President in sculpture. In 1911, Caproni started offering full Lincoln statues, the bodies of which were based on Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ standing Lincoln statue, but with Bachmann’s busts used as the heads. I’m indebted to fellow researcher Scott Schroeder for helping me identify this Lincoln bust. Scott and Dave Wiegers have been working on a great map of known Lincoln statues and monuments that you can check out by clicking here.

  • In the scene where Corrigan is shown running up Baptist Alley and pounding on the stage door of Ford’s Theatre, two large broadsides are shown. One of them is a mock-up of a broadside announcing that night’s performance of Our American Cousin. It is similar in style to a modified Ford’s Theatre playbill and, as far as props go, is well done. The other broadside, only seen as Corrigan runs up, is not a duplicate of the Our American Cousin poster but an advertisement for the next night’s show of The Octoroon. After the assassination of Lincoln, this performance did not go on, but the Ford brothers had commissioned the making of a broadside announcing the performance. In a picture taken of Ford’s Theatre draped in mourning shortly after the assassination, the broadside for The Octoroon can be seen posted on the side of the street near the theater.

“Back There” did a decent job of recreating this broadside and gets bonus points for including such an obscure reference in a shot that lasts just seconds.

  • There are a few notable decorations in the police station where Corrigan is brought after his unsuccessful attempt to enter the back door of Ford’s Theatre.

Hanging on the back wall of the police station, near the door where both Corrigan and Mr. Wellington make their entrances and exits, we can see a lithograph of General Grant and President Lincoln. The specific print shown is called “The Preservers of Our Union” and was published by Kimmel & Forester in 1865.

  • Behind the police sergeant at the front of the room, there is an American flag on a staff and two portraits. While the flag is not completely unfurled, the visible star pattern looks like it might have been the correct 35-star flag that existed between July 1863 and July 1865. You have to respect the prop department for going out of their way to find a period flag, even though very little of it is seen.
  • One of the portraits hanging near the flag is a copy of Gilbert Stuart’s Athenaeum Portrait of George Washington. The original painting was done from life in 1796, but was left unfinished by Stuart.

Stuart used the Athenaeum Portrait as his model for many subsequent paintings of Washington made after the President died in 1799. A print of one of Stuart’s paintings was framed and used to decorate the outside of the box at Ford’s Theatre, which was occupied by President Lincoln on the night of his assassination. The image below shows that portrait of Washington, which was knocked off the box when John Wilkes Booth made his leap to the stage.

  • The image to the left of the police sergeant’s podium is a large, oval portrait of Abraham Lincoln. This appears to be a painting based on Francis Bicknell Carpenter’s 1864 drawing of Lincoln, which was published in 1866 by engraver Frederick Halpin.

Carpenter lived in the White House for six months in 1864. During this time, he was engaged in painting his most famous work, “First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation of President Lincoln.”

  • During the police station scenes, one of the cameras used for some of the close-up shots suffered from a “hair in the gate.” This is when an actual hair or a sliver of broken-off film gets trapped in the camera’s film gate. This hair blocks part of the film, preventing it from being exposed. Since these hairs couldn’t be seen through the viewfinder, a hair in the gate could ruin a shot and might not be noticed until editing. Sets often stopped to “check the gate” after each shot to ensure that the footage was usable since it was extremely difficult to edit out such hairs in the pre-digital age. In the close-ups of the police sergeant and then of the patrolman who suggests putting extra guards on Lincoln, a small hair can be seen in the top right corner of these shots. Evidently, someone didn’t “check the gate” during these shots.

  • In his room, Mr. Wellington relates to Corrigan that he dabbled in “medicine of the mind.” Corrigan replies with the word “psychiatrist,” but Mr. Wellington says he doesn’t know that term. This is a correct statement. The term psychiatry didn’t really make its appearance in English until around 1846, and it took far longer than that before the word psychiatrist came to be used to refer to a practitioner. It will be remembered that most psychiatric disorders were given the broad description of “insanity” in those days, with affected individuals being sent to insane asylums. Even if Mr. Wellington had truly dabbled in the “medicine of the mind,” the term psychiatry and psychiatrist would have been completely foreign to him in 1865.
  • Wellington/Booth recalls his own days “as a young man” in college. Like in many other productions featuring the Lincoln assassination, John Wilkes Booth is portrayed in “Back There” as a far older man than he was. Booth was only 26 years old when he killed the President and had never gone to college. It’s even more humorous that Booth refers to Corrigan as “his young friend” since Russell Johnson was three years older than the 32-year-old John Lasell, who played Booth. While Lasell may have looked a little on the older side, his portrayal is a marked improvement over Francis McDonald’s appearance as JWB in The Prisoner of Shark Island:

Francis McDonald as John Wilkes Booth in The Prisoner of Shark Island

McDonald was around 45 when he played the assassin, but looked far older than his years.

  • “Back There” did a great job of costuming Lasell as John Wilkes Booth. From the moment he arrives at the police station, it is clear that he is a man of elegance. Even the otherwise curt police sergeant speaks to him reverently because of his dress and appearance of standing. The long coat that “Wellington” wears is a decent copy of a similar fur-collared coat that Booth wears in multiple photographs.

  • The decor in Wellington’s room also matches the aesthetic of wealth. While Booth may not have been considered wealthy, especially after spending a great deal of money to further his plot against Lincoln, he would have undoubtedly wanted to portray the illusion of wealth and status. His room is filled with images, artwork, vases, and sculptures, not unlike the decor in the posh Potomac Club. The only decorative items I’ve been able to identify in this room are two silhouette images hanging near the door of the room. They are both lithographs duplicating the work of William Henry Brown, a well-known silhouette artist who lived from 1808 to 1883. Extremely skilled in the craft of capturing a person’s profile, Brown often cut his silhouettes from life free-hand in a matter of minutes. Numerous notable persons had their silhouettes cut by Brown.

The rightmost lithograph, only partially visible when Wellington starts to exit, depicts President John Quincy Adams. The left lithograph, which turns up in multiple shots in the room, depicts another president: John Tyler. While I don’t know John Wilkes Booth’s view on John Quincy Adams, the actor would have likely been a fan of President Tyler due to his support of the South’s secession. The former President was actually elected as a Representative to the Confederacy’s House of Representatives but died in January of 1862 before he could take his seat. Jefferson Davis had Tyler buried in Virginia with his coffin draped in the Confederate flag. Due to his betrayal of the country he served as President, Tyler’s is the only Presidential death that was not officially recognized or mourned in Washington.

  • In the room, when Corrigan asks for the time, Wellington looks at his watch and states, “Half past seven. [The] play doesn’t begin for another three-quarters of an hour.” According to Thomas Bogar’s wonderful book, Backstage at the Lincoln Assassination, the normal curtain time for performances at Ford’s Theatre was 7:45 p.m. However, on the night of April 14th, the starting time for Our American Cousin was delayed as the house waited for the arrival of the President and his party. Musical director William Withers led his orchestra in the playing of several patriotic songs to pass the time. However, half an hour passed, and the President’s party still had not arrived. John B. Wright, the stage manager of Ford’s, decided they had waited long enough, and so the play began without their celebrated guests present. While “Back There” actually gives the correct start time of Our American Cousin as 8:15, Wellington/Booth would not have known about the delay if he were still in his hotel room at 7:30.

Other Adaptations

From 2002 – 2012, classic episodes of The Twilight Zone were adapted as audio dramas and played over syndicated radio. In these Twilight Zone Radio Dramas, a guest celebrity actor would come in and take on the main role of an episode while the rest of the roles were played by a regular company of voice actors. These radio dramas were published in physical and digital form, and many have been included as special features on the Blu-Ray releases of The Twilight Zone. The audio remake of “Back There” features actor Jim Caviezel in the role of Peter Corrigan. The adaptation is very close to the original, though extended by about ten minutes and altered to fit the audio-only format. Personally, I feel that Caviezel is a bit underwhelming as Corrigan, but I still enjoy the audio drama as a whole. You can listen to the radio adaptation yourself by clicking here or on the picture above.

The radio show is not the only adaptation of “Back There.” In 1963, Cayuga Productions published a book entitled Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone. The book was subtitled, “13 New Stories From the Supernatural Especially Written for Young People.” While published by Serling’s production company and bearing his name, the volume is actually a collection of short stories written by Walter B. Gibson. A prolific author, Gibson is known for penning over 300 stories about the cult fictional character, The Shadow. Of the 13 stories contained in the book, two of them are adaptations of actual Twilight Zone episodes. These are season one’s “Judgement Night” and “Back There.”

Gibson makes many changes in adapting “Back There” into a short story. In the story, Peter Corrigan is an astrophysicist from New York who has recently been accepted into The Potomac Club, which leans more toward being a scientific society in this version. He travels to D.C. to visit the club for the first time. Caught in a downpour of rain outside of the club, William, the attendant, offers Corrigan a rather antique suit of clothes to wear while his outfit is dried and pressed. In the “monument room,” Corrigan meets with his club sponsors, Millard, Whitaker, and Jackson. Rather than just being three affluent men casually talking about time travel, the trio are experts in parapsychology, biochemistry, and history. Millard recounts his theory about time travel and theorizes that a time traveler may have been accidentally responsible for the stock market crash of 1929. Jackson, the historian, then takes Corrigan on a tour of the club, pointing out all of the old period pieces that were put in around the time of the club’s founding. When attempting to catch up with William to inquire about the status of his clothes, Corrigan slips on the wet marble and falls, hitting his head on the floor. A much younger-looking William comes to his aid, but Corrigan shakes off the fall. Upon being told by a quizzical William that it is not raining, Corrigan decides to take a walk and get some fresh air. Outside, Corrigan sees a horse-drawn carriage and, struck by the novelty of it all, decides to take a ride. During this ride, Corrigan observes sights like the incomplete Washington Monument and soldiers dressed in Union uniforms. He realizes he has somehow traveled back to Civil War Washington. At the Willard Hotel, he spots a newspaper bearing the date April 14, 1865. He flips through the paper until he sees an announcement that President Lincoln and General Grant will be attending the play Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theatre that evening. [Note: This has a basis in fact. Announcements were made in the evening papers that Lincoln and Grant would appear at Ford’s Theatre.]

Corrigan rushes over to Ford’s Theatre and enters the lobby, but the box office is closed. After a few knocks, a ticket taker opens it up but tells Corrigan he can’t do anything but sell him a ticket. Instinctively, Corrigan buys a ticket while asking to see Mr. Ford, the manager. The ticket taker tells him to check the bar next door or around the backstage door. After no luck at the bar, Corrigan pounds on the locked backstage door until a stagehand opens it. Corrigan tells the stagehand that the President is in danger and that he needs to see Mr. Ford. The stagehand tells him that Mr. Ford isn’t around, but Corrigan attempts to push past him anyway. A brawl ensues, and Corrigan is arrested. At the station, Corrigan learns that the stagehand who tried to get rid of him was Ned Spangler, a name he recognizes as one of Booth’s conspirators.

While Corrigan sits in a cell, the same basic conversation between the sergeant and one of the patrolmen occurs, with the patrolman wanting to secure an extra guard for Lincoln and the sergeant telling him to forget it. The only real change in the conversation is how the sergeant notes that General Grant is going to be with Lincoln at the theater, so the President will be guarded enough. Then, a handsomely dressed man enters the police station and introduces himself as “Bartram J. Wellington, M.D.” He tells the sergeant that he is in the government service as part of a mental branch that is tasked with helping misguided folks who see assassinations and plots everywhere. Not wanting to be stuck in a prison cell, Corrigan agrees to go with Wellington. On the way out, Corrigan tells the patrolman that Grant will not be at Ford’s that night, and, just then, a message comes into the station announcing the same.

In the 1963 edition of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone, each short story was accompanied by an illustration by artist Earl Mayan. This is Mayan’s collage for “Back There.” (Click to enlarge)

Corrigan and Dr. Wellington walk to the National Hotel, where Wellington is staying. Not wanting to appear crazy and seeing that there are still two hours before the play begins, Corrigan briefly drops the matter of Lincoln’s assassination. In his room, Dr. Wellington asks Corrigan about himself and how he came to believe the President was in danger. He asks if Corrigan has suffered any accidents lately, and Corrigan points out the bruise on the back of his head from his fall in the club. Wellington pulls out a handkerchief, soaks it in a liquid, and wraps it around Corrigan’s head like a bandage. He then pours Corrigan a drink, which he insists Corrigan take to relax. Wellington then leads Corrigan to believe that he has convinced him of the legitimacy of his claims. Wellington suggests sending a messenger to the surgeon general’s office so that they might be granted an audience with the President. Corrigan lies back and rests as Wellington exits, ostensibly to get help. However, then Corrigan hears the sound of a key locking him in the room. He attempts to stand but finds that he can’t. His body feels paralyzed. He can only pull the handkerchief bandage off his head, and he notices the initials JWB in the corner. His mind tries to understand:

“‘Bartram J. Wellington…B-J-W…B-J-‘ Corrigan’s breath came with a hard gasp. ‘J-W’ Another gasp – ‘J-W-B…J-W-B.’ His mind, still alert, turned those initials into a name: ‘John Wilkes Booth!'”

Corrigan passes out but is awakened by the sound of the patrolman entering the room. Corrigan asks for the time, and the patrolman replies that it is 10 o’clock. It’s not too late! The pair get into a carriage outside the National and rush towards Ford’s Theatre. The patrolman tells Corrigan that he started investigating Wellington after his appearance at the station. He discovered there was no Dr. Wellington nor a government service dealing with the mentally ill. After learning Wellington matched the description of the actor, John Wilkes Booth, the patrolman rushed to his room at the National Hotel and procured the key. The pair rush to Ford’s Theatre as fast as they can, with the patrolman showing other carriages, horses, and pedestrians out of their way.

Just as they arrive at the theater, a crowd of panicked people come rushing out of the door, announcing that the President has been shot. Corrigan shouts that it was Booth who shot the President and that he was now on his horse galloping off toward Maryland. A group of theatergoers grab Corrigan, convinced the only way a person on the street could already know this information was if he was involved in the crime. An angry mob descends on Corrigan before the patrolman manages to break through the throng and get Corrigan back into the carriage. The patrolman sends the carriage off, telling the driver to get Corrigan far away from there. A dazed and battered Corrigan lies in the back of the carriage as it rapidly moves through the streets. The driver takes Corrigan to the Potomac Club, and he wearily ascends the stairs and knocks on the door.

When the club door opens, Corrigan is greeted by William, this time looking quite old once more. William informs Corrigan that the time is six o’clock and that his suit is now dried and pressed. Corrigan realizes he has arrived back to the present. He changes into his dried suit and reenters the monument room. He finds that a fourth man has joined Millard, Whitaker, and Jackson. This man is the spitting image of the patrolman who came to Corrigan’s aid, and he tells the story of his great-grandfather, who attempted to save Lincoln’s life with the help of a crackpot who was never heard from again. Corrigan says nothing about his experience in the past to his friends, nor anything about time travel in general. On his way out of the club, he asks William if he had a great-grandfather who worked at the club. William responds that his great grand-uncle, also named William, was the doorman at the club during the Civil War. Reflecting on his experience, Corrigan waits for a cab outside the club. Just as one arrives to take him to the airport, William returns and hands something to Corrigan:

“‘This was in the pocket of that old-time suit you were wearing,’ said William. ‘So I suppose it must be yours. Good night, Mr. Corrigan.’

Soon the cab was speeding down along a smooth street into the blaze of lights that represented downtown Washington. They passed the now completed Washington Monument, which was illuminated to its full height; and off beyond, Corrigan saw the stately pillars of the magnificent Lincoln Memorial. Then, as the cab reached the bridge leading to the airport, Corrigan studied the printed cardboard strip that William had handed him.

Deliberately, he tore the strip in half; then again, again, and again. Near the middle of the bridge, Corrigan tossed the pieces from the cab window. Caught by the night breeze, they fluttered over the rail and down to the broad bosom of the Potomac River.

Those scattered scraps were all that remained of a unique collector’s item – the only unused ticket to Ford’s Theatre on it’s closing night of April 14, 1865.”

While not a true adaptation of Serling’s original teleplay, I do enjoy Walter Gibson’s take on “Back There.” This version gives a little more action to the story, with Corrigan and the patrolman rushing to Ford’s. And the switch of the JWB handkerchief for a ticket is a nice touch.

Final Thoughts

Marc Scott Zicree, author of The Twilight Zone Companion, is not a fan of “Back There,” writing:

“For all the intellectual fascination of its premise, however, ‘Back There’ is a dramatic failure. The reason is obvious: from the outset the conclusion is known; Lincoln was assassinated, therefore Corrigan won’t be able to intercede. Says Buck Houghton [the producer of The Twilight Zone], ‘I think that when you play ducks and drakes with the shooting of Lincoln, your suspension of disbelief goes to hell in a bucket.'”

While I certainly understand this critique, I still feel that this episode is more than a foregone conclusion. Yes, new viewers will likely go into it pretty confident that Russell Johnson won’t be able to save Lincoln, but watching the attempt play out is still compelling. This opinion was shared by the associate producer of The Twilight Zone during its second season, Del Reisman, who later recalled:

“We had a big struggle on that topic in the sense that we know that Lincoln was assassinated. So when the ending is already known by everyone, where’s the suspense? My feeling was that the suspense lies in how the character does it, how he tries to prevent the shooting. That’s the interest. It doesn’t matter that we know that Lincoln was assassinated. We want to know how Russell Johnson’s character does this, his approach to it… Incidentally, that theme comes up a lot, whenever you’re dealing with historical storytelling. I was working at Fox television at the time when they did The Longest Day. That was the Cornelius Ryan story, a World War II all-star movie about the assault on Normandy Beach and the move into the beachhead. A very good producer on the Fox lot said, ‘This is gonna flop.’ I asked why and he said, ‘Because we all know that the landing succeeded.’ I argued that the story is about how they did it. It’s the same thing on the wonderful The Day of the Jackel, which was the fictional tale of the attempted assassination of Charles de Gaulle. In effect, production people were saying, ‘We know that Charles de Gaulle was not assassinated, so what’s the suspense?’ It’s in how they attempted it. I felt that way about ‘Back There’ and I liked it.”

While some episodes like “Eye of the Beholder” or “Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?” are built around a single twist at the end, “Back There” gives us multiple twists and turns. It’s true that Johnson is undoubtedly hamming it up at times as Corrigan, especially in the scene where he writhes around the floor somewhat laughably knocking things over, but there is still a sense of humanity in his performance. The look on his face at the very end of the episode, when he finds the JWB handkerchief in his pocket, perfectly encapsulates a man who knows he’s experienced something remarkable but is completely unsure how to make sense of it all.

One of my other favorite parts of “Back There” is the unknown nature of the mechanism that sent Corrigan back to 1865 in the first place. There’s no convoluted time machine like in “Execution” or “No Time Like the Past.” A strange feeling comes over Corrigan, and he just appears in the past. We accept this because it’s The Twilight Zone we’re dealing with, and the Twilight Zone operates under its own rules, rarely providing an explanation. There’s an elegance in that that doesn’t exist in the world of complicated sci-fi time travel movies or shows.

As far as episodes of The Twilight Zone go, “Back There” may not be considered a classic by many. However, it will always hold a top spot on my list. This is not just because it deals with a subject that I find fascinating but because the episode is everything I want from The Twilight Zone. The best episodes not only keep you thoroughly engaged while you’re watching but also give you something to think about when they are over. “Back There” invites us all to reflect on the concepts of time, fate, and our own ability to influence the future. As Rod Serling’s ending narration states, “Back There” is a thesis for each of us to take and mull over in our own way.

References

The following sources were consulted in composing this post

A very special thanks to Richard Sloan and Scott Schroeder for lending me their expertise for this project.

*The ten Twilight Zone episodes featuring music from “Back There” are: “To Serve Man,” “Death Ship,” “No Time Like the Past,” “The Parallel,” “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” “Uncle Simon,” “Probe 7, Over and Out,” “You Drive,” “The Masks,” and “Stopover in a Quiet Town.”

While my own handkerchief is missing the embroidered JWB in the corner, it does have the autographs of both John Lasell (JWB) and Russell Johnson (Peter Corrigan).

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