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The Man Who Assassinated Abe Lincoln's Assassin · Ridiculous History

0:10
Speaker 1: Yeah. Today's story kind of but not really, starts in
0:29
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty five on April four, when Abraham Lincoln is
0:34
Speaker 1: assassinated by John Wilkes Booth while watching the play Our
0:38
Speaker 1: American Cousin at Ford's Theater in d C. Do you
0:41
Speaker 1: think it was any good, ben our American Cousin? Um?
0:48
Speaker 1: I remember I think hearing about it in school, but
0:52
Speaker 1: it wasn't my kind of play. And it does remind
0:55
Speaker 1: me of one of those very tasteless middle school jokes.
0:58
Speaker 1: Did you ever hear this one? Well? Other than that,
1:01
Speaker 1: Mrs Lincoln, how did you find the play? That's funny?
1:05
Speaker 1: That's terrible? Too soon? Surely not? Surely not? Ben? You
1:10
Speaker 1: you called out the date and it sounded to me
1:12
Speaker 1: like it was long ago, long ago, far away, right,
1:17
Speaker 1: And I'm no by the one. This ridiculous history is
1:20
Speaker 1: ridiculous history. And there's our super producer, Casey Pegram giving
1:26
Speaker 1: us his stamp of approval. Let me lean by the
1:28
Speaker 1: window and see if see if we get thumbs up. Oh,
1:32
Speaker 1: we got a pretty good thumbs up. Thumbs up indeed,
1:34
Speaker 1: as you would text me thumbs up emoji that oh
1:38
Speaker 1: thanks man? Yeah, yeah, I want to be clear that
1:40
Speaker 1: it is an emoji, because you know, some people don't
1:44
Speaker 1: know this, but emojis translate differently across different folks. I think, oh, ACPs,
1:49
Speaker 1: we've talked about Have we talked about this on this show?
1:51
Speaker 1: I don't you know? So we just hung out and
1:53
Speaker 1: talked a bit of a blur. We do talk about
1:55
Speaker 1: all kinds of things. Today we're talking about Abraham Lincoln
1:59
Speaker 1: getting a bullet to the back of the dome by
2:02
Speaker 1: a crazed I don't know, maybe it's not fair to
2:04
Speaker 1: call him craze, but a zealous actor by the name
2:08
Speaker 1: of John Wilkes booth Um during said play that may
2:12
Speaker 1: or may not have been any good, and then he
2:14
Speaker 1: leapt from the balcony. It was a point blank shot
2:17
Speaker 1: to the back of the heads six temper Tyrannus onto
2:21
Speaker 1: the stage, caught his his his pants on something on
2:25
Speaker 1: the way down and broke his leg, and somehow managed
2:29
Speaker 1: to escape. Yeah, made it seventy three miles to Port Royal, Virginia.
2:35
Speaker 1: While the Feds were chasing him, his accomplices were dropping
2:40
Speaker 1: out one by one. He eventually was cornered in a barn,
2:46
Speaker 1: surrounded by veterans from the Union Army. But wait, we
2:51
Speaker 1: need to back up again. Yes, beep, beep beep, that's
2:56
Speaker 1: the sound of the history truck moving back, because we
3:00
Speaker 1: gave you a little bit of, I guess, a cold open.
3:04
Speaker 1: We should start at the as the mad Hatter says
3:07
Speaker 1: at the beginning, Yes, that's appropriate for this, isn't it.
3:13
Speaker 1: Our story starts with a soldier by the name of
3:18
Speaker 1: Boston Corbett, although he was born Thomas Corbett and was
3:23
Speaker 1: not a soldier out of the womb. As it turns out,
3:27
Speaker 1: his his initial occupation was as an incorrigible drunk. Yes,
3:31
Speaker 1: Thomas Corbett was a hatter, not yet mad, and this
3:35
Speaker 1: was a pretty solid job for an upstanding American in
3:39
Speaker 1: the mid nineteenth century. But his wife and his first child,
3:44
Speaker 1: a girl, died during childbirth, and this sent him on
3:49
Speaker 1: a downward spiral. We had a lot of death and
3:52
Speaker 1: childbirth things happening in these last this episode and then
3:56
Speaker 1: the last one about the Cocklane ghost. It's true to
3:58
Speaker 1: check it out. Yeah, if you haven't already, uh, and
4:01
Speaker 1: if you haven't, the shame on you. But yeah, no,
4:03
Speaker 1: he did not uh, he did not do well after
4:06
Speaker 1: this blow uh from on high and um, he you know, became,
4:13
Speaker 1: like I said before, an incorrigible drunk. So that wasn't
4:15
Speaker 1: his first profession. His first profession was a hatter, and
4:17
Speaker 1: then he gave that up for the bottle um and
4:20
Speaker 1: he lived in New England um in Boston, and he
4:24
Speaker 1: would just haplessly stumble around drunk. He was kind of
4:28
Speaker 1: because he was a vagrant. He became known as kind
4:30
Speaker 1: of like one of the town um shiftless layabouts, right.
4:35
Speaker 1: And it was one night, uh late in the eighteen
4:38
Speaker 1: fifties when he ran into someone that would change his
4:43
Speaker 1: life forever. Yes. Then there's a great recounting of this
4:48
Speaker 1: in the Washingtonian in an article by Bill Jensen. He
4:52
Speaker 1: meets one of these proselytizing preachers, a street evangelists, and
4:57
Speaker 1: it gets to him. Corbette is psmerized by this word
5:01
Speaker 1: of God. He becomes a regular at the what what
5:06
Speaker 1: they called sidewalk churches around the city, which was an
5:09
Speaker 1: interesting phrase I had not heard before. But it's like
5:12
Speaker 1: a regularly occurring church meet up that doesn't necessarily have
5:18
Speaker 1: its own physical building. And he became sort of a
5:22
Speaker 1: hype man at these street preaching get togethers. He stopped
5:27
Speaker 1: drinking and he started uh. He started being the guy
5:32
Speaker 1: who just yells amen along with you know, sort of
5:37
Speaker 1: punctuating what the preachers are saying. Yea, hype Manning is
5:40
Speaker 1: it is sort of like in the trap music O
5:41
Speaker 1: to there that it's gonna go. Yeah, yeah, that was
5:45
Speaker 1: that was what he would do, except he was going
5:48
Speaker 1: Floyd to God. Yep, yeah, that kind of and now
5:51
Speaker 1: and speaking of Jesus, he also grew his his his
5:55
Speaker 1: hair his main long to to appear to resemble Jesus
5:59
Speaker 1: Christ himself. Um. He was baptized in the Methodist faith. UM,
6:05
Speaker 1: and he changed his name to Boston from Thomas because
6:10
Speaker 1: Boston was the town where he credited this meeting with
6:14
Speaker 1: the street preacher that turned his life around. He was
6:19
Speaker 1: twenty six at this time, and the ministers eventually said, hey,
6:24
Speaker 1: you should get your own turf. In other words, maybe
6:26
Speaker 1: it's sort of like back up off our turf with right, Manning,
6:29
Speaker 1: we don't need you anymore. I feel like Jesus is
6:32
Speaker 1: leading you to preach elsewhere elsewhere, to leading to preach
6:37
Speaker 1: down on Fourth. I think that's right. I think we
6:39
Speaker 1: have to remember we haven't said this yet, but I'm
6:42
Speaker 1: sure a lot of people know this already, but hatters
6:45
Speaker 1: used mercury to treat the felt, to form to form
6:49
Speaker 1: the felt to make the hats. And as we know,
6:52
Speaker 1: long term exposure to mercury, um does have some debilitating
6:57
Speaker 1: effects on the brain. Yeah, as some illitating cognitive effects.
7:02
Speaker 1: We do want to tell you that the next part
7:06
Speaker 1: of this story takes a brief and grizzly turn. Yes,
7:09
Speaker 1: we'll try to make it as brief as possible, but yeah,
7:12
Speaker 1: it's it's it's not a pleasant image that's coming up here.
7:16
Speaker 1: So he's out ministering to the people in the summer
7:20
Speaker 1: of eighteen fifty eight when he feels that a pair
7:25
Speaker 1: of sex workers are googling him, are giving him the eye,
7:30
Speaker 1: and he is disgusted with himself when he feels physically
7:37
Speaker 1: excited rises to the occasion, right, So he proceeds directly home,
7:44
Speaker 1: takes a pair of scissors, and you, after making an
7:50
Speaker 1: incision in his screw to um, he removes his testicles
7:54
Speaker 1: and then goes directly to a prayer meeting like you do.
7:59
Speaker 1: It was a different time, Yeah, and not only that
8:02
Speaker 1: he went to his prayer meeting, did whatever that entails? Uh?
8:06
Speaker 1: And then oh, we should also mention that Um. He
8:09
Speaker 1: was when when he got home from from this encounter
8:12
Speaker 1: with these these these ladies of the evening, he was
8:14
Speaker 1: in search of answers uh. And he opened the Bible too.
8:19
Speaker 1: It's unclear if if he was looking for this passage
8:21
Speaker 1: because he was aware of it, or if he was like,
8:23
Speaker 1: you know, did the old flipperou? And this is what
8:25
Speaker 1: came exactly. And the passage that he encountered was Matthew
8:29
Speaker 1: nineteen twelve, which has a part that says there are
8:33
Speaker 1: eunuchs who have made themselves unis for the sake of
8:36
Speaker 1: the Kingdom of God. Uh. And that's what he went
8:39
Speaker 1: and did with the with the snip snip. So he
8:41
Speaker 1: goes on to the prayer meeting and then what he
8:44
Speaker 1: goes to the hospital immediately right, No, he goes the
8:46
Speaker 1: next day after after the prayer meeting. Uh. He he
8:50
Speaker 1: grabs did or and takes a walk through the city,
8:52
Speaker 1: thinking his thoughts. Surely he's bleeding profusely from his genitals.
8:57
Speaker 1: At this point, one would think that he was able
9:00
Speaker 1: who staunched the wound, because otherwise, surely it would have
9:03
Speaker 1: been noticed during the prayer meeting. If the guy's bleeding
9:05
Speaker 1: through his trousers, but either way, he did eventually check
9:09
Speaker 1: himself into a Massachusetts general and spent some time trying
9:15
Speaker 1: to heal. Eventually he says, Okay, I'm better. A few
9:20
Speaker 1: weeks later and he moved to New York City to
9:24
Speaker 1: become a hat maker again. But he's still very religious
9:27
Speaker 1: a boy, is he? Ever? He's possibly the most religious
9:31
Speaker 1: person we've ever encountered in any story we've ever done
9:34
Speaker 1: for this show. Can you think of anyone more staunchly religious?
9:37
Speaker 1: Staunchly religious? Um, probably not that guy who mooned all
9:41
Speaker 1: those people. Definitely he was still unidentified. Yeah, this guy
9:45
Speaker 1: might take the cake so far. Uh. He would often
9:50
Speaker 1: use his lunch break to go to prayer meetings, so
9:54
Speaker 1: he's still kept these He's very i would say, dogmatic
9:58
Speaker 1: religious practices. And then in eighteen sixty one, the Confederate
10:04
Speaker 1: Army attacks Fort Sumter, which one was that in the
10:06
Speaker 1: Civil War? Nice ironically named because it was because it
10:10
Speaker 1: was very uncivil. Yes, they were not nice to each other,
10:13
Speaker 1: they were not. He enlisted the Union Army, and he
10:19
Speaker 1: had a quotation here that he allegedly told the women
10:23
Speaker 1: at his church, did you see this one? No, it
10:26
Speaker 1: had not been give it to me when he told
10:29
Speaker 1: the people a church that he was going to join
10:33
Speaker 1: up with the Union Army. He said, when I come
10:36
Speaker 1: eye to eye with my great suited enemies, I will
10:40
Speaker 1: say to them, God, have mercy on your souls. Then
10:42
Speaker 1: pop them off. Yes, I do remember this one. To
10:45
Speaker 1: pop them off is what did it for me? Very slang,
10:47
Speaker 1: you know what. It reminds me of them. It reminds
10:49
Speaker 1: me of Samuel L. Jackson's character, and pulp fiction does
10:54
Speaker 1: the whole. And I will smite thee with great anger
10:59
Speaker 1: and fury his vengeance those who attempt to poison and
11:02
Speaker 1: destroy my brothers, you know the one. It's good though.
11:05
Speaker 1: I wonder if he got that idea from from from
11:07
Speaker 1: old Corbett. Uh. Perhaps perhaps he did. That would be interesting.
11:14
Speaker 1: We'd have to ask Quentin himself. Right, there was a
11:21
Speaker 1: big bummer about him joining the army. He had to
11:24
Speaker 1: shave his Jesus is Jesus, jam is Jesus locks. Yeah,
11:30
Speaker 1: and by most of the accounts we've discovered, he was
11:34
Speaker 1: no case soldier. Could he could? Ryan, you can fire
11:37
Speaker 1: a gun, pretty good shot, but wasn't the wasn't the
11:42
Speaker 1: best at um He answered to a very particular authority,
11:46
Speaker 1: didn't he ben, it was not No, it was not earthly,
11:49
Speaker 1: nor was it his his commanders. And that's going to
11:51
Speaker 1: come up time and again in this man's story. But
11:53
Speaker 1: one funny anecdote in this Washington I And article is
11:57
Speaker 1: about um the time where when he was training in
12:01
Speaker 1: Franklin Square in New York, his colonel, a man by
12:06
Speaker 1: the name of Daniel Butterfield, who they point out, I
12:09
Speaker 1: did not know this composed TAPS. I didn't think TAPS
12:12
Speaker 1: was composed just was you know? Yeah, but no, this
12:16
Speaker 1: guy Butterfield, um also apparently had a bit of a
12:19
Speaker 1: potty mouth, because um, he was just eff and jeffen
12:23
Speaker 1: and swearing all over town. And Corbett was not having it.
12:27
Speaker 1: Was he? No, absolutely not Corbett, who we should also
12:29
Speaker 1: mention is still very green his training here. Uh he
12:35
Speaker 1: when the curls yelling at them and cursing, he yells back, colonel,
12:39
Speaker 1: don't you know you're breaking God's law? Butterfield is a
12:43
Speaker 1: guest like, he's speechless for a second. This has probably
12:46
Speaker 1: never happened to him. So what what does he do
12:49
Speaker 1: in response? Yeah? He he he reads him in the
12:52
Speaker 1: Riot Act, probably in a very measured kind of hannibal
12:56
Speaker 1: electric kind of way. I don't know this guy Corbett
12:58
Speaker 1: kind of giving me the creeps the whole self. Uh
13:00
Speaker 1: near relation thing that that's a that's a bridge too
13:03
Speaker 1: far sign a mental illness, I think for sure. And yeah,
13:06
Speaker 1: again we should point out that he had been exposed
13:08
Speaker 1: to these vapors, these mercury vapors for quite some time
13:12
Speaker 1: in his and his hatting career before he for any
13:14
Speaker 1: of this happened. Um. Yeah, and he says, colonel, don't
13:17
Speaker 1: you know you are breaking God's law? Uh? And yeah,
13:20
Speaker 1: Butterfield was probably just say, you know what, my boy,
13:22
Speaker 1: thank you so much for pointing that out, thank you,
13:25
Speaker 1: thank you for saving But no, it's not he did
13:27
Speaker 1: at all. It's not what he did at all. No. Uh,
13:32
Speaker 1: he said, I'm gonna send you to jail. So Corbette
13:37
Speaker 1: begins loudly singing hymns, pretty much shouting hymns while he's
13:42
Speaker 1: in jail. He's asked to stop. He won't. Butterfield eventually
13:47
Speaker 1: throws up his hands and says, look, if you just
13:50
Speaker 1: say you're sorry, I can let you out of prison,
13:54
Speaker 1: to which Corbett says, he says it no, sir, I
13:58
Speaker 1: have no cause to apologize to you, for you are
14:01
Speaker 1: but immortal, and you have offended the delicate sensibilities of
14:07
Speaker 1: the Lord thy God. So if you ask God to
14:12
Speaker 1: forgive you, then maybe I'll ask you to forgive me
14:16
Speaker 1: the chutzpah. It's out of control for a guy without balls,
14:20
Speaker 1: this is really ballsy. Yeah, no, no doubt about that.
14:23
Speaker 1: I think it just goes to show that those kind
14:25
Speaker 1: of balls come from within. My friend. There we go.
14:27
Speaker 1: So he is released at jail because he's like, this
14:32
Speaker 1: guy's impenetrable, you know. Yeah. Yeah, Also there's a war going. Yeah,
14:38
Speaker 1: they they probably need him. He's a crack shot. He's
14:41
Speaker 1: at least a passable soldier. Um, so yeah, they they
14:43
Speaker 1: need him. Um. And Okay, let's see. God, this guy's
14:48
Speaker 1: got a really storied, storied life. Yeah, where do you
14:51
Speaker 1: want to go? Well? He he He becomes a pretty
14:55
Speaker 1: important figure in the Union, uh cause he fights in
15:00
Speaker 1: all these very very deadly conflicts that most people would
15:05
Speaker 1: not have survived and did not survive. And I don't
15:07
Speaker 1: know if he had God's God on his side or whatever,
15:11
Speaker 1: but it's I don't know, it's hard to not think
15:13
Speaker 1: that that his piety maybe had something to do with it,
15:15
Speaker 1: or maybe it was just he was stark, raving, mad
15:19
Speaker 1: and fearless and just kind of like had luck on
15:21
Speaker 1: his side. Yeah yeah, Like the New England Historical Society
15:26
Speaker 1: covers a little bit of his activity in the Civil War.
15:30
Speaker 1: I did not know that he had enlisted or re
15:34
Speaker 1: enlisted three times. He took to this conflict and he
15:40
Speaker 1: wasn't the best soldier produced consistent. The thing people hated
15:44
Speaker 1: about working with him is that he was always telling
15:48
Speaker 1: people not to curse, would do sinful stuff sure, like
15:51
Speaker 1: you know, like you do in the army. He sounded
15:54
Speaker 1: like a real kill joy um. But he eventually got
15:59
Speaker 1: captured and sent to Andersonville. Do you know what Andersonville Prison? Ben? Yes, No,
16:05
Speaker 1: Andersonville Prison is a terrible, terrible place, or it was
16:09
Speaker 1: a terrible terrible place. We should say. It's sitting here
16:12
Speaker 1: in Georgia, right, Hunts. It was a Confederate run prison
16:16
Speaker 1: here in Georgia, which you can visit. I've actually been it.
16:20
Speaker 1: Uh it's the Andersonville National Historic Site now so it
16:23
Speaker 1: preserves uh Camp Sumter, which is also known as the prison,
16:28
Speaker 1: and it held forty five thousand Union soldiers prisoner during
16:32
Speaker 1: the war. Uh Nearly thirteen thousand of them died not
16:36
Speaker 1: from execution, but from diseases, scurvy, diarrhea, dysentery, the bloody flux. Yeah,
16:43
Speaker 1: is that? What is that? What it was called? I
16:44
Speaker 1: think that's what they call it. That was the That
16:46
Speaker 1: was the shorthand. Um, although it's sort of longer now
16:49
Speaker 1: just dysentery, the blood deflux, same number of syllables, but
16:52
Speaker 1: sounds a lot scarier, doesn't it. It does, Yeah, because
16:55
Speaker 1: because the flux, I guess is when you when you
16:57
Speaker 1: expel blood. Right now. The thing about uh, the thing
17:02
Speaker 1: about Mr Boston Corbett is that maybe it's a matter
17:06
Speaker 1: of his faith, Maybe it's a matter of luck. He survived. Yeah,
17:09
Speaker 1: this man was nothing if not resilient. I mean, he
17:11
Speaker 1: survived a self administered castration first informat, he survived you know,
17:17
Speaker 1: drunkenness in the streets, um. And he survived some of
17:21
Speaker 1: the most intense battles of the Civil War. Uh. And
17:26
Speaker 1: he survived this prison, which was built to house ten
17:29
Speaker 1: thousand inmates and ballooned to over thirty two thousand. There
17:35
Speaker 1: was like a little stream that ran through it, and
17:37
Speaker 1: apparently it had just become a swamp of human filth,
17:41
Speaker 1: and all of these diseases ran rampant. The guy who
17:46
Speaker 1: was in charge of this, uh, this facility was actually
17:50
Speaker 1: brought up on war crime trials because thousands, if not
17:54
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of men died in this facility. Yeah,
17:57
Speaker 1: thirteen thousand that we know of, So that guy was
18:00
Speaker 1: rightly brought up a war crime. What's his name? His
18:02
Speaker 1: name was Captain Henry Were's w I r Z. Not
18:07
Speaker 1: only he's tried for war crimes, but he was executed.
18:10
Speaker 1: So after Corbett gets away, after he survives this convalesces
18:16
Speaker 1: for a bit, one would imagine, right, learns to eat
18:19
Speaker 1: solid food again, he still stays with the army. He
18:26
Speaker 1: he had eventually reached the rank of sergeant in the
18:29
Speaker 1: sixteenth New York Volunteer Cavalry. Now we get to the
18:33
Speaker 1: point where we began the story. Oh man, weren't we
18:37
Speaker 1: having a barn burner? Maybe we hadn't quite gotten there yet.
18:41
Speaker 1: But our man John Wilkes Booth, hobbled from his idiotic
18:45
Speaker 1: fall at the Ford Theater after putting a bullet in
18:48
Speaker 1: um old Abe Lincoln's head is now hold up in
18:51
Speaker 1: this barn, along with two accomplices. I want to say, yeah,
18:55
Speaker 1: everybody else has deserted them. He's seventy three miles away
18:58
Speaker 1: from the theater, being hunted like a dog. Boston Corbette
19:03
Speaker 1: is one of the twenties six elite cavalrymen sent from
19:06
Speaker 1: the unit to pursue John Wilkes Booth and pursue him.
19:10
Speaker 1: They did. They got a tip from a local innkeeper,
19:13
Speaker 1: um who put them in touch with with a man
19:16
Speaker 1: who kind of gave give a give it to us man.
19:19
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not doing a very good job. Oh no,
19:21
Speaker 1: you got it. You got it. We've got uh Booth
19:25
Speaker 1: and his conspirator, David Harold in a tobacco farm owned
19:30
Speaker 1: by a guy named Richard Garrett. So what are the
19:34
Speaker 1: calvary men do once they have them cornered in that barn? Well,
19:37
Speaker 1: they're not coming out right, So they light some straw
19:41
Speaker 1: on fire and poke it through in a notth hole
19:43
Speaker 1: in the in the barn, and you know, like old
19:46
Speaker 1: dry wood tends to do it. It went up in
19:48
Speaker 1: flames pretty quickly. And David Harold says, Okay, this is
19:53
Speaker 1: crazy even for a terrorist like me. I give up Booth,
19:58
Speaker 1: who was already made his decision, made his peace with
20:02
Speaker 1: whatever powers he thinks exists, stays inside. But as the
20:07
Speaker 1: barn disintegrates in the conflagration, the soldiers outside can see
20:15
Speaker 1: Booth silhouette moving back and forth in the burning barn.
20:24
Speaker 1: And let's, uh, let's just remind our listeners. Maybe not
20:28
Speaker 1: really reminder, because we haven't said it yet. Um, the
20:30
Speaker 1: instructions of this brigade was to bring back these men
20:35
Speaker 1: alive because the plot against Lincoln there was a good
20:40
Speaker 1: chance that it had been organized orchestrated by forces on
20:44
Speaker 1: the Confederate side, and they wanted to, you know, get
20:47
Speaker 1: to the top of this uh conspiracy. Right. So when
20:53
Speaker 1: our boy Corbett popped one off, as he would say,
20:56
Speaker 1: right at John Wokes Booth as he hobbled away, people
21:01
Speaker 1: were understandably annoyed, right, And a another government employee says,
21:09
Speaker 1: what on earth did you shoot him for? And he's
21:12
Speaker 1: rushing to yank Booth out of the burning barn. They
21:16
Speaker 1: wanted him alive to you know, run up the ladder
21:19
Speaker 1: of the conspiracy, and Corbett refused to apologize. Booth dies
21:27
Speaker 1: around seven am the next day and the government forces
21:33
Speaker 1: are are wondering why this guy is completely contradicting his orders.
21:38
Speaker 1: And all he says is that God Almighty directed me
21:41
Speaker 1: to So instead of John Wilkes Booth going back to
21:46
Speaker 1: d C, they take Corbett. Yeah, and Edwin M. Stanton,
21:50
Speaker 1: who's the Secretary of War who had issued a reward
21:55
Speaker 1: the War Department of a hundred thousand dollars fifty for Booth,
22:00
Speaker 1: five for um Surat and for Harold and a total
22:06
Speaker 1: of a hundred thousand dollars. And um, this guy questioned
22:11
Speaker 1: Corbette uh personally, and I think he sort of decided
22:15
Speaker 1: it wasn't worth pursuing that. Um, you know, the guy's dead.
22:18
Speaker 1: The justice has been served. This guy is going to
22:22
Speaker 1: be kind of a national hero. Let's let it. Let's
22:24
Speaker 1: let it slide. Yeah. Even though Corbett kind of changes
22:28
Speaker 1: his message at the trial and he says, I didn't
22:31
Speaker 1: fire the ball from fear. I was under the impression
22:35
Speaker 1: that he, meaning Booth, had started to the door to
22:38
Speaker 1: fight his way through, and I thought he would do
22:40
Speaker 1: harm to my men if I didn't fire. So it
22:43
Speaker 1: changes a little bit. He's not quite as self righteous
22:47
Speaker 1: about it. But how does this story end? Noel, he
22:51
Speaker 1: doesn't get the whole fifty grand. You know he gets
22:53
Speaker 1: a portion of it, though I think who gets a
22:55
Speaker 1: little over sixteen hundred. And then he asked if he
22:58
Speaker 1: can take his horse hole, which I thought was pretty sweet.
23:01
Speaker 1: He says, he's not valuable, but I'm attached to him
23:04
Speaker 1: and I'd like to take him home. He's a sentimental man.
23:06
Speaker 1: He's a sentimental eunuch um mad hatter h Later he
23:13
Speaker 1: is largely forgotten um. He starts initially going back to
23:18
Speaker 1: work as a silk hat finisher, then he turns to
23:22
Speaker 1: being a lay preacher, making two fifty a year dollars dollars, yes,
23:28
Speaker 1: not thousands, of course, And by eighteen seventy four he
23:33
Speaker 1: has his mental state has further deteriorated. He is convinced
23:38
Speaker 1: that John Wilkes Booth is actually still alive, and that
23:41
Speaker 1: Booth has sent people from the former Confederacy to kill him.
23:46
Speaker 1: That being said, though he was not a popular man
23:48
Speaker 1: among his cohorts. For for for the reason we talked
23:51
Speaker 1: about earlier, that he's always in people's faces preaching the
23:54
Speaker 1: Holy Roller line. But also like even the other troops
23:58
Speaker 1: that he was with in his unit, they would have
24:00
Speaker 1: been irritated with him because he kind of stole their glory. Right,
24:03
Speaker 1: that could have been any of them. Also, it would
24:06
Speaker 1: have been much more of a group victory if they
24:08
Speaker 1: had brought the man back alive like they were supposed to.
24:11
Speaker 1: But instead he took it upon himself to to pop
24:14
Speaker 1: one off. Yeah, and so he was getting threatening letters,
24:19
Speaker 1: that was real. Yes, he was getting threatening letters. Don't
24:23
Speaker 1: know if they were meant just to torture him, but
24:27
Speaker 1: some were signed J. Wilkes Smooth. So in his mental
24:31
Speaker 1: state he felt that these really were from this guy,
24:36
Speaker 1: and there was this overarching conspiracy to assassinate him. By
24:40
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy eight, increasingly unpopular, despised by half the country,
24:46
Speaker 1: strongly disliked by his colleagues. Uh. He hops in a
24:50
Speaker 1: wagon and says that he's going to head west. Where's
24:55
Speaker 1: it go Ben? He goes to a place called Cloud County, Kansas,
25:00
Speaker 1: starts the homestead of eighty acres. Yeah. Unfortunately, that doesn't
25:04
Speaker 1: go super well, and because of some pretty intensely erratic behavior, um,
25:13
Speaker 1: he does not get to continue in that endeavor. Some
25:17
Speaker 1: of that behavior includes in eighteen eighty seven, he holds
25:21
Speaker 1: the Kansas House of Representatives hostage, basically using two revolvers
25:28
Speaker 1: and a sword, and then he declares that the session
25:31
Speaker 1: has been adjourned um. And then he has various incendity
25:35
Speaker 1: run ins with the law, and in eighteen eighty seven
25:38
Speaker 1: October that is um. He has declared insane and he
25:41
Speaker 1: is committed to a Kansas asylum. But that's not the end.
25:47
Speaker 1: That is not quite the end. He escapes from the
25:51
Speaker 1: asylum in May six, eighteen eight because he sees somebody
25:57
Speaker 1: making deliveries and tethering a horse to the front of
26:00
Speaker 1: the building. So he breaks away, jumps on the horse,
26:05
Speaker 1: and takes off all the way to Neodesha, Kansas, home
26:09
Speaker 1: of a fellow veteran and survivor of and Andersonville, a
26:13
Speaker 1: guy named Richard Thatcher, and that caused this kind of
26:17
Speaker 1: bolo letter to be generated with the heading insane man
26:21
Speaker 1: escaped Topeka, Kansas. Dear Sir Boston Corbett, an insane man
26:28
Speaker 1: escaped from the insane asylum at Topeka this morning, and
26:31
Speaker 1: it's supposed to be heading for Cloud County. He's about
26:34
Speaker 1: fifty five years old and five ft four inches tall.
26:38
Speaker 1: It is a clever detail. This is a smart move.
26:40
Speaker 1: He has plucked all his beard out down to the
26:43
Speaker 1: lower part of his ears, his gray chin whiskers, and mustache,
26:48
Speaker 1: gray hair cut square at the bottom and parts his
26:50
Speaker 1: hair in the middle. He wore a dark jeans suit
26:53
Speaker 1: and black soft hat and was riding a bay or
26:57
Speaker 1: a sorrel pony with a boy's saddle. So keep a
27:01
Speaker 1: lookout for that guy. He is regarded as a dangerous man,
27:05
Speaker 1: but was unarmed when he escaped. If he comes your way,
27:08
Speaker 1: arrest him and return him to the asylum at once,
27:10
Speaker 1: or telegraph Dr B. D. Eastman, Superintendent Insane Asylum, Topeka
27:15
Speaker 1: for orders. What happens when he meets up with his
27:18
Speaker 1: old pal Thatcher, or when he reaches Thatcher's property, We
27:22
Speaker 1: should say, well, the first thing he did when he
27:24
Speaker 1: got there to Neodosha, Kansas, was he he took that
27:27
Speaker 1: stolen horse that he referred to as a borrowed horse,
27:30
Speaker 1: and he tied it a note onto it and slapped
27:33
Speaker 1: it on the button sent it on its way. Um,
27:35
Speaker 1: And it was quite a way as a way, So
27:36
Speaker 1: it's it's unclear if that horse made it to its
27:39
Speaker 1: rightful owner. But the note kind of was like, sorry,
27:41
Speaker 1: I just had to do it here, Please take this horseback.
27:44
Speaker 1: I didn't wasn't stealing it. But yeah, he went to
27:49
Speaker 1: a train station and I was trying to get to Mexico. Um.
27:53
Speaker 1: And that is the last anyone ever heard from him, right.
27:58
Speaker 1: Rumors still trickle in after that. They'll see a lot
28:01
Speaker 1: of people list as death as eighteen four. One theory
28:05
Speaker 1: says that he was targeted by people who were bitter
28:09
Speaker 1: over the various battles he had had in his time
28:14
Speaker 1: in the Union Army. Uh. Someone else said he died
28:17
Speaker 1: the Great Hinkley Fire. Uh. And then there were people
28:21
Speaker 1: who would point out other possibilities. You know, in the
28:25
Speaker 1: early nine hundreds, of Federal Prison Bureau heard about a
28:28
Speaker 1: Boston Corbett who claimed he was alive and well and
28:31
Speaker 1: wanted his pension checks. But the problem was that the
28:37
Speaker 1: guy who claimed to be Boston Corbett, who also went
28:40
Speaker 1: by the nickname Old Trapper. Old Trapper, only gave um
28:47
Speaker 1: vague descriptions. Yeah, I think he was taller. And he
28:50
Speaker 1: was taller, Yeah, like a lot taller, I believe full
28:54
Speaker 1: eight inches or so. And then people thought that would
29:00
Speaker 1: be the last they heard of him. But more and
29:03
Speaker 1: more stories poured in. They just became less and less credible.
29:07
Speaker 1: If that makes sense, it does, and now he is
29:11
Speaker 1: largely lost to history except for one one thing that remains. Right. Yeah,
29:18
Speaker 1: it's like a weird kind of memorial. It's just a
29:21
Speaker 1: pen like a like a fenced area. Um that marks
29:27
Speaker 1: where his final home was. And uh. In this Washingtonian
29:30
Speaker 1: article they wrap up talking about how in there was
29:33
Speaker 1: a boy Scout troop that made a stone plaque to
29:37
Speaker 1: put there and they called it the Boston Corbett dugout
29:42
Speaker 1: And um, there are two revolvers embedded in the rock.
29:46
Speaker 1: And here ends the strange story of Boston Corbette war.
29:51
Speaker 1: He wrote a some a villain to others, but clearly
29:56
Speaker 1: a man in need of medical care ofs some sort. Yeah. Absolutely,
30:02
Speaker 1: who left a pretty fascinating mark on history. And if
30:06
Speaker 1: you'd like to read more about Boston Corbett, you can
30:10
Speaker 1: check out the book The Madman and the Assassin, which
30:15
Speaker 1: has a a pretty snappy chronicle of his time, both
30:20
Speaker 1: his normal life leading up to the Civil War and
30:23
Speaker 1: his earlier struggles all the way to that fateful day
30:29
Speaker 1: when he shot John Wilkes Booth. I felt like a
30:33
Speaker 1: very definitive engine. Usually we get to a segue or something. Uh, yeah, no,
30:36
Speaker 1: that's good, that's good. Where it's almost like we're getting
30:38
Speaker 1: a little bit better at this. Well let's let's not
30:41
Speaker 1: jinx ourselves, but we we hope you enjoyed this story.
30:46
Speaker 1: We were surprised in the course of our research to
30:48
Speaker 1: learn that, you know, a lot of people haven't heard
30:50
Speaker 1: of this guy. I hadn't. Yeah, they don't really teach
30:53
Speaker 1: you about it in school, you know. Well, you know,
30:55
Speaker 1: it's like, I think this is an interesting slice of
30:58
Speaker 1: life of the time too, and ms of like, you know,
31:01
Speaker 1: the way mental illness was was handled, the whole idea
31:04
Speaker 1: of there's just so many interesting little twists in this story.
31:06
Speaker 1: The way, um, the whole Anderson villain carstration thing. I
31:08
Speaker 1: knew a little bit about that, but this was a
31:10
Speaker 1: really interesting inside perspective, like from someone who lived through it,
31:14
Speaker 1: the whole, you know, coming to Jesus stuff. It's just
31:16
Speaker 1: this is like, why is there not a film about
31:19
Speaker 1: this guy? Who would play him? Uh, Crispin Glover? Yes,
31:24
Speaker 1: did I tell you that? My friend Matt saw Crispin
31:27
Speaker 1: Glover on the subway in New York for like an hour,
31:30
Speaker 1: just sitting by himself, wearing a really nice black suit
31:32
Speaker 1: and listening to his earbuds. I think you may have
31:35
Speaker 1: mentioned that was it was he actually going somewhere just
31:38
Speaker 1: righting the subway. No, I think he was going he said,
31:40
Speaker 1: Matt works way uptown. Um, and his his theory was
31:43
Speaker 1: maybe that he was shooting something in Harlem, because that's
31:45
Speaker 1: sort of the direction. Yeah. So I think Crispin Glover
31:49
Speaker 1: would be a good pick. He would be awesome. I mean,
31:51
Speaker 1: I mean, look, if you look at this guy, listeners,
31:53
Speaker 1: if you want to check it out, tell us what
31:54
Speaker 1: you think. Who would play Boston Corbett, Oh, Crispin Glover
31:58
Speaker 1: all day long? You know who else would be good?
32:00
Speaker 1: Norman read us scenes. Also, my favorite moment in the
32:06
Speaker 1: Guy's biography is definitely the Other Street evangelists saying God
32:11
Speaker 1: has called you to preach my son about four blocks
32:15
Speaker 1: that way. That's still my Favorite's good. H We want
32:19
Speaker 1: to know what you thought about this episode, and as always,
32:23
Speaker 1: some of our best ideas come from you, fellow ridiculous historians.
32:27
Speaker 1: So let us know what other tremendously important characters in
32:32
Speaker 1: American history or in the history of your own country
32:35
Speaker 1: seemed to be largely obscured today. We'd like to shed
32:38
Speaker 1: some light on them. As always, thank you for checking
32:41
Speaker 1: out the show. Thank you to our super producer Casey Pegram,
32:45
Speaker 1: thanks to Alex Williams who composed our theme, and thanks
32:48
Speaker 1: to Christopher Haciers for being our researcher extraordinaire on this episode.
32:52
Speaker 1: And by this time, long time listeners, you know the drill.
32:55
Speaker 1: Find us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. You can also
32:58
Speaker 1: check out our Commune D page, Ridiculous Historians, which is
33:03
Speaker 1: a hoot, a real hoot and hoot, hunt and holler
33:08
Speaker 1: a bruhaha. Sure are we just going to toss synonyms?
33:13
Speaker 1: We have to get out of here. We do toss synonym,
33:15
Speaker 1: so I like it