Evening star. [volume], April 13, 1947, Page 13, Image 106

About Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972

Image provided by: Library of Congress, Washington, DC

                
torians insist that April 14, 1865,
was a night on which witches flew
over Washington. Surely, they
whisper, there were more things in
heaven and earth that day and
night than are dreamt of in any
historian’s philosophy.
As another example, consider
the people in the box with the
President and Mrs. Lincoln that
night.
Miss Clara Harris was the
daughter of the Senator from New
York. Major Henry R. Rathbone
was the stepson of the same Sena
tor. Miss Harris and Major Rath
bone. guests of Abraham Lincoln
at the theater that night, were
soon to be married. They and
Mrs. Lincoln flanked the President
when Booth entered the box in
Ford’s Theater.
He came in, a shadowy pres
ence. quietly closed and barred
the door behind him. He had a pis
tol in one hand and a dagger in the
other. He walked straight up to
the President, placed the pistol to
the massive dark head, and fired.
The Major Was Occupied
Now, had Major Rathbone been
paying less attention to the com
edy on the stage and to his pretty
fiancee, he could have prevented
the crime of the century. But he
was sitting next to his sweetheart
and looking down at the stage.
Who can blame him if his thoughts
were too carefully divided between
love and laughter to be spared for
the sudden appearance of shadowy
strangers?
Immediately after the shot, he
jumped up. Though a “slight,
smallish man,” as the history
books say. Rathbone had courage.
He “threw himself upon Booth.”
The two men. actor and soldier,
fought in the space behind Lin
coln's crumpled figure. Booth, still
armed with a dagger, slashed at
Rathbone and cut his arm. Kuth
Ixme fell to the ground, and
Booth OHcaped by vaulting over
the box, jumping a dozen feet
onto the stage.
History has paid very little
attention to Major Rathbone.
Though he was not eight feet from
the President when the shot was
fired, though he was the man clos
est to one of the great American
catastrophes, his subsequent his
tory is almost forgotten. So is that
An Accomplished Jumper
Other peculiar things happened
that night, but one in particular
merits the skeptic’s close atten
tion: In jumping from the box to
the stage, Booth broke his leg.
It was quite a jump to the stage
— for ordinary people. But Booth,
in terms of stage experience: was
an accomplished “jumper." He
was one of the hellfire-and-calis
thenic school of acting, a kind of
Douglas Fairbanks of his day. In
“Macbeth," the agile Booth used
to leap to the stage from a rock 12
feet high. What then, to such a
man, was a drop of a dozen feet
from the box to the stage?
It was nothing. Booth could
have done it any day in the week,
blindfolded. He knew it, and it
was an integral part of his plan.
What he didn’t grasp was
that April 14, 1863, was not
just any night of the week. It
was the night on which the Presi
dent and Mrs. Lincoln honored
Ford’s Theater with a visit, and
the management had gratefully
decorated the Presidential box
with bunting.
of his fiancee, the “young and
lovely” Miss Harris. Historians
can only assume that the Major
was haunted for the rest of his
days by the knowledge that he
was the man who might have
saved Lincoln’s life. For in later
years the short and smallish Major
shot and killed the lovely Clara
Hams, and ended his own days in
an insane asylum.
Omens? Dire portents? A black
curse on all concerned?
Tripped by a Flag
Booth was wearing spurs, for he
was to rush through the theater,
leap on his waiting horse and ride
to safety. But when he vaulted
from the box. one of his spurs
caught in the bunting. And that is
why Booth, the experienced jump
er. fell so clumsily to the stage and
broke his leg. And it was because
of the broken leg that he was even
tually trapped in a barn, and
killed.
Booth, the perfect planner,
hadn’t figured on bunting — and
on the strange forces that were at
work that night. He hadn’t figured
on being tripped up by an Ameri
can flag. The End
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