Backstage at the Lincoln Assassination: The Untold Story of the Actors and Stagehands at Ford's Theatre Author: Thomas A. Bogar | Language: English | ISBN:
B00E2583RQ | Format: PDF
Backstage at the Lincoln Assassination: The Untold Story of the Actors and Stagehands at Ford's Theatre Description
April 14, 1865. A famous actor pulls a trigger in the presidential balcony, leaps to the stage and escapes, as the president lies fatally wounded. In the panic that follows, forty-six terrified people scatter in and around Ford’s Theater as soldiers take up stations by the doors and the audience surges into the streets chanting, “Burn the place down!”
This is the untold story of Lincoln’s assassination: the forty-six stage hands, actors, and theater workers on hand for the bewildering events in the theater that night, and what each of them witnessed in the chaos-streaked hours before John Wilkes Booth was discovered to be the culprit. In Backstage at the Lincoln Assassination, historian Thomas A. Bogar delves into previously unpublished sources to tell the story of Lincoln’s assassination from behind the curtain, and the tale is shocking. Police rounded up and arrested dozens of innocent people, wasting time that allowed the real culprit to get further away. Some closely connected to John Wilkes Booth were not even questioned, while innocent witnesses were relentlessly pursued. Booth was more connected with the production than you might have known—learn how he knew each member of the cast and crew, which was a hotbed of secessionist resentment. Backstage at the Lincoln Assassination also tells the story of what happened to each of these witnesses to history, after the investigation was over—how each one lived their lives after seeing one of America’s greatest presidents shot dead without warning.
Backstage at the Lincoln Assassination is an exquisitely detailed look at this famous event from an entirely new angle. It is must reading for anyone fascinated with the saga of Lincoln’s life and the Civil War era.
- File Size: 846 KB
- Print Length: 402 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1621570835
- Publisher: Regnery History (November 4, 2013)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00E2583RQ
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #90,025 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
Old-timers who read this may remember a television show from the 1950s entitled You Are There. Under the guidance of Walter Cronkite, viewers experienced time travel to relive historic events. It hasn't made it to television yet - and You Are There has given way to reality shows - but this new book, Backstage at the Lincoln Assassination by Thomas Bogar, PhD, is the next best thing.
I have been addicted to the story of the Lincoln assassination for over fifty years, and I truly thought that I knew 99% of what I needed to know (and too many theories and "what ifs" that I didn't need to know). Dr. Bogar's book has proven me wrong. His focus on the effects of Lincoln's assassination on the actors, actresses, and theater staff at Ford's Theatre after the horrendous event of April 14, 1865, has filled a huge void that few in that field of research have even attempted to address.
First, let me say that his theater background has enhanced his work tremendously; it is not just "history," it is a historical production. We learn the history of the theatrical world in mid-19th century America, the role that it played in social history as well as the hits it took from the culture of that time. One of the most famous plays in history is Our American Cousin, made famous strictly because it was being performed at Ford's Theatre on the night of Lincoln's death. Dr. Bogar, however, has given it life in the book by describing it in detail in a type of written dress rehearsal. This reader felt as if she were the only member of the audience as she watched the textual presentation unfold on the pages before her.
Shining the spotlight on the actors, actresses, and theater personnel is the highlight of Bogar's work, however.
Dr. Thomas Bogart is a theatre historian who has produced an original and well researched account of the lives of the forty-six stagehands, actors and owners of the Ford Theatre in Washington Dc. The infamous theatre was the sight of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln on the night of April 14, 1865. The assassination tale has been told in countless books but never before has the story of the employees of Ford's Theatre been explored in such depth.
Bogart's preface to the book begins by asking the reader to imagine that a POTUS has just been murdered in your work place by a charismatic employee. The event of the murder will plague the lives of all the workers for the rest of their lives. John Wilkes Booth was the nineteenth century version of Brad Pitt who was beloved by the public. At 10:14 PM on the night of the `14th he shot Lincoln and leaped over eleventh feet to the stage prior to his escape through southern Maryland and Virginia where he was killed by soldiers who trapped him in Garret's barn.
The unexplored story told by Dr. Bogart is to examine in detail the previously unreported lives of the Ford troupe. We learn of the three Ford brothers who ran the theatre. All were arrested and later released. The theatre was closed for over one hundred years. Edwin Stanton the Secretary of War arrested all who worked at the theatre and closed the establishment down. Laura Keene the star of "Our American Cousin" comforted the dying Lincoln by holding his head in her arms as she daubed water on his forehead. Harry Hawk was the only man on stage at time of Booth's wild flight from the theatre. The poignant tale of Edwin Spangler the stage hand sent to the Dry Tortugas for his supposed participation in the plot provides intriguing reading.
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