| A Word Edgewise by Mary Joe Clendenin |
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| A Word Edgewise by Mary Joe Clendenin |
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UNDER THE SHADOW OF LINCOLN'S MURDER
I love to tell a story, and count it especially fortunate to find bits of actual happenings--truth stranger than fiction--I didn't know existed. Maybe it is only I who am ignorant, but if this story is familiar to you, why didn't you tell me?
It was one hundred and thirty-three years ago, on Good Friday in1865, that President Abraham Lincoln was shot while watching John Wilkes Booth perform on stage. That great tragedy of his murder overshadowed another story that had its beginning in the same setting.
The Lincolns had invited other guests to view the play that night, but for various reasons the first ones invited declined. Their oldest son, Robert Lincoln, just back from service as a staff officer with General Grant, was one who declined, saying he wanted to sleep the extra hours in a real bed. Miss Clara Harris and Major Henry Rathbone, an engaged couple, happily accepted the presidential invitation. She was the daughter of a friend of Mary Todd Lincoln. The four watched the play, "Our American Cousins," starring a popular actor, John Wilkes Booth, from the president's box at the Ford Theatre.
According to history, Mrs. Lincoln, at some point in the play, asked her husband, "What will Miss Harris think of me hanging on you so?"
The President answered, "She won't think anything about it." Those may have been his last words--at least the last remembered by the party.
At that moment John Wilkes Booth appeared in the box. A curl of blue smoke rose from the gun with which he shot Lincoln in the head before anyone suspected his intentions. As Rathbone bounded from his seat, Booth slashed his arm from shoulder to elbow with a knife. Rathbone knocked him off ballance, but John Wilkes Booth leaped from the box.
Rathbone yelled, "Stop that man."
Clara Harris yelled, "Won't somebody stop that man?"
The dying Lincoln was taken to the house across the street where he was tended to in a bedroom until his death. The ladies were told to wait in the parlor. Major Henry Rathbone collapsed on the floor of the parlor from loss of blood. Miss Clara tried to stop the blood by cramming her handkerchief into the wound as she cradled Henry's head in her lap. Someone soon helped dress the wound and got the major home.
Clara went home with blood on her face and hands and all over the special dress she had worn for the evening at the theatre. She couldn't bring herself to wash out the blood or burn the dress, so she hung it in a closet.
It was exactly a year later, while she slept in the room in her home where the closet was located, that she was awakened by laughter. Struggling to control her fear she found that the laughter, which sounded exactly like that of President Lincoln as he had watched the play, came from the closet where the dress was hanging. Clara told the rest of the family about the experience the next morning--only a dream, they said.
On the second anniversary of the death of Lincoln, a friend was sleeping in the fated bedroom. She, too, heard the laughter. Clara Harris had the closet bricked up with the dress still inside.
Clara Harris and Major Rathbone were married in 1867, but he was not a well man. He blamed himself for not saving Lincoln's life. The Major resigned his commission in 1870 and they traveled to Europe seeking a cure for his fatiguing illness. No cure was found, so they returned to Albany, New York. He continued to have, among other ailments, headaches. They eventually had three children. In 1882, they sailed for Germany to live in a rented house in Hanover, still seeking cure for Henry.
On Christmas morning, 1883, thin and pale, Henry fully dressed went into his wife's room and told her he wanted to spend time with the children. She protested because they were not up yet. He shot her in the head, about the same wound as Lincoln's and then stabbed himself. She died. He lived-- to be placed in an asylum where he spent the rest of his life.
The children were taken back to America to be raised by their uncle, her brother. Henry died in 1911 and was buried in Germany beside his wife. In 1952, as was the policy in German cemeteries for long neglected graves, the remains were disposed of. Henry Riggs Rathbone, was thirteen when his mother died.
The young Rathbone grew up to be a United States congressman. A year before his father's death he had the brick walling over the closet torn down, retrieved the dress and burned it. He said it had cursed his family for forty-five years.
If and when you visit the Ford Theatre, which is now a museum, due to the influence of Representative Rathbone, think of what happened in the shadows of that box.
And be careful of shadows when you visit places of death. They have a way of hiding tragedies yet unearthed. Sleep well.
I found information about this story in American Heritage, February/March 1994.