"Other than that, how was the play, Mr. Lincoln?"
Good afternoon, and I hope you are enjoying your day off.
Today is Presidents’ Day, the holiday formerly known as Washington’s Birthday (which is actually 2/22). The name was never officially changed by Congress but has still become widely known as Presidents’ Day in order take the exclusivity away from our first president AND to include Abe Lincoln’s birthday (which is actually 2/12).
I don’t really give a fuck if you chose to call it Washington’s or Lincoln’s or Presidents’ Day, but the day itself is always the third Monday in February, so it can only occur between Feb. 15 and Feb. 21. Therefore, the holiday is always AFTER Lincoln’s birthday and is always BEFORE Washington’s, without ever coinciding with either.
Since most of the civilized world has the day off, I thought I would drop some presidential trivia on all y’all’s asses… Give you something moderately interesting to talk about with your miserable wife and kids on what looks to be another moderately terrible winter day.
That groundhog was full of shit.
I don’t know a ton about George Washington, outside of the fact he had no middle name, he was infertile, and he owned a fairly profitable whiskey distillery in Mount Vernon at one point. I am fairly certain he was the first American to own a pet goldfish, but I was told that by a weird pet store clerk, so don’t hold me to that.
Abe Lincoln, on the other hand, I know a SHIT-TON about.
Carl in Chicago wrote a riveting piece on the life of Lincoln last week, highlighting why he is the biggest thing to come out of Illinois since the Italian beef…
Today, I am going to talk a little bit about his death.
On April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth, a famous actor, and Confederate sympathizer shot Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre in DC. The attack came only five days after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, effectively ending the American Civil War.
I wrote a blurb about infamous killers some time ago and commented on how they traditionally have 3 names: Lee Harvey Oswald, John Wilkes Booth, John Wayne Gacy, Mark David Chapman, James Earl Jones, etc…
Someone DM’d me later that day to tell me that historians purposely use murderers’ middle names to differentiate them from other people who have the same first and last name as the murderer… Because I am sure plain-old Lee Oswald from Texas does not get his balls busted every day.
Back to Ford’s Theatre- Ulysses S. Grant was supposed to be in the box with Lincoln that night, but backed out last minute because Grant’s wife hated Mary Todd Lincoln (who was known to be a hellacious cunt). Lincoln had a difficult time finding a replacement before Clara Harris, daughter of New York Senator Ira Harris, and her fiancé, Major Henry Rathbone, accepted.
We’ll stay with Rathbone… After shooting Lincoln, Booth slashed Rathbone’s left arm from his elbow to his shoulder. Rathbone recovered from the stab wounds but not from the trauma. Henry wound up eventually marrying Harris (who also happened to be his stepsister), and two days before Christmas in 1883, he fatally shot and stabbed his stepsister/wife before stabbing himself repeatedly in a suicide attempt.
Once again, however, Rathbone survived the knife wounds and lived out the remaining three decades of his life in an asylum for the criminally insane.
Another interesting tidbit: The aforementioned “hellacious cunt” Mary Todd Lincoln, was also institutionalized in 1875… Meaning there were five people in that balcony that night (including JW Booth), and three were shot while the other two eventually wound up in the puzzle factory.
Booth jumped off the balcony after shooting Lincoln and stabbing Rathbone. He broke his leg in the fall but still managed to run away. The manhunt that ensued is actually pretty interesting if you have a moment.
And all four of John Wilkes Booth’s assassination co-conspirators- Mary Surratt, Lewis Powell, David Herold, and George Atzerodt were hung on July 7th, 1865… Less than 3 months after the president was killed.
Booth’s remains are buried under an unmarked gravestone in the shadow of his family’s much larger monument at Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore, MD. There’s a tradition for many bitter weirdos who place Lincoln head pennies face up on the headstone to “lock the assassin in the ground”.
Similarly, Booth-backers place pennies face down in the alley behind Ford’s Theatre to do the same to Lincoln.
In order to end the now 150-year feud between penny-up Lincoln fans vs penny-down Booth backers, I propose a solution:
-Members from either side mail me $5 bills to the Barstool HQ address.
-Have Lincoln’s mug facing the stamp side of the envelope if you would like me to enact an ancient and eternal Celtic curse on Booth’s soul and his descendants.
-Have Lincoln’s visage facing the back of the envelope if you would like me to perform a similar bad juju on Lincoln’s lineage.
-After I receive 1,000 entrants, I will curse whoever has fewer entries.
Hit the post office now (even though it is closed today)… Vote early and vote often.
Enjoy the day, and take a report.
-Large