2/6/06- Off Topic

Editor's Note- Besides his consuming interest in University of Michigan Football and other Michigan sports, Andy maintains an active interest in Michigan and United States History. He is currently President of the Docent Guild of the Michigan Historical Center in Lansing.

The Guild is a charitable organization whose volunteers serve the needs of the Historical Center. Docents learn, study, teach, and write Michigan history, and give tours at the Museum for both children and adults.

Andy would be happy to provide a tour for one and all, but would particularly enjoy meeting Michigan fans. You can email him at andy@umgoblue.com about football or history.

Andy also tapes books for the State Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped. Currently he is enjoying the taping of Blue Ice.

HISTORY’S CHARACTERS-

Major Henry Rathbone

This series of articles is intended to inform regarding some lesser known, but none-the-less interesting characters that participated in notable events in America’s History. It is recognized that some events, such as the Lincoln assassination have been well described by some of the best writers of many generations. So why add to the alphabetic cacophony that already exists regarding the well-storied events of that era?

Primarily because the events of the 1860’s impacted the nation immediately, and severely, and should not be forgotten as generations pass because those events have continued to impact this nation to some degree ever since. We are what we are today as Americans in important part, because of the events of that era.

The Presidential assassination of that time further strained the fragile fabric of an American Society already rent by four years of the cruelest kind of war. The social fabric of the country was as torn as its battle flags and its approximately 540,000 soldier casualties. The assassination was a bloody exclamation point to the end of a bloody era. That after a time, a long time, too long of a time, a more equitable, if still imperfect and evolving society, developed as the country healed, was a cause for hope. If the country could get over that war and the events of that era, it can get over anything, and that is worth noting.

In looking back, we that have never lived in or suffered through the era perhaps feel there is a somewhat romantic aspect to the age of the horse. Whether that is so or not, there is an eerie aspect to an era that lived at night by the flicker of gaslight, fireplaces, candles and whale oil lamps.

There were many nightly shadows. Many believed in the occult and séances. Mrs. Lincoln was solaced by this, and tried to evoke the spirit of a lost child in séances at the White House. There were no funeral homes and the deceased ordinarily lay in state in front parlors, in lamp and candle light, with some one sitting up all night for company. Church bells tolled all day in honor and wearing mourning black was mandatory. There were rude medical practices. Germs and viruses were as unknown as the means to defeat them. Opium and its derivatives gave some pain relief, but their use often ended in a serious addiction sometimes termed “old soldier’s disease”.
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Some people involved in the Ford’s Theater events, like John F. Parker, President Lincoln’s bodyguard on the evening of his assassination were unwitting but effective contributors to the commission of the crime, while others such as U. S. Army Major Henry Rathbone, and his fiancé, Miss Harris, who was Senator Ira Harris’ daughter, and Mary Lincoln, did not contribute to that crime, but simply became collateral damage.

The President’s three ill-fated companions in the Lincoln box that fateful evening at Ford’s Theater, April 14th, 1865, were all unwitting victims. All were the victims of a single shot not aimed at them, and not striking them, but which ruined their futures just as surely as if it had been intended for them and had passed through them.

That two of the three would later spend time in “lunatic asylums” (nomenclature of the times), and that the other would suffer as dreadful a fate as Lincoln himself, could not be anticipated at the time.

Mary Todd Lincoln was later judged insane in the mid 1870’s as the result of a jury trial. Shortly after, she was judged sane by another jury, and remanded to the custody of her sister in Springfield, Illinois, where she resided in the same house in which she had married Abraham until her death.

Her son Robert played a role in these proceedings as it was said that Mrs. Lincoln would yield to an abject fear of poverty, with plenty of cash at hand, and would not pay the bills from debts she lavishly incurred at places like Tiffany’s. She otherwise demonstrated singular behavior at times.

It seems the mind of a high-strung lady had been stretched too thin by the death of a murdered husband and the loss of two beloved sons. One, a mere boy, had passed away in the White House. It is easy to appreciate the plight of this well educated, ambitious woman. Of Southern origin, she lost relatives in the Civil War on the Southern side. Her brother in law, a Confederate General, was killed. Strangely enough the General’s wife, Mary’s widowed sister, came to live for a short time during the war with her in the White House. Mary was accused by some of coddling the enemy, and worse was slandered by some as a traitor.

The same sense of sympathetic appreciation one can have regarding Mary’s plight, can not be had regarding that of Major Henry Rathbone. He held up admirably at Ford’s Theater, trying to fight off assassin Booth who attacked him with a knife, stabbing his arm seriously before leaping to the stage over the side of the Lincoln box. Rathbone later grew faint from loss of blood and retired from the scene. Memories of his unquestionably honorable actions that Good Friday evening were later replaced by memories of some of the most dishonorable actions in the human repertoire.

Clara’s father had remarried after his wife and Clara’s mother died. He was wed to the Major’s mother at the time Henry and Clara were subsequently married. Henry and Clara had been raised in the same household, but were not blood relatives.

The Major, now retired, was subject to continuing episodes of uneasiness, and unhappiness. The events at Ford’s Theater apparently rode his mind for years after, and he could not bridle the memories, throw them off, or put them to pasture.

It was thought a change of scene would ease his mind, so a government appointment to Germany was accepted. The dutiful Clara accompanied him.

The change of scene did not help. While in Germany, in a fit of violent jealously over his children, he shot Clara fatally, but he did not manage to kill himself as a domestic intervened. Fortunately this saved his children from the fate he might have had planned for them.

His days ended in a “lunatic asylum” in Germany, incarcerated for the murder of his wife.

All three were to some degree the victims of a single shot that never hit them physically, but which certainly touched their lives in terrible ways. They were all collateral damage.

Authors Note:

The main source is Carl Sandberg’s The War Year’s, Volume IV, Harcourt Brace and World, 1942.

Ancillary sources include information from the Michigan Historical Center and various internet sites.

Go Blue!

Andy Andersen
andy@umgoblue.com

Andy is a Michigan graduate and long time Michigan Football fan, having attended games during the tenures of Fritz Crisler, Bennie Oosterbaan, Bump Elliot, Bo Schembechler, Gary Moeller, and Lloyd Carr. He attempts to present articles consistent with the concerns and interests of Michigan Fans.

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