Fun fact: John Wilkes Booth and his two brothers starred in Shakespeare’s Julias Ceaser. He played Mark Antony, but the role he really wanted was Brutus, which his older brother got. (Edwin, the more famous Booth brother pre-assassination).
Anyway, going forward, Johnny boy high key had an obsession with Caesar and really thought he would be remembered as the next Brutus.
Not even the other confederate sympathizers liked his assassination though. Twas not dope enough. He was never memed on tumblr. Instead, the United States government celebrates the day Abraham Lincoln died (April 15th) by making us pay taxes.
**Note: in the interest of not spreading misinformation, I should clarify that Lincoln’s death date and tax day being the same day is almost certainly a coincidence. But also I think it’d be funny if it wasn’t.
***Note 2: Abraham Lincoln was shot on April 14th, Good Friday, 1865. He did not die until the next morning, though.
**Note 3: This good-Friday, sort-of-ides of April thing was not intentional despite Johnny boy’s dramatic theater kid ways or his love of assassinating Ceaser. (Probably. I imagine the bitch would’ve told us in his diary if it was. He loved being a dramatic little asshole in that diary). In fact, Booth did not initially plan to assasinate Lincoln at all, but to kidnap him and hold him hostage for the confederate cause (Robert E. Lee had already surrendered by this point, so it was kind of a bad plan). But in Lincoln’s last speech (which Booth attended, and you can actually see him in picture of the crowd), he suggested that some educated Black men could maybe be allowed to vote post war, and Booth, being racist, decided murder was better. The Ford’s Theater plan was relatively last minute, after Booth learned Lincoln was planning to attend the play.
***Under appreciated fact about the Lincoln assassination: Abraham Lincoln was not the only target the night of April 14th. Booth and co also wanted to kill the rest of the line of succession for the presidency. However, the guy who was supposed to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson got drunk and chickened out. The guy who was supposed to kill Secretary of State William Seward (who was bedridden from a carriage accident) stabbed him multiple times, and did not kill him any of those times. Did he viciously injure multiple people, including Seward and his adult sons? Yeah. Did he kill literally anyone? Nope. But the morning of April 15th 1865 was shocking not just because it was the first presidential assassination, but also because of that.
***Bonus fact: Edwin Booth once saved Robert Lincoln’s life (Abe’s oldest son). He was going to fall to his death on a train platform and Edwin grabbed him. The Booth brothers (particularly Edwin) were actually pretty well known actors, so Robert did recognize him.
Edwin was not a fan of his little brother assassinating the president and was pretty ashamed of the whole thing.
***Last Fact: Robert Lincoln was present for two other presidential assassinations (Garfield and McKinley; he was not at the play with his parents on April 14th 1865, but he was retrieved quickly afterward and was present with his father on his deathbed). Anyway yeah Robert stopped going places with presidents after that.
(Not totally relevant, but for context, Lincoln had four sons. Of them Robert, the eldest, was the only one to live past 18. He was 18 when Lincoln entered the White House, 22 when he died. Eddie died when he was 3 or 4, before Willie or Tad were born. Willie died at 11 in the White House of typhoid fever. Tad, the youngest, outlived his father (he was 8/almost 9 when Willie died, and 12 when his dad was assassinated) but eventually died at 18. Robert lived until 1923, age 82. I do not envy his life though).
