Yeah, but it gets way weirder, y'all.
(Prepare yourselves because Lincoln lore is kinda my jam.)
John Wilkes Booth is the more (in)famous brother now, but back then his older brother, Edwin, was America’s (& Europe’s) darling.
They were from the famous Booth acting family, who were essentially the Barrymore’s of the mid-1800s. Classically trained, truly gifted kinda people.
The whole family, save John, was pro-Union. They were from Maryland FFS. There was no reason for John to be Confederate at all, but I digress.
John was known as a notorious scene stealer who pulled focus in everything he did, but audiences found him so charming that people kept hiring him anyway. He even starred in a few plays with his brother.
Edwin wasn’t just good at acting, though. He was good at life, too. Think Chris Evans levels of goodness.
Once, while standing at a train station, he saw a small child fall off the platform & on to the tracks. He immediately leapt into action! Risking his own life by jumping in front of an oncoming train, & heroically saved the little boy just in the nick of time, returning him to his hysterical mother to great applause.
That boy? ABRAHAM LINCOLN’S SON, ROBERT.
Yeah. That’s right. The brother of Lincoln’s assassin saved his son years before the crime took place. Small fucking world, right?? & He didn’t even know it was them until he received a letter of thanks a few months later.
Just a stand up fucking dude all the way around.
Now, in the aftermath of said crime, Edwin felt a great & terrible shame over his brother’s actions and actually retired from the stage & public life altogether, moving to London & becoming destitute in the process.
He felt their family no longer deserved the love & praise Americans had always poured over them when one of their own had betrayed the nation in such a terrible way.
Eventually though, a grief-striken people cried out for his return. Thousands of letters poured in from both here & abroad, begging the man to return to acting & bring joy back to us. Even Mrs. Lincoln wrote him & granted him and the family forgiveness. (Her own kin had been Confederates, to her great embarrassment, so she understood how he felt.)
After a few years, Edwin Booth did indeed return to the stage to great acclaim. He continued acting until a stroke a few years before his death in 1893 & even founded the Boone Theater in Manhattan, which was quite popular until it was destroyed by a fire.
He is still considered by many theater historians to be the greatest American Shakespearean actor of all time.
Edwin Booth. American actor. American hero.
