April 26, 1865

John Wilkes Booth. Black & Case of Boston back mark. Date unknown. Public Domain.

John Wilkes Booth was born in Maryland in 1838. His father, Junius Brutus Booth, was an English actor who immigrated to the US in 1821 with his mistress and John’s mother, Mary Ann Holmes.

Booth began acting in his youth and went on to have a successful career. Critics often remarked on his good looks and energetic performances. After the election of Abraham Lincoln, southern states began seceding from the US. Booth earned praise from some quarters, and scorn from others for his passionate support of the Confederacy. 

As the war turned in the Union’s favor, Booth began plotting with a small group of sympathizers to kidnap the president. Their attempt was thwarted by a last minute change to Lincoln’s travel plans. Soon after Booth learned that the Lincolns  would be attending a performance of “Our American Cousin,” at Ford’s Theatre, a venue he had performed at and knew well. 

On April 14, Booth slipped into the president’s box and shot him in the back of the head. He leapt from the box down to the stage, injuring his leg in the process, and cried out “Sic Semper Tyrannis!” a famous line from the play Julius Caesar meaning “thus always to tyrants.” He escaped DC with one of his co-conspirators, David Herold. The 2 evaded Union soldiers for 12 days before being cornered in a barn near Port Royal, Virginia on April 26, 1865.

Herold surrendered, but Booth refused, demanding that the soldiers move back and allow him to come out and fight with his knife and pistol. Eventually, Sergeant Thomas Corbett fired into the barn hitting Booth in the neck. Corbett claimed he shot after Booth raised his pistol to fire on them, but several other soldiers disputed this claim. Booth died several hours later on the porch of a nearby house.

Sources:

Material Evidence: John Wilkes Booth- Ford’s Theatre

Who was John Wilkes Booth before he became Lincoln’s Assassin?- NPR

April 12, 1861

When did the Civil War begin? This question can and should spark hours of conversation. 

Since the creation of the United States, its political leaders orchestrated a delicate balance of admitting new states to the union as the country expanded westward. This balance was maintained by keeping the number of “free” and “slave” states equal as the country grew. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 discarded this practice and attempted to replace it with the mechanism of “popular sovereignty,” whereby the citizens of a territory would vote to decide if slavery would be prohibited. This compromise provoked fierce opposition on both sides and led to widespread voter fraud and political violence throughout the Kansas Territory. This saga of terrorism became known as “Bleeding Kansas.”

As the decade wore on both major political parties, the Whigs and the Democrats, split over the issue of slavery’s future in the West, leading to the creation of the Republican Party. Central to their agenda was prohibiting slavery’s expansion. While there was a small abolitionist fringe that advocated a complete elimination of slavery, the majority of the new party declared they had no intention of abolishing it where it already existed. However, pro-slavery politicians declared on many occasions that stopping the expansion of slavery ensured it would be eradicated where it already existed, and so was in fact, an attack on the southern states. 

When the Republican Party ran Abraham Lincoln for the presidency in 1860, southern politicians began threatening secession immediately. After his victory, South Carolina seceded from the Union. Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, and Florida soon followed. Between Lincoln’s election in November and his inauguration in March of 1861, all federal forts and armories in the seceded states were seized without a fight by Confederate forces, except Fort Sumter. 

Once in office, Lincoln was immediately embroiled in managing the secession crisis. The Upper-South states, most critically Virginia, had not yet seceded and most Republicans still believed war could be averted. The official stance of the Republican Party was that secession was unconstitutional and illegal, thus they refused to recognize it officially. They claimed that what the Union faced was not a civil war, but a domestic insurrection. While this may seem like semantic nonsense, it all had real consequences about how the conflict would unfold. The Lincoln Administration worked to avoid war, but also, to prepare for it. In order to preserve the loyalty of the Upper-South, and the public generally, Lincoln believed it was critical that the North not be seen as firing the first shot. When he informed South Carolina officials that he intended to resupply the men of Fort Sumter with food and provisions, many believe he was maneuvering the Confederacy into striking first.

On April 12, 1861, as the supply ship approached, Confederate cannons opened fire on Fort Sumter. The attack lasted 34 hours and ended with the Confederate Flag flying over the fort. The only casualties of the battle occurred after the surrender. The Union troops were permitted to conduct a 100 gun salute before leaving. In the process, Private Daniel Hough’s gun malfunctioned and exploded in his hands, killing him and mortally wounding Private Edward Galloway.

Soon after the battle, 4 more southern states seceded: Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina. While most Americans, particularly in the border states were thrown into chaos, many hardliners on either side of the issue of slavery celebrated that the war had finally begun. 

Sources:

Fort Sumter- National Parks Service

Flags of Ft. Sumter- National Parks Service

Fort Sumter Animated Map- American Battlefield Trust

Civil War Timeline- Library of Congress

The United States' Thanksgiving

Thanksgivings were originally English Puritan religious festivals that would be declared for various reasons. New England pilgrims declared them after their arrival in the Americas, the end of a brutal drought, and other major events. Oddly, it’s not certain if the feast declared by governor William Bradford to celebrate Plymouth Colony’s first successful corn harvest was among these recurring Thanksgiving celebrations. However, this feast in which the colonists invited their Native allies, the Wampanoags, led by “Chief“ Massasoit, provided the basis of the story of the United States’ “first” Thanksgiving.

George Washington made the first proclamation of a national day of Thanksgiving on November 26, 1789 to celebrate the successful revolution, particularly the enacting of the Constitution which gave the nation of disparate states a solid political foundation. Several of the following presidents made similar Thanksgiving proclamations, but the tradition faded out after James Madison. 

Sarah Josepha Hale

The writer Sarah Josepha Hale and others petitioned for a national Thanksgiving holiday repeatedly starting in 1827. The holiday these White Protestant writers had in mind was more national than religious, and it sought to focus the holiday around the “Woman’s sphere” (cooking, homemaking, crafting, etc.) Many have criticized that it was also a scheme to institutionalize Protestant Anglo-Saxons as the cultural hegemons in the face of rising Catholic immigration, Black emancipation, etc. It didn’t happen until 1863. 

During the Civil War Abraham Lincoln declared the last Thursday of November as a national day of Thanksgiving. The year began with the Emancipation Proclamation and that July the Battle of Gettysburg dealt both sides enormous losses. The proclamation was actually penned by Lincoln’s Secretary of State, William Seward.

(Partial quote)

“…Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the battlefield, and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised, nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

Right Hand and Life Mask of Abe Lincoln- Leonard Wells Volk, Augustus Saint-Gaudins

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people. I do, therefore, invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a Day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.

And I recommend to them that, while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation, and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union.” 

Right Hand and Life Mask of Abe Lincoln- Leonard Wells Volk, Augustus Saint-Gaudins

Sources:

Lincoln’s 1863 Thanksgiving Proclamation- Olivia Waxman, Time.com

Lincoln and Thanksgiving- National Park Service 

Thanksgiving 2022- The History Channel

Wills, Anne Blue. Pilgrims and Progress: How Magazines made Thanksgiving. Church History. March 2003 Vol. 72, no. 1. Pp. 138-158. Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Society of Church History. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4146807