Episode 624: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln Part IV - Madder than a Hatter
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There's no place to escape to. This is the last. On the left. That's when the cannibalism started. But honestly, with a lot of them, like especially, especially now, the way they make the strut is now is they just push them up. Yeah.

If you push the balls up, then what happens is that you just pop them back up into little holes. You're talking, you do this to children? I mean, if you're at the Vatican, yeah. And if you're training castratis, then yes. Yeah, because yeah, obviously, you need to. Next, last week, someone said,

That my Abraham Lincoln is turning into Mickey Mouse? And it is! Oh, Minnie! That makes a lot of sense. He was Disney's favorite president. Do you think that he was... The first animatronic human. He was the favorite president of Walt Disney? That's right. Yeah. What great company. Yeah. It was Lincoln and then Hitler. And the people always told him Hitler wasn't a president. And he's just been like... And they're like, no!

Let me put my favorite parts of Hitler into this little mouse. Yes, that actually sounds really good. Oh, yeah. I was just wondering, imagine though if it was true that Abraham Lincoln...

was born Jewish. Oh, let's set the scene, okay? Okay, all right. Eddie, please, if you could do some Jewish background. Baruch atah! Yeah, hello, hey, everybody. Baruch atah! Hey, how's everybody doing? First of all, I just want to say, feeling guilty. You know how it is, being a Jew. And honestly, it's so nice to be here with my home cabal, my home cabal.

Kabal and I, we really just never get a chance to really hang out. You know, if his mother would have stayed kosher, she'd still be alive. She died of milk sickness. Oh, yeah. And that's why we're burying plates for six months. I don't know how the rules work. I'm a new Jew. I'm one of those new Jews because I'm hanging out with my Kabal and my buddies and they'll tell me what to do. And it's super easy because I put my plans under my super long hat. And I tell you what.

get these Jewish guys used to a long hat? Yeah. It's a process. You could definitely hide a yarmulke under there. Oh, I got a pile of them. I got like 45 of them.

Okay, welcome to the last podcast on the left, ladies and gentlemen. Can't let this bit go on for any fucking longer. They told Lincoln's mother to stop sucking your own tits. But she wouldn't do it. Mama, stop. You're not making milk anymore. You gotta leave some for yourself. My name is Marcus Parks. I'm here with the cabal heavy, Henry Zebrowski. Hey, I'm big with the cabals. No, I was just trying to illustrate...

Maybe just a little bit of what it would have been like if some of the conspiracy theories about Abraham Lincoln were true. Sure. Oh, OK. That he was directed by somehow both the Jewish community and the pope to treat the South poorly, even though he wasn't gonna. Yeah.

I just don't see how being Jewish is a conspiracy. Yeah, the conspiracy is defined as an action that involves multiple people. Who else was involved in Abraham Lincoln being Jewish? My rabbi, Herbert Winkleman, who is an amazing tailor. I've

I've never heard of a good Jewish wrestler. Goldberg. Hey. Oh, and Goldberg. You're right. David. The David. David? Oh, he was the slingshot guy. No, but he wrestled littler guys. I don't know anything about that. I don't think so. I don't think that's true at all. And we also have Ed Larson here, the anti-milk Ed Larson. That's right, man. Kosher Ed Larson? Oh, I wish. I don't have the patience. But I do love to bury a plate.

Yeah, just fucking gullet. You're actually looking good. Yeah, you are looking great. I feel great. Good. And we're here. We're all feeling good because we're at the conclusion to our series on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Let's kill him again. No, can't. We already killed him. All right. But there is going to be death. A lot of people are going to die in this episode. Excellent. And a couple of balls are going to be left along the path of death.

As we go. This series is longer than John Wilkes Booth's escape. So when we last left John Wilkes Booth, he and his co-conspirator David Herold had made it as far as Virginia following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Also, it was not the only assassination that night. There was the attempted assassination of Vice President Andrew Johnson and, of course, the attempted assassination of Secretary of State William Seward.

But whilst wandering the countryside, entirely unsure where to go next, Booth and Harold had run into a trio of Confederate soldiers who also weren't quite ready for the war to be over. This crew was led by none other than Lieutenant Mortimer Ruggles. The only Confederate lieutenant made out of felt. Ruggles, however, didn't have the faintest idea of what to do either.

But one of the two kids under his command, a teenager named Willie Jett, he knew about a farm nearby that was owned by a man with Confederate sympathies. You guys hate too, right? I've got a great place for hate. Come on, let's wait next to my carrots. This farmer, however, was not sympathetic to the point where he'd be cool with hosting the man who just killed the president and that assassin's buddy.

So an idea was hatched to present Booth and Harold to the owner of the nearby farm, not as the two most wanted men in America, but as just a couple of regular-ass, wounded Confederate soldiers needing a place of respite. Yes, and it is finally the role I will play to the hilt.

So, Willie Jett led Booth, Harold, and his fellow Confederate soldiers to the sympathizer's home, a place called Garrett's Farm. That farm, of course, would be the location of John Wilkes Booth's imminent demise. Yeah! Set him on fire! Yeah! Let's do it! About fucking time.

Now, the man who fired the shot that took the life of America's first presidential assassin, he truly is an amazing American character. He's just a simple Union soldier who, like so many others in the story, simply found himself swept up in the tide of history. That soldier's name was Boston Corbett.

And while one may not think that the story of a simple Union soldier would be particularly engaging, the path that brought Boston Corbett to Garrett's farm on April 26th, 1865 is an absolutely fascinating one because Boston Corbett truly is one of America's finest weirdos.

So, before we return to John Wilkes Booth on Garrett's farm, we're going to tell the story of how exactly Boston Corbett found himself in Virginia in 1865, where Boston fired the shot that took the life of Abraham Lincoln's killer. Fuck yeah, man. D-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-

What are we doing again? Civil War. Okay, I was doing Thus Big, Zero Through, so that doesn't work. Yeah, yeah, that's a different one. You're a fucking terrible Confederate band. Hey, we hate because we like it. We hate because we like it. Good.

Good enough. So Boston Corbett was actually born Thomas Corbett in England in 1832 to a taxidermist named Bartholomew. Bartholomew Corbett, like so many other immigrants, was simply looking for a better life for his family. So they made the move to New York City in 1840.

Great! But cons...

Oh, good. Oh, good. But concerning the five points, Boston Corbett grew up in what's considered to be America's first slum. It was a violent and unruly neighborhood, rife with disease and overcrowding, where the unpaved roads were often buried under a foot of mud and excrement bodies.

both animal and human. That's Tribeca, right? Yes. Yeah, dude. It's literally Tribeca. Yeah, right now, the five points, if I remember correctly, it's just north of the New York Supreme Court. Okay. It's like just right, you know that area right there, yeah. Oh, unfortunately.

Yeah, he's always there. They get a little sign there now that's just like, this is where the five points once stood. And of course, it bears no similarity to what it looked like back then. Of course. This is all Gangs of New York time period, right? Yes. This is very much Gangs of New York. Now, at some point in the mid-1850s, Boston Corbett began an apprenticeship with a hat maker. But while this sounds inconsequential,

Possibly even boring. No way, Marcus. I love hats. I love hearing about the history of hats, and that's why we will now begin our two-episode deep dive into milliners. Hi, I'm Ed Larson. It's summertime. You ever think about going down to Gordon Bros and get yourself a nice new ball cap? Hey, welcome to Hat Chat. My name's Henry Zebrowski, and hats are a way for me to look 14 but still have the mysterious air of a 41-year-old loser.

Hi, and I'm here. I'm Marcus Sparks. I'm here to tell you all about how beavers changed America. Yeah, tell me. I know one specific beaver that did quite a lot. That one beaver that made the American goddamn flag. Betty Thomas. Betty Thomas. Very famous Betty Thomas. What's her name? Betsy Ross. Betsy Ross.

I think Betty Thomas sounds like a district attorney. I think Betty Thomas made cookies or something. I've never heard of Betty Thomas. Whatever. She's not a person. Actress. Wow, yeah. She's an actress. She was in just one of those actresses. Dr. Doolittle. The original Dr. Doolittle? No, no. The 1998 Dr. Doolittle. The best beaver this country's ever made.

Now we'll come back. Sure. Well, we took a bit of a side. We took a bit of a side quest. But yes, while hat making may sound inconsequential, Corbett's career as a hatter greatly influenced the rest of his life.

See, hat making in the 19th century was actually a dangerous, skilled trade because hat makers regularly soaked animal fur in mercury to stiffen it, which made it easier to remove from the skin. Liquid. It's just the idea of just vats of liquid mercury just dipping raccoons in and out of it. Just being like, yeah, we got a good pool. There's a good pool on this one. It's beavers mostly, but I get your point. Where did Dave Krakke get his hat?

I mean, he bought it. Do you think he just hollowed out a raccoon and popped it on his fucking head? But they're talking about really nice hats here, and at the time, really nice hats were made out of beaver. You're saying Davy Crockett's hat's not nice? Yes! I'll say it right now. You're fucking saying Davy Crockett, American hero. I think his head smelled like shit. Well...

Very quickly, a very quick side note. A listener actually corrected us on the Andrew Jackson assassination. That's the reason why David Crockett's in my mind. Yeah. Apparently it was not Andrew Jackson who beat the house painter with his cane after the house painter's guns misfired. It was actually Davy Crockett who beat the house painter with his cane, even though he hated Andrew Jackson.

Yeah, he hated Andrew Jackson, but he hated the other guy that was running against Andrew Jackson so much more that he beat the shit out of the guy that tried to kill Andrew Jackson. So are we calling Davy Crockett an asshole? Sort of. I've always been a Daniel Boone guy myself. Wow. Wow. We all learned quite a bit just now. Well, while they were making these fucking hats. Mr. Wizard, let's get to it. Back to the hats.

Back to the hat. So these guys, they're soaking the fur in mercury, and then they use liquid and heat to press that fur, that mercury-soaked fur, into basic felt forms in order to actually make the hat.

but the pressing process would create a mercury-infused mist that would be inhaled by the hatters. These hatters were therefore poisoning themselves every time they made a hat, and exposure to mercury mist over prolonged periods of time can permanently damage the brain.

20 years later.

This link, however, was made decades before Boston Corbett began his career in hat making making.

But while we don't know exactly how much mercury Boston Corbett was exposed to, it's almost certain we could classify it as a fuck ton. Because as we'll see, the choices Boston made at certain points in his life could only be described as absolutely fucking insane. I'm going to tell you, I've adjusted so much mercury, miss, there's a lot of people, a lot of my big nicknames, people call me the Silver Surfer. Yeah.

I'm not a super dependable guy. But if you want a hat, I'll fucking, I'll iron a raccoon until you look like good old Shavey Crack and my favorite porneck. Boston met and married a woman named Susan in the 1850s, and the two of them eventually moved to Richmond, Virginia, which, of course, just a few years later would become the seat of Confederate power.

But Corbett entertained no Confederate sympathies and, in fact, had inherited a staunch anti-slavery stance from his father. He was absolutely an abolitionist, far beyond what most people were in America at the time, in fact.

But from what it seems like, Richmond was simply a place of opportunity. But Richmond was also where Corbett's life changed paths completely. In 1856, Corbett's wife died in Richmond. Finally! And Corbett began drinking heavily and constantly to deal with the grief.

But while Corbett was deep in his cups one day, he was accosted by a group of evangelical Christians who were roaming the streets of Richmond and illegally detaining any drunkard they found. These evangelicals were part of the infamous Temperance Movement, which would one day lead to women's suffrage on the good side and prohibition on the bad. It must be said, however, that their intentions were at the very least practical in the beginning.

See, in 19th century America, the urban population was on a sharp rise. Safe drinking water in the cities was rare, if not non-existent. So a lot of men drank fermented beer instead. Yeah! The problem was that the urban growth was due to the Industrial Revolution. So you had a lot of guys operating highly dangerous equipment while absolutely fucking trashed. And a lot of guys were dying in workplace accidents as a result.

Not to mention, you know, no more fingers. Hey, man, what a great ad for Molson's, though, kind of. Your job.

Nullify it with M. Olsen. It's your job. All you got to do. Oh, are you a nine-year-old whose job it is to crawl up inside a giant threshing machine? Have a M. Olsen. It's really interesting how it worked out. Like the temperance movement, that's actually why we have public drinking fountains, water fountains, because the temperance movement was like, people need water. Yeah, out in the cities, you know? Yeah, well, water is like what beer is most. Yeah.

There's mostly water. And you got the seeds in it. You got the beer seeds and the water. And I already see. I'm drinking the liquid part.

Yeah, alcoholism was a major problem in 19th century America. Really, really bad. Well, they had like, it was all based out of a good idea. And I know it created prohibition and obviously it didn't work, but it was the temperance movement was ran by women mostly, right? Yeah. And so I imagine they were like, these men are drinking and beating us. That was exactly what it was. Yeah. We need to do something about this. And it eventually kind of worked a little bit. The thing is, like, to be a little bit of a devil's advocate here, is that

Why didn't they just start drinking too? You know, like, I imagine a portion of them did. If they just started drinking too, then everybody just get along. That's not how it works. Oh, well. Yeah. I guess I'm the fucking odd man out. Yeah, you can't just put two drunks into a bottle and shake it up, and you're like, okay, it's going to be fine now. I'm the only person with the fucking cojones to back Davy Crockett. I'm the only person that's asking women to drink more. This isn't Barfly.

Well, because alcoholism was such a massive problem in America in the 19th century, people began protesting, as is their right as Americans.

But the temperance movement crossed the line when they began kidnapping men and forcing sobriety upon them in the hopes that they'd turn their lives around. A hungover man is not ready for the truth. Many men, of course, simply waited it out until the evangelicals let them go. But Boston Corbett was... I just love that idea. Obviously, they arrest you and be like, guys, I'm just going to have to just admit right here that I'm starting to get...

But Boston Corbett was one of the men for whom this approach actually worked. While being detained, Corbett underwent a religious epiphany and became a Methodist.

His conversion, however, occurred in a time when thousands of other Americans were doing the same sort of thing, because Corbett had found himself caught up in the evangelical movement known as the Second Great Awakening. Basically, this movement was tailor-made for Americans to plug themselves in and turn the volume on their Christianity up to 11.

Because while America had always been filled to the brim with Christian fundamentalists, the Second Great Awakening is when Americans started to get real fucking weird with the Bible and about the Bible at the same time.

It was very interesting. This was like a time period where like the idea of opening up the interpretation of the Bible would. In my mind, I'm always like this. I'm like, who gives a shit? Right. I always joke about the differences. There's no difference between Lutherans and Methodists and blah, blah, blah. Oh, there is. Yes. And I know that. But it's so crazy to think that you there are little clicks over. They're all like little clicks one and over. But it seems that when you let everybody interpret it.

in any way that they want and they're allowed, all of a sudden no rules are off. And that's how you get yourself Mormonism. That's exactly how you get it. Mormonism grew out of the second great awakening. Well, fuck it then. Yeah, honestly, let me sleep. Fly from your grave. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace gives you everything you need to offer services and get paid all in one place.

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Now, on a personal level, the Second Great Awakening gave people like Boston Corbett the idea that they could interpret the Bible any way they wanted. It also led them to believe that they had the right, nay, the responsibility to tell as many people as possible about their conversion and try to get them to convert as well. Have you heard about that big fish? Come here! Come here, woman! I want you to vote!

So after moving to the city of Boston Corbett began street preaching at strangers about the evils of drinking which would become one of Corbett's lifelong hobbies Corbett also continued his work as a hatter and with a head full of mercury Corbett had his second religious epiphany this one far more dramatic than the first okay, I think he's so trippy - you know he was trippin ball

24-7. See, Corbett began to see that his biggest personal problem was not in abstaining from alcohol, but rather in tamping down the sexual urges that he felt following the death of his wife. My penis has got to be into trouble because everybody's trying to fuck me. So it's hard. I got to think about supply and demand is all over the place when it comes to my ding-dong. No one told him it was okay to just marry again? He had a lot of...

He had a lot of problems. Yeah. Yeah, I think marrying again was quite difficult. And I think he also wanted to just devote a life to God. I want you to know that women can vote! Have you heard about the fish?

You think that guy, he might be hard. It's hard in the courting phase. Well, Corbett turned to the Bible for answers and found the verse in the Gospel of Matthew that said, If thy hand or foot offend thee, cut them off. For it is better to enter the kingdom of heaven maimed than to be sent to hell intact. I'm going to say, is my foot the problem? No, my foot takes me to church. My hand's the problem? No, my hands mostly are there just at the end of my arms, just living life.

What's my big problem? I think I know what my problem is. I got some devil bumps. This verse was not meant to be taken literally, but Corbett's mercury-addled brain was already turning its gears by the time he found another verse in Matthew. This one said that eunuchs, who had made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake, would fall under God's good graces. And with that, Corbett decided that he'd found the answer to his problem.

Yeah.

Using every ounce of his willpower, Corbett then reached inside his own ball sack and pulled his testicles downward so he could cut them free. Once done with this unpleasant task, Corbett stoically attended a prayer meeting with an open wound gaping beneath his legs.

So I will give you some newspapers. So I'm going to give you some newspapers. Honestly, I just want to pray, but I'm messing this pier all up. This whole thing's getting all fucked up. I'm going to go ahead and guess those scissors weren't too sharp. No. Let me sharpen them. I do it right on my front teeth. Since he was a hatter, I'd actually guess they were quite sharp. Oh.

Especially to delicately cut up the wrinkly skin of your balls is actually quite difficult, I imagine.

Your scalp will probably be best. Yeah, sure. With a doctor. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, eventually, the wound clotted and the blood and fluids backed up into a scrotum, which caused the whole area to turn black and swell to an enormous size. Fuck yeah. Fucking found the loophole, bro. All the boys are going to be jealous of me when they see my balls. Blackest night. Fuck.

So Corbett went to a doctor who cleaned up the wound and tied off the various tubes and vessels that Corbett had left dangling. Corbett was then sent to a local hospital where he was given an enema because his DIY surgery had clogged up his intestinal tract.

Finally, though, about a month after the self-castration, Corbett was released from the hospital where he told his friends that he could now focus on the gospel without being, quote, tormented by his passions. Fuck yeah. Fucking warrior, man. All I think about is that picture of Nicole Kidman coming out of what they said is obviously now that's been debunked, but they said it was her coming out of her divorce with Tom Cruise. How happy she looked. Yeah, how happy. He just comes out of that being like, fire!

Finally, balls are gone. I can feel the weight off my neck. He felt like he'd figured it all out. I mean, after his recovery, he was baptized in the Boston Methodist Episcopal Church. And in following with the tradition of apostles changing their names, Corbett left behind his given name of Thomas and took Boston as his first name because that was the city where he'd had his rebirth.

In other words, Corbett was so happy that he dug his testicles out of his own ball sack that he decided to commemorate it in such a way that he would be reminded of the act every time someone said his fucking name. I absolutely love Boston. That is one of my favorite places. I love it again. I love a nice cold beer. And I also, that's where I lost my ball.

Ironically, it's where he lost his beans. Yeah, you don't truly. God, what a great time to not be in like Hopkinsville or something like that. Like a super long one. Like Cincinnati would have been a long one. Honestly, though, but I do think Cincinnati, great place to cash trade yourself. Oh, my God. I'm thinking about doing it over break. Tell me. Release me.

He was the only guy in Boston who wasn't racist, too. It's nice. Oh, wow. And Cincinnati Corbett. I know that sounds like a riverboat gambler. Yeah. Even outside of the self-mutilation, Boston Corbett was a strange, strange man.

When Boston proselytized, he would bury his chin down in his chest and for no reason at all would add an ER to the end of every word as in Lord, hear our prayer. Yep. So he stayed drunk somehow. He's mentally drained. He's soaked. His head is soaked with mercury. Yeah.

Boston also shouted the loudest amens in church and yelled glory to God so frequently and loudly that people began calling him the glory to God man. Glory to God. Good to do. Good to do. I'm just so happy that the person he did kill was...

John Wilkes Booth. Yeah, yeah. Because this sounds more like the biography of the man who killed Lincoln. Yeah, yeah. Like, when you ask, like, okay, if you put these two biographies side by side, like, the man who is soaked in mercury from head to toe, who screams and castrates himself, or the actor, the famous actor, like, who's going to kill the president? Boston Corbett was on the right side of history. Yeah.

Eventually, Boston Corbett decided to move back to New York City, where he joined the congregation of a man who would inform Corbett's later opinion that Christianity and violence were not mutually exclusive. In New York, Corbett began attending services run by a retired evangelical bare-knuckle boxer named Orville Gardner, who'd earned the nickname of Orville.

awful gardener because of how many times he'd been put in jail for starting fights. And he, you know, stepped on a bunch of flowers. Yeah, yeah. I technically raped a bunch of tomatoes. I'm an awful gardener! Yeah, they call me the awful gardener!

Gardner, someone get me my hose. Well, Gardner had been arrested in 1853 for biting off the ear of his opponent during a bare-knuckle boxing match. He put the holy in Holyfield. Yeah, and he was arrested two years later for breaking a businessman's jaw because the businessman didn't take Gardner's advice on which bar to go to in New York City, which goes to show you the New Yorkers had just been like that forever. Yeah.

Fuck you. Go to my place. No, you are. You think you know better? You think you know better than me? I know the best fucking bar in the city. It's got fucking skee-ball. Oh, nice. Now, Boston Corbett was, as you can tell, a man of intense principles. But those principles didn't just limit themselves to drinking and sex. Boston Corbett was a man of intense principles.

Boston also believed that slavery was a grave sin. So when the Civil War broke out, Boston Corbett joined up with the Union's 12th Regiment by replacing a friend of his who was too sick to fight, a man by the name of James Brown. Ooh, ah! Kuka! Wouldn't it be great if he got out of it and then someone put a coat over him and he's like, I can do it! I'm just kidding, I'm just kidding. Take the bridge! Ah!

That's one of the fun things about studying American history is that you really do notice how common of a name James Brown really is. There's a lot of guys named James Brown in American history. But there only was one godfather of souls. That's right. This guy was the least hardworking man in all of the Civil War. Yeah.

Corbett, therefore, entered the Civil War on April 19th, 1861, just five days after the war began. Against all odds, Boston Corbett would survive the entirety of the war through battles and ambushes and POW camps until the entire affair ended in 1865. I just got to congratulate myself for seeing the most of the Civil War that anybody saw. I saw almost every minute of it.

And I loved every fucking second of it. Just prove you didn't need balls to win. You really didn't. Overall, I think he spent three years and nine months either in active duty or in POW camps. You're going to hear a lot of mixed reviews about the Civil War, but I'm going to tell you right now, I loved it. Couldn't get enough of it.

The fellow soldiers often commented that when Corbett put on his uniform, his round, pleasant face, an abundance of long black hair worn in Jesus's style parted down the middle, they said it gave him the appearance of a woman. I'd actually say that he looked like a more feminine Pedro Pascal. Thank you.

But it seems like everyone around Corbett took every opportunity to bust his non-existent balls because Corbett was very clearly an overly religious and performative weirdo of the highest order. Partly this reputation was earned because Boston Corbett was not shy about telling anyone and everyone all about his self-castration. Hey, you want to see it?

How many times that must have happened? You want to see it? You want to see it? The funny thing is that you're looking at something that's not there. Isn't that funny? It's like an absence. Weird, right? It's kind of weird. I'm all fucking stem, no apples, huh? Weird, right? You want to see it again? It's really weird. No, I don't need to see it again. Jesus made me do that. I did it myself. He's ripping off his pants. Glory to God! Glory to God! Glory to God! Oh, I just caught the tip of my boho on my fly.

I mean, from what I can tell, it seems like just about everyone who served with Boston Corbett had a story about how big of a pain in the ass Boston Corbett could really be. For example, Corbett once publicly denounced a superior officer simply for saying the word damn, which earned Corbett a disorderly conduct arrest and a stint in a makeshift jail. That's how big of a deal he made about the guy saying damn. Someone dig a hole.

Let's put Corbett in it. Tell him it's a jail. It's literally the Civil War. People are dying of infection. It is the worst place to be. And he's just been like, hey, there's no reason to be cussing. Hey, let's think about this. I cut my own balls off. And when I cut my own balls off, do you think I cursed once? No. But rather than take his lumps, Corbett went on a hunger strike and loudly sang hymns nonstop from his cell.

It worked, though. They fed him and released him. Yeah, he did get out eventually. It's more annoying in jail. Yeah. But while Corbett was no doubt an oddball, he was also a fucking ferocious fighter. Utterly fearless. And he apparently had a knack for being a good nurse to the other soldiers when they needed it. This is the man made for the military. Hey, you got a problem over there? Want me to suck out that bullet? No.

I got the ball for you if you want. You want to see how I don't have balls? Yeah. Does that make you feel better? Yeah, I can take care of you. You know, I cut off my own balls. I cut off my own balls and I'm fine. Look at me, I'm great. I survived. I survived. Glory to God!

Thusly, when Corbett's first tour of duty ended, he re-enlisted in the Union Army and was assigned to defend Harper's Ferry, where John Brown, another man of principle, had made his stand so many years earlier. Harper's Ferry, however, had become an extremely active battle zone. It changed hands between Union and Confederate control no less than eight times throughout the course of the war, which meant that Corbett had been thrown into a situation where the sin of killing could not be avoided.

but while corbett was so afraid of his own sexual desires that he castrated himself to make it stop he like so many other committed christians before and after had absolutely no problem whatsoever with breaking the commandment against killing

In fact, a fellow soldier wrote that for all of Corbett's fervent Christian beliefs, he was always eager to kill no matter who the victim might be, just so long as Corbett had a biblical justification for the action. For example, Corbett once threatened to murder two of his own soldiers for picking blackberries on the Sabbath because Corbett felt that his soldiers were committing a sin grave enough for execution.

Every Blackberry you pick when they should be in church is sending that Blackberry straight to hell.

Now, on the positive side of things, Corbett was one of the few white men who were fighting the Civil War on the moral issue of slavery, and he would argue endlessly about the practical use of violence to end slavery. Corbett was so dead set on killing for the cause that when he returned to New York following his second tour of duty, he was ejected from his church following a heated argument over his eagerness to, quote, shoot men like dogs. I'm going to shoot him like a dog.

Honestly, if you've ever shot a dog, it's great! Let me do it! I wanna do it for God! I wanna do it for Christ! I only kill dogs at work on Sunday. I know you've shot a dog, but have you ever shot a dog with no balls? Well, you think about what that's like. Have you ever shot a dog on no balls? And so, Corbett returned to the military to serve his mission in his third tour of service. Which, these multiple tours, not as uncommon as you might think.

While some men did have moral issues with fighting the war over slavery specifically, being a Union soldier was still a well-paid job that was just as, if not less dangerous, than certain industrial careers in the mid-19th century. Yeah, it's just so much... And you get something... And you get to go kill...

with the blessing of the government. Yeah. It's nice. If you like that. If all you want to do is kill, then yeah. There's plenty of killing to do. Honestly, he probably would have died earlier if he would have just stayed making hats and covering himself in mercury. Maybe. Maybe. I think it just eats away at the brain. Yeah. He probably still would have made it to his 40s or 50s, but

I don't think he would. I think that it was good for him to get the break. Yeah. It's the only place where the Civil War was a very good time away from his job. During Corbett's third tour of service, he came very close to being a sort of Civil War Forrest Gump. You know, the guy who's everywhere.

But as anyone who's seen Kim Burns' Civil War can attest, that distinction belongs to Elijah Hunt Rhodes of the 2nd Rhode Island Volunteer Infantry, who managed to find himself in almost every major battle of the Civil War. I really wish I didn't, though, honestly. I'd prefer to have hit every circus in America at the time, but no, it was...

It was battles. It was Gettysburg and Teardom. Like, Elisha Hunt Rhodes just had the worst time. His catchphrase was, again? You know what? Not as bad as Gettysburg. At least you got to say that all the time. But as far as Boston Corbett went, he just missed the Battle of Gettysburg because his unit was defending roadways in nearby Harrisburg. Let me die in Gettysburg.

Ten days later though, Corbett was sent to New York, where he was one of the many regiments called back during the infamous draft rights. That meant that at one point, John Wilkes Booth and Boston Corbett were in the same city, maybe even the same fucking neighborhood. Cool. But after all these near misses, Corbett's luck finally ran out after he signed up for a fourth tour of duty in 1864.

He found himself assigned to the front lines in Virginia, where some of the most brutal close quarters combat in the war occurred. Quite a bit of the action in this area came as a result of the guerrilla warfare campaigns waged by the Confederate force known as Mosby's Rangers. So named because they were led by John Mosby, a.k.a. the Gray Ghost. All ghosts are gray. Some ghosts are white. You think so?

I know so. Because I've made at least 11 ghosts. I think of them more as green. See, that depends on what you're going for. It's a very frighteners way of looking at it. Yeah. Well, that's when I saw the ghosts. When I saw ghosts when I was a kid, they were always green. They were, yeah, sure. Mine were blue. So I guess mine were Union. Blueberry. Oh, Blueberry. That's who they were. Blueberry. Now I feel better about it.

Hat making actually started in 1749. It's actually one of the more interesting. And if you want to get into the history of boutonnieres...

Back when heads were attached to feet. Well, the Mosby Rangers, they were a terrifying force of teenagers and young men armed with little more than Colt Army revolvers who rushed Union battalions in close quarters while screaming at the top of their lungs, the so-called rebel yell.

Interestingly, though, Mosby was more or less doing all this just for the love of the game. He didn't really believe in the cause at all. He'd spoken out against seceding from the union before the war and became a Republican afterward. Mosby even worked after the war as an attorney for none other than the former leader of the union forces, Ulysses S. Grant. Man, nothing scares me more than a pack of teenagers. Oh, still? Yeah. To this day, imagine Civil War teenagers, which were adults.

Yeah. And also, revolvers is the better weapon back then. Very much so. Yeah, it was a more consistent weapon. Yeah. I think, yeah, that's what Mosby said. He's like, don't give me a rifle, don't give me a saber, give me a revolver. That's awesome. And I'll kill anyone. Yeah, he was a fucking psychopath.

Unfortunately for Boston Corbett, his regiment, the 16th New York Cavalry, they found themselves on the receiving end of a highly successful attack led by John Mosby and his Rangers. The Gray Ghost forces managed to kill over 40 men in Corbett's regiment in a single attack. But while Corbett managed to escape that battle, rebel forces ambushed Corbett's regiment again while he and his fellow soldiers were trying to eat breakfast. Hey, I'm trying to have my flapjacks! Ow!

I only get one meal. Leave me alone. Armed with just a single seven-shot rifle, Corbett hid in the woods and kept the rebels at bay over the course of two attempts to capture him. That's awesome. But on the third go-round, a rebel corporal rushed Corbett riding a horse and knocked his weapon from his hands. Damn horse. That's cheating. That horse is fighting. That horse don't know hate. By

By the end of the day, Corbett was one of 34 Union soldiers captured and was soon on his way to one of the worst POW camps in the entire South. And that was fucking saying something in the Civil War.

Located just south of Atlanta, this hell on earth was known as Andersonville. Oh, now we're getting to it. Yeah, you brought this up last week, right? Yeah, these fuckers, man. They sucked. Yeah, it's not good. This is a place that reminds me a lot of what we saw when we went to Greyfriars in Edinburgh. Yeah. Now, Andersonville was a relatively new prison when Boston Corbett arrived in June of 1864.

The camp had only been established as a POW facility earlier that year, but by August, the population had exploded to 32,000 Union soldiers. The Confederacy, however, had not the resources nor the desire to treat these soldiers humanely. See, when we say prison, what we really mean is a 26-acre holding pen.

The Deadline.

the deadline would eventually be used by Andersonville prisoners as a sort of poison pill, because many soldiers would come to choose death by sharpshooter over any attempt at surviving the horrendous conditions of the camp. I'm pretty sure Corbett can't be killed. Yeah. He can't die. He's a vampire. He's all right with me.

But I also wonder in my mind, why do I immediately see them like, I know they're not doing this, but like playing kickball, kind of like they're in a field. They're playing kickball. And finally it's been like, man, I'm sick of this shit. And then just running for the deadline. And then like, God damn it, Corbin, you cheated again. I'm going to kill myself. And then just runs at the deadline. Yeah, kickball's fun, but none of these guys had feet. That's the problem. It's kick head.

Many of them had lost it due to gangrene. It's more like imagine a guy shitting his brains out for two weeks straight and then finally deciding if I shit for another second longer, I'm going to lose my mind. And so he hobbles over the deadline while still shitting and his stomach cramping and a sharpshooter blows his brains out. But if I was going to be having fun with them, what I would be doing is doing the thing and being like,

One foot out, one foot in. One foot out, one foot in. You ready? You gonna kill me? One foot out, one foot in. Are you gonna do it? I'm shitting right now. I'm actively shitting. They would kill you. Yeah. Yeah.

The Confederacy was facing massive problems feeding even their own troops by 1864 because they lacked adequate means to deliver food to the places where it needed to be. So feeding prisoners of war was not high on the Confederate priorities list, and the men of Andersonville starved as a result. This was in fact by design, as the Confederate in charge of the prison system at large often bragged that his camps were killing more Yankees per day than any rebel general on the battlefield.

As such, Andersonville really was just an open field with no shelter whatsoever to house these prisoners. So Union men burned in the blistering Georgia sun by day and froze by night. Is anybody, if anybody, y'all, my Atlanta people know,

What Atlanta and that area of the world is like during the summer. Jesus fucking Christ. It is rough. There's no fucking breeze. None. It's so muddy. It's so damp. You can see the air. In the summer of 2012, we filmed a bunch of Pretty Face on location in Georgia in July. And it was brutal. And I'm an actor.

I can't imagine what a Civil War prisoner felt like. Water was also non-existent in Andersonville because the streams that ran through the camp quickly became filth-ridden latrines. Consequently, the camp's water source smelled so much like an outhouse that the

Prisoners wouldn't even go near it. I kind of like it. I don't mind it. I don't mind it. It's kind of like a mineral-y thing. As a result of the non-existent waste management, the soil itself became, quote, a living mass of putrefaction and filth. It was a breeding ground for maggots that reportedly ran a foot deep.

Prisoners would dig through these masses of maggots to find roots to feed themselves. But when the roots ran out, the prisoners survived on the maggots. I was going to say, yeah, just eat the maggots. They did. I mean, you don't want to start with the maggots. The maggots are the last resort. But I'll tell you what, honestly...

I like the maggots. This whole thing's kind of working out for me. Glory to God! The maggots were so pervasive that the men who developed open sores from their various diseases would awake to find their wounds infested.

and men who were particularly diseased with the smelliest wounds were dragged away to die alone. By the end of it, 13,000 Union soldiers had died in Andersonville by disease, dehydration, or starvation. This was just in the 15 months that Andersonville was operational. Jeez, so they were killing a fucking thousand people a month. Oh, yeah. That's a wild number. Yes, it is.

Absolutely. And the number of deaths and the treatment of the survivors was such that the Andersonville Commandant would be one of the very, very few Confederate officials to hang for war crimes in the aftermath of the war. You know, stuff them with maggots. Is it weird to say that, like, I'm looking at Andersonville now and it's like a park or whatever, and that's nice. But like, I feel like for the sake of the ghosts there, they should put a thing that had air conditioning.

You know what I mean? Like, you just put one building that has air conditioning on it so they can experience it, you know? That's what I'd do. Yeah. All right. Well, you know, one of these days. I hope to... Once we have our Civil War, I can't wait to be on the front lines of the comedians with the flutes at the Battle of Bussey Creek.

That we're going to have to do. When you run for governor of Georgia, I'm like, we're bringing air conditioning to Anderson. Yeah, yeah, yeah. These ghosts have been too hot for too long. Slippin' slides for the union boys.

Now, Boston Corbett came damn close to being one of the 13,000 Union soldiers who died in Andersonville. But I won't. He became gravely ill with dysentery and scurvy. They canceled each other out. It's kind of crazy. It's all this crazy shit happened to me, man. Oh, his joints swelled up so bad that he couldn't even straighten out his own back. And Corbett, like so many others at Andersonville, also suffered near-constant diarrhea. And as a result...

Corbett endured a lifelong struggle with hemorrhoids, which were known back then as piles. Can I say something a little off-putting? Sure. I kind of like diarrhea. We all do. There's nothing wrong with it. As long as you got water, then you're good to go. Yeah, every time I'm just like, yeah, you know, that's kind of nice. But it's because, you know why, Eddie? You're talking from a place of privilege. Because every single time you've

You've had diarrhea. You've chosen it. Yeah. Yeah. Same with me. I know when I'm getting diarrhea now. Yeah. I'm proud of it. Yeah. I made that diarrhea. I wanted this. I chose this. Yeah. If you were having like, you know, the fatal type of diarrhea, which people die from diarrhea every day. Oh, yeah. They really do. They really do. That would be unfortunate. Yeah. But mine's still super fun. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

If you're a customer having too much fun at like a fair, that's why you're having diarrhea. Too many funnel cakes. It's different.

Now, news of the appalling conditions at Andersonville had reached the North by November of 1864, just after Lincoln's re-election. And a mass prisoner exchange therefore began, which included Boston Corbett. Can't forget about me! He's the first one to get him out of here. Hey guys, why don't you let some other people out before me? Because honestly, I'm kind of liking all this. Why don't you go? I like this. My knees are the size of pumpkins. That's cute.

It's like every day is Halloween. Well, Corbett returned to New York City and hobbled around on crutches while still suffering from daily diarrhea. It took a long time for it to clear up. But it's said that Boston's faith in God and therefore his faith in the union cause was unmoved by his time in Andersonville. I like him more!

I like them more. I was like, what a fun opportunity to survive. Accordingly, after just two months of recovering from the most notorious POW camp in the Civil War, Boston Corbett rejoined the 16th New York Cavalry for a fifth tour of duty at the age of 32. You know what's crazy is that I just stopped having diarrhea and I realized...

I miss it. You know, the thing is, you can't get the good diarrhea in New York City. You got to go down south if you want to get good diarrhea. You got to have that slippery, sloppery, super meat falling off bone, rib sticking Southern barbecue to really get a good flow going. And that's kind of what I'm all about. That's kind of me.

It was January of 1865, just after Lincoln's second inauguration. And hats were still an important part of society. And we will talk gear on hat chat. We will. We will.

Well, Corbett was determined to see the war to its conclusion. The war, of course, came to an end just a few months later, along with Lincoln's life. And Corbett's regiment was stationed in Vienna, Virginia, when they got the word that the president had been killed.

About 10 days later, Corbett and his fellow soldiers also got word that the assassin was most likely in their area. So when detectives showed up in Virginia, hot on the trail of John Wilkes Booth, the 16th New York Cavalry found themselves in the enviable position of being the unit that would find and kill the president's murderer. This is an example of like...

When they say how God chooses somebody, right? Like, God chose Boston Corbett. If he exists, whatever. For some reason, Boston Corbett is all... Fate comes down to this guy.

wackadoo. Even by, you know, going back to the mercury poisoning. Like, that's the thing is that the mercury poisoning, like the castration absolutely put him along the path to joining the army, to being a fucking weirdo, to being like, to just being an insane, everything. Honestly, who would ever have thought that me cutting my balls off would be the smartest decision I've ever made? And again, that's why I love Boston.

But there's also, you know, there's the question of what would have happened if John Wilkes Booth had lived. But he did. We'll get back to that. We know that for a fact that he did. And that because I've received several emails from his family members, which is true. I've received several members emails that have claimed that they are now fighting hard to verify the that John Wilkes Booth lived and had kids. Isn't he buried on their property? Dig him up if you can find him.

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And so, now that we've caught Boston Corbett up to our timeline, let's return to John Wilkes Booth. Booth had just shown up to Garrett's farm along with his compatriot David Harold and their new Confederate friends. That's Absalom Bainbridge, Willie Jett, and Mortimer Ruggles.

Jets. Three names together. It's fucking insane. I don't want to have any of them be... That's my crew, you're fucked. So, yeah, you want to go hang out at the bar tonight? Oh, yeah, maybe. Like, who's coming? Oh, you know, like, Absalom, Willie, Mortimer. Actually, I'm super tired. I'll catch up with you guys next week.

The Jets' contact at the farm, Jack Garrett, was apparently not a fan of the theater. So he had no idea that he and his family were about to harbor the man who had just shot and killed the president.

John Wilkes Booth was therefore treated by the Garrett family as just another wounded Confederate soldier. The plan went off without a hitch. That meant that Booth was able to sleep in a bed for the first time since he left Dr. Mudd's plantation nine days earlier. Ah, how wonderful, Ted. Thank you. I can't even tell you what a nightmare Antietam was. I remember Antietam. Oh, you were at Antietam, huh? Yes, oh, very much so. I vacationed there several times.

And I did a wonderful rendition of Henry V in that incredible theater of Antietam. Of course, for the boys. Boys and gray. David Harold and the Confederates, however, they felt the need to blow off a little steam. So while Booth rested, his friends visited a log cabin of ill repute located just down the road.

This place, run by a woman who pimped out her four daughters to whatever confederate might be in need of companionship, was known locally as The Trap. You guys want to go down to The Trap and have sex with some bog whores? Yeah!

Oh, yeah. There's nothing I like better than some underage boghorses. Let's go get them. Is the mother forcing her daughters to do it? Watching the whole time. Let's go. Come on, Mortimer. Those girls didn't have to clap. They had the applause. Oh, yay! Those poor, poor girls. After spending the night with the ladies of the trap, David Harreld...

David Harreld and the Confederate Trio. Terrible fucking band, by the way. Oh, yeah. David Harreld. That's what we were doing before. They returned to Garrett's farm. There, they found John Wilkes Booth on the front porch, having returned to his usual charming self after a good night's sleep. He no longer wanted just to die. He was now full of piss and vinegar once more. Have any of you had proper tattletales?

tap lessons. After pleasantries were exchanged, Mortimer Ruggles, Absalom Bainbridge, and Willie Jett, they decided that it was best if they moved on. After saying goodbye, Willie Jett took off for the town of Bowling Green where he was supposed to court a girl while Mortimer and Absalom traveled to Port Royal. We're gonna court each other.

But upon their arrival to the port, Mortimer and Absalom were highly disturbed to find the 16th New York Cavalry docked on a steamship. And apparently the 16th Cavalry were just told that Booth and Harold had been spotted crossing the Potomac into Virginia.

Mortimer and Absalom therefore raced back to Garrett's farm, and after Booth and Harold were duly warned, they immediately left the house and returned to hiding in the woods. Thirty minutes later, the 16th came riding by Garrett's farm, galloping right past the spot where Booth and Harold were hiding in the underbrush. I thought that that yesterday would be the last day I would need to be a bush. I am sick of being in the bush! I am not

Considering the reaction that his houseguest had just had to the cavalry coming, Jack Garrett was starting to suspect that the two men staying in his home were maybe a little more hot than Willie Jett had led them to believe.

But even so, Jack Garrett still promised to take Booth and Harold to another location the next day. And still hadn't figured out their identities. Hadn't figured out who these guys were. It's fucking, Calvary's coming through town, ask for all these guys. If I was Jack Garrett, I would definitely be like, I have no idea who these gentlemen are. I don't know what they do. Do you want them?

But because Garrett was worried that the men would steal his horses while he slept, he locked Booth and Harold in his farm's tobacco barn while Garrett and his brothers kept watch overnight. This, of course, would be the undoing of John Wilkes Booth, because soon after the 16th Cavalry passed Garrett's farm, they arrived at the aforementioned cabin of ill repute, The Trap, which was located just four miles up the road. Yeah, I just did anal with Mortimer.

Yeah, you should go check him out. Yeah, I'm nine. Who gives a shit, right? You want to blow it before you leave? Ruggle and tuggle. You know, it's funny. I didn't mention them being underage at all. I just assumed.

That was just a picture you painted. I view it as a, let me really paint the picture. Multi-generational. Four girls, and it goes from 21, 18, 15, 9. Oh, okay. And so when they all come together, they call the Voltron of Trap.

Yep. Tramp Voltron. Yep. All right. Isn't that great? Are you happy with that? Are you happy that we took that? I'm happy. Yeah, I'm happy, but I just want to know what picture you were painting. That's it. Sometimes I like to see into the porthole. That's all I saw was just like people under the ground having sex with ruggles while a mother washes. Do you think they might have called it the trap after Wilkes Booth was caught there? No, it was known as the trap beforehand. I'm just trying to give them a little benefit of the doubt. Nope.

It's called the trap because that's where the girls were trapped. Oh, yes, yes. Well, since the trap was a Confederate establishment, the ladies who worked there were uncommunicative, to say the least, towards the Union cavalry. But the detectives traveling with the 16th, the ones who were actually in charge of this investigation, they were actually quite clever in their methods. They knew that they would get nowhere with the locals if they said they were looking for the man who'd shot the hated Abraham Lincoln.

So they instead told the ladies at the trap that they were looking for two men who'd beaten and raped a girl. This apparently was the right tactic. It hit just the right chord with them. Because the ladies immediately spoke up and said that four soldiers had visited the trap the day before. While they didn't know where the soldiers had come from, one of the soldiers had said he was going to Bowling Green the next day. That soldier was Willie Jett.

And so the cavalry raced to the Star Hotel in Bowling Green. And after being roused from his sleep, the 18-year-old Willie Jett rolled over on John Wilkes Booth as fast as he possibly fucking could. J.W.'s in a bush! He's in a bush! He told the detectives that Booth and Harold were holed up in a farmhouse back the way they'd came, and Jett would be willing to lead them there, but only if they made sure that it did not appear as if he was collaborating with the Yankees.

The detectives said, sure, who gives a shit? Whatever you want. So Jett led the detectives in Boston Corbett's regiment directly to Garrett's farm, where John Wilkes Booth and David Harold were fast asleep in the tobacco barn. Now, the two detectives in charge of the 16th were under the assumption that Booth and Harold were in the farmhouse. So when the assembled forces arrived at Garrett's farm at 2 a.m., the detectives approached alone while the rest of the men hung back.

It was not, however, Jack Garrett who opened the door that night.

Jack was guarding the tobacco barn with his brothers. So it was Jack Garrett's elderly father who opened the door just a crack to see who it was. The detectives, they didn't give a shit who was on the other side of that door. So they grabbed the elder Garrett and pulled him outside by his nightshirt. The old man, of course, got flustered and told the detectives that the men they were looking for, they'd fled into the woods. They fled into the woods like a bunch of butterflies. Like a bunch of butterflies that ran into the woods. You gotta go find them with your nets. Go get them.

Time for fucking around, however, was over. So one of the cavalry officers ordered one of his men to bring out a rope so they could, quote, stretch the truth out of this damned old rebel. Ah, thank you.

Things were different back then. But just as they were tossing a rope over the branch of a locust tree to hang the old man, Jack Garrett stepped forward, apparently having figured out in that very moment just exactly who the men were hiding in his tobacco bar really were. Oh, no. Oh, no.

As soon as he sees the rose, he's like, they're in a barn. Garrett told the cavalry exactly where John Wilkes Booth and David Harold were hiding. And Booth, therefore, woke up in the middle of the night to find himself locked in a barn, surrounded by a large force of very angry Union soldiers. That must have been fun for them. Oh, yeah. Oh, what time is it? Am I late? Oh,

my name for the matinee. Just imagine like, though, you know, he's in there. He's fucking banging the side of the bar. Johnny! Yeah, dude. Johnny! We're gonna fuck you, Johnny! We're coming to fuck you!

Fuck you, actor boy! And that's why with a tip of the nose and a flick of the wrist and a wink of the eye, up the chimney I go! Just doesn't work. Now, being an actor, John Wilkes Booth immediately settled into the role of the defiant hero. David Herold, meanwhile, upon seeing The Cavalry, suggested that maybe it was time to give themselves up.

But Booth told him that he would rather die than surrender. Would it be romantic, my dear good man, us, you and I, aflame, burning and burning and burning and burning, never to live again? Or we go outside. Oh! What a terrible encore! That's an or. I'm giving us options here. I call that the end of this program.

And so after Booth and Harold didn't directly respond to any of the cavalry's calls to give themselves up, one of the detectives gave an ultimatum. Either come out within 15 minutes or we're burning down this fucking barn with you inside.

Now at that point, David Herold lost every bit of his nerve. As the cavalry waited for a response, they could hear Booth and Herold having a hushed argument inside. Let me fucking go. I want to fucking go. No, you cannot go outside. Let me fucking go out. I'm fucking stupid, John. We're building to a dramatic day no more. I'm not a fucking actor, John. John, I'm not a fucking actor. Jump with me. Jump into this with me. Yes, and with me.

Yeah, they're all being like, we can hear you. The mood in the barn only got worse when the soldiers began piling sticks and leaves against the structure's walls. Beginning to build the fire now. And when the match was lit and the fire was set, David Harold panicked and raced towards the door. Booth threatened to shoot Harold himself if he left, but eventually Booth relented.

While Harold screamed, let me out, let me out, let me out, let me out. He was finally let out of the back door by the soldiers. He was handcuffed and tied to a tree where he whined and cried like a scared little boy until one of the soldiers finally couldn't stand to listen to him whimper anymore. Just shoved a gag in his fucking mouth. I can't believe they didn't kill him. Well, actually, the goal was to take them alive. Yes. John Wilkes Booth was supposed to be...

He was supposed to because which is what we have. We deal with this all the time is because they wanted to try him, hang him in front of everybody, but do the thing they wanted to make it official and to hold up in the eyes of the law as things would go forward. But not just that. At this point, they had no idea how far the conspiracy went.

They didn't know if it was ordered by like, you know, former Confederate officials. They didn't know whether it was ordered by someone within the government itself or the military. They wanted to see where this fucking thing. They didn't know that it ended at John Wilkes Booth at just this moment. Yeah, they thought there was a whole like Byzantine conspiracy within the within the Confederacy. And this is also the kind of shit that led to all the conspiracy theories after the fact. Yeah, they thought Jefferson Davis ordered the assassination. Yes. And that maybe there were guys on the inside of the White House that were helping.

Because there was all this confusion about how they were. There was these military parades and all this kind of military actions that were happening around the city that sort of allowed John Wilkes Booth to even leave Washington, D.C. And so they viewed that as a big conspiracy. That was like one of the Edward Stanton did it again. You know, he defied Abraham Lincoln because he thought Abraham Lincoln was going to be too soft on the South. So he organized the hit on Abraham Lincoln.

Yeah, Stanton, the Secretary of War. And then they actually killed John Wilkes Booth, and there was a double that looked like John Wilkes Booth. It's stupid. It's not real. Doesn't even matter because old Corbett was there. Well, the fire set by the soldiers had finally grown large enough to clearly illuminate John Wilkes Booth inside the barn, who was seen holding onto his crutch with one hand and holding a Colt revolver in the other while a rifle rested against his hip.

Now, the soldiers hadn't been given any orders to fire, but they also hadn't been given orders to not fire. Yeah, nobody said anything about what exactly we were supposed to do when we got to this position. Hold on, by fire, do you mean set the fire? You're setting a fire, and I'm firing as well. Yeah.

So, Boston Corbett had his own .44 revolver aimed squarely at John Wilkes Booth through a narrow barn slat. I'll fix your problem for you. He just opens up, just sticks his gun in there. If you'll remember, Corbett was always eager for a kill. He thirsted.

for murder and here he had the man who had shot down his great leader abraham lincoln and this man was trapped in desperate very likely about to open fire on corbett and his fellow troops why none of you guys killing this guy so when booth reached the barn door and raised his rifle corbett fired a single shot

And when the detectives flung open the door, this is one of my favorite images in history. John Wilkes Booth fell face down as blood spurted from the bullet hole in his neck. To be honest, that's the first time I've ever done it in one shot. That was...

Amazing. That's crazy. And through the slack. Usually I shoot him and then I beat him with rocks. Yeah, I finish him off. Sometimes a bear comes and finishes him or they get real sick. How many people do you think Corbett murdered?

Oh, man. Just rough estimate. I know there's no way to know. Rough estimate? I mean, it's impossible to know in the Civil War. It could be 100. It could be 30. Yeah. I mean, it could be one. It could be six. They said my grandfather had like a confirmed 10. And that was World War II? That was World War II. And they talk about that he was in there for two years. So it's like if you track like the five years, I bet you he'd probably be about 50. But also a lot of them didn't die immediately. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. Who knows?

Now, as far as kill shot locations went, Corbett could hardly have picked a more painful spot to shoot John Wilkes Booth. The bullet shattered Booth's vertebrae and severed his spinal cord, simultaneously paralyzing Booth and causing him extreme pain.

See, unlike Lincoln, who was unconscious for the hours he lingered on, Booth was fully awake the entire time. He did not die quickly. And he spent the next few hours feebly asking for someone to kill him over and over again as blood filled his throat. Will someone please kill my head?

My head is the last living part. Will you just please kill my head? Which would usually be very annoying, but in this instance was delightful to hear. Sure, I'm sure. The detectives, meanwhile, tried to interrogate Booth as much as they could, because as I said earlier, they still had no idea how far this conspiracy actually reached or if Booth was the head of the snake.

But finally, in his last moments, Booth lifted his hands. It's actually, do you know, he was asking somebody to lift his hands. Oh. He couldn't lift his hands. It's why he said useless, useless. It was because he asked the guy to lift his hands up to his face and he wouldn't do it. And then when he didn't, he said useless, useless, and then he died. Oh. As an actor, even in his last moments, all subtext. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

But at any rate, his last... Because he was paralyzed. At any rate, his last words were, useless, useless. Has to be so fucking dramatic. Okay. You know, for an assassin, he better be. Yeah, that is true. And with that, America's first successful presidential assassin died from asphyxia at 7.15 a.m., 12 days after he killed one of the greatest leaders our country has ever had.

Boston Corbett, meanwhile, had ridden off to a spot where he could be alone to pray. And after asking God if he'd done the right thing, Corbett claimed that God told him, fuck yeah, bro. Great job. Thanks, God. You know, God, a lot of people get angry at you because you give kids diseases and you do all sorts of things that seem unfair and random, but...

You're good with me. God, would you let me cut my balls off one more time? Yes. Yes, my dear child, after you did this most splendid job. Here you go. My balls. My favorite son. I love you more than Jesus Christ. What a pussy, right?

Crying and bitching to me when he's on that stick. Handle yourself, son. Even though the man who killed the president was dead, there was still the matter of what to do with David Herold, along with what to do with everyone else who'd been involved in the plot to kill the president.

Eventually, the government whittled the conspiracy down to nine defendants. Most people, most of them were caught within five or six days after Lincoln's assassination. I think Harold was the one who took the longest to catch. You know, that was like 14 people.

Yeah, they weren't Green Berets who he was working with. You know what I mean? This was a real ragtag group. It was. And also the government started off by arresting basically everyone who had ever had anything to do with Booth at any point in Booth's life. Yes. Good? Absolutely.

I mean, well, some of them didn't really deserve it. You know, like some of them were just like, like, for example, like the guy who had worked as Booth's agent in like 1860 before the Civil War and before like Wilkes really like lost his mind. Remember the guy that Boots like stole his gun and Booth accidentally shot himself in the leg. They arrested that guy. Yeah. It's worth slapping him around and find out what he knows. Yeah.

Technically, I know the group arrests are rough, but it is a technically, you know, we did a lot of shit after 9-11. Oh, yeah. I don't remember. Yeah. But that was all totally legal and fine. Yeah. We used that as a lot of ideas.

Now, these nine defendants, they were all tried in a collective trial that began less than a month after the assassination. This is, of course, once officials were satisfied that the conspiracy had gone no further than John Wilkes Booth. After 50 days, all nine defendants were found guilty by a panel of nine military officers, but only four were sentenced to death.

Mostly, that distinction was saved for the men who had directly participated in the mass assassination plot. That would be Lewis Powell, George Atzerodt, David Herold. The one outlier in the executions was tavern keeper Mary Surratt, who, as we said last episode, was the first woman to ever be executed by the United States federal government. It was said that Mary was sentenced to death by hanging because her tavern had been, quote, "...the nest that hatched the rotten egg."

It's been speculated, however, Mary Surratt was actually sentenced to death more as a tactic to lure her son John out of hiding because John Surratt was the only conspirator that the government wanted but didn't get. He was like, you can have my mother. Yeah, John Surratt, he was already long gone by the time his mother was hanged as a traitor.

If you remember, while John Surratt was certainly a Confederate piece of shit, he had left the conspiracy just before it became an assassination plot because he thought that John Wilkes Booth was too much of a liability. He's correct. Very correct. Surratt was therefore already on his way to the Canadian Confederate stronghold of Montreal when Lincoln was murdered.

Surratt, however, was smart enough to know that he was in deep shit nonetheless. So after a couple of pro-slavery Catholic priests, there were plenty of them around, after they gave him shelter, Surratt hopped on a boat across the Atlantic to Liverpool. Liverpool. From there, Surratt made the incredibly unpredictable move of going to the Vatican. Yeah.

where he enlisted in the Catholic Church's Infantry Battalion, which actually existed until 1870. Wow! It was hiding plain sight. Yeah, wow, wow. I mean, how else can I have sex with children?

You go down in a trap. Surratt was able to worm his way into this battalion through his Montreal connections because hundreds of Canadians had already joined the Vatican's armed forces. But what Surratt didn't count on was the greed of his fellow man.

An old acquaintance of Surratt's tipped off the U.S. consul that John was in the Pope's guard. He was in the Pope's fucking guard. He was in the Pope's guard. Yeah, I hear what you're like. It's so crazy. And an old friend, like a guy he used to know, turned him in for the reward money. And the guy ended up getting like 10 grand. I mean, Catholics love money. That they do. 10%. Back to the church. So after a brief negotiation, a cardinal agreed to take Surratt into custody so he could be turned over to American authorities.

But in another unbelievable twist, John Seurat broke loose from his guards during transport and jumped off a fucking cliff. He survived and made his way to Naples, where he boarded a freighter to Egypt.

This man's seen the whole goddamn world. He's having the best vacation I've ever heard of a man who plotted to kill the president. Montreal to Liverpool to Italy to Naples to the Vatican to Naples to Egypt. It's amazing.

But by this point, the Americans were hot on Surratt's trail. So the American consul was waiting for Surratt upon his arrival in Alexandria. Jesus. This was, however, almost two years after Lincoln's murder. So Surratt was not tried in the same military court as the other conspirators.

Instead, Surratt had a normal court trial, which ended in a hung jury. The government then tried for a treason charge, which failed on a technicality. And a third attempt was also thrown out because of the second attempt. And most people by this point, they just wanted to move on from the war. So John Surratt was set free.

Wow, it worked. He capitalized on his role in the conspiracy by giving paid public talks about his involvement in the plot to kidnap Abraham Lincoln. And he died of pneumonia as a free man in 1916 at the age of 72. So we got to see like cars and electricity.

Oh, my God. All of it, dude. And he got to do the truly most American thing ever, which is double down on your crimes and make money for it later on. That is a pinnacle part of the American experience. And he did it like a true American, too. He made sure to only talk about the stuff that was already made public, that was public knowledge, so that way he could not be charged with anything new. No. He could be brought in. He knew how to do it. Yep.

He's the most true American dream of this whole thing. Now, while Surratt's postscript was action-packed, no other person in this saga had a more interesting post-war journey than Boston Corbett. Of course. Of course it did. Corbett naturally became a celebrity following Booth's death, but...

And that's the incredible, like, think about this man that we've talked about this entire time. He is now the most famous man in America. He's like, you know, this is like equivalent of like him hanging out with like Pete Davidson. Yeah. Doing all this crazy shit. Just being like, I'm a bit of an influencer. Yeah.

I called several people, cut their balls off. They don't regret it, honestly. They don't understand what they're doing or why they're doing it. Oh, yeah. Ulysses S. Grant is coming to shake this man's hand. I cut my balls off. Yeah. It's like LBJ shaking Forrest Gump's hand in the movie and shows him his ass. Like, goddamn. It's that over and over again. Yes. Now, Corbett naturally...

got a lot of death threats after shooting John Wilkes Booth from Confederate sympathizers. Constant death threats. And he loved it. Yeah, well, it gave him very good reason to carry a gun at all times for the rest of his days. And the threats, that would be enough to make anyone paranoid. But Corbett's career as a hatter and the mercury poisoning he suffered as a result only made that paranoia worse.

His paranoia led to constant verbal altercations with people both friendly and hostile. He didn't really make a distinction. And those disputes usually ended when Corbett drew his pistols long before the argument called for such escalation.

As such, Corbett began to seek a more private life. I need to chill out. I need to relax. By 1878, he'd settled in Kansas, where he built himself a dugout carved into a hillside. Home. Just literal dense in a mountain. Hey, my fucking ancestors in Oklahoma, they lived in dugouts.

They're fantastic. I used to build, when I was a kid, I loved to build. That was like one of my favorite things to do is find a good hill. You fucking dig into the side of it. You make a dugout. Really lucky I didn't die doing that. You just got done killing the assassin of the president of the United States of America and he's living in dirt. He's choosing to live in dirt. It's great. He is Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam. Yes.

And Wile E. Coyote. And quite a bit of Daffy Duck. This is enough for me. Right here, this is all, this is enough for me. I have my sleeping rock. I have my sitting rock. And I got my tobacco. And I got my brain, which is, I can talk to and see in front of my own eyes.

Actually, what he loved more than anything was his horse, Billy. Yeah, I love old Billy. He lived his days with that beloved horse. Billy just sleeping in the dirt, hanging out here on the hillside. He's the only one that understands me. I love Billy. It's those guys, you know, I've met them before. It's like when that dog dies, like, he's going to kill everybody. Yeah. Let's just say, don't mess with Billy. Yeah.

Corbett split his time between cattle ranching and preaching wherever Billy would take him. But his proselytizing got more and more lost in the mercury cloud as the years went by. His hellfire and brimstone fervor became too much for even the Kansas crowd, who kicked him out of their congregation because Corbett wouldn't stop literally screaming about so-called eternal burning. I'm talking about my piles! Ha!

His brain was on fire. My ass is filled with devils. By the time Corbett was in his 50s, he'd become a clear danger to anybody who was in his presence. Yeah.

In 1885, Corbett opened fire on a bunch of local boys who were playing baseball on a Sunday. Someone's got to. He justified the action by saying that he was merely trying to warn the boys of the spiritual risks of such an activity. Sometimes you'll get a bullet from God in your little head, you dumb shit fucking little... You think that you can play baseball when God's at work?

Corbett also made himself a nuisance at the Kansas House of Representatives because he believed the legislature along with the local county officials in the courts. It shows you paranoia never changes. He was convinced that they were all conspiring to steal his disability pension. They're not helping me keep it! They're not filling out the paperwork that I'm showing up to the appointments and I do all this shit I gotta do. Those are my two dollars a month and no one's taking them. That's for me and my

my brain. And after Corbett finally pulled his revolvers on some house members, he was finally arrested and declared legally insane by a judge. Thank you. Who sent Corbett to a state asylum in Topeka. Finally, someone had the balls tonight? I did not. I am legally insane. I say that because I don't have balls and I am legally insane. Ha ha! Ha ha!

By 1887, the hospital had declared Corbett to be permanently insane. Okay. That meant that he was unlikely to ever be released. It was like the equivalent of a life sentence. I want that stamp. Permanently insane. Just tattooed on your forehead. The following year, though, Corbett surprised everyone when he escaped captivity after stealing a horse. Just fucking took off.

Some guy was visiting with his horse, left the horse unsupervised. Hey, you look like Billy. Billy, remember me, Billy? The fear was that Corbett was on his way to assassinate members of the Kansas legislature.

But Corbett again surprised everyone by instead deciding to visit an old friend. Dude, this is the story of the last Rambo movie. It is. They're more surprised that he had a friend. They're like, what? My buddy. I'm hanging out with my buddy, my pet pal. Quite calmly, Corbett told his old friend that he planned to head to Mexico.

And after that friend watched Boston Corbett board a train. I think the train's going north. The man who killed John Wilkes Booth vanished from history forever. I imagine he's just like, I'm going to get on this train. And then just walked off a cliff. You know, like he literally, but he doesn't fall at all. Like he literally, he does the Wile E. Coyote where he says, all right, see you later. On my way to Mexico.

You see him outside. But they do say that they think that he did end up going north. He told a bunch of people he was going to Mexico, and then he just ended up in the Dakotas. Yeah. Well, that's actually smart. Yeah, it is. Seriously, no one has any idea whatsoever. A couple of people did try to come up and say, I'm Corbett, but no, they were proved to be frauds. He's just fucking gone. We just got to check him for balls. That is literally...

I was listening about this, about how many people came forward me and like, I'm Boston Corbett. It's like there's an easy test. As far as the consequences of John Wilkes Booth's actions go, they are both far reaching and impossible to truly quantify. Yes, Lincoln's death did have a massive effect on the reunification of America following the war, a process known as Reconstruction. But it's hard to know exactly how Lincoln would have handled it differently.

See, despite what the South thought, Abraham Lincoln was by all accounts a moderate. And most historians agree that leniency towards the South had always been a part of Lincoln's post-war plans. But it's also true that Lincoln's successor after the assassination, President Andrew Johnson, he was a fucking terrible person to handle Reconstruction.

Johnson gave pardons to almost all the Confederates who took an oath of allegiance to the Union. That included the Confederate president, Jefferson Davis, who retired to where else but Montreal after the war. Johnson also returned all plantations to the men who'd previously worked that land with slave labor. But Johnson's worst crime was leaving every former Confederate state to do pretty much whatever they wanted after the war, just so long as they didn't bring back

outright slavery. Yeah, and he took away the 30 acres and a mule, too. Yeah. Well, because he was also supposed to, because the idea that one of the big plans was Abraham Lincoln was kind of talking about, which people take in a bad way, but sometimes, but I actually view it differently where he said...

Like, we got to teach everybody to read. We got to teach everybody how to do all this. We want them to be a part of society. We want the newly freed black people to be able to vote and participate and do all this shit. It's going to require these certain steps that they're going to have to take. Of course, because it's like, congrats, you're free. Now you're homeless. That doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense. Well, the educational programs did actually take place. That was one of the few things that got through. And that's the thing. But the southerners got pissed off.

because they were teaching black people to read. And the federal government was like, you know, anyone can come to these schools. It doesn't have to, like, we're just teaching anybody who wants to come. Yeah, you should come and learn to read. Of course, the fucking southerners refused to come because, of course, black people were there and they did not want them to be on any sort of equal footing. And we all know that the North did the worst crime of all.

Hypocrisy. We know that for a fact. Yeah, and eventually they just gave up on it. You know, there was a compromise. It's a lot of American history after this. But because President Johnson took the route of states' rights, Jim Crow laws quickly emerged in the South, and a lot of post-war civil rights legislation failed on the federal level. What followed was a lot of horrible shit, to say the very least, which would take an entirely different series of podcasts to cover.

As such, I'm not really sure what the lesson at the end of all this really is, because sadly, John Wilkes Booth succeeded, despite his best efforts. See, Reconstruction would probably have been far harsher towards the South if George Atzerodt had actually killed Andrew Johnson. And Booth was totally wrong about William Seward stepping into the vacuum of power upon Lincoln's death. Instead, Seward's legacy is buying Alaska, which was known for years as Seward's Folly.

But that's cool. Now we like it. Yeah. Now we like, well, we like after the oil. Yeah. Yeah. But back then, yeah, everyone's like it. That's what Seward was known for most in American history was fucking Seward's Folly.

But that's all to say that while the South still lost the war, the institutionalized disenfranchisement of Black people in the South particularly has continued to this day, which is exactly what John Wilkes Booth wanted. Booth and those of his ilk are such spineless fucking bullies, so lacking in any sort of self-confidence that they only feel good if someone else in society has a permanent boot on their neck.

neck. Some of these people are so dependent on this system for their own peace of mind that they will commit murder to keep it alive, which is what you had in the case of the pathetic wannabe John Wilkes Booth. However...

I will say that while there are still plenty of Americans with the mindset of John Wilkes Booth in 2025, many currently holding office, there's also a hell of a lot more Abraham Lincolns than there ever were. And today, those Lincolns are gay as hell and ready to take it to the fucking streets! Suck it to the hill, Lincolns! So while things look bleak right now, I still urge everyone to show up and fight where you're needed. Because while this country always has been and probably always will be fucked up,

up to some degree, there's always the hope that we can someday, somehow make it better. I will therefore be goddamned if we lose the chance to one day fulfill the promise of this great but flawed nation!

to the shitheads currently in power who want nothing more than to remake this country in the image of pathetic fucking losers like John Wilkes Booth. My country, tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I see. Glory to God!

That's a assassination Abraham Lincoln, ladies and gentlemen. Just wrapped all her, wrapped her up. And you want to say, you did a really good job of just kind of like wrapping up like 120 years of history right at the end there. Yeah, just try it. It took some doing. You did a really good job on that. Thank you. Thank you. Well, I mean, I- It's precarious. It's what? It's precarious. Well, I mean, it's extraordinarily complicated in every way whatsoever. Yeah. Yeah.

It would take another series of podcasts to properly explain all of it. But yeah, reconstruction is very, very, very complicated. That's why instead of tackling reconstruction, we're coming back next week with hat chat. We're getting even deeper into Fez's. We're going to talk a little bit about turbans. Is it a hat? We'll find out next week. Now, the thing about John Wilkes Booth, though, is that I really got to bring up before we close out is like, what if he didn't do it?

Thank you. Finally, somebody said it. You are talking sense. You are talking sense. I know that was the reason we brought you on. Because he had his double that did it. Obviously, he was trained. He was a member of the Union War. He was part of the intelligence groups of the Union War. And I guess that was one big part of it. Another one was, which we've said oftentimes, his head just did that. Then there was also the Annabelle Theory. Oh, Annabelle. That was the ghost. Yeah.

That came from England on a boat to see the Civil War, killed Lincoln, went back to England, got that little doll. Sure. And now it's in a basement in Connecticut. It's right here. Yeah. Oh, nice. Because I stole it. Nice. Yeah. You know what? I haven't learned anything. Well, go to patreon.com slash last podcast on the left to give us money for this.

Yeah, to see us live. If you want to see all the wonderful jigglins and stand-ups and all the fun act-outs that we do, go to our Patreon. Doesn't cost but just a little bit of cash each month. And you also get to see Last Stream on the Left live every Tuesday at 6 p.m. PST 9 p.m. ESPN.

And you get to interact with us live on the chat. You get to see it uncensored, unlike what comes out later. Oh, yes. And tonight, if you are so lucky, you will join us on YouTube at LPN-TV for the last podcast, for the very first production that we can't wait to show you guys. Last podcast on The Left Presents Beyond the Veil. June 20th. June 20th. Tonight.

You can come and see what it's like when we peer beyond the veil with professional exorcist R.H. Davis. And you might even be involved if you dare.

We should try to get Lincoln for the seance. We should. Oh, he's just going to be like, yeah, I'd like to see all that. God, it's nice to see a nice, tight young man walk around with his very top of his pubes showing out of his pants. God damn, I wish I was president again. When I was a boy, June was just color a month. Shalom!

All right, fuckers. Hail Satan. Hail Gane. Hail you, Marcus. This was great, man. Thank you so much. This was unbelievable. And I'm going to rebound that hail over to our researchers. You know, hail Joel and Shaw, who just did an absolutely fantastic job, you know, helping us out with this one. They really did. They helped walk us through a lot of complicated stuff. And also, I got so many great emails from people with a bunch of different... It's like, it is true about the Booth family. I got reached out by several people that claim to be members of the Booth family.

Yeah? Yes. Lots of people think they are. They do, yeah. It's very interesting. Well, those dudes were fucking. They better have been. Show's over. Yep.

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