Killing Lincoln - Bill O'Reilly [108]
John Wilkes Booth would have been enraged to know that Robert Lincoln and Lucy Lambert Hale spent the afternoon of Lincoln’s assassination together, studying Spanish. It’s possible that Lucy could have mentioned this upcoming appointment to the assassin during their final moments together that morning, fueling his jealousy. In the end, it doesn’t matter, because Lucy Lambert Hale will forever be linked with John Wilkes Booth.
Secretary Stanton, out of respect for her father’s position, refused to let her be called upon to testify at the trial. However, there were rumors that she was smuggled aboard the Ides to view Booth’s body and wept openly at the sight. This has never been confirmed. Regardless, the intimacy of their relationship soon became widespread knowledge in Washington, D.C., and she was only too happy to escape to Spain for the next five years while her father served as ambassador. Lucy and Robert Todd Lincoln continued to maintain a friendly relationship, but she chose to marry William Chandler in 1874. She bore one child, a son, at the age of forty-four. William Chandler went on to serve as secretary of the navy. Their grandson Theodore Chandler would become a highly decorated World War II navy admiral who was killed when kamikazes attacked his ship in the Pacific. Lucy Lambert Hale died of natural causes in 1915, at the age of seventy-four.
Robert Todd Lincoln died at his home in Vermont at the age of eighty-two, though not before being present for the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., in 1922. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
Laura Keene would regret cradling Lincoln’s head in her lap that night in Ford’s Theatre. The assassination linked her troupe with the killing, and the attendant notoriety was hard on her already floundering career. The actress was eminently resourceful, however, and left America to barnstorm through England before returning in 1869 to manage the Chestnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia. She later took to lecturing on the fine arts and publishing a weekly art journal. Laura Keene died of tuberculosis on November 4, 1873, in Montclair, New Jersey. She was believed to be forty-seven, although she was often vague about her actual birthdate and may have been three years older.
Edwin Stanton did not live long after the death of Abraham Lincoln, and those years he did live were fraught with controversy. Stanton clashed repeatedly with President Andrew Johnson over the process of Reconstruction. Johnson’s vengeful policies toward the South were in direct contrast with what Lincoln had hoped for, and despite their earlier animosity toward each other, Stanton was keen to see Lincoln’s wishes put in place. Tensions between Stanton and Johnson got so bad that in 1868 the president fired Stanton as secretary of war and replaced him with Ulysses S. Grant. Stanton refused to leave the office and was vindicated when the Senate voted that Johnson’s actions were illegal. Johnson tried once again to replace Stanton, this time with General Lorenzo Thomas. Stanton barricaded himself in his office to avoid being removed. The Senate, which had openly clashed with Johnson over other key issues, now began impeachment hearings, stating that Johnson did not have the authority to remove the secretary of war. Though Johnson escaped removal from office by one vote in the Senate, Stanton was the clear winner in the case. He retired soon after the vote, only to be nominated as a justice to the Supreme Court by the newly elected president, Ulysses S. Grant. Edwin Stanton died before he could take the oath. The end came on Christmas Eve 1869; at the age of fifty-five, Stanton died from a sudden and very sever asthma attack. Did he have any part in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln? To this day, there are those who believe he did. But nothing has ever been proved.
Few men could have successfully