Killer Cousin

James and Henry Clay Ford had a problem. Their brother John had booked into the theatre he owned in Washington, DC, a two-week run by famous actress Laura Keene and her touring repertory company. Keene and fellow players had done well with popular classics such as She Stoops to Conquer and School for Scandal, but ticket sales were sluggish for the final offering of the Washington stand—a popular comedy, Our American Cousin—the night of April 14, 1865. John Ford had decamped to Richmond, leaving his brothers in charge, having overlooked the fact that April 14 was Good Friday, not an evening on which the pious would attend a theatrical performance—or one on which the less pious would want neighbors to see them attending the theatre.

James and Henry Ford had an inspiration. They had hand delivered to the White House a personal note to Mary Todd Lincoln, inviting the First Lady and her husband to be guests that Friday night. The Civil War had ended with Robert E. Lee’s surrender on April 9, and the president was exhausted, trying to find the strategy to reassemble the nation. He just wanted to stay home, but his wife persuaded him that an evening of laughter was the tonic he needed. Her acceptance in hand, the Fords circulated a handbill trumpeting that the Lincolns would be attending Our American Cousin; the news made the early edition of that day’s Washington Evening Star. Ticket buyers rushed the box office and filled the 1,700-seat house.

Halfway through Act Three, actor John Wilkes Booth, 26, an ardent supporter of the Confederacy, entered the Lincolns’ box and shot the President. Pandemonium broke out, but Keene came onstage, managing both to calm the audience and organize an orderly emptying of the theater. Booth got away and was not captured until April 26. Lincoln died of his wounds at 7:22 the morning after the shooting, the first time an American president had been assassinated.