Tragedy Stalked Lincoln Survivors

The assassination of Lincoln gave him to the ages, after the fall out strange events followed the survivors. Henry and Clara Rathbone the young couple who attended the Ford’s Theater with the Lincolns moved to Germany, Henry lost his mind, killed his wife and ended up in an insane asylum. Boston Corbett the soldier who shot John Wilkes Booth went berserk in the Kansas Legislature, was arrested and was sent to the Topeka Insane Asylum. William Peterson the German tailor in whose house Lincoln died in, committed suicide. Ann Surratt who tried to see President Andrew Johnson to plead clemency for her mother, who was suspected of knowing about the plot to kill Lincoln, was prevented from doing so by Senator Preston King and Senator James Lane. A few months later, King tied a bag of bullets around his neck and committed suicide by jumping off of a ferry boat on the Hudson River. The next year Lane shot himself to death in Kansas. During the weeks following the assassination Mary Todd Lincoln was under the care of Dr. Anson Henry until she settled back home in Illinois. A few months later the doctor drowned on a steamer off the coast of California. LaFayette Baker who led the investigation to capture John Wilkes Booth was found murdered in his home a few years later in Philadelphia. Mary Todd Lincoln herself was put in a hospital for the insane a decade later. A lot of the survivors of the Lincoln assassination suffered great tragedy in their lives, if we didn’t know better, we might think that there was a curse placed on those surrounding Lincoln.