Abraham Lincoln’s Last Laugh
At 7:22 a.m. on April 15, 1865, Abraham Lincoln died at the Petersen House across the street from the Ford Theatre, where John Wilkes Booth had shot the President in the back of the head the previous night. Only six days after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his last major army to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, effectively ending the American Civil War.
The night before, President Lincoln and his wife were excited to see the play Our American Cousin, a farse featuring awkward and boorish American Asa Trenchard, who is introduced to his aristocratic English relatives when he goes to England to claim his family estate. A most welcome entertainment, I am sure, after the hardship and tragedy of four years of the American Civil War.
Halfway through act III, Scene 2, the actor Harry Hawk who plays Asa Trenchard utters one of the plays funniest lines to Mrs. Mountchessington, “Don’t Know the manners of good society, eh? Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal – you sockdologizing old man-trap!”
Lincoln was surely laughing when John Wilkes Booth attacked and shot the President in the back of the head. It was the perfect time in the mind of Booth (He was very familar with the play and had seen it many times) because he hoped in this humerous moment the audiences laughter would drown out the sound of his gunshot.
“So it goes,” — Kurt Vonnegut
“Insanity doesn’t die, it only changes form.” David Wesley Wagner, April 15, 2021.
