Henry Rathbone
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Henry Reed Rathbone (July 1, 1837 – August 14, 1911) was a United States military officer and diplomat who was present at the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Rathbone was sitting with his fiancée, Clara Harris, next to the President and his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, when John Wilkes Booth entered the president's box at Ford's Theatre and fatally shot Lincoln in the head. When Rathbone attempted to prevent Booth from fleeing the scene, Booth stabbed and seriously wounded him.
Wracked with guilt over his perceived inability to stop President Lincoln from being killed, he spent years obsessing over his failure to the point where he drove himself insane. This culminated in him attempting to murder his children, then murdered his wife before attempting to commit suicide on December 23, 1883, while the family was living in Hanover, Germany. He would be committed to an insane asylum, where he spent the rest of his life before passing away in 1911.
Biography edit
Henry Rathbone was born in Albany, New York, in 1837. Rathbone joined the Union Army in 1861 and during the American Civil War reached the rank of major, notably participating in the Battles of Antietam and Fredericksburg. After his father's death, his mother married the New York senator, Ira Harris. In 1865 he became engaged to his step-sister, Clara Harris.
On 14th April, 1865, Mary Lincoln, the wife of Abraham Lincoln, invited Clara Harris and her boyfriend to Ford's Theatre to see the play Our American Cousin.
Officer John Parker, a constable in the Washington Metropolitan Police Force, was detailed to sit on the chair outside the presidential box. At 9:30 P.M., just before intermission, Parker left to get a drink with Lincoln’s valet, Charles Forbes and the coachman Francis Burke at the same saloon where John Wilkes Booth was spending time drinking. Soon afterwards, Booth entered the front of the theater one last time at ten minutes past 10 P.M.. After presenting his calling card to Forbes, Booth went inside the box and waited until 10:15 P.M. when he shot the president in the back of the head at the play's funniest lines. Rathbone grabbed Booth, who slashed him with a hunting knife. Despite a bad wound in his left arm, Rathbone continued to struggle with Booth and as a result, he was unable to jump cleanly from the State Box. Booth landed on the stage twelve feet below at an awkward angle and allegedly fractured his ankle and shouted the Virginia state motto. However, he was able to hobble out and get on his horse and escape for 12 days before being fatally gunned down in a Virginian tobacco barn by one of the Union officers, Boston Corbett. Once chaos breaks out, Rathbone removes the brace Booth wedged against the door. 23-year-old surgeon Charles Leale briefly examines Rathbone before turning his attention to Mrs. Lincoln and later examine her husband’s condition and head wounds. Following this, Rathbone, Laura Keane, and Harris accompanied Mary Lincoln to the Petersen House, where her husband was taken to the room to be re-examined by his doctors for other additional wounds. Once they got to the boarding house, Rathbone started to feel light-headed. A little while later, Rathbone was taken back home while Clara stayed with Mary as her husband lay dying for almost 8 hours until he died at 7:22 A.M. on April 15, 1865, the following morning.
Although Rathbone's physical wounds healed, his mental state deteriorated in the years following Lincoln's death as he anguished over his perceived inability to thwart the assassination attempt. He married Harris on July 11, 1867, and the couple had three children: Henry Riggs (born February 12, 1870, who later became a U.S. Congressman), Gerald Lawrence (born August 26, 1871), and Clara Pauline (born September 15, 1872).
Rathbone resigned from the Army in 1870, having risen to the rank of brevet colonel. After his resignation, he struggled to find and keep a job due to his mental instability. He became convinced that Harris was unfaithful. He also resented the attention Harris paid their children and reportedly threatened his wife on several occasions after suspecting that she was going to divorce him and take the children.
Rathbone made multiple attempts to obtain a position as a U.S. Consul to a European city, but was always refuted. Rumors exist that Rathbone was appointed the U.S. Consul to Hanover, Germany. This is incorrect as the U.S. never established diplomatic relations with Hanover and seems to have stemmed from a mix-up between Henry and his brother Jared Lawrence Rathbone, who was the U.S. Consul to Paris in 1887 during Grover Cleveland's administration. The family relocated to Germany, where Rathbone's mental health continued to decline.
On December 23, 1883, Rathbone attacked his children in a fit of madness. Rathbone fatally shot and stabbed his wife, who was attempting to protect the children. He then stabbed himself five times in the chest in an attempted suicide. He was charged with murder but was declared insane by doctors after blaming the murder on an intruder. He was convicted and committed to an asylum for the criminally insane in Hildesheim, Germany. The couple's children were sent to live with their uncle, William Harris, in the United States. Rathbone spent the rest of his life in the asylum. He died on August 14, 1911, and was buried next to his wife in the city cemetery at Engesohde.