Episode 624: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln Part IV - Madder than a Hatter

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There's no place to escape to.

This is the last podcast.

On the left.

That's when the cannibalism started.

What was that?

But honestly, with a lot of them, like,

especially now, the way they make destructions now is they just push them up.

If you push the balls up, then what happens is that you just pop them back up in the little hole.

You're talking, you do this to children?

I mean, if you're at the Vatican, yeah, and if you're training castratis, then yes.

Yeah, because yeah, obviously, you need to.

Oh,

oh, next last week, someone said that my Abraham Lincoln is turning into Mickey Mouse.

And it is.

Oh, Minnie.

That makes a lot of sense.

He was Disney's favorite president.

Do you think Disney?

He's the first animatronic human.

He was the favorite president of Walt Disney.

That's right.

Yeah.

What great company?

Yeah.

It was Lincoln and then Hitler.

And then people always told him Hitler wasn't a president.

Kenny just really

like.

Let me put my favorite parts of Hitler into this little mouse.

That actually sounds really good.

Oh, yeah.

I was just wondering, imagine, though, if it was true that Abraham Lincoln was born Jewish.

Oh, let's set the scene.

Okay.

All right.

Kenny, please, if you could do some Jewish.

how's everybody doing?

First of all, just want to say, feeling guilty.

You know how it is, being a Jew.

And honestly, it's so nice to be here with my home cabal.

My home cabal and I.

We really just never get a chance to really hang out.

You know, if his mother would have stayed kosher, she'd still be alive.

She died of milksick.

Oh, yeah.

And that's why we're burying plates for six months.

I don't know how the rules

would work.

I'm a new Jew.

I'm one of those new Jews because I'm hanging out with my cabal and my buddies, and they're telling me what to do.

And it's super easy because I put my plans under my super long hat.

And I tell you what, get these Jewish guys used to a long hat.

Yeah.

It's a process.

You can definitely hide a Yamaka under there.

Oh, I got a pile of them.

I got like 45 of them.

Okay, welcome to the last podcast of the left, ladies and gentlemen.

Can't let this bit go on for any fucking longer.

They told Lincoln's mother to stop sucking her own tits, but she wouldn't do it.

Mama, stop.

You're not making milk anymore.

You gotta leave some for yourself.

My name is Marcus Parks.

I'm here with the Cabal Heavy, Henry Zabrowski.

Hey, I'm big with the cabals.

No, I was just trying to illustrate maybe just a little bit of what it would have been like if some of the conspiracy theories about Abraham Lincoln were true.

Sure.

Oh, okay.

That he was directed by somehow both the Jewish community and the Pope to treat the South poorly, even though he wasn't gonna.

Yeah.

I just don't see how being Jewish is a conspiracy.

Yeah, the conspiracy is defined as an action that involves multiple people.

Who else was involved in Abraham Lincoln being Jewish?

My rabbi,

Herbert Winkelman, who is an amazing tailor.

I've never heard of a good Jewish wrestler.

Goldberg.

Hey, oh, and Goldberg, you're the one who's David.

The David.

David?

Oh, yeah, he was the slingshot guy.

But no, but he wrestled little guys.

I don't know anything about that.

I don't think so.

I don't think that's true at all.

And we also have Ed Larson here at the anti-milk Ed Larson.

That's right, man.

Poacher, Ed Larson?

Oh, I wish.

I don't have the patience.

You know, but if I do love to bury a plate.

Yeah, just fucking gull it.

Ha ha, you fucking.

You actually are looking good.

Yeah, you are looking great.

I feel great.

Good.

And we're here.

We're all feeling good because we're at the conclusion to our series on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

Let's kill him again.

Nope, can't.

We already killed him.

All right.

But there is going to be death.

Good.

A lot of people are going to die in this episode.

Excellent.

And a couple of balls are going to be left along the path as we go.

This series is longer than John Wilkes Booth's escape.

So when we last left John Wilkes Booth, he and his co-conspirator David Harold had made it as far as Virginia following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

Also, it was not the only assassination that night.

There was the attempted assassination of Vice President Andrew Johnson, and of course the attempted assassination of Secretary of State William Seward.

But whilst wandering the countryside, entirely unsure where to go next, Booth and Harold had run into a trio of Confederate soldiers who also weren't quite ready for the war to be over.

This crew was led by none other than Lieutenant Mortimer Ruggles.

The only Confederate lieutenant made out of felt.

Ruggles, however, didn't have the faintest idea of what to do either.

But one of the two kids under his command, a teenager named Willie Jett, he knew about a farm nearby that was owned by a man with Confederate sympathies.

You guys hate too, right?

I've got a great place for hate.

Come on, it's right next to my carrots.

This farmer, however, was not sympathetic to the point where he'd be cool with hosting the man who'd just killed the president and that assassin's buddy.

So, an idea was hatched to present Booth and Harold to the owner of the nearby farm, not as the two most wanted men in America, but as just a couple of regular-ass wounded Confederate soldiers needing a place of respite.

Yes, and it is finding the role I will play to the hilt.

So, Willie Jett led Booth, Harold, and his fellow Confederate soldiers to the sympathizer's home, a place called Garrett's Farm.

That farm, of course, would be the location of John Wilkes Booth's imminent demise.

Yeah, set him on fire.

Yeah, let's do it.

About fucking time.

Now, the man who fired the shot that took the life of America's first presidential assassin, he truly is an amazing American character.

He's just a simple Union soldier who, like so many others in the story, simply found himself swept up in the tide of history.

That soldier's name was Boston Corbett.

And while one may not think that the story of a simple Union soldier would be particularly engaging, the path that brought Boston Corbett to Garrett's farm on April 26th, 1865 is an absolutely fascinating one because Boston Corbett truly is one of America's finest weirdos.

So, before we return to John Wilkes' booth on Garrett's Farm, we're going to tell the story of how exactly Boston Corbett found himself in Virginia in 1865, where Boston fired the shot that took the life of Abraham Lincoln's killer.

Fuck yeah, man.

What are we doing again?

Civil War.

Okay, I was doing bus fake Zarathrus, so that doesn't that doesn't work.

They're a fucking terrible Confederate band.

We hate her because we like it.

We hate her because we like it.

Good enough.

So Boston Corbett

was actually born Thomas Corbett in England in 1832 to a taxidermist named Bartholomew.

Bartholomew Corbett, like so so many other immigrants, was simply looking for a better life for his family, so they made the move to New York City in 1840.

Bartholomew, however, chose the notorious Five Points in downtown Manhattan as his family's new home, because Bart was riding the wave of Irish immigration that swelled New York City's population following the potato famine.

Interestingly, this very same immigration wave was partly what had so inspired the anti-immigration conspiracist Know Nothing Party that had first gotten John Wilkes Booth interested in politics way back when.

Great.

But concern.

Oh, good.

Oh, good.

But concerning the five points, Boston Corbett grew up in what's considered to be America's first slum.

It was a violent and unruly neighborhood, rife with disease and overcrowding, where the unpaved roads were often buried under a foot of mud and excrement, both animal and human.

That's Tribeca, right?

Yes.

It's literally Tribeca.

Yeah, right now, the Five Points, if I remember correctly, it's just north of the New York Supreme Court.

Okay.

It's like just right, you know that area right there.

Yeah.

Oh, unfortunately.

Yeah, he's always there.

Yeah, they got a little sign there now.

It's just like, this is where the five points, you know, once stood.

And of course, it, you know, bears no similarity to what it looked like back then.

Of course.

This is all Gangs of New York time period, right?

Around Yangshan.

Yes, this is Gangs of New York.

Yeah, this is very much Gangs of New York.

Now, at some point in the mid-1850s, Boston Corbett began an apprenticeship with a hat maker.

But while this sounds inconsequential, possibly even boring.

No way, Marcus.

I love hats.

I love hearing about the history of hats, and that's why we will now begin our two-episode deep dive into milliners.

Hi, I'm Ed Larson.

It's summertime.

You ever think about going down to Gordon Brothers and get yourself a nice new ball cat?

Hey, welcome to that chat.

My name's Henry Zabrowski, and hats are a way for me to look 14, 14 but still have the mysterious air of a 41 year old loser.

Hi and I'm here.

I'm Marcus Sparks.

I'm here to tell you all about how beavers changed America.

And tell me I know one specific beaver that did quite a lot.

That one beaver that made the American goddamn flag.

Betty Thomas.

Betty Thomas.

Very famous Betty Thomas.

Betsy Ross.

I think Betty Thomas, that sounds like a district attorney.

I I think Betty Thomas made cookies or something.

I've never heard of Betty Thomas.

Whatever.

She's not a person.

Actress.

Wow, yeah.

She's an actress.

She was in

just one of those actresses.

Dr.

Doolittle.

The original Dr.

Doolittle.

The number one.

No, no, the 1998 Dr.

Doolittle.

The best beaver this country's ever made.

Okay, now we'll come back.

Sure.

Okay, well, we took a bit of a side.

quest.

We took a bit of a side quest.

But yes, while hat making may sound inconsequential, Corbett's career as a hatter greatly influenced the rest of his life.

See, hat making in the 19th century was actually a dangerous, skilled trade because hat makers regularly soaked animal fur in mercury to stiffen it, which made it easier to remove from the skin.

Just the idea of just

vats of liquid mercury, just dipping raccoons in and out of it, just being like, Yeah, we got a good pull.

There's a good pool on this one.

It's beavers mostly, but I get your butt.

I get your point.

Where'd Dave Crockett get his hat?

I mean, he bought it.

Do you think he just coming out of raccoons?

They did also do coonskit.

But they're talking about really nice hats here.

And at the time, really nice hats were made out of beaver.

You're saying Davey Crockett's hat's not nice?

Yes.

I'll say it right now.

You fucking say it.

Davy Crockett, American hero.

I think his head smelled like shit.

Well,

very quickly, a very quick side note, a listener actually corrected us on the Andrew Jackson assassination.

That's the reason why David Crockett's in my mind.

Yeah, apparently it was not Andrew Jackson who beat the house painter with his cane after the house painter's guns misfired.

It was actually Davey Crockett who beat the house painter with his cane, even though he hated Andrew Jackson.

Yeah, he hated Andrew Jackson, but he hated the other guy that was running against Andrew Jackson so much more that he beat the shit out of the guy that tried to kill Andrew Jackson.

Jackson.

So are we calling Davey Crockett an asshole?

Sort of.

I've always been a Daniel Boone guy myself.

Wow.

Wow.

We all learned quite a bit just now.

Well, while they were making these fucking hats,

let's get to it.

Back to the hats.

Back to the hats.

So these guys, they're soaking the fur in mercury, and then they use liquid and heat to press that fur, that mercury-soaked fur, into basic felt forms in order to actually make the hat.

But the pressing process would create a mercury-infused mist that would be inhaled by the hatters.

These hatters were therefore poisoning themselves every time they made a hat, and exposure to mercury mist over prolonged periods of time can permanently damage the brain.

Hatters who were exposed to mercury poisoning were known to become increasingly irritable and erratic over the course of their career, while those who were most heavily affected became prone to fits of intense paranoia.

This is actually the origin of the phrase mad as a hatter, which entered the lexicon after the link between mercury poisoning and abnormal behavior was finally made in 1870.

20 years later.

This link, however, was made decades before Boston Corbett began his career in hat making.

But while we don't know exactly how much mercury Boston Corbett was exposed to, it's almost certain we could classify it as a fuck ton.

Because as we'll see, the choices Boston made at certain points in his his life could only be described as absolutely fucking insane.

I'm gonna tell you I haven't just so much mercury misses a lot of people one of my big nicknames and people call me the silver surfer

yeah

I'm not a super dependable guy

but if you want a hat

I'll fucking I'll iron a raccoon until you look like good old shavy crocket.

I don't like my favorite porn egg.

Boston met and married a woman named Susan in the 1850s, and the two of them eventually moved to Richmond, Virginia, which, of course, just a few years later would become the seat of Confederate power.

But Corbett entertained no Confederate sympathies, and in fact, had inherited a staunch anti-slavery stance from his father.

He was absolutely an abolitionist, far beyond what most people were in America at the time, in fact.

But from what it seems like, Richmond was simply a place of opportunity.

But Richmond was also also where Corbett's life changed paths completely.

In 1856, Corbett's wife died in Richmond.

Finally.

And Corbett began drinking heavily and constantly to deal with the grief.

But while Corbett was deep in his cups one day, he was accosted by a group of evangelical Christians who were roaming the streets of Richmond and illegally detaining any drunkard they found.

These evangelicals were part of the infamous temperance movement, which would one day lead to women's suffrage on the good side and prohibition on the bad.

It must be said, however, that their intentions were at the very least practical in the beginning.

See, in 19th century America, the urban population was on a sharp rise.

Safe drinking water in the cities was rare, if not non-existent, so a lot of men drank fermented beer instead.

Yeah!

The problem was that the urban growth was due to the Industrial Revolution, so you had a lot of guys operating highly dangerous equipment while absolutely fucking trashed.

And a lot of guys were dying in workplace accidents as a result.

Not to mention, you know, no more fingers.

Hey, man, what a great ad for Molsons, though, kind of.

Ain't your job?

Nullify it with Molsons.

Ain't your job.

All you got to do.

Oh, are you a nine-year-old whose job it is to crawl up inside a giant threshing machine?

Have a Molson.

It's really interesting how it worked out.

Like the temperance movement, that's actually why we have public drinking fountains, water fountains, because the temperance movement was like, people need water

out in the cities, you know?

Yeah, well, water's like what?

Beer is most.

Beer is mostly water.

And you got the seeds, and then you got the beer seeds and the water.

And I already see, I'm drinking the liquid part.

Yeah, alcoholism was a major problem in 19th century America.

Really, really bad.

Well, they had like, it was all based out of a good idea.

And I know it created prohibition and obviously it didn't work, but it was the temperance movement was ran by women mostly, right?

Yeah.

And so I was like, I imagine they were like, these men are drinking and beating us.

That was exactly what it was.

Yeah.

We need to do something about this.

And it eventually kind of worked a little bit.

But the thing is, like, I'm to be a little bit of a devil's advocate here, is that...

Why didn't they just start drinking too?

You know, like, I imagine

they just started drinking too.

Then everybody just get along.

That's not how it works.

Oh, well.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

You can't.

I'm the fucking Yeah, you can't just put two drunks into a bottle and shake it up and you're like, okay, it's going to be fine now.

I'm the only person with the fucking cojones to back Davey Crockett and I'm the only person that's asking women to drink more.

This isn't barfly.

Well, because alcoholism was such a massive problem in America in the 19th century, people began protesting, as is their right as Americans.

But the temperance movement crossed the line when they began kidnapping men and forcing sobriety upon them in the hopes that they'd turn their lives around.

A hungover man is not ready for the truth.

Many men, of course, simply waited it out until the evangelicals let them go.

But Boston Corbett was just

love that idea.

Obviously, they arrest you and be like, guys, I'm just going to have to just admit right here that I'm starting to get hungry.

I'll do whatever the fuck it is that you want.

Which one of you chicks though?

I got to tell that I believe in God.

The big loud meme one.

But Boston Corbett was one of the men for whom this approach actually worked.

While being detained, Corbett underwent a religious epiphany and became a Methodist.

His conversion, however, occurred in a time when thousands of other Americans were doing the same sort of thing, because Corbett had found himself caught up in the evangelical movement known as the Second Great Awakening.

Basically, this movement was tailor-made for Americans to plug themselves in and turn the volume on their Christianity up to 11.

Because while America had always been filled to the brim with Christian fundamentalists, the Second Great Awakening is when Americans started to get real fucking weird with the Bible and about the Bible at the same time.

It was very interesting.

This was like a time period where like that, the idea of opening up the interpretation of the Bible would,

in my mind, I'm always like this.

I'm like, who gives a shit?

Right?

I always joke about the differences that there's no difference between Lutherans and Methodists and blah, blah, blah.

Oh, there is.

Yes, and I know that, but it's so crazy to think that you, they're little clicks over.

They're all like little clicks one and over, but it seems that when you let everybody interpret it in any way that they want and they're allowed, all of a sudden no rules are off.

And that's how you get yourself Mormonism.

That's exactly how you get it.

The Mormonism grew out of the

Second Great Awakening.

Well, fuck it, Don.

You honestly let me sleep.

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Now, on a personal level, the Second Great Awakening gave people like Boston Corbett the idea that they could interpret the Bible any way they wanted.

It also led them to believe that they had the right, nay, the responsibility to tell as many people as possible about their conversion and try to get them to convert as well.

Have you heard about the big fish?

Come here!

Come here, woman, I want you to vote!

I want you to vote!

Come here!

I'm hearing about the big fish!

So, after moving to the city of Boston, Corbett began street preaching at strangers about the evils of drinking, which would become one of Corbett's lifelong hobbies.

Corbett also continued his work as a hatter.

And with a head full of mercury, Corbett had his second religious epiphany.

This one far more dramatic than the first.

Okay.

God, and he's so trippy, too.

You know, he was tripping balls at all or sevens.

See, Corbett began to see that his biggest personal problem was not in abstaining from alcohol, but rather in tamping down the sexual urges that he felt following the death of his wife.

My penis has got to be into trouble because everybody's trying to fuck me.

So it's hard.

I gotta fucking, I gotta think about supply and demand is all over the place when it comes to my dinghy.

No one told him it was okay to just marry again.

He had a lot of

problems.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think marrying again was quite difficult uh and i think he also wanted to just devote a life to god i want you to know thy women can vote have you heard about the fish so you think that guy

he might be hard he's hard in the courting phase well corbett turned to the bible for answers and found the verse in the gospel of matthew that said if thy hand or foot offend thee cut them off for it is better to enter the kingdom of heaven maimed than to be sent to hell intact

is my foot the problem no my foot takes me to church My hands the problem?

No, my hands mostly are there just at the end of my arms just living life.

What's my big problem?

I think I know what my problem is.

I got some devil bumps.

This verse was not meant to be taken literally, but Corbett's mercury-addled brain was already turning its gears by the time he found another verse in Matthew.

This one said that eunuchs, who had made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake, would fall under God's good graces.

And with that, Corbett decided that he'd found the answer to his problem.

In order to better serve God, Corbett grabbed a pair of scissors at the age of 26, mind you, and sliced open the bottom of his scrotum.

Yeah, there we go.

I need to get a little bit of air in there.

Using every ounce of his willpower, Corbett then reached inside his own ball sack and pulled his testicles downward so he could cut them free.

Ouch, ouch, ouch, get some ice.

Once done with this unpleasant task, Corbett stoically attended a prayer meeting with an open wound gaping beneath his legs.

Someone get me some newspapers.

Somebody get me some newspapers.

Honestly, I just want to pray, but

I am messing this pier all up.

This whole thing's getting all fucked up.

I'm going to go ahead and guess those scissors weren't too sharp.

No.

Let me sharpen them.

I do right on my front teeth.

Since he was a hatter, I'd actually guess they were quite sharp.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, yeah.

Especially to delicately cut up the wrinkly skin of your balls is actually quite difficult, I imagine.

Your scalp will probably be best.

Yeah, sure.

With a doctor.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Now, eventually, the wound clotted and the blood and fluids backed up into his scrotum, which caused the whole area to turn black and swell to an enormous size.

Fuck yeah.

You fucking found the loophole, bro.

All the boys are going to be jealous of me when they see my balls.

Blackest night.

So Corbett went to a doctor who cleaned up the wound and tied off the various tubes and vessels that Corbett had left dangling.

Corbett was then sent to a local hospital where he was given an enema because his DIY surgery had clogged up his intestinal tract.

Finally, though, about a month after the self-castration, Corbett was released from the hospital where he told his friends that he could now focus on the gospel without being, quote, tormented by his passions.

Fuck yeah.

Fucking warrior, man.

All I think about is that picture of Nicole Kidman coming out of what they said is obviously now that's been debunked, but they said it was her coming out of her divorce with Tom Cruise.

How happy she looked.

Yeah, how happy he just comes out of that game, like being like, finally, balls are gone.

I can feel the weight off my dick.

Like, he felt like he'd figured it all out.

I mean, after his recovery, he was baptized in the Boston Methodist Episcopal Church.

And in following with the tradition of apostles changing their names, Corbett left behind his given name of Thomas and took Boston as his first name because that was the city where he'd had his rebirth.

In other words, Corbett was so happy that he dug his testicles out of his own ball sack that he decided to commemorate it in such a way that he would be reminded of the act every time someone said his fucking name.

I absolutely love Boston.

It was one of my favorite places.

I loved, again, I love a nice cold beer.

And I also, that's where I lost my ball.

Ironically, it's where he lost his beans.

Yeah, you don't truly.

God, what a great time to not be in like Hopkinsville or something like that, like a super long one.

Like Cincinnati would have been a long one.

Honestly, though, but I do think Cincinnati, great place to castrate yourself.

Oh, my God.

I'm thinking about doing it over over break.

Release me.

He was the only guy in Boston who wasn't racist, too.

It's nice.

Yeah.

And Cincinnati Corbett.

I know that sounds like a riverboat gambler.

Yeah.

Now, even outside of the self-mutilation, Boston Corbett was a strange, strange man.

When Boston proselytized, he would bury his chin down in his chest and, for no reason at all, would add an ER to the end of every word, as in Lord Earth, hear our prayer.

Yep.

So he stayed drunk somehow.

He's manually duane.

He's soaked.

His head is soaked with mercury.

Yeah.

Boston also shouted the loudest amens in church and yelled, Glory to God

so frequently and loudly that people began calling him the glory to God man.

Glory to God, good to do, good to do.

I'm just so happy that the person he did kill was John Wilson.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, because this sounds more like the biography of the man who killed Lincoln.

Like, if you ask, like, okay, if you put these two biographies side by side, like the man who is soaked in mercury from head to toe, who screams and castrates himself, or the actor, the famous actor, like, who's going to kill the president?

Boston Corbett was on the right side of history.

Well, eventually, Boston Corbett decided to move back to New York City, where he joined the congregation of a man who would inform Corbett's later opinion that Christianity and violence were not mutually exclusive.

In New York, Corbett began attending services run by a retired evangelical bare-knuckle boxer named Orville Gardner,

who'd earned the nickname of Awful Gardner because of how many times he'd been put in jail for starting fights.

And he, you know, stepped on a bunch of flowers.

Yeah, yeah.

I technically raped a bunch of tomatoes.

I'm an awful dude.

Yeah, they call me the awful gardener.

Someone get me my hose.

Well, Gardner had been arrested in 1853 for biting off the ear of his opponent during a bare knuckle boxing match.

He put the holy in Holyfield.

Yeah, and he was arrested two years later for breaking a businessman's jaw because the businessman didn't take Gardner's advice on which bar to go to in New York City, which goes to show you the New Yorkers had just been like that forever.

Fuck you.

go to my place.

No, you won't.

Oh, they said

you know better.

You think you know better than you know better than me?

I know the best fucking bar in the city.

It's got fucking skee-ball.

Oh, nice.

Now, Boston Corbett was, as you can tell, a man of intense principles.

But those principles didn't just limit themselves to drinking and sex.

Boston also believed that slavery was a grave sin.

So when the Civil War broke out, Boston Corbett joined up with the Union's 12th Regiment by replacing a friend of his who was too sick to fight, a man by the name of James Brown.

It would have been great if he like he like you know, he got out of it and then someone put a coat over him and he's like, I can do it.

I'm just kidding.

I'm just kidding.

Damn the bridge.

That's one of the fun things about studying American history is that you really do like notice over like how common of a name James Brown really is.

Oh, there's a lot of guys named James Brown in American history.

But there only was one, Godfather of Souls.

That's right.

This guy was the least hard-working man in all of the Civil War.

Yeah.

Corbett, therefore, entered the Civil War on April 19th, 1861, just five days after the war began.

Against all odds, Boston Corbett would survive the entirety of the war through battles and ambushes and POW camps until the entire affair ended in 1865.

I just got to congratulate myself for seeing the most of the Civil War that anybody saw.

I saw almost every minute of it and I loved every fucking second of it.

Just prove you didn't need balls to win.

You really didn't.

No, I think overall, I think he spent three years and nine months, like in active, either in active duty or in POW camps.

You're going to hear a lot of mixed reviews about the Civil War, but I'm going to tell you right now, I

loved it.

Couldn't get enough of it.

The fellow soldiers often commented that when Corbett put on his uniform, his round, pleasant face, and abundance of long black hair worn in Jesus' style parted down the middle, they said it gave him the appearance of a woman.

I'd actually say that he looked like a more feminine Pedro Pascal.

Thank you.

From what it seems like, everyone around Corbett took every opportunity to bust his non-existent balls, because Corbett was very clearly an overly religious and performative weirdo of the highest order.

Partly, this reputation was earned because Boston Corbett was not shy about telling anyone and everyone all about his self-castration.

Hey, you want to see it?

The only times that must have happened.

You want to see it?

You want to see it?

The funny thing is that you're looking at something that's not there.

It's not funny.

It's like a laps and weird, right?

It's kind of weird.

I'm all

fucking stamina apples, huh?

Weird, right?

You want to see it again?

It's really weird.

No, I don't need to see it again.

Jesus made me do that.

I did it myself.

Just ripping off his pants.

Glory to God.

Glory to God.

Glory to God.

Oh, I just

caught the tip of my bowhole on my fly.

I mean, from what I can tell, it seems like just about everyone who served with Boston Corbett had a story about how big of a pain in the ass Boston Corbett could really be.

Glory to God.

For example, Corbett once publicly denounced a superior officer simply for saying the word damn, which earned Corbett a disorderly conduct arrest and a stint in a makeshift jail.

That's how big of a deal he made about the guy saying damn.

So let's dig a hole.

Let's Let's put Corbett in it.

Tell him.

It's literally the Civil War.

People are dying of infection.

It is the worst place to be.

And he's just been like, hey, there's no reason to be cussing.

Hey, let's think about this.

All right.

I cut my own balls off.

And when I cut my own balls off, do you think I cursed once?

No.

But rather than take his lumps, Corbett went on a hunger strike and loudly sang hymns non-stop from his cell.

It worked, though.

They fed him and released him.

Yeah, you did get out eventually.

It's more annoying in jail.

Yeah.

But while Corbett was no doubt an oddball, he was also a fucking ferocious fighter, utterly fearless.

And he apparently had a knack for being a good nurse to the other soldiers when they needed it.

This is a man made for the military.

Hey, you got a problem over there?

You want me to suck out that bullet?

I'll suck out the bullet for you if you want.

You want to see how I don't have balls?

Yeah.

Does that make you feel better?

Yeah, I can take care of you.

You know, I cut off my own balls.

I cut off my own balls, and I'm fine.

Look at me.

I survived.

I survived.

Glory to God.

Thusly, when Corbett's first tour of duty ended, he re-enlisted in the Union Army and was assigned to defend Harper's Ferry, where John Brown, another man of principal, had made his stand so many years earlier.

Harper's Ferry, however, had become an extremely active battle zone.

It changed hands between Union and Confederate control no less than eight times throughout the course of the war, which meant that Corbett had been thrown into a situation where the sin of killing could not be avoided.

But while Corbett was so afraid of his own sexual desires that he castrated himself to make it stop, he, like so many other committed Christians before and after, had absolutely no problem whatsoever with breaking the commandment against killing.

In fact, a fellow soldier wrote that for all of Corbett's fervent Christian beliefs, he was always eager to kill, no matter who the victim might be, just so long as Corbett had a biblical justification for the action.

For example, Corbett once threatened to murder two of his own soldiers for picking blackberries on the Sabbath because Corbett felt that his soldiers were committing a sin grave enough for execution.

Every blackberry you pick when they should be in church is sending that blackberry straight to hell.

Now, on the positive side of things, Corbett was one of the few white men who were fighting the Civil War on the moral issue of slavery, and he would argue endlessly about the practical use of violence to end slavery.

Corbett was so dead set on killing for the cause that when he returned to New York following his second tour of duty, he was ejected from his church following a heated argument over his eagerness to quote, shoot men like dogs.

I'm going to shoot them like a dog.

Honestly, if you ever shot a dog, it's great.

Let me do it.

I want to do it for God.

I want to do it for Christ.

I only kill dogs at work on Sunday.

I know you've shot a dog, but have you ever shot a dog with no balls?

Well, you think about what that's like, have you ever shot a dog on no balls?

And so, Corbett returned to the military to serve his mission in his third tour of service, which, these multiple tours, not as uncommon as you might think.

While some men did have moral issues with fighting the war over slavery specifically, being a Union soldier was still a well-paid job that was just as, if not less dangerous, than certain industrial careers in the mid-19th century.

Yeah, it's just so much, and you get something, and you get to go kill with the, you know, the blessing of the government.

Yeah, it's nice.

If you like that.

If all you want to do is kill, then damn.

There's plenty of killing to do.

Honestly, probably would have died earlier if he would have just stayed making hats and covering himself in mercury.

Maybe.

Maybe.

I think it just eats away at the brain.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He probably still would have made it to his like 40s or 50s.

But I don't think he would, I think that it was good for him to get the break.

Yeah.

it's the only place where the Civil War was a very good time away from his job.

During Corbett's third tour of service, he came very close to being a sort of Civil War forest gump, you know, the guy who's everywhere.

But as anyone who's seen Kim Burns' Civil War can attest, that distinction belongs to Elisha Hunt Rhodes of the 2nd Rhode Island Volunteer Infantry, who managed to find himself in almost every major battle of the Civil War.

I really wish I didn't, though, honestly.

I'd prefer to have hit every circus in America at the time, but no, it was

but it was battles.

Yeah, it was Gettysburg and Tietum.

Like, Elisha Hunt Rhodes, like, just had the worst time.

His catchphrase was, again?

You know what?

Not as bad as Gettysburg.

At least you got to say that all the time.

But as far as Boston Corbett went, he just missed the Battle of Gettysburg because his unit was defending roadways in nearby Harrisburg.

Let Let me die in Gettysburg.

Ten days later, though, Corbett was sent to New York, where he was one of the many regiments called back during the infamous draft riots.

That meant that at one point, John Wilkes Booth and Boston Corbett were in the same city, maybe even the same fucking neighborhood.

Cool.

But after all these near misses, Corbett's luck finally ran out after he signed up for a fourth tour of duty in 1864.

He found himself assigned to the front lines in Virginia, where some of the most brutal close-quarters combat in the war occurred.

Quite a bit of the action in this area came as a result of the guerrilla warfare campaigns waged by the Confederate force known as Mosby's Rangers, so named because they were led by John Mosby, aka the Gray Ghost.

All ghosts are gray.

Some ghosts are white.

You think so?

I know so.

Because I've made at least 11 ghosts.

I think of them more as green.

See, that depends on your, depends on what you're, you're, what you're going for.

It's a very frightener's way of looking at it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, that's when I saw the ghosts.

When I saw ghosts when I was a kid, they were always green.

They were, yeah, sure.

Yeah.

Mine were blue.

Interesting.

So I guess mine were Union.

Blue, Booberry.

Oh, Booberry.

That's who they were.

Booberry.

Now I feel better about it.

The most

hat making actually started in 1749.

It's actually one of the more interesting.

And if you want to get into

the history of boutineers,

back when heads were attached to feet.

Well, the Mosby Rangers.

They were a terrifying force of teenagers and young men armed with little more than cult army revolvers who rushed Union battalions in close quarters while screaming at the top of their lungs, the so-called rebel yell.

Interestingly, though, Mosby was more or less doing all this just for the love of the game.

He didn't really believe in the cause at all.

He'd spoken out against seceding from the Union before the war and became a Republican afterward.

Mosby even worked after the war as an attorney for none other than the former leader of the Union forces, Ulysses S.

Grant.

Man, nothing scares me more than a pack of teenagers.

Oh, still, to this day, imagine Civil War teenagers, which were adults.

And also, revolvers is the better weapon back then.

Very much so.

Yeah, Yeah, it was a more consistent weapon.

Yeah, I think, yeah, that's what Mosby said.

He's like, you don't give me a rifle, don't give me a saber, give me a revolver.

That's it.

And I'll say, and I'll kill anyone.

Yeah, he was a fucking psychopath.

Unfortunately for Boston Corbett, his regiment, the 16th New York Cavalry, they found themselves on the receiving end of a highly successful attack led by John Mosby and his Rangers.

The Gray Ghost forces managed to kill over 40 men in Corbett's regiment in a single attack.

But while Corbett managed to escape that battle, rebel forces ambushed Corbett's regiment again while he and his fellow soldiers were trying to eat breakfast.

Hey, I'm trying to have my flapjacks.

Ow!

I only get one meal a month.

Leave me alone!

Armed with just a single seven-shot rifle, Corbett hid in the woods and kept the rebels at bay over the course of two attempts to capture him.

That's awesome.

But on the third go-round, a rebel corporal rushed Corbett, riding a horse, and knocked his weapon from his hand.

Damn horse!

That's cheating!

A horse is fighting.

The horse don't know hate.

By the end of the day, Corbett was one of 34 Union soldiers captured and was soon on his way to one of the worst POW camps in the entire South.

And that was fucking saying something in the Civil War.

Located just south of Atlanta, this hell on earth was known as Andersonville.

Oh, now we're getting to it.

Yeah, you brought this up last week, right?

Yeah, these fuckers, man,

they sucked.

Yeah, it's not good.

This is a place that reminds me a lot of what we saw when we went to Greyfriars in Edinburgh.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Now, Andersonville was a relatively new prison when Boston Corbett arrived in June of 1864.

The camp had only been established as a POW facility earlier that year, but by August, the population had exploded to 32,000 Union soldiers.

The Confederacy, however, had not the resources nor the desire to treat these soldiers humanely.

See, when we say prison, what we really mean is a 26-acre holding pen.

Tens of thousands of Union soldiers were locked up in a field surrounded by 15-foot-high fences, guarded by sharpshooters who killed anyone who crossed a certain barrier, a barrier that came to be known as the deadline.

The deadline would eventually be used by Andersonville prisoners as a sort of poison pill, because many soldiers would come to choose death by sharpshooter over any attempt at surviving the horrendous conditions of the camp.

I'm pretty sure Corbett can't be killed.

Yeah, He can't die.

He's a vampire.

He's alright.

But I also wonder in my mind, why do I immediately see them like, I know they're not doing this, but like playing kickball, kind of like they're in a field, they're playing kickball.

And finally, it's been like, man, I'm sick of this shit.

And then just running to the deadline.

You know, been like, God damn it, Corbett, you cheated again.

I'm going to kill myself.

He just runs at the deadline.

Yeah, kickball's fun, but none of these guys had feet.

Yeah.

That's the problem.

It's kickhead.

Many of them had lost it due to gangrene.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No,

it's more like imagine a guy shitting his brains out for two weeks straight and then finally deciding if I shit for another second longer, I'm going to lose my mind.

And so he hobbles over the deadline while still shitting and his stomach cramping.

And then, you know, a sharpshooter blows his brains out.

But if I was going to be having fun with them, what I would be doing is doing the thing, being like, one foot out, one foot in.

One foot out, one foot in.

You ready?

Are you going to kill me?

One foot out, one foot in.

Are you going to do it?

I'm shitting right now.

I'm actively shitting.

They would kill you.

Yeah.

Now, the Confederacy was facing massive problems feeding even their own troops by 1864 because they lacked adequate means to deliver food to the places where it needed to be.

So feeding prisoners of war was not high on the Confederate priorities list, and the men of Andersonville starved as a result.

This was, in fact, by design, as the Confederate in charge of the prison system at large often bragged that his camps were killing more Yankees per day than any rebel general on the battlefields.

As such, Andersonville really was just an open field with no shelter whatsoever to house these prisoners.

So Union men burned in the blistering Georgia sun by day and froze by night.

Is anybody, if anybody, y'all, my Atlanta people know what Atlanta and that area of the world is like during the summer?

Jesus fucking Christ.

It is rough.

There's no fucking breeze.

It's so muddy.

It's so damp.

You can see the air.

In the summer of 2012, we filmed a bunch of Pretty Face on location in Georgia in July, and it was brutal.

And I'm an actor.

I can't imagine what a Civil War prisoner felt like.

The water was also non-existent in Andersonville because the streams that ran through the camp quickly became filth-ridden latrines.

Consequently, the camp's water source smelled so much like an outhouse that the prisoners wouldn't even go near it.

I kind of like it.

I don't mind it.

I don't mind it.

It's kind of like a minerally thing.

As a result of the non-existent waste management, the soil itself became quote a living mass of putrefaction and filth.

It was a breeding ground for maggots that reportedly ran a foot deep.

Prisoners would dig through these masses of maggots to find roots to feed themselves, but when the roots ran out, the prisoners survived on on the maggots.

I was going to say, yeah, just eat the maggots.

They did.

I mean, you don't want to start with the maggots.

The maggots are the last resort.

But I tell you what, honestly, I like the maggots.

This whole thing's kind of working out for me.

Glory to God.

The maggots were so pervasive that the men who developed open sores from their various diseases would awake to find their wounds infested, and men who were particularly diseased with the smelliest wounds were dragged away to die alone.

By the end of it, 13,000 Union soldiers had died in Andersonville by disease, dehydration, or starvation.

This was just in the 15 months that Andersonville was operational.

Geez, so they were killing a fucking thousand people a month.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

That's a wild number.

Yes, it is.

Absolutely.

And the number of deaths and the treatment of the survivors was such that the Andersonville Commandant would be one of the very,

very few Confederate officials to hang for war crimes in the aftermath of the war.

You know, know, stuffed them with maggots.

Is it weird to say that, like, I'm looking at Andersonville now and it's like a park or whatever, and that's nice, but like, I feel like for the sake of the ghosts there, they should put a thing that had air conditioning.

Yeah, you know what I mean?

Like, you just put one building that has air conditioning on it so they can experience it.

You know, that's what I'd do.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, you know, one of these days.

You know, I hope to

once we have our Civil War, I can't wait to be on the front lines of the comedians with the flutes

at the Battle of Bussy Creek.

That we're going to have to do.

When you run for governor of Georgia, be like, we're bringing air conditioning to Anderson.

I'm like, yeah.

These ghosts have been too hot for too long.

Slip and slides for the Union boys.

Now, Boston Corbett came damn close to being one of the 13,000 Union soldiers who died in Andersonville.

But I won't.

He became gravely ill with dysentery and scurvy.

They canceled each other out.

It's kind of crazy.

It's like all this crazy shit happened to me, man.

Oh, his joints swelled up so bad that he couldn't even straighten out his own back.

And Corbett, like so many others at Andersonville, also suffered near-constant diarrhea.

And as a result, Corbett endured a lifelong struggle with hemorrhoids, which were known back then as piles.

Can I say something a little off-putting?

Sure.

I kind of like diarrhea.

We all do.

There's nothing wrong with it.

Really?

It's like, as long as you got water.

Yeah.

And you're good to go.

Yeah, every time I was just like, yeah, you know, that's kind of nice.

But it's because, you know why, Eddie?

You're talking from a place of privilege.

Because every single time you've had diarrhea, you've chosen it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Same with me.

I know when I'm getting diarrhea now.

Yeah, I'm proud of it.

Yeah.

See, I made that diarrhea.

I wanted it.

I chose this.

Yeah, if you were having like, you know, the fatal type of diarrhea, which people die from diarrhea every day.

Oh, yeah, they really do.

They really do.

That would be unfortunate.

Yeah, but mine's still super fun.

Yeah, yeah.

You're because we're having too much fun at like a fair.

That's why you're having diarrhea.

Too many funnel cakes.

It's different.

Now, news of the appalling conditions at Andersonville had reached the North by November of 1864, just after Lincoln's re-election, and a mass prisoner exchange therefore began, which included Boston Corbett.

Can't forget about me.

He's the first one.

Like, get him out of here.

Hey, guys, why don't you let some other people out before me?

Because honestly, I'm kind of liking all this.

Why don't you go?

I like that.

My knees are the size of pumpkins.

It's cute.

It's like every Halloween.

Well, Corbett returned to New York City and hobbled around on crutches while still suffering from daily diarrhea.

It took a long time for it to clear up.

But it's said that Boston's faith in God and therefore his faith in the Union cause was unmoved by his time in Andersonville.

I like him more.

I like him more.

I was like, what a full opportunity to survive.

Accordingly, after just two months of recovering from the most notorious POW camp in the Civil War, Boston Corbett rejoined the 16th New York Cavalry for a fifth tour of duty at the age of 32.

You know what's crazy is that I like just stopped having diarrhea and I realized I miss it.

You know, the thing is, you can't get a good diarrhea in New York City.

You got to go down south if you want to get good diarrhea in South.

I'm back in the Army.

You got to have that slippery, sloppery, super meat falling off bone, rib sticking southern barbecue to really get a good flow going.

And that's kind of what I'm all about.

That's kind of me.

It was January of 1865, just after Lincoln's second inauguration.

And hats were still important part of society.

And we will talk here on that chat.

we will

well corbett was determined to see the war to its conclusion the war of course came to an end just a few months later along with lincoln's life and corbett's regiment was stationed in vienna virginia when they got the word that the president had been killed about 10 days later corbett and his fellow soldiers also got word that the assassin was most likely in their area.

So when detectives showed up in Virginia, hot on the trail of John Wilkes Booth, the 16th New York Cavalry found themselves in the enviable position of being the unit that would find and kill the president's murderer.

This is an example of like when they say how like God chooses somebody, right?

Like God chose Boston Corbett.

If he exits, whatever.

For some reason, Boston Corbett is all like fate comes down to this

whackadoo.

Even by, you know, going back to the the mercury poisoning, like that's the thing is that the mercury poisoning, like the castration absolutely put him along the path to joining the army, to being a fucking weirdo, to being like, to just being an insanely everybody.

Honestly, who would ever have thought that me cutting my balls off would be the smartest decision I've ever made?

And again, that's why I love Boston.

But there's also, you know, there's the question of what would have happened if John Wilkes Booth had lived.

But he did.

We'll get back to that.

We know that for a fact that he did, and that is because I've received several emails from his family members.

Which is true.

I've received several members' emails that have claimed that they are now fighting hard to verify

that John Wilkes Booth lived and had kids.

Isn't he buried on their property?

Dig him up if you can find him.

Cremated.

Ah.

He fire.

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And so, now that we've caught Boston Corbett up to our timeline, let's return to John Wilkes Booth.

Booth Booth had just shown up to Garrett's farm along with his compatriot David Harold and their new Confederate friends.

That's Absalom Bainbridge, Willie Jett, and Mortimer Ruggles.

Now, Jett's

three names together.

It's fucking insane.

I don't want to have any of them be.

If that's my crew, you're fucked.

You don't like that.

So, yeah, you want to go hang out at the bar tonight?

Oh, yeah, maybe.

Like, who's coming?

Oh, you know, like, Absalom, Willie, Mortimer.

actually i'm super tired i'll catch up with you guys next week

the jets contact at the farm jack garrett was apparently not a fan of the theater so he had no idea that he and his family were about to harbor the man who had just shot and killed the president john wilkes booth was therefore treated by the garrett family as just another wounded confederate soldier the plan went off without a hitch.

That meant that Booth was able to sleep in a bed for the first time since he left Dr.

Mudd's plantation nine days earlier.

Ha ha, how wonderful, Peb.

Thank you.

I can't even tell you what a nightmare Antietam was.

I remember Antietam.

Yo, you were at Antietam, huh?

Yeah, so, very much so.

I vacationed there several times.

And I did a wonderful rendition of Henry V.

Imagine.

Of course, for the boys.

Boys and Grey.

David Harold and the Confederates, however, they felt the need to blow off a little steam.

So, while Booth rested, his friends visited a log cabin of ill repute located just down the road.

This place, run by a woman who pimped out her four daughters to whatever Confederate might be in need of companionship, was known locally as the trap.

You guys want to go down to the trap and have sex with some bog whores?

Yeah.

Oh, yeah, there's nothing I like better than some underage bog whores.

Let's go get them.

Is the mother forcing her daughters to do it?

Watching the whole time.

Let's go.

Come on, Mortimer.

Those girls didn't have the clap.

They had the applause.

Oh, yay!

Those poor,

poor girls.

After spending the night with the ladies of the trap, David Harold,

David Harold and the Confederate trio, terrible fucking bamboo boy.

David Harold and

that's what we were doing before.

They returned to Garrett's farm.

There, they found John Wilkes' booth on the front porch, having returned to his usual charming self after a good night's sleep.

He no longer wanted just to die.

He was now full of piss and vinegar once more.

Have any of you had proper tap lessons?

After pleasant trees were exchanged, Mortimer Ruggles, Absalom Bainbridge, and Willie Jett, they decided that it was best if they moved on.

After saying goodbye, Willie Jett took off for the town of Bowling Green, where he was supposed to court a girl, while Mortimer and Absalom traveled to Port Royal.

We're gonna court each other.

But upon their arrival to the port, Mortimer and Absalom were highly disturbed to find the 16th New York Cavalry docked on a steamship.

And apparently, the 16th Cavalry were just told that Booth and Harold had been spotted crossing the Potomac into Virginia.

Mortimer and Absalom therefore raced back to Garrett's farm, and after Booth and and Harold were duly warned, they immediately left the house and returned to hiding in the woods.

30 minutes later, the 16th came riding by Garrett's farm, galloping right past the spot where Booth and Harold were hiding in the underbrush.

I thought that that yesterday would be the last day I would need to be a bush.

I am sick of being in the bush.

I am not a berry.

I am not a Brussels sprout.

I am a star, not a member of the the Corps.

Get me out of the bush.

Considering the reaction that his house guests had just had to the cavalry coming, Jack Garrett was starting to suspect that the two men staying in his home were maybe a little more hot than Willie Jett had led them to believe.

But even so, Jack Garrett still promised to take Booth and Harold to another location the next day.

And still hadn't figured out their identities.

Hadn't figured out who these guys were.

As fucking, cavalry's come through town, ask for all these guys.

Like, I don't know who these guys are.

If I was Jack Garrett, I would be the, I would definitely be like, I have no idea who these gentlemen are.

Yeah, I don't know what they do.

But because Garrett was worried that the men would steal his horses while he slept, he locked Booth and Harold in his farm's tobacco barn while Garrett and his brothers kept watch overnight.

This, of course, would be the undoing of John Wilkes Booth, because soon after the 16th Cavalry passed Garrett's farm, they arrived at the aforementioned cabin of ill repute, the trap, which was located just four miles up the road.

Yeah, I just did anal with Mortimer.

Yeah, you should go check him out.

Yeah, I'm nine.

Who gives a shit, right?

You want to blow him before you leave?

Ruggle and tuggle.

You know, it's funny, I didn't mention them being underage at all.

I just assumed.

That was just the picture you painted.

I view it as a let me really paint the picture.

Multi-generational.

Four girls, and it goes from 21, 18, 15, 9.

Yeah.

Oh, okay.

And so when they all come together, they call it the Voltron of Trap.

Yep, trap.

Voltron.

Yep.

I agree.

Are you happy?

Are you happy that you did that?

I'm happy.

Yeah,

I'm not happy, but

I just want to know what picture you were painting.

That's it.

Sometimes I like to see into the porthole.

That's all I saw was just like people under the ground having sex with Ruggles while a mother watches.

Do you think they might have called it the trap after Will's Booth Booth was caught there?

No, it was known as the trap before him.

I'm just trying to give him a little benefit of the doubt.

Nope.

It's called the trap because that's where the girls were trapped.

Oh, yes, yes.

Well, since the trap was a Confederate establishment, the ladies who worked there were uncommunicative, to say the least, towards the Union cavalry.

But the detectives traveling with the 16th, the ones who were actually in charge of this investigation, they were actually quite clever in their methods.

They knew that they would get nowhere with the locals if they said they were looking for the man who'd shot the hated Abraham Lincoln.

So they instead told the ladies at the trap that they were looking for two men who'd beaten and raped a girl.

This apparently was the right tactic.

It hit just the right chord with them, because the ladies immediately spoke up and said that four soldiers had visited the trap the day before.

While they didn't know where the soldiers had come from, one of the soldiers had said he was going to Bowling Green the next day.

That soldier was Willie Jett.

And so the cavalry raced to the Star Hotel in Bowling Green.

And after being roused from his sleep, the 18-year-old Willie Jett rolled over on John Wilkes Booth as fast as he possibly fucking could.

GW's in a bush!

He's in a bush!

He told the detectives that Booth and Harold were holed up in a farmhouse back the way they'd came, and Jett would be willing to lead them there, but only if they made sure that it did not appear as if he was collaborating with the Yankees.

The detectives said, sure, who gives a shit?

Whatever you want.

So Jett led the detectives in Boston Corbett's regiment directly to Garrett's farm, where John Wilkes Booth and David Harold were fast asleep in the tobacco barn.

Now, the two detectives in charge of the 16th were under the assumption that Booth and Harold were in the farmhouse.

So when the assembled forces arrived at Garrett's farm at 2 a.m., the detectives approached alone while the rest of the men hung back.

It was not, however, Jack Garrett who opened the door that night.

Jack was guarding the tobacco barn with his brothers, so it was Jack Garrett's elderly father who opened the door just a crack to see who it was.

The detectives didn't give a shit who was on the other side of that door, so they grabbed the elder Garrett and pulled him outside by his nightshirt.

The old man, of course, got flustered and told the detectives that the men they were looking for fled into the woods.

They fled in the wood like a bunch of butterflies.

They're a bunch of butterflies that ran into the woods.

You gotta go find them with them nets.

Go get them, boys.

Go get them.

I toyed on them.

I toyed on these little states.

Time for fucking around, however, was over.

So one of the cavalry officers ordered one of his men to bring out a rope so they could, quote, stretch the truth out of this damned old rebel.

Things were different back then.

But just as they were tossing a rope over the branch of a locust tree to hang the old man, Jack Garrett stepped forward, apparently having figured out in that very moment just exactly who the men were hiding in his tobacco barn really were.

Oh,

no.

As soon as he sees the rose, they're in the barn.

Garrett told the cavalry exactly where John Wilkes, Booth, and David Harold were hiding.

And Booth, therefore, woke up in the middle of the night to find himself locked in a barn surrounded by a large force of very angry Union soldiers.

That must have been fun for them.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, it's time.

Is it time for rehearsal?

Oh, what's time, Sakai?

Ha ha come.

Am I late?

Am I ready for the matinee?

Just imagine, like, though, you know, he's in there, and you're just fucking banging the side of the bar and going, Johnny!

Yeah, dude, Johnny!

Let's go!

We're going to fuck you, Johnny!

We're coming to fuck you, actor boy!

That's why, with a tip of the nose and a flick of the wrist, and a wink of the eye, up the chimney I go!

Just doesn't work.

Now, being an actor, John Wilkes Booth immediately settled into the role of the defiant hero.

David Harold, meanwhile, upon seeing the cavalry, suggested that maybe it was time to give themselves up.

But Booth told him that he would rather die than surrender.

Wouldn't it be romantic, my dear good man?

Us, you and I, aflame, burning and burning and burning and burning, never to live again?

Or

we go outside.

That's an or.

I'm giving us options here.

I call that the answer to this periphery.

And so, after Booth and Harold didn't directly respond to any of the cavalry's calls to give themselves up, one of the detectives gave an ultimatum: either come out within 15 minutes or we're burning down this fucking barn with you inside.

Now, at that point, David Harold lost every bit of his nerve.

As the cavalry waited for response, they could hear Booth and Harold having a hushed argument side.

Let me fucking go for a fucking pale.

You cannot go out.

Let me fucking go out.

You're building, we're building to a dramatic day no more.

This is what we're doing.

Poets on the moment I'm a fucking actor, John.

John, I'm not a fucking actor.

Jump with me.

Jump into this with me.

Yes, and with me.

Yeah, he's just all being like, we can hear you.

The mood in the barn only got worse when the soldiers began piling sticks and leaves against the structure's walls.

Beginning to build the fire now!

And when a match was lit and the fire was set, David Harold panicked and raced towards the door.

Booth threatened to shoot Harold himself if he left, but eventually Booth relented.

While Harold screamed, Let me out, let me out, let me out, let me out, he was finally let out of the back door by the soldiers.

He was handcuffed and tied to a tree where he whined and cried like a scared little boy until one of the soldiers finally couldn't stand to listen to him whimper anymore, just shoved a gag in his fucking mouth.

I can't believe they didn't kill him.

Well, actually, the goal was to take them alive.

Yes, Don Wilkes wilkesbooth was supposed to be taken he was supposed to because which is what we have we're dealing we deal with this all the time is because they wanted to try him hang him in front of everybody but do the thing they wanted to make it official and to hold up in the eyes of the law as things would go forward well at that but not just that at this point they had no idea how far the conspiracy went they didn't know if it was ordered by like you know former confederate officials they didn't know whether it was ordered by someone within the government itself or the military they wanted to see where this fucking thing they didn't know that it ended at John Wilkes Booth at just this moment.

Yeah, they thought there was a whole like Byzantine conspiracy

within the Confederacy.

And this is also the kind of shit that led to all the conspiracy theories after the fact.

Yeah, they thought Jefferson Davis ordered the assassination.

Yes, and that maybe there were guys on the inside of the White House that were helping.

Because there was all this confusion about how they were,

there was these military parades and all this kind of military actions that were happening around the city that sort of allowed John Wilkes Booth to even leave Washington, D.C.

And so they viewed that as a big conspiracy.

That was like one of the Edward Stanton did it again.

You know, he defied Abraham Lincoln because he thought Abraham Lincoln was going to be too soft on the South.

So he organized the hit on Abraham Lincoln.

Yeah.

Stanton, the Secretary of War.

And then they actually killed John Wilkes Booth, and there was a double that looked like John Wilkes Booth.

It's the whole.

Yeah.

It's stupid.

Yeah.

It's not real.

It doesn't even matter because old Corbett was there.

Well, the fire set by the soldiers had finally grown large enough to clearly illuminate John Wilkes Booth inside the barn, who was seen holding onto his crutch with one hand and holding a colt revolver in the other, while a rifle rested against his hip.

Now, the soldiers hadn't been given any orders to fire, but they also hadn't been given orders to not fire.

Yeah, nobody said anything about what exactly we were supposed to do when we got

this position.

Hold on, by fire, do you mean set the fire?

You're setting the fire, and I'm firing his life.

So, Boston Corbett had his own 44 revolver aimed squarely at John Wilkes Booth through a narrow barn slat.

I'll fix your problem for you.

He just opens up, just sticks his gun in there.

If you'll remember, Corbett was always eager for a kill.

He thirsted for murder.

And here he had the man who had shot down his great leader, Abraham Lincoln.

And this man was trapped in desperate, very likely about to open fire on Corbett and his fellow troops.

Why are none of you guys killing this guy?

So, when Booth reached the barn door and raised his rifle, Corbett fired a single shot.

And when the detectives flung open the door, this is one of my favorite images in history.

John Wilkes Booth fell face down as blood spurted from the bullet hole in his neck.

To be honest, that's the first time I ever done it in one shot.

That was amazing.

That's crazy.

And through the slack.

Usually I shoot him and then I beat him with rocks.

Yeah, I finished him off.

Sometimes, you know, a bear comes and finishes them where they get real sick.

How many people do you think Corbett murdered?

Oh, man.

Just rough estimate.

I know there's no way to know.

Rough estimate.

I mean, it's impossible to know in this.

It could be like, it could be 100.

It could be 30.

Yeah.

I mean, it could be one.

I know my grandfather.

could be six.

They said my grandfather had like

a confirmed 10.

And that was World War II?

That was World War II.

And they talk about that.

He was in there for two years.

So it's like if you track like the five years, I bet he'd probably bet about 50.

Like also, a lot of them didn't die immediately.

That's true.

Yeah.

Yeah, who knows?

Now, as far as kill shots.

That's got to be so disappointing.

As far as kill shot locations went, Corbett could hardly have picked a more painful spot to shoot John Wilkes Booth.

The bullet shattered shattered Booth's vertebrae and severed his spinal cord, simultaneously paralyzing Booth and causing him extreme pain.

See, unlike Lincoln, who was unconscious for the hours he lingered on, Booth was fully awake the entire time.

He did not die quickly, and he spent the next few hours feebly asking for someone to kill him over and over again as blood filled his throat.

Will someone please kill my head?

My head is the last living part.

Will you just please kill my head?

Which would usually be very annoying, but in this instance was delightful to hear.

I'm sure.

The detectives, meanwhile, tried to interrogate Booth as much as they could, because as I said earlier, they still had no idea how far this conspiracy actually reached or if Booth was the head of the snake.

But finally, in his last moments, Booth lifted his hands.

It's actually, do you know, he was asking somebody to lift his hands?

Oh, he couldn't lift his hands.

It's not because he said useless, useless.

It's because he asked the guy to lift his hands up to his face and he wouldn't do it.

And then when he didn't, he said useless, useless, and then he died.

Oh, so as an actor, even in his last moments, all subtext.

Yes.

But at any rate, his last words.

He was paralyzed.

At any rate, his last words were, useless.

Useless.

Has to be so fucking dramatic.

Okay.

Yeah.

And, you You know, for an assassin, he better be.

Yeah, that is true.

And with that, America's first successful presidential assassin died from asphyxia at 7.15 a.m., 12 days after he killed one of the greatest leaders our country has ever had.

Boston Corbett, meanwhile, had ridden off to a spot where he could be alone to pray.

And after asking God if he'd done the right thing, Corbett claimed that God told him, Fuck yeah, bro.

Great job.

Thanks, God.

You don't gotta allow people angry at you because you give kids diseases and you do all sorts of things that seem unfair and random, but you're good with me.

God, would you let me cut my balls off one more time?

Yes,

yes, my dear child, after you did this most splendid job, here you go.

My bones!

My favorite son.

I love you more than Jesus Christ.

What a pussy, right?

Crying and bitching to me when he's on that stick.

Handle yourself, son.

Even though the man who'd killed the president was dead, there was still the matter of what to do with David Harold, along with what to do with everyone else who'd been involved in the plot to kill the president.

Eventually, the government whittled the conspiracy down to nine defendants.

Most of them were caught within five or six days after Lincoln's assassination.

I think Harold was the one who took the longest to catch.

You know, that was like 14.

Yeah.

Yeah, they weren't green berets who he was working with.

You know what I mean?

This was like a, it was a real rag tag group.

It was.

And also the government started off by arresting basically everyone who had ever had anything to do with Booth at any point in Booth's life.

Yes.

Good?

I mean, well, some of them didn't really deserve it.

You know, like some of them were just like, for example, like the guy who had worked as Booth's agent in like 1860, before the Civil War and before Wilkes had really lost his mind.

Remember the guy that Books stole his gun and Booth accidentally shot himself in the leg?

They arrested that guy.

Yeah, it's worth slapping him around and find out what he knows.

Technically, I know the group arrests are rough, but it is a technically, you know, we did a lot of shit after 9-11.

Oh, yeah.

I don't really remember.

Yeah.

But that was all totally legal and fine.

Yeah.

We use that as a lot of my guests.

Now, these nine defendants, they were all tried in a collective trial that began less than a month after the assassination.

This is, of course, once officials were satisfied that the conspiracy had gone no further than John Wilkes Booth.

After 50 days, all nine defendants were found guilty by a panel of nine military officers, but only four were sentenced to death.

Mostly, that distinction was saved for the men who had directly participated in the mass assassination plot.

That would be Lewis Powell, George Atzerott, David Harold.

The one outlier in the executions was tavern keeper Mary Surratt, who, as we said last episode, was the first woman to ever be executed by the United States federal government.

It was said that Mary was sentenced to death by hanging because her tavern had been, quote, the nest that hatched the rotten egg.

It's been speculated, however, Mary Surratt was actually sentenced to death more as a tactic to lure her son John out of hiding, because John Surratt was the only conspirator that the government wanted but didn't get.

He was like, you can have my mother.

Yeah, John Surratt, he was already long gone by the time his mother was hanged as a traitor.

If you remember, while John Surratt was certainly a Confederate piece of shit, he had left the conspiracy just before it became an assassination plot because he thought that John Wilkes Booth was too much of a liability.

He's correct.

Very correct.

Surratt was therefore already on his way to the Canadian Confederate stronghold of Montreal when Lincoln was murdered.

Surratt, however, was smart enough to know that he was in deep shit nonetheless.

So after a couple of pro-slavery Catholic priests, there were plenty of them around,

after they gave him shelter, Surratt hopped on a boat across the Atlantic to Liverpool.

Liverpool.

From there, Surratt made the incredibly unpredictable move of going to the Vatican, where he enlisted in the Catholic Church's infantry battalion, which actually existed until 1870.

Wow!

It was hiding plain sight.

Yeah, it's wow, wow!

I mean, how else is gonna have sex with children?

You go down in the trap.

Seurat was able to worm his way into this battalion through his Montreal connections, because hundreds of Canadians had already joined the Vatican's armed forces.

But what Seurat didn't count on was the greed of his fellow man.

An old acquaintance of Seurat's tipped off the U.S.

Consul that John was in the Pope's guard.

He's in the Pope's fucking guard.

He's in the Pope's guard.

Yeah, I hear me.

Like, it's so crazy.

And an old friend, like a guy he used to know, turned him in for the reward money.

And I ended up getting like 10 grand.

I mean, Catholics love money.

That they do.

10%.

Back to the church.

So, after a brief negotiation, a cardinal agreed to take Surat into custody so he could be turned over to American authorities.

But in another unbelievable twist, John Seurat broke loose from his guards during transport and jumped off a fucking cliff.

Whoa!

He survived and made his way to Naples, where he boarded a freighter to Egypt.

This man's seen the whole goddamn world.

He has just been like, he's having the best vacation I've ever heard of.

A man who plotted to kill the president.

My God, Montreal to Liverpool,

to Italy, to Naples, to the Vatican, to Naples, to Egypt.

It's amazing.

But by this point, the Americans were hot on Surat's trial, so the American consul was waiting for Surat upon his arrival in Alexandria.

Jesus.

This was, however, almost two years after Lincoln's murder.

So Seurat was not tried in the same military court as the other conspirators.

Instead, Surat had a normal court trial, which ended in a hung jury.

The government then tried for a treason charge, which failed on a technicality.

And a third attempt was also thrown out because of the second attempt.

And most people by this point, they just wanted to move on from the war.

So John Surratt was set free.

Wow, it worked.

He capitalized on his role in the conspiracy by giving paid public talks about his involvement in the plot to kidnap Abraham Lincoln, and he died of pneumonia as a free man in 1916 at the age of 72.

So we got to see like cars and electricity, light,

all of it, dude.

And he got to do the truly most American thing ever, which is double down on your crimes and make money for it later on.

Like,

that is a pinnacle part of the American experience.

And he did it like a true American, too.

He made sure to only talk about the stuff that was already made public, that was public knowledge, so that way he could not be charged with anything new.

He could be brought in.

He knew how to do it.

Yep.

See, he's the most true American dream of this whole thing.

Yep.

Now, while Surat's postscript was action-packed, no other person in this saga had a more interesting post-war journey than Boston Corbett.

Of course.

Of course it's him.

Corbett naturally became a celebrity following Booth's death.

But then that's the incredible.

Like, think about this man that we've talked about this entire time.

He is now the most famous man in America.

He's like, you know,

this is like equivalent of like him hanging out with like Pete Davidson.

Yeah, him like all like doing all this crazy shit.

Just being like, I'm a benefit floor, sir.

Several people cut their balls off.

They don't, they don't regret it.

They regret it, honestly.

They don't understand

what they're doing or why they're doing it.

Oh, yeah.

Ulysses S.

Grant is coming to shake this man's hand.

I cut my balls off.

Yeah.

It's like LBJ shaking Forrest Gump's hand

in the movie and like shows him his ass.

Like, goddamn.

So it's that over and over again.

Yes.

Now, Corbett naturally got a lot of death threats after shooting John Wilkes Booth from Confederate sympathizers.

Constant death threats.

And he loved it.

Yeah, well,

it gave him very good reason to carry a gun at all times for the rest of his days.

And the threats, that would be enough to make anyone paranoid.

But Corbett's career as a hatter and the mercury poisoning he suffered as a result only made that paranoia worse.

His paranoia led to constant verbal altercations with people both friendly and hostile.

He didn't really make a distinction.

And those disputes usually ended when Corbett drew his pistols long before the argument called for such escalation.

As such, Corbett began to seek a more private life.

I need to chill out.

I didn't relax.

By 1878, he'd settled in Kansas, where he built himself a dugout carved into a hillside.

Home.

That's what I like.

Just literal dents in a mountain.

Hey, my fucking ancestors in Oklahoma, they lived in dugouts.

They're fantastic.

I used to build when I was a kid.

I loved to build.

That was like one of my favorite things to do, is find a good hill.

You fucking dig into the side of it.

You make a dugout.

Really lucky I didn't die doing that.

You just got done killing the assassin of the president of the United States of America, and he's living in dirt.

He's choosing to live in dirt.

It's great.

He is Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Six.

Yes.

And Wiley Coyote.

And quite a bit of Daffy Duck.

This is enough for me.

Now, right here, this is all.

This is enough for me.

I have my sleeping rock.

I have my sitting rock.

And I got my tobacco.

And I got my brain, which is I can talk to and see in front of my own eyes.

Actually, what he loved more than anything was his horse, Billy.

Yeah, I love old Billy.

Yep.

He lived his days with that beloved horse.

Lid Billy just sleeping in the dirt, hanging out here on the hillside.

He's the only one that understands me.

I love Billy.

It's those guys, you know, I've met them before.

It's like, when that dog dies, like, he's going to kill everybody.

Yeah.

Let's just say, don't mess with Billy.

Corbett split his time between cattle ranching and preaching wherever Billy would take him.

But his proselytizing got more and more lost in the mercury cloud as the years went by.

His hellfire and brimstone fervor became too much for even the Kansas crowd who kicked him out of their congregation because Corbett wouldn't stop literally screaming about so-called eternal burning.

I'm talking about my piles.

His brain was on fire.

My ass

is filled with devils.

By the time Corbett was in his 50s, he'd become a clear danger to anybody who was in his presence.

In 1885, Corbett opened fire on a bunch of local boys who were playing baseball on a Sunday.

Someone's got to.

He justified the action by saying it was merely that he was merely trying to warn the boys of the spiritual risks of such an activity.

Sometimes you'll get a bullet from God in your little head, you dumb shit fucking little.

You think that you can play baseball when God's at work?

Corbett also made himself a nuisance at the Kansas House of Representatives because he believed the legislature, along with the local county officials and the courts, and this is such, it shows you like paranoia never changes.

He was convinced that they were all conspiring to steal his disability pension.

They're not helping me keep it.

They're not filling out the paperwork.

They're not showing up to the appointments.

They're not doing all this shit I gotta do.

Those are my two dollars a month, and no one's taking them.

That's for me and my brain.

And after Corbett finally pulled his revolvers on some house members, he was finally arrested and declared legally insane by a judge who sent Corbett to a state asylum in Topeka.

Finally, someone had the balls.

I am legally insane.

I say that because I don't have balls and I am legally insane.

By 1887, the hospital had declared Corbett to be permanently insane.

Okay.

That meant that he was unlikely to ever be released.

It was like the equivalent of like a life sentence.

I want that stamp.

Permanently insane.

Permanently insane.

Just tattooed on your forehead.

The following year, though, Corbett surprised everyone when he escaped captivity after stealing a horse.

Just fucking took off.

Some guy was visiting with his horse, left the horse

unsupervised.

Hey, you look like Billy.

Billy, remember me, Billy?

The fear was that Corbett was on his way to assassinate members of the Kansas legislature.

But Corbett, again, surprised everyone by instead deciding to visit an old friend.

Dude, this is the story of the last Rambo movie.

It is.

They're more surprised that he had a friend.

Yeah.

What?

My buddy.

I want your hang on with my buddy, my pet pal.

Quite calmly, Corbett told his old friend that he planned to head to Mexico.

And after that friend watched Boston Corbett board a train.

I think that train's going north.

The man who killed John Wilkes Booth vanished from history forever.

I imagine he's just like, I'm going to get on this train.

He's walked off a cliff.

You know, like he literally, but he doesn't fall at all.

Like he literally, he does the wily coyote where he uses,

all right, see you later.

On my way to Mexico.

You know, like, you see him outside of.

Like, but they do say that they think that he did end up going north.

That he told a bunch of people he was going to Mexico and then he just ended up in the Dakotas.

Yeah.

Well, that's actually sparked.

Yeah, it is.

Yeah.

No one, seriously, no one has any idea whatsoever.

Like, a couple of people did try to come up and say, like, I'm, you know, I'm...

Corbett, but no, they were proved to be frauds.

He's just fucking.

You just got to check them for balls.

That is literally.

was listening about this about how many people came forward being like, I'm Boston Corbett.

It's like there, there's an easy test.

Now, as far as the consequences of John Wilkes Booth's actions go, they are both far-reaching and impossible to truly quantify.

Yes, Lincoln's death did have a massive effect on the reunification of America following the war, a process known as Reconstruction.

But it's hard to know exactly how Lincoln would have handled it differently.

See, despite what the South thought, Abraham Lincoln was, by all accounts, a moderate, and most historians agree that leniency towards the South had always been a part of Lincoln's post-war plans.

But it's also true that Lincoln's successor after the assassination, President Andrew Johnson, he was a fucking terrible person to handle Reconstruction.

Johnson gave pardons to almost all the Confederates who took an oath of allegiance to the Union.

That included the Confederate president, Jefferson Davis, who retired to where else but Montreal after the war.

Johnson also returned all plantations to the men who'd previously worked that land with slave labor, but Johnson's worst crime was leaving every former Confederate state to do pretty much whatever they wanted after the war, just so long as they didn't bring back outright slavery.

Yeah, and he took away the 30 acres and a mule, too.

Yeah.

Well, because he was also supposed to, because the idea that one of the big plans was Abraham Lincoln was kind of talking about, which people take in a bad way, but sometimes, but I actually view it differently where he said, like, we got to teach everybody to read.

We got to teach everybody how to do all this stuff.

We want them to be a part of society.

We want the newly freed black people to be able to vote and participate and do all this shit.

It's going to require these certain steps that they're going to have to do.

Of course, because it's like, congrats, you're free.

Now you're homeless.

That doesn't make any sense.

It doesn't make any sense.

Well, the educational programs did actually take place.

That was one of the few things that got through.

But, and that's the thing, but the South, the Southerners got pissed off because they were teaching black people to read.

And the federal government was like, you know, anyone can come to these schools.

It doesn't have to, like, we're just teaching anybody who wants to come.

Yeah, you should come and learn to read.

Fucking Southerners refused to come because, of course, black people were there and they did not want them to be on any sort of equal footing.

And we all know that the North did the worst crime of all.

Hypocrisy.

We know that for a fact.

Yeah.

And eventually they just gave up on it.

You know, there was a compromise.

You know,

it's a lot of American history after this.

But because President Johnson took the route of states' rights, Jim Crow laws quickly emerged in the South, and a lot of post-war civil rights legislation failed on the federal level.

What followed was a lot of horrible shit, to say the very least, which would take an entirely different series of podcasts to cover.

As such, I'm not really sure what the lesson at the end of all this really is, because sadly, John Wilkes Booth succeeded despite his best efforts.

See, Reconstruction would probably have been far harsher towards the South if George Atzerott had actually killed Andrew Johnson.

And Booth was totally wrong about William Seward stepping into the vacuum of power upon Lincoln's death.

Instead, Seward's legacy is buying Alaska, which was known for years as Seward's Folly.

But that's...

Alaska's cool.

Yeah, now we like it.

Yeah, now we like it.

Well, we like it after the oil.

Yeah.

Yeah, but back then, yeah, everyone's like,

that's what Seward was known for most in American history, was fucking Seward's Folly.

But that's all to say that while the South still lost the war, the institutionalized disenfranchisement of black people in the South, particularly, has continued to this day, which is exactly what John Wilkes Booth wanted.

Booth and those of his ilk are such spineless fucking bullies, so lacking in any sort of self-confidence that they only feel good if someone else in society has a permanent boot on their neck.

Some of these people are so dependent on this system for their own peace of mind that they will commit murder to keep it alive, which is what you had in the case of the pathetic wannabe John Wilkes Booth.

However, I will say that while there are still plenty of Americans with the mindset of John Wilkes Booth in 2025, many currently holding office, there's also a hell of a lot more Abraham Lincolns than there ever were.

And today, those Lincolns are gay as hell and ready to take it to the fucking streets.

Suck it to the hilt, Lincolns.

So while things look bleak right now, I still urge everyone to show up and fight where you're needed.

Because while this country always has been and probably always will be fucked up to some degree, there's always the hope that we can someday, somehow, make it better.

I will therefore be goddamned if we lose the chance to one day fulfill the promise of this great but flawed nation to the shitheads currently in power who want nothing more than to remake this country in the image of pathetic fucking losers like John Wilkes Booth.

My country tis of the sweet land of liberty

of the IC.

Lord of God,

that's

assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

And you want to say, you did a really good job of just kind of like wrapping up like 120

years of history right at the end there.

It took some doing.

You did a really good job.

Thank you, thank you.

It's precarious.

It's what?

It's precarious.

Well, I mean, it's extraordinarily complicated in every way whatsoever.

Yeah.

It would take another series of podcasts to properly explain all of it.

But yeah, Reconstruction is very, very, very complicated.

That's why

instead of tackling Reconstruction, we're coming back next week with hat chat.

We're getting even deeper into Fezzes.

We're going to talk a little bit about turbans.

Is it a hat?

We'll find out next week.

Now, the thing about John Wilkes Booth, though, is that I really got to bring up before we close out is like, what if he didn't do it?

Thank you.

Finally, Somebody said it.

You are talking sense.

You are talking sense.

I know that was the reason we brought you on.

He had his double.

Obviously, he was trained.

He was a member of the Union War.

He was part of the intelligence groups of the Union War.

And I guess that was one big part of it.

Another one was which we've said oftentimes his head just did that.

Yeah.

Then there was also

the Annabelle theory.

Oh, Annabelle, that was the ghost that came from England on a boat

to see the Civil War.

Yeah.

Killed Lincoln.

Gotcha.

Went back to England.

Okay.

Got that little doll.

Sure.

And now it's in a basement in Connecticut.

It's right here.

Yeah.

Oh, hey.

Because I stole it.

Nice.

Yeah.

You know what?

I haven't learned anything.com slash last podcast on the left to give us money for this.

Yeah, to see us live.

Yeah, if you want to see all the wonderful jigglings and stand-ups and all the fun act outs that we do, go to our Patreon.

Doesn't cost but just a little bit of cash each month.

And you also get to see last stream on the left live every Tuesday at 6 p.m.

PSD, 9 p.m.

EST.

And you get to interact with us live on the chat.

You get to see it uncensored, unlike what comes out later.

Oh, yes.

And tonight, if you are so lucky, you will join us on YouTube at LPN-TV for the last podcast, for the very first production that we can't wait to show you guys.

Last podcast and the left presents Beyond the Veil.

June 20th.

June 20th, tonight, you can come and see what it's like when we peer Beyond the Veil with professional exorcist R.H.

Davis.

And you might even be involved

if you dare.

We should try to get Lincoln for the seance.

We should.

Oh, you're just going to be like, yeah, I like to see all that.

God, it's nice to see a nice, tight young man walking around with his very top of his pube showing out of his pants.

God damn, I wish I was president again.

When I was a boy, June was just collar a month.

All right, fuckers.

Hail Satan.

Hail Gain.

Hail you, Marcus.

This was great, man.

Thank you so much.

This is unbelievable.

And I'm going to rebound that hail over to our researchers.

You know, I hail Joel and Shaw, who just did an absolutely fantastic job, you know, helping us out with this one.

They really did.

They helped walk us through a lot of complicated stuff.

And also, I got so many great emails from people with a bunch of different.

It's like, it is true about the Booth family.

I got reached out by several people that claim to be members of the Booth family.

Yeah?

Yes.

Lots of people think they are.

They do, yeah.

It's very interesting.

Well, those dudes were fucking.

Got shit better of it.

Show's over.

Yep.

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