I came here from Mr. Samuel Seymore's interview. It's amazing to hear voices of people who were physically there on that awful night. It would've been so interesting to meet these eyewitnesses, and hear their stories. People say that elderly people are lame, but they are wrong. Elderly people come with great knowledge, and they just might have a story that brings significant knowledge to your mind. What a fascinating video.
Those of you that are arguing the accuracy of the story are missing the point. You're listening to a guy that was there at the time. He could be talking about playing horseshoes, and it would still be fascinating.
Really-we're assuming he was really there-but if he has inaccuracies what's the good of-anyway after the ititial part he's just telling the story he was not an eye wittness to
How many stories out there are filled with inaccuracies and lies..if he's lying, they at least it's good to know that the USA hasn't gotten worse...people have been lying for years.
ryanexpress34 Yes it seems like the fake news never stopped but at least it's interesting to listen to something that actually has political and historical significance. I agree with one of the last guys that made a statement to the effect that it wouldn't matter if this guy was talking about playing with horseshoes... He was there at the time alive during an era which is long gone and it's just interesting to hear this guy speak because our history as a nation is only summarize but those he remember the past or take a trip down memory lane through the voice of someone that lived during the time
This piece attracts a lot of neoconfederate types in the comments below. I believe this is a fraudulent account. Sound recording technology couldn't record this well in 1933. Further there is a lot of evidence Booth died on the farm when he refused to surrender. His body was taken, shown to relatives, autopsied and samples taken from it. He was a public figure with many photographs, many people knew what he looked like so his death wasn't something easily faked. This piece though a little critical of the assassination ends up heroizing Booth as a daring-do character. Booth was a committed racist, white supremacist and traitor to not just the US, but also humanity. Don't waste your time with this phony history.
Thanks for the "must read" title.....facinating.....never thought about the written description from the witnesses. I can't wait to read those accounts..
How strange that Mr, Hazleton, recalling the events so many years later, would have mistakenly identified the other male in the President's theater party as Surgeon General Joseph Barnes. It could be understood that a young boy might make this mistake at the time of the event in 1865 but surely he must have heard in the aftermath that the man who was with Lincoln in the box and stabbed by Booth was actually Major Henry Rathbone. Barnes and Rathbone both wore their whiskers in a similar style of the day. The description of the hush that immediately followed the shot is apparently authentic as is the description of Booth wearing riding boots but the description of Booth's activities after he left Ford's Theatre is obviously not part of Hazleton's eye-witness account and is merely the retelling of a doubtful legend that grew popular in the years after the assassination. Still, it is a very vvid account.
I'm in "awe" of Samuel J. Seymour telling his story as a small child of 6 with his nurse at the time that "President Lincoln" was shot!" Incredible story to hear and to be part of the hearing of that event that took our breath away to imagine what everyone was going through at that time sad and most delicate time after so many years.
This is very fascinating and an honor to listen to. Thank you so much posting this video for all to listen to this assassination eyewitness account of America's most beloved President!
There's another video on RU-vid, from a guess-who TV game show in the mid-1950's. The guest was the last living witness of the Lincoln assassination. The man was nearing 100 years of age, and he talked about his memories of that night, when he was a member of the audience in Ford's Theater, at the age of 5 or 6; I don't remember his exact age at the time but he was very young. It was a lot more powerful than this recording because it had no theatricality or embellishments. The man just simply described the confusion he felt as a little child to the mayhem that had erupted out of the blue from a night of play-watching.
he also remembered being more concerned "with the man who fell from the booth" (no pun intended) then the President, because he had not known the President was shot.
Thanks for the comments. A friend gave me the document you see in the video and that inspired me to do some research. I found the voice recording that basically repeats what the document says. Yes, I think hearing the voice of someone who was there is fascinating. The story about Booth escaping was new to me as well. I'm going to do some more research and try to separate fact from fiction.
The Surgeon General was the only to make a stand against Booth in that entire theatre of Army and Navy Officers. Hats off to you sir! Don't have to be a soldier to do brave acts in the moments of crisis!
Joseph Hazleton was definitely there as a child, age eleven, handing out programs, but we know that Surgeon General Barnes was NOT in the Presidential party in the box that night. Hazleton has confused him with Major Henry Rathbone who grappled with Booth and was severely wounded in the arm by Booth's knife. There is no other witness to Laura Keene coming to the footlights to announce to the audience that the "President has been shot by John Wilkes Booth." The tall tale of Booth surviving and committing suicide with arsenic years later is, of course, an urban legend, thoroughly debunked by professional historians, although, clearly, Hazleton believed it. Eye-witness account are fascinating, but often mistaken in details, especially after several decades have passed.
You're daft! Major Rathbone tried to stop Booth after he shot Lincoln and Booth stabbed him in the arm. What did the Surgeon General do? Nothing! He did not stop Booth. Rathbone was the ONLY one who attempted to make a stand against Booth.
@@SStupendous No teleportation, but the only person to grapple with Booth was Major Rathbone in the box. Booth made a relatively quick getaway after jumping from the box
I liked how 1903 was referred to not as "19 Oh 3", as we say today, but "nineteen three." AND the guy's accent, which is nothing like today's American. I've heard architect Frank Lloyd Wright on old tapes, and he sounds much the same. When you watch old movies from the 30's you can still hear that long-gone accent.
That’s how people referred to the 1910s that lived through it. I meet an old man when I was a child in the 90s I specifically remembered him referring to 1906 as “nineteen six”
The accent wasn't natural, but contrived. It's called the mid Atlantic, or transatlantic, accent (look it up). Basically before movies, or amplification, you had to project your voice a great deal and speak very precisely or you couldn't be understood. When the first recording equipment was developed, it was still low enough quality that unless you spoke very precisely like this, the meaning of your sentences was often lost. Plus it was a way for newscasters, sports announcers, television/radio personalities, etc to erase regionalisms in speech so as to all sound the same, but not like anyone naturally spoke, so as to have a more mass appeal. Nowadays we've scrapped the idea of a contrived "stage accent" separate from normal speech, and just decided that the accents of the American Midwest, which became the predominant southern California accent when so many midwesterners settled there, should be the "standard American accent," whatever that means, probably because so-cal is the hub of American entertainment and that's how people from around there talk. So a lot of people around the country, especially younger people, have also developed what used to be regional niche dialects/accents of California that originated in the heartland.
It is interesting to note, that recently Roger Mudd the broadcast journalist, died. Roger Harrison Mudd was born on Feb. 9, 1928, in Washington. The family was distantly related to Samuel A. Mudd, a Maryland doctor who treated John Wilkes Booth's broken leg after Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln in 1865. Dr. Mudd was accused of being part of the plot for awhile until he was found to have been at the wrong place (his home) at the right time. I have been told, the phrase, "Your name is Mudd" came from this false accusation of his guilt.
Exactly right. I was in my teens when the US government finally declared Dr. Mudd was not one of the plotters. When that time came Roger Mudd was given the honor of being the one to announce that bit of news on the evening broadcast. I saw it. He was very moved his family name had been cleared.
Back in the late ‘60s I worked at a company located at 10th & Streets. Our Office overlooked the back of Ford’s Theater and the alleyway there. I often thought about what happened there 100+ years before. When they reopened the theater they did a network special and the stars like Bob Hope, Carol Channing, Raymond Burr, etc. would gather there during rehearsal breaks. I think that’s the only time I’ve ever seen actors in person.
Kind people can do bad things. Humans... to me, are complex and unpredictable. Take the man who was a committed vegetarian, loved dogs and children and disney films... and had over 6 million people slaughtered in cold blood.
It sounds very similar to an English accent. America made accents like this extinct with the adoption of the neutral midwestern accent as the accepted newsreader accent of the US. This was done precisely to distinguish between Americans and British accents and forge a new American identity. Shame this accent is very nice.
It's most definitely the Mid-Atlantic accent. It also stems from the Patrician societies of the northeast, which were the wealthier families of New England down to Maryland. They decided the proper, more distinguished way to speak was to sound more English. It was kind of a fad at the turn of the last century that lasted much too long, it slowly died out by about the 1960's. You can hear it in old movies from the 40's and 50's, Katherine Hepburn is a great example of the Boston variant.
Know we know how some mid nineteenth century people talked plus a trained actor who had to talk in a precise manner to allow an audience to understand before amplification.
Laura Keen: "Ladies and Gentlemen, the Presidents been shot by John Wilkes Booth." An announcement such as this suggests the class of people of that day.
It has been said that Joseph H Hazelton, silent Screen Actor, had a romantic interlude with Dame Mae Fishman. They had a child out of wedlock that they named Wilkes J Hazleton. Fishman and Hazleton went on to make more movies but without each other. It is unknown what happened to their son Wilkes.
Though likely reading from his own written account rather than orally recanting it, I can tell that he's likely told it many times to many gatherings over the years, perhaps one of his draws as a man of the theater (hear a firsthand account of the Lincoln assassination! come one, come all!). It would have made quite the attraction for the theater company I'd imagine.
Eli Dean It's unbelievable because it is not genuine. Hazleton may have been a real person etc., but the recording is modern and clearly done by a voice actor (and not a very good one at that).
There are some totally enaccurate statements in his story for sure. Who knows if he was actually there at all. I'll bet if you rounded up all the people who said was there you couldn't stuff them all in Fords Theater. I don't know if there was any independent proof that he was there but It's interesting none the less in my opinion.
Agreed. I worked at a WWII museum, and we met so many "vets" who were in the Flying Tigers or onboard the Enola Gay... that plane musta been a Jumbo Jet.
Rathbone was haunted by those events the rest of his life, and he later attempted to stab his children to death, killed his wife as she tried to protect them, and attempted to stab himself to death in what today would likely be deemed a post-traumatic flashback. He died in an asylum.
inkyguy wtf are you even talking about? Basil never killed his wife, he divorced his 1st wife in 1924, remarried and was married to that woman till he died of a heart attack at 75 years young? The fuck are talking about?
This was fascinating to listen to. Imagine an eyewitness who recorded his thoughts and recollections of that terrible day. The man in the box accompanying Miss Clara Harris that night was actually Major Henry Rathbone not Surgeon General Barnes and it was he whom Booth slashed after shooting the president. Booth broke his ankle after his 11 foot jump and therefore was able to walk albeit in pain. On a side note, Rathbone and Miss Harris eventually married and years later he went mad and murdered her. He spent the remainder of his life in a lunatic asylum, never having forgiven himself for not stopping Booth that night on April 14, 1865.
@@Liz-sn1mm Booth and accomplice David Herold were on the run for 12 days before being caught by Union cavalry. Herold surrendered but Booth was shot and died a few hours later. He had his broken ankle set by a Dr. Samuel Mudd shortly after leaving Washington following the shooting Lincoln. He was in severe pain and needed medical treatment badly. Mudd was a southern sympathizer and was later imprisoned for helping Booth. Booth’s riding boot which Dr. Mudd cut off of his leg is on display at the Ford’s Theater museum in Washington DC.
What more could you expect from an actor. Especially a New England "Stage Actor" well known for their theatrical displays of vocabulary. Pure spectacularization to amaze the crowd gathered before him. Food for his ego. This diatribe sounds so well rehearsed that he must of said it a thousand times or more.
Radio has been prominent in American homes since 1925. It was that year the movie industry blamed the broadcast industry for movie theater box office slumps. Also, it was that year that the electrical recording and playback process, which allowed for great amplification, replaced the acoustic process and this advent made talking pictures practical. Recording technology was very high quality by 1933 as evidenced by records and films still in pristine condition. Mystery in The Wax Museum, King Kong, Cimarron, The Big Trail, Doctor X, Dracula, Frankenstein, Little Caesar, Public Enemy, and so on. Fox Studios was using the Vitagraph long playing disc recording system on its prestige films since 1926's Don Juan. Using records and magnetic wire as audio storage mediums was very common in the radio broadcasting industry.
I think the recording is a fraud, just like the whole tale. Too many details make no sense. The old Booth doesn't look at all like the one that died in April 1865. There was a book written using this false narrative. It sold a million copies. Parading the body around in carnivals was good publicity for it. It is essentially a hoax.
I will accept everything he said with 100% fact right up to the point booth escaped. Everybody could say they where there and lie but who can challenge him in 2017? I have to accept it as fact; after all I definitely wasn't alive in 1865 lol. I don't know why he says what booth did afterwards because he was not In the escape party so he can only say what he heard happened. As to the things being inaccurate about after his escape we must remember this had to have been recorded YEARS ago. Many details may not had been released to the public yet. He is also up there in age when this recording was done he may not recall some details accurately.
Contrary to what most people would imagine, most time travelers aren’t historians; a lot of us do it for the food. Things you can’t get anymore like real Garum, New Coke, Ecto-Cooler. We’re actually closer to anthropologists, since you gotta have a basic grasp of the fundamentals when you buy shit from a street vendor. One guy I know paid a dollar for a Moon Pie in 1935, forgetting they were 10¢ at the time. Dumbass. Anyway, the point is, we’re not really historians, so you can imagine my surprise when I went to catch a play in 1865 and fucking this happened! I still have the ticket, but I brought it back with me instead of hiding it and recovering it when I got back, so it’s not aged like it would be. If I tried to get it authenticated it would come back as a fake for that reason. Anyway, moral of the story: Study history, kids. And don’t try selling shit you get from the past on Ebay unless you bury it first. Also, Garum is fucking nasty.
NASAjunkie Very entertaining comment. I think you should be a writer. I disagree about Garum, the Roman Condiment. I have tasted it using reconstructed recipes.It is flavoursome, very savoury. I love it. It is hard to come by, but aficionados make their own. The stuff I tried was in a little place in Florence, Tuscany. Non-commercial. Delicious.
In response to many of the comments that say this man was mistaken about some of the history, he was. Some facts are absolutely erroneous. However, he was a witness to a significant historical event and his account has importance for that reason. As a professional historian, that is why we use multiple primary sources (and continually seek new primary sources) to reconstruct events. A primary source is a report or recounting by a contemporary to the event. No witness is infallible; eyewitnesses to a crime often report widely different accounts of the same event and that is why eyewitness accounts are the least reliable of all evidence. Circumstantial evidence in the case of a crime is nearly always more accurate, and forensics is best of all. But in the case of history these two types of evidence are often lacking and thus we must depend on eyewitness accounts and reports from newsmen of the day. Thus the term "revisionist" history. All history, just like science, is revised as new facts become known. The only bad revisionist history is that which is a lie, somewhat like what we have today with "fake news". That is not history. It is and always will be a lie and lies are exposed by history. (And his speech patterns, style and wording are typical for an actor of his era. I think it's rather informative of how we spoke back then.)
My grandmother was educated at the New England Conservatory . She studied voice, public speaking. singing. When she told a story her voice changed and became a performance. It was similar to this, controlled, dramatic, and resonant.
Never making sense to me: Booth found out late that very day that both the Lincolns and Grants were to attend, but even later the same day, Julia refused wanting to visit family instead. Since he had two targets: why did Booth bring only one single shot derringer? And why that tin whistle? And why so many missing pages from Booth's diary supposedly explaining his motives?
As an Australian ,i understand this man's accent perfectly.In certain parts of his speech i thought i could detect an Irish tone.With some present day Americans ,i have to listen very hard to decipher what they are saying.
streaming1950 Are you implying that I did not serve my country one speck between my election in November of 1860 and inauguration in March? What, did you think I lounged in my parlor for four months? Outrageous! you sir, must be a Confederate!
"....with malice towards none, and charity for all".....If Lincoln words are any indication, I have to think, and believe strongly, that "The Reconstruction" would have not been the disastrous, unjust, kleptocratic abomination that it was....if President Lincoln had lived out his second term.
Anglovox, I’m uncertain about that. Politics were mighty corrupt then. The patronage system was well established and entrenched. Lincoln had to appoint people purely based on their connections. However, I don’t think the rebel states would have been readmitted so quickly and easily. I suspect that true and proven reconstruction would have to be demonstrated and maintained before readmission to the Union. It would have taken years, not months as it did with his successor, Southern sympathizer and racist Andrew Johnson.
Visitors to Granbury, TX will get a little bit about the "Booth survived" tale, and there are some references to "St. Helen's" to be seen on the courthouse square. Up the road, you'll also find the grave of "Jesse James", the guy who claimed that Bob Ford shot someone else, allowing "Jesse" to move on with life and live to old age in Granbury. I don't buy these stories, but they do make things interesting in a city that is full of plenty of other great (and real) history.
There was a TV appearance 23 years after this recording, who was there that night to talk about it as well, although he was just someone in the audience. Not involved with any of the players.
Apparently Mr H. did become an actor - hence the 'thespian' accent that prevailed during his lifetime - and if his account of what he witnessed in 1865 sounds embellished or too slick, remember that he'd been telling and refining his story for 68 years when this recording was made. I have yet to find confirmation from the Ford's Theatre Society or the National Park Service that he was a programme boy that evening...but neither have I found objection by them to his claim.
I went back in my travels to the assassination and saw the whole thing i would make a video for RU-vid about it however you could never view it because I'm currently 150 years in the future.
They should have never even mentioned that this guy was an actor. Even when this was first recorded I'm sure fools were saying "oh, he's just being dramatic".
After the war of independence Americans hated all things English. They changed the way they talked and words that were English slang like bloody on purpose. The entire country did this in their homes there businesses creating American language.
I wonder if this is the "Mid-Atlanic" accent they used to teach people (notice the old actors in movies form the 30s who talk this ay despite no one really talking like this).
Semantics. Do you expect a 12 year old boy to know the name of a random army major? He related the story as he remembered, and clearly he remembered it as the Surgeon General in the box
I can see how he made that mistake though: the decades afterwards would have obscured the details, and caused him to conflate what the Surgeon General (who looked similar to Rathbone, curiously enough--at least in terms of the over-the-top whiskers).
I'd be willing to bet that if we managed to go back in time, and watch this event unfold we'd notice how different it was compared to what we've been told.
This "eye witness" didn't mention my second cousin, five times removed, Colonel Pren Metham (1830 - 1917), who not only witnessed the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln but was the first man to jump onto the stage in pursuit of John Wilkes Booth, just as Booth disappeared behind the stage curtain or that someone had shouted "Fire" 🔥 and the audience panicked because they thought the theatre was going to burn down. Strange that he forgot to mention that. How did he know Booth to call him by name? I know Booth was an actor, but I didn't know he had family ties with Washington DC.
The man himself is a part of American history. I would rather have been alive back then and see America than to be alive today to see the mess of things today.
Enid, Oklahoma - Grand Avenue Hotel in 1903, upstairs behind boarded windows are rooms, one of which was where John Wilkes Booth possibly committed suicide. Many years later on January 13, 1903, in the Booth Legend (upstairs in the current Garfield Furniture building) in Enid, Oklahoma, a man calling himself David E George was found dead. A doctor diagnosed his death as self-administered arsenic poisoning. George had been a house painter who did not know how to paint and always had access to money but died penniless. Legend has him quoted as saying”,,I killed the best man that ever lived.” After George was embalmed, he was placed in a chair in the window of the furniture store/funeral home so that the public could view him, and a photograph was taken due to his “remarkable likeness” to Booth. George’s leg had also been broken above the right ankle-the same break that Booth had suffered in jumping from the Ford’s Theater balcony. However, the doctor who had set Booth’s leg had reported it to be the opposite leg.
There was another boy that was on “ What’s my Line “ game show.....his name was Seymour......he also witnessed the shooting......the show was in the 60s, and Mr. Seymour was 96......
He was supposed to be an eye witness to the assassination. His description of the escape is what he heard after Booth left the theater. There are several inaccuracies in his story. I think he embellished it or the mistakes were unintentional due to his age at the time of the recording.
This man may have been there, but what is recorded here is stuff the history books have already said. A true eye witness should tell of a personal account that doesn't sound so theatrical and more intimate. In other words say something we haven't heard of this event.
Me thinks your critique is couched in a certain modern sensibility which, in a manner of speaking, makes you blind sir and quite ungracious. For shame! If I had come of age in the same time period that the narrator did I would respond to your comment just as I did above. Whether trained in the theatre or not the style that you heard would be pretty much what you would hear from someone speaking for public consumption whether on a stage or a street corner although there is a strong facility with the language that I think would come with theatrical training. That is, his command of the language is what gives away his stage training and NOT the theatricality or drama of his actual delivery. If you could step back in time you would hear that same drama from even a common man speaking publicly. There's absolutely nothing unusual in the style of speaking that you hear in this recording. It's YOU and other modern listeners who are out of sync. He wasn't speaking to an audience in our time frame but his own. He grew up without electricity and amplification AND radio and television and those modern miracles only came about well past the prime of his life. It was only though the printed word OR the LIVE spoken word that had the power to move the masses. There is nothing out of the ordinary in his style of public speaking nor in the embellishment that went along with relating his actual experience. In fact, anyone in his "Hey Day" would have thought it unusual if all he did was relate ONLY what he actually experienced. They would more than likely have felt cheated. The same kind of contrast can be seen in very old movies when the majority of film actors started their acting careers on the stage with no amplification, no voice recording, no film and no television. Modern stage actors have all those technical advances and even if they don't use them their simple presence "out there" affects the dynamics of their acting. To our modern sensibility the acting in those old movies seems very "over the top".
Lyndon White, it's not "theatric". That's the way people expressed themselves in that time, regardless of what they were talking about. It's the way all men spoke.
Lyndon, this was recorded in the 1930's. Many folks back then had not had the luxury of a public or private education. As such, a large percentage of the public could not read a history book. For that matter, a fair percentage couldn't even sign their own name. They simply made a mark, which was witnessed. At the time, it would have been 'new' information for many.
Far too many details for a young lad to recall. Even if he had a photographic memory, the details do not work out right. Non the less, I love a good tell spun with style! And this has style.
It shouldn't be a surprise to anybody that this was rehearsed. There was no editing, splicing nor interpolating of corrections. It had to get done in one take or start over...very expensive to do that then.
It's too bad the only thing I get out of it is knowing someone speaking was actually around during the time of the assassination. The "Let me tell you a story" style ruins the rest of it. I suppose it's what I should expect from that sort of guy from that age. I would much rather hear from someone interviewed, reluctantly telling something hard to remember and sad, then I might see it in my mind.
very well put, AK and exactly on the point...the sensations a young working boy on the spot during the moments of the actual occurrences he witnessed are all i want to hear about
A pivotal event in U.S. history - Lincoln was about to propose a bill that would include funding for repatriation of all former slaves to Hispaniola (South America), or Africa. After the President's death, the territory of Liberia was set aside for these people. Lincoln believed that freed slaves could not co-exist with their former owners.
