{"id":9383,"date":"2026-09-05T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/?p=9383"},"modified":"2026-09-08T20:27:17","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T00:27:17","slug":"midnight-on-the-potomac","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/midnight-on-the-potomac\/","title":{"rendered":"MIDNIGHT ON THE POTOMAC"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I just finished Scott Ellsworth\u2019s 2025 book \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/4iRAf3U\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Midnight on the Potomac: the Last Year of the Civil War, the Lincoln Assassination, and the Rebirth of America.<\/a>\u201d Excellent read!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Things I learned there which I hadn\u2019t known before:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abraham Lincoln\u2019s beloved young son Tad had a profound speech impediment, having been born with a cleft palate, and all but his parents had difficulty understanding him when he spoke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">John Wilkes Booth and Abraham Lincoln apparently knew each other by sight. The President had been to at least one previous play featuring Booth, a superstar of his time, during which Booth had glared at him from the stage while saying negative things about another character. Lincoln\u2019s wife commented at the time that Booth seemed to be insulting him personally, and Lincoln agreed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Booth had apparently practiced regularly at shooting galleries in Washington and New York City, for what would turn out to be an infamously cowardly shot fired from inches away from behind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There were at least two occasions prior to the assassination when Booth came close to murdering Lincoln. Once he had staked out a building the President entered, but when Lincoln emerged he was accompanied and Booth feared he himself might be killed by a security guard. Another time, he and a fellow assassin were in a crowd watching Lincoln speak. Only the accomplice was armed, and when Booth told him to shoot Lincoln, he declined. Neither could have escaped from the angry crowd if one of them had shot at the President.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I just finished Scott Ellsworth\u2019s 2025 book \u201cMidnight on the Potomac: the Last Year of the Civil War, the Lincoln Assassination, and the Rebirth of America.\u201d Excellent read! Things I learned there which I hadn\u2019t known before: Abraham Lincoln\u2019s beloved young son Tad had a profound speech impediment, having been born with a cleft palate, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":9384,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9383"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9385,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9383\/revisions\/9385"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}