Speaker 1: Fellow ridiculous historians, Welcome to this week's classic episode. Back
Speaker 1: in twenty eighteen, we looked at each other, we had
Speaker 1: that Ghostbuster's eye contact moment where they figure out the
Speaker 1: statue of Liberty, and we said, how deeply have we
Speaker 1: really dove into the infamous tragic story of the Lincoln assassination?
Speaker 2: Not nearly deeply enough, Ben, is what our longing gays
Speaker 2: told each of us psychically.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, now we do know knowl that on April fourteenth,
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty five, an actor named John Wilkes Booth assassinated
Speaker 1: President Abraham Lincoln there in Ford's Theater, watching a play
Speaker 1: with his wife. That story aside. We know that Booth
Speaker 1: escaped the scene of the crime and he went on
Speaker 1: the run. But it turns out there's some more to
Speaker 1: the story.
Speaker 2: Hm, yeah, more like on the limp. If I'm not mistaken,
Speaker 2: I think that's right. We did have a injury can jump,
Speaker 2: that's correct. But boy, are we going to dive into
Speaker 2: a bit of an assassin meta episode today. We're talking
Speaker 2: about everybody loves an assassin, but what about an assassin's assassin? Okay,
Speaker 2: maybe everyone doesn't love an assassin, but you get what
Speaker 2: I'm getting at.
Speaker 1: Yes, so joined us as we dive into the bizarre
Speaker 1: life and times of a man named Boston Corbett. Ridiculous
Speaker 1: History is a production of iHeartRadio. Today's story kind of
Speaker 1: but not really starts in eighteen sixty five. On April fourteenth,
Speaker 1: Graham Lincoln is assassinated by John Wilkes Booth while watching
Speaker 1: the play Our American Cousin at Ford's Theater in DC.
Speaker 2: You think it was any good, Ben, our American cousin?
Speaker 2: Uh huh?
Speaker 1: I remember I think hearing about it in school, But
Speaker 1: it wasn't my kind of play. And it does remind
Speaker 1: me of one of those very tasteless middle school jokes.
Speaker 1: Did you ever hear this one?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 1: Other than that, missus Lincoln, how did you find the play?
Speaker 1: Oh that's funny, that's terrible. Yeah, too soon, surely not,
Speaker 1: surely not.
Speaker 2: Ben. You called out the date and it sounded to
Speaker 2: me like it was long ago.
Speaker 1: Long ago, far away, right. And this is ridiculous history.
Speaker 1: It is ridiculous history. And there's our super producer, Casey
Speaker 1: Pegram giving us his stamp of approval. Let me lean
Speaker 1: by the window and see, I see if we get
Speaker 1: a thumbs up. Oh, we got a pretty good thumbs up.
Speaker 2: Thumbs up indeed, as you would text me thumbs up
Speaker 2: emoji thumb when you do that. Oh thanks man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I want to be clear that it is
Speaker 1: an emoji, because you know, some people don't know this,
Speaker 1: but emojis translate differently across different folks.
Speaker 2: I think, oh, aps, we've talked about Have we talked
Speaker 2: about this on this show? I don't, you know, we
Speaker 2: just hung out. It's a bit of a blur. We
Speaker 2: do talk about all kinds of things. Today we're talking
Speaker 2: about Abraham Lincoln getting a bullet to the back of
Speaker 2: the dome by a crazed I don't know, maybe it's
Speaker 2: not fair to call him craze, but a zealous actor
Speaker 2: by the name of John Wilkes booth during said play
Speaker 2: that may or may not have been any good, and
Speaker 2: then he leapt from the balcony. It was a point
Speaker 2: blank shot to the back of the head. Six temper
Speaker 2: Tyrannus onto the stage, caught his his pant on something
Speaker 2: on the way down and broke his leg and somehow
Speaker 2: managed to escape.
Speaker 1: Yeah, made it seventy three miles to Port Royal, Virginia
Speaker 1: while the Feds were chasing him, his accomplices were dropping
Speaker 1: out one by one. He eventually was cornered in a
Speaker 1: barn surrounded by veterans from the Union Army.
Speaker 2: But wait, we need to back up again.
Speaker 1: Yes, beep, beep beep, that's the sound of the history
Speaker 1: truck moving back. Because we gave you a little bit
Speaker 1: of a I guess, a cold open. We should start
Speaker 1: at the as the Mad Hatter says at the beginning
Speaker 1: the Mad Hatter, Yes, story, Yes, that's appropriate for this,
Speaker 1: isn't it.
Speaker 2: It really is.
Speaker 1: Our story starts with a soldier by the name of
Speaker 1: Boston Corbette.
Speaker 2: Although he was born Thomas Corbett and was not a
Speaker 2: soldier out of the womb, as it turns out, his
Speaker 2: his initial occupation was as an incorrigible drunk.
Speaker 1: Yes, Thomas Corbett was a hatter, not yet mad, and
Speaker 1: this was a pretty solid job for an upstanding American
Speaker 1: in the mid nineteenth century. But his wife and his
Speaker 1: first child, a girl, died during childbirth, and this sent
Speaker 1: him on a downward spiral.
Speaker 2: He got a lot of death and childbirth things happening
Speaker 2: in these last this episode and then the last one
Speaker 2: about the Cocklane Ghost it's true. Check it out. Yeah,
Speaker 2: if you haven't already, And if you haven't, then shame
Speaker 2: on you. But yeah, no, he did not. He did
Speaker 2: not do well after this blow from on high and he,
Speaker 2: you know, became, like I said before, an incorrigible drunk.
Speaker 2: So that wasn't his first profession. His first profession was
Speaker 2: a hatter, and then he gave that up for the bottle.
Speaker 2: And he lived in New England in Boston and he
Speaker 2: would just haplessly stumble around drunk. He was kind of
Speaker 2: because he was a vagrant. He became known as kind
Speaker 2: of like one of the town shift layabouts, right. And
Speaker 2: it was one night late in the eighteen fifties when
Speaker 2: he ran into someone that would change his life forever.
Speaker 1: Yes, And there's a great recounting of this in the
Speaker 1: Washingtonian in an article by Bill Jensen. He meets one
Speaker 1: of these proselytizing preachers, a street evangelists, and it gets
Speaker 1: to him. Corbett is mesmerized by this word of God.
Speaker 1: He becomes a regular at the what they call sidewalk
Speaker 1: churches around the city, which was an interesting phrase I
Speaker 1: had not heard before. But it's like a regularly occurring
Speaker 1: church meetup that doesn't necessarily have its own physical building,
Speaker 1: and he became sort of a hype man at these
Speaker 1: street preaching get togethers. He stopped drinking and he started
Speaker 1: he started being the guy who just yells amen along
Speaker 1: with you know, sort of punctuating what the preachers are saying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Hype Manning is is sort of like in the
Speaker 2: trap music up today, they's going to go yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was what he would do, except he was
Speaker 1: going huck Florid to God free this.
Speaker 2: Yep, yeah, that kind of thing. And now on speaking
Speaker 2: of Jesus, he also grew his hair his man long,
Speaker 2: to appear to resemble Jesus Christ himself. He was baptized
Speaker 2: in the Methodist faith, and he changed his name to
Speaker 2: Boston from Thomas because Boston was the town where he
Speaker 2: credited this meeting with the street preacher that turned his
Speaker 2: life around.
Speaker 1: Right. He was twenty six at this time, and the
Speaker 1: ministers eventually said, hey, you should get your own turf.
Speaker 2: In other words, maybe it's sort of like back up
Speaker 2: off our turf with Hype Manning. We don't need you anymore.
Speaker 1: I feel like Jesus is leading you to preach elsewhere, elsewhere,
Speaker 1: to leading you're to preach down on fourth.
Speaker 2: I think that's right. I think we have to remember
Speaker 2: we haven't said this yet, but I'm sure a lot
Speaker 2: of people know this already. But hatters used mercury to
Speaker 2: treat the felt, to to form the felt, to make
Speaker 2: the hats, and as we know, long term exposure to
Speaker 2: mercury does have some debilitating effects on the brain.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as some debilitating cognitive effects. We do want to
Speaker 1: tell you that the next part of this story takes
Speaker 1: a brief and grisly turn.
Speaker 2: Yes, we'll try to make it as brief as possible,
Speaker 2: but yeah, it's it's it's not a pleasant image that's
Speaker 2: coming up here.
Speaker 1: So he's out ministering to the people in the summer
Speaker 1: of eighteen fifty eight when he feels that a pair
Speaker 1: of sex workers are googling him or giving him the eye,
Speaker 1: and he is discussing with himself when he feels physically
Speaker 1: excited to rise us to the occasion, right, So he
Speaker 1: proceeds directly home, takes a pair of scissors, and you,
Speaker 1: after making an incision in his scrotum, he removes his
Speaker 1: testicles and then goes directly to a prayer meeting.
Speaker 2: Like you do. It was a different time. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: not only that he went to his prayer meeting did
Speaker 2: whatever that entails. And then, oh, we should also mention
Speaker 2: that he was when he got home from this encounter
Speaker 2: with these ladies of the evening, he was in search
Speaker 2: of answers and he opened the Bible to It's unclear
Speaker 2: if he was looking for this passage because he was
Speaker 2: aware of it, or if he was like, you know,
Speaker 2: did the old FLIPPERO, and this is what came up
Speaker 2: tell me what to do? Yeah, exactly. And the passage
Speaker 2: that he encountered was Matthew nineteen twelve, which has a
Speaker 2: part that says there are unit who have made themselves
Speaker 2: eunuchs for the sake of the Kingdom of God. And
Speaker 2: that's what he went and did with the snip snip.
Speaker 2: So he goes on to the prayer meeting and then what, oh,
Speaker 2: he goes to the hospital immediately.
Speaker 1: Right, No, he goes the next day after the prayer meeting,
Speaker 1: he grabs Denner and takes a walk through the city,
Speaker 1: thinking his thoughts.
Speaker 2: Surely he's bleeding profusely from his genitals.
Speaker 1: At this point, one would think that he was able
Speaker 1: to staunch the wound because otherwise, surely it would have
Speaker 1: been noticed during a prayer meeting if the guy's bleeding
Speaker 1: through his trousers. But either way, he did eventually check
Speaker 1: himself into a Massachusetts general and spent some time trying
Speaker 1: to heal. Eventually he says, Okay, I'm better. A few
Speaker 1: weeks later and he moves to New York City to
Speaker 1: become a hat maker again. But he's still very religious.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, is he. Ever? He's possibly the most religious
Speaker 2: person we've ever encountered in any story or we've ever
Speaker 2: done for this show. Can you think of anyone more
Speaker 2: staunchly religious?
Speaker 1: Staunchly religious? Probably not that guy who mooned all those
Speaker 1: people now, definitely not who was still unidentified. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: guy might take the cake so far. He would often
Speaker 1: use his lunch break to go to prayer meetings. So
Speaker 1: he still kept these these very i would say, dogmatic
Speaker 1: religious practices. And then in eighteen sixty one, the Confederate
Speaker 1: Army attacks Fort Sumter, which one was that in the
Speaker 1: Civil War nice ironically named uh huh because it because
Speaker 1: it was very uncivil. Yes, they were not nice to
Speaker 1: each other, they were not. He enlisted in the Union
Speaker 1: Army and he had a quotation here that he allegedly
Speaker 1: told the women at his church, did you see this one?
Speaker 2: No? I had not been. Oh, give it to me.
Speaker 1: When he told the people as church that he was
Speaker 1: going to join up with the Union Army, he said,
Speaker 1: when I come eye to eye with my gray suited enemies,
Speaker 1: I will say to them, God, have mercy on your souls.
Speaker 1: Then pop them off.
Speaker 2: Ah. Yes, I do remember this one. And pop them
Speaker 2: off is what did it for me? Very slang. You
Speaker 2: know what? It reminds me of them. It reminds me
Speaker 2: of Samuel L. Jackson's character in pulp fiction, does the
Speaker 2: whole And I will smite thee with great anger and
Speaker 2: furious vengeance those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers,
Speaker 2: you know the one. Yeah, it's good though. I wonder
Speaker 2: if he got that idea from from from old Corbett. Uh.
Speaker 1: Perhaps perhaps he did. That would be interesting. We'd have
Speaker 1: to ask Quentin himself. Right, there was a big bummer
Speaker 1: about him joining the army. He had to shave his
Speaker 1: Jesus is.
Speaker 2: Jesus, jam is Jesus locks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and by most of the accounts we've just got,
Speaker 1: he was an ok soldier.
Speaker 2: He could Ryan he could fire a gun pretty good shot,
Speaker 2: but uh wasn't uh the wasn't the best at he
Speaker 2: answered to a very particular authority, didn't he, man, it
Speaker 2: was no, it was not earthly, nor was it his
Speaker 2: his commanders. And that's gonna come up time and again
Speaker 2: in this man's story. But one funny anecdote in this
Speaker 2: Washingtonian article is about the time where when he was
Speaker 2: training in Franklin Square in New York, his colonel, a
Speaker 2: man by the name of Daniel Butterfield, who they point out,
Speaker 2: I did not know this composed TAPS. I didn't think
Speaker 2: TAPS was composed. Thought it happened just was you know, yeah,
Speaker 2: but no the sky. Butterfield also apparently had a bit
Speaker 2: of a potty mouth, because he was just effin and
Speaker 2: jeffin and swearing all over town. And Corbett was not
Speaker 2: having it.
Speaker 1: Was he, No, absolutely not. Corbett, who shall also mention
Speaker 1: is still very green his training. Here he when the
Speaker 1: courl's yelling at them and cursing, he yells back, Colonel,
Speaker 1: don't you know you're breaking God's law. Butterfield is a
Speaker 1: gas like he's speechless for a second. This has probably
Speaker 1: never happened to him. So what what does he do
Speaker 1: in response?
Speaker 2: Yeah, he he reads him in the Riot Act, probably
Speaker 2: in a very measured kind of hannibal electric kind of way.
Speaker 2: I don't know this guy. Corvett kind of gives me
Speaker 2: the creeps, the whole self near relation thing that that's
Speaker 2: a that's a bridge too far illness, I think for sure.
Speaker 2: And yeah, again we should point out that he had
Speaker 2: been exposed to these vapors, these mercury vapors for quite
Speaker 2: some time in his in his hatting career, before he
Speaker 2: for any of this happened. Yeah, and he says, colonel,
Speaker 2: don't you know you are breaking God's law?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 2: And yeah, Butterfield was probably just like, you know what,
Speaker 2: my boy, thank you so much for pointing that out.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you for saving But no, it's not
Speaker 2: he did at all. It's not what he did at all.
Speaker 1: No, h he said, I'm gonna send you to jail.
Speaker 1: So Corbette begins loudly singing hymns, pretty much shouting hymns
Speaker 1: while he's in jail. He's asked to stop, he won't.
Speaker 1: Butterfield eventually throws up his hands and says, look, if
Speaker 1: you just say you're sorry, I can let you out
Speaker 1: of prison, to which Corbett.
Speaker 2: Says, oh. He says a no, sir, I have no
Speaker 2: cause to apologize to you, for you are but immortal,
Speaker 2: and you half offended the delicate sensibilities of the Lord
Speaker 2: thy God. So if you ask God to forgive you,
Speaker 2: then maybe I'll ask you to forgive me the Chutzbaugh.
Speaker 2: It's out of control for a guy without balls. This
Speaker 2: is really ballsy. Seriously, Yeah, no, no doubt about that.
Speaker 2: To think it just goes to show that those kind
Speaker 2: of balls come from within. My friend. There we go.
Speaker 2: So he is released at jail, Yeah, because he's like,
Speaker 2: this guy's impenetrable, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Also there's a
Speaker 2: war going. Yeah, they probably need him. He's a crack shot.
Speaker 2: He's at least a passable soldier. So yeah, they need him.
Speaker 2: And okay, let's see, God, this guy's got a really storied,
Speaker 2: storied life. Yeah, where do you want to go? Well?
Speaker 2: He he. He becomes a pretty important figure in the
Speaker 2: Union cause he fights in all these very very deadly
Speaker 2: conflicts that most people would not have survived and did
Speaker 2: not survive. And I don't know if he had God's
Speaker 2: God on his side or whatever, but it's I don't know,
Speaker 2: it's hard to not think that his piety maybe had
Speaker 2: something to do with it, or maybe it was just
Speaker 2: he was stark, raving, mad and fearless and just kind
Speaker 2: of like had luck on his side.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Like the New England Historical Society covers a
Speaker 1: little bit of his activity in the Civil War. I
Speaker 1: did not know that he had enlisted re enlisted three times.
Speaker 1: He took to this conflict and he wasn't the best soldier,
Speaker 1: but he was consistent. The thing people hated about working
Speaker 1: with him is that he was always telling people not
Speaker 1: to curse or do sinful stuff.
Speaker 2: Sure like you know, like you do in the army. Right.
Speaker 2: He sounded like a real killjoy. But he eventually got
Speaker 2: captured and sent to Andersonville. Do you know what Andersonville
Speaker 2: Prison been? Yes?
Speaker 1: No, Andersonville Prison is a terrible terrible place, or it
Speaker 1: was a terrible terrible place.
Speaker 2: We should say. It's here in Georgia, right, hunt.
Speaker 1: It was a Confederate run prison here in Georgia, which
Speaker 1: you can visit. I've actually been. It's the Andersonville National
Speaker 1: Historic Site now, so it preserves Camp Sumter, which is
Speaker 1: also known as the Prison and it held forty five
Speaker 1: thousand Union soldiers prisoner during the war. Nearly thirteen thousand
Speaker 1: of them died not from execution, but from diseases, scurvy, diarrhea, dysentery,
Speaker 1: the bloody flux.
Speaker 2: Yeah, is that what it was called. I think that's
Speaker 2: what they call it. Yeah, that was the shorthand, although
Speaker 2: it's sort of longer. No, just dysentery, the blood deflux,
Speaker 2: same number of syllables. But it sounds a lot scarier,
Speaker 2: doesn't it. It does, Yeah, because the flux, I guess,
Speaker 2: is when you expel blood. Right now.
Speaker 1: The thing about the thing about mister Boston Corbette is
Speaker 1: that maybe it's a matter of his faith. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: a matter of luck. He survived. Yeah, this man was
Speaker 1: nothing if not resilient. I mean, he survived a self
Speaker 1: administered castration, first and foremost. He survived you know, drunkenness
Speaker 1: in the streets, and he survived some of the most
Speaker 1: intense battles of the Civil War. And he survived this prison,
Speaker 1: which was built to house ten thousand inmates and ballooned
Speaker 1: to over thirty two thousand.
Speaker 2: There was like a little stream that ran through it,
Speaker 2: and apparently it had just become a swamp of human filth,
Speaker 2: and all of these diseases ran rampant. The guy who
Speaker 2: was in charge of this facility was actually brought up
Speaker 2: on war crime trials because thousands, if not tens of
Speaker 2: thousands of men died in his facility.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thirteen thousand that we know of, So that guy
Speaker 1: was rightly brought up a war crimes what's his name?
Speaker 2: His name was.
Speaker 1: Captain Henry wurrez wr Z. Not only he's tried for
Speaker 1: war crimes, but he was executed. So after Corbette gets away,
Speaker 1: after he survives this, it.
Speaker 2: Convalesces for a bit, one would imagine.
Speaker 1: Right, learns to eat solid food again. He still stays
Speaker 1: with the army. He had eventually reached the rank of
Speaker 1: sergeant in the sixteenth New York Volunteer Cavalry. Now to
Speaker 1: the point where we began the story.
Speaker 2: Oh man, weren't we having a barn burner? I don't
Speaker 2: Maybe we hadn't quite gotten there yet. But our man
Speaker 2: John Wilkes Booth, hobbled from his idiotic fall at the
Speaker 2: Ford Theater after putting a bullet in Old Abe Lincoln's
Speaker 2: head is now hold up in this barn, along with
Speaker 2: two accomplices. I want to say, yeah.
Speaker 1: Everybody else has deserted them. He's seventy three miles away
Speaker 1: from the theater and being hunted like a dog. Boston
Speaker 1: Corbette is one of the twenty six elite cavalrymen sent
Speaker 1: from the unit to pursue John Wilkes.
Speaker 2: Booth and pursue him. They did. They got a tip
Speaker 2: from a local innkeeper who put them in touch with
Speaker 2: a man who kind of cave gave a give it
Speaker 2: to us man. I'm I'm not doing a very good
Speaker 2: job here. Oh no, you got it. You got it.
Speaker 1: We've got a Booth and his conspirator, David Harold, in
Speaker 1: a tobacco farm owned by a guy named Richard Garrett.
Speaker 1: So what do the Calvern men do once they have
Speaker 1: them cornered in that barn?
Speaker 2: Well, they're not coming out right, So they light some
Speaker 2: straw and fire and poke it through in anthole in
Speaker 2: the in the barn, and you know, like old dry
Speaker 2: wood tends to do it. It went up in flames
Speaker 2: pretty quickly. And David Harold says, Okay, this is crazy
Speaker 2: even for a terrorist like me. I give up Booth,
Speaker 2: who has already made his decision made his peace with
Speaker 2: whatever powers he thinks exist, stays inside. But as the
Speaker 2: barn disintegrates in the conflagration, the soldiers outside can see
Speaker 2: Booth's silhouette moving back and forth in the burning barn.
Speaker 2: And let's let's just remind our listeners. Maybe not a
Speaker 2: really reminder, because we haven't said it yet. The instructions
Speaker 2: of this brigade was to bring back these men alive
Speaker 2: because the plot against Lincoln there was a good chance
Speaker 2: that had been organized orchestrated by forces on the Confederate side,
Speaker 2: and they wanted to, you know, get to the top
Speaker 2: of this conspiracy. Right, So when our boy Corbett popped
Speaker 2: one off, as he would say, right at John Wilkes
Speaker 2: Booth as he hobbled away, people were understandably annoyed, right.
Speaker 1: And another government employee says, what on earth did you
Speaker 1: shoot him for? And he's rushing to yank Booth out
Speaker 1: of the burning barn. They wanted him alive to you know,
Speaker 1: run up the ladder of the conspiracy, and Corbett refused
Speaker 1: to apologize. Booth dies around seven am the next day,
Speaker 1: and the government forces are are wondering why this guy
Speaker 1: is completely contradicting his orders. And all he says is
Speaker 1: that God Almighty directed me to So instead of John
Speaker 1: Wilkes Booth going back to DC, they take Corbett.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Edwin M. Stanton, who's the Secretary of War
Speaker 2: who had issued a reward the War Department of one
Speaker 2: hundred thousand dollars fifty for Booth, twenty five for Surrat
Speaker 2: and twenty five for Harold, and a total of one
Speaker 2: hundred thousand dollars. And this guy questioned Corbett personally, and
Speaker 2: I think he sort of decided it wasn't worth pursuing that.
Speaker 2: You know, the guy's dead. The justice has been served.
Speaker 2: This guy's going to be kind of a national hero.
Speaker 2: Let's it. Let's let it slide.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Even though Corbette kind of changes his message at
Speaker 1: the trial, and he says, I didn't fire the ball
Speaker 1: from fear. I was under the impression that he, meaning Booth,
Speaker 1: had started to the door to fight his way through,
Speaker 1: and I thought he would do harm to my men
Speaker 1: if I didn't fire. So it changes a little bit.
Speaker 1: He's not quite as self righteous about it. But how
Speaker 1: does his story end, Noel, he doesn't get the whole
Speaker 1: fifty grand, No, he gets a portion of it, though
Speaker 1: I think he gets a little over sixteen hundred, and
Speaker 1: then he asked if he can take his horse home,
Speaker 1: which I thought was pretty sweet. He says, he's not valuable,
Speaker 1: but I'm attached to him and I'd like to take
Speaker 1: him home.
Speaker 2: He's a sentimental man. He's a sentimental eunuch mad hatter.
Speaker 1: Later he is largely forgotten. He starts initially going back
Speaker 1: to work as a silk hat finisher, then he turns
Speaker 1: to being a lay preacher, making two hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: a year, two hundred and fifty dollars dollars, yes, not thousands,
Speaker 1: of course, And by eighteen seventy four he has his
Speaker 1: mental state has further deteriorated. He is convinced that John
Speaker 1: Wilkes Booth is actually still alive, and that Booth has
Speaker 1: sent people from the former Confederacy to kill him.
Speaker 2: That being said, though he was not a popular man
Speaker 2: among his cohorts, for the reason we talked about earlier,
Speaker 2: that he's always in people's faces preaching the Holy Roller line.
Speaker 2: But also like even the other troops that he was
Speaker 2: with in his unit, they would have been irritated with
Speaker 2: him because he kind of stole their glory, right Yeah,
Speaker 2: that could have been any of them. Also, it would
Speaker 2: have been much more of a group victory if they
Speaker 2: had brought the man back alive like they were supposed to,
Speaker 2: but instead he took it upon himself to pop one off. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and so he was getting threatening letters, right, that was real. Yes,
Speaker 2: he was getting threatening letters. Don't know if they were
Speaker 2: meant just to torture him, but some were signed Jay
Speaker 2: Wilkes Booth. So in his mental state, he felt that
Speaker 2: these really were from this guy, and there was this
Speaker 2: overarching conspiracy to assassinate him. By eighteen seventy eight, increasingly unpopular,
Speaker 2: despised by half the country, strongly disliked by his colleagues,
Speaker 2: he hops in a wagon and says that he's going
Speaker 2: to head west. Where's it go, Ben?
Speaker 1: He goes to a place called Cloud County, Kansas and
Speaker 1: starts the homestead on eighty acres.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Unfortunately, that doesn't go super well, and because of
Speaker 2: some pretty intensely erratic behavior, he does not get to
Speaker 2: continue in that endeavor. Some of that behavior includes, in
Speaker 2: eighteen eighty seven, he holds the Kansas House of Representatives
Speaker 2: hostage basically using two revolvers and a sword, and then
Speaker 2: he declares that the session has been adjourned, and then
Speaker 2: he has various in sundry run ins with the law,
Speaker 2: and in eighteen eighty seven October, that is, he is
Speaker 2: declared insane and he is committed to a Kansas asylum.
Speaker 2: But that's not the end.
Speaker 1: That is not quite the end. He escapes from the
Speaker 1: asylum on May twenty sixth, eighteen eighty eight, because he
Speaker 1: sees somebody making deliveries and tethering a horse to the
Speaker 1: front of the building. So he breaks away, jumps on
Speaker 1: the horse, and takes off all the way to Neodesha, Kansas,
Speaker 1: home of a fellow veteran and survivor of Andersonville, a
Speaker 1: guy named Richard Thatcher.
Speaker 2: And that caused this kind of bolo letter to be
Speaker 2: generated with the heading insane man escaped Topeka, Kansas, May
Speaker 2: twenty sixth, eighteen eighty eight. Dear Sir Boston Corbett, an
Speaker 2: insane man escaped from the insane asylum at Topeka this
Speaker 2: morning and is supposed to be heading for Cloud County.
Speaker 2: He's about fifty five years old and five feet four
Speaker 2: inches tall. It is a clever detail. This is a
Speaker 2: smart move. He has plucked all his beard out down
Speaker 2: to the lower part of his ears, his gray chin, whiskers,
Speaker 2: and mustache, gray hair cut square at bottom and parts
Speaker 2: his hair in the middle. He wore a dark jeans
Speaker 2: suit and black soft hat and was riding a bay
Speaker 2: or a sorel pony with a boy's saddle. So keep
Speaker 2: a lookout for that guy.
Speaker 1: He is regarded as a dangerous man, but was unarmed
Speaker 1: when he escaped. If he comes your way, arrest him
Speaker 1: and return him to the asylum at once, or telegraph
Speaker 1: doctor B. D. Eastman, Superintendent Insane Asylum, Topeka for orders.
Speaker 1: What happens when he meets up with his old pal
Speaker 1: Thatcher or when he reaches Thatcher's property.
Speaker 2: We should say, well, the first thing he did when
Speaker 2: he got there to Neodosha, Kansas, was he he took
Speaker 2: that stolen horse that he referred to as a borrowed horse,
Speaker 2: and he tied a note onto it and slapped on
Speaker 2: the button and send it on its way. And it
Speaker 2: was quite a ways of way, so it's unclear if
Speaker 2: that horse made it to its rightful owner. But the
Speaker 2: note kind of was like, sorry, I just had to
Speaker 2: do it here, Please take this horse back. I didn't
Speaker 2: I wasn't stealing it. But yeah, he went to a
Speaker 2: train station and was trying to get to Mexico. And
Speaker 2: that is the last anyone ever heard from him.
Speaker 1: Right, Rumors still trickle in after that. You'll see a
Speaker 1: lot of people list his death as eighteen ninety four.
Speaker 1: One theory says that he was targeted by people who
Speaker 1: were bitter over the various battles he had had in
Speaker 1: his time in the Union Army. Someone else said he
Speaker 1: died the Great Hinckley Fire, and then there were people
Speaker 1: who would point out other possibilities. You know, in the
Speaker 1: early nineteen hundreds, the Federal Prison Bureau heard about a
Speaker 1: Boston Corbette who claimed he was alive and well and
Speaker 1: wanted his pension. But the problem was that the guy
Speaker 1: who claimed to be Boston Corbette, who also went by
Speaker 1: the nickname Old Trapper Old Trapper, only gave vague descriptions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think he was taller, and he was taller, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like a lot taller, I believe full eight inches or so.
Speaker 1: And then people thought that would be the last they
Speaker 1: heard of him, But more and more stories poured in.
Speaker 1: They just became less and less credible, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1: It does, and now he is largely lost to history
Speaker 1: except for one one thing that remains.
Speaker 2: Right. Yeah, it's like a weird kind of memorial. It's
Speaker 2: just a pen like a like a fenced area that
Speaker 2: marks where his final home was. And in this Washingtonian
Speaker 2: article they wrap up talking about how in nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: there was a boy Scout troop that made a stone
Speaker 2: plaque to put there and they called it the Boston
Speaker 2: Corbett Dugout. And there are two revolvers embedded in the rock.
Speaker 1: And here ends the strange story of Boston Corbette war.
Speaker 1: He wrote a sum a villain to others, but clearly
Speaker 1: a man in need of medical care of some sort.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, who left a pretty fascinating mark on history.
Speaker 1: And if you'd like to read more about Boston Corbette,
Speaker 1: you can check out the book The Madman and the Assassin,
Speaker 1: which has a pretty snappy chronicle of his time, both
Speaker 1: his normal life leading up to the Civil War and
Speaker 1: his earlier struggles all the way to that fateful day
Speaker 1: when he shot John Wilkes Booth. I felt like a
Speaker 1: very definitive ending. Usually we get to a segue or something.
Speaker 2: Huh, yeah, No, that's good. That's good where it's almost
Speaker 2: like we're getting a little bit better at this. Well,
Speaker 2: let's jakes ourselves fair enough, fair enough, But we hope
Speaker 2: you enjoyed this story. We were surprised in the course
Speaker 2: of our research to learn that, you know, a lot
Speaker 2: of people haven't heard of this guy. I hadn't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they don't really teach you about it in school,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, it's like, I think this is an
Speaker 2: interesting slice of life of the time too, in terms of, like,
Speaker 2: you know, the way mental illness was handled, the whole
Speaker 2: idea of me. There's just so many interesting little twists
Speaker 2: in this story, the way the whole Andersonville incarceration thing.
Speaker 2: And I knew a little bit about that, but this
Speaker 2: was a really interesting inside perspective, like from someone who
Speaker 2: lived through it, the whole, you know, coming to Jesus stuff.
Speaker 2: It's just this is like, why is there not a film.
Speaker 1: About this guy who would play him, Crispin Glover?
Speaker 2: Yes? Can I tell you that My friend Matt saw
Speaker 2: Crispin Glover on the subway in New York for like
Speaker 2: an hour, just sitting by himself, wearing a really nice
Speaker 2: black suit and listening to earbuds.
Speaker 1: I think you may have mentioned that it was he
Speaker 1: actually going somewhere, just writing the subway, I.
Speaker 2: Think he was going. He said, well, Matt works way uptown,
Speaker 2: and his his theory was maybe that he was shooting
Speaker 2: something in Harlem, because that's sort of the direction.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I think Crispin Glover would be a good pick.
Speaker 2: He would be awesome. I mean, I mean, look, if
Speaker 2: you look at this guy at listeners, if you want
Speaker 2: to check it out, tell us what you think. Who
Speaker 2: would play Boston Corbett, Oh, Crispin Glover all day long?
Speaker 2: You know who else would be good? Norman Ritas dead
Speaker 2: in the States.
Speaker 1: Also, my favorite moment in the guy's biography is definitely
Speaker 1: the Other Street evangelists saying God has called you to
Speaker 1: preach my son about four blocks that way.
Speaker 2: That's still my favorite. That's good.
Speaker 1: We want to know what you thought about this episode,
Speaker 1: and as always, some of our best ideas come from you,
Speaker 1: fellow ridiculous historians. So let us know what other tremendously
Speaker 1: important characters in American history or in the history of
Speaker 1: your own country seem to be largely obscured today. We'd
Speaker 1: like to shed some light on them. As always, thank you,
Speaker 1: for checking out the show. Thank you to our super producer,
Speaker 1: Casey Pegram.
Speaker 2: Thanks to Alex Williams who composed our theme, and thanks
Speaker 2: to Christopher Haciotis for being our researcher extraordinaire on this episode.
Speaker 1: And by this time, longtime listeners you know the Drill
Speaker 1: will find us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. You can
Speaker 1: also check out our community page, Ridiculous Historians, which is a.
Speaker 2: Hoot, a real hoot and hot and haller a brewhaha.
Speaker 1: Sure are we just going to toss synonyms?
Speaker 2: We have to get out of here. We do toss synonyms, huh.
Speaker 2: I like it. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
Speaker 2: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 2: favorite shows.