After President Lincoln settled in to enjoy Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre, his guard left to drink at a nearby saloon, leaving Lincoln vulnerable.
Posted on 04/09/2010 12:34:10 AM PDT by Palter
What happened to Officer John Parker, the man who chose the wrong night to leave his post at Ford's Theater?
When a celebrity-seeking couple crashed a White House state dinner last November, the issue of presidential security dominated the news. The Secret Service responded by putting three of its officers on administrative leave and scrambled to reassure the public that it takes the job of guarding the president very seriously. “We put forth the maximum effort all the time,” said Secret Service spokesman Edwin Donovan.
That kind of dedication to safeguarding the president didn’t always exist. It wasn’t until 1902 that the Secret Service, created in 1865 to eradicate counterfeit currency, assumed official full-time responsibility for protecting the president. Before that, security for the president could be unbelievably lax. The most astounding example was the scant protection afforded Abraham Lincoln on the night he was assassinated. Only one man, an unreliable Washington cop named John Frederick Parker, was assigned to guard the president at Ford’s Theatre on April 14, 1865.
Today it’s hard to believe that a single policeman was Lincoln’s only protection, but 145 years ago the situation wasn’t that unusual. Lincoln was cavalier about his personal safety, despite the frequent threats he received and a near-miss attempt on his life in August 1864, as he rode a horse unescorted. He’d often take in a play or go to church without guards, and he hated being encumbered by the military escort assigned to him. Sometimes he walked alone at night between the White House and the War Department, a distance of about a quarter of a mile.
John Parker was an unlikely candidate to guard a president—or anyone for that matter. Born in Frederick County, Virginia, in 1830, Parker moved to Washington as a young man, originally earning his living as a carpenter. He became one of the capital’s first officers when the Metropolitan Police Force was organized in 1861. Parker’s record as a cop fell somewhere between pathetic and comical. He was hauled before the police board numerous times, facing a smorgasbord of charges that should have gotten him fired. But he received nothing more than an occasional reprimand. His infractions included conduct unbecoming an officer, using intemperate language and being drunk on duty. Charged with sleeping on a streetcar when he was supposed to be walking his beat, Parker declared that he’d heard ducks quacking on the tram and had climbed aboard to investigate. The charge was dismissed. When he was brought before the board for frequenting a whorehouse, Parker argued that the proprietress had sent for him.
In November 1864, the Washington police force created the first permanent detail to protect the president, made up of four officers. Somehow, John Parker was named to the detail. Parker was the only one of the officers with a spotty record, so it was a tragic coincidence that he drew the assignment to guard the president that evening. As usual, Parker got off to a lousy start that fateful Friday. He was supposed to relieve Lincoln’s previous bodyguard at 4 p.m. but was three hours late.
Lincoln’s party arrived at the theater at around 9 p.m. The play, Our American Cousin, had already started when the president entered his box directly above the right side of the stage. The actors paused while the orchestra struck up “Hail to the Chief.” Lincoln bowed to the applauding audience and took his seat.
Parker was seated outside the president’s box, in the passageway beside the door. From where he sat, Parker couldn’t see the stage, so after Lincoln and his guests settled in, he moved to the first gallery to enjoy the play. Later, Parker committed an even greater folly: At intermission, he joined the footman and coachman of Lincoln’s carriage for drinks in the Star Saloon next door to Ford’s Theatre.
John Wilkes Booth entered the theater around 10 p.m.. Ironically, he’d also been in the Star Saloon, working up some liquid courage. When Booth crept up to the door to Lincoln’s box, Parker’s chair stood empty. Some of the audience may not have heard the fatal pistol shot, since Booth timed his attack to coincide with a scene in the play that always sparked loud laughter.
No one knows for sure if Parker ever returned to Ford’s Theatre that night. When Booth struck, the vanishing policeman may have been sitting in his new seat with a nice view of the stage, or perhaps he had stayed put in the Star Saloon. Even if he had been at his post, it’s not certain he would have stopped Booth. “Booth was a well-known actor, a member of a famous theatrical family,” says Ford’s Theatre historical interpreter Eric Martin. “They were like Hollywood stars today. Booth might have been allowed in to pay his respects. Lincoln knew of him. He’d seen him act in The Marble Heart, here in Ford’s Theatre in 1863.”
A fellow presidential bodyguard, William H. Crook, wouldn’t accept any excuses for Parker. He held him directly responsible for Lincoln’s death. “Had he done his duty, I believe President Lincoln would not have been murdered by Booth,” Crook wrote in his memoir. “Parker knew that he had failed in duty. He looked like a convicted criminal the next day.” Parker was charged with failing to protect the president, but the complaint was dismissed a month later. No local newspaper followed up on the issue of Parker’s culpability. Nor was Parker mentioned in the official report on Lincoln’s death. Why he was let off so easily is baffling. Perhaps, with the hot pursuit of Booth and his co-conspirators in the chaotic aftermath, he seemed like too small a fish. Or perhaps the public was unaware that a bodyguard had even been assigned to the president.
Incredibly, Parker remained on the White House security detail after the assassination. At least once he was assigned to protect the grieving Mrs. Lincoln before she moved out of the presidential mansion and returned to Illinois. Mrs. Lincoln’s dressmaker, former slave Elizabeth Keckley, recalled the following exchange between the president’s widow and Parker: “So you are on guard tonight,” Mrs. Lincoln yelled, “on guard in the White House after helping to murder the President.”
“I could never stoop to murder,” Parker stammered, “much less to the murder of so good and great a man as the President. I did wrong, I admit, and have bitterly repented. I did not believe any one would try to kill so good a man in such a public place, and the belief made me careless.”
Mrs. Lincoln snapped that she would always consider him guilty and ordered him from the room. Some weeks before the assassination, she had written a letter on Parker’s behalf to exempt him from the draft, and some historians think she may have been related to him on her mother’s side.
Parker remained on the Metropolitan Police Force for three more years, but his shiftlessness finally did him in. He was fired on August 13, 1868, for once again sleeping on duty. Parker drifted back into carpentry. He died in Washington in 1890, of pneumonia. Parker, his wife and their three children are buried together in the capital’s Glenwood Cemetery—on present-day Lincoln Road. Their graves are unmarked. No photographs have ever been found of John Parker. He remains a faceless character, his role in the great tragedy largely forgotten.
After President Lincoln settled in to enjoy Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre, his guard left to drink at a nearby saloon, leaving Lincoln vulnerable.
I am pointing out that he proved that the feds could and now do get what the want with the power of the gun. Sorry that you do not understand that, but hopefully the One and his spawn will be kind to you.
No that power in his hands has just reached an all time major threat to us.
Oh it's easy to understand. Just another Lost Causer blindly blaming every ill on Lincoln. Especially the self-inflicted ones.
No lost causer here, IA had family on both sides of the war. Moms side the north dads side the south.
I did not blame everything on Lincoln, I only said he opened the flood gates which he did. Some think that he had to, some say he did not. I think he was damned either way, but he still opend the gates wide.
Of course I fully agree.
"Oh Paulie, you won't see him no more."
No, it didn't.
A rhetorical question, though perhaps a good one for debate.
Can you imagine a real life situation where the United States would want to throw a single state out of the union and the state not wanting to go?
However, I am sure you posted it to emphasize the corollary - that if a state can leave the union then the union could in turn throw one out.
Here is an answer:
It has been argued that a State would thus claim the right to exercise her will against the others, whilst denying them the right to use their will as against herself. But the case is not one of will within the limit of individual action, but of compulsion extending to, and exercised over, another. A State compelled to go or to remain has a forcible restraint imposed on its will; but in seceding it imposes no restraint on the will of others — they remain free to follow, or continue as before.
Here is a conclusion by James Spence:
Again, governments are unjust unless their powers are based on the "consent of the governed." Here the same question arises, Who are the governed who are to consent? Are the people of the State of Georgia to refrain from dissenting until they agree with the people of Oregon, more remote than England from Arabia? But this principle also was enunciated, like the last, for the guidance of each separate, distinct community. Upon these principles we can arrive at no other conclusions than these — that according to the Constitutional doctrines of America, whenever a State decides by the vote of a majority of its people, that the government over it has become destructive to the ends of its welfare and happiness, and no longer exists in its consent, such State has a right to abolish that government, so far as it concerns itself, or, in other words, has a right to secede from the Union.
In addition, many of the states who agreed to become part of the Union did so only with the provision that were the bond to become unsatisfactory the state would be able to withdraw, or secede. New York and Virginia were among those with that provision as were many who followed. Texas certainly retained that right as well as the right to divide into five states with two Senators and the appropriate Representatives for each if they desired.
Lincoln ignored all that.
You are correct on the passing of the tariff. I was thinking of modern times, knowing Lincoln won the Presidency in the election of 1860. But your point in someways makes my point. President Buchanan himself said “the power by force of arms to compel a State to remain in the Union” was not among the “enumerated powers granted to Congress”.
Numerous other states had a right to secession in their own state constitutions, including New York. Lincoln’s suspension of habeus corpus and jailing of the elected representatives of the state of Maryland to prevent secession and holding them without trial, was a crime in itself. Lincoln and his cronies in congress, instituted the Revenue Act of 1861 imposing the income tax on the Northern states, to finance his power grab.
Show us were it says that. Per the 10th it is retained by the states.
No, that is not the corollary at all. Madison is not denying a right to secession, he is saying that the idea that a state can secede without the consent of the other parties impacted is as illogical as the idea of a state being expelled against its will.
If we accept the idea that the Constitution is a compact between equals, then it stands to reason that no one state has any powers denied another state. Likewise it would also stand to reason that the Constitution protects all states equally. But to believe that states may leave at will, without the consent of all the impacted parties, is to believe that only the seceding states have rights that are to be respected and that only the seceding states have any protections. They are free to take any action, regardless of how it may harm the remaining states, just by leaving and there is nothing that those states can do to prevent it. I don't see the Founding Fathers supporting something like that.
In addition, many of the states who agreed to become part of the Union did so only with the provision that were the bond to become unsatisfactory the state would be able to withdraw, or secede. New York and Virginia were among those with that provision as were many who followed.
New York and Virginia are the only ones that I am aware of. And regardless of what else they may have put in their raitifcation documents, they included language stating that they accepted and ratified the Constitution as passed by the convention. And if the power to secede at will is a power denied to the states then there is nothing they can do to change that.
Texas certainly retained that right as well as the right to divide into five states with two Senators and the appropriate Representatives for each if they desired.
A fallacy. Texas may have had the right to divide before it was admitted to the Union but once it became a state then it has no more rights to divide than any other state. And those restrictions are found in Article IV.
You are correct, as you know you are. However, as I say in post #49, much of the discussion during the writing of the Constitution and in the process of ratification and acceptance by the states was about two primary things:
Whether the first ten amendments, the Bill of Rights, were necessary or a hindrance and;
The right to secede if the idea didn't work out.
Many, if not all, of the states who agreed to join did so with the condition of the right to secede. I feel certain that all the Confederate States which did actually secede had that provision. Regardless, it was implied in their acceptance of the deal.
See post #48 (not 49) and my other post.
We know that there were a great many discussions and arguments regarding the reservation of secession, but in the end none of them made their way into the Constitution.
Every state that joined, or was subsequently admitted, did so in full knowledge of that fact. There were no crossed fingers behind the back or under the table deals.
Secession remains an option open to every state, but the act must be done with the consent of all states in order to be prosecuted legally and correctly.
They messed that part up the first time around...
Buchanan also said, "The right of the people of a single State to absolve themselves at will and without the consent of the other States from their most solemn obligations, and hazard the liberties and happiness of the millions composing this Union, can not be acknowledged. Such authority is believed to be utterly repugnant both to the principles upon which the General Government is constituted and to the objects which it is expressly formed to attain."
Numerous other states had a right to secession in their own state constitutions, including New York.
I'm not aware of any. Regardless, if the Constitution prohibits states from leaving without the consent of the other states then the Supremecy clause of the U.S. Constitution makes any such clause in the state constitution meaningless.
Lincoln’s suspension of habeus corpus and jailing of the elected representatives of the state of Maryland to prevent secession and holding them without trial, was a crime in itself.
Habeas corpus can be suspended in times of invasion or rebellion if circumstances require it. That's in Article I of the Constitution. Lincoln was within his powers as president to do so, especially when Congress was not in session. Your claim about the Maryland legislature omits one key fact - the arrests took place in September 1861 when those members were advocating joining an armed rebellion being wages against the United States government. Such acts would qualify as treason under any definition of the word.
Lincoln and his cronies in congress, instituted the Revenue Act of 1861 imposing the income tax on the Northern states, to finance his power grab.
Well, they could have financed the war by merely printing money and letting inflation run amuck, as the confederates did. But they imposed an income tax, which was repealed following the war and which was later ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. An institution that the confederacy didn't have.
Doesn't the Constitution say that all powers not enumerated in the Constitution are reserved to the states or to the people? Where does the Constitution deny the states the right to secede? Remember, the Constitution was written to restrict the federal government, not empower it.
No, it says that all powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution or denied by it to the states are reserved to the states. It does not say that powers cannot be implied.
Where does the Constitution deny the states the right to secede? Remember, the Constitution was written to restrict the federal government, not empower it.
It does not deny states the right to secede. But since states can only join with the consent of the other states, and once allowed in they can only combine or split or change their borders by a fraction of an inch then it makes sense to conclude that they can only leave with the consent of the other states as well. Likewise, Article I Section 10 and Article IV list a number of actions either prohibited to the states or allowed only with the consent of Congress. Since one common feature is that these prohibited acts if performed could have a negative impact on the interests of the other state then why should be conclude that a state may leave without any consideration on how that could impact the remaining states? Since all states are equal members of the compact then obviously those remaining should have a say over the conditions under which other states may leave. How else can their interests be protected?
You mean they got trick-f**ked? :-)
I am too lazy to do the necessary research and too disinterested to after all these years but during my journey through school I studied the History of Mississippi (where I grew up), the History of the United States and two semesters of the History of the South in college.
From my long ago recollection and from what seems to me to be common sense, I would think that the states who joined with the condition of the right to secede didn't understand that that right was immediately negated by signing. After all, that was their condition for signing! I seems that it was the unionists who had their fingers crossed behind their backs.
And, as I said, a mere seventy years later (I am 72) I am sure most states with that provision of the right to secede still thought that it prevailed. It seems logical to me that they agreed to abide by all the provisions of the Constitution as long as they were a part of the union but that they were not bound to that union forever and regardless of other factors that may arise. If they decided the union no longer met their needs and separated themselves from that union, as they thought they were able to do, they were no longer bound by it.
Like I said, I think they we Tee Effed.
Very interesting. Thank you.
No, it says that all powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution or denied by it to the states are reserved to the states. It does not say that powers cannot be implied.
Are we quibbling over the word delegated versus enumerated? Otherwise, I fail to see the difference.
It does not say that powers cannot be implied.
Dat's da problem round heah! Too much inferrin goin on! Especially about Article IV and the equality concept.
I posted this to you earlier and I am not aware of you addressing it.
"It has been argued that a State would thus claim the right to exercise her will against the others, whilst denying them the right to use their will as against herself. But the case is not one of will within the limit of individual action, but of compulsion extending to, and exercised over, another. A State compelled to go or to remain has a forcible restraint imposed on its will; but in seceding it imposes no restraint on the will of others — they remain free to follow, or continue as before."
Here is a conclusion by James Spence:
"Again, governments are unjust unless their powers are based on the "consent of the governed." Here the same question arises, Who are the governed who are to consent? Are the people of the State of Georgia to refrain from dissenting until they agree with the people of Oregon, more remote than England from Arabia? But this principle also was enunciated, like the last, for the guidance of each separate, distinct community. Upon these principles we can arrive at no other conclusions than these — that according to the Constitutional doctrines of America, whenever a State decides by the vote of a majority of its people, that the government over it has become destructive to the ends of its welfare and happiness, and no longer exists in its consent, such State has a right to abolish that government, so far as it concerns itself, or, in other words, has a right to secede from the Union."
Your thoughts?
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