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.
Implied powers has gotten us an Air Force, NASA, a national air traffic control system, pure food and drugs, and other things as well.
I posted this to you earlier and I am not aware of you addressing it.
See reply 51.
Here is what Madison had to say on conditional ratifications:
"My opinion is, that a reservation of a right to withdraw, if any amendments be not decided on under the form of the Constitution within a certain time, is a conditional ratification; that it does not make New York a member of the Union, and consequently that she could not be received on that plan. Compacts must be reciprocal - this principle would not in such a case be preserved. The Constitution requires an adoption in toto and forever. It has been so adopted by the other States. An adoption for a limited time would be as defective as an adoption of some articles only. In short, any condition whatever must vitiate the ratification...The idea of reserving a right to withdraw was started in Richmond, and considered as a conditional ratification which was itself abandoned as worse than a rejection."
Madison was speaking specifically about a state ratifying the Constitution on the condition that certain amendments were adopted, but I sincerely doubt he would have looked on any form of conditional ratification any more favorably.
Lincoln had no right to invade the South either. Lincoln invaded the South for one reason and one reason only, money. As you no doubt recall, in his First Inaugural Lincoln promised to invade any state that failed to collect “the duties and imposts,” and he kept his promise. On April 19, 1861, the reason Lincoln gave for his naval blockade of the Southern ports was that “the collection of the revenue cannot be effectually executed” in the states that had seceded.
The South had the right to secede. The Declaration of Indpendence decribes the states as: “Free and Independent, they have full Power to levy war and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States, may of right do.”
From an article by Walter Williams:
Thomas Jefferson in his First Inaugural Address said, “If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union, or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left to combat it.” Fifteen years later, after the New England Federalists attempted to secede, Jefferson said, “If any state in the Union will declare that it prefers separation ... to a continuance in the union .... I have no hesitation in saying, ‘Let us separate.’”
At Virginia’s ratification convention, the delegates said, “The powers granted under the Constitution being derived from the People of the United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression.” In Federalist Paper 39, James Madison, the father of the Constitution, cleared up what “the people” meant, saying the proposed Constitution would be subject to ratification by the people, “not as individuals composing one entire nation, but as composing the distinct and independent States to which they respectively belong.” In a word, states were sovereign; the federal government was a creation, an agent, a servant of the states
And I suppose you could say that George Patton had no right to invade Germany, too. But war was the solution Jeff Davis and the confederacy chose to further their aims. And having chosen war then the responsibility for keeping that war from coming home to roost lay with them. They just made a mess of it.
As you no doubt recall, in his First Inaugural Lincoln promised to invade any state that failed to collect “the duties and imposts,” and he kept his promise.
Actually what Lincoln said in his first inaugural was, "In doing this there needs to be no bloodshed or violence, and there shall be none unless it be forced upon the national authority. The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere. Where hostility to the United States in any interior locality shall be so great and universal as to prevent competent resident citizens from holding the Federal offices, there will be no attempt to force obnoxious strangers among the people for that object. While the strict legal right may exist in the Government to enforce the exercise of these offices, the attempt to do so would be so irritating and so nearly impracticable withal that I deem it better to forego for the time the uses of such offices. The mails, unless repelled, will continue to be furnished in all parts of the Union. So far as possible the people everywhere shall have that sense of perfect security which is most favorable to calm thought and reflection." He closed by promising, " In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors." And he kept his promise.
On April 19, 1861, the reason Lincoln gave for his naval blockade of the Southern ports was that “the collection of the revenue cannot be effectually executed” in the states that had seceded.
He opened that paragraph by noting, "Whereas an insurrection against the Government of the United States has broken out in the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas..." and closed it by saying "...therein comformably to that provision of the Constitution which requires duties to be uniform throughout the United States..." He was only carrying out his responsibilities as president.
War was the remedy that the South chose, as William Sherman pointed out. It's what they wanted and it's what they got. And if it turned out to be a bit more than they expected and it didn't turn out quite like they had hoped, they have only themselves to blame.
Actually that quote, complete and in context, is:
"The alternatives between which we are to choose [are fairly stated]: 1, licentious commerce and gambling speculations for a few, with eternal war for the many; or, 2, restricted commerce, peace and steady occupations for all. If any State in the Union will declare that it prefers separation with the first alternative to a continuance in union without it, I have no hesitation in saying 'let us separate.' I would rather the States should withdraw which are for unlimited commerce and war, and confederate with those alone which are for peace and agriculture. I know that every nation in Europe would join in sincere amity with the latter and hold the former at arm's length by jealousies, prohibitions, restrictions, vexations and war."
Now if instead of saying 'let us separate' Jefferson had said, "I say kick them out of the Union regardless of whether they want to go or not" then would you have agreed with him?
In Federalist Paper 39, James Madison, the father of the Constitution...
James Madison also said, "...that I do not consider the proceedings of Virginia in ’98-’99 as countenancing the doctrine that a state may at will secede from its Constitutional compact with the other States. A rightful secession requires the consent of the others, or an abuse of the compact, absolving the seceding party from the obligations imposed by it."
The fact that you can say the South chose war, with a straight face is almost laughable. Lincoln forced their hand with provocatively resupplying Fort Sumter. It wasnt Jeff Davis calling for the raising of 150,000 troops to invade the North and General Lee took great care in how his troops dealt with the civilian population in Pennsylvania, as opposed to the war criminal sherman.
So either they had a right to secede or they didnt. Why should South Carolina need New Jersey to agree to allow them to leave?
Why shouldn’t they? Are we not equals? What should give one state superiority over another?
We arent equals now, look at the electoral college. California and New York have way more power than Virginia or South Carolina.
And why was that provocative? Sumter was the property of the federal government. Built on land deeded to the U.S. free and clear by an act of the South Carolina legislature, funded with government revenue provided by all the states, manned by the U.S. Army, Sumter was not the territory of South Carolina or the confederacy and Lincoln was well within his rights to send them supplies and keep them from starving. Had Lincoln landed his supplies then all that would have resulted in was a continuation of the status quo. Why was that such a threat to Davis that he felt the need to launch a war to gain the fort?
It wasnt Jeff Davis calling for the raising of 150,000 troops to invade the North...
But a month before he fired on Sumter, Davis signed an authorization for raising 100,000 troops. An army 6 or 7 times the size of the U.S. army. What was that for?
...and General Lee took great care in how his troops dealt with the civilian population in Pennsylvania, as opposed to the war criminal sherman.
Lee's army survived by taking their supplies from the local civilian populace, took horses and mules and anything they could get their hands on, went out of their way to destroy an ironworks owned by a prominent abolitionist senator as well as the homes of the workers, and also abducted any and all free blacks they could get their hands on and sent them South into slavery. Do those qualify as war crimes, too?
“And why was that provocative? Sumter was the property of the federal government. Built on land deeded to the U.S. free and clear by an act of the South Carolina legislature, funded with government revenue provided by all the states, manned by the U.S. Army, Sumter was not the territory of South Carolina or the confederacy and Lincoln was well within his rights to send them supplies and keep them from starving. Had Lincoln landed his supplies then all that would have resulted in was a continuation of the status quo. Why was that such a threat to Davis that he felt the need to launch a war to gain the fort?”
Because if South Carolina’s secession had any merit or standing, they certainly could not allow a “foriegn” army to occupy land in their territory.
“But a month before he fired on Sumter, Davis signed an authorization for raising 100,000 troops. An army 6 or 7 times the size of the U.S. army. What was that for?”
Davis wasnt stupid. He saw what happened at Harpers Ferry and knew that certain folks in the North had grand designs of beating the South into submission, but he raised that army for purely defensive purposes, correctly as it turns out.
In reference to Lee’s men, they certainly do not qualify as war crimes. Lee’s men never burnt down entire cities or issued an order giving his men the right to rape, as the Bastard Butler did in New Orleans.
But the land was not their. And why would continued possession of a fort by the U.S. - a fort that was their property to begin with - cast doubts about South Carolina's secession? How did Sumter create such a threat that it justified a war to gain control of it?
Davis wasnt stupid. He saw what happened at Harpers Ferry and knew that certain folks in the North had grand designs of beating the South into submission, but he raised that army for purely defensive purposes, correctly as it turns out.
Wuh? Harper's Ferry? That was hundreds of miles from Montgomery and the rest of the confederacy. What on earth did that have to do with Davis' rash arms buildup?
In reference to Lee’s men, they certainly do not qualify as war crimes. Lee’s men never burnt down entire cities or issued an order giving his men the right to rape, as the Bastard Butler did in New Orleans.
The people of Chambersburg, Maryland would have an argument with you on that. And as for Butler's order I'd like to see that if you don't mind.
Butler’s Order..
HDQRS. DEPARTMENT OF THE GULF
New Orleans, May 15, 1862.
As the officers and soldiers of the United States have been subject to repeated insults from the women (calling themselves ladies) of New Orleans in return for the most scrupulous non-interference and courtesy on our part, it is ordered that hereafter when any female shall by word, gesture, or movement insult or show contempt for any officer or soldier of the United States she shall be regarded and held liable to be treated as a woman of the town plying her avocation.
By command of Major-General Butler:
GEO. C. STRONG,
Assistant Adjutant-General and Chief of Staff
Butler’s order said in essence that if you’re gonna behave like a whore, you can expect to be treated like one. It didn’t say anything about rape...
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