Actor Edwin Booth saved Robert Todd Lincoln, son of President Abraham Lincoln, from falling onto train tracks in New Jersey during the Civil War. The event was later recounted by Robert Todd Lincoln himself in 1909.
Here’s a headline that never came out but is still true: Booth saved Lincoln’s life. No, we’re not talking about the assassin John Wilkes Booth, who shot President Abraham Lincoln in 1865, but rather about his brother, Edwin Booth. Nor are we referring to the president, but to his eldest son, Robert Todd Lincoln.
The event took place in Jersey City, New Jersey in the midst of the Civil War (probably 1863 or 1864). Robert Todd Lincoln was en route to Washington, DC, during a break from his college education at Harvard, and acclaimed actor (and Lincoln supporter) Edwin Booth was en route to Richmond, Virginia. While standing on the platform of the train station, waiting to board, Lincoln was jostled by the crowd and nearly fell onto the tracks. But just in time, Booth reached out and grabbed Lincoln by the collar of his coat, then pulled him to safety.
Although printed accounts of the rescue appeared shortly after the president’s assassination, many of the details were either incorrect or exaggerated. Fortunately, Robert Todd Lincoln himself gave an account in a 1909 letter to the editor of The Century Magazine.
The other Booth and Lincoln:
Robert Todd Lincoln was the only child of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln to live to adulthood; he died in 1926.
Edwin Booth was an avid supporter of President Lincoln. Famous for his role as Hamlet, he has often been called the greatest American stage actor of the 19th century.
In a strange coincidence, Robert Todd was near or about to meet with both Presidents Garfield and McKinley shortly before their assassinations.
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