The story of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination on April 14, 1865 at Ford’s Theater by John Wilkes Booth is a well-known tale from American History. What many people don’t know is the story of Henry Rathbone, the Union Major who attempted to apprehend Booth, and his steady decline into madness since that tragic day.
Major Rathbone and his fiance Clara had been personally invited to attend the play that evening by their longtime friends President Lincoln and First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln after several others, including Ulysses S. Grant and Thomas Eckert, had declined the offer. It was during the play that Rathbone had noticed Booth enter into the Presidential box and watched in horror as the President was shot in the back.
Rathbone ran up to the President’s box in an attempt to apprehend Booth. Booth fought off Rathbone and slashed the length of his left arm from elbow to shoulder. In spite of the extent of his injuries, Rathbone attempted to grab Booth as he went to jump from the Presidential Box. Rathbone grabbed hold of Booth’s coat, causing Booth to tumble down to the stage below. His left leg broke just above his ankle, but he successfully escaped.
President Lincoln was taken to the nearby home of William Peterson, where he would perish the following day. Rathbone, not realizing the severity of his injuries, escorted Mary Todd Lincoln to the Peterson home and helped stand watch over Lincoln as his health rapidly deteriorated. Rathbone eventually loss consciousness from blood loss. The slash had cut him nearly to the bone and had hit a major artery. A surgeon tended to Rathbone’s wounds and sent him and Clara home.
12 days after shooting the President, Union forces surrounded Booth and put him to death. As for Rathbone, he was able to make a full recovery from his injuries, but that night would continue to haunt him for the rest of his life. He had felt, at least in part, responsible for Lincoln’s death.
Rathbone went on to marry his fiance Clara, but married life didn’t cure him of his inner demons. He resigned from the Army in 1870 after having risen to the rank of Colonel. Things only took a turn for the worst for Rathbone. He struggled to find work due to his mental instability. He, his wife Clara and three children spent time traveling around Europe, visiting spas and other health clinics in hopes of finding a cure for Rathbone’s mental illness.
Clara had become fed up with Rathbone’s mood swings, but ultimately decided to stay with him on account of the children. Eventually he was appointed to the U.S. Consul General’s office in Handover, Germany. The family relocated and Clara believed that a fresh start was exactly what was needed to cure Rathbone of his deteriorating mental state, as well as their deteriorating marriage. Instead the relocation had the opposite effect on Rathbone.
Believing that his wife had been having an affair, Rathbone and Clara fought constantly. The tensions within the couple’s unhappy marriage would finally come to a head in the early hours of December 23, 1883.
Clara awoke just before daybreak to find her husband fully clothed and pacing about the room. She asked what he was doing and he began demanding to see the children. Clara refused and the two got into a heated argument. Rothbone set out towards the children’s bedroom, but Clara managed to fight him off just enough to get him back into the master bedroom. Clara blocked Rothbone’s passage back to the doorway. That’s when Rothbone pulled out a gun and shot his wife, then proceeded to stab her multiple times.
Horrified by what had just happened, Rothbone turned the knife on himself. He stabbed himself five times. Rothbone’s suicide attempt had failed, but Clara died as a result of her injuries.
After their father’s arrest the children were sent back to the United States in order to live with their uncle. Rothbone was charged with murder, but was declared legally insane by doctors who conducted extensive interviews with him. Rothbone had insisted that it was an intruder who had killed his wife and attempted to stab him. He was forced to live out his years in Hildesheim, German at the Asylum for the Criminally Insane.
He would eventually go on to die there in August of 1911. He was buried next to Clara.