Booth's Note to Johnson

[Cliff Roberts]

(01-12-2015 12:29 PM)Wild Bill Wrote:  According to Hamilton Howard (son of Senator Jacob Howard, Radical Republican from Michigan), in his book Civil War Echoes (1907), Johnson and Booth knew each other from Nashville. Johnson was military governor of Tennessee and Booth appearing as an actor, as usual. Johnson evidently knew a pair of promiscuous sisters and knowing Booth's reputation as a hustler of women asked the actor to share the girls. Later, Booth allegedly serviced both of them when Johnson was away in DC. Johnson's wife, a consumptive, was also damaged from childbearing and could no longer satisfy him sexually and another pregnancy would have been life-threatening. This same story is in Jerry Madonna's, A Threat to the Republic. He and I used the same source independently. So Johnson and Booth were likely more "intimate" than normally assumed. What this all means, if anything, is up to you.

The story of Booth and Johnson sharing sisters in Nashville first appeared in the press in 1867, during the impeachment investigation of President Johnson, and was reprinted in various newspapers around the country. Perhaps the earliest reference is found in a long page-one article in the June 1, 1867 issue of the Cincinnati Daily Gazette, signed only with the initials "H.V. N. B.," which contains the following paragraph under the heading "BOOTH AT NASHVILLE":

After the Republican party had nominated its ticket Booth passed time in Nashville. There he was well acquainted with Mr. Johnson. Both had mistresses there, and these mistresses were said to be sisters. Booth was also well acquainted with Mr. Browning, the Private Secretary of the Vice President.

The entire article is clearly anti-Johnson and is filled with slurs and obvious untruths.

While I could find no evidence to substantiate the shared mistress claim, it is interesting that Booth's mistress, Ella Starr, is said to have accompanied her married sister, Mary Jane Treakle, to Nashville where they spent some time together. This again is based on press reports, but I recall some documentation that Mary Jane, at least, did reside for a time in Nashville before coming to Washington.