Grant and Lincoln's invitation

[loetar44]

Thanks to all for your remarks and suggestions. I want to add the following.

Eva your suggesting about the total seating capacity of the theatre holds water. I also read that it was 1,700.

From George J. Olszewski, “Restoration of Ford’s Theatre” page 102/103: “For seating, approximately 1 ,074 individual cane-bottomed chairs will be required: 602 in the orchestra and parquet; 422 in the dress circle, and from 48 to 80 for the eight boxes which accommodated from six (6) to ten (10) persons each. High-backed benches were used in the family circle to seat approximately 676 persons. Thus this total figure of 1,700 for the theatre's seating capacity, aside from the boxes, is based on the statement of John T. Ford published in the Washington Post of June 11, 1893, and the unpublished doctoral dissertation of John Ford Sollers referred to in the main body of this report. This figure of 1,700 appears to be more realistic than contemporary newspaper accounts of 1865 which stated the seating capacity to be between 2,000 and 3,000 persons."

In another account (can’t remember where) I once read: 600 seats in the the orchestra and parquet, 420 seats in the Dress Circle and 600 to 700 (on benches) in the Family Circle. Thus aside from the 4 boxes there were 1,620 to 1,720 seats in the theatre and this is in accordance with the given seating capacity of the theatre as 1,700.

The theatre was certainly not sold out because the two lower boxes (1,2 and 3,4) and one upper box (5,6) was empty (out of respect of the President’s visit). You are right Roger! I agree with you that the Dress Circle had empty seats, because some changed seats to have a better look at the stage. Further I think that it is not exactly known how many tickets were sold for the Family Circle and probably this level was not sold out.

Still searching for more info concerning the exact structure of the Union high command in April 1865 and Grant’s exact position within this structure. STS Lincolnite thanks for your highly interesting overview. If I have something to add I will of course post this info.

[RJNorton]

(10-15-2014 08:00 AM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  On Amazon I found this statement in a review on "We Saw Lincoln Shot":
"On history's most tragic Good Friday night since that First Good Friday, 741 people bought a ticket to Ford's Theater."

Eva, THANK YOU. Due to the fact that you mentioned Good's book I decided to thumb through it. And I finally found where I had read the 1,000 figure. (I mentioned earlier that I could not recall the source but knew I read it somewhere.)

In the Preface Tim Good writes, "Approximately one thousand patrons attended Ford's Theatre on the evening of April 14, 1865."

[L Verge]

Tim spent many days at Ford's Theatre on the staff of the National Park Service, so he's an excellent source.

[Eva Elisabeth]

(10-15-2014 12:05 PM)RJNorton Wrote:  

(10-15-2014 08:00 AM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  On Amazon I found this statement in a review on "We Saw Lincoln Shot":
"On history's most tragic Good Friday night since that First Good Friday, 741 people bought a ticket to Ford's Theater."

Eva, THANK YOU. Due to the fact that you mentioned Good's book I decided to thumb through it. And I finally found where I had read the 1,000 figure. (I mentioned earlier that I could not recall the source but knew I read it somewhere.)

In the Preface Tim Good writes, "Approximately one thousand patrons attended Ford's Theatre on the evening of April 14, 1865."

Thank YOU, Roger! I, too, thumbed through Good's book, but didn't find what you found. I solely focused on the 741 (as a figure, not a word)...

[loetar44]

(10-15-2014 12:03 PM)loetar44 Wrote:  In another account (can’t remember where) I once read: 600 seats in the the orchestra and parquet, 420 seats in the Dress Circle and 600 to 700 (on benches) in the Family Circle. Thus aside from the 4 boxes there were 1,620 to 1,720 seats in the theatre and this is in accordance with the given seating capacity of the theatre as 1,700.

Found!!

From Ford’s Theatre and the Lincoln Assassination. Eastern National, 2003:

The theater was divided into three seating levels. The gradually sloping ground level held approximately 600 movable wooden chairs with cane seats. The chairs were not attached to the floor so that the entire area could be made even with the stage for dances. There were half-circular niches on the aisles to the rear of the parquet, perhaps to accommodate heating stoves or busts of theater personalities. The second floor balcony, or dress circle, accommodated 420 people in wooden chairs similar to those on the level below. Finally, the upper tier, or family circle balcony, seated 600 to 700 people on high wooden benches. Gas lighting fixtures ran the entire length of the ornate railing along this upper balcony, and on special occasions, birdcages hung from the fixtures…

Four private boxes, arranged in two tiers, flanked either side of the stage. The more elaborate and desirable boxes provided an excellent view of the stage and the audience. When the two upper boxes on stage left, boxes seven and eight, were combined, they were known collectively as the State Box, which was reserved for use by high government officials. This is also known as the Presidential Box.

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(10-15-2014 06:20 AM)STS Lincolnite Wrote:  

(10-15-2014 05:16 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  Perhaps the only box occupied that night - the Presidential box - was "telling?" Or was this done purposely by management (the other 6 boxes were vacant) so as not to detract from the presidential party? Would Ford's have sold tickets to the other 6 boxes if the demand was there?

I'm sure I read somewhere that Ford's puposefully did not sell tickets to the other boxes on the nights that the President was in attendance - as you said, so not to detract from the Presidential party (and also I think to give the party a little more privacy from people looking in). I will see if I can find where I read that. Although, if it came down to it, and if money and was in issue, I'm sure they would have softened that stance to some degree.

“Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination that Changed America Forever” by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard says on page 160: “Out of respect for the office, none of the other boxes are for sale when the Lincolns occupy the state box”.

[HerbS]

Sad but true-O'Reilly does make some sense-some time.Loetarr44,you hang in there,don't you?

[L Verge]

The mention of the bird cages struck me. Dare I think that canaries were there to assure that the gas was not seeping out into the audience (a la coal miners)?

[Eva Elisabeth]

(10-15-2014 06:09 PM)L Verge Wrote:  The mention of the bird cages struck me. Dare I think that canaries were there to assure that the gas was not seeping out into the audience (a la coal miners)?

Coming from a coal mining area, I would think you are right.

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(10-15-2014 04:56 PM)loetar44 Wrote:  “Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination that Changed America Forever” by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard says on page 160: “Out of respect for the office, none of the other boxes are for sale when the Lincolns occupy the state box”.

Wasn't the opposite box the Seward family's? I seem to recall at least one performance the Sewards AND the Lincolns attended, thus the word "none" would be incorrect.

[Susan Higginbotham]

From the testimony of John T. Ford, James Maddox, H. Clay Ford, and Thomas Raybold at the conspiracy trial, it doesn't sound as if there was a set policy of leaving the other boxes unsold when the President attended. None of them suggests that there was.

John T. Ford:

Q. Do you know the fact that none of the boxes were occupied that night except that occupied by the President?
A. I have only heard so.
Q. Is the play of the “American Cousin” a popular one? Does it attract considerable audiences?
A. It was, when originally produced, an exceedingly attractive play: of late years it has not been a strong card, but a fair attraction.
Q. Is it not a very unusual thing, when such plays are produced, for your private boxes to be entirely empty?
A. Washington is a very good place for selling boxes usually. They are generally in demand, and nearly always two or three boxes are sold.
Q. Can you recall any occasion on which a play so popular and attractive as that was presented when none of your private boxes, save the one occupied by the President, was used?
A. I remember occasions when we sold no boxes at all, and had quite a full house,—a good audience; but those occasions were rare. My reason for constructing so many boxes to this theatre was, that usually private boxes were in demand in Washington,—more so than in almost any other city. It is not a favorable place to see a performance; but it is a fashionable place here to take company.

Maddox:

Q. Do you know whether any of the other boxes were occupied that night when the President sat in there?
A. I do not think any of them were.
Q. Do you not know they were not?
A. I do not. I cannot say positively whether they were or not.
Q. You do think they were?
A. I do not think they were; but I would not say positively they were not. I never took notice only first of the President’s box, and saw that the President came in.

H. Clay Ford:

Q. You know the fact, I suppose, that the other boxes of that theatre were not occupied on the night of the assassination?
A. Yes, sir: none of the boxes were occupied, I think. I could tell by looking at my book. I am not certain of it.
Q. Have you not had particular attention called to that matter since the assassination?
A. Yes, sir: I do not remember of any boxes being taken on that night.
Q. Do you not remember the further fact that the boxes were applied for that evening, and the applicants were refused, and told that they had already been taken?
A. No, sir: I do not recollect it. The applicants did not apply to me.
Q. You sold all the tickets, did you not?
A. No, sir: there were four of us in the office who sold tickets.
Q. And you do not know who had applied for those other boxes?
A. No, sir.
Q. Are you willing to swear here that Booth did not?
A. To me? Yes, sir.
Q. To anybody, with your knowledge?
A. Yes, sir: I swear he did not.
Q. To you, according to your information?
A. According to my information, he did not.
Q. Nor anybody else for him?
A. Nor anybody else for him.
Q. There were no applications of any kind for the other boxes to your knowledge?
A. To my knowledge, no application was made for any box except the President’s? [stet]
Q. I understand you to swear, however, that there may have been applications made, and you know nothing about them?
A. Yes, sir: there may have been.

Thomas Raybold:

Q. State whether there were any box-tickets sold at the theatre up to the time of the opening on the night of the assassination.
A. To the best of my knowledge, there were not. I cannot say positively, for I do not know; but I know I sold none. I was not all the time in the office. I had been sick for three days with neuralgia, which I suffered from frequently, and I was not in the office all the time that day; but I was in the office during that afternoon, and I was there also in the morning when the tickets were obtained for the President by his messenger; but I do not know whether there were any sold, nor whether there were any applications made for them. Mr. Sessford is the best one to tell that: he knows it, I suppose.
Q. Would you have been likely to know if any of the tickets were sold?
A. Yes, sir: I would have seen in counting the house at night. I counted the tickets at the usual time, ten o’clock, on the night of the assassination.
Q. And you have no recollection of any of the box-tickets having been sold?
A. No recollection of it.

[loetar44]

I now understand Gen. Grant’s exact position in 1865 and the role of the General-in-Chief better. Grant was indeed a man with awesome power in 1865, after he was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant General on March 9, 1864 and was made General-in-Chief of all the Union armies. In his memoirs he clearly stated what his position was and what was expected of him. He was Commander in Chief of the Union Armies in the field and was charged with the chief responsibility for ending the war. He was no mere advisor to the president, but possessed full control over strategic and operational planning; he in fact exercised the actual military control of that moment. The civilian control of the Army was however exercised from Washington, as had always been. This all was a drastic change. Why this change? Today I’ve tried to study this and here is what I found:

In European armies there were four grades in which generals could be commissioned: Brigadier General (1 star), Major General (2 stars), Lieutenant General (3 stars), or General (4 stars). After the Revolution the fear of a dictator remained powerful in America, and so the people were unwilling to give too much power to a military man. That’s the main reason why the U.S. Congress refused to authorize a rank higher than major general (2 stars) until 1798. That year however there was big fear that France would invade the U.S. and the Congress induced to create a lieutenant generalcy and President John Adams appointed George Washington in that position. When it became evident that France had no intention of attacking on American soil, and when Washington died in December 1799, the rank Lieutenant General (3 stars) died with him. So only George Washington had risen to that rank before Ulysses Grant in 1864.

Grant was the second Lieutenant General in U.S. History and the fifth General-in- Chief. Until Grant, it was not clearly outlined what the General-in-Chief's exact powers and responsibilities were. If the General-in-Chief truly commanded the Army and could fully exercise the actual military control, he would decimate the president's role as Commander- in-Chief as written in the Constitution. If he did not, then the civilian leadership in Washington was free to ignore him, making his position in effect merely an honorary one. Because the legislation did not formally define the job, the duties, responsibilities, and authority of the General-in-Chief it all depended on the character of the individual who held the office and on his informal relationships with the army and the nation's political leaders (the President and the Secretary of War). This was not a real problem until the Civil War broke out.

Winfield Scott was at that moment General-in-Chief. He received in 1855 a brevet promotion to Lieutenant General , was 74 and suffering numerous health problems. A brevet promotion is a promotion to a rank, without receiving the authority of that rank, nothing more than a “honorary promotion”, thus meaningless in terms of real authority. In the fall of 1861 Scott was succeeded as General-in-Chief by the far more powerful Major General George B. McClellan. Initially, McClellan was confident he would eventually win a third star— the Lieutenant General's star (against the real wishes of Lincoln, because it would make McClellan more powerful in military affairs), but he fell ill with typhoid fever in December 1861. Lincoln began to fear what might happen if McClellan were gone and he wanted to maintain his authority over the military, so in January 1862 he put Edwin M. Stanton in place of Cameron at the head of the War Department. Stanton encouraged Lincoln to strenghten authority over the military (because of the lack of progress in the war at that moment) and when McClellan recovered from his illness, he found his civilian superiors interfering in areas that had been his exclusive responsibility (operational planning and personnel assignments). Finally, on March 11, 1862, Lincoln removed McClellan from his post.

For the next few months Lincoln and Stanton attempted to direct the Union war effort without the aid of a General-in-Chief, but this did not work. So, on July 11, 1862, Lincoln decided to resurrect the office of General-in-Chief and appointed Major General Henry W. Halleck to the post. Halleck's role however was reduced to simply a military advisor of the Secretary of War and the President. Lincoln found this situation completely satisfactory. He was determined to be Commander-in-Chief in fact as well as in title. What he wanted from his General-in-Chief was advice and translation of presidential wishes into military orders. And that was exactly what Halleck did.

After three years of bitter civil war, the conflict was still no nearer to a solution than it had been in 1861. Lee’s Army’s were wounded but still perfectly capable of defending itself. To destroy the Confederation there was in 1864 a need of a new General-in-Chief and a new strategy. At that point Grant came in. But Grant did not want a role as a military advisor, he wanted “real power”. He wanted fully control over strategic and operational planning and personnel assignments, and the rank of Lieutenant General (3 stars).

Initially Lincoln did not welcome this, because he was fully satisfied with Halleck, but he agreed by the end of February 1864, when he had the assurances he wanted concerning his own (military) authority. That’s why Grant did not enjoy complete liberty in managing the war, but neither was he stuck in the role of “simply” an advisor to the president. Lincoln gave Grant his personal assurance that he was to be allowed to exercise the real functions of the office. Halleck, being a good soldier, resigned his position to make way for Grant and was appointed Chief of Staff of the Army in an advisory role, the same work he had done until his resignation, from the same office in Washington.

Grant became in 1864 in fact the controller of the grand strategy of the war. He was also able to choose his own staff (and he drew upon the best men in the Army). Grant knew how to end the war. His strategy was simply to apply relentless pressure on the Confederate Armies and to keep pounding away at the Confederacy until its collapse and the people of the South had had enough of war. Included in his plans was the intention of occupying enemy territory and capturing key positions such as Richmond and Atlanta. His secondary objective was to destroy all communications between Richmond and the deep South. We all know how he ended the war.

On July 25, 1866 Ulysses Grant was promoted to General of the Army (4 stars) and became with this promotion the first 4 star General in the U.S.

[Anita]

[quote='Susan Higginbotham' pid='39527' dateline='1413427050']
From the testimony of John T. Ford, James Maddox, H. Clay Ford, and Thomas Raybold at the conspiracy trial, it doesn't sound as if there was a set policy of leaving the other boxes unsold when the President attended. None of them suggests that there was.



Thanks Susan for posting the trial testimony. Great information. None of the testimony even implies this was a policy. I can think of many reasons why there were empty boxes and low ticket sales.

As Eva mentioned, it was Good Friday and many people don't go out on such a solemn religious holiday.

John T Ford speaking of "Our American Cousin" testified "...of late years it has not been a strong card, but a fair attraction. And it was the last night.

Only that day did the papers announce Lincoln and Grant would be attending. Not much time to make plans if one wanted to go because they would be there.

Grover's was showing a very popular attraction the same night.

People had been celebrating Lee's surrender with the grand illumination on April 13.

In other words, lots going on to account for low attendance at Ford's on April 14.

Booth knew where the President's box was when he and his party were in attendance. There was no need to have the other boxes vacant when he had a separate entry leading to the box and his planned escape was a leap to the stage.

[RJNorton]

The research in this thread is amazing. What has been uncovered is fascinating. I will just add one small tidbit. If the "John Deery story" is true, then it would appear that Grover's Theatre also did not have a set policy of closing the other boxes when the President was in attendance. Essentially the story goes that Booth asked his friend, John Deery, to secure tickets for him (Booth) in the box adjacent to where the President would be sitting had the Lincolns accepted the Grover's invitation and not Ford's.

I have several books that say this. One is Theodore Roscoe's Web of Conspiracy. On page 96 Roscoe writes, "If Lincoln decided to go to Grover's, Booth wanted to be in the next box. And he had sought to 'cover' the move by having Deery make the reservation."

[HerbS]

Booth had the whole complex assassination plot covered,didn't he!That is why, Art Loux's book is a "Must-Read"for all of us.Booth was as cunning as a fox.Sure,fame was the name of his game,but the entire conspiracy plot was well thought out.To me,this shines a whole new light on the"smarts" of the conspirators as a goup.-Herb Swingle

[loetar44]

EVA,
When I checked Roger’s site this morning I saw two posts from you, now disappeared. However, I want to react on both.

#1. Your post about my remarks about the exact position of Grant and the function of General-in-Chief. Here’s my response:

Thank you for your kind words.
BTW, in modern times there exist in the US also a "five-star general". This is the rank of General of the Army, established in 1944. It was created to give the most senior American commanders parity of rank with their British counterparts holding the ranks of Field Marshal (this was a rank above that of general). As you probably knows the German equivalent was until 1945 the rank of Generaloberst. The five-star-rank exists only in a minority of countries and is usually held by only a very few officers during wartime. In times of peace, it is usually held only as an honorary rank.

General Grant was in 1866 promoted to the rank of General of the Army, and wore in that rank four stars. The modern four-star rank in the US is that of General. There is one rank considered senior to General of the Army, and that is the General of the Armies. George Washington was posthumously promoted to that rank in 1976. The rank is not active in the U.S. military.

#2 Your post about your research in which you summed up 18 accounts re. People who came to Ford’s and why they came in the first place. Can you please repost this? And you said that you were not feeling too well, catching a cold. Here’s my response:

Great work Eva! Hope you are feeling better now! See it as the first signals of the beginning of the cold season. So, go green! Eating plenty of leafy green veg can boost your immune system. And switch C for D. I appreciate very much your research. My conclusion so far is that the theatre was crowded, that people came in the first place for Grant and that a lot of people were in good mood that Friday because the war was ended and the people were willing to come out of their homes. Did Lincoln proclaim Good Friday April 14, 1865 as a day of jubilation and triumph??? I remember once reading this, but can’t recall where. Maybe someone else knows this.

[RJNorton]

Kees, I have not researched your question...just going from memory. I do not recall that Lincoln issued any proclamations for April 14th. The only thing that comes to mind is that Stanton let War Dept. workers off to attend religious services on Good Friday. Once again there is no research on my reply so don't take it to the bank.