medicine. he frequently lectures civil war groups. we are thankful to have him speak to us tonight. he's a member of the board of directors of the society of civil war surgeons and public concerning, he is what we call a switch hitter -- he does physician in the civil war for confederate and union soldiers. we are happy to have you anyway, jon. please welcome to the podium, dr. jon willen. [applause] ok.willen: that's better. , when i give talks, i think the organizers for inviting me. chairmanase, being the of this group, i have to thank myself. we will dispense with that. title of myee, the talk is lincoln's first responder. we will talk about the medical aspects of the assassination itself. let me advance the slides. do we have a clicker to advance the slides? does it -- in. [laughter] we are not advancing for some reason. >> [indiscernible] dr. willen: there we go. ok. i interest in this was piqued the fact that in may of 2012 a researcher at the national archives uncovered a 21-page report written by dr. charles leale. a 21-pagered handwritten report, which was done in the first .4 hours of -- 24ncoln assassination hours of the lincoln assassination by dr. charles leale. previously, this was unknown. dr. leale did submit seven onerts, but this particular turned out to be a treasure trove. who was this gentleman? first doctor to be admitted to the presidential box was indeed dr. charles augustine's leale. he was a 23 row. he had just graduated bellevue medical college in new york only some six weeks prior. that's a little deceiving because his stepfather was a doctor and as a young man, he had -- his father had overseen the marine hospital important, maine and dr. leale -- young charles, actually, gained surgical experience. he recalls receiving his first surgical instruction at the hospital as he visited the wards as a young man. himddition, his father had privately tutored by two of the ,reatest positions of the day austin flint senior and the other frank hamilton. frank hamilton went on to be involved with the union army and wrote a manual of military surgery which was used by the union surgeons. ,e indeed, in medical school took a course under dr. hamilton and, ironically, the treatment of head wounds. and that, indeed is the manual .r. hamilton had written at the time of the assassination, he was a surgeon in charge of the commissioned officers ward at armory square hospital on the mall there in washington, d.c.. you see the pictures. on seventh and independent spirit it was a 1000-bed hospital with overflow. after the armory on the right, which you can see in the picture and, of course, this is the site of the air and space museum. so, we have to go to april 14, 1865. president lincoln is assassinated by john wilkes booth. we all know that story. now, john wilkes booth was part dynasty,oth acting starting with junius booth and edwin booth. . like this anecdote a 1864, edwin booth is that railroad station in new jersey and he was traveling with john t . ford. the young man slipped and was about to fall into the gap between the platform and the train. ,ooth grabbed him by the collar pulled him back up and saved his life. was none other than robert todd lincoln. the headline at the time was "booth saves lincoln." what motivated booth? there are several theories. book thatre's a propagates the theory there is a case of sibling rivalry. edwin was a more famous actor than john, and indeed, he had , i am going to act in the north. you are going to act in the south. smaller audiences, less notoriety, which is one reason very close toe the southerners. he was also a racist, of course, and that's part of the motivation. this is lincoln's second inauguration. the arrow points to a man in a enlarge which, when you it, that is considered by most people to be booth. when booth himself stated -- there was an excellent chance if i had wished to kill the -- what next lent chance if i did wish to kill the president on inauguration day. if iat excellent chance did wish to kill the president on inauguration day. why was he there? ticket from lucy lambert. he was engaged to lucy lambert. they may have attended the inaugural ball together. this photograph was found on booth's body. the photographs of four other women were also found on booth's body. all know this story, but it's worth repeating -- the president decides to attend a performance of "our american cousin" starring laura keene. 15 people with the president. mr. and mrs. grants. down people turned attending with the present. mr. and mrs. grant. they could not stand mrs. lincoln. the speaker of the house did not want to go. george ashe and, who presided over the 1860 republican convention, the former and president governor of illinois and the x governor of illinois governor of illinois declined. william howard, the postmaster of detroit. we keep going nonetheless. mr. and mrs. william wallace. the governor of idaho did not want to go. last, but not least, his own son robert. this was the carriage used to transport the president and mrs. lincoln to ford's theater. it was built in 1964 in chicago. the carriage is now in the studebaker museum. we had it at the smithsonian american history museum in the lobby at the time of the 150th anniversary of the assassination in 2015. here is who did go. -- clara harris and major henry rathbone. married rathbone's mother, making her his stepsister. she married henry rathbone in 1867. she was murdered by her husband in hannover, germany. that's her father, the republican senator i read friend ofso a president lincoln. henry was a lawyer from albany who bridges abated and the bells of vence id. in fredericksburg. he was appointed the u.s. consul to hanover, germany in 1882. he subsequently ended up murdering his wife in a 10 three. inspent the rest of his life a german asylum for the insane. henry andbooks about clara. there's a novel based on their relationship and the murder of clara harris. there's not a lot of nonfiction. so, here is the group of linking conspirators. richer, is not in that but the rest of them are. we will briefly run through the book -- through the group. -- know about lewis how lewis powell. he was known as lewis payne. atzerodt. he was assigned to murder vice president johnson at the kirkwood house hotel, but lost his nerve. this is a guy who would have ---two b president had huge gone to be president had he succeeded. a republican senator from connecticut. he actually voted against the bill granting the vote to african-american men in d, but he did vote for the 13th amendment. so, a lot of people do not know this. henry johnson asked if he could delay being sworn in until april and tennessee had approved the abolition of slavery. foster would have become president, active resident if johnson was not sworn in -- active president if johnson had not been sworn in your there is a test that this guy could have been president, at least acting president. erold, theuy pharmacist. he knew the geography of maryland very well. they wanted him as a guide. andurrendered with booth was sentenced to hang. of course, we know about mary surratt who owned the boarding house where the conspirators met. she also owned the tavern in maryland, and she was sentenced to hang and she is the first woman executed in united states history. and of course, my guy, dr. booth'sudd, who set leg. he met the country prior occasions. his problem was he told authorities he is never seen the guy in his life before, which turned out not to be true. he was sentenced -- he missed execution by one vote here it he was sentenced to four jefferson in the dry tortugas, and because of his efforts during the yellow fever epidemic at four jefferson he was pardoned by andrew johnson. samuel arnold, former army soldier, he was sentenced also, but he dropped out of the plot when it became an assassination. it started as a kidnap plot when the war ended. they would exchange the president for prisoners of war. when booth decided he was going to kill him, that is when he dropped out. laughlen boyhood friend of booth, also dropped out when it became an assassination plot. edmund spangler. he was asked by both to hold his worst. he said he was too busy. -- he was asked by booth to hold his horse. -- johnny peanut -- burroughs. ned spangler got sentenced to six years in four jefferson. he was also pardoned by andrew johnson and he had become very good friends with dr. mudd, ended up coming to live with dr. mudd and ultimately died of tuberculosis. the sone, john surratt, of mary surratt. . confederate agent but he escaped the country, ultimately ended up a people guard in rome. was captured in alexandria, virginia, brought back here in 1867 and acquitted. he went on the stage, lecturing on the lincoln assassination. apparently was not very good, not very successful at it. 15, the presidential party goes into ford's theatre. how does booth get into the box? to the people were in charge of that. a d.c. policeman named john parker was assigned to garden -- to guard the present but his duty was to president -- was to guard the president on his way to the theater and out of the theater. he was not at the play. some people say he was having a drink. some say he was watching the play. he was definitely not at a post trying to protect the box. the presidential valet was outside the box, but all booth had to do was present his calling card to him because he was a very famous actor and say, john wilkes booth would like to see the president and he said, basically, go right in. act happened, of course, in three, scene two of "our american cousin," we all know this line -- well, i guess, i know enough to turn you inside sockdologizingu old man trap. beencally, harry hawk had fully around with booth's girlfriend. when he heard that booth shot a gun in the theater he took off and thought that booth was there to kill him. the president is shot. he is shot. he's using a philadelphia derringer 44 caliber. theourse, that is presidential box. conventional wisdom has always been that when booth jumped he made leaps like this -- this 11-foot jump before. he broke his left tibia length by catching his spur on the treasury department plaque. there is now us cool of thought that he broke his leg when his horse fell on him. we're not sure. emper tyrannis" s -- the virginia motto, which means death always to tyrants. dr. mudd set his leg. dr. mudd is convicted as a co-conspirator. at ford's. leale theater that night? speech in lincoln's which he expressed his support for black suffrage. actually noticed his space -- he says the almost divine appearance of the president's place in the glow of the light from the white house. he decided at that moment he was atng to go to ford's theatre the next opportunity or he was when to take the next opportunity to study the president's face. when he found that he would be at ford's theatre, that is why he went. he wanted to study the president's face. ironically, also, in the audience was booth himself. speech, that is the last he will ever make and that was allegedly a response to the fact the president had proposed giving the vote to andcan-american soldiers that pushed booth over the edge. he used to be n-word. the n-wordat means convoke." he finds out that president ford's will be at theater. the dress circle is basically the balcony. he thought he could study the president's facial theaters. my wife and i go to the theater at ford's. it's considerably more than the paid.r. leale this is the approximate location. i tried to find exactly where dr. leale sat. they don't really know. that is my best guess, where the arrow is, where i'm sitting, where dr. leale was. .ow there is a door in the archives, in the basement at ford's, the door, we know that booth had taken a broken piece of wood and used it as a .edge for the door he also earlier carved a peephole so he could observe the president through the peephole. that is the door that dr. leale ordered. when he hears the shooting, he says he immediately ran to the by mrs."i was admitted lincoln." and she exclaimed several times, oh, dr., what can you do for him? all thatr we would do was possible. the other thing that happened, when he came in, major rathbone came up to him and said, my arm is cut as we know that booth cut arm. rathbone's he looks into his eyes and he said, oh, you are ok. i've got to take care of the president. they always do this. he sends two guys for brandy, one guy for water. he starts to examine the president. states he was- he in a general state of paralysis and he starts looking for a wound. he could not find it. he does find blood clots in the left shoulder. here is where it gets a little controversial. after examining the president and putting his head on the pillow, he says he admitted to close chest cardiac massage. there was something called the sylvester method that was practiced back then. the problem with this is, there is no mention of this cpr in any of the seven reports that dr. leale submitted, including his testimony before the committee about administering cpr. this only comes up in his lastts called lincoln's hours based on a speech he gave in 1909, the 100th anniversary of lincoln's birth, to the military order of the loyal legion, people who had been civil war officers and their claimsents, in which he he did cardiac massage. there is some question whether this is an embellishment by him or he did it. his diagnoses, we do know. the wound is mortal. it's impossible for him to recover. this is what he told mary. to otherhe theater, physicians. one dr. charles taft, a military surgeon, the uncle of william howard taft, and another prominent washington surgeon, dr. albert king. they consult and basically what the three doctors ascertain is the president could not survive a carriage ride back to the white house. so they are going to make the out onn to carry him 10th street and find a venue with a bed to place the president and he even says twice to the guards -- because it was very crowded -- guards, clear the passage. he also says dr. king was on the left side, dr. taft was on the , withinde and he says 20 minutes of their examination, he was in the petersen house. he is carried across the street to the petersen house. the reason he ended up there, when they got out of 10th street -- which was chaos by this time -- there was a border on the yelledho basically "bring him in here." that is the reason that they brought him to the petersen house. he begins examining the present. the bed was not large enough for the president at 6'4". they had to remove the headboard and live the president diagonally across the bed. does a thorough physical and finds neither injuries. he puts a mustard plaster on his solar plexus. obviously is not going to do anything for the headland, but at least the doctors are doing something. is superiorjudgment to these senior physician because dr. taft asks permission to administer brandy and water. objected, saying it would produce to regulate, but finally he consents to a small produceshich of course a laryngeal obstruction and symptoms. the younger man is proven right. a total of 16 physicians would show up at the petersen house. prominent position in washington, d.c. decided they wanted to make an appearance to say i was there when president lincoln dies. and of course, there is the pillow with the president's lied on it. i arrive sometime later. [laughter] dr. willen: i was not able to do much. there is a strange coincidence. there is an actor who is a good friend of booth. he rented the same room where the president was brought and he is visited by his good friend john wilkes booth. booze was very tired and he decided he was going to take a nap and he fell asleep in the very bed where a month later the president was going to expire. being a junior position, and ultimately is going to turn the care of the president over to his physician and his boss. of course, he would go on to and if you have read the book, you know what happened in the garfield assassination. ton though they had begun accept the theories of joseph the physicians who would not was willard bliss, so he performed multiple examinations of garfield, causing him to have infection, which is why he died from. there are some who say the expression "ignorance is bliss" comes from that. [laughter] dr. willen: this is the part of the petersen house where mary was banished by secretary of war stanton. when he arrived, he basically took over, became acting president, and began managing the situation. mary was hysterical and he basically said, get that woman out of here. , according to him at least, for the rest of the time decided he would hold the president's hand, and sometimes recognition and reason return just before departure. held his hand firmly to let him know, in his blindness, that he had a friend. so, he is going to progress towards death at 1 a.m. generalienced twitching, spasming of the arms, which tended to turn his arms downward like this. brits -- -- d sarah crebrate posturing. that is assigned the brain is not functioning. the surgeon general, of course, has to show up at 2:00 in the morning. course, when the surgeon general gets there he thinks he has to do something. we show these probes in my reenacting career. -- these areed porcelain or silver tipped probes. if you hit something hard you will have gray discoloration from the lead. you do not want to do this with the brain. the present was going to die but the -- die anyway, surgeon general came in administered what i call the -- coup de --coup de grace. becamesident's breath intermittent. at least we think we know that edwin stanton said "now he belongs to the ages." or did he. he said "now he belongs to the angels." but he changed it because he taught that ages sounds better than angels. he did say "there lies the most er of men the world has ever seen." unfortunately, we had a guy taking notes, james tanner, in the boarding house next door. he was a union army veteran who lost both of his legs at second manassas. one of the things the war department would do was higher injured veterans. he knew shorthand. that's how he got the job. he was a war department clerk and he was living next door to the petersen house. at the time of the president's death, his pencil broke. the words uttered by stanton were not recorded. he later stated that stanton did say "he belongs to the ages." the new york herald reporter never mentions anything about that. -- there's apparently a book the ages or angels? people write books on everything. guy brought in to do the judge davidn was kellogg carter. he took testimony from the witnesses, which james tanner subsequently recorded. in honor of john, the reverend "that bothley said heavenly father looked down and pity upon the bereaved family and preserve our sorrow stricken country." we do know what he said. not talk to the ame white house. it will be performed by two army medical the museum, now the national museum of health and medicine. woodward. jj the other is edward curtis. it will be done in the prince of is currentlyhich ,he presidential dining room but it was called the prince of wales room back then because it is where, in the 1850's, the prince of wales stayed. the way, was invited to attend the autopsy, but stated he needed to get back to care for his patients at armory square hospital, so he declined to attend the autopsy. those who did attend were surgeon general barnes, surgeon stone, lincoln's personal physician, dr. taft, who was at ford's theater, another man, a surgeon from the surgeon general's office. we do not have a picture of him. quartermaster, daniel rocker. the assistant surgeon, charles crane. here is the prince of wales room where the autopsy was performed, and like i said, it is now the presidential dining room. it's also the room where willie of dr.here is what the report stone, lincoln's personal -- physician says. and a handwritten notes diagram. they were found 100 years after the autopsy. he states that the bullet was lodged on the left side. autopsy report, i give this talk to physicians a lot so it has a lot of medical terms. "the ball entered through the occipital bone one inch to the left of center, passed through the left posterior lobe of the brain, and into the left lateral ventricle and lodged in the white matter just above the anterior portion where it was found. is it, for anybody who has medical interest. it is not involved in movement. the bullet was on the left side by all accounts. theories, the path of the bullet where it lodges behind the left eye is the one that most people now accept. you can see it from two different views, but you can see where the bullet went in, and where it lodged behind the left eye. instruments used in the lincoln autopsy. for any of you who have been to reenactments that we or others do, you will note that they did not sterilize autopsy instruments, but you will see that the medical instruments of the day have wooden handles. it did not matter -- matter because you could not sterilize would, but they did not sterilize their instruments. museum is nowal the national museum of health and medicine where i am privileged enough to be a docent. we have the bullet that killed president lincoln, which i am standing in front of. there is the bullet. , withe the bloody cuffs president lincoln's blood. we know a lot about the autopsy of curtis, because he wrote a letter to his mother describing the autopsy. shirt cuffsleale's the smithsonian. i happen to be a docent at the american history and i have been bugging the curators to show them to me. we do not have them on display. we do have, at the national museum of health and medicine, the bullet probe that the surgeon general used, and fragments of the patient -- of president lincoln's skull and a lock of his hair also. this is the last sketch of president lincoln made in new by a french5, 1865 expatriate and a washington acquaintance of the president. this is the contents of the president's pockets, also note the confederate money. we think that he had made a trip down to richmond several days earlier, and we think that is where he got the confederate money, when he was in richmond. eyeglasses,his which he had stirring around because he had broken and repaired his eyeglasses. -- string around because he had broken and repaired his eyeglasses. this has nothing to do with the lincoln assassination. they ask if we have the general's leg. we do have the leg. sicklesy was that dan lost his leg at the battles of battle -- battle of gettysburg donated his leg. every year he would bring a delegation of congress to visit leg and then they would have a few drinks afterwards. now, this is the hat worn by president lincoln to ford's. this is part of the smithsonian and part of my highlights tour. you will notice that there is a black band around it called a morning band. back in those days, if you lost a spouse or a child, men would bandslack crepe mourning on their hats. you know that willie lincoln had passed away from typhoid in february 1862. the president was still wearing the mourning band. the curators have measured the hat and they found it to be seven and 1/8. it is a black silk dress hat. that is not his everyday hat. hats, you probably know that he always used as a briefcase to keep papers in his hat and everything. corner ofound on the the box and it began the investigation until it went into the war department. it resided with the interior department until 1964, when the american history museum opened. it has been there ever since. it is one of our prized possessions at the national museum of american history. now, the president will be involved by henry could tell and charles brown. ,hese are civil war embalmers the reason that they hired them, they were the ones that had embaled -- involved -- william lincoln. this came out of a guy named thomas holmes. mingade a fortune embal soldiers. they had used zinc fluids, and holmes came up with a miracle embalming load which contained arsenic. where it became a problem was later on when you would bury people, occasionally the arsenic would leach out of the bodies and contaminate the area. the funeral service is april 19 in the east room. dr. leale was part of the honor guard at the head of the president's coffin during the service. last known photo of lincoln in his casket, and he is on view in new york. some of you may know the story how this was discovered. a young man from iowa was working in an internship for harry pratt, the state historian for illinois. he was in springfield and going through lincoln papers and he found this photograph. confiscated and ordered all photos of the president to be confiscated. somehow this one escaped. nicollet's in john papers. i do not know how he got a hold of it, or how it escaped stanton , because stanton attempted to suppress all photographs of lincoln taken after his assassination. is a grand funeral procession from the white house to the capital. dr. leale was in the carriage immediately preceding. the grand review, he is asked to sit in the grandstand in front of the white house, he was invited to stanton's office even. theourse, we know about execution on july 7, 1865. it is at the washington arsenal, now fort meade air, -- fort meade air -- mcnair. the scaffolding is where the tennis courts are. dr. leale had a life after the assassination. 1876, -- september 3, 1876 he will marry rebecca copcutt. the home is now the rectory of the saint casmir's church. the union would produce six children. now, we talked about lincoln's last hours where the story of the cardiopulmonary resuscitation came from. 100th --1909, the february 1909, the 100th anniversary of lincoln's birth, dr. leale addresses the new york state commandery. he had previously testified before congress in 1866. the speech was published as lincoln's last hours. he had quite an extensive career post assassination. he is going to travel to england to study and treat colorado. there was an epidemic -- study and treat cholera. there is an epidemic, and he returned to new york to treat another cholera epidemic. he was the physician in charge of the northwestern dispensary treating over 5000 children. northwestern dispensary is a free clinic, a clinic for the poor people in new york. one of the lectures that i also baroque,bout dr. simon the father of bernard farouk, a -- farouk, a confederate army surgeon. or time he worked at the northwestern dispensary. he was a physician to those having heart and lung diseases and another new york dispensary called the central dispensary. he became resident of the alumni association of bellevue college. president interm the new york county medical association. one of the founders of the children's free city hospital, chairman of the committee of action of -- instruction of the deaf and dumb. got very involved with deaf children. he was a surgeon specializing in surgery,ng, and chest and doing pediatric surgery. he was the chairman at st. john's guild, a charity caring for foremothers and six children. he had quite a career. young man, his father had shows, ando minstrel he became a big and of stephen music.and of 1864, he is a medical student at bellevue hospital, and a patient who had been at the hotel fell and hit his head. he was assigned to medical student leal. this was stephen foster. care.d under dr. leale's ,nother incident with dr. leale november 1864. threes the only time the booth brothers acted together at a benefit performance in new york, a performance of "julius caesar." dr. leale was in the audience. that night when the confederates attacked new york, there is a hotel next to the theater which they set on fire. the patrons were trapped in the theater. for a time there is panic in the booth brothers calm the audience down. dr. leale goes out to the street and he begins treating dems. that is the night that he decided to become a union army surgeon. just a series of coincidences. on june 13, 1932 at the age of 90. granddaughter and her grandfather's grave in yonkers, new york. her husband's great grandfather was the mayor of new york, and it was the founder of "harper's weekly." which we all know about. harold actually had met helen leale harper for -- before she passed away. i can say i know someone who knew dr. leale's grandfather. that is my connection to him. today, we know it for the educational center and the tors which opened in 2012. -- tours that opened in 2012. there is over 10,000 lincoln books now. my wife and i used to live in we angeles, so in 2012 attended a performance at the pasadena playhouse. some of you might've heard of her -- some of you might have heard of hersey felder. he has done one-man shows. he has done various composers in character. but he decided that he was going to do dr. leale accompanied by a 45 piece orchestra. we attended, i attempted to speak to him but was never able to. he was very good, the program was good, my only criticism, he was wearing a polyester uniform. [laughter] the question i always got, so i had to add this slide. could president lincoln have survived today? we serve -- we show you the picture of bobby kennedy, did not survive. gabby giffords, who was shot a few years back, a congresswoman in tucson when she was shot. she was lucky enough to be located in a city where they had a trauma center at the university in tucson where she was taken, subjected to hypothermia, and the body is basically frozen and that disgraces -- decreases the metabolic demand for the brain which increases neuralgia -- neurologic function. for gabby giffords the path of the bullet was much more superficial. if president is, lincoln was shot today, he is taken to the trauma center and they had him on ivs and gets hypothermia, given where the bullet was, i suspect that he may have survived but he would have been a vegetable. it might have been worse. i do not think he would've had, even today, any kind of meaningful survival. so i always end the talk by quoting churchill who said "the farther backwards you look, the further forward you see." reenacte, i said i am a her, so this is one of my -- reenacter, so maybe this is my pinnacle. the 150th anniversary of gettysburg so i got to do an amputation on the battlefield. the rangers said this is the first time since 1863 that we have had a hospital here. , or stoping to pause and take questions. [applause] >> i understand that many questions asked to analyze lincoln's dna, but nobody has agreed to it. can you explain why not? dr. willen: i guess it would be called -- would be possible. the question that has come up is that did he have a condition? cause him to have a particular body type? this has been looked at extensively by medical experts, and one of the things that we in civil war medicine, this and stonewall jackson are kind of parlor games. i have discussed this with harold holzer. the conventional wisdom is that he did not have marfan's syndrome, but he would've had multiple indonesia neoplasia syndrome type -- you might've had something else. the people who had this happen that particular body structure. one of the features of that condition is thyroid cancer. if you remember the last photograph of president lincoln how gaunt he looks and people said, it is because of the stress of the war. there is one theory that he was suffering from thyroid cancer at the time of the photograph, and that accounts for his appearance. even without the assassination he was not gonna live a long life. of course, there is no treatment for thyroid cancer back then. >> can you tell me about the hat. leale. dr. willen: on dr. leale. that is me. he is not in this picture. of -- that is me. that is not dr. leale. i said i am a reenacter. that is not dr. leale, that is me. it is on my business card, that picture. yes. lincoln enters the theater about 10:15. were curtain times customarily that late? dr. willen: he came in the middle of the performance. they stopped the play in the production and all of the actors applauded the president. president, do not have to be on time. >> please correct me if i am wrong. i have been telling my groups for many years another story about what happened to lincoln's hat. afterory i heard was that the investigation had been completed, the hat was presented to the head of the smithsonian, and dr. henry said i do not want to make the smithsonian a freak set -- a freak show. he put it in his desk drawer and forgot about it. have you heard that? dr. willen: it is funny you said that. when we are doing our -- our training, they did not tell us the story. they said it was a part of the investigation and turned over to the interior department. whether or not joseph henry and his story, they did not tell us. what they did tell us, henry was not interested in having the smithsonian be a museum to collect objects. he was more interested in the scientific parts. francis beard was the guy who got involved in making it a museum. >> this is a what if in history. would the president have just gone away or weighted? dr. willen: the question is if parker, the d.c. police man had been there. parker was known to be a drunk and ineffective cop, so i don't know why they picked him. he was not even disciplined by the d.c. police because his job was only checked the president -- to protect the president going to and from the theater. the real speculation was that he wanted to get grant. if grant would have been there he would have had more security, but he have been able to thwart booth? toth really wanted a chance get lincoln and grant. grant would have probably come with more security, but that was not going to happen because grant could not stand mary lincoln. you know, we did not have secret service back then. president -- presidential security was -- you could walk into the white house. christopher spencer wanted to sell repeating rifles to the army, he goes and makes an appointment with lincoln and comes into the white house carrying a rifle to show to the president. yes. , andremember reading leale he mentioned that lincoln had an incredible physique of a man much younger. i think he compared him to michelangelo's moses. i was wondering, we are always talking about all of these things that might have shortened his life, but he seemed to have an external really strong -- dr. willen: that is true, and all of this is speculation. we will never know. physicians like to do these parlor game things where they speculate what people -- what can visions -- conditions people might have had. artainly we know that as young man, lincoln was a wrestler, an outstanding wrestler. and the rail splitter thing and everything. he was extremely strong as a young man. you have a favorite book about the assassination, one you think it is well written? dr. willen: i happen to be so ifs with ed spears, you want to read about the pursuit of truth, swanson's " manhunt" is very good. there was only one biography of ruth, and that is called " fortunes fool." that is an actual biography of booth. one of the things that terry alfred does is he has a piece of the crotch that dr. mudd made for booth, and he carries it around with them. he will show it off. i took a picture of it one time. i have gotten to know some of dr. mudd's descendents. as granddaughter comes to society event every year. descendents mudd pretty much agreed that he was probably guilty of at least obstruction of justice. he was not part of the certainly, but he was -- this is a timely topic. he was probably guilty of obstruction of justice. john: thank you for sharing your expertise with us. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2019] which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, john: we will take advantage of you one more time. we want to treat you as we treat all of our speakers who inform us and entertain us and make us smarter. thank you very much first spending time tonight. [applause] john: is there any further business? then i declare this meeting adjourned. good night. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> american history tv products are now available at the new online store. go to c-span store.org to see what is new for american history tv, and check out all of the products. >> this weekend on "american artifacts. jared frederick describes the fourth infantry division role in the june 6 d-day invasion. at the u.s. army heritage days in carlisle pennsylvania. as a preview. >> my name is. frederick and i am instructor of history, and i am also any reenact your with the world war ii living history group. we are at the u.s. army and heritage center, and at this went, it is a major conflux, are here on the trail. andcan find reenactors living historians for all different time periods ranging from the 17th century to the present. here to discuss the 75th anniversary of the normandy invasion which is taking place this summer. and we thought it is fitting to commemorate that event. these oldting on uniforms and wearing old equipment, it gives us a better perspective and appreciation of what the greatest generation went through, and if we can in part even a small inkling of that to passersby and families that visit this place, then we have -- we feel we have done a good job. the unit that we portray is the fourth infantry division. it is a unit that is sometimes overshadowed the world war ii history it was one of a spearhead units that was involved in the normandy invasion and one of the first and fabius troops that were ashore. they waited ashore on utah beach. theynownst to many of them landed on the wrong sector. they landed half a mile off course. and there was a little bit of uncertainty and hesitation that what they wanted to do. the son of the president, the oldest participant said that we will start the war right here. that is what i did. inlandrried the fight and they began to tally up casualties. for -- fought in mainland europe. they were the first american troops into germany. unfortunately, it inflicted a grim toll. the unit in its entirety suffered about 250% casualties. there is a perpetual stream of wounded, killed, and the replacements and the replacements after that which were being killed and wounded as well. it was an absolutely devastating affair, and many of the men in the unit had the firm conviction that they needed to do this because there was really no other choice. this was the price of stopping fascism and its spread. as many world war ii veterans say to this very day, it is something that had to be done. 75 years later, that is something that they still firmly believe in. >> thank you gentlemen and thank you for visiting us today. more about the fourth infantry division and their role and-day sunday at 6:00 p.m. 10:00 p.m. eastern on american artifacts. explore our nation's passed on american history tv. the civil war, a panel of historians compares the different geographic theaters of war, exploring topics such as tax makes, leaders, and soldier motivation. daylong part of a conference hosted by the university of virginia center for civil war history. start ourready to final panel of the day, and this is a new thing we are trying. if you have been here, we have not done this before and we thought it would be fun. you get everyone together and have a conversation. before we get started i want to introduce my colleagues at the other end of the

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