About this item
April 14, 1865. A famous actor pulls a trigger in the presidential balcony, leaps to the stage and escapes, as the president lies fatally wounded. In the panic that follows, forty-six terrified people scatter in and around Ford’s Theater as soldiers take up stations by the doors and the audience surges into the streets chanting, “Burn the place down!”This is the untold story of Lincoln’s assassination: the forty-six stage hands, actors, and theater workers on hand for the bewildering events in the theater that night, and what each of them witnessed in the chaos-streaked hours before John Wilkes Booth was discovered to be the culprit. In Backstage at the Lincoln Assassination, historian Thomas A. Bogar delves into previously unpublished sources to tell the story of Lincoln’s assassination from behind the curtain, and the tale is shocking.
About the Author
Thomas A. Bogar holds a Ph.D. in Theatre History/Criticism/Literature from Louisiana State University. He has taught theatre for forty years, most recently at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia and Hood College in Frederick, Maryland. He is also the author of John E. Owens (2002) , American Presidents Attend the Theatre (2006) , and numerous journal articles. He has served as a judge for Washington, D.C.'s Helen Hayes Theatre Awards, and lives in Silver Spring, Maryland.
