Well, it was exactly 161 years ago tonight that Abraham Lincoln climbed into a carriage with his wife,

Mary Todd, and headed to the presidential box at Ford's Theater. We all know how the evening ended

for the first couple, but this seems like the right time to revisit that box and the people

sitting beside them when John Wilkes booth pulled the trigger.

I'm Patty Steele. The worst or maybe the second worst seat in the house. That's next on the

backstory. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human. The backstory is back.

Okay, it's April 14th, 1865.

After General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Confederate forces on April 10th, the Civil War

is finally over.

It had been a brutal four-year battle, with the war beginning just weeks after President

Abe Lincoln took

office in 1861 and ending just over a month after he was sworn in for his second term.

Lincoln and his wife Mary Todd decide that very morning that a night at the theater to see a major

star in a hit comedy is just what they need as the National Nightmare winds down.

But they need another couple to go with them that evening. Sounds like a great invite, being

invited by the Lincoln's to go see the final performance of our American cousin on that

Misty Good Friday evening in 1865. Mr. Lincoln first asks General Ulysses S. Grant and his

wife to go with them, but Julia Grant tells her husband they can't go because they have an afternoon

train to Philadelphia to visit their kids in South Jersey. Another major reason? Julia's intense

dislike for Mrs. Lincoln, who'd always treated her badly.

Problem is, word had already hit the afternoon papers that General Grant and his wife would be there

with the Lincoln's, and that's what they ran with. So when the Grant sent their regrets that afternoon,

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