Hey everyone Jody here. This is a best of episode one of our favorites from the archives. We're giving ourselves the final week or so of summer off and we will be back with new episodes after Labor Day. But for now, enjoy.

Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, 1894, Thomas H. Boston Corbett is presumed dead in Minnesota.

He is the victim of what came to be known as the Great

Hinkley Fire. This was a massive forest fire which wiped out the town of

Hinkley, Minnesota and the surrounding forest. Somewhere between 450, 500 people died in that fire and among the names

listed was Boston Corbett.

Now, what makes Boston Corbett notable? Why wasn't he just another relatively anonymous death in this tragic fire?

Well, he'd faded a bit into obscurity by time he got to Minnesota, but in the previous decades, Corbett had come to be known and

call himself Lincoln's Avenger. Boston Corbett was the man who killed John Wilkes Booth,

days after Booth had assassinated Abraham Lincoln.

Corbett was part of a regiment that cornered Booth on a Virginia farm.

If you know this story, they had orders not to kill Booth, but Corbett claims at least, that he nevertheless took a fatal shot and thus became the man who avenged

Abraham Lincoln's death. And in the years and decades since that act really seemed to consume him for better and really mostly as we'll discuss for worse.

So here to discuss as always Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wesley.

Hello Jody. Hey there.

Thomas H Boston Corbett, we're going to call him Boston Corbett from now on. That's

what most people called him. I suppose we should start with Booth's death the days after Lincoln's

assassination how does Booth finally get cornered captured and killed I mean it's

it's a it's probably one of the greatest man hunts in American history

Abraham Lincoln has died and people are trying to find John Wilkes Booth wherever they think he might be.

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