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Incompetence That Shaped History

Khalid Elhassan March 9, 2020 33 min

Nineteenth century Washington Metropolitan Police Force officers. Washington Metropolitan Police

33. Abandoning a Post Guarding the President to Go Drinking

John Wilkes Booth’s assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Corbis

Parker grabbed a seat in the hallway behind Lincoln in Ford’s Theater, but was unable to see the play from there. So he abandoned his post to watch from downstairs. The play bored him, however, so Parker left Ford’s Theater altogether, to go grab a drink in a bar next door. There, he might have crossed paths with John Wilkes Booth, who was also at the bar for the last shot of liquid courage before heading into Ford’s Theater.

Lincoln was unguarded when Booth entered his theater box and shot him in the back of the head. It is unclear if Parker ever returned to Ford’s Theater that night, or only found out about the assassination the next day. Parker was charged with failing to protect the president, but incredibly, the charge was dismissed. He was even kept on the presidential protection detail for another three years, before he was finally fired for once again sleeping on the job.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.