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The Civil War Had a Senior Citizen Regiment and Other Amazing Obscure Facts

Khalid Elhassan March 30, 2022 36 min

5. A Bodyguard Who Left His Post to Grab a Drink

Officer John Frederick Parker of the Washington Metropolitan Police escorted President Lincoln and his wife to their box seats in Ford’s Theater on the night of April 14^th, 1865. The bad cop then grabbed a seat in the hallway behind Lincoln in the 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 he left the theater altogether, to go grab a drink in a nearby bar.

It is possible that Parker might have crossed paths there with John Wilkes Booth, who was also at the bar for the last shot of liquid courage before he headed to Ford’s Theater. Booth, a famous actor, was a Confederate sympathizer. During the Civil War, Booth had lacked the courage of his convictions to take up arms and join the Confederate armies in the field. When it was all over and the Confederacy was defeated, he found enough courage – or at least bitterness – to finally act.

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.