Robert Todd Lincoln and Three Presidential Assassinations

Robert Todd Lincoln in 1865, the year his father was assassinated. Library of Congress.

Robert Todd Lincoln, eldest son of Abraham and Mary Lincoln, felt cursed. His brother Edward died as a boy in Springfield, Illinois; his brother William ("Willie") died in the White House on February 20, 1862; and his last brother, Thomas ("Tad"), died at 18 in 1871. After his father's death he watched his mother fall into financial hardship and manic depression — at one point he had her committed to an asylum — and she died in 1882 at 63.

But what made him feel cursed was his close connection to three presidential assassinations in 36 years. This account comes from Todd Arrington, site manager of James A. Garfield National Historic Site, writing in 2014.

Abraham Lincoln, 1865

On the night of April 14, 1865, his parents invited Robert — then a captain on General Ulysses S. Grant's staff — to see Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre. He declined, planning to turn in early. Several people later claimed to have brought him the news of John Wilkes Booth's attack; Robert remembered only that many came. He hurried to the Petersen House, where his father lay unconscious. John Hay, one of the president's private secretaries and Robert's lifelong friend, wrote that "After a natural outburst of grief, young Lincoln devoted himself the rest of the night to soothing and comforting his mother." Robert was there at 7:22 a.m. on April 15 when his father died.

James A. Garfield, 1881

For years Republicans urged Robert to run for office; he refused, partly from lack of interest and partly because he knew his appeal was his name, not his ability. In early 1881 he agreed to serve as Secretary of War under President James A. Garfield.

Robert T. Lincoln as Secretary of War. Library of Congress.

On July 2, 1881, Garfield was leaving for New England. Lincoln went to Washington's Baltimore and Potomac railroad station to tell the president his family would follow the next day. He was about forty feet away, walking toward Garfield and Secretary of State James G. Blaine, when Charles Guiteau came up behind the president and shot him twice. "I think I reached him in fifteen seconds," Lincoln recalled. He sent for Dr. D. W. Bliss and called four companies of soldiers to the depot, and when Garfield was moved to the White House, he made sure "all intruders were out of the grounds and a strong military guard on duty there and another at the jail to prevent lynching." Historian Jason Emerson has likened his decisive response to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton's on the night of Abraham Lincoln's shooting. Still, the memory haunted him: "My god," he told a New York Times reporter the next day. "How many hours of sorrow I have passed in this town."

Charles Guiteau shoots President Garfield, July 2, 1881. Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper.

Garfield died on September 19, 1881, eighty days later. His successor, Chester A. Arthur, kept only one of Garfield's cabinet officers: Robert Todd Lincoln, who stayed Secretary of War until Arthur's term ended.

William McKinley, 1901

Lincoln later returned to law, served as U.S. Minister to Great Britain under President Benjamin Harrison from 1889 to 1893 — where his 16-year-old son, Abraham Lincoln II ("Jack"), died of an infection after surgery — and became general counsel, then president, of the Pullman Palace Car Company.

In September 1901, returning to Chicago from a New Jersey summer, the Lincolns stopped in Buffalo, New York, for the Pan-American Exposition. When their train arrived on the evening of September 6, a Pullman employee handed Robert a telegram: "President McKinley was shot down by an anarchist in Buffalo this afternoon. He was hit twice in the abdomen. Condition serious."

Leon Czolgosz shoots President McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition, September 6, 1901. Library of Congress.

Lincoln went to the home of exposition president John G. Milburn, where McKinley was recovering after surgery, and came away reassured; two days later he said, "My visit has given me great encouragement." A week later McKinley died of infection. Theodore Roosevelt, sworn in on September 14, 1901, soon received a letter from Lincoln: "I do not congratulate you, for I have seen too much of the seamy side of the Presidential Robe to think of it as an enviable garment."

Cursed?

Popular stories that Robert Lincoln was "present" at all three murders are untrue. He was not at Ford's Theatre, though he was at his father's deathbed; he was across the station when Garfield was shot and was soon at his side; and he was just arriving in Buffalo when McKinley was shot.

More likely, his name and positions put him near presidents far more often than most people, during a long life in turbulent times — the Civil War, bitter fights over patronage and civil service reform, and fears of government power that made anarchism seem a plausible answer — which made attacks on presidents more likely. It was, in Arrington's words, a macabre numbers game.

Nor is it true that he refused ever again to be near presidents. A remark often attributed to him — that there was "a certain fatality about presidential functions when I am present" — has no direct evidence behind it. His last public appearance was on May 30, 1922, at the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial, where President Warren G. Harding presided; Harding died in office fourteen months later, but since he was not assassinated, no one blamed Robert.

Robert Todd Lincoln (right) with Chief Justice William Howard Taft (left) and President Warren G. Harding at the Lincoln Memorial dedication, May 30, 1922. National Park Service.

Robert Todd Lincoln died on July 26, 1926, six days before his 83rd birthday — a long, accomplished life that deserves to be remembered for more than his father's name or myths about a curse.

Sources

• National Park Service: "Robert Todd Lincoln and Presidential Assassinations," by Todd Arrington, Site Manager, James A. Garfield National Historic Site, written for the Garfield Observer, July 2014.