• Location: in the bedroom with abby
• Mood: lazy
• Music: Dr. John-"Right Place Wrong Time"

Robert Lincoln: The Wrong Place at The Wrong Time

Robert Todd Lincoln was the oldest son of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, and is at the center of an amazing coincidence in Presidential history. The son of a president who was assassinated, he was also present when two other presidents were assassinated.

At the invitation of President James A. Garfield, Robert Lincoln was present at the Sixth Street Train Station in Washington, D.C. on July 2, 1881, when Garfield was shot by Charles J. Guiteau on July 2, 1881. Lincoln was an eyewitness to the event. He was serving as Garfield's Secretary of War at the time.



Then 20 years later, at the invitation of President William McKinley, Lincoln was at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, where the President was shot by Leon F. Czolgosz on September 6, 1901.

Robert Lincoln was not present at his father's assassination. After McKinley's assassination, he later declined another presidential invitation with the comment "No, I'm not going, and they'd better not ask me, because there is a certain fatality about presidential functions when I am present." But he did attend the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial, in 1922, in the presence of both President Warren G. Harding and former President William Howard Taft, however.

In another In an odd coincidence, Robert Lincoln was once saved from possible serious injury or death by Edwin Booth, brother of John Wilkes Booth. The incident took place on a train platform in Jersey City, New Jersey. Robert Lincoln recalled the incident in a 1909 letter to Richard Watson Gilder, editor of The Century Magazine:

"The incident occurred while a group of passengers were late at night purchasing their sleeping car places from the conductor who stood on the station platform at the entrance of the car. The platform was about the height of the car floor, and there was of course a narrow space between the platform and the car body. There was some crowding, and I happened to be pressed by it against the car body while waiting my turn. In this situation the train began to move, and by the motion I was twisted off my feet, and had dropped somewhat, with feet downward, into the open space, and was personally helpless, when my coat collar was vigorously seized and I was quickly pulled up and out to a secure footing on the platform. Upon turning to thank my rescuer I saw it was Edwin Booth, whose face was of course well known to me, and I expressed my gratitude to him, and in doing so, called him by name."