03596cam a2200385 i 4500 567522333 TxAuBib 20220817120000.0 220207s2022||||||||||||||||||||||||eng|u 2022005165 9781631495601 HRD 27.95 1631495607 HRD 27.95 TxAuBib rda Alford, Terry, author. In the houses of their dead [BOOK] : the Lincolns, the Booths, and the spirits / Terry Alford. First edition. New York : Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W.W. Norton & Company, [2022] xvii, 298 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm. txt rdacontent n rdamedia nc rdacarrier Includes bibliographical references (pages 251-285) and index. If the Fates Allow -- His Imperfect Self -- So Old When He Was Young -- God's Most Precious Truth -- Love's Sacred Circle -- Ghost Kisses -- Why Wake Me? -- Fatal Vision -- Are We So Soon Forgot? -- Death Came as a Friend. In the 1820s, two families, unknown to each other, worked on farms in the American wilderness. It seemed unlikely that the families would ever meet―and yet, they did. The son of one family, the famed actor John Wilkes Booth, killed the son of the other, President Abraham Lincoln, in the most significant assassination in American history. The murder, however, did not come without warning―in fact, it had been foretold. In the Houses of Their Dead is the first book of the many thousands written about Lincoln to focus on the president’s fascination with Spiritualism, and to demonstrate how it linked him, uncannily, to the man who would kill him. Abraham Lincoln is usually seen as a rational, empirically-minded man, yet as acclaimed scholar and biographer Terry Alford reveals, he was also deeply superstitious and drawn to the irrational. Like millions of other Americans, including the Booths, Lincoln and his wife, Mary, suffered repeated personal tragedies, and turned for solace to Spiritualism, a new practice sweeping the nation that held that the dead were nearby and could be contacted by the living. Remarkably, the Lincolns and the Booths even used the same mediums, including Charles Colchester, a specialist in “blood writing” whom Mary first brought to her husband, and who warned the president after listening to the ravings of another of his clients, John Wilkes Booth. Alford’s expansive, richly-textured chronicle follows the two families across the nineteenth century, uncovering new facts and stories about Abraham and Mary while drawing indelible portraits of the Booths―from patriarch Julius, a famous actor in his own right, to brother Edwin, the most talented member of the family and a man who feared peacock feathers, to their confidant Adam Badeau, who would become, strangely, the ghostwriter for President Ulysses S. Grant. Provided by publisher. 20220817. Lincoln, Abraham 1809-1865 Religion. Lincoln, Abraham 1809-1865 Assassination. Lincoln, Mary Todd 1818-1882 Religion. Lincoln family. Booth family. Booth, Junius Brutus 1796-1852 Family. Spiritualism United States History 19th century. Parapsychology United States History 19th century. Presidents United States Biography.