Blood on the Farm: Booth, Lincoln, and 13 Days of Civil War Insanity

Tue, 26 Aug 2025 15:58:48 GMT

Bullet to the brain, from one farm boy to another.

When John Wilkes Booth fired a .44 lead ball into Abraham Lincoln’s head, the murder shook a nation to its core and led to 13 days of bedlam rivaling any stretch on U.S. record. Manhunts, scoundrels, eunuchs, and mass death followed, all tied by a common thread—agriculture.

Farming is not merely woven into the fabric of America, rather, it is the fabric. All of U.S. history is rooted in soil, no period arguably more so than the last gasp of Civil War carnage carried out by a surreal cast of characters, almost all pulled from agriculture’s stage.

Welcome to a bizarre tale bouncing from deranged assassins to scissored castration to a burning barn to lunatic asylums to the cruel deaths of over 1,000 emaciated soldiers, all soaked in the blood of American farming.

One Night, Four Corpses
Almost everyone. In 1775, of approximately 3.5 million people spread over 13 colonies, roughly 90% grew crops. Fast forward 85 years to the Civil War’s eve in 1860, and the ag flavor remained stout: Approximately 40% of Americans in the North and 80% of Americans in the South worked in dirt.

Roughly half of Union soldiers in the Civil War came directly off the farm.

(Photos courtesy of Library of Congress)

In 1861, as Blue versus Gray exploded into four years of hell, well over half of soldiers, 48% of the Union and almost 70% of the Confederacy, spilled straight from farmland onto battlefields. Simply, Billy Yank and Johnny Reb grew corn and cotton. The majority of 700,000 Civil War dead, North and South, came from farm families. Lincoln, in the closing month of the conflict, April 1865, recognized the agricultural origins of U.S. soldiers and the dire need to return them to row cropping, stating his intention “…get the men composing the Confederate armies back to their homes, at work at their farms and in their shops.”

Approximately 70% of Confederate soldiers entered the Civil War from Southern farms.

(Photos courtesy of Library of Congress)

On April 9, 1865, Robert E. Lee surrendered in the McLean home at Appomattox Court House, Virginia. (Lee lost his 1,000-acre farm in 1861 to Union troops who later turned the property into Arlington National Cemetery.) Following the Confederacy’s capitulation, Northern cities erupted in spontaneous celebration with torchlight parades, fireworks, bands, and bonfires, but lost in the revelry, a dashing 26-year-old Marylander with a wavy shock of jet-black hair turned the crank on a wicked plot.

John Wilkes Booth, in league with a cabal of conspirators , aimed to murder the four highest U.S. holders of office or position in synchronized assassinations: President Abraham Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson, Secretary of State William Seward, and Commanding General of the U.S. Army Ulysses S. Grant.

One night and four farmer corpses at the hand of a farm boy turned actor.

Kidnap or Kill
Killing presidents was in the DNA.

Twenty-seven miles north of Baltimore, in 1838, Booth was born on a 170-acre farm in a two-story, whitewashed log cabin, as the fourth son and ninth of 10 children of Mary Ann Holmes and Junius Brutus Booth, a famed stage performer, chronic alcoholic, notorious bigamist, and headbanger touched with a dose of insanity. Junius was a walking contradiction, equally comfortable quoting Shakespeare in tights under the limelight or raising livestock in isolation on the farm.

Junius Booth, left, built Tudor Hall on the family farm, but died just before it was completed. John Wilkes Booth lived in the house from 1852 to 1856.

(Photos courtesy of Library of Congress)

In a nutshell, Junius was buck-wild. Shot a man in the face, tried to stab another, assaulted multiple people, and was jailed on a loop. In 1835, he wrote a letter to President Andrew Jackson, threatening to kill the commander in chief.

You damn’d old Scoundrel … I will cut your throat whilst you are sleeping … look out or damn you I’ll have you burnt at the Stake in the City of Washington.

Your Master, Junius Brutus Booth. You know me! Look out!

At Junius’ death in 1852, John Wilkes Booth, a mere 15 years young, took the reins of the farm and made a go at raising crops on 80 arable acres. Booth’s ag effort fell short and he later followed the family path to the stage, acquiring national fame, alongside his brothers, as a renowned actor.

However, mirroring his father, Booth’s skin was as hard as bark, far from a soft-handed thespian dandy. His Southern sympathies boiled over at Lee’s surrender in 1865. Kidnap or kill, Booth was hellbent on action.

Tattooed Assassin
Seeded at least as early as 1864 and fueled by a motley crew of anti-Unionists and Confederate Secret Service players, Booth’s conspiracy petered out with the South’s April surrender—except in the eyes of a core group of collaborators. On April 14, with newspapers blaring Lincoln and Grant’s upcoming D.C. attendance at Ford’s Theatre to watch Our American Cousin from the flag-draped presidential box, alongside their wives, Mary Todd Lincoln and Julia Grant, Booth rolled the dice.

Kidnapping was out. (Booth and his cohorts had seriously considered abducting 6’ 4” Lincoln during Our American Cousin and lowering him with ropes from the balcony-level box before dashing away with the chief of state in tow.) Murder of four targets was in:

From left, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses Grant, and William Seward all were targeted for death on April 14.

(Photos courtesy of Library of Congress)

Lincoln, the founder of USDA, was the consummate hardscrabble farm kid, scratching dirt in Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois, before a career in law.

Johnson, despite a childhood apprenticeship as a tailor, was a significant agriculture advocate and owned a 350-acre farm in Tennessee.

Seward, 5’6” with red hair and a gigantic intellect, was born on a New York farm and maintained a sharp awareness of crop management. In 1856, responding to the dire fertilizer needs of growers, Seward spearheaded the Guano Islands Act and enabled U.S. acquisition of almost 100 islands (including the Midway Atoll) between 1856 and 1903, all in the name of acquiring bird feces. Shaped by his farming background, Seward understood the value of land better than anyone of his era. Only 11 years after the Guano Islands Act, Seward made one of the greatest land purchases in world history, paying $7.2 million for Alaska—375 million acres of land. Pilloried by the public and mocked in the press, Seward presciently said the Alaska deal, at less than 2 cents per acre, would be the crowning achievement of his career, but it would “take the people a generation to find out.”

Mary Todd Lincoln, left, and Julia Grant. Julia was invited, but declined to attend Ford’s Theatre on the night of April 14.

(Photos courtesy of Library of Congress)

Grant grew grain in Missouri, eating debt almost up to the Civil War. In 1857, he wrote to his father: “For two years I have been compelled to farm without either [tills or seeds], confining my attention therefore principally to oats and corn: two crops which can never pay.” Grant sold out in 1860, never to farm again.

All four gentlemen—Lincoln, Johnson, Seward, and Grant—were slated to die on the night of April 14. Lincoln and Grant would be attacked together during an evening play; Johnson would be hit at the five-story Kirkwood House Hotel by conspirator George Atzerodt; and Seward would be killed at his three-story home facing Lafayette Square near Pennsylvania Avenue by Booth henchman Lewis Powell.

However, on the Friday afternoon of April 14, Grant slipped the noose. His spouse, Julia, got cold feet, ostensibly avoiding a night out with the mercurial Mary Todd Lincoln. Grant, at the behest of Julia, declined Lincoln’s invitation to watch Our American Cousin, and skipped town, much to Booth’s distress.

The single-shot pistol used by Booth in Lincoln’s assassination.

(Photo courtesy of National Park Service)

Into the evening, Booth palmed his weapon of choice, a firearm that would shake history. It was a single-shot .44-caliber pistol (5.87” long, half a pound in weight, easily concealed in a pocket or boot top) made by Henry Deringer, the renowned Philadelphia gunsmith. Typically, Deringer’s pistols sold in pairs for $25, including the bullet mold. Did Booth have a set? He possessed at least one, and it was all he would need.

Holding the wrought iron barrel with his left hand, skin stretched to reveal an initialed J.W.B. tattoo between thumb and forefinger, Booth carefully used his right hand to load the pistol with a single, round ball weighing nearly an ounce—a projectile he may have poured and formed himself, keenly aware the lead was intended to kill a president for the first time in American history. Percussion cap at the ready, Booth’s firepower needs were met.

As nightfall approached, Booth was already 0 for 1 in assassination success, thanks to Grant’s departure from D.C. Three targets remained.

A Maniac’s Passion
Alone in his second-story room at the Kirkwood House Hotel, Andrew Johnson was easy pickings. No security. No bodyguard. (Secret Service protection for vice presidents did not begin until 1951. Significantly, SS details for presidents began in 1901, following the assassination of William McKinley.)

George Atzerodt, 30, checked into the Kirkwood in his own name on the third floor, directly above Johnson. He was supposed to knock on the door of the VP’s two-room suite and deliver a shot to the head. Instead, Atzerodt lost his nerve and balked, bought a bottle of liquor, and spent the evening outdoors in a stupor.

By 10 p.m., Booth was 0 for 2. Seward and Lincoln were still on the board.

Assassins three, from left: David Herold, George Atzerodt, and Lewis Powell.

(Photos courtesy of Library of Congress)

A short walk from the Kirkwood, inside a red-brick mansion perched a stone’s throw from the White House, resting in a third-floor bedroom illuminated by gaslight, tended by his daughter, Fanny, 20, along with a veteran recovering from battlefield wounds as a nursing backup, Seward, 63, was suffering. Nine days prior, on April 5, in a gruesome, runaway carriage accident, he was thrown to the road and fractured an arm near the shoulder joint, and broke both sides of his jaw, followed by massive blood loss. Doctors sheathed Seward in a canvas-metal brace extending from face to shoulders.

His condition prompted immediate concern from a traveling Lincoln. Returning to D.C. after a triumphant trip to the recently captured Confederate capital of Richmond, Va., on April 9, the same day of Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, Lincoln made a direct visit to check on Seward—likely the most trusted cabinet member of the administration. The two men exchanged war updates and hopes for the country, and then Lincoln walked home to the White House. The pair of friends would never speak or see each other again.

Days after Lincoln’s visit, and simultaneous with Atzerodt’s assassination failure, young Lewis Powell stood on Lafayette Square, staring at the red mansion. Powell, 21, was pulled straight from Hollywood casting. Blessed with a movie star’s chiseled looks and 6’2” of height, he was the son of an Alabama-Florida cotton-growing preacher. Powell fought valiantly and was wounded at Gettysburg, later rode with the famed Mosby’s Rangers , and lost two brothers in the war.

Just past 10 p.m., carrying a purported bag of medicine, Powell rapped on the front door of Seward’s mansion. Wary at the late visit, Seward’s butler answered the door. Powell excitedly announced possession of critical meds sent by Seward’s doctor and claimed to be under direct orders to hand-deliver the cure-all to the secretary of state. The butler refused to buy the story; a heated argument ensued; Powell stormed into the house; bounded up the stairs; and began searching for his prey.

Running toward the commotion, Seward’s son, Frederick, met Powell on the third-floor landing. Powell pulled a .36 caliber Whitney revolver, leveled the pistol, and pulled the trigger. Misfire.

Enraged, he flipped the pistol and swiftly swung downward, fracturing Seward’s skull with several blows as the gun broke. Hearing the chaos, Fanny made a near-fatal error, opening the bedroom door to check on her brother, but inadvertently giving away Seward’s precise location. Powell swatted Fanny aside, knocked over the male nurse, and pulled a Bowie knife, slashing wildly at the helpless Seward. With a maniac’s passion, Powell repeatedly stabbed into Seward’s neck and chest. Two former farm boys—one turned politician and the other turned soldier—locked in a primal struggle.

Fanny Seward, left, alongside her father, William. Lewis Powell is pictured in cuffs, far right, awaiting execution. A year after her father’s near murder, Fanny, 21, died of tuberculosis in October 1865.

(Photos courtesy of Library of Congress)

On almost any other night under any other circumstances, the wounds would have been fatal. However, the canvas-metal brace was Seward’s salvation, deflecting the worst of the blade’s thrusts. Assuming the deed was done, Powell sprinted away from the horror, dropped the knife on the street, and disappeared in the darkness, shouting: I’m mad. I’m mad.

Inside the home, drenched in blood and barely clinging to life, Seward stirred: I am not dead. Send for a doctor. Send for the police. Close the house.

It was 10:15 p.m. Booth was 0 for 3. Time to pull the trigger himself.

Rathbone’s Regret
Leaving his horse behind Ford’s Theatre, Booth, wearing a long coat and spurred, calf-high boots, entered the playhouse with intimate knowledge of the structure’s layout, from creaks to cracks to corridors to stage passageways. Booth was a fixture at Ford’s Theatre and had free reign, often receiving fan mail at the Tenth Street address.

Roughly 1,700 people were in attendance, including Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, alongside their guest couple replacement, Major Henry Rathbone and his fiancée, Clara Harris. Lincoln sat in a cushioned rocker nearest the presidential box door, Mary Todd to his right, Clara Harris next, and Rathbone last, furthest from the door on a walnut sofa.

Henry Rathbone and Clara Harris, who attended Ford’s Theatre with the Lincolns. Twenty years later, Rathbone went insane and murdered Clara.

(Photos courtesy of Library of Congress)

During Act 3, Scene 2, Booth made his move, stepping unchallenged into the presidential box, while jamming the door behind him. With all eyes glued to the stage, Booth leveled the pistol roughly 7”-10” behind Lincoln’s head and pulled the trigger, sending the Deringer’s .44 caliber ball tumbling through the left back side of the president’s skull at ear level. The bullet traversed Lincoln’s brain and lodged behind his right eye.

(Irony of ironies, Lincoln’s son, Robert Todd Lincoln was saved from death either in 1863 or 1864 after falling off a train platform in Jersey City, N.J. His rescuer? Edwin Booth, older brother of John Wilkes Booth. Edwin, a staunch Unionist, lifted 19-year-old Robert Todd to safety just as railcar wheels rolled. Extraordinarily, Robert Todd would be present or within proximity of three presidential assassinations: Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley.)

History never moves in straight lines: Robert Todd Lincoln and Edwin Booth, the odd couple.

(Photos courtesy of Library of Congress)

As Rathbone rose from the sofa in response, Booth pulled a horn-handled dagger and slashed through Rathbone’s upper arm, severing an artery. Booth then vaulted over the box railing to the stage below before a stunned audience, breaking his left fibula (accounts vary; possibly Booth broke the leg later on horseback) before escaping out the back of Ford’s Theatre and riding out of D.C. over the Navy Yard Bridge across the Anacostia River into Maryland.

Mortally wounded and unconscious, Lincoln was hustled across the street to a boarding house and lingered for nine hours, officially dying the following morning on April 15. (Rathbone was consumed with guilt and depression over his inability to stop Booth. In 1883, he went crazy and attempted to attack his three children. When Clara intervened, Rathbone shot her three times and stabbed her repeatedly in the heart. Rathbone then attempted suicide, stabbing himself five times in the chest. He spent the rest of his life in a lunatic asylum, dying in 1911.)

Riding into the night, Booth linked up with accomplice David Herold, a 23-year-old who knew the countryside and would guide the escape. Where would Booth go? To a farm, of course. Booth would bounce from farm to farm, one step ahead of thousands of federal soldiers on his trail in a colossal 12-day manhunt.

In D.C., as the War Department began flushing out Booth’s cronies to uncover the machinations of the conspiracy, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton dropped a $100,000 reward, and gave explicit instruction to all soldiers in pursuit: Bring me Booth on two legs. I want him alive.

However, among the soldiers spreading across the countryside was an insane sergeant who only took orders from on high. Boston Corbett, who had once snipped off his privates and then attended a prayer meeting, had Booth in his sights.

Avenging Angel
The escape was a dizzying blitz of farm visits.

Booth and Herold reached the farm of Dr. Samuel Mudd at 4 a.m., where the doc splinted Booth’s broken leg. The pair of fugitives next rode to Samuel Cox’s farm for aid, and then hid in a pine thicket for several days, assisted by another farmer, Thomas Jones, who took Booth and Herold to his house before giving them a boat to cross the Potomac.

Photographed just after the rope drop, four conspirators dangle on the gallows: Mary Surratt, the first woman ever executed by the federal government, along with Powell, Atzerodt, and Herold.

(Photo courtesy of Library of Congress)

On April 21, their river crossing attempt failed. They landed nine miles away, still in Maryland, and took shelter at the farm of John J. Hughes. The next night, they succeeded in crossing the Potomac, landing in Virginia, where they went to the farm of Elizabeth Quesenberry, who offered food but no help. Afterward, Booth and Herold hired a farmer, William Bryant, to take them to Richard Stuart’s farmhouse, and from there were unwelcomed at the home of another farmer, Randolph Peyton. After 11 days on the run, desperate for cover, only 70 miles south of Ford’s Theatre, Booth stopped at a 500-acre operation in Port Royal, Virginia. It was April 25: He gambled on the Garrett farm and rolled snake-eyes.

One night later, asleep in the Garrett’s tobacco barn, Booth and Herold were cornered by 20 U.S. cavalrymen. Herold exited the barn and surrendered. (Two-and-a-half months later, Herold, along with Powell and Atzerodt, felt the dangling crack of rope on neck. They were hanged in unison on July 7.) Booth vowed a fight to the death as federal soldiers set fire to the barn.

While flames rose and threw light across the barn’s interior, a diminutive eunuch crept along the perimeter and peered into the barn. Sergeant Boston Corbett, Lincoln’s 5’4” avenging angel, stuck a pistol between a crack in the planks and aimed a .44 Colt revolver at an illuminated Booth.

The Cruelest Cut
Mercury to drive a man mad.

Born in 1832, Thomas Corbett ranks among the most peculiar and enigmatic Americans on record. At 7, Corbett moved from London to New York, later apprenticing as a hat maker, a trade synonymous with mercury poisoning, resulting in a lifetime of “hatters’ shakes,” as well as hallucinations and psychosis.

Boston Corbett, among the most bizarre characters in American history.

(Photos courtesy of Library of Congress)

Corbett married, lost his wife and stillborn daughter in childbirth, found solace in the bottle, and moved to Boston, where he continued work (and mercury ingestion) as a hatter. After hearing an evangelist’s sermon, Corbett gave up drinking and devoted himself to piety, growing his hair apostle-style, and preaching on street corners.

However, Corbett careened beyond religious devotion into zealotry. In 1858, walking home after a church service, he was propositioned by prostitutes. Offended or tempted, Corbett took solace in the New Testament, opening the Gospel of Matthew, and read chapters 18 and 19. He took Matthew 18:8 to heart: Wherefore if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire.

Matthew 19:12 cut even deeper: For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother’s womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake.

Corbett interpreted chapters 18 and 19 as a directive. He sliced off his testicles, went to church, took a walk, and ate a big supper, all before seeing a doctor. From a subsequent Massachusetts General Hospital report: … he took a pair of scissors & made an opening an inch long in the lower part of the scrotum. He then drew down the testes & cut them both off. He then went to a prayer meeting walked about some & ate a hearty dinner. There was not much external hemorrhage, but a clot had filled the opening so that the blood was confined in the scrotum which swelled immensely & was black. He called on Dr. Hodges (R. M.) who laid it open & removed the blood; he tied the cord & sent him here.

In tandem with emasculation and a month’s hospital stay, Corbett changed his first name to “Boston” as a benchmark of seismic life change. At the Civil War’s outbreak, he joined the Union Army and began berating officers who took the Lord’s name in vain, resulting in a court martial and sentence of execution for insubordination. Instead, likely related to his mental condition, the sentence was commuted, and he was tossed out of the Army.

Corbett re-enlisted, fought valiantly in combat, and was captured by Confederates in June 1864, before imprisonment in Georgia’s infamous Andersonville POW camp under the control of Commander Henry Wirz, where 33,000 Union soldiers were crammed in 26.5 acres. In a prisoner exchange, Corbett was released from Andersonville in November 1864. (After the war, he would testify in court against Wirz, who was executed for war crimes.)

Corbett spent weeks in recovery from extreme malnourishment at Andersonville and then rejoined his regiment, months later landing in the thick of the manhunt for Lincoln’s killer, then onto the Garrett farm, and despite the infinitesimally incredible odds—to within 12’ of Booth.

On April 26, 1865, at 2 a.m., as Booth held a carbine and refused to surrender, Corbett fired his pistol through the barn slats and hit Booth in the neck, severing his spinal cord and shattering the fourth and fifth vertebrae. Three hours later, essentially paralyzed, Booth, at 26, died on the front porch of the Garrett home, taking a trove of secrets to the grave. He was sewn into a horse blanket, dropped on a wooden plank, and carted away from the hapless Garrett farm.

The spot outside Port Royal, Virginia, where the Garrett farmhouse and tobacco barn once stood.

(Photos public domain)

Despite defying capture-alive-at-all-costs orders, Corbett was firm in his action: “Providence directed me.” Initially arrested for disobeying orders, Corbett was released and given a $1,600 portion of the Booth reward money. He went west, homesteading on 80 acres in Cloud County, Kansas, where he lived in a one-room, rock-wall dugout. In 1886, despite extreme paranoia and unpredictability, he was granted a doorman’s post at the Kansas House of Representatives, but after pulling a gun and threatening colleagues, Corbett was committed to the Topeka Insane Asylum in 1887. A year later, he escaped on a pony, rode south to Wilson County, and caught a train to parts unknown. Corbett faded into history, leaving behind no confirmed record of his whereabouts or death.

Soldiers and Sardines
The cruelest twist of the Civil War and one of the greatest indignities inflicted on American prisoners of war was yet to come.

Almost three weeks past Appomattox, 1,000-plus young Union soldiers died a terrifying death, just days away from a return to their fields and homes.

(Photos courtesy of Library of Congress)

While Booth was on the lam, hiding on rural farms, thousands of malnourished farm boy POWs were moving across the South by foot, wagon, and rail, desperate for a golden ticket home. In the closing months of the war, North-South prisoner exchanges picked up in pace, and by mid-April, Union prisoners needed transportation home. For many soldiers housed in roughly 16 Confederate prison camps in the Deep South, the quickest way home was by steamship up the Mississippi River. Therefore, camps such as Andersonville, Ga., and Cahaba, Ala., sent their POW inmates west to Vicksburg, Mississippi, to catch a ride upriver.

Below the Vicksburg bluffs, an armada of private steamships waited as POWs arrived in town, all fares paid courtesy of the Union Army: $2.75 per soldier and $8 per officer. The substantial money, intended to incentivize captains to provide a quick return home for Union troops, instead turned into a pay-and-pack recipe of horror. As in, an unscrupulous captain might view soldiers as sardines.

Across farms and homes in Iowa, Ohio, Minnesota, and other Union states, thousands of expectant families waited for the promised return of sons, brothers, and husbands. But 1,200 of these families, in the Civil War’s last bloody rattle, unknowingly were about to lose their scions—young men who had survived combat, wounds, disease, emotional trauma, imprisonment, and starvation. They would not survive betrayal.

Human Cargo
She was almost the length of a football field. She was Sultana. Almost three weeks beyond Appomattox, her demise would drag over 1,000 young servicemen to a horrid end, and a hefty percentage of the dead would be farm boys, days away from a return to their fields.

At 260’ long and 42’ wide, Sultana cut current at 10 miles per hour and carried a 376-passsenger capacity with operating room for 80 crew members. Captained by 34-year-old James Cass Mason of St. Louis, Sultana chugged up and down the Mississippi River, typically running cotton, sugar, and hogs.

Thomas W. Bankes photographed Sultana when the ship stopped in Helena, Arkansas, only one day prior to disaster.

(Photo courtesy of Library of Congress)

Piloting Sultana into Vicksburg from New Orleans on April 23, Mason came to collect a plum offer from Reuben Hatch, regional chief quartermaster for the Union Army. Hatch wanted to wet his beak: He could funnel 1,000 POW parolees onto Sultana if Mason returned a kickback under the table. Deal.

However, one of Sultana’s four boilers was faulty and needed immediate, proper repair. Overwhelmed by profit potential, Mason relied on a minor boiler patch, essentially turning Sultana into a time bomb. On April 24, Hatch provided human cargo for Sultana—but whether by graft or incompetence, Hatch doubled his POW offering.

It was madness. Roughly 2,137 people (including 50 women and children) were stuffed onto the ship, according to the Sultana Association : “1,960 ex-prisoners, 22 guards, 85 crew members, and 70 paying passengers.”

By sheer weight of humanity, the upper decks sagged, forcing the crew to brace with beams. Never before (or since), had so many passengers packed a boat on the Mississippi River. Churning into swollen spring current, bound for Cairo, Illinois, Sultana left Vicksburg with bodies crammed in every nook and cranny—gaunt soldiers who had braved the firestorms of Shiloh and Chickamauga, and survived the hell of Andersonville. Spread across the decks, they talked of home and farming. Maybe, just maybe, a few dared to hope, they might be home in time to plant.

No More Tears
Dragging heavy camera equipment, anxious to snap a picture of a bulging Sultana on the morning of April 26, Thomas Bankes hustled to banks of the Mississippi River in Helena, Ark., roughly 175 miles north of Vicksburg.

Eighty-four days after the murder of Lincoln, four assassin/conspirators were jerked to eternity on July 7, 1865.

(Photo courtesy of Library of Congress)

As Bankes got into position, cheerful soldiers rushed starboard in excitement, anxious for inclusion in the photo. Sultana listed. The ship’s crew began barking direction, ordering men away from the side to restore balance on the top-heavy steamboat. It was a pregnant moment for Captain Cass and a final warning.

He carried on upriver.

At 2 a.m. the following morning, 7 miles north of Memphis near Marion, Arkansas, Sultana’s boilers exploded, tearing the ship apart. By blast, fire, and drowning, 1,169 passengers died—the single deadliest maritime disaster in U.S. history.

It was April 27, 1865, one day after the death of Booth. In a sense, the country’s sympathies were bled out, i.e., no more tears left to cry. News coverage was relatively scant, still dominated by events of the preceding weeks. Time to move on.

Lincon and Booth, farm boy to farm boy, and a story deeply connected by American agriculture.

(Photos courtesy of Library of Congress)

The crescendo of events was historically surreal. April 9, Confederate surrender and Union celebration; April 14, murder of Lincoln, attempted assassinations of Seward and Johnson, and intended killing of Grant; April 15, Lincoln’s death; April 19, Lincoln’s funeral. April 26: Booth’s death. April 27, the forgotten loss of 1,000-plus soldiers.

Beneath outer layers, each event linked directly to U.S. agriculture—as does every narrative of U.S. history. The tapestry in undeniable: Farming is the fabric of the American story.

For more from Chris Bennett (@ChrisBennettMS or cbennett@farmjournal.com or 662-592-1106), see:

How the Deep State Tried, and Failed, to Crush an American Farmer

Corn and Cocaine: Roger Reaves and the Most Incredible Farm Story Never Told

Family Farm Wins Historic Case After Feds Violate Constitution and Ruin Business

County Shuts Down 15-Yr-Old’s Bait Stand on Family Farm, Threatens Daily Fines

City Gov to Seize 175-Year-Old Farm by Eminent Domain, Replace with Affordable Housing

Game of Horns: Iowa Poacher’s Antler Addiction Leads to Historic Bust

Farmer Unearths Lost Treasure, Solves WW2 Mystery

20 Phrases Every Farmer Actually Mutters About Rain

Mon, 14 Jul 2025 20:45:05 GMT

If there’s one topic that unites farmers across all sectors of ag, it’s rain. It’s more than just weather on the farm, it determines your profits, your schedule and your mood all wrapped into one frustrating package. And it doesn’t matter if it’s planting season, mid-summer or the final push before harvest, our entire lives revolve around what’s happening in the sky.

If two or more farmers are talking, you can bet rain will come up in the conversation within the first five minutes. Here’s a look at some of the most common phrases you’ll hear when farmers start talking about rain:

“We could use some rain.”
This is the go-to phrase farmers have said since the beginning of time. It’s a simple, familiar line heard everywhere from church parking lots to town meetings, starting at planting and sticking around through the end of harvest.
“It would be nice if it stopped raining.”
Ah, the full-circle moment. Just two weeks ago we were begging for a slight shower. Now it’s been raining cats and dogs for four straight days.
“How much rain did you get?”
This is more than small talk; it’s actually a competition between farmers, and there is a winner and a loser.
“How much rain did so-and-so get?”
Because we all know that one farmer magically got all the rain, again.
“Did you see the forecast for the week?”
This is a question that leads farmers to check five weather apps that all have five different answers.
“That cloud is looking pretty dark.”
If this phrase is said on any farm, everyone will turn to look and offer their opinion on if it’s actually going to rain or not.
“It always seems to miss us.”
Every time the radar shows a line of storms, somehow it splits, shifts or drifts just enough to leave you high and dry.
“We needed that.”
This is often said with a kind of relief that comes after waiting days or weeks, when even a small rain feels like a lifeline.
“It was just enough to settle the dust.”
This is farmer speak for: it looked better than it was, but we’ll still take it.
“The radar made it look like we’d get rain, but we didn’t get a drop.”
All the signs pointed to a downpour, but somehow the sky held back.
“It split and went north again.”
Of course it did. It always does. It never rains where it’s supposed to.
“The neighbor got an inch, and we got nothing.”
This can go one of two ways: You’re ticked that you didn’t get the rain, or you’re thankful that you didn’t get more of it.
“It’s too wet to get anything done now.”
Welcome to farming: Nothing goes according to plan, and every drought seems to end with a downpour.
“Hopefully it holds off ‘til we get this hay in.”
A tempting statement that all but guarantees a pop-up thunderstorm. Mother Nature never checks your schedule.
“At least we get a break.”
This is said when the rain slows work down but gives everyone a moment to catch their breath.
“We’re overdue.”
This is usually muttered out of practicality and frustration, recognizing that the dry spell has gone on longer than expected and something has to give soon.
“It was just enough to green things up.”
It wasn’t a drought-buster, but it was good enough to make everything look better.
“How long do you think this dry stretch will last?”
Asked like someone might have insider info. Nobody does, but that won’t stop the theories, calendar comparisons or 2012 references.
“You could see the rain line from here.”
Another version of “we missed it,” but with more drama and eyewitness testimony.
“I could be a meteorologist.”
Said when the forecast flips unexpectedly, reminding everyone that sometimes even the experts are just guessing.

Whether it’s not enough, way too much or the perfect amount, rain brings out every emotion in a farmer’s toolkit — hope, stress, gratitude, frustration, envy and relief. And no matter what the forecast says, one thing is always true: If you’re a farmer, you’ll never stop talking about rain.

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