Miss Clara Harris

[AndyHall]

The Lincolns' guest at Ford's Theater. Image by Matthew Brady, National Archives.

 

[Nathanb1]

Are we sure she was still Miss Harris? Doesn't that look like a wedding band on her left finger? Maybe Mrs. Rathbone already? To her everlasting sorrow, no doubt.

 

[AndyHall]

NARA captions the image "Miss Clara Harris (Married Major Rathbone)."

Does seem to match this one:

Expired Image Removed

 

[Eagle eye]

Are we sure she was still Miss Harris? Doesn't that look like a wedding band on her left finger? Maybe Mrs. Rathbone already? To her everlasting sorrow, no doubt.

If its a 'reverse image' then it would be on her right hand…don't know how to figure out if its reversed or not… another ACW mystery I suppose.

 

[JPK Huson 1863]

Poor Clara and Henry- you can never tell if he would have become mad regardless or if the Lincoln killing is THE event which was the cause of his decline. I mean, History does remember it this way but Rathbone had problems earlier. He could easily have been afflicted with PTSD- Antietam and Fredericksburg as a commander of forces? Thne later afflicted with some mysterious illness- this reads as if it's a returning type of fever, like malaria. Poor guy, so much in such a short time span. Who knows what it could have been.

Her various writings seem to show that she really did love him despite how difficult he became, or how dangerous. God bless both of them.


http://civilwarwomenblog.com/clara-harris-rathbone/


" Clara Harris was born on September 9, 1834 in Albany, New York, one of four children of Senator Ira Harris and his first wife Louisa Tubbs Harris. Clara's mother died 1845. On August 1, 1848, Ira Harris married widow Pauline Rathbone, who had two sons, Jared and Henry. From the ages of 13 and 11 respectively, Clara and Henry were raised in the same household. To their parents' dismay, the two fell in love and became engaged.
When Clara Harris arrived with her family in Washington, DC in 1861, it was a small community. Many members of President Abraham Lincoln's Cabinet lived on Lafayette Square. Secretary of State William Seward lived on the east side of the Square. Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles lived on the north side. Clara lived with her family just off Lafayette Square at 15th and H streets.

When the war began, Henry enlisted as an officer in the 12th U.S. Infantry. He fought in the battles southeast of Richmond in the spring of 1862. That September, he commanded a company at the Battle of Antietam in Maryland. In December, he was at the Battle of Fredericksburg, a bloody defeat for Union forces.

Records show the toll the war took on him. "His bodily health, never robust, suffered impairment from... fever in 1862," his Washington doctor, G.W. Pope, wrote. Henry was sick for two months that summer. In the winter of 1863-64 he fell ill again, suffering from a malaria-like illness. He returned to the Army against the doctor's advice and was sick again later in 1864. Once again, he returned to duty, despite his physician's advice that he seek an easier job in the service.

"I felt satisfied that these repeated attacks of a wasting and debilitating disease were likely to permanently injure your constitution," Dr. Henry Paine wrote to him later. Using his connections, Senator Ira Harris had arranged a desk job for Henry in the provost marshal's office, which was only a few blocks away from the Harris residence.

By 1865 Clara, now 30, had become a cultured, self-assured woman who moved in the highest Washington social groups. She had become an intimate friend of the first lady, Mary Todd Lincoln, with whom she often attended the theater, and was a familiar guest at the White House. Henry was 27, an intense-looking young man with receding, wavy auburn hair and mutton chops. Clara and Henry had been engaged for several years, but Henry had avoided setting a wedding date.

On April 14, 1865, Clara Harris accepted a last-minute invitation to see the play Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre with the President and First Lady that night. She and Henry were waiting at the Harris house when the big black presidential carriage arrived to take them to the theater. Despite the night chill, Clara recalled, the Lincolns were "in the gayest of spirits."
The Lincoln party arrived at the theater late and settled into the Presidential Box. The play was temporarily stopped while the orchestra played Hail to the Chief and the audience gave the president a standing ovation. It was now about 10:15 pm. During the intermission, the policeman who was supposed to be guarding the Presidential Box went to a nearby tavern for a drink.

.......Just after the line in the play was delivered, Booth opened the door, rushed in and shot the President in the back of the head at point-blank range. Lincoln slumped over in his chair, mortally wounded. First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln reached out to catch him, and then screamed when she realized what had happened. Clara screamed: "The president is shot!"
Upon hearing the gunshot, Henry Rathbone quickly jumped from his seat and tried to prevent Booth from escaping. Booth drew a Bowie knife and slashed Rathbone's left arm, leaving a gaping wound from his elbow to his shoulder. Rathbone again tried to grab Booth, but he stabbed Rathbone in the chest and then jumped over the rail of the box down to the stage below.

.....Blood was everywhere - all from Rathbone's stab wound. It soaked Clara's white dress, and streaked her hands and face as she tried to stop the bleeding with a handkerchief. The other theater goers were thrown completely into chaos when they saw what was happening in the President's Box. Mary Lincoln was inconsolable, and clung to Clara for support.

......Shortly after they arrived at the boarding house, Henry passed out and was taken by carriage to the Harris house. It is unclear how long Clara stayed with the first lady, but Dr. G.W. Pope later recalled that Clara was at home when he was called to tend to Henry, who lay stripped of his clothes and as pale as a corpse. Clara was calm, bringing water, towels and bandages as an Army surgeon stitched up Henry's wound.


.....Henry Rathbone's physical wounds took a long time to heal, and Clara agreed with her father's recommendation that the wedding be postponed. Finally, Clara Harris and Henry Rathbone were married on July 11, 1867, and moved into an elegant 22-room home on the west side of Lafayette Square. They had three children, the eldest born on Abraham Lincoln's birthday in 1870.
Yet Henry was plagued by mysterious medical problems. During 1869 and again in 1870 he was treated for what a doctor described as "attacks of neuralgia of the head and face and in the region of the heart attended by palpitations and at times difficulty breathing." In December 1870, Henry abruptly retired from the Army.


Henry Rathbone never recovered from what happened at Ford's Theatre that spring night. His mental state deteriorated in the years following Lincoln's death, as he blamed himself for not preventing Lincoln's death. He suffered from "physical ailments, constant fears, and terrible delusions" that worsened over the years and eventually declined into mental illness.

" "In every hotel we're in, as soon as people get wind of our presence, we feel ourselves become objects of morbid scrutiny.... Whenever we were in the dining room, we began to feel like zoo animals. Henry... imagines that the whispering is more pointed and malicious than it can possibly be." " Clara Harris Rathbone

...Henry had become even more depressed and erratic, people would recall later. He said he was afraid of himself. He had hallucinations. His relationship with Clara had grown even more tense. He was said to be so fearful that she would leave him that he would not allow her to sit by the window or be alone. He begged her to stay with him, and around this same time, he bought a revolver.


" "The truth is I have never loved him more than I have this last month. I have wanted to wail with pity over him... He mutters more than ever of our hours in the box at Ford's, forcing me to think of them, too." " Clara Harris Rathbone

According to most accounts, before dawn on December 23, 1883, Henry Rathbone either entered or tried to enter the room where his children were sleeping. Clara, afraid that he might hurt them, coaxed him back to the master bedroom and closed the door. There, Henry shot his wife several times; Clara Harris Rathbone died on Christmas Eve at age 49. He then stabbed himself six times before the servants intervened. Once again, the gunshot victim died, while Henry survived his knife wounds. "