Robert Todd Lincoln was the eldest son of Abraham Lincoln, and the only child in the family to reach adulthood. He was a privileged man but his life was cursed, weaving through several tragic events of the Reconstruction Era and the Gilded Age.
Lincoln Experienced Three Presidential Assassinations
Lincoln’s first encounter with an assassination was personal and traumatic, as he was in the White House when his father was shot by John Wilkes Booth in 1865 at Ford’s Theatre. Although he was not present at the theater, the impact of his father’s assassination haunted him for the rest of his life.
Decades later Lincoln was appointed Secretary of War in President James Garfield’s cabinet. In 1881 He invited Garfield to travel with him to New Jersey. The pair were at a Washington, D.C. train station when a man named Charles Guiteau shot Garfield. He succumbed to his injuries weeks later.
