Faith and History
The Maundy Monday Newsletter - This Week in History November 17 - 23.
After arriving at the Surrat Tavern in Southern Maryland late into the night on Good Friday, 1865, John Wilkes Booth and his accomplice, David Herold, barely slept before setting off at dawn for the home of Dr. Samuel Mudd. Mudd set Booth’s broken leg—an injury caused when Booth leaped from the presidential box at Ford’s Theatre after assassinating Abraham Lincoln.
Booth and Herold retreated to the part of Maryland where Confederate sympathizers lived—people who could provide them with food, shelter, weapons, and information. They hoped to slip into Virginia and into the protected arms of the Rebel land that had just surrendered and lost the war only a few days earlier.
The next day, April 16, 1865, the two men reached a house called “Huckleberry,” which was owned by Confederate mail agent Thomas Jones, a local smuggler and Southern spy. Jones hid Booth and Herold in dense woods behind the house for nearly a week while Union troops scoured the countryside looking for them.
Eventually, Booth and Herold crossed the Potomac and reached Virginia. Ten days had passed, and the men were at the Garrett Family Farm in Bowling Green, Virginia. It was here that Booth would learn that General Joseph E. Johnston’s army had also surrendered and the Confederacy’s capital city of Richmond had fallen. Booth’s plan to throw the war into chaos by killing Lincoln had failed.
Federal troops had been tracking the killers and found them at the farm. Herold surrendered immediately. Booth refused, insisting he would never be taken alive, and he met a violent end in the burning barn.
I spent the second weekend of November at a religious retreat on the banks of the Potomac River, where the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) runs a retreat center. It’s 235 acres of nature, and the house at the entrance is where Jones lived and where Booth and Herold stayed during those fateful historic days. Every year I drive past the same house where the most wanted man in America once hid. Now it welcomes retreatants seeking silence instead of fugitives seeking escape.
I’ve been traveling to Loyola on the Potomac since 2014. I’ve always been familiar with the area’s ties to Lincoln’s assassination, but this year I explored more of the land that had opened up for contemplative walks, which led me to think about how, for one weekend a year, I get to blend my love of faith with my love of history.
The days are spent in silence, and 30-40 other men join you. Each on their own journeys. Some come from Florida, others from Richmond. This year, before the silent part kicked in, I met a deacon from Philadelphia. Unlike the rest of Booth and Herold, we weren’t running from something.
Here are a few pictures I took before the silence begins and the phone is turned off.
On Saturday night, I witnessed the most beautiful sunset I have ever seen, and I appreciate the fact that I can’t share a picture of it with you, as I didn’t have my phone with me at the time. But I got to see the sharp, vibrant reds and oranges fill up a sky. Trust me, it was amazing.
Okay, let’s highlight what else happened this week. As a reminder, these events celebrate their anniversary, ending in 5 or 0. Here’s what I got:
1. Congress met in Washington, DC, for the first time on November 17, 1800. The Sixth Congress took its seats in the unfinished Capitol building, marking the official move to Washington, DC, and leaving behind the City of Philadelphia. Two hundred twenty-five years later, Congress finally ended its longest shutdown in history. Let’s hope they get back to being productive.
2. Milli Vanilli’s Grammy award was rescinded after it was discovered they didn’t do their own singing on November 19, 1990. The German R&B duo never recorded vocals for their Grammy Award-winning debut album, Girl You Know It’s True. The wildly popular group was soon discovered to have been deceiving back in 1989 when a CD of one song jammed during a live performance and kept repeating. A few months later, more questions about their authenticity arose when journalists questioned their grasp of the English language. The group was preparing to launch its comeback album in 1998, when Rob Pilatus died of an accidental overdose, and the album was never released.
3. The television broadcasting company CBS banned a Calvin Klein Jeans advertisement on November 19, 1980. The ad featured 15-year-old Brooke Shields, and broadcasters thought it was too suggestive. In the ad, Shields says, “You know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing,” and this was seen as inappropriate for a 15-year-old to be speaking in a slightly seductive way.1 Just an aside, Megyn Kelly was 10 when this ad came out, and her birthday is November 18. I’ll let you connect the dots.
I highly recommend taking time away to go somewhere and be silent for a weekend. Read, write, and rest. Turn off your phones, but make sure you have an emergency plan (it’s best to be prepared), and enrich yourself with the gift of silence.
For me, it’s a great way to listen to God and explore what’s going on with me and him. The Saturday of the weekend is easily the most spiritually rewarding day of the year for me.
But even if faith isn’t your thing, try to make silence something you seek out, not just in your daily life, but just one weekend a year. You won’t regret it.
I’ll see you later this week. Until then, thank you for your support and have a great week!
Okay,
Chris
Pulled from thefactsite.com