The Weirdest Lincoln Assassination Conspiracy Theories

President Lincoln sometimes worked late into the night by himself at the Soldiers Home, three miles from the White House. One night, while riding to the Soldiers Home by himself, a lone shot flew through his hat, sending his horse running. Lincoln eventually arrived at the Home unscathed and told his bodyguards what happened.

They went back out and indeed found the hat with a hole in it. The shot missed Lincoln's head by inches, and it's never been discovered who fired it, or why. Lincoln himself believed the shot had been discharged by a careless hunter and is alleged to have remarked: "I can't bring myself to believe that anyone has shot at me or will deliberately shoot at me with the deliberate purpose of killing me."

Long before Lincoln perished in Ford's Theatre, other plots emerged that threatened the president's life. One took place before he was even in office - the so-called Baltimore Plot. With the nation on the verge of civil conflict in February 1861, Allan Pinkerton, President-elect Lincoln's personal bodyguard, became convinced there was a plot afoot to take Lincoln out in Baltimore as he journeyed to his inauguration.

After he was warned, Lincoln proceeded as planned during the day, but passed through Baltimore in disguise during the middle of the night. Meanwhile, the Lincoln family used a dummy train to throw off what Pinkerton believed was a cadre of conspirators waiting for Lincoln with knives as he changed trains.

Lincoln got through Baltimore with no attempts on his life, and the existence of the plot was never proven. Lincoln was deeply embarrassed by the affair - but some believed he made it all up to enhance the threat posed by the South.

Fringe theorists have long speculated on a link between Lincoln's second-term vice president, Andrew Johnson, and John Wilkes Booth. A 1997 book called Right or Wrong, God Judge Me: The Writings of John Wilkes Booth purported to reveal that Johnson contracted the slaying out to Booth.

Most scholars dismiss any link between the two men, and an 1867 committee didn't find any evidence to substantiate it. But the theory did have one high-profile proponent: Mary Todd Lincoln. The president's widow reportedly detested Johnson, seeing him as a repugnant drinker. She wrote to a friend in 1866 revealing that she believed Johnson was involved in his husband's demise:

That, that miserable inebriate Johnson, had cognizance of my husband's [passing] - Why, was that card of Booth's, found in his box, some acquaintance certainly existed - I have been deeply impressed, with the harrowing thought, that he, had an understanding with the conspirators & they knew their man.

She added: "As sure, as you and I live, Johnson, had some hand, in all this..."

In the investigation of the slaying, it was revealed that Booth's original plan was to capture and ransom Lincoln for Confederate prisoners.  In fact, Booth and his comrades did attempt to nab Lincoln - on March 17, 1865. Booth learned that the president would be attending a play at a rural military hospital. He led a number of men to a position on the road outside the hospital to wait for Lincoln to leave, at which point they'd ambush his party. But they never left the hospital, since they were never there at all.

Instead, Lincoln changed his plans - or was never actually planning on attending at all - and so foiled Booth's scheme.

In 1937, author Otto Eisenschiml began speculating that Lincoln's passing came not at the hands of disgruntled Confederates, but his own secretary of war, Edwin Stanton. As the theory goes, the fiercely abolitionist Stanton opposed Lincoln's charitable attitude toward former Confederates and wanted someone in office who would treat them much more harshly. 

When Lincoln perished, Stanton led the manhunt for Booth - supposedly ensuring that his patsy would be taken out. However, historical scholars have downplayed these theories as based on flawed readings of the source material.

High-ranking Confederate politician (and the first openly practicing Jew to serve in the United States Congress) Judah Benjamin has been linked to the slaying of President Lincoln through conspirator and Confederate agent John Surratt. While Secretary of State, Benjamin supervised the Confederate Secret Service and was confirmed to have met with Surratt in Richmond two weeks before the incident. 

While there was little compelling evidence connecting Benjamin to the plot, Northern papers compared him to Judas betraying Jesus - in this case, played by Lincoln. Fearing that his Judaism and high rank in the Confederacy would make it impossible for him to get a fair trial if he were arrested for helping plot Lincoln's demise, he fled for England. He became a celebrated lawyer in London, and never returned to the US.