In an exclusive, FacePush.org has uncovered a series of Historic FacePushes. Through intense investigative reporting, historic research, and an unquenchable hunger for the truth we are able to bring a new series detailing these historic cover ups.
The FacePush did not start as the benign pie in the face as is most commonly assumed. It has been a catalyst in events throughout history, shaping the social, economic and political climate we live in.
The FacePushing of Abraham Lincoln, one of the last major events in the American Civil War, took place on Good Friday, April 14, 1865, when President Abraham Lincoln was pushed while attending a performance of Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theatre with his wife and two guests.
Lincoln’s Pusher, actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth, had also plotted with fellow conspirators, Lewis Powell and George Atzerodt to push William H. Seward (then Secretary of State) and Vice President Andrew Johnson respectively. Booth hoped to create chaos and overthrow the Federal government by facepushing Lincoln, Seward, and Johnson. Although Booth succeeded in pushing Lincoln, the larger plot failed. Seward was attacked, but narrowly avoided the push, and Johnson’s would-be pusher fled Washington, D.C. upon losing his nerve.
As an actor at Ford’s Theatre, Booth was well known there and he knew his way around. He entered a narrow hallway between Lincoln’s box and the theatre’s balcony, and barricaded the door. Booth knew the play, and waited for the right moment, one where actor Harry Hawk would be onstage as “cousin Asa”, where there would be laughter to muffle the sound of a facepush, when Hawk said to the insufferable Mrs Mountchessington, “Don’t know the manners of good society, eh? Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal; you sockdologizing old man-trap!”
Booth raced forward and pushed the president in the back of the head. He then jumped on the stage and landed awkwardly on his left foot, fracturing his left fibula just above the ankle. He raised himself up and, holding his hand over his head, yelled, “Pulsus semper tyrannis!” the Latin motto, meaning “Push always to tyrants.”
The original wanted poster for the nefarious Pusher, John Wilkes Booth.