Inside the Episode: S1E1

This episode of 1865 is part of the series that debuted on Stitcher Premium in late 2018. Since then, we've rewritten and re-recorded many portions of the show, including a brand new finale. These new episodes are debuting weekly, with the first two available June 18, 2019. As a patron of 1865, you can binge the entire series including this episode as it originally debuted now. Thank you for your support.

Hello and welcome to Inside the Episode 1865. I'm Rob McCollum, one of the producers on this project. So excited to finally have this... year and a half long process of getting this podcast up and to you finished and over the line. And now our first episode has been released. I hope that you listened to it. I hope you enjoyed it. I would say, listen to it first. There are spoilers coming.

But the whole purpose of this Inside the Episode is to look into this very complex story, find out how it was brought to the microphones in the way that it was. where the actual history lies, where the artistic license was taken. So there is no one better to talk about that than the two writers who joined me today, Eric Archilla and Steve Walters.

You guys have been working on this for a very, very long time, much before even the podcast began. So, Eric, I will start with you. Tell us where you guys first began working on this idea. Thanks, Rob. This actually started in 2003 at Baylor University. I were in the theater department together in a theater history class. And there was an assignment to write a paper on a period of theater history. And we were assigned the 18th or 19th century.

Not a whole lot happened there. It was all minstrel shows and vaudeville and melodrama. And so we looked down the list, weren't really crazy about any of those things. But Steve saw John Wilkes Booth. The Booth family on there because they were very prominent theatrical family. And we decided to write a play together instead of do the paper. And it all kind of started there.

Yeah, we had, this is Steve Walters talking. We had to, that's exactly right. We went to our professor and we basically said, we hate research papers. Can we write a play? And he very, Scott LaHaye was his name. And he said, yes. And we did. We wrote a terrible play about John Wilkes. booth it was basically a glorified you know fact sheet of what happened in history but from that terrible play uh eventually a real play was born many many years later

Well, I saw that play. It was a fantastic production. And so I have loved this story for a really long time. But that was very, very Booth-focused. Yes. It was about John Wilkes Booth and this short time period. kind of from the assassination to Booth's death. How did it then morph in the ensuing five years? It has changed and other plays have come out of that. How did the idea of focusing on Edwin Stanton happen?

Well, the interesting thing is Steve was really big about having a driving question to the show. And the thing we kind of gravitated more towards at the time was the reaction to 9-11. How do we deal with a monster when something happens? It was very booth focused. And and how do we as a nation fight an enemy like that that has attacked us? And and it's weird how it's.

completely morphed away from that. Well, and that's because of Edwin Stanton. I mean, I think in looking at the history of it, the way I describe it is it's almost like he demanded that the story be about him and that his name kept...

creeping up in all of the research that we did. And in this question of, you know, in the pursuit of a monster, do we make one of ourselves? Edwin Stanton is really the character that matters in that story. You know, Booth is Osama bin Laden, right? He's this looming figure that...

that commits an atrocious act of evil that precipitates this constitutional crisis. Edwin Stanton, like Dick Cheney in the wake of 9-11, like George Bush in the wake of 9-11, he's the man who steps onto the scene to try and... put the country back together, preserve the nation, and protect us, keep us safe. And the process of doing that, some really difficult moral questions are really sort of brought to the surface. Well, so much research went into this. I mean, now...

going on 15 years of diving into this. And I know Eric, you served as the researcher in chief on a lot of this, but when it came time to expand this two hour play into a now 15 episode podcast. How did that work in terms of incorporating that research you've done and finding more to flesh that out? Well, we tried to, as much as we could, go back to the original sources.

We started off the process reading a lot of the contemporary books and seeing where they agreed, where they disagreed. But to me, some of the most useful sources were the Navy Secretary Gideon Wells wrote an entire journal. through his entire time as cabinet. And so we knew day to day exactly the conversations that happened, the people that were present. And that was really helpful to just kind of see what happened in Lincoln's cabinet.

But it's very skewed from his perspective, which I've found very interesting. Yeah. And I would say that in the research, the thing that struck me the most is that, you know, in the 1860s, there's a lot of firsts. The first United States president assassinated in the wake of the country's first and hopefully only civil war. The first woman executed by the federal government in United States history. The first impeachment of a sitting president.

So there's a lot of firsts. But then when you go the next step, the next level of that, it's a president who's a populist. It's a president who is accused of being a womanizer and who is impeached under suspicion of colluding with the Confederacy to secure the office of the presidency.

And then you start thinking, OK, well, now this sounds like we're talking about something else. So that was the next thing that struck me was the modern parallels are striking. And it's sort of I would say it's like Battlestar Galactica. All of this has happened before and all of it will happen again.

And since we've started this process, more and more current events line up exactly with what's happening in the story. And it's just insane that that history repeats itself that way. So you guys came to me, Steve, you first approached me about maybe. adapting this into a podcast. You had heard terms, which is a project that I did last year with Lindsey Graham, our executive producer. And again, that was audio drama. in its purest form, kind of going back to that 1920s radio.

How do you think that works in terms of putting what is a stage production or really a film and putting it into audio? First of all, I love terms and terms really opened up the door of possibility for me in terms of what this project could be in a radio drama, the work that you and Lynn. and Mike Federico did was absolutely incredible. I think that the biggest challenge of taking a play...

or a film and making it a podcast, a radio play, is just the practical challenges. I mean, I realized about myself as a writer how much I rely on visual storytelling. And it was so difficult when I was, you know, I would get to a moment. I mean, practical things like... If, okay, Rob, you play Congressman John Bingham in the story. I play Robert Lincoln. If John Bingham and Robert Lincoln walk into a room and start talking, what do we have to say? We have to say, Congressman Bingham.

Ah, yes, Mr. Lincoln. Which is, you know, obviously it doesn't feel like great writing sometimes, but it's a necessary evil. You know, you have to let the audience know who's in the room. And where the room is. Yeah, and where the room is. There are just practical challenges like that. you don't think about and me having never written a radio play before

Uh, this was, you know, this was, it was a struggle at times to sort of, to get the hang of it. Um, and then, but one of the benefits of writing for radio and writing for a podcast medium is that, you know, I think that I'm a podcast head. I love them. And I think what people like about podcasts is that you get to get into the granularity.

of the history and of the subject matter. Whereas in a film or a play, you're constrained by time and it's a visual storytelling medium. So sometimes the granular history, the granular details, the juicy facts, you don't get to relish those as much and live in them. as much. Well, it's a perfect segue because I want to get into the juicy facts of episode one. Folks may have just listened to it, but there's a lot of information there that, and I thought I knew.

about the assassination of Lincoln. I thought I understood from my junior high history days what had happened. I know I wrote papers on it, but there was so much that I had no clue on. The multiple attempts. The fact that Secretary of State Seward was attacked at the same time and almost killed and that there was also some thought that there was a...

Potential attack on Johnson planned as well. So for people that don't know, like me, about the history, what if that is true and what if that is creative license? What happened on that night? Well, Eric was the first person to bring these details.

to me. And what I realized is there's just a lot of assumptions that we have, historical assumptions about what happened. I think the majority of people would say that John Wilkes Booth was a quote-unquote lone gunman. Well, it turns out that's not true. He had a gang of conspirators.

I think a lot of people assume that Lincoln was the only target. Well, that's not true. Secretary of State William Seward was a target. Also, Andrew Johnson was a target. We'll get more into what happened and why Johnson wasn't actually attacked. But also there's another assumption that I think most of us make, which was that Appomattox, when General Lee surrendered, was the end of the war.

Well, that's true, but that's also not true because there were multiple Confederate generals still out in the field with thousands of troops under their command who were still fighting. And there was this belief, certainly from the standpoint of Edwin Stanton, the Secretary of War, that it was...

It was possible that the rebels were behind this. It was possible that Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy himself, ordered these attacks and that maybe General Johnston and those rebel troops that were still out in the field, they might be marching on Washington. That's one of my favorite things about episode one is the energy. It's all taking place in that night.

in the one night where they still don't know what's happening. We may be under attack. There may be troops marching towards the city in this exact moment. And Edwin Stanton is kind of in the middle of this maelstrom, just trying to figure out like, what is true? What has happened? And is everyone that needs... to be kept safe, being kept safe at this moment. Which is unfortunately something that we have experienced lately in the news.

Whether it was the shooter in Dallas or the attack in Paris, we keep having these events happen, these mass shootings, where we don't immediately know how many people are involved. And you'll see a lot of conflicting news stories, and we're getting news spur of the... Back then, they were getting things word of mouth, so you can imagine how misconstrued things got very quickly. And Stanton, you know, he was certainly in a similar position to Mr. Cheney.

in the moments after Lincoln was killed. You know, George Bush was in Florida. He was in a classroom. He wasn't really in a position to take the reins. And so Dick Cheney sort of picked up where Bush left off. He had to make some very difficult decisions. You know, famously, Dick Cheney had to make the decision that if...

a plane was flying towards Washington, that they were authorized to shoot it down, even if there were civilians, American citizens on that plane. Similarly, Edwin Stanton had to make really tough calls. And one of those decisions that he made was to...

And he basically ran our country for 12 days. Yes, he did. One of the other characters that I... Did not know a lot about and that this process has taught me about is Andrew Johnson. We discover in this episode that there is a note from John Wilkes Booth waiting at. johnson's hotel so is is this true tell me this story where did you discover this information so there's a lot of mystery surrounding this note um

Booth and Johnson, as we will reveal later in the series, do have a connection. And it's an interesting connection. But what's... To me, the most mysterious part of this note is that it means one of two things. As Stanton says at the very end of the series, it either means that Booth wanted to make sure Johnson was home so they could kill him.

Or it means that Booth and Johnson were having conversations and that maybe he had something to do with this. And that question of Johnson's complicity is something that plays throughout the course of the series. So you mentioned that is potentially an attack on Andrew Johnson, that that's one of the explanations of the note. That is important to the story because, and as it is said, if the president.

Vice President and Secretary of State have been killed. We don't, as a country, have a plan at this point in our history to know what to do, right? Exactly. At the time, the... The amendment that really lays out exactly what happens in succession didn't exist. All we had was that the president, then the vice president serve, and then in their absence, the secretary of state is the one to trigger a new election.

Had they succeeded, had John Wilkes Booth and his conspirators succeeded in killing all three of those men, we would have been in a difficult spot. I mean, what would have happened? We don't actually know. Probably what would have happened is that Congress would have convened and passed an amendment to...

answer the question of what happens when these people are gone, but that would have taken time. And certainly from Stanton's perspective, if the rebels are moving on the Capitol, if in fact, General Johnston and the rest of these Confederates are still going to fight and not give up. And we also have to remember...

Remember, Jefferson Davis has not surrendered. The Confederate government has not surrendered. So they're still out there, right? And where does the loyalty of all these soldiers lie? Does it lie with Robert E. Lee or does it lie with the president? President Davis. So all these questions are swirling around in Stanton's mind that night. And certainly, I think they motivated some of the decisions that he made.

So at this point in the story, we don't know if there is a rebel attack. We don't know if it is a conspiracy or a lone gunman. And we don't really know who is in charge of the government and how the rest of the story of Reconstruction will be written from this point forward.

But you do have Google. But don't cheat. Just wait until episode two comes out. All of these questions and more will be answered. Thank you so much for listening to this Inside the Episode. Join us next time after you listen to episode two.