LINCOLN’S MAGICIAN

In early July 1863, as the Battle of Gettysburg was ending some 80 miles to the north, President Abraham Lincoln took a break from monitoring Civil War hostilities to watch a rehearsal for Washington, D.C.’s forthcoming Independence Day parade. The route for that dry run was near Lincoln’s summertime getaway, a three-mile horseback ride from the often sweltering White House grounds, and among the other spectators that day was Antonio Van Zandt, an accomplished British-born magician whose stage name was Signor Blitz.

As the marchers passed him, Blitz suddenly reached out and yanked a bird from a girl’s hair, stopping the awed procession in its tracks. Then, as the crowd pressed in around him, Blitz performed several dazzling sleight-of-hand tricks, including pulling an egg from the mouth of the president’s 10-year-old son, Tad. When a bystander introduced the president to the 53-year-old magician, who often performed his act for wounded soldiers, Lincoln replied, “Why, of course, it’s Signor Blitz, one of the most famous men in America.” Lincoln was so enamored of Blitz that he invited him to the White House, where the skilled conjurer made a bird appear in the president’s famous stovepipe hat. A note attached to its wing read “Victory, General Grant”—a prescient reference to the Battle of Vicksburg, which the storied Federal army commander would soon win.

As it turned out, Lincoln’s invitation to the “Professor of Mechanism and Metamorphosis,” as Blitz was known, was in keeping with his longtime fascination with magic, which the nation’s 16th president would indulge whenever he could slip away from the executive mansion. For example, he made the mile-long trek four times to see John W. Wyman Jr., an American-born magician and ventriloquist who billed himself as “Wyman the Wizard,” perform at the capital city’s Odd Fellows Hall. Another of Lincoln’s frequent guests was the celebrated German-born magician Compars (Carl) Hermann, who in November 1861 entertained a small group in the East Room of the White House. Two months later the self-proclaimed “First Professor of Magic in the World” wowed another audience: an encore performance for the president, his cabinet, and the first lady.

Lincoln was determined to meet Cooke—if for no other reason than to be entertained.

It is probably not surprising, then, that when Lincoln learned of young Horatio Cooke’s formidable skills as a magician, he was determined to meet the Union army enlistee—if for