Most students of history probably recall these basic facts about Abraham Lincoln's oldest son, yet, he is also the equivalent of a real-life Forrest Gump.
Consider just a few of these historical moments that he either witnessed or was directly part of:
Sometime in either late 1864 or early 1864, he was saved from possible serious injury or death by Edwin Booth, whose brother, John Wilkes Booth, would go on to assassinate Robert's father. This event took place on a train platform in Jersey City, New Jersey.
He served on General Grant's staff for almost five months, during which he witnessed Robert E Lee's surrender at Appotomax.
On the night his father was assassinated, Robert had turned down an invitation to accompany his parents to Ford's Theatre due to fatigue after spending much of his recent time in a covered wagon at the battlefront. The president was moved to the Petersen House after the shooting, where Robert attended his father's deathbed.
Lincoln was an eyewitness when Charles J. Guiteau shot President James A. Garfield at the Sixth Street Train Station in Washington, D.C., on July 2, 1881. Lincoln was Garfield's Secretary of War at the time.
Lincoln was at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, when President William McKinley was shot by Leon Czolgosz. Though not an eyewitness, he was just outside the Temple of Music when the shooting occurred.
Lincoln himself recognized these coincidences. He is said to have refused a later presidential invitation with the comment, "No, I'm not going, and they'd better not ask me, because there is a certain fatality about presidential functions when I am present."
