Lucy's Bones, Sacred Stones, & Einstein's Brain

by Harvey Rachlin

  The marble-topped table and the oval table, one symbolic of the Confederacy and the other of the Union, were taken away after the surrender by officers of the Union who appreciated their great historical value. It is ironic that the table of the Confederacy went to relieve the financial hardships of the widow of a Union general, and the table of the Union went to the wife of a Union general who led a regiment into one of the most disastrous engagements of nineteenth-century American military history.

  LOCATIONS: Lee table: Chicago Historical Society, Chicago, Illinois.

  Grant table: National Museum of American History, Washington, D.C.

  THE BED LINCOLN DIED IN

  DATE: 1865.

  WHAT IT IS: The bed President Abraham Lincoln was placed on after he was shot, on which he slowly bled for nearly nine hours before he expired.

  WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE: The bed is 78½ inches long. It has a peaked headboard measuring 46⅛ inches high and 53¾ inches wide; and a footboard with spool-turned posts and spindles that is 44½ inches high and 53¾ inches wide.

  The scene was William Petersen’s boardinghouse at 453 Tenth Street N.W., in Washington, D.C. The event was the desperate, hopeless struggle to save the life of Abraham Lincoln, who had been shot a short while earlier at Ford’s Theatre. News of the shooting was spreading through the streets of the nation’s capital like wildfire, sparking fears and tears that would billow into a national hysteria once the president’s fate played itself out. For now, however, the drama was focused in the somber theater of an infantry private’s room where an unwilling protagonist was lying on a walnut bed, center stage in this most dramatic episode of American history.

  The details of this larger-than-life tragedy are well known. President Lincoln, his wife, Mary, and invited guests, Major Henry Rathbone and his fiancée, Clara Harris, were attending a performance of Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theatre, having arrived from the Executive Mansion by carriage (Studebaker National Museum, South Bend, Indiana).* The Civil War had essentially ended just five days before when Lee signed the terms of surrender at Appomattox Court House. Lincoln was still on the eve of great victory and his legend was spiraling higher, even if sentiment against the Union and against Lincoln continued to run high in the South.

  The Lincoln party arrived sometime after the play began at 7:45 P.M. on Good Friday, April 14, 1865, the president having been detained at the White House by discussions with some members of Congress, including the speaker of the House of Representatives, Schuyler Colfax. Different accounts have been given as to exactly when the party arrived—during the first or second act—but it was probably about 8:30 P.M., forty-five minutes after the curtain rose. Lincoln’s presence in the theater did not escape notice. There have been various accounts of who signaled the audience’s attention and when, but that of Harry Hawk, the actor who played the lead role of Asa Trenchard, the “American Cousin,” is given the most credence. According to Hawk, the others on stage performed the following lines:

  FLORENCE: What’s the matter?

  DUNDREARY: That wath a joke, that wath.

  FLORENCE: Where’s the joke?

  MRS. MOUNT: No.

  DUNDREARY: She don’t see it—*

  Then the star of the show, Laura Keene, seeing the president and his party being ushered to their box, quickly raised her hand to the balcony and interjected her own improvised line, “Anybody can see that!” All heads turned—there were about seventeen hundred people present on three levels of the theater—and the play came to a stop. Laura Keene gestured to the orchestra director, Professor William Withers, who summoned the musicians to play “Hail to the Chief.” There were enthusiastic cheers and applause from the audience, and many people rose to their feet. Mrs. Lincoln smiled and curtsied a few times. The president, a forlorn look on his face, modestly bowed.

  The state box had been prepared earlier that day by Harry Clay Ford, the treasurer of Ford’s Theatre and one of the three brothers of the owner, John Thompson Ford. The box normally was divided into two parts, accessed by doorways seven and eight, but that night the partition was removed and Lincoln and his party probably entered through doorway eight. The box was decorated with five flags: two American flags on flagstaffs hanging at either end and the blue Treasury Guard flag (Ford’s Theatre National Historic Site, Washington, D.C.) hanging above an engraving of George Washington (Ford’s Theatre) at the center, as well as two more American flags Harry Clay Ford added, draping them over the balcony.

  In the presidential box at one corner was a red upholstered chair (lost or destroyed over time) on which Miss Harris sat, next to which was a walnut-framed sofa with a tufted back, upholstered in red silk (Ford’s Theatre), that Rathbone sat on; continuing across, in box seven, there was a cane-bottom straight-back chair (lost or destroyed over time) on which Mrs. Lincoln sat, and a walnut-framed high-back rocking chair padded with red silk fabric in which the president sat (Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn, Michigan).

  A door from the dress circle, or mezzanine, opened into a hallway that led to doorways seven and eight of the presidential box. Unbeknownst to the presidential party, there was a small hole in box seven’s door (Ford’s Theatre). There are two stories about who put it there. One is that it was done previous to April 14 on the orders of Harry Clay Ford, who was in charge of decorating the box for the president’s attendance at the theater; Ford wanted a hole bored so the president’s aides could look through it to see who was inside without having to bother the guests. The other story is that the actor who headed the conspiracy to kill the president and others, John Wilkes Booth, made it earlier that day when he came to the theater during a dress rehearsal of the play. In the conspiracy trial that followed Lincoln’s murder, Harry Clay Ford did not claim to have ordered the hole made in the door, but long after his death his son, Frank Ford, stated “the hole was bored by my father, Harry Clay Ford, or rather on his orders, and was bored for the very simple reason it would allow the guard, one Parker, easy opportunity whenever he so desired to look into the box rather than to open the inner door to check the Presidential party. As we know Parker left his post to view the performance from the dress circle.” Also at the trial a Ford’s Theatre clerk by the name of Thomas J. Raybold testified that he saw Booth at the theater box office on the morning of April 14, establishing his presence at the theater before the performance attended by Lincoln. (Raybold also noted that about two weeks earlier, Booth reserved box four at the theater, then returned in the afternoon to exchange the box for box seven or eight—Raybold wasn’t sure which one it was, but thought it was box seven, the one whose door had the hole bored in it.)

  During the evening, John Wilkes Booth presented his calling card to a man sitting by the passageway (by most accounts it was Charles Forbes, Lincoln’s valet). Presumably Booth told the man he would like to see the president.

  While Lincoln was enjoying the play, John Wilkes Booth lurked in the passageway behind him, waiting to seize the most opportune moment to strike at the man whose politics he detested. As the unsuspecting Lincoln leaned forward in his rocking chair toward the railing, Booth probably peered at him through the hole in the door. Booth was familiar with the play and planned his execution to occur during act three, scene two, when only one actor was on stage.

  This was a droll scene when Asa Trenchard confessed to Augusta, the girl he loved, and her mother, Mrs. Mountchessington, that he wasn’t an heir to a fortune. Asa didn’t think that would be a problem since moments earlier Augusta had said all she craved was affection.

  “Now I’ve no fortune,” Asa admitted to Augusta, “but I’m boiling over with affections, which I’m ready to pour out all over you like apple sass over roast pork.” Mrs. Mountchessington responded, “Mr. Trenchard, you will please recollect you are addressing my daughter, and in my presence.” “Yes,” answered Asa. “I’m offering her my heart and hand just as she wants them, with nothing in ’em.” Mrs. Mountchessington ordered her daughter to her room, and Augusta left in a huff sa
ying, “Yes, ma, the nasty beast.” Mrs. Mountchessington then told Asa that because he was not used to the manners of good society, he would be excused of his impertinence, and then she walked away. Now alone on stage, Harry Hawk, the actor playing Asa, said:

  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.

  Those were the last words Lincoln heard before he was mortally attacked. They were spoken about 10:15, when Booth surreptitiously opened one of the doors to the president’s box. As laughter filled the theater, Booth strode a few paces, held a .44-caliber single-shot Derringer (Ford’s Theatre) up to the back of Lincoln’s head, and pulled the trigger. The sharp crack of a pistol reverberated through the theater. At once, all those who heard the shot through the laughter looked to the state box as Mrs. Lincoln let out a loud scream. Rathbone rushed over and struggled briefly with Booth, who dropped his pistol and thrust a knife into the upper left arm of Rathbone.*

  Everyone’s attention was drawn to the commotion in the state box, and an indescribable panic set in among the audience. People began to rise from their seats when Booth, an athletic actor who performed on the stage with deliberate and grandiose moves, leaped from the box onto the stage. But he caught his boot spur on a flag and broke a small bone above his left ankle. (According to the best evidence, it was the Treasury Guard’s flag; by some accounts, it was one of the American flags draped at the front of the box. Some witnesses reported that Rathbone lunged at Booth and apparently forced him to catch his boot in the flag.) Waving his knife, Booth shouted Virginia’s state motto, Sic semper tyrannis! (Thus always to tyrants!), and made his way offstage. In heading to the back doorway, he encountered Laura Keene and the orchestra leader, William Withers, whom he slashed twice—on his neck and his coat—before escaping on horseback. Meanwhile, people were racing to the exits, and the lights were now dimmed. There were cries of “The president is shot!” and frantic calls for a surgeon.

  This interior photograph of Ford's Theatre was taken by Mathew Brady's staff photographers in 1865, shortly after the Lincoln assassination. American flags drape the box where the president and his party sat the night the president was shot.

  Moments later, someone pounded on the door at the end of the passageway, but Rathbone had difficulty opening it because Booth had wedged it shut with a wooden bar (Ford’s Theatre) so no one could interfere with his assassination as he waited in the passageway to carry it out.*

  Dr. Charles Leale, an assistant surgeon with the U.S. Volunteers, was the first to enter the box. Rathbone immediately importuned the surgeon to attend to his arm wound, but Leale, after momentarily looking at Rathbone and determining that his injury was not life-threatening, heeded the cries of Mary Lincoln and Clara Harris.*

  Mrs. Lincoln, wailing loudly, was holding her husband, his eyes closed, head slumped forward on the chair. Leale lowered the president to the floor and placed him in a recumbent position. Someone quickly cut open the president’s coat and vest. Lincoln was bleeding copiously, his respiration was barely perceptible, and he had no pulse. Leale separated the blood-drenched hair on Lincoln’s head, and, upon finding where the bullet had entered, removed a blood clot from it. Leale knew that victims of such injuries never survived long. But he had to attempt to save the president or at least prevent him from immediately succumbing.

  It was on this bed that Abraham Lincoln expired after being shot. Ironically, Lincoln's assassin earlier lay on the same bed, which was in the boardinghouse to which the president was carried from Ford's Theatre.

  As hysteria filled the theater, Leale straddled the president’s body. He opened Lincoln’s mouth, pulled out his tongue to clear the passageway, and then put his mouth over Lincoln’s face and forcefully blew into his mouth and nose, administering artificial respiration. At the same time three other doctors were hitting Lincoln’s chest with the palms of their hands in an effort to get the heart beating again and to restore normal breathing. The president’s heart did start beating, and Leale determined that death would be forestalled. But he also knew the consequence of the wound, for he turned to his colleagues and grimly announced: “His wound is mortal. It is impossible for him to recover.”

  It was a wildly emotional scene. Lincoln was lying on the floor with the doctors working on him, futilely trying to restore life. Standing over the president were several men who ran in from the dress circle. Mrs. Lincoln was hysterical. The star of the show, Laura Keene, had also rushed to the box and begged Leale to let her hold the president. He consented, and she put his head on her lap. (Pieces of her dress are at Ford’s Theatre and the Illinois State Historical Society Library, Springfield, Illinois; a bloodstained cuff from the dress is at the National Museum of American History.)

  Some people in the box called for the president to be taken back to the White House; it might still be dangerous in the theater, and Lincoln could be made more comfortable and receive better attention in bed. But Leale knew the president could not survive a trip to the White House, ten blocks away. He would have to be moved to the nearest house. Several men lifted the president, clutching his body from his head to his feet, and carried him out of the theater and across the street to the three-story brick house of William Petersen, a tailor. Soldiers armed with revolvers and sabers cleared a path as a large crowd watched the procession bearing the dying chief magistrate. Lincoln was carried through the hallway to a back room (ironically, about the same size, nine feet by seventeen feet, as the Kentucky log cabin in which Lincoln was born in 1809) rented by William T. Clark, a private in a Massachusetts infantry. There was now chaos in the streets, and word was spreading that the president had been shot. Soon the Petersen house would fill with executives of the federal government, medical men, Mrs. Lincoln, and the Lincolns’ son Robert Todd Lincoln, a twenty-one-year-old captain in the Union army who had been sleeping at the White House.*

  Meanwhile, the most relentless manhunt in the republic’s history was starting to take shape. Some people had recognized Booth as the president’s assailant, but the search expanded as news poured in that Secretary of State William Seward had been stabbed at home and multiple perpetrators were at large. Soldiers, detectives, policemen, and others began a dogged search for the conspirators.

  Within a half hour after he was shot, the president was placed on the bed in Clark’s room. Ironically, as a friend of Petersen’s son would later recall, John Wilkes Booth had earlier sprawled on that very bed and smoked a pipe while visiting a previous boarder, John Matthews, an actor. (Matthews was on stage the night Lincoln was shot, playing an attorney named Mr. Coyle.) But now the urgent mission was to make the president comfortable. The bed was too small to accommodate Lincoln’s large frame, and Leale asked that the footboard be taken off. He was told it didn’t detach and then suggested cutting it off, but this wasn’t practical. On his back, Lincoln was then shifted to a diagonal position with his head and shoulders reclining on some pillows. His overcoat, pants, frock coat, vest, bow tie, and boots were removed (Ford’s Theatre).

  Also removed were several of Lincoln’s pocket items: a pair of folding spectacles in a case, a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles with sliding “temples,” a single sleeve-button with a gold L on dark blue enamel, a linen handkerchief, a watch fob of gold-bearing quartz, a pocketknife, a wallet containing a five-dollar Confederate note, and nine newspaper clippings, each one praising Lincoln for some achievement during his presidency (Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.).*

  The scene around the president was one of great hopelessness and despair. Lincoln was lying on the bed, covered with blankets. Hot water bottles were applied to his feet, to warm them, and mud plasters were applied to his chest to try to reduce the shock to his body. He received medical attention. As Dr. Charles S. Taft wrote a week later:

  The wound was there examined, the finger being used as a probe, and the ball found to have passed beyond the reach of the finger into the brain. I put a teasp
oon of diluted brandy between the lips, which was swallowed with much difficulty; a half-teaspoonful administered ten minutes afterward, was retained in the throat, without any effort being made to swallow it. The respiration now became labored; pulse 44, feeble, eyes entirely closed, the left pupil much contracted, the right widely dilated; total insensibility to light in both.

  Surgeon-General [Joseph K.] Barnes and Robert K. Stone, M.D., the family physician, arrived and took charge of the case. At their suggestion, I administered a few drops of brandy, to determine whether it could be swallowed, but as it was not, no further attempt was made. The left upper eyelid was swollen and dark from effused blood; this was observed a few minutes after his removal from the theatre. About thirty minutes after he was placed upon the bed, discoloration from effusion began in the internal canthus of the right eye, which became rapidly discolored and swollen with great protrusion of the eye.

  All the doctors who saw the president agreed that nothing could be done to save his life. The lead bullet (National Museum of Health and Medicine, Washington, D.C.) had entered the president’s head behind his left ear, pierced his brain, and lodged just behind and above the right eyeball (it cracked his skull and destroyed his brain immediately). Lincoln intermittently gasped deep convulsive breaths. His wife and eldest son Robert wept, as did many of the men gathered around. But the brain-dead president clung to life, fighting an injury the doctors said would have killed almost any other person within a couple of hours. “They were gathered around the bed watching,” said William Crook, one of Lincoln’s aides, “while, long after the great spirit was quenched, life little by little loosened its hold on the long gaunt body.”