Legal sources are cited in accordance with standard legal notation, which gives volume number first, then a standardized abbreviation for the source, followed by page number. For example, a statute that appears in volume 12 of the United States Statutes at Large, page 320, would be cited as “12 Stat. 320.” Court cases are cited in this form: Plainti f v. Defendant, [volume, series title, page]. Cases decided by the United States Supreme Court are cited by [case name], [volume U.S. page].
Chapter 1: “By God, then, is John Booth crazy?”
Eyewitness biographies are derived from obituaries and Civil War pension files. The former prisoners of war were Obadiah Downing and Edwin Cooke; Downing also took part in the Dahlgren Raid. At least 250 eyewitnesses were combat veterans.
Welford Dunaway Taylor, ed., Our American Cousin: The Play That Changed History (Washington: Beacham Publishing, Inc., 1990), 14. The play débuted in October 1858 in New York, and it became a turning point in the careers of Laura Keene, Joseph Jefferson III, and E. A. Sothern. Autobiography of Joseph Je ferson (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1964), 147. As the original Dundreary, E. A. Sothern ad-libbed a lisp and stutter-step. His improvisations, and a ridiculous wig, made the play a hit. It was thereafter known as a comedy. Taylor, Our American Cousin, 14. See also Rebecca Lea Ray, “Stage History of Tom Taylor’s ‘Our American Cousin’ ” (Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1985).
The playbills were already being printed when the Lincolns’ notice arrived, so stage manager John B. Wright ran over to Polkinhorn’s Printing Shop and had the printing stopped. A stanza from “Honor to Our Soldiers” was inserted into the copy block, and the rest of the bills included that revision. Thus, two separate playbills existed for the performance that night. “Music and Drama,” Boston Transcript, June 15, 1898. Ford’s Theatre may not have been full that night. Though the orchestra (ground level) section seems to have filled up at about curtain time, many people showed up late, but still managed to find good seats. Of more than 350 eyewitnesses I’ve tracked, not a single one claimed to have sat in the upper balcony, or family circle. The house had a capacity of just over 1,700, and if the two lower levels were full, the audience would have numbered about a thousand patrons.
A Park Service historian listed ten prior visits of Lincoln to Ford’s Theatre, but two more were subsequently discovered. George J. Olszewski, Restoration of Ford’s Theatre (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1963), 105; James P. Ferguson statement in the National Archives, in the Lincoln Assassination Suspects File, a part of Record Group 153, and reproduced on microfilm in Microcopy M-599, reel 7, beginning at frame 487. Ferguson gave detailed statements to various newspapers as well. See Washington Evening Star, April 17, 1865, 1; Generally, theaters of the day continued to keep the houselights raised during the performance, and late arrivals were common. The practice of dimming the lights to draw attention to the stage was an innovation of the 1890s, though it was not unknown in 1865.
The Grants had been renting a house at 309 Wood Street, Burlington, since September 1864, and their daughter Nellie attended school at St. Mary’s Hall nearby. William E. Schermerhorn, The History of Burlington (Burlington, NJ: Enterprise Publishing Co., 1927), 136–37. Both the house and school are still standing. Taylor, Our American Cousin, 14; Much of my information on Henry and Clara came through the kindness of their granddaughter, the late Louise Randolph Hartley.
The account of Mrs. Lincoln comes from Helen Bratt DuBarry in a letter to her mother, dated April 16, 1865, in the Illinois State Historical Library; Isaac Jacquette in LAS 2:104.
James P. Ferguson statement in LAS 4:339, and in the Evening Star, April 17, 1865, 1.
Taylor, Our American Cousin, 82. “Sockdologizing” is one of those quaint Americanisms Taylor made up for the play. A “sockdologer” was a fish trap with two hooks that close upon each other by means of a spring. Bartlett’s Dictionary of American English, 2nd ed. (1848), as cited in the Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. (1989).
Hawk’s April 16 letter to his father, William J. Hawke, was published in The New York Times, April 26, 1865, 2. The distance from the rail to the stage varies owing to the downward slant of the stage floor. Measurements taken from the April 17 photographs were used in the restoration of the theater in the 1960s. See Olszewski, Restoration of Ford’s Theatre, 45.
H. Clay Ford statement in LAS 5:459; James L. Maddox in LAS 5:275.
Edwin Bates letter, April 15, 1865, to his father, Jacob Bates, of Derby, Vermont. Files of the National Park Service; Charles Addison Sanford letter to Edward Payson Goodrich, April 15, 1865, published in Bulletin 47 of the Clements Library, University of Michigan.
Joseph B. Stewart statement, sworn before Justice A. B. Olin, April 15, in LAS 4:58.
Isaac Grantham Jacquette statement, April 26, in LAS 2:103.
Ferguson, Evening Star, April 17, 1865; Ferguson in Maxwell Whiteman, While Lincoln Lay Dying (Philadelphia: The Union League of Philadelphia, 1968), 2.
John J. Toffey letter to his parents, dated April 17, 1865. I am indebted to William Toffey, a direct descendant of the lieutenant, and to Stephen J. Wright for putting me in touch with him.
E. D. Wray in LAS 3:1043; James P. Ferguson claimed the woman who said, “They’ve got him” was Laura Keene. Ferguson testimony in Ben: Perley Poore, The Conspiracy Trial for the Assassination of the President (Boston: J. E. Tilton and Company, 1865), 2:537. Hereinafter Poore.
Isaac Jacquette in LAS 2:103; Letter dated April 16, 1865, from Helen DuBarry to her mother, in the Illinois State Historical Library; Dr. Charles Leale reported hearing cries of “Shoot him!” and “Kill the murderer!” Report of Dr. Charles A. Leale dated July 21, 1867, for the Butler Committee in the House of Representatives, Benjamin Butler Papers, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress.
James L. Maddox, April 28, in LAS 5:275; Pandemonium: Theodore S. McGowan statement, LAS 5:317; Helen DuBarry letter. Mayor Richard Wallach also tried to calm the crowd. See John E. Buckingham, Reminiscences and Souvenirs of the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln (Washington: Rufus H. Darby, 1894), 15. Joseph B. Stewart and others heard hoofbeats trailing off in the alley, toward F Street. A new streetcar line was under construction there, and Stewart later reported hearing the horse cross over the wooden planking that covered the construction area. Joseph B. Stewart in The Trial of John H. Surratt in the Criminal Court for the District of Columbia (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1867), 125 (hereinafter Surratt Trial).
Sarah Hamlin Batchelder letter dated April 15, in the Hannibal Hamlin Papers, Fogler Library, University of Maine at Orono, MSS40758.
John T. Bolton’s recollections were not published until nearly fifty years after the fact, so take them for what they are worth. He appears to be the officer mentioned in several contemporary accounts. Norfolk (Virginia) Ledger-Dispatch, January 28, 1911. Hereinafter Bolton, Ledger-Dispatch. Thanks to James O. Hall.
Henry Rathbone statement dated April 17, LAS 5:83; Leale Report; An excellent composite of Leale’s career and education is in John B. Mulliken, M.D., “Charles Augustus Leale: Lincoln’s Young Physician,” Surgery 71, no. 5 (May 1972): 760–70.
Blotter entries for April 14 in the records of the Washington Metropolitan Police. Record Group 351, entry 126, National Archives.
Richards would later (1878) claim to have been present in Ford’s Theatre, but he asked questions that no eyewitness would have had to ask. Detective James A. McDevitt’s later account recalled that Richards ordered him to send out a telegraphic message. Washington Star, April 14, 1894, and an undated clipping in the George Alfred Townsend Papers, Maryland State Archives, claimed that Richards “jumped for the telegraph” when James Ferguson brought him the news. However, the Metropolitan Police Force didn’t have a telegraph system until after July 23, 1866, when Congress appropriated $15,000 to build one. 13 Stat. 206; Maddox in LAS 5:277. The Maddox and Ferguson 1865 accounts predate the others, and I tend to give them more credenc
e.
Bolton, Ledger-Dispatch; Annie Wright in “President Lincoln: His Assassination Described by an Eyewitness,” Dorchester (MA) Beacon, April 11, 1896. Clipping in the papers of John T. Ford, Maryland Historical Society; Original notes of Dr. Charles S. Taft, written immediately after the events, are in the Joseph Nathanson Lincolniana Collection at McLennan Library, McGill University, Montreal. Though several accounts by Dr. Taft exist, these notes have never been published in their entirety. The author discovered them there in 1996. Courtesy of Dr. Richard Virr.
Jesse Weik, Century Magazine, February 1913, 562.
In his contemporaneous notes, Taft said that he didn’t know anyone had been wounded until he heard the calls for a surgeon; Daniel Beekman manuscript dated February 11, 1915, National Park Service files.
Leale Report. Dr. Taft was a half-brother of Julia Taft, governess to the Lincoln children; Bolton, Ledger-Dispatch.
Dr. King’s parents were enthusiastic supporters of the Colonization Society, hence the name. King graduated from the University of Pennsylvania Medical School in 1865, but had an earlier medical degree from the National Medical College. He and Leale both had experience with battlefield casualties long before the assassination. Howard A. Kelly, Dictionary of American Medical Biography (Baltimore: n.p., 1928), 697. This source credits Dr. King with the discovery that mosquitoes transmit malaria. Judging from his notes, Dr. Taft seems to have taken little notice of Leale, and could not even remember his name, but he later praised Leale’s work; J. Willard Brown, The Signal Corps, U. S. A. in the War of the Rebellion (Boston: U.S. Veteran Signal Corps Association, 1896), 665 (hereinafter Brown, Signal Corps); Letters to Edwin Bedee on this subject are in the James A. Hardie Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
The motto of Virginia, adopted on July 5, 1776, was generally translated as “Thus Ever to Tyrants,” and was subsequently placed on the commonwealth’s seal and flag. “Report on the Great Seal of Virginia,” House Document No. 7, Virginia House of Delegates, dated February 20, 1930, Virginia State Library, Richmond. DeForrest P. Ormes and Benjamin F. Gilbert, eyewitnesses to the shooting, were typical in that they did not understand what Booth said on the stage, but agreed he had spoken twice. Their undated joint statement is in LAS 3:832.
Ferguson spoke to a reporter for the Washington Evening Star (April 15) and gave three separate statements over the next few days, including one at the Petersen house (LAS 4:339); Details on his life are given in an 1876 interview published in the Chillicothe Advertiser, date unknown, a copy of which is in the papers of George Alfred Townsend at the Maryland State Archives.
James L. Maddox statement in LAS 5:342.
Maddox was described as a witness at police headquarters, though any statement he gave at that time seems to have been unrecorded. In this and other cases, I assume the witnesses gave essentially the same information that they provided soon afterward. The information used here came from Maddox’s April 27 memorandum and his April 28 interrogation at the Old Capitol. LAS 5:346 and 5:275, respectively; Joseph Borrows statement in LAS 4:64. “Peanuts” has never been identified, and his family name is given as “Burroughs,” “Bohrar,” and “Burrus” in the records. Though I cannot prove it, I believe he may have been the son of Dr. Joseph Borrows III, a prominent physician who lived just around the corner from Ford’s on E Street. Dr. Borrows’s property abutted Baptist Alley, behind the theater. The only information given about the boy himself was that he lived with his father, whom police did not see the need to identify specifically; Ferguson in LAS 4:339 and 5:384.
Samuel J. Koontz and Captain Joseph Robinson Findley letters in the files of the National Park Service; Dr. George B. Todd letter dated April 15, copies of which were distributed. One is in the Henry Bass Collection at the University of Oklahoma, Norman; Letter by James A. Tanner to Hadley Walch, April 17, 1865, published in American Historical Review 29, no. 3 (April 1924): 514. Tad Lincoln’s escort has often been identified as Alexander Williamson, but in an interview given two years before his death, Williamson said he was at home when he learned of the assassination. His son, William B. Williamson, was an eyewitness at Ford’s. From an unidentified obituary dated June 8, 1903, in the papers of actor Owen Fawcett, University of Tennessee at Knoxville. I thank William B. Williamson’s granddaughter, Grace Hand, for Williamson family information.
Sterling in Washington Evening Star, April 14, 1918 (4), 1.
Seaton Munroe, “Recollections of Lincoln’s Assassination,” North American Review 162 (March 1896): 425. A few eyewitnesses recalled that six soldiers carried the president, but only four of them have been identified. The other two had apparently served in different units, and were thus strangers to the other four. See “Shot That Killed Lincoln Still Rings in Memory of Soldier Who Saw Him Die,” Washington Daily News, February 11, 1933.
Jacob Soles gave many interviews, in which he identified his companions in the procession. Personal information is from Jacob Soles’s pension file and from the service records of those he identified. For information on the soldiers’ artillery unit, see Frederick H. Dyer, Compendium of the War of the Rebellion (Des Moines, Iowa: Dyer Publishing Company, 1908).
Munroe, 425; Isaac Jacquette in LAS, 2:103; Bolton, Ledger-Dispatch; Some eyewitnesses disputed the story that Laura Keene ever got into the box. Clara Harris was quoted as saying, “Laura Keene did not enter the box from first to last. She might have been with the crowd who were trying to get in at the door, but only a very few were admitted and she was not among the number.” Miss Keene’s daughter responded in the December 29 (year unknown) issue of the Philadelphia Weekly Times, claiming she still has the blood-spattered dress. Clipping in the Laura Keene Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. A swatch from Miss Keene’s bloody dress was once in the Colorado Historical Society, and a stained cuff from it is in the Smithsonian Institution. The staining is more extensive than one would expect if Lincoln’s wound did not bleed profusely while he was in the box.
In later years, Taft even paid tribute to Leale, saying, “It was owing to Dr. Leale’s quick judgment in instantly placing the almost moribund President in a recumbent position the moment he saw him in the box, that Mr. Lincoln did not expire in the theatre within ten minutes from the fatal syncope.” Century Magazine, quoted in Brown, Signal Corps, 667; Taft notes.
John Devenay identified the hat. April [15], 1865, LAS 2:154. E. D. Wray, LAS 3:1043. Capt. John Rankin Gilliland, 51st Pennsylvania Infantry, found that spur, though several other spurs have surfaced over the years. Thanks to Gilliland’s descendant Winifred S. Dynes. A drawing of the hat and spur appeared in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper on May 6, 1865. Detective Corps Blotter for April 14, 1865. The full list of names also included Andrew C. Manwaring, William Brown, C. W. Gilbert, and James B. Cutler—none of whom were called to testify in either trial.
Much of this was not put on paper until Maddox was interrogated on April 28 at the Carroll Annex. LAS 5:275. Baptist Alley got its name from the Tenth Street Baptist Church, which John T. Ford converted to a theater early in 1862. Sergeant Johnson returned with a saddle cover, a halter, and three fishing lines that had belonged to Booth. The Metropolitan Police detective blotter entry for April 17 says that these items were collected on the morning of the fifteenth, but had not yet been claimed.
Henry S. Safford letter to Osborn H. Oldroyd, June 25, 1903, in the files of the National Park Service. The Petersen house address is now 516 Tenth Street. Another Petersen child, Louisa, was attending the Moravian Academy in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, at the time; Bersch died in 1914, but his account appeared in the Washington Star, April 16, 1933 (6), 12. He later painted the scene in oils, and his painting shows an American flag carried on a pole near the president. Neither his nor any other contemporary account mentioned anything about the president’s head being cradled in a flag. That story, just now gaining currency, seems to be a twentieth-century creation.
George A. Woodward, “The Night of Linc
oln’s Assassination,” United Service: A Monthly Review of Military and Naval A fairs (May 1889): 472–73 (hereinafter Woodward, United Service).
Lawrence A. Gobright, Recollections of Men and Things at Washington (Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen, & Haffelfinger, 1869), 348. The special was printed in papers throughout the country, including for example, The Baltimore Sun, April 15, 1865, 2.
Laird and Maynard in The Washington Post, April 11, 1915 (2), 5.
Chapter 2: “It all seems a dream—a wild dream”
The determination of the timing of the attack is based in part on the fact that Lafayette Park was to be locked just before the time of the attack, and William H. Bell had just heard the announcement. Washington Evening Star, April 15, 1865, 1. Testimony of William H. Bell, Surratt Trial, 247.
Details of the attack and the injuries are from a letter from Frances (Mrs. William) Seward to a Mr. Alward, dated May 11, 1865, as published in Frederick W. Seward, Seward at Washington, as Senator and Secretary of State (New York: Derby and Miller, 1891), 279–81. Most of the victims left good accounts of this incident. William and Frederick Seward gave their impressions to the London Spectator. This previously unnoticed interview was republished in the Cincinnati Commercial, December 8, 1865, 1. Fanny Seward made copious notes in the April 14 entry of her diary, and she wrote another account in addition to that. Seward Papers, University of Rochester, microfilm reel 198. George Robinson’s earliest account was published in the Washington Evening Star, April 18, 1865, 1. Frederick Seward’s detailed account was given in testimony at the 1867 trial of John Surratt. Surratt Trial, 249–51.
Washington Evening Star, April 14, 1918 (4), 1.
The brace, with nicks, is mentioned in the New York Tribune, April 17, 1865, 1. Frances Seward letter, May 11, 1865; Cincinnati Commercial, December 8, 1865, 1.
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