On the morning of April 14, 1865, during breakfast, President Lincoln and his wife Mary agreed to attend the comedy play ‘Our American Cousin’ starring actress Laura Keene. After breakfast, he met with the recently appointed Minister to Spain, John P. Hale. Coincidentally, Hale’s daughter was engaged to a well known actor named John Wilkes Booth.
That evening, the President cut short a meeting with former Congressman George Ashmun, when he realized that he would be late for the play, and promised that they would continue their meeting the following morning. President and Mrs. Lincoln traveled in their carriage to Ford’s Theater, picking up Major Henry R. Rathbone and his fiancée, Clara Harris, on the way. The President’s concern that they would be late was realized. They walked into the theater at approximately 8:30, to the applause of the audience. The play was in the second act, and paused as the orchestra played ‘Hail to the Chief’. The party made their way to the President’s Box. They were met at the door by John Parker, a Washington police officer, who did not have a very good record as a policeman, but was assigned to be Lincoln’s bodyguard for the evening. He took a seat outside the box, but found that he could not see the stage, so he left his post to find better seating. At the intermission, Parker left the theater with the President’s footman and coachman to go to Taltavull’s Star Saloon for a whisky. It is not known if Parker ever returned to the theater that night. Booth also stopped at Taltavull’s for a drink, but he did go back to the theater that evening.
Shortly after the play resumed, at approximately 10:15 p.m., the door to the President's Box was quietly opened. Booth entered the box unnoticed from behind the President, who was intently watching the play with his wife and their two guests. Booth pulled out his derringer and shot President Lincoln in the back of the head at point-blank range. The bullet entered his head approximately 3 inches behind the left ear and traveled about 7 1/2 inches into the brain, lodging itself below the left eye. Major Rathbone quickly jumped into action and struggled with Booth. He received a slash in his arm between his shoulder and elbow, rendering him incapable of subduing Booth. In spite of his debilitating wound, he made a second attempt to stop Booth, but only caught a portion of his clothes as Booth leapt 11 feet down onto the stage that was directly below the box. Landing off balance, he shattered the fibula in his left leg just above the ankle. He continued across the stage and “many in the theatre thought he yelled ‘Sic Semper Tyrannis’ (Latin for ‘As Always to Tyrants’) (1).” He rushed out through the back door of the theater, climbed onto his horse that was being held by Joseph Burroughs, an employee of the theatre, and left the city by way of the Navy Yard Bridge.
The first doctor on the scene was an army surgeon named Charles Leale. When he examined Lincoln, he found a large clot of blood on the back of his head, and pressed the little finger of his left hand through the hole made by the ball. When he removed his finger, “an oozing of blood followed and he commenced to show signs of improvement (3).” He determined that a stagecoach ride to the White House would kill the President, so he had him carried across the street to the Peterson Boarding House. The wound was kept open to keep the brain from swelling from the bleeding, and the President’s head was supported to allow the blood to run out.
At 7:22:10 the following morning, President Lincoln became the first president to be assassinated, when he died in the same bed that John Wilkes Booth had rested on the previous month. Booth hated the President who represented all of the things that Booth was against. He blamed Lincoln for all of the South’s problems, and thought that killing him would lead to a comeback for the South. Booth was eventually trapped and killed in a barn near Port Royal, Virginia. All of his co-conspirators would be caught and sentenced to either life in prison or death by hanging, except one whose only part was helping Booth to escape from Ford’s Theater. He was sentenced to 6 years.
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