awake
On April 15, 1865, 145 years ago today, Abraham Lincoln died from a gunshot wound to the head. Lincoln was shot while attending a performance at Ford's Theatre in Washington D.C., on the night of April 14th. The play was "Our American Cousin". General Ulysses Grant and his wife Julia had planned on attending the play with the Lincolns, but begged off. (Supposedly, the wives disliked each other.) Major Henry Rathbone and his fiancée Clara Harris (daughter of New York Senator Ira Harris) were in the balcony booth with the Lincolns. Lincoln's last words are reported as being spoken to Major Rathbone: "What will Miss Harris think of my hanging on to you so? She won't think anything about it".
The box was supposed to be guarded by a policeman named John Frederick Parker. During the intermission, Parker went to a nearby tavern with Lincoln's footman and coachman.
Lincoln's assassin, the actor John Wilkes Booth, knew the play, and waited for the right moment, one where actor Harry Hawk would be onstage as "cousin Asa", where there would be laughter to muffle the sound of a gunshot, when Hawk said to the insufferable Mrs Mountchessington, "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!"
At 10:15 Booth raced forward and shot the president in the back of the head. Lincoln slumped over in his rocking chair and his wife Mary reached out and caught him, then screamed. Rathbone jumped from his seat and tried to prevent Booth from escaping, but Booth stabbed Rathbone in the arm with a knife. Rathbone tried to grab Booth as he was about to jump from the box. Booth stabbed at Rathbone, and then tried to vault over the rail and down to the stage. His riding spur caught on the Treasury flag decorating the box. Booth jumped on the stage and landed awkwardly on his left foot, fracturing his left fibula just above the ankle.
There is some confusion about what Booth said after the assassination. By some accounts, he raised himself up and, holding a knife over his head, yelled, "Sic semper tyrannis!" the Latin Virginia state motto, meaning "Thus always to tyrants". But other accounts state that he also uttered "The South is avenged!" He then ran across the stage, and went out the door onto the horse he had waiting outside.
Dr. Albert King, was quickly consulted and decided that while the President must be moved, a bumpy carriage ride across town to the White House was a bad idea. He instructed some men to carry Lincoln across the street at William Petersen's boarding house. The men carried Lincoln into the boarding house and into the first-floor bedroom, where they laid him diagonally on the bed because he was too tall to lie straight.
At 7:22 a.m. on April 15, 1865, Abraham Lincoln died. He was 56 years old. The crowd around the bed knelt for a prayer, and when they were finished, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, who had been running the government, said "Now he belongs to the ages".
