• CHAPTER NINETEEN •
APRIL 15, 1865
Visitors detained the President at the White House; so he and Mrs. Lincoln and their guests, Major Rathbone and his fiancée, were late in arriving at the theater that evening. The place was crowded; many in the audience were returning soldiers who had come in the hope of seeing their President. When Lincoln appeared, the play stopped and the band struck up “Hail to the Chief.” The audience rose and cheered. The President bowed, and the play went on.
At noon that very day, John Wilkes Booth, a mad fanatic favoring the South, had heard that Lincoln was to attend the theater. He promptly made plans for a deed that had been in his mind for some time.
Abraham Lincoln’s home in Springfield.
About ten o’clock that evening he left his horse by the rear door of the theater and went to the hallway by the President’s box. He carried with him a knife and a pistol. Sneaking into the box, he fired directly at the back of Lincoln’s head.
Major Rathbone grabbed Booth, and was terribly cut in the arm. Booth shook the major off and leaped to the stage. The shot, then the leap, made many think that this was a part of the play. They were uneasy, but not frightened, until Major Rathbone shouted.
“Stop him! He has shot the President!”
The audience stared in horror. The theater was in wild confusion. Booth had caught his spur on a flag draped over the box; he fell on the stage and broke his leg. But the uncertainty of the audience gave him the chance to regain his balance, reach his horse, and gallop away.
In the President’s box it was seen at once that Lincoln was fatally hurt. Doctors came. He was tenderly carried to a home across the street. Members of the cabinet, more doctors, his son Robert, and dozens of friends hurried to offer aid. But the man they wanted to save was injured beyond hope of recovery. After hours of unconsciousness, the President died about seven o’clock on the morning of April 15th.
By that hour, grieving crowds thronged Washington streets grabbing extra editions of newspapers which printed the awful news in great black letters:
EXTRA
THE PRESIDENT SHOT AT
THE THEATRE LAST EVENING
DEATH
OF
THE PRESIDENT
Black-bordered columns told the sad story. All over the country wires and presses were worked overtime carrying the news. People wept openly as they met on the street. The President’s death was a shocking blow to the nation. The South lost a friend it hardly knew. The country lost a wise and experienced guide it sorely needed.
Services were held in the White House on Tuesday and among the Bible verses read were some phrases that told people’s thoughts better than commonplace words:
“Man is cut down as a flower. Yet death may be swallowed up in victory.”
Then began the long, sad journey back to the prairie state.
Lincoln’s fellow countrymen wanted to pay personal tribute to their fallen hero, so arrangements were made for many stops—in New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Chicago, and other places. The black-draped train crept across the country between rows of weeping citizens. Cities, shrouded in crepe, echoed to the sound of funeral dirges, and ordinary business was suspended during two weeks of mourning. The final rites were held in Springfield on the fourth of May.
All this while the newspapers were filled with accounts of Lincoln’s life. They recounted his hope of saving the Union, his faith, his hard work, his good judgment, and his kindness. He was a friend of all, the papers said, North and South, slave and free, and never had a man had higher ideals for his country.
Years have passed. And with each changing season the figure of Abraham Lincoln has grown. People have seen that his genius was many-sided. He chose law and politics for his lifework, but he might have been an actor: his sense of timing was perfect, and he had that gift for mimicry. Or he might have been a writer: he wrote poetry and satire as well as his excellent speeches. Instead he had poured all his gifts into the work he cared for most, political life. The stirring times in which he lived rewarded him with enduring fame.
In time he became the symbol of the American dream, the backwoods boy who, uneducated and lacking wealth and influence, won the highest office in the land. And he had not won by lucky political chance alone but by his honesty, dignity, and kindness. At a time when he might have gained popularity he stood stanchly for what he believed was true; when he might have compromised and had an easier entrance into the White House, he held to his given word.
The boy Abe Lincoln had pondered on the Declaration of Independence in Azel Dorsey’s school and had memorized the stirring words, All men are created equal.
The grown man Abraham Lincoln had learned that men are not equal in all ways. He would never be as rich as Senator Douglas; neither would Douglas be as tall as Lincoln. The Declaration did not promise impossibilities. Its signers were forming a new government. They wrote down what they proposed men’s rights should be under the law. The document they wrote declared a man’s right to live, to be free, and to try to be happy.
Abraham Lincoln gave his life to keep united a country dedicated to that ideal for men and women of every race and every creed.
Tickets to Ford’s Theater.
The box in which assassin John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln during the president’s visit to Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C.