PRESIDENT LINCOLN SHOT AT FORD'S THEATER, WOUND IS 'MORTAL'
Washington, D.C. (JFK+50) At 10:15 p.m. April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was shot as he sat in the presidential box at Ford's Theater here in the Nation's Capital. The President and First Lady were watching the Good Friday performance of the play "Our American Cousin."
A single bullet was fired from a Derringer* pistol into the back of Mr. Lincoln's head by John Wilkes Booth, a famous actor and Confederate sympathizer.
Eyewitness Edwin Bates described what he observed in a letter dated April 15, 1865...
"I...heard the report of a pistol and immediately...a man jumped from Mr. Lincoln's box, a distance of 10 or 15 feet...(landing on the stage) not 10 feet from me.
With a long dagger in his hand, (Booth) rushed across the stage and disappeared."
Dr. Charles A. Leale of the U.S. Army, who was in attendance that evening, got into the box and assessed the President's wound as 'mortal.' Mr. Lincoln was taken across 10th Street to the Petersen Rooming House where he died the following morning.
Abraham Lincoln became the first United States president to be assassinated.
*Derringers are compact pocket handguns of the 19th century. They were designed for concealed carry by Henry Derringer. Having no use for his pistol after firing its one bullet, JWB dropped the weapon in the presidential box where it was later discovered. Today it is on display at Ford's Theater Museum in Washington, D.C.
SOURCES
"Derringers 101," Bond Arms, www.bondarms.com/
"Lincoln Shot On Good Friday 148 Years Ago," JFK+50, April 14, 2013, www.jfk50.blogspot.com/
"We Saw Lincoln Shot, One Hundred Eyewitness Accounts," by Timothy S. Good, University Press of Mississippi, 1995
