PRESIDENT SHOT AT FORD'S THEATER BY SOUTHERN SYMPATHIZER
Washington, D.C. (JFK+50) On April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was shot at Ford's Theater while attending the play 'Our American Cousin.'
The President was looking down at the stage below his box when the actor/Southern sympathizer John Wilkes Booth fired a single shot from a Derringer pistol into the back of Lincoln's head.
Booth gained access to the President's box by going through two closed, unlocked and unguarded doors. The Lincolns' theater guest, Major Henry Rathbone, in an attempt to stop the assailant was badly cut by Booth's knife.
Edwin Bates, seated next to the stage, later described what he saw...
"I first heard the report of a pistol and immediately after a man jumped from Mr. Lincoln's box a distance of 10 or 15 feet upon the stage. He fell...but instantly rose and, with a long dagger in hand, rushed rapidly across the stage and disappeared."
Dr. Charles Leale*, attending the President, determined the wound mortal and ordered Mr. Lincoln carried to the nearest bed. Soldiers carried their Commander-n-Chief to the Petersen Rooming House across the street from Ford's. It was there the death watch began.
*Dr. Charles Augustus Leale (1842-1932) was born in New York & became a surgeon serving in the Union army during the Civil War. Afterwards, Dr. Leale established a medical practice in NY. During the ordeal at the Petersen House, CAL held President Lincoln's hand to "let him know he had a friend."
SOURCE
"We Saw Lincoln Shot: One Hundred Eye Witness Accounts," by Timothy S. Good, University Press of Mississippi, 1996.
