PRESIDENT LINCOLN DIES AT PETERSEN HOUSE
Washington, D.C. (JFK+50) On April 15, 1865 at 7:22 a.m., the sixteenth President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, died here in the Nation's Capital. The President, attending a play at Ford's Theater with First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln the previous evening, was shot in the back of the head at close range by the actor John Wilkes Booth*.
As Booth escaped the theater, Mr. Lincoln was attended in his balcony box by several physicians including Dr. Charles Leale who determined the wound to be mortal. The event, which occurred at 10:15 p.m., was witnessed by more than a hundred persons. The President was carried across 10th Street to the Petersen Rooming House** where a death watch began.
When it was confirmed that the President's heart had stopped beating, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton reportedly said, "Now he belongs to the ages."
*John Wilkes Booth (1838-1865) was born in Bel Air, Maryland & became a nationally known actor & Southern sympathizer. After shooting Lincoln, JWB was on the run for two weeks until finally surrounded, shot & killed in Virginia.
**William Petersen was a German tailor who purchased the lot in 1849. He & his wife continued living in the house until their deaths in 1871. The Petersen House, a national historic site, is located at 511 10th Street NW, Washington, D.C.
SOURCES
"History of the Petersen House," Fords Theater, www.artsandculture.google.com/
"The Assassination: Death of the President," by Champ Clark, Time-Life Books, Alexandria, Virginia, 1987.
"We Saw Lincoln Shot: One Hundred Eyewitness Accounts," edited by Timothy S. Good, University Press of Mississippi, Jackson, 1995.
