‘I have received the letter which Your Majesty has had the kindness to write. I am deeply grateful for the expressions of tender sympathy, coming as they do, from a heart which from its own sorrow, can appreciate the intense grief I now endure.’
Mary Todd Lincoln
In response to a letter of condolence from HRM Queen Victoria
Lincoln had guided the nation through a war and found a way to retain his position as president. Within weeks of his second inauguration, the war was won and a time of healing should have begun. Lincoln had plans for mending the relationship between the North and South. Some of them had begun as Union forces gained more and more ground in the South. Reconstruction plans for healing the wounds of a nation nearly torn asunder were in place. Lincoln intended to bring the United States together again without animosity. His plans did not include punishment of an impudent South for which Lincoln knew the Radical Republicans in Congress were keen. Tragically, those plans would fall to less capable hands.
In April 1865, Lincoln had every reason to look forward to better days ahead – for himself and for the country. The war was over, the Union had been preserved, he had been re-elected as president and he could begin working to restore the nation. Yet those around him reported that he seemed melancholy. In hopes of lifting her husband’s spirits, Mary insisted that they attend a performance of a new play called My American Cousin at Ford’s Theater, only a few blocks from the Executive Mansion.
Throughout his administration, there had been rumours of plots to kidnap or kill the president, and most were believed to be in cooperation with the Confederate government: in 1861, a jar of poisoned preserves was sent to the president by Confederate sympathizers. In 1863, a carriage accident that injured Mary Lincoln is suspected of being an attempt on the president, given the evidence that the carriage had been tampered with. While Lincoln was visiting an encampment outside Washington, he was almost hit by a stray bullet, or perhaps a deliberate shot. Some believe that it was an attempt by a Confederate sniper. Finally, in 1864, a suit contaminated by yellow fever was sent to the president by Confederate agents.
During the war, troops had been posted at the Executive Mansion for the protection of the president and his family. But the war was over. The need for vigilance seemed less urgent. Among Lincoln’s final tasks before leaving his office that day was the signing of legislation to form the Secret Service, who would later become responsible for the safety of the president. Lincoln left for Ford’s Theater without the protection or safety measures that his last act as president would afford his successors.
There is also evidence to support a theory that Lincoln himself was not above such attempts on the lives of his enemies. A Union raiding party was on their way to Richmond when enemy troops fired upon them and killed their leader. On the body of Colonel Ulric Dahlgren was an order, bearing Lincoln’s signature, that authorized the assassination of President Jefferson Davis and his entire cabinet. Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America, called such attempts and plots to assassinate non-combatants violations of the rules of war.
Spies for both sides were also active – and often self-appointed – before the war began. Many worked with no supervision or directives from superiors, taking action based entirely upon their own initiative. It has been suggested that the man who killed Abraham Lincoln was such an agent for the Confederacy. John Wilkes Booth belonged to a family of actors who were well known in their day. He was also a passionate supporter of the Southern cause, and had used his travels as an actor to disguise his activities as a spy and smuggler. Having learned of Lincoln’s plans to attend the theatre on the evening of 14 April 1865, Booth, who had performed at Ford’s Theater several times when the president was in attendance, recognized the opportunity.
The box at Ford’s Theater as it looked on the night when Lincoln was shot. The owner, in anticipation of the president’s arrival, draped the box with American flags and the framed image of George Washington.
Personal accounts of events such as the violent death of a president can provide valuable details, but consideration should be given to the narrator’s perspective of the situation. One such was by Charles A. Leale, MD, who on the hundredth anniversary of Lincoln’s birth, offered an address to the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States in New York City. Coincidence had put Leale by the president’s side that night. He would remain there until the president died the next morning.
Dr Leale was a commissioned officer in the United States Army. He was posted as a surgeon at the Wounded Commissioned Officers’ Ward at the United States Army General Hospital in Washington, DC. On the night of 14 April 1865, he had decided to take a break from his duties and attend the performance at Ford’s Theater. He arrived late and was seated about forty feet from the president’s box. He recalled his disappointment that all the seats in the orchestra section, which had a view of the president’s box, were taken.
The play was already under way but stopped when the presidential party arrived. From his seat, Leale watched the president and his wife pass, accompanied by Major Henry Rathbone and his fiancée, Clara Harris. General Grant and his wife had declined an invitation to join the Lincolns. An attendant escorted the party to their box and remained outside the door. Leale returned to watching the play.
Later, Leale recalls, a disturbance drew his attention back to the door of the president’s box. A man was talking with the usher, possibly arguing, and finally was allowed to enter the box. A few moments later, Leale and the rest of the audience heard the gunshot.
Actor and spy, John Wilkes Booth, quite possibly the most infamous assassin in the history of the United States.
Shocked, Leale watched a man who would later be identified as actor John Wilkes Booth jump to the stage. So did another witness, a young man named Edwin Bates who was seated near the orchestra, next to the stage, and almost beneath Lincoln’s box. By Bates’s own account, he was about ten feet from Booth when Booth landed on the stage, cried ‘Sic semper tyrannis’, a Latin phrase meaning ‘Thus, always, to tyrants’, and ran offstage.
Booth was gone before the audience began to realize what had happened. Leale reported shouts of ‘Kill the murderer!’ It was the cries for a surgeon that drew him towards the president’s box while others ran for the exits. He found the door blocked, but managed to get inside. He was the first to reach the president and his party.
Rathbone had been injured when he attempted to intervene, but was in no serious danger. Mrs Lincoln and Miss Harris were unharmed, but stood beside the chair where the president still sat. Leale’s account credits Mary Lincoln with coming to her husband’s aid the moment he was shot and keeping him in his chair. At first glance, Leale thought the president might be dead. His head had fallen forward and his eyes were closed, and there was no pulse. Others had arrived and Leale asked for assistance to move Lincoln to the floor in hopes of reviving him.
Leale tells us that he had seen a dagger flashing in Booth’s hand and expected to find a stab wound. When Lincoln’s coat and shirt were cut open in search of the wound, none was found. Leale checked Lincoln’s eyes and saw signs of a brain injury. It was at that point that he probed the president’s head and found the gunshot wound in Lincoln’s skull, just behind the left ear. Leale cleared the clotting blood to relieve pressure on the brain.
Mary Lincoln pleaded with Leale to save her husband. In spite of the fact that he knew Lincoln could not survive his wound, Leale began efforts to revive him. He used various methods of artificial respiration, one that required others to pump the arms while Leale pressed on the diaphragm. Leale tried what he describes as ‘several physiological methods’ to revive the president before Lincoln’s heart began to beat again. After using mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, the heartbeat became stronger.
Lincoln’s heart was beating. He was breathing, but Leale knew that the president was dying. Leale repeatedly told Mrs Lincoln, ‘His wound is mortal; it is impossible for him to recover.’
Before long, Leale had assistance. Dr Charles S. Taft and Dr Albert F. King came to offer their help. Leale expressed the opinion that Lincoln should be moved to the nearest house, which was across the street. He rejected inquiries about moving the president to his home at the Executive Mansion. Even though the traditional presidential home was only a few blocks away, Leale felt that the president would not survive long enough to reach it.
While Leale and his colleagues waited for the president to regain enough strength to be moved, Laura Keene, the star of the play, came to the box. She was granted access and knelt on the floor with the president’s head in her lap for a time.
Leale describes in detail how others came forward to help move the president’s six-foot four-inch frame from the box and across the street. Some helped to carry the president; some held back the crowd that had gathered in the street. He also describes how Lincoln left the theatre under the canopy of ‘swords, pistols, and bayonets’ held in the ‘present arms’ position by soldiers lining the cleared pathway.
The house directly across the street from the theatre was closed. A man stood at the door of the neighbouring house belonging to William Petersen and beckoned Leale to bring the president inside. Lincoln was taken into a room where laying him on the bed proved difficult. His feet extended past the length of the mattress, and his legs had to be bent. Efforts to remove the foot of the bed failed and the president was finally laid diagonally, with his head and shoulders elevated by pillows.
Mary Lincoln took up a place in a chair beside the head of the bed where her husband lay. Army officers came, offering assistance, and Leale asked them to go to the Executive Mansion and return with the president’s oldest son. Robert Todd Lincoln was serving as a captain in the army at the time of his father’s death. Serving with Grant, Robert had witnessed the surrender at Appomattox, but on the night Lincoln was shot, he had been staying at home, on leave.
Leale also sent for the Surgeon General, the surgeon in charge of the Armory Square General Hospital, the president’s family physician and Lincoln’s Cabinet. After consulting Mary Lincoln, Leale added the Reverend Dr Phineas Gurley, Mary’s pastor, to the list of those he felt should be summoned.
Throughout the night Leale and his fellow physicians continued to monitor the president. From time to time they cleared the blood clot from Lincoln’s wound, hoping to relieve pressure on the brain. At one point, a Nélaton probe was used to examine the wound. It was inserted several inches into the wound before it came into contact with resistance – possibly loose bone, according to Leale. A second attempt to probe made contact with the bullet.
Secretary of War Edwin Stanton arrived and set up what Leale described as a war room in an adjacent room. ‘He was then the master,’ reports Leale, ‘and in reality, acting President of the United States.’ Stanton was known for his aggressive actions. At one point, when Mary Lincoln was startled by a noise from her husband, she fainted. Stanton ordered her removed, ‘and do not let her come in again’. She was thus prevented from being with her devoted husband at the time of his death.
That death finally came near dawn, Leale writes. The president’s pulse became erratic, followed by his respiration. At that point, Leale reports the condition of his patient. Lincoln was blind. The pressure on the brain had caused paralysis, dilated pupils, eyes that bulged and were bloodshot. Lincoln’s hearing and touch were the only two of the five senses remaining. Leale held the president’s hand, in case the man was aware through touch or hearing during his last moments, so that the president would know he was not alone.
At 7:20 a.m., on 15 April 1865, President Abraham Lincoln died from a mortal gunshot wound. The Reverend Dr Gurley prayed. Leale smoothed Lincoln’s face and placed coins from his own pocket upon the president’s eyes. Leale does not offer the quote from Edwin Stanton that has been reported by others. ‘Now, he belongs to the ages.’
Remarkably, about two weeks before his death, Lincoln had told his friend and biographer, Ward Hill Lamon, of a dream he had had. In this dream, he heard a ‘vast weeping’ and wandered into the East Room of the Executive Mansion. There he found a casket lying upon a catafalque, surrounded by a military honour guard and people crying. When Lincoln asked one of the soldiers of the guard who had died, the soldier replied, ‘The President. He was killed by an assassin.’
It was, unfortunately, a dream that became reality. Lincoln’s body lay in state in the Executive Mansion until 21 April 1865, when it was loaded aboard a train, along with the body of one of his sons, who had been buried in Washington, DC. The train began a 1,700 mile journey that would end in Springfield, Illinois, on 3 May 1865. The following day, the body was taken to Oak Ridge Cemetery where it was entombed while a larger tomb was being constructed for Lincoln and his family.
The Lincolns’ eldest son, Robert, accompanied the body while Mary and the youngest son, Tad, stayed behind in Washington. The second son, Edward Baker ‘Eddie’ Lincoln, had died in 1850 of tuberculosis. The third son, William Wallace ‘Willie’ Lincoln, had died in 1862 when typhoid fever swept through Washington. Both boys were interred with him at Oak Ridge Cemetery. The three would remain there until 19 September 1871 when the larger tomb was completed and the bodies were reinterred.
After Lincoln’s death, Mary and her son Tad moved to Chicago. In 1868, she took Tad with her to Europe, where they remained until 1871. It was shortly after their return to the United States that Tad became ill. He died in July. Once again, Mary’s behaviour became erratic. In March 1875, she arrived in Chicago to visit her oldest son, Robert. She told him that someone had tried to poison her and that her purse was stolen. She had come to Chicago convinced, she said, that Robert was gravely ill, but found him fine and well. Mary was known to wander about with $56,000 in bonds sewn into her petticoats. Her irrational fear of poverty was one of the concerns that led her son, Robert, to take extreme measures.
Mary was institutionalized after attempting to jump from a window to escape a fire that didn’t exist. On 19 May 1875, Robert had his mother committed to an institution in Batavia, Illinois. With the help of her lawyer and friends, Mary managed her own release into her sister’s custody. She travelled again to Europe, but declining health, cataracts and damage to her spine forced her home in 1880. During the last years of her life, Mary lived with her sister, Elizabeth Edwards, in Springfield, Illinois, once again.
On 16 July 1882, Mary Ann Todd Lincoln died at the age of 63. She was buried beside her husband and three of her four sons in Springfield, Illinois.
Robert Todd Lincoln was the eldest of the Lincoln’s four sons and the only child to survive past the age of 18. He became an attorney and lived in Chicago, Illinois, for forty-six years. He married, had three children, and served in Cabinet posts twice, but refused proposals that he run for president. In 1902 he bought land in Vermont to build his summer home called Hildene. He died there quietly in his bed on 26 July 1926 and was buried, as per his request, at Arlington National Cemetery just outside of Washington, DC. He was 82 years of age.