The
Last Days of Abraham Lincoln
 On the evening of
April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was
shot while watching the play Our American
Cousin at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C.
The incident occurred at 10:15 p.m., during a
moment when the audience was laughing as actor
Harry Hawk performed on stage. Actor John Wilkes
Booth entered the rear of the  Presidential Box
(shown in the photo to the right) and shot
Lincoln from behind before leaping out of the box
and down to the stage. In all the confusion,
Booth was able to flee from the theater without
being accosted or arrested.When the theatre-goers realized what had happened to the President, doctors from the audience immediately rushed to his aid. Lincoln was taken across the  street to the
home of William Petersen (known today as the
Petersen House, shown to the left). Here he
remained for the rest of the solemn night, until
his death on the morning of April 15 at 7:22 a.m.
 Though the assassin had momentarily escaped and was on the run, he was found and killed in less than two weeks after the murderous act was committed. The surviving conspirators who had plotted with Booth to murder the President were arrested, and a trial was held from May 10 through June 29. During the trial, a testimony by William T. Kent on May 16, 1865 stated the following about the murder weapon: |
About three minutes
after the President was shot, I went into his
box. There were two other persons there then, and
a surgeon, apparently, asked me for a knife to
cut open the President's clothes. I handed him
mine, and with it he cut the President's clothes
open. I then went out of the theatre and went
down to call my roommate. I missed my night key,
and thinking that I had dropped my night key in
pulling out my knife, I hurried back to the
theatre. When I went into the box and was
searching around for it on the floor, I knocked
my foot against the pistol, and stooping down, I
picked it up. I held it up, and cried out,
"I have found the pistol!"
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