Assassination

On our recent trip to Washington DC we found that our hotel was only two blocks from Fords Theater. It is today, an active theater and we went to see a fairly decent musical there, “Freedom’s Song,” which was about life and hardships during the civil war. There is also a pretty good museum in the basement centered around president Abraham Lincoln and the period during the civil war. Fords Theater was the place where well-known stage actor at the theater, John Wilkes Booth, a confederate sympathizer, assassinated President Lincoln. The assassination occurred on Good Friday, April 14th, 150 years ago and Lincoln died the next morning, April 15. The war had just ended five days earlier when general Robert E. Lee surrendered his army to general Ulysses S. Grant, bringing hostilities to an end. A policeman assigned to guard the box was across the street in a bar and Booth, being a very famous actor of the time, did not arouse any suspicion as he made his way to the where Lincoln, his wife and another couple were watching a comedy on stage. At the point where the funniest line of the play was uttered, and loudest laughter occurred, Booth shot the President in the back of the head. After a brief struggle with the other man in the box, Booth leapt to the stage and made his escape from the theater. He injured himself in the jump and looking at where the seats were in the theater I can see why, it is a good 12 or more feet above the stage. Almost two weeks after the assassination, Booth was tracked down to a farm in Virginia where he was hiding with a co-conspirator. Union soldiers set fire to a barn to flush out Booth, and another soldier shot and killed him. The box at the theater has been preserved in the manner it was decorated in when Lincoln was killed. Hearing that the president was coming to the theater that evening, a portrait of George Washington was placed in front of the box because apparently there was no photo of Lincoln available on such short notice. The theater was forced to close due to public outrage and eventually became an office building and then a warehouse. In 1968 it became a museum and the theater was restored to working condition. (The photo below shows the presidential box, which is, of course, never used during plays.)