After President Abraham Lincoln was shot during a performance of Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre, several doctors who were in the audience and also enjoying the play rushed into the Presidential Box and began attending to the President. It was clear that Lincoln's wounds were almost certainly mortal, but the doctors still attempted to save his life. Originally thinking that the President had been stabbed, they soon found that he had been shot behind the left ear and the bullet -- a 43.75 mm ball which had been fired by John Wilkes Booth's .44 caliber Derringer -- had sliced through Lincoln's brain and lodged behind his eye sockets without exiting the skull. When Lincoln's breathing became more shallow, Dr. Charles Leale used his finger to remove blood clots from the wound, which immediately improved Lincoln's respiration.
The doctors decided to move Lincoln from the theater, but felt that the President's condition was far too weak to risk taking him back to the White House, which was several blocks away. A nearby saloon was considered just as unseemly of a place for the President to spend his last hours and likely die in as a theatre, so Lincoln was carried across the 10th Street to William Petersen's boarding house. When they brought Lincoln into the boarding house, they realized that the 6'4" President was too tall for the bed they found for him, so they laid him diagonally upon it.
It was obvious that Lincoln could not survive his wound, so the attending doctors simply tried to keep him comfortable in his final hours by clearing the blood clots in his skull that caused his breathing to become more labored. Throughout the night, the President never regained consciousness, but witnesses said that he looked peaceful as his life was drawing to a close. The only visible evidence of his mortal wound were the bloody pillows that his head rested on and the raccoon-like bruising around Lincoln's eye sockets due to the orbital bones fractured by Booth's bullet after it passed through his brain. Nine hours after he was shot, Lincoln died in Petersen's Boarding House at the age of 56.
Shortly after the President was pronounced dead, his body was placed in a coffin and transferred back to the White House in a carriage. Just a few hours later, one of the residents of Petersen's Boarding House, Julius Ulke, took a photograph (seen at the beginning of this post) of the room and the bed -- including a pillow soaked with the President's blood -- where Lincoln had died earlier that morning.
The room in Petersen's Boarding House where Abraham Lincoln died, pictured in 2007.
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Four conspirators in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln are hanged.
David Herold — An impressionable and dull-witted pharmacy clerk, Herold accompanied Booth to the home of Dr. Samuel Mudd, who set Booth’s injured leg. The two men then continued their escape through Maryland and into Virginia, and Herold remained with Booth until the authorities cornered them in a barn. Herold surrendered but Booth was shot and died a few hours later.
Lewis Powell— Powell was a former Confederate prisoner of war. Tall and strong, he was recruited to provide the muscle for the kidnapping plot. When that plan failed, Booth assigned Powell to kill Secretary of State William Seward. He entered the Seward home and severely injured Seward, Seward’s son, and a bodyguard.
Mary Surratt— Surratt owned a boarding house in Washington where the conspirators met. Sentenced to death, she was hanged, becoming the first woman executed by the United States federal government.
George Atzerodt — German-born Azterodt was a carriage painter and boatman who had secretly ferried Confederate spies across Southern Maryland waterways during the war. Recruited by Booth into the conspiracy, he was assigned to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson, but lost his nerve and stayed in a hotel bar, drinking, instead.
"Our American Cousin" is a play less known for its story than its 1865 production at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., which was said to be "Well-costumed, lavish in set design, and supremely well acted despite certain distractions," according to Mary Todd Lincoln.
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Timeless (TV 2016)
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Garcia Flynn/Lucy Preston
Characters: Garcia Flynn, Lucy Preston, Carol Preston
Additional Tags: Rittenhouse (Timeless), alternative episode, post-Abraham Lincoln, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Engagement, Time Travel, where flynn gets to have a real conversation with Lucy not "on the clock", maybe not realistic or exciting but it makes more sense to do it this way, he's got a time machine after all, pre-garcy
Summary:
In canon, the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln mission lasted 23 hours, 48 minutes and 56 seconds.
Set in S1 Ep2: Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, near the end. Lucy returns to her mother’s house, full of people, to find out its her engagement party. She’s just had the argument (or start of one) with her mother about her “real” father, and Carol has stormed off in search of a drink.
Before Noah can come and kiss Lucy, the doorbell rings, and Lucy goes to answer it, assuming it is more partygoers.
She opens the door to find Flynn, imposing, dark, impressive in his modern clothes, filling the doorway.
Learned today that John Wilkes Booth had a six-pack. Can that really be right?
I hope that's not the most essential information that people today are learning about John Wilkes Booth's life.
I've never seen a "Sexy American Assassins" calendar that featured Booth posing with his shirt off or Charles Guiteau participating in a wet t-shirt contest (at least not yet, but a boy can dream), so I can't definitively confirm that information. However, what apparently made Booth stand out as an actor was his exceptional athleticism on stage. People who watched the plays that he acted in often remarked on Booth's dynamic physical performances. So that, and the fact that he was just 26 years old when he died, would seem to support the possibility that he was in pretty good shape. But even if John Wilkes Booth had washboard abs, I think the most important detail to remember is that he murdered Abraham Lincoln and that sucked.
(While we're on the subject, it's interesting to note that some of the people attending to President Lincoln in the hours between the time he was shot and his death the following morning were shocked at how muscular the 56-year-old President was when he was undressed as doctors attempted to save his life. Dr. Edward Curtis, who assisted with the autopsy of Lincoln at the White House, wrote that "I was simply astonished at the showing of the nude remains, where well-rounded muscles built upon strong bones, and perfectly outlined beneath a clear skin free from underlying fat, told the powerful athlete. Now did I understand the deeds of prowess recorded of the President's early days." So, Booth is probably lucky he had a gun -- and snuck up on the President from behind -- because Lincoln probably would have knocked his dick in the dirt.)
[And, yes, I really gave a relatively serious answer to this question.]
From Goodreads:
A novel of a house haunted by an ancient evil. A tale of lies, envy, and curses spanning generations. Mike Gray is still reeling from the sudden death of his father when he inherits Willow House, his father’s childhood home. Keen to move out of the city, Mike decides to move his young family to the small, quaint town, of Fairview. But not all is right at Willow House. There are…
John Wilkes Booth (May 10, 1838 – April 26, 1865) was an American stage actor who assassinated United States President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865.