we may perhaps never realize.” The bullet that had killed Abraham Lincoln was sent to the Army Medical Museum.
The bullet that ended Lincoln’s life.
A bizarre print depicting Booth imprisoned inside his own bullet.
During the autopsy a messenger from the First Lady arrived to ask for a lock of Lincoln’s hair as a memento. One of the doctors clipped off enough hair to send some to Mary Lincoln and to give pieces to all the doctors in the room.
Another doctor suggested weighing Lincoln’s brain. Perhaps his brain was larger than that of ordinary people—that might account for his genius. But it turned out that it was of ordinary weight for a man of his size. The secret of his intelligence was not in the weight of his brain.
Their work done, the doctors wiped their tools clean and packed their instruments away. The president’s body looked ghastly. The skin was pale, the jaw slack, the eyelids slightly open, the face bruised, the scalp peeled back, the top of the skull sawn off, and the brain lying nearby in a basin. The embalmers arrived. It was their job to repair, or at least hide, the damage. The body was drained of blood, parts that would decay quickly were removed, and it was injected with chemicals that caused it to turn as solid and hard as a statue.
The bullet’s fatal path.
Edwin Stanton went through Lincoln’s wardrobe to choose the suit he would be buried in. Abraham Lincoln had never cared much about his clothes; he usually wore whatever he owned until it was worn out. But Stanton did find one new black suit that he thought would do. He watched as the embalmers fitted the president with a white cotton shirt, attached a black bow tie under his collar, and dressed him in the clothes Stanton had chosen.
Lincoln’s corpse was ready for his funeral. But Edwin Stanton had no time to organize it. He would have to choose someone else to set in motion Washington’s grand farewell to Abraham Lincoln.
Stanton picked George Harrington, assistant secretary of the treasury. Harrington would take charge of all events in Washington honoring the late president. But at the moment there were no events to take charge of. No American president had ever been murdered. It would be up to Harrington to figure out how the capital should pay tribute to its first assassinated president.
Now that Lincoln’s body was prepared for burial, a few visitors were allowed to pass into the White House, climb the stairs, enter the dark chamber, and view the body. Only relatives, close friends, and high officials were given permission. Mary Lincoln’s friend and dressmaker Elizabeth Keckly was one of them.
After the president had been shot, Mary had sent a messenger summoning Keckly to her side. She had rushed to the White House, but guards would not let the free black woman enter. Keckly did not see Mary until the next day.
“I shall never forget the scene,” Keckly wrote afterward, “the wails of a broken heart, the unearthly shrieks.” She worried about Tad. He was silent in his own grief and frightened by his mother’s outbursts. “Sometimes he would throw his arms around her neck,” she described, “and exclaim, between his broken sobs, ‘Don’t cry so, Momma! Don’t cry, or you will make me cry too! You will break my heart.’”
Keckly comforted Mary and then asked to see Abraham Lincoln. “[Mrs. Lincoln] was nearly exhausted with grief, and when she became a little quiet, I received permission to go into the Guest Room, where the body of the President lay in state,” she wrote. “When I crossed the threshold of the room I could not help recalling the day on which I had seen little Willie [Lincoln] lying in his coffin where the body of his father now lay. I remembered how the president had wept over the pale beautiful face of his gifted boy, and now the President himself was dead.”
Strangely, Mary Lincoln did not make a private visit to her husband. Her last nightmare vision of him as he lay dying was
The bullet that ended Lincoln’s life.
A bizarre print depicting Booth imprisoned inside his own bullet.
During the autopsy a messenger from the First Lady arrived to ask for a lock of Lincoln’s hair as a memento. One of the doctors clipped off enough hair to send some to Mary Lincoln and to give pieces to all the doctors in the room.
Another doctor suggested weighing Lincoln’s brain. Perhaps his brain was larger than that of ordinary people—that might account for his genius. But it turned out that it was of ordinary weight for a man of his size. The secret of his intelligence was not in the weight of his brain.
Their work done, the doctors wiped their tools clean and packed their instruments away. The president’s body looked ghastly. The skin was pale, the jaw slack, the eyelids slightly open, the face bruised, the scalp peeled back, the top of the skull sawn off, and the brain lying nearby in a basin. The embalmers arrived. It was their job to repair, or at least hide, the damage. The body was drained of blood, parts that would decay quickly were removed, and it was injected with chemicals that caused it to turn as solid and hard as a statue.
The bullet’s fatal path.
Edwin Stanton went through Lincoln’s wardrobe to choose the suit he would be buried in. Abraham Lincoln had never cared much about his clothes; he usually wore whatever he owned until it was worn out. But Stanton did find one new black suit that he thought would do. He watched as the embalmers fitted the president with a white cotton shirt, attached a black bow tie under his collar, and dressed him in the clothes Stanton had chosen.
Lincoln’s corpse was ready for his funeral. But Edwin Stanton had no time to organize it. He would have to choose someone else to set in motion Washington’s grand farewell to Abraham Lincoln.
Stanton picked George Harrington, assistant secretary of the treasury. Harrington would take charge of all events in Washington honoring the late president. But at the moment there were no events to take charge of. No American president had ever been murdered. It would be up to Harrington to figure out how the capital should pay tribute to its first assassinated president.
Now that Lincoln’s body was prepared for burial, a few visitors were allowed to pass into the White House, climb the stairs, enter the dark chamber, and view the body. Only relatives, close friends, and high officials were given permission. Mary Lincoln’s friend and dressmaker Elizabeth Keckly was one of them.
After the president had been shot, Mary had sent a messenger summoning Keckly to her side. She had rushed to the White House, but guards would not let the free black woman enter. Keckly did not see Mary until the next day.
“I shall never forget the scene,” Keckly wrote afterward, “the wails of a broken heart, the unearthly shrieks.” She worried about Tad. He was silent in his own grief and frightened by his mother’s outbursts. “Sometimes he would throw his arms around her neck,” she described, “and exclaim, between his broken sobs, ‘Don’t cry so, Momma! Don’t cry, or you will make me cry too! You will break my heart.’”
Keckly comforted Mary and then asked to see Abraham Lincoln. “[Mrs. Lincoln] was nearly exhausted with grief, and when she became a little quiet, I received permission to go into the Guest Room, where the body of the President lay in state,” she wrote. “When I crossed the threshold of the room I could not help recalling the day on which I had seen little Willie [Lincoln] lying in his coffin where the body of his father now lay. I remembered how the president had wept over the pale beautiful face of his gifted boy, and now the President himself was dead.”
Strangely, Mary Lincoln did not make a private visit to her husband. Her last nightmare vision of him as he lay dying was
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