I have just finished reading my Bible: and now, while waiting for the going to ring, I will commence my letter to you. It is a delightful day so quiet — so peaceful, and so fitting a time to worship our Maker……. I am glad she saw him. I little thought when I stood by his coffin, looking at his features, beautiful even in death, that any other member of our family had seen him.
I went down to Albany Wednesday morning to see him. Charly H. The crowd was immense — a perfect jam. During the day there was one young lady killed by the crowd trampling upon her, and several had their arms and ribs broken. I can give you no description of the jam. A great crowd did not get in to see him. I saw him twice. I was the last one who looked at him; and I stood by his coffin nearly a minute.
Addie has given you an account of it, what she saw, and I can add noting more. I will only say I saw the procession had a good view of the hearse as it passed — saw the coffin which contained the one whom all love. Saw the car in which the body was placed. I mean the Hearse Car — it was magnificent and the whole train upon the N. Central Road, consisting of eight cars, was draped most beautifully in mourning I would have given a great deal rather than to not have seen what I saw that day.
Powell was tried and convicted, and was executed by hanging in July Surratt owned a boarding house in Washington where the conspirators met. The subject of some controversy, she received the death sentence and was put to death by hanging in July , becoming the first woman executed by the United States. After he turned himself in to the authorities, he was tried as a conspirator, though his role remained unclear.
Another long-time friend of Booth, Arnold was not in Washington at the time of the assassination. Sentenced to life in prison, Arnold was pardoned by President Andrew Johnson, and survived until , when he died of tuberculosis. He escaped hanging by one vote of the military commission that had been convened to try the conspirators.
Like Arnold, Mudd was sentenced to life in prison but pardoned in He died of pneumonia in He was not connected to the kidnapping plan, but he was found guilty and sentenced to six years in prison.
Pardoned by President Andrew Johnson in , Spangler moved to Maryland, where he remained until his death in Booth's plans were foiled, however, when the President changed his plans and decided instead to speak to the th Indiana Regiment and present a captured flag. Booth then turned to plan to kidnap the President at a future performance at Ford's Theatre, where the actor had several friends, but the plan failed to win the support of some of his co-conspirators, who dismissed it as infeasible.
On April 14, , after the fall of Richmond rendered moot his kidnap scheme, Booth set in motion his final plan--one of assassination. Booth may have made the decision to kill the President after hearing Lincoln deliver a speech urging Negro suffrage, according to Booth's former friend, Louis Weichmann. Weichmann spoke of his viewing of the the President's speech with Booth:. Lincoln up close and I knew he was a tall man, however nothing could have prepared me for the sight of him.
A long shadow did he have. And his arms, when at his sides, touched near his knees. Very professionally he said that there would never be any suffrage based on differences in the way people look. Booth tried to convince several of his co-conspirators to participate in his plot to kill several high government officials including the Vice President, the Secretary of State, and probably General Grant , but found few willing. Around , as the President and the First Lady watched a performance of Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre, Booth, showed a card to a presidential aide and was allowed entry through a lobby door leading to the presidential box.
Reaching the box, Booth pushed open the door. The President sat in his armchair, one hand on the railing and the other holding to the side a flag that decorated the box, in order to gain a better view of a person in the orchestra.
From a distance of about four feet behind Lincoln, Booth fired a bullet into the President's brain as he shouted "Revenge for the South! Major Rathbone, seated with the President in the State Box, sprang up to grab the assassin, but Booth wrested himself away after slashing the general with a large knife. Booth rushed to the front of the box as Rathbone reached for him again, catching some of his clothes as Booth leapt over the railing. Rathbone's grab was enough to cause Booth to fall roughly on the stage below, where he badly fractured his leg.
Rising from the stage, Booth shouted "Sic semper tyrannus! Booth rushed out the back door of the theatre to a horse being held for him by Joseph Burroughs better known as "Peanuts".
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