As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
It is an odd thing, but in all of the horrendous events we know about, like the assassination of John Kennedy, except for the film, there really are not any people who were there, who have provided a description of what they saw that the people know about.
The same is true with the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. We know John Wilkes Booth did it. We know he shot people. We know he jumped to the stage and yelled something, but it all seems second hand, as it is. I though in looking through some photos, came across a photo copy of an eye witness to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and it was most interesting, just for the glimpse it provided from the audience.
Abraham Lincoln attended Ford's Theater quite often, as it was a popular location with the best of performances. It was there though that Francis Spatz Leighton would be on the fateful evening that Abraham Lincoln was shot.
Leighton was 5 years old. It was his first trip to Washington City from Maryland, his home. It was by coach, team and side wheel steamboat, and he saw the first hotel in his life, and it was huge by his judgment.
His father was there, and informed them, that they would attend a play that night and that the President would be there.
He thought "play" meant a game like tag and liked the idea. The purchased the tickets and went to the hotel to sit on hard backed chairs.
In the audience, the wife of his father's business associate pointed out where the President would sit. It was a colorful, flag draped box, and when the President arrived, the associate's wife lifted up the 5 year old to see. He thought Lincoln stern, because of his whiskers, as Lincoln smiled and waved at the crowd.
As the play started, and the actors took the stage, the boy's attention was brought back to the box when someone in the box screamed, who as probably Mrs. Lincoln, and he saw Lincoln slumped forward in his seat.
People began to mill around in the audience, so some time elapsed.
Sammy thought that another accident had taken place, when another man seemed to tumble over the box rail and fall to the stage. This would have been John Wilkes Booth. The little boy full of compassion pleaded for them to go to the poor man who fell down and help him.
Booth though gathered himself and ran from the stage.
At that point pandemonium broke out in the audience with shouts of the President having been shot and was dead. The wife of the associate swept the child up in her arms at that point.
That is the eyewitness account recorded from a 5 year old boy's perspective. We know the details of the President being carried across the street to the hotel, where his eye blackened, and he died several hours later from a brain shot wound.
While Booth was focused upon, there are numerous questions why the guard left his post, the intrigue of the Republicans who detested him, the South's hatred of him, and the Europeans conspiracy during this entire war.
Booth and his people had tried to kidnap Lincoln before and attempted harm. Like most things, there were numbers of people who benefited from a dead president for their interests.
It is strange that for all the actors, the hundreds in the audience, that there are so few instances of what took place at Ford's Theater. The time lapse was short that Sammy reported, but all the same, there was enough time apparently for John Wilkes Booth to be in the presidential box for sometime, and was still hidden long enough, to not be seen as the boy looked on, and the boy did not comprehend that Booth was a threat, but more an unfortunate theater goer.
And not one person out of hundreds, including the cast, was moved to rush John Wilkes Booth. Everyone, let him run or limp away. That again is another interesting point, in Booth was said to have broken his leg in the jump, and yet the boy speaks of his running away.
It is the point though in the Kennedy film, that it created even more questions, just as this eye witness account, produces some interesting points which would benefit from comparing other accounts, if they were real.
Once again, another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
President Lincoln is Shot, 1865 - Eyewitness to History
President Lincoln is Shot, 1865. References: This eyewitness account originally appeared in: Pitman, Benjamin The Assassination of President Lincoln and the Trial of the Conspirators (1865), reprinted in: Hofstadter, Richard and Michael Wallace eds. American Violence: A Documentary History (1970); Panati, Charles.Listen to a Rare Recording of an Eyewitness Account of ...
Conspiracy theories surrounding Abraham Lincoln's death abound to this day, just as hearsay filled newspapers the morning after the 16th president's assassination on April 14, 1865.Eyewitness account of Abraham Lincoln's assassination to go ...
The most detailed eyewitness account of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in existence is set to go on sale 150 years after the former president was shot dead by John Wilkes Booth.
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