Celebrating Lincoln

Today we visited Ford's Theater. Close by was Hard Rock Cafe and I wanted to go because I had never been to the Washington DC Hard Rock Cafe Before.


FORD'S THEATER


The theater box that President and Mary Lincoln sat with Henry Rathbone and Clara Harris.

Clara Harris and Henry Rathbone were recently engaged when they were invited by the Lincolns to join them at Ford's Theater.
Immediately following the shooting, Rathbone jumped out of his seat and grappled with Booth. Booth stabbed Rathbone in the arm and leapt from the theater box.
Rathbone never forgave himself for letting Booth get away. He and Clara married and moved to Germany. On December 23, 1883, Rathbone recreated his own version of that fateful night 18 years earlier: he shot and killed Clara and stabbed himself. When the police arrived he claimed there were people living behind the pictures on the wall. He died in an asylum 28 years later.

John Wilkes Booth wrote in his diary, "I struck boldy, and not as the papers say. I walked with a firm step through a thousand of his friends, was stopped, but pushed pn. A colon was at his side. I shouted Sic semper before I fried. In jumping broke my leg. I passed all his pickets, rode sizty miles that night with the bone of my leg tearing the flesh at every jump. I can never repent it, though we hated to kill. Our country owed all her troubles to him, and God simply made me the instrument of his punishment. The country is not what it was. This forced the Union is not what I have loved. I care not what becomes of me. I have no desire to outlive my country..."

The dagger that John Wilkes Booth used to stab Major Henry Rathbone after shooting Abraham Lincoln. The dagger is engraved with the words: "Liberty" and "America."



Tickets from the April 14, 1865 play at Ford's Theater:

The day it all took place, my birthday :^/


The Ford's Theater was one of my favorite places we visited. One of my favorite things about traveling is getting a closer look at history. The theater visitors center had tons of artifacts and information on President Lincoln and on Booth. They had posters that outlined what they did every single hour from 8am-10:15pm when the shooting took place.


When we headed from the Visitors Center to the actual theater we walked down a hallway. A clock was ticking away the seconds very loudly. On one side of the hallway we read what Lincoln did that day, and on the other side of the hallway we read what Booth did that day. The theater itself was very interesting because the tour guide told us lots of things I never knew before. I learned that nobody questioned Booth being in the theater because he was the "Harrison Ford" of that time. (A very popular well-known actor.) They also told this story:
"On April 11 Lincoln revealed an eerie dream, much to Mary's horror. Hearing the sounds of weeping coming from somewhere in the White House, he had left his bed and made his way to the East Room. There he met with a sickening surprise. 'Before me was a catafalque,' said Lincoln, 'on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; and there was a throng of people, some gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose face was covered, others weeping pitifully.
"Who is dead in the White House?' I demanded of one of the soldiers. 'The President' was his answer. 'He was killed by an assassin!'"

THE HOUSE WHERE LINCOLN DIED

LoL. Has to be the most creative name in the world. :^)

Me and my fun travel buddies.

The Front Parlor.
"In this room, Mary Lincoln grieved between visits to her husband's bedside. She spent most of the night on a black horse-hair sofa... Among the many people that tried to console Mary that night were her eldest son Robert, and Miss Clara Harris (who accompanied them to the theater that night).
The bedroom where Lincoln laid unconsience until he passed away the following morning.