The Day Lincoln Was Shot (42 page)

The Glass Crutch

The Mark Hettinger Story

Parish Priest

The Girl in Poison Cottage

The Making of a Priest

The Day Kennedy Was Shot

The Golden Ham

The Day Christ Died

Go With God

The Day Christ Was Born

Some of My Very Best

The Murder Trial of Judge Peel

Honeymoon Diary

A Day in the Life of President Kennedy

Jim Bishop: Reporter

A Day in the Life of President Johnson

Cover design by Nicholas Bilardello

Cover photographs: © Alexander Gardner / Getty Images

(Lincoln); © VisionsofAmerica / Joe Sohm / Getty Images (flag)

A hardcover edition of this book was published by Harper & Brothers in 1955.

THE DAY LINCOLN WAS SHOT.
Copyright © 1955 by Jim Bishop. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

First Perennial Library edition published 1964 by Harper & Row, Publishers, Incorporated.

First Harper Perennial edition published 2013.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

ISBN 978-0-06-229060-1 (reissue)

EPub Edition November 2013 ISBN 9780061374876

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*
It is commonly agreed that Lincoln is wrong about the time of the dream. Lamon, who remembered this dialogue almost word for word, believed that the dream occurred on March 19, the night after the Lincolns saw
Faust
.

*
The President could not have made such a promise in good conscience because he had learned, long before, that, when Mrs. Lincoln wanted to go out, he risked a scene if he refused.

*
Elder son Junius.

†
Daughter Rosalie.

*
Whatever his other faults may have seemed. Johnson was an exceedingly tough customer, a man of very great physical courage, who had been threatened with assassination by experts all through the war. Actually murdering Johnson was about as tough an assignment as a conspirator could have been given—and of all people in Washington. Atzerodt got the job!

*
Again, this is Lloyd's testimony. Largely because of it. Mrs. Surratt was hanged.

*
Where has always been a question. Most authorities believe that it was held in Paine's room at Herndon House, but Paine gave his room up at 3 P.M. The meeting was probably held outdoors, on horseback.

*
At the trial of the conspirators, he said that Mrs. Surratt, not Anna, answered the doorbell, and he implied that the mysterious caller was Booth.

*
She was discovered and revived.

*
Lee swore at the trial of the conspirators that this happened on April 15. He probably meant after midnight of the fourteenth.

*
On modern maps, it is often listed as Clinton.

*
Surratt was later identified by Cass and several others in and around Elmira as having been in the town on the morning of April 15, 1865. Had he been in Washington the night before, there was no possible way he could have reached Elmira in the morning.

*
This word, in a time of psychiatric ignorance, was used to describe most emotional disturbances.