Brant Schwartz – WASHINGTON — More than 160 years after President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, Ford’s Theatre and the Petersen House remain among Washington’s most powerful historic sites, preserving the places where one of the most consequential nights in American history unfolded.
The tragedy began at approximately 10:15 p.m. on April 14, 1865, as Lincoln and First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln attended a performance of Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theatre.
Actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth entered the presidential box and shot Lincoln in the back of the head with a .44-caliber Derringer pistol. Major Henry Rathbone attempted to stop Booth but was wounded during the struggle. Booth then leaped from the presidential box onto the stage, injured his leg and escaped from the theater on horseback.
Doctors quickly determined that Lincoln’s condition was critical. Rather than attempting to transport him to the White House, they carried the unconscious president across 10th Street to the Petersen House, a boarding house directly opposite the theater.
Lincoln was placed in a small bedroom at the rear of the house. Because of his height, he reportedly had to lie diagonally across the bed. Doctors remained with him throughout the night, but the president never regained consciousness.
While Mary Todd Lincoln waited in the front parlor, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton turned another room into an emergency command center. Officials questioned witnesses, sent messages and coordinated the rapidly expanding search for Booth and his accomplices.
At 7:22 a.m. on April 15, Lincoln died. Stanton was famously reported to have declared, “Now he belongs to the ages.”
Booth’s escape triggered an intense 12-day manhunt that ended at a Virginia farm, where he was shot and later died. Several people connected to the conspiracy were prosecuted, and four co-conspirators were ultimately executed.
Lincoln’s remains were later carried on a funeral train that traveled approximately 1,654 miles from Washington to Springfield, Illinois, as crowds gathered along the route to mourn the assassinated president.
Today, visitors can retrace the events by walking from Ford’s Theatre across the street to the Petersen House. Exhibits continue the story through Booth’s escape, the investigation and Lincoln’s funeral journey.
One of the museum’s most striking features is a roughly 34-foot tower of books written about Lincoln, symbolizing the enormous historical legacy he left behind.
The few steps separating Ford’s Theatre from the Petersen House mark one of the shortest yet most significant journeys in American history — from an evening at the theater to the final hours of Abraham Lincoln’s life.
