The Life, Crime, and Capture of John Wilkes Booth — John Shaqi
The Life, Crime, and Capture of John Wilkes BoothTownsend, George Alfred
History
The Life, Crime, and Capture of John Wilkes Booth
Townsend, George Alfred
Assassins -- United States -- Biography; Booth, John Wilkes, 1838-1865; Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865 -- Assassination
Close by the corpse sit the relatives of the deceased, plain, honest,
hardy people, typical as much of the simplicity of our institutions as
of Mr. Lincoln's self-made eminence. No blood relatives of Mr. Lincoln
were to be found. It is a singular evidence of the poverty of his
origin, and therefore of his exceeding good report, that, excepting his
immediate family, none answering to his name could be discovered. Mrs.
Lincoln's relatives were present, however, in some force. Dr. Lyman
Beecher Todd, General John B. S. Todd, C. M. Smith, Esq., and Mr. N. W.
Edwards, the late President's brother-in-law, plain, self-made people
were here and were sincerely affected. Captain Robert Lincoln sat during
the services with his face in his handkerchief weeping quietly, and
little Tad his face red and heated, cried as if his heart would break.
Mrs. Lincoln, weak, worn, and nervous, did not enter the East room nor
follow the remains. She was the chief magistrate's lady yesterday;
to-day a widow bearing only an immortal name. Among the neighbors of the
late President, who came from afar to pay respect to his remains, was
one old gentleman who left Richmond on Sunday. I had been upon the boat
with him and heard him in hot wrangle with some officers who advised the
summary execution of all rebel leaders. This the old man opposed, when
the feeling against him became so intense that he was compelled to
retire. He counselled mercy, good faith, and forgiveness. To-day, the
men who had called him a traitor, saw him among the family mourners,
bent with grief. All these are waiting in solemn lines, standing erect,
with a space of several feet between them and the coffin, and there is
no bustle nor unseemly curiosity, not a whisper, not a footfall--only
the collected nation looking with awed hearts upon eminent death.
This scene is historic. I regret that I must tell you of it over a
little wire, for it admits of all exemplification. In this high,
spacious, elegant apartment, laughter and levee, social pleasantry and
refined badinage, had often held their session. Dancing and music had
made those mirrors thrill which now reflect a pall, and where the most
beautiful women of their day had mingled here with men of brilliant
favor, now only a very few, brave enough to look upon death, were
wearing funeral weeds. The pleasant face of Mrs. Kate Sprague looks out
from these; but such scenes gain little additional power by beauty's
presence. And this wonderful relief was carved at one blow by John
Wilkes Booth.
The religious services began at noon. They were remarkable not only for
their association with the national event, but for a tremendous
political energy which they had. While none of the prayers or speeches
exhibited great literary carefulness, or will obtain perpetuity on their
own merits, they were full of feeling and expressed all the intense
concern of the country.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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