Lincoln's Final Hours by Kathryn Canavan

Author:Kathryn Canavan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2015-11-22T16:00:00+00:00

Booth escaped over the Navy Yard Bridge into Maryland. Credit: National Archives

Gurley said, “I will speak to God.”

Stanton replied, “Do it just now.”32

Gurley dropped to his knees and began, but he was quickly interrupted by the deep sobs of Stanton, who had buried his face in the bedclothes. Gurley went on, but his voice was nearly inaudible among the sobs of more than twenty-one people packed into the room. Tanner pulled his pencil from his pocket to copy the prayer for posterity, but its point caught in his coat and broke.33 Bob Lincoln stood at the headboard leaning over his father, then sobbing on the shoulder of Senator Sumner.34

Stanton, tears still streaming down his cheeks, looked longingly at the president’s face and said, “Now he belongs to the ages.”35

Major O’Beirne remembered him saying, “That’s the last of him.”36

Sweet peace came to Abraham Lincoln.

As quickly as he could, the army major who had been eyeballing every person in the death room bustled back to his office to draw a diagram showing the exact positions of the witnesses to the president’s demise.37

At this moment, while the newspapers had him all but nabbed, John Wilkes Booth was resting in a much larger bedroom thirty miles away, in the gracious home of Dr. Samuel Mudd in rural Waldorf, Maryland.38

In Boston, Edwin Booth had already received a note from his theater manager saying his popular play would be closed until further notice.39

And stunned June Booth was making plans to quietly leave Cincinnati, where he had just wrapped up a two-week engagement at Pike’s Opera House. He turned himself in to a federal marshal upon his arrival in Philadelphia.40

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