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"Tenderly raising his inanimate form, the writer and five others carried him...”

ABBOTT, DR. EZRA. Autograph Manuscript Signed, “Reminiscences of the Assassination of President Lincoln,” Washington, D.C., penned ca. 1880. 4 pp. 6½ x 7½”.

                                                       Inventory #21930   $7,500

An eyewitness writes in lurid detail about the histrionics of the assassin, his first sight of the wounded president, and the bedside vigil as Lincoln lay dying.

Abbott “saw the gleam of the knife as [Booth] struck Major Rathbone,” and, jumping down from the president’s box to the stage, to face the audience “with bloody hand above his head he waved a gory, glistening blade and shouted Sic semper tyrannis! Now the south are avenged.’” Once Abbott realized what had happened, he “ran down a flight of stairs round to the President’s box. There upon the floor, his head tenderly supported in the lap of... Laura Keene... lay the prostrate, unconscious form of President Lincoln. Efforts were made to remove his coat, searching for wounds, and in so doing the coat was cut about the arms and breast. Tenderly raising his inanimate form, the writer and five others carried him... to a house across the street.”

Historical Background:

Dr. Ezra W. Abbott (1819-1884) of Concord, New Hampshire was at Ford’s Theatre the night of April 14, 1865. Realizing sooner than most that John Wilkes Booth’s performance was not part of the play, Abbott made his way to the fallen president’s box. He and five other men carried Lincoln across the street to the Petersen boarding house. Dr. Abbott’s chart recording Lincoln’s condition as the night progressed was published on April 16, 1865 in The New York Times.

Additional Historical Background:

Dr. Abbott preserved a section of the sleeve from Lincoln’s coat, cut away in search of the fatal bullet wound and now in the New Hampshire Historical Society Collection. Years later, Abbott recalled, "During the entire night I kept the record, and the only one, of the president’s respiration and pulsation, noting them every half hour. At 3 a.m. I went to the office of the National Intelligencer and left a copy of my memoranda up to that time. I resumed my position at the foot of the sufferer’s bed, and remained there until he breathed his last, at 7:22 a.m. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton immediately exclaimed, ′He now belongs to the ages.′"

Remarkably, this was not Abbott′s first experience with presidential sorrow. He was also present at the death of Benjamin Pierce, the son of Franklin and Jane Pierce, who was killed in a train accident just days before his father’s inauguration.