Dr. Bill Bushong

[LincolnMan]

(10-22-2013 07:33 AM)Rhatkinson Wrote:  I was unable to attend the fall Surratt House meeting, but Laurie was kind enough to have the lecture of Dr. Bushong on Washington during Lincoln's time videotaped for me. I have been corresponding with Dr. Bushong over the last couple of weeks and he was kind enough to send me his slide show with pictures used during his lecture. I thought a couple would be of interest to the folks here.

The first is the only known photograph of the stables used by Lincoln and his family before the fire that consumed it in 1864:


Here is the gate leading out of the North entrance of the White House. This would have been the gate that Lincoln left out of headed towards Ford's on the night of April 14, 1865, and the gate his body was returned through the next morning:


Finally, I learned something that I did not know until the lecture about the "Lincoln bed". Most of us here know that Lincoln himself did not ever sleep in the bed. However, this WAS the bed that Willie Lincoln died on. It was in Willie's bedroom, which was then known as the Prince of Wales room. It is tied to Lincoln's own death, as the bed bore witness to the President's autopsy and burial preparation that was performed in that same room on April 15th. Lincoln's body was not autopsied on the bed, but rather was placed on a board held up by two sawhorses. That bed has seen a great deal of history (which makes what occurred in it in 1981 especially vile and disrespectful in my opinion.)
This photo shows the bed in the Prince of Wales room, so this is the room where the autopsy was performed. That room is - oddly enough - today the current family dining room where the president's family eats its meals.


Heath

So is the bed shown in the diorama in the Abraham Lincoln Museum in Springfield an exact reproduction of the actual bed that Willie died in?