Laura Keene dress

[RJNorton]

Linda, that is an excellent article. It is one of the best I have ever seen as it includes so many eyewitness accounts. Rather than take a strong stand, the author states, "It more or less boils down to this: which eyewitnesses do you believe?" Billy J. Harbin notes that the accounts given nearest to the event generally do not mention Keene in the box, while it's the later accounts that do. This, in itself, could conceivably be considered an argument against Keene's presence.

If true, I find Seaton Munroe's account one of the strongest arguments that the blood was Rathbone's not Lincoln's. Munroe stated:

Seaton Munroe, an attorney, met up with Laura Keene as she was departing the State Box and related:

"Making a motion to arrest her progress, I begged her to tell me if Mr. Lincoln was still alive. "God only knows!" she gasped, stopping for a moment's rest. The memory of that apparition will never leave me. Attired, as I had so often seen her, in the costume of her part in "Our American Cousin," her hair and dress were in disorder, and not only was her gown soaked in Lincoln's blood, but her hands, and even her cheeks where her fingers had strayed, were bedaubed with the sorry stains!"

Based on what most of the folks in the box stated then I think this large amount of blood most likely came from Rathbone, not Lincoln. One of the doctors in the box, Dr. Taft, said that Lincoln's wound bled very little. In all honesty, however, Munroe's account came 31 years later.