Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation Owes Big $$$

[RJNorton]

(05-22-2018 10:34 AM)LincolnMan Wrote:  Has the Lincoln hat with the bullet hole that Laurie mentioned ever turned up anywhere? Somehow I thought Lincoln had it disposed of to not alarm Mary.

Bill, I think you are right. I have never heard of this hat being on display anywhere.

Quoting from Matthew Pinsker's Lincoln's Sanctuary: Abraham Lincoln and the Soldiers' Home:

"About eleven o'clock one night, Private John W. Nichols of Company K was on guard duty at the large gate on the edge of the institution's grounds when he heard a rifle shot and then witnessed the "bareheaded" president riding quickly on horseback toward his cottage. Private Nichols asked the president about his missing hat and was told that "somebody had fired a gun off at the foot of the hill" which frightened Lincoln's horse and then led to a struggle to regain control that had "jerked his hat off." Concerned, Nichols recalled years later that he and another member of the company went down the twisting driveway toward the main road where they discovered the president's signature silk plug hat with a bullet hole through the crown. The next day Nichols claimed that he returned the item to the president, who assured him "rather unconcernedly" that the whole episode was the product of "some foolish gunner" and that he wanted the matter "kept quiet."