Killing Lincoln - Nat Geo (Reactions)

[Linda Anderson]

Thank you, Erik, for getting it right concerning Fanny Seward's actions on the night her father was assaulted by Lewis Powell. Fanny did not give away the location of her father's room, as other accounts have stated. Besides Fanny's account in her diary, both George Robinson and William H. Bell testified that Fred Seward looked in first to see if his father was awake. I was also very glad to see that Powell did not punch Fanny on his way in the room as is portrayed erroneously in other accounts of Powell's attack. Fanny denies crying "murder" out the window in her diary as Robinson said she did but she was in a state of shock so she most likely did not remember doing that.

Since you asked for nitpicking comments, I will offer a few.

According to Fanny's diary, Lincoln was already lying on Seward's bed on the night of April 9 when Fanny entered the room. She wrote, "Early in the evening the President, who returned from City Point in the afternoon) was here. When I went into the room he was lying on the foot of father's bed, talking with him. I said good evening, & was passing around to my seat on the other side, when I saw a long arm extended back around the foot of the bed, to shake hands in his cordial way."

Powell entered Seward's bedroom from Seward's left side. According to Fred Seward's testimony in the John Surratt trial in 1867, Seward's bedroom was in the southwest corner of the house overlooking Lafayette Park. Seward's bed was parallel with the front of the house near the front window. Powell stabbed Robinson on his way into the bedroom and brushed past Fanny who then ran to the bed crying out, "Don't kill him!" Seward described seeing her terrified face over him in a newspaper article the following year.

Powell said, "I'm mad," as he was striking Gus Seward several times with his knife. Gus had run to Seward's bedroom after hearing Fanny's screams. Gus testified that as that as he struck him, Powell told him in a "intense but not voice," (which is shown correctly in the film) that he was mad.

Here is a diagram that Paul J. Pelz, one of the archtects of the Library of Congress, drew of Seward's bedroom. Pelz had drawn a diagram of the Blaine mansion, also known as the Old Club House and the Seward mansion, "for the historical record," before the house was demolished in 1895. Pelz incorrectly identified Seward's bedroom as being in the southeast corner of the house. You can see the bloodspot in the southwest bedroom that was supposedly still there in 1895. Newspaper accounts of the time reported that some people cut away a piece of the blood stained board as souvenirs. The blood spot coincides with where Seward rolled off the bed onto the floor during Powell's assault. Thank you to Betty for creating the graphic for me.



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