New Eyewitness Account?

[Tom Bogar]

In addition to Kate Evans' saying she saw Lincoln carried out on a shutter, Ned Emerson said he saw the same thing, in a long letter describing the night's events that he wrote to H. D. Bowen of Paris, Texas, dated 4/21/1920 (close to the end of his life), which is now in the Barbee Collection at Georgetown Univ. Library. I have always been convinced of the shutter concept, for a number of reasons, along with being a staunch believer in Laura Keene being in the box and cradling Lincoln's head. On that same note, by a strange coincidence, I was reading today a book about British Travelers' perceptions and writings about American theatre in the mid-19th century. Rev. Newman Hill of England (From Liverpool to St.Louis, p. 167) writes in 1870 that he has just seen, in the Lincoln Home in Springfield, "a painful relic. Framed as a picture is a bit of the dress of Laura Keene, the actress who rushed from the stage when he was assassinated in the theatre, and supported the President's head. The gay-coloured silk is stained with blood." [Which I think most of us agree--not to say that we all agree on anything, and so thank goodness for this wonderful symposium--was probably Rathbone's, not Lincoln's.]