“She Won’t Think Anything About It.”
According to Wikipedia, those words, spoken in reply to the question, ""What will Miss Harris think of my hanging on to you so?" asked by Mary Todd Lincoln, were the last words of Abraham Lincoln. Shortly thereafter, John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln in the back of the head at Ford's Theater in Washington, DC. The date was April 14, 1865, just after 9 PM. Abraham Lincoln would die the next morning at 7:22 AM, laid diagonally across a boarding house bed across the street from Ford's Theater. He was too tall a man to lie in the bed normally.
Somehow, it seems fitting that Lincoln's last official act as President of the United States was to pardon a man who had been convicted three times of spying for the Confederacy and sentenced to death.
Now, as then, he belongs to the ages.
By Andrew X, Monday, 14 April , 2008 @ 7:56 pm
Well worth remembering when you peruse the editorial pages of your big city newspaper tomorrow; the learned opinion of the Chicago Times to a Presidential address given in November of 1863, one that began, "Four score and seven years ago….."
Said the Times:
“The cheek of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat, and dishwater utterances of the man who has to be pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the President of the United States.”
Good thing we are beyond all such foolishness.
By Lars Walker, Monday, 14 April , 2008 @ 8:05 pm
I’ve been to Ford’s Theater, and also to the Peterson House, where Lincoln died. It’s amazing, according to historians, how many people claimed to have been in the room at the moment of death (it’s tiny; there’s barely room to walk around the bed). And I think three men, all of them honorable men, claimed to have closed Lincoln’s eyes. I’m sure they were all sincere. Great moments tend to revise themselves in memory.
By TKelso, Monday, 14 April , 2008 @ 11:03 pm
Thanks, Abe. Rest in Peace…….and say hello to the new guy, Chuck Heston.