President Lincoln was not the first person to be accorded the honor of lying in state in the Capitol Rotunda.

Henry Clay, speaker of the House of Representatives, was the first when he died in 1852.

President Lincoln was second, and 11 other presidents followed him, along with selected senators and military commanders, the unknown soldiers for four wars, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and Pierre L ‘Enfant, who designed the layout for Washington, D.C.

President Lincoln attended 10 performances at Ford’s Theatre: “La Figlia Del Regiment” in March 1862, “Fanchon, the Cricket” in October 1863, “The Marble Heart” starring John Wilkes Booth in November 1863, “Henry IV” starring James H. Hackett as Falstaff on December 14 and again on December 15, 1863, “The Merry Wives of Windsor” starring Hackett on December 17, 1863, “King Lear” in April 1864, a June 1864 concert, a Treasury Department concert in April 1864 and “Our American Cousin” on April 14, 1865.

Source: Civilwar.org

President Lincoln wrote a fan letter to his favorite Shakespearian actor James H. Hackett.

He invited Hackett to the White House, an invitation the actor accepted.

He liked Hackett’s rendition of Falstaff so well that he attended four times.

For more on Lincoln’s love of Shakespeare, go to http://www.folger.edu/template.cfm?cid=3137

John Wilkes Booth never bought a ticket on the evening of April 14 because he was a long-time friend of theater owner John T. Ford. Here are the prices for the paying customers:

Family Circle tickets, for 25 cents, admitted the bearer to the third-floor balcony, where patrons sat on high-backed benches.

Dress Circle tickets, at 75 cents, meant the bearer sat on a cane-bottomed chair on the second-floor balcony, the same level as the presidential box.

Orchestra Level tickets, at $1, were among the best seats in the house. Seats ran from directly behind the orchestra pit and to the back of the main floor.

Tickets for boxes cost $10 for upper boxes and $6 for the lower boxes. The grandiose boxes were actually the worst seats in the house because they faced away from the stage and toward the audience. The idea was to allow audience members to  gawk at the celebrities who rented them.

Thirsty playgoers could duck into the adjoining Tatavull’s Saloon to wet their whistles at intermission.

Luminaries from all walks of life attended Edwin Booth’s funeral services on June 9, 1893, at The Little Church Around The Corner in New York City.

Mourners crowded the church, spilled out onto the small patch of grass outside and filled the sidewalk.

One flower arrangement was six-feet-high, tall enough that it was delivered in a truck bed, not a florist’s wagon.

The funeral procession wound through the city streets to Grand Central Station where the elaborate casket was loaded onto a funeral car for the train ride to Boston.

Booth was buried among the Boston elite in Mount Auburn Cemetery. He chose not to be interred with his siblings in Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore.

Rain began on the evening of April 14 and continued into the next day, turning unpaved Tenth Street into a mess for the president’s deathbed visitors and, later, for his hearse.

The men who attended Ford’s Theatre usually wore boots with their formal clothing, as President Lincoln did on April 14, because the wet sand-and-loom soil along Tenth Street became mucky enough to pull shoes completely off.

Sources: Soil Survey of the District of Columbia and Meteorological Journal 1865 Washington City.

There were no voice recording machines around to capture John Wilkes Booth’s performances, but the C. Robert Vincent Voice Library at Michigan State University has a recording of Edwin Booth performing Othello.

The scratchy recording is difficult to access at the Vincent Library site, but it’s been posted on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LM82m1MJn_g

The Vincent Voice Library doesn’t include President Lincoln, but go to http://www.lib.msu.edu/cs/branches/vvl/presidents/index.html to listen to the voices of Presidents Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford or Ronald Reagan.

Robert Lincoln would not allow his father’s papers to be opened until 21 years after his own death, although he did allow his father’s secretaries earlier access.

Robert died at his 32-room summer mansion in Vermont on July 26, 1926. Exactly 21 years later, at the stroke of midnight, the papers were opened.

Among those present for the opening were U.S. Grant III, grandson of President Grant, and Robert Todd Lincoln Beckwith, great-grandson of President Lincoln.

Source: Ralph G. Newman in the Bulletin of the 28th Annual Meeting of The Lincoln Fellowship of Wisconsin 1981

The Washington City police who searched for John Wilkes Booth were accustomed to working 12-hour shifts seven days a week. That was their normal schedule.

The patrolmen were paid $40 a month — less than day laborers and less than half what a skilled mechanic could command. Sergeants made a little more — $600 a year.

Source: “Law and Order in the Capital City: A History of the Washington Police 1800-1866 by Kenneth G. Alfers.

By Friday, April 21, Booth had seen the newspaper stories reviling him, and he had been stymied in his attempts to escape to the Deep South.

Friday 21–

After being hunted like a dog through swamps, woods, and last night being chased by gun boats till I was forced to return wet and cold and starving, with every man’s hand against me, I am here in despair. And why; For doing what Brutus was honored for, what made Tell a Hero. And yet I, for striking down a greater tyrant than they ever knew, am looked upon as a common cutthroat. My action was purer than either of theirs. One, hoped to be great himself. The other had no only his country’s but his own wrongs to avenge. I hoped for no gain. I knew no private wrong. I struck for my country and that alone. A country groaned beneath this tyranny and prayed for this end. Yet now behold the cold hand they extend to me. God cannot pardon me if I have done wrong. Yet I cannot see any wrong except in serving a degenerate peple. The little, the very little I left behind to clear my name, the Govmt will not allow to be printed. So ends all. For my country I have given up all that makes life sweet and Holy, brought misery on my family, and am sure there is no pardon in Heaven for me since man condemns me so. I have only heard what has been done (except what I did myself) and it fills me with horror. God try and forgive me and bless my mother. To night I will once more try the river with the intent to cross, though I have a greter desire to return to Washington and in a measure clear my name which I feel I can do. I do not repent the blow I struck. I may before God, but not to man.

I think I have done well, though I am abandoned, with the curse of Cain upon me. When if the world knew my heart, that one blow would have made me great, though I did desire no greatness.

To night I try to escape these blood hounds once more. Who who can read his fate. God’s will be done.

I have too great a soul to die like a criminal. Oh may he, may he spare me that and let me die bravely.

I bless the entire world. Have never hated or wronged anyone. This last was not a wrong, unless God deems it so. And its with him, to damn or bless me. And for this brave boy with me who often prayers (yes before and since) with a true and sincere heart, was it a crime in him, if so why can he pray the same I do not wish to shed a drop of blood, but “I must fight the course.” Tis all that’s left me.