When word of Gen. Robert E. Lee’s spectacular and bloody victory at Chancellorsville arrived at the War Department in Washington on May 6, 1863, observers said President Lincoln couldn’t have been more overwhelmed if he had been struck by a thunderbolt and he couldn’t have looked more ghostlike if he had just risen from the dead.

The president clasped his hands behind his back and walked the room, saying, “My God! My God! What will the country say? What will the country say?”

The casualties began coming into Washington that night. Men lay helpless in the rain on the wharf and nearby streets, soaking on blankets, their wounds bound by bloody rags. There were few volunteers and few attendants.

“The wounded are getting to be common. People grow callous,” wrote Walt Whitman, who was volunteering as two boatloads of wounded came in.

Source: Freedom Rising: Washington in the Civil War by Ernest B. Furguson

President Lincoln had a $5 bill in his pocket when he died — a Confederate five.

Within five decades, Lincoln’s own image would grace the U.S. $5 bill.

John Wilkes Booth had to threaten William Lucas, a free black man, to get him to furnish a wagon and a team and a driver to transport Booth and Davy Herold to the Port Conway ferry when they were on the run.

Booth did pay Mrs. Luca $20 for the ride, though.

On this day in 1863, Gen. Fightin’ Joe Hooker, who had just taken over the Army of the Potomac two days earlier, was told that army desertions were at 200 men a day, nearly 6,000 a month.

There is no record that inconsolable Mary Lincoln ever viewed her husband’s body after she left Petersen House on the morning after the assassination.

Source: Mary Lincoln: A Life by Catherine Clinton

Virginia, which seceded from the Union on April 17, 1861, rejoined the Union on this day in 1870.

Only three states rejoined later, all in 1870 — Mississippi on Feb 23, Texas on March 30 and Georgia on July 15.

When the federal government needed John Wilkes Booth’s photograph for his wanted poster, they didn’t have to look far. They used the publicity photo from Booth’s theater appearances, the same shot he often autographed in his large script.

John Wilkes Booth attended Lincoln’s second inaugural ball in the great hall of the Patent Office with stunning Lucy Lambert Hale on his arm.

Hale was the daughter of abolitionist Senator John Parker Hale of New Hampshire.

Source: Freedom Rising: Washington in the Civil War by Ernest B. Furgurson

President Lincoln lay ill after returning from delivering his historic speech at Gettysburg in mid-November 1863.

He was confined with varioloid, a mild form of smallpox. He joked with a visitor that the president always had a crowd of people asking him to give them something, and now he has something he can give them all.

He had designated the last Thursday of that month as the nation’s first official Thanksgiving, but he was too ill to enjoy it.

Source: Freedom Rising: Washington in the Civil War by Ernest B. Furgurson

Congressional Cemetery at 1801 E. Street SE in Washington is the final resting place for many men whose lives were quaked by the Lincoln assassination.

Among them are Henry P. Cattell, who embalmed Willie Lincoln and President Lincoln; Davy Herold, who was hanged as a co-conspirator, and Charles Forbes, the president’s valet and the man to whom John Wilkes Booth handed a calling card on assassination night.

Others interred there include Seaton Munroe, one of the men who identified John Wilkes Booth’s body aboard the Montauk; John Buckingham, doorkeeper at Ford’s Theatre on assassination night, and Peter Taltavul, the barkeep who poured two whiskeys for John Wilkes Booth just before Booth shot the president.

In addition, Congressional is the burial place of Evening Star reporter James Corggon, who viewed Booth’s body, and James Pumphrey, who rented a bay mare to Booth on the afternoon of the assassination but never got it back.

Source: The Lincoln Assassination: Where Are They Now? by Jim Garrett and Richard Smyth

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