John Hay

John Hay and Abraham Lincoln first met because Hay’s uncle had a law office next to Lincoln’s in Springfield, Ill.

When Lincoln was looking for an assistant secretary to serve in his White House office, his secretary John Nicolay recommended 22-year-old Hay, a former schoolmate of his. Hay started a lifelong career in government service, save six years as an editor at the New York Tribune.

Hay’s clear, lucid writing tells us much of what we know about Mr. Lincoln. Some believe Hay was the real author of Lincoln’s Letter to Mrs. Bixby, a letter consoling a bereaved mother for the loss of her sons in the war.

Hay went from secretary to secretary of state. He became assistant secretary of state in the Hayes administration and secretary of state in the McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt administrations.

When Mary and Tad Lincoln traveled to New York to escape the Washington heat in September 1863, the president missed her.

He wrote this to her at her Fifth Avenue hotel:

“The air is so clear and cool, and apparently healthy, that I would be glad for you to come. Nothing very particular, but I would be glad to see you and Tad. A. Lincoln”

Source: Abraham Lincoln: The Writer, edited by Harold Holzer

Tad Lincoln’s pet goat Nanny sometimes ate the White House furniture, but Tad loved Nanny so that the president allowed the goat to stay.

When Mary took Tad on vacation to Vermont in 1863, no one was keeping close tabs on Nanny and the goat went missing. He was last seen in the middle of Tad’s bed. President Lincoln had the unappealing task of writing to Mary to announce the sad news.

Finding replacements for soldiers captured or killed was difficult because, throughout the war, men were recruited by the states rather than the federal government.

Governors awarded colonel’s commissions to favored citizens who would round up recruits. Sometimes the regiments would go off to fight without their colonels.

It was easier politically to form a new regiment than to raise replacements, so much of the war was fought with skeleton regiments.

Source: The Army of the Potomac: Mr. Lincoln’s Army by Bruce Catton

Maj. Henry Rathbone, who, with his fiance Clara Harris, accompanied the Lincolns to Ford’s Theatre, testified that he was watching the play when he heard a pistol discharge behind him.

Looking around, he saw a man enveloped in gunsmoke and standing between the president and the door to the box.

Rathbone sprang toward the man but the assassin wrested himself from his grasp and thrust at his chest with a large knife. Rathbone tried to grasp him again but only caught his clothes and the man leapt over the railing of box.

Rathbone said neither Miss Harris or Mrs. Lincoln left their seats during the 30 seconds between the gunshot and the assassin jumping to the stage.

Like several other Ford’s Theatre players, Helen Truman followed the movie industry to Los Angeles.

Truman, who saw John Wilkes Booth standing by the president’s box on assassination night, married a California real estate agent. After the turn of the century, she lived at 1183 W. 31st St. in Los Angeles

Here is the present-day location on Google Maps Street View: https://www.google.com/maps/preview#!q=1183+W+31st+St%2C+Los+Angeles%2C+Los+Angeles+County%2C+California+90731&data=!1m8!1m3!1d3!2d-118.301934!3d33.718899!2m2!1f118.26!2f90!4f75!2m12!1e1!2m7!1sCzc00D96v_F

On this day in 1861, Mayor Fernando Wood proposed that New York City should secede from the Union so that merchants could trade with both the North and the South.  City council balked.

Billy Ferguson, the handsome 15-year-old call boy who rang down the curtain at Ford’s Theatre for the last time in the 19th Century, later moved to Hollywood.

Unfortunately for Ferguson, assassination night was to be his big chance to fill in for Ford’s actor who called in sick, but his luck changed when he moved to California.

In Hollywood, he enjoyed a successful career as a comic and a movie actor. In 1915, he played Abraham Lincoln in the silent film “Battle Cry for Peace.”

The Lincolns were animal lovers. During their tenure in the White House, they kept horses, cats, dogs, goats and a turkey. The president once rushed toward a burning stable to save his son Willie’s favorite horse. Guards had to hold him back from entering the fiery building.

Joseph Hazelton, the little program boy whose hair John Wilkes Booth tousled on the day of the assassination grew up to be a Hollywood actor. He performed with stars such as Lon Chaney, Norma Shearer and Jackie Coogan.