The Atlantic magazine has published an online reading list on Lincoln, with links to historic stories from the 1860s to present. See it at http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/11/the-atlantics-lincoln-reading-list/265307/

Maj. Henry Rathbone heard a pistol discharge behind him while he was watching “Our American Cousin” being performed at Ford’s Theatre.

Through a cloud of smoke, he saw a man between President Lincoln and the door to the theater box. He thought he heard the man shout a word like “freedom.”

Rathbone sprang towards the assailant and seized him, but the man came at him with a large knife, slitting his arm from the elbow to the shoulder.

Rathbone tried to seize the man again, but he only caught his clothes as the man leapt over the railing of the box.

Pres. John Kennedy and Ted Sorensen

The late Theodore C. Sorensen, speechwriter for President John F. Kennedy, said the best of all presidential speechwriters was actually president.

Abraham Lincoln’s phrases still ring in our minds.

His greatest speeches were quite short — his second inaugural address was just over 700 words. The Gettysburg Address was 272 words.

“He could have mastered today’s sound-bite culture,” Sorensen said. “He had a talent for getting to the point.”

Source: A Man of His Words by Theodore C. Sorensen

Boston Corbett, the army sergeant who shot John Wilkes Booth, was a small, sober-looking man who parted his dark hair down the middle so severely that a swath of his white scalp was always visible.

A New York City hat maker until his wife died in childbirth, after her burial Corbett moved to Boston. He drank heavily until a street preacher brought him to God.

Corbett became a Methodist, grew his hair long like Jesus and renamed himself in honor of the city where he found religion. But that wasn’t the end of it.

What happened next might be explained by the effects of mercury used in hat making – delusions, mood swings and aggressiveness.

When Corbett was approached by two prostitutes who inspired lust in his heart, he went home and read Mark 19:12, a Bible passage that mentions eunuchs.

Taking the passage literally, Corbett cut open his own scrotum, pulled out his testicles and cut them off.

That night, he attended a prayer meeting, ate an ample meal and took a walk. He sought medical help only after his scrotum turned black and swollen.

President Lincoln was bombarded with requests for government jobs, but he didn’t fend them off with a web page. He met with hundreds of job seekers, usually telling them bluntly that he could not help them.

It ended differently on October 17, 1861. When a woman told Lincoln her sons were willing to work hard, he wrote a recommendation letter to the commander of the Washington arsenal:

Majr. Ramsay

My dear Sir

The lady — bearer of this — says she has two sons who want to work.

Set them at it, if possible.

Wanting to work is so rare a merit, that it should be encouraged.

Yours truly,

A. Lincoln

Source: Abraham Lincoln The Writer: A Treasury of His Greatest Speeches and Letters compiled by Harold Holzer

President Lincoln died on the 63rd day of his 57th year. His breath ended at 7:21 a.m. and 55 seconds. His pulse expired at 7:22 a.m. and 10 seconds.

Source: In This Sad World of Ours, Sorrow Comes to All: A Timetable for the Lincoln Funeral Train by Ralph G. Newman, Library of Congress Rare Book Room

Albert Daggett, private secretary to Secretary of State William Seward, was walking into Ford’s Theatre when he heard the shot that killed President Lincoln.

“I heard the report of a pistol and turned just in time to see the hell hound of treason leap from the box upon the stage and, with glittering dagger flourishing above his head, disappear behind the scenes. As he leaped from the box he exclaimed ‘Sic Semper Tyrannis!’ and, just before he disappeared from the stage,  he cried out, ‘I have done it — the South is avenged.’

“It is impossible to describe the intense excitement that prevailed in the theater. The audience arose as one person and horror was stamped upon every face.”

Brig. Gen. Benjamin Helm

Mary Lincoln was in New York when word reached the Executive Mansion that her beloved brother-in-law Confederate General Benjamin Hardin Helm had been killed at Chickamauga.

The president sent her a telegram: “We now have a tolerably accurate summing up of the late battle between Rosecrans and Bragg. Of the killed, one Major Genl. and five Brigadiers, including your brother-in-law, Helm.”

It seemed cold, but the president could not lament the death of a Confederate general over the Union’s military telegraph system.

A friend from Illinois said he had never seen the president more moved than when he heard of the death of his 32-year-old brother-in-law.

Source: House of Abraham: Lincoln & The Todds, A Family Divided by War by Stephen Berry

Dr. Charles Leale, U.S. Army

Dr. Charles A. Leale, the young army surgeon who was first to reach President Lincoln after the assassination, administered mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. He described the scene immediately afterwards:

“On the carpeted floor lay prostrate the president of the United States. His long, outstretched, athletic body of six feet, four inches appeared unusually heroic. His bleeding head rested on my white linen handkerchief. His clothing was arranged as nicely as possible. He was irregularly breathing, his heart was feeble beating, his face was pale and in solemn repose, his eyelids were closed, his countenance made him appear to be in prayerful communion with the Universal God he always loved.”

Source: Leale address delivered before the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, February 1909.

The Emancipation Proclamation wasn’t an immediate favorite among Lincoln’s cabinet members. Edwin Stanton, the secretary of war, and Edward Bates, the attorney general, did favor immediate publication. Interior Secretary Caleb Smith considered resigning over it.

Postmaster General Montgomery Blair thought it would alienate the border states.

Three cabinet members supported it with reservations — Gideon Welles, secretary of the Navy, Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase and Secretary of State William H. Seward.

Source: Lincoln: America’s Greatest President at 200, Smithsonian Enterprises