When the president scheduled a public reception at the White House following his second inauguration, famed African-American orator Frederick Douglass assumed he would be welcome.

After all, Douglass was nationally known and well acquainted with the Lincolns.

Frederick Douglass

As he walked into the house after standing in a line 2,000 persons long, two policeman grabbed Douglass. They were about to oust him through an East Room window when the president heard about it. While white handshakers waited, Mr. Lincoln stopped to chat with Douglass.

The guards should have been working the room. After the crowd left, almost a square yard of red brocade had been cut from the East Room window hangings and a large piece was missing from the Green Room drapes.

Source: Reveille in Washington by Margaret Leech

Whether you believe Dr. Sam Mudd was guilty of aiding John Wilkes Booth or not, a visit to his Waldorf, Md., plantation is a good move.

The Dr. Mudd House Museum offers a beautifully restored farmhouse, entertaining and informed tour guides and a chance to gaze through a window John Wilkes Booth looked through when he was on the run after the assassination.

The house features many original pieces of Mudd family furniture — including the red settee where Booth rested as the doctor examined his severed fibula.

The collection includes several pieces of inlaid furniture handmade by Dr. Mudd and his jailhouse pal Edward Spangler. The doctor saved Spangler’s life when they were imprisoned together in malaria-ridden Dry Tortugas, and, during their imprisonment, the stage carpenter taught the doctor to make fine furniture.

Joseph H. Simonds, a close friend of John Wilkes Booth, was a sandy-haired, immaculately dressed cashier at Merchants Bank in Boston — until he gave up his job and moved to Franklin, Pa., to manage Booth’s oil investments.

Simonds aspired to be something more than a bank clerk. He had no clue Booth was conspiring against the president.

In fact, when Booth was preoccupied with the plot to kidnap Lincoln in the early months of 1865, Simonds chastised him for neglecting his acting and his investments.

Source: “Right of Wrong, God Judge Me: The Writings of John Wilkes Booth,” edited by John Rhodehamel and Louise Taper

The flowers for President Lincoln’s Washington funeral cost $30 — about $433 in today’s dollars. The total included $9 for rose buds, $1 for other white flowers and $20 for unspecified flowers.

The other funeral costs included $100 for embalming, $160 for an embalmer and assistant to travel with the funeral cortege to Illinois, 700 yards of white silk at $3.75 a yard, 126 pair of white silk gloves at $1 each, $10 for removing Willie Lincoln’s remains so they could be buried with his father’s in Springfield, two $8 silk hats for the coachmen and one $10 silk hat for Robert Lincoln.

 Elizabeth Keckley

Elizabeth Keckley, Mrs. Lincoln’s attendant, expensed $360 for caring for the widow from April 14 until May 26 — $210 for her services, $100 for travel and incidental expenses, a $50 for requisite mourning apparel.

Test your Lincoln Administration knowledge:

Q. What did Lincoln often eat for lunch?

A. Just an apple

Q. What was the name of President Lincoln’s horse, the one he rode over the Eighth Judicial Circuit?

A. Old Bob.

Q. What animal did Lincoln’s sons lead to the White House attic?

A. A goat.

Q. Why did Mary Lincoln dislike Fridays?

A. She thought they were unlucky — even years before the assassination.

Q. What was Mr. Lincoln’s presidential salary?

A. $25,000 a year.

Q. How much did John Wilkes Booth earn acting in the 1860s?

A. About $20,000 a year.

Q. Lincoln was the first president to wear this.

A. A beard

Q. What unusual gathering did President and Mrs. Lincoln host in the White House?

A. A seance.

Maine’s Gov. Enoch Lincoln

You can’t assume all of the thousands of spots named Lincoln are named after the 16th president.

Lincoln County in Maine predates the president. It takes its name from the British town of Lincoln.

Lincoln, N.H. predates the president too. It was established in 1764 and named for Henry Fiennes Pelham-Clinton, the 9th Earl of Lincoln.

After the Constitution was signed, the namesakes began to shift from Brits to Americans.

Lincolnville, Maine, settled in 1802, was named after Revolutionary War general Enoch Lincoln, Maine’s sixth governor.

One of President Lincoln’s favorite tunes was “Dixie,” the anthem of the South.

He asked the band to play it at an impromptu celebration over Lee’s surrender, just four days before the assassination.

“I have always thought ‘Dixie’ one of the best tunes I have ever heard,” he said. “Our adversaries over the way attempted to appropriate it, but I insisted yesterday that we fairly captured it. I presented the question to the attorney general, and he gave it as his legal opinion that it is our lawful prize. I now request the band to favor me with its performance.”

The bank struck up “Yankee Doodle” as an encore.

Hear a 1907 recording of “Dixie” from the Library of Congress collection: http://www.loc.gov/jukebox/recordings/detail/id/552/

Sources: Library of Congress and A.Lincoln in His Own Words, edited by Milton Meltzer

When Mary Todd and Abraham Lincoln married in Ninian Edwards’ Springfield parlor in 1842, he put a ring on her finger that was engraved, “A.L. to Mary, Nov. 4, 1842. Love is eternal.”

When President Lincoln and his wife Mary visited Washington’s army hospitals,  he would joked with the wounded soldiers while she distributed homemade jams and flowers from the Executive Mansion gardens.

One of President Lincoln’s favorite moves to cheer the troops was to challenge them to a height contest. He’d stand back-to-back with any soldier who thought he might be taller than the 6 foot, 4 inch president.

He never found a soldier that tall, but there was one man in Washington, D.C., who was definitely taller than Mr. Lincoln. Maj. Joseph Stewart was 6- foot, 6-inches tall.

Stewart, who was sitting in the audience at Ford’s Theatre when John Wilkes Booth jumped to the stage after shooting the president, was one of the first theatergoers to realize what had happened. With his long legs, he was able to jump onto the stage and chase the assassin, but he was unable to catch him. He watched from the stage door as Booth rode down Baptist Alley to freedom.

When The Rev. Jacob Walter told the newspapers there wasn’t enough evidence against Mary Surratt to hang a cat, Archbishop Martin Spalding already had his hands full.

The Rev. Jacob Walter

The archbishop, spiritual leader of Washington and Baltimore Catholics in 1865, was already under pressure from the Know-Nothings. The sometimes violent anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant Protestant group was stirring up anti-Catholic sentiment by pointing out that several of the assassination conspirators were Catholics.

Although the Catholic churches had observed a day of mourning, held a High Mass for the repose of the president and tolled their church bells of a half hour as the Protestant churches did, the bishop feared a backlash over the conspirators’ connection to the church.

He was also in negotiations with Attorney General Joshua Speed over the case of The Most Rev. Patrick Lynch, a Charleston bishop accused of disloyalty.

On top of that, he was concerned for Catholics living in the South.

Spalding ordered Fr. Walter to keep mum about Mrs. Surratt.

Fr. Walter, who said who took his superior’s warning as a suggestion rather than an order, blithely ignored it.

He went to the Executive Mansion with Surratt’s 22-year-old daughter in tow, hoping for a last-minute reprieve for Mrs. Surratt. When the president refused to see them, Anna Surratt threw herself on the mansion steps. Word got back to the archbishop.

Walter said he was confident no Catholic woman would take Holy Communion on Holy Thursday and commit murder on Good Friday.

James A. Hardie, the army’s inspector general and a devout Catholic, warned Spalding to keep a lid on Walter.

The archbishop was anxious to end the confrontation with the government. He called Hardie a staunch friend of the church, but he told Hardie that Walter was also doing what he believed best.

Hardie demanded Walter be silent as a condition for his visiting Mrs. Surratt in prison.

Walter agreed to keep mum: “Of course, I cannot let Mrs. Surratt die without the sacraments, so, if I must say yes, I say yes.”

Walter, known for standing up for the disenfranchised and collecting items for the poor, did give Hardie a tongue-lashing though: “You wish me to promise that I shall say nothing in regard to the innocence of Mrs Surratt? Do you know the relation exisitng between a pastor and his flock? I will defend the character of the poorest woman in my parish at the risk of my life…You wish to seal my lips; I wish you to understand that I was born a  freeman and will die one…”

Walter kept quiet for about a quarter century. Then he wrote his side of the story.

Source: A Parish for the Federal City: St. Patrick’s in Washington, 1794-1994 by Morris J. MacGregor