The front cover of Harper’s Weekly for May 20, 1865 carried two sketches. One was of a burnt tobacco barn, the site where John Wilkes Booth was shot by Boston Corbett in the predawn darkness of April 26.The other was the small Garrett farmhouse, where Booth died on the front porch just after sunrise.

Even 26 days after the president was shot, two out of the three front-page headlines referred to the April 14 assassination or the president’s May 9 funeral.