John Miles was working in Ford Theatre’s flies, about 20 to 30 feet above the backstage, when he heard a pistol go off. In about a minute or two, he heard the sound of a horse’s hooves fleeing the alley outside.

Miles came down the stairs and saw the door John Wilkes Booth passed through open.

Source: “We Saw Lincoln Shot” by Timothy S. Good

John Wilkes Booth used an old 1864 pocket calendar as a diary during his 12 days on the run. He never admitted he’d done wrong. His scribblings were egocentric:

“Our country owed all her troubles to him, and God simply made me the instrument of his punishment.”

“I think I have done well, though I am abandoned, wth the Curse of Cain upon me.”

“I have too great a soul to die like a criminal…”

And, five days before he died, he wrote, “I bless the entire world. Have never hated or wronged anyone. This last was not a wrong, unless God deems it so. And its with him, to damn or bless me…”

President Andrew Johnson was not among tose who consoled Mary Lincoln while she stayed in bed in the Executive Mansion after the assassination.

He had rushed to Petersen’s Boarding House on assassination night, but Mrs. Lincoln was not welcoming.

To avoid encountering her again, he did presidential business from a small office in the Treasury Building while he waited almost six weeks for her to move out of the Executive Mansion.

Later, she would write to him to seek jobs for her friends and staff.

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

Fred Petersen, the 15-year-old boy who blotted up blood from the hallway of his father’s boardinghouse on assassination weekend and sold it to relic seekers, made his career in sales.

Petersen and his partner Albert Childs established Petersen & Childs, a rug emporium in Market Space, Washington, D.C.’s commercial corridor along Pennsylvania Avenue.

They were listed in the 1887 Boyd’s Directory of Washington, D.C. and Georgetown, selling carpets, rugs, oil cloth, mattings and home furnishings.

A century before Caroline Kennedy rode Macaroni, Tad and Willie Lincoln would ride their ponies on the Executive Mansion lawn and people would stop and stare.

Source: Guide to Civil War Washington

Below: Tad Lincoln on his pony and Caroline Kennedy on Macaroni

Shortly after the assassination, Dr. Charles Taft wrote this description of the first seconds after John Wilkes Booth shot President Lincoln:

“While sitting in an orchestra chair at Ford’s Theatre, on Friday evening, the 14th, about 10:30 p.m., I heard the sharp report of a pistol in the direction of the state box, and, turning my head in that direction, saw a wild looking man jump from the box to the stage, heard him shout “Sic semper tyrannis,” as he brandished a glittering knife in his right hand for an instant, and dart across the stage from sight.

“A few moments of utterly indescribable confusion followed, amid which I heard a call for a surgeon. I leaped upon the stage, and was instantly lifted by a dozen pair of hands up to the President’s box, a distance of 12 feet from the stage.

One of President Lincoln’s favorite pieces of music was the Scottish song “Annie Laurie.”

Listen to it here, along with something Mr. Lincoln wouldn’t recognize — a web commercial:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzTNNOWqSCs

Viriginia Governor F.H. Pierpont sent this condolence telegram to Secretary William Stanton the day after the assassination: “Loyal Virginia sends her tribute of mourning for the fall of the Nation’s President by the hands of a dastardly agent of treason, who dared to repeat the motto of our State at the moment of the perpetration of his accursed crime.”

Source: The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Uniona nd Confederate Armies, U.S. War Dept.

John Wilkes Booth made ill-fated investments in oil lands in the years before his death.

The name of the company he and his friends formed: Dramatic Oil Company

Source: “John Wilkes Booth, Oilman” by Ernest C. Miller

Confederate States of America Gen. Robert E. Lee

Gen. Robert E. Lee died on this day in 1870. He was 63.

Black hoop skirts and old Confederate uniforms were the dress at his funeral.

After the war, Lee served as president of Washington College, now known as Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va.