The Lincoln funeral car was not one of the new Pullman sleeping cars as widely reported. The car that carried the president’s coffin through seven states was part of a now-defunct military railroad system, according to the meticulous research of Wayne E. Wesolowski. Wesolowski is the University of Arizona chemistry professor working on uncovering the true color of the funeral car,

The construction of an opulent presidential car was authorized in 1864. It was constructed in Alexandria, Va. It featured fine woodwork, upholstered walls, etched glass windows and sixteen wheels for a smoother ride.  A large U.S. crest was painted on the sides of the car because there was no presidential crest at the time.

The president never rode in the car until after his death.

The car was sold and resold until it was accidentally burned when two boys were burning weeds during a windstorm in 1911.

Source: Interview with Wayne and Mary Cay Wesolowski, authors of “The Lincoln Train is Coming.”

Allan Pinkerton’s Pinkerton National Detective Agency had already been operating for 15 years when the manhunt for John Wilkes Booth began.

The Pinkerton detectives had foiled a plot to assassinate the president in 1861.

Pinkerton thought Secretary William Stanton would hire him to hunt for Booth, but Stanton told Pinkerton he could go after the same reward as all others.

Pinkerton’s agency was back in the headlines in 1866 when it solved a sensational $700,000 robbery.

After that, the Pinkertons became known as anti-union forces. A Pinkerton man infiltrated the Molly Maguires, the first labor union for Pennsylvania’s Irish coal miners. The miners were protesting harsh conditions imposed by the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, the company that owned the mines.

The Mollies were charged with murder and convicted largely on McParlan’s testimony, because there were no eyewitnesses. They were hanged, but they received a gubernatorial pardon in the 1970s.

In 1892, Pinkerton detectives and state militia members broke a strike against the Carnegie Steel Company.

Union members grew to hate the Pinkertons and call them “pinks” and “pinkies.”

The use of the word “fink” to mean an informer (originating in 1902) and a strikebreaker (originating in the 1920s) probably came from this use of “pink.”

Source: Listening to America by Stuart Berg Flexner

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

Along with John Wilkes Booth’s last hopes, the fire in Richard Henry Garrett’s tobacco barn destroyed the family’s farm equipment and their neighbors’ furniture.

The Garrett family played host to fugitive Booth and his companion Davy Herold at their Locust Hill farm on April 25-26, but they did not know their guests were the subject of a manhunt for the assassinators of President Abraham Lincoln.

Booth and Herold were sleeping in the Garrett’s tobacco barn when Union soldiers surrounded it on the morning of April 26 and set a fire to flush them out.

Sgt. Boston Corbett  fired a paralyzing shot into Booth’s neck as the barn was burning, and Booth died on the front porch of the family farmhouse.

Unfortunately, the Garretts’ neighbors had stored their tables and beds in the tobacco barn to evade looting by Union soldiers. The barn burned to the ground and all was lost.

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.”