Lincoln’s Death Honored 100 Years Later

Apr. 15, 1965 - At 7:22 a.m. in Washington D.C. today, a small group of officials and scholars bowed their heads over a cheap bedstead in a small hall bedroom. 

Outside, in a tiny garden, an Army bugler stood among freshly opened hyacinths and sounded taps. 

Thus was commemorated the death of Abraham Lincoln one century ago.

Lincoln was shot in his box at Ford’s Theater on Good Friday, April 14, 1865, by John Wilkes Booth (top). Carried across 10th Street to the modest home of William Peterson, a tailor, Lincoln lingered unconscious until the next morning. He died at 7:22 a.m.

The bed in the room now is not the original one; it is a reproduction, a varnished affair with convoluted woodwork. But the pillow is the one on which his head lay.

The house is now under the jurisdiction of the United States Park Service, an agency of the Interior Department, and so it was that Stewart Udall, Secretary of the Interior, stood at the head of the bed today and conducted the simple ceremony. 

Two Senators — from North and South — spoke briefly. Sen. Ralph Yarborough (D-Tex.) called for a binding up of the nation’s wounds, and so did Sen. Milton Young (R-N.D.). It was Young who signaled a moment of silence as the bugle sounded.

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