A Guide to the 150th Anniversary of Lincoln’s Assassination

Abraham Lincoln was murdered 150 years ago Tuesday night. Here’s a selection of Lincolnia from Washingtonian‘s archives.

• Things to Do in DC for the 150th Anniversary of Lincoln’s Assassination: Ford’s Theatre will hold a late-night commemoration of the vigil for the President.
• The Insane Story of the Guy Who Killed the Guy Who Killed Lincoln: Read Bill Jensen‘s wild profile of Boston Corbett, the self-castrated hatmaker who took down John Wilkes Booth.
• One Family’s Obsession with Lincoln’s Portraits: Members of the Kunhardt family have been collecting photos of the 16th president since the mid-19th century. They’re the subject of a new HBO documentary.
• President Lincoln’s Cottage: This entry from the Great Washington Bucket List calls Lincoln’s summer retreat “the single most fascinating look at a President’s life in Washington.” (Already seen it? You may want to take our How Washingtonian Are You?quiz.)
• Is This a Real Deathbed Photograph of Abraham Lincoln? Shane Mettlen reported last year on a photo Ernestine Glessner found in a flea market. Glessner sued Surratt House Museum director Laurie Verge for defamation after she wrote “This is no more a photo of Abe Lincoln than it is of me” on the museum’s website. A federal judge in West Virginia dismissed the case in December 2013.
  

  Glessner’s photo.
• Mr. Lincoln’s Washington: A 2009 feature by Ernest B. Furgurson (with photos that, sadly, appear to have vanished) about places other than Ford’s that figured in Lincoln’s time in the capital.
• The Things He Carried: Tanya Pai‘s story about “Silent Witnesses: Artifacts of the Lincoln Assassination,” an exhibit at Ford’s. Items include the gun Booth used to shoot Lincoln and the contents of Lincoln’s pockets.
  

  Booth’s Deringer pistol. Photograph by Carol M. Highsmith/courtesy Ford’s Theatre.
  

  Lincoln’s pockets contained two pairs of spectacles and a lens polisher, a pocket knife, a watch fob, a linen handkerchief, a sleeve button, and a brown leather wallet containing a $5 Confederate note. Image courtesy the Library of Congress.

Andrew Beaujon

Senior editor

Andrew Beaujon joined Washingtonian in late 2014. He was previously with the Poynter Institute, TBD.com, and Washington City Paper. His book A Bigger Field Awaits Us: The Scottish Soccer Team That Fought the Great War was published in 2018. He lives in Del Ray.