Assassination of Abraham Lincoln - Aftermath

Aftermath

Lincoln was the first American president to be assassinated. His assassination had a long-lasting impact upon the United States, and he was mourned throughout the country in both the North and South. There were attacks in many cities against those who expressed support for Booth. On the Easter Sunday after Lincoln's death, clergymen around the country praised Lincoln in their sermons. Millions of people came to Lincoln's funeral procession in Washington, D.C. on April 19, 1865, and as his body was transported 1,700 miles (2,700 km) through New York to Springfield, Illinois. His body and funeral train were viewed by millions along the route.

After Lincoln's death, Ulysses S. Grant called him "incontestably the greatest man I ever knew." Southern-born Elizabeth Blair said that, "Those of Southern born sympathies know now they have lost a friend willing and more powerful to protect and serve them than they can now ever hope to find again."

Andrew Johnson became President upon Lincoln's death. Johnson was to become one of the least popular presidents in American history. He was impeached by the House of Representatives in 1868, but the Senate failed to convict him by one vote.

Secretary of State William Seward recovered from his wounds and continued to serve in his post throughout Johnson's presidency. He later negotiated the Alaska Purchase, then known as Seward's Folly, by which the United States purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867.

Henry Rathbone and Clara Harris married two years after the assassination, and Rathbone went on to become the U.S. consul to Hanover, Germany. However, Rathbone later became mentally ill and, in 1883, shot Clara and then stabbed her to death. He spent the rest of his life in a German asylum for the criminally insane.

John Ford tried to reopen his theater a couple of months after the murder, but a wave of outrage forced him to cancel. In 1866, the federal government purchased the building from Ford, tore out the insides, and turned it into an office building. In 1893, the inner structure collapsed, killing 22 clerks. It was later used as a warehouse, then it lay empty until it was restored to its 1865 appearance. Ford's Theatre reopened in 1968 both as a museum of the assassination and a working playhouse. The Presidential Box is never occupied. The Petersen House was purchased in 1896 as the "House Where Lincoln Died"; it was the first piece of real estate ever acquired by the federal government as a memorial. Today, Ford's and the Petersen House are operated together as the Ford's Theatre National Historic Site.

The bed that Lincoln occupied and other items from the bedroom had been bought by Chicago collector Charles F. Gunther and are now owned by and on display at the Chicago History Museum. The Army Medical Museum, now named the National Museum of Health and Medicine, has retained in its collection several artifacts relating to the assassination. Currently on display are the bullet that hit Lincoln, the probe used by Barnes, pieces of Lincoln's skull and hair, and the surgeon's cuff stained with Lincoln's blood. The chair in which Lincoln was shot is on display at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.

On February 9, 1956, 96-year-old Samuel J. Seymour appeared on the U.S. game show I've Got a Secret. The celebrity panel was eventually able to guess Seymour's "secret": he had been in attendance at Ford's Theater the night of the assassination. Seymour, five years old in 1865, was the last living witness to the event. Seymour died two months after the telecast.

Lincoln was honored on the centennial of his birth when his portrait was placed on the U.S. one-cent coin in 1909. The Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., was opened in 1922.

The day before his assassination, Lincoln wrote a personal check for $800 to "self", reportedly to cover some debts incurred by Mary Todd Lincoln. That check, and several other historical checks, would be put on display by Huntington Bank at a branch in Cleveland in 2012, after a Huntington employee discovered the checks in 2011 looking through old documents from a bank Huntington acquired in 1983. Although checks from several other historical figures were also on display, the check written by Lincoln two days before his death received the most attention.