Abraham Lincoln

In this room, at 7:22 A.M. on April 15, 1865, an unconscious Abraham Lincoln breathed his last. Mr. Lincoln was therefore unable to witness the nation reunite after its greatest trial.

"Now he belongs to the ages."
According to John Hay, one of the President's personal secretaries, these profound words were uttered by Edward Stanton at the time of Lincoln's death.

Captions:
Of the many depictions of the death scene, this drawing is the most accurate.

Photo taken April 15, 1865
The original bed is on exhibit in the Chicago American History Museum.

William A. Petersen was a tailor whose shop was on Pennsylvania Avenue. He and his wife Anna owned this house, constructed in 1849. They let out rooms to transients, including performers at Ford's Theater. One of these, John Wilkes Booth, may once have boarded in the room where Lincoln died.

This is the house where President Lincoln died, located directly across the street from Fords Theatre.

scene of Lincoln's murder, directly across 10th street from the Petersen House.

The marker on the table reads, "Between visits to her husband's bedside, Mary Lincoln waited in this parlor with her son Robert and friends of the Lincoln family."

The marker on the table reads, "In this bedroom, Secretary of War Stanton held several cabinet meetings, interviewed witnesses and ordered the pursuit of the assassins."

This 1887 portrait of Abraham Lincoln by George P. A. Healy hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC.

“Today Abraham Lincoln is universally regarded as one of our greatest presidents. But from the start of his administration, Lincoln, guiding the nation in a time of civil war, was beset with criticism from all sides. Some charged him with moral cowardice for initially insisting that an end to slavery was not one of his wartime goals; others accused him of overstepping his constitutional powers; still others blamed him for military reverses in the field. But as Union forces moved toward victory, Lincoln's eloquent articulation of the nation's ideals and his eventual call for an end to slavery gradually invested him with grandeur. following his assassination in 1865, that grandeur beca.me virtually unassailable.

The original version of this portrait was a template for artist George P. A. Healy's large painting The Peacemakers, depicting Lincoln in consultation with three of his main military advisers at the end of the Civil War. But Healy recognized that this made a fine portrait in its own right and eventually made three replicas, including this one.” — National Portrait Gallery