Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, June 23, 1990 TAG: 9006230051
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SARAH BOOTH CONROY THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The legendary ghosts of Abraham Lincoln and especially John Wilkes Booth may well be, if not appeased, at least pleased by the Ford's Theatre Museum that reopened last week after two years of remodeling.
For the first time, the museum tries to answer the question, "Why did John Wilkes Booth shoot Lincoln?"
"The new museum tells the story of the assassination, the events which led up to it and the events which came after," said James M. Ridenour, National Park Service director, at the reopening. "After all, the assassination did take place here, and Lincoln's sudden death did have a dramatic and profound effect on the future of this country."
The museum's 1968 installation, respecting the sensibilities arising from the Kennedy assassinations, focused more on Lincoln's life than on his death. "Nowhere in the museum was the story of Lincoln's last hours told," Ridenour said.
But visitors - 800,000 a year to the theater performances and tours - wanted to know more specifically about the events in the theater 125 years ago on April 14, a pivotal point in the history of the United States.
Ghosts are not amenable to being encased and presented in the newly remodeled Ford's Theatre Museum, nor can the precise times of their performances be reliably booked. But the shades of the past are otherwise well-evoked by more than 400 original artifacts in the new glass exhibit cases built at the National Park Service Design Center at Harpers Ferry, W.Va. Some of the 6,700 objects in storage will appear in later exhibits.
John Wilkes Booth (no relation to this writer) is here portrayed as a handsome, swashbuckling actor.
The memorabilia include a poster for the play "Apostate" - his last performance was on March 18, 1865, at Ford's Theatre - and photographs of five young women, including his fiancee, found in his pocket at his death.
The exhibit also shows him as a man with a passion to live the heroic role and as a fervent Southern patriot who blamed Lincoln for initiating the war.
He was not alone. "The Temper of the Times," a slide show, describes the way some blamed Lincoln for the burning and sacking of the villages and cities of the Confederate states.
After Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered on April 9, 1865, Booth decided that only Lincoln's death would avenge the deaths and destruction. In his diary, shown in the exhibit, Booth wrote, "Our country owed all her troubles to him, and God simply made me the instrument of His punishment."
In one of the many coincidences attending the tragedy, Booth was at the theater that April afternoon when the first report came that Lincoln would attend the performance of "Our American Cousin" that night.
Whatever Booth's motives, however deluded and confused he might have been, most agree that he strode into the presidential box, shot Lincoln, and daringly jumped to the stage shouting, "Sic Semper Tyrannis" ("thus always to tyrants"), the state motto of Virginia.
Booth escaped on horseback. He was reportedly shot 12 days later by the 16th New York Cavalry, which also set fire to the tobacco barn near Port Royal where he was hiding. Reports proliferated that Booth escaped, and theories arose saying Lincoln Cabinet members were part of the conspiracy.
Lincoln was taken across 10th Street to the Petersen boardinghouse on the orders of doctors who were in the theater at the time. He died nine hours later.
The deed becomes real when the visitor sees the exhibits of small, humble objects stained with his life's blood: a pillow, his coat sleeve and bits of towel removed by souvenir hunters, and even the shirt cuff of Charles A. Leale, the first doctor to reach the presidential box. There's the piece of lace said to have been torn from Mrs. Lincoln's dress as she hurried into the Petersen House.
Even the gun is here - the .44-caliber, single-shot derringer pocket pistol found in the presidential box hours after Lincoln had been shot.
The door to the theater box has a peephole, said to have been gouged by Booth to observe the president. Here's the wood bar he used to jam the outer door. So is the dagger, and its sheath, identified as the one Booth used to stab Maj. Henry Reed Rathbone, who also was in the box.
Lincoln's matted beaver-wool greatcoat, custom-made as a gift from Brooks Brothers, is spread open in the case to show its elaborate lining's quilted and hand-stitched silk design of shields with stars and stripes, scallops and a spread-winged American eagle holding a ribbon inscribed "One Country, One Destiny."
The National Park Service, National Capital Region, administers Ford's Theatre, at 511 10th St. N.W., its museum and the Petersen House where Lincoln died. The museum is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, except Christmas. There is no admission charge. For information, call (202) 426-6924.
by CNB