金融英语保险语证卷业务相关辅导21
APRIL 14, 1865For President Abraham Lincoln, things looked brighter on Friday, April 14, 1865 than they had for a long time. Five days earlier, General Robert E. Lee effectively ended the long nightmare of the Civil War by surrendering the Army of Northern Virginia, and just the previous day, the city of Washington celebrated the war's end by illuminating every one of its public building with candles. Candles also burned in most private homes, causing a city paper to describe the nation's capital as "all ablaze with glory." The President decided he could finally afford an evening of relaxation: he would attend a performance of Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre in downtown Washington.
About eight-thirty, the President and Mrs. Lincoln, accompanied by Major Henry Rathbone and his date, Clara Harris, arrived in a carriage at Ford's Theatre on Tenth Street. As the presidential party entered theatre, the play was stopped and the band struck up "Hail to the Chief." The audience stood to give the President a rousing standing ovation.
The presidential party took their seats in a specially-prepared box on the left side of the stage. During the second scene of the third act of the play, John Wilkes Booth, a southern-sympathizing actor, climbed the stairs to the mezzanine. He showed a card to Lincoln's valet-footman and was allowed entry through a lobby door leading to the presidential box. Reaching the box, Booth pushed open the door. The President sat in his armchair, one hand on the railing and the other holding to the side a flag that decorated the box, in order to gain a better view of a person in the orchestra. From a distance of about four feet behind Lincoln, Booth fired a bullet into the President's brain as he shouted "Revenge for the South!" (according to one witness) or "Freedom!" (according to another). Major Rathbone sprang up to grab the assassin, but Booth wrested himself away after slashing the general with a large knife. Booth rushed to the front of the box as Rathbone reached for him again, catching some of his clothes as Booth leapt over the railing. Rathbone's grab was enough to cause Booth to fall roughly on the stage below, where he fractured the fibula in his left leg.
Rising from the stage, Booth shouted "Sic semper tyrannus!" and ran across the stage and toward the back of theatre. Ed Spangler, a Ford's theater stagehand, opened a rear door as Booth rushed out to a horse being held for him by Joseph Burroughs (better known as "Peanuts"). Booth mounted the horse and swept rapidly down an alley, then to the left toward F Street--and disappeared into the Washington darkness.
About 10:15, the same time as Booth fired his fatal shot, two men well known to Booth, Lewis Powell and David Herold, approached the Washington home of Secretary of State William Seward, where the Secretary lay bedridden from a recent carriage accident. Powell knocked on the door of Seward's home as Herold waited outside with his horse. Powell told the servant who answered the door, William Bell, that he had a prescription for Secretary Seward from his doctor. Over Bell's objections, Powell began walking up the steps toward the Secretary's room. One of the Secretary's sons, Frederick Seward, confronted Powell. Seward told Powell he would take the medicine, but Powell insisted on seeing the Secretary. When Seward continued to refuse him entry to the bedroom, Powell clubbed him violently with his revolver (fracturing Seward's head so severely that he would remain in a coma for sixty days), then slashed the Secretary's bodyguard, George Robinson, in the forehead with a bowie knife. Finally reaching the Secretary in his bed, Powell--shouting, "I'm mad, I'm mad!"--stabbed him several times before he could be pulled off by Robinson and two other men. Powell raced down the stairs and out the door to his bay mare.
Sometime after 10:30, Booth approached the Navy Yard bridge leading over the Potomac to Maryland. Questioned by the sentry guarding the bridge about his purposes, Booth said he was "going home" to his residence "close to Beantown." The sentry allowed Booth to pass. Five to ten minutes later a second rider, David Herold, approached the bridge. Herold told the sentry his name was "Smith" and had been "in bad company" and wanted to get home to White Plains. The sentry decided to let Herold pass. Shortly thereafter, Booth and Herold met up.
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