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Article: Lincoln in the National Memory
- Article from:
- Macmillan Encyclopedia of Death and Dying
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Lincoln in the National Memory
At 10:30 P.M. on April 14, 1865, while Major Henry Reed Rathbone, Clara Harris, Mary Todd Lincoln, and Abraham Lincoln watched the third act of
Our American Cousin
from the state box in John Ford's theater, twenty-six-year-old John Wilkes Booth entered the box, aimed his derringer, and discharged a shot that struck the left side of the president's head. Nearly three weeks later, following a series of dramatic funeral pageants stretching from Washington, D.C., to Springfield, Illinois, Lincoln's body was laid to rest and his place in national memory began in earnest.
An Immediate Context
Some may find it difficult to imagine that Lincoln's contemporaries ...