hat a box had been taken for the President that
evening. He engaged a fleet horse for a saddle-ride in the afternoon,
and left it at a convenient place. In the evening he rode to the
theatre, and, leaving the animal in charge of an accomplice, entered the
house. Making his way to the door of the President's box, and taking a
small Derringer pistol in one hand and a double-edged dagger in the
other, he thrust his arm into the entrance, where the President, sitting
in an arm-chair, presented to his view the back and side of his head. A
flash, a sharp report, a puff of smoke, and the fatal bullet had entered
the President's brain.

Major Rathbone, who occupied a seat in the President's box, testifies
that he was sitting with his back toward the door, when he heard the
discharge of a pistol behind him, and looking around saw through the
smoke a man between the door and the President. Major Rathbone instantly
sprang toward him and seized him; the man wrested himself from his
grasp, and made a violent thrust at the Major's breast with a large
knife. The Major parried the blow by striking it up, and received a
wound in his left arm. The man rushed to the front of the box, and the
Major endeavored to seize him again, but only caught his clothes as he
was leaping over the railing of the box. Major Rathbone then turned to
the President. His position was not changed; his head was slightly bent
forward, and his eyes were closed.

As soon as the surgeons who had been summoned completed their hasty
examination, the unconscious form of the President was borne from the
theatre to a house across the street, and laid upon his death-bed.
Around him were gathered Surgeon-General Barnes, Vice-President Johnson,
Senator Sumner, Secretaries Stanton and Welles, Generals Halleck and
Meigs, Attorney-General Speed, Postmaster-General Dennison, Mr.
McCulloch, Speaker Colfax, and other intimate friends who had been
hastily summoned. Mrs. Lincoln sat in an adjoining room, prostrate and
overwhelmed, with her son Robert. The examination of the surgeons had
left no room for hope. The watchers remained through the night by the
bedside of the stricken man, who showed no signs of consciousness; and a
little after seven o'clock in the morning--Saturday the 15th of
April--he breathed his last.

A vivid account of the death-bed scene, together with particulars of the
attacks upon Secretary Seward and his son Frederick a half-hour later
than the attack upo