Lincoln lives

Washington, Good Friday, 14 April 1865. The war is five days won. The morning papers announce that President Lincoln and General Grant will attend Ford's Theatre together that evening. By afternoon the Grants have begged off; Julia Grant will not spend an evening with Mary Lincoln, and the couple takes the train north. The War Department's Thomas Eckert, asked next, is refused by Stanton. So the box gets no soldier. Its only guard, a Metropolitan policeman named John Parker with a file full of reprimands, leaves his post at the intermission for a drink. John Wilkes Booth, who has read the same morning papers, walks up the unwatched stairs at ten, and the second term ends before it begins.

In the timeline recorded here, the general reads his wife's face at breakfast and makes her a better offer. One evening of duty, then the train, then no capital city for a year. Julia Grant endures Mary Lincoln for three hours as a soldier's favor. And where Grant goes five days after Appomattox, his escort goes. A cavalry sergeant stands the box stairs by order, relieved hourly, because the general's staff does not do intermissions. Booth climbs the stairs at ten with the morning paper's promise in his head. He meets a man who does not know him from Adam and does not care. What happens next fills two minutes and one cell. What does not happen fills the rest of this page.