[The following is part of a contemporary account of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, written by Peter Doyle, who was present for the event.]
There is a scene in the play representing a modern parlor, in which two unprecedented English ladies are informed by the unprecedented and impossible Yankee that he is not a man of fortune, and therefore undesirable for marriage-catching purposes; after which, the comments being finished, the dramatic trio make exit, leaving the stage clear for a moment.
There was a pause, a hush as it were. At this period came the murder of Abraham Lincoln.
Great as that was, with all its manifold train, circling round it, and stretching into the future for many a century, in the politics, history, art, of the New World, in point of fact the main thing, the actual murder, transpired with a quiet and simplicity of any commonest occurrence – the bursting of a bud or pod in the growth of vegetation, for instance. Through the general hum following the stage pause, the change of positions, came the muffled sound of a pistol shot, which not one hundredth part of the audience heard at the time – and yet a moment’s hush – somehow, surely a vague startled thrill – and then, through the ornamented, draperied, starred and striped space-way of the President’s box, a sudden figure, a man raises himself with hands and feet, stands a moment on the railing, leaps below to the stage (a distance of perhaps fourteen or fifteen feet) falls out of position, catching his boot-heel in the copious drapery (the American flag), falls on one knee, quickly recovers himself, rises as if nothing had happened (he really sprains his ankle, but unfelt then) – and so the figure, Booth, the murderer, with a head full of glossy, raven hair, and his eyes like some mad animal’s flashing with light and resolution, yet with a certain strange calmness, holds aloft in one hand a large knife – walks along not much back from the footlights – turns fully toward the audience his face of statuesque beauty, lit by those basilisk eyes, flashing with desperation, perhaps insanity – launches out in a firm and steady voice the words, Sic semper tyrannis [the motto of Virginia, which means “thus always to tyrants”] – and then walks with neither slow nor very rapid pace diagonally across to the back of the stage, and disappears…
Source:
Stephens, John Richard. “Eyewitness Reports.” Weird History 101: Tales of Intrigue, Mayhem, and Outrageous Behavior. New York: Barnes & Noble, 2006. 31. Print.
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