A curator held the pistol in the palm of her hand, the steel and brass engravings along the wooden handle muted under the dim lighting of Ford’s Theatre’s Center for Education and Leadership.
A mere eight ounces, it had been stored in a box among layers of tissue paper. Now the weapon used to assassinate a president was being readied for display to commemorate an event that both shattered and united a nation divided by civil war.
The Deringer used by John Wilkes Booth, along with other artifacts from the night Abraham Lincoln was shot, were brought to the center Tuesday in preparation for an exhibit this month to mark the 150th anniversary of the president’s last day.
Laura Anderson, with the National Park Service, was joined by other curators who helped set up an installation on a red wall, where the pistol will be showcased on a mount.
On the night of April 14, 1865, Booth sneaked into the presidential box at Ford's Theatre, on 10th Street NW, and fired the .44-caliber pistol at the president's head from less than a foot away. He leapt from the box, and then he fled. The gun was later found on the floor.
“He chose the gun that was a single-shot,” said Jenny Anzelmo-Sarles, a spokeswoman for the Park Service. “He fled by leaping onto the stage. He was an actor, very ornate.”
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A man at the theater that night told a reporter about the Deringer. Lawrence Gobright, a Washington correspondent for the Associated Press, then handed it over to the Metropolitan Police. It remained in the possession of the War Department until it was acquired by the Park Service in 1940.
Though many details of the night’s events remain unknown, a letter that will be displayed in the exhibit gives a glimpse of the hours leading up to Lincoln’s death the next morning.
Charles Leale, the doctor who treated the president that night, scribbled in cursive on two pieces of 8.5-by-11-inch paper, folded and stacked. He wrote in columns, to get the most use out of the paper, which was at a premium during the Civil War, said Heather Hoagland, a museum assistant with the Ford’s Theatre Society.
Leale, just six weeks out of medical school and working as a doctor for the Union Army, had a ticket for that night’s performance of the play “Our American Cousin.” But Leale was really there to see Lincoln, Hoagland said. He had seen Lincoln speak at the White House. Seated near the president’s box, he would be the first doctor to attend to Lincoln after he was shot.
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“He didn’t know he would later be holding his hand as he died,” Hoagland said.
About six weeks later, during the trial of the conspirators in the assassination, Leale, 26, sent the letter to a medical school friend, Dudley, describing what had happened.
Leale had “heard the report of the pistol,” he wrote, and rushed to where the president was seated.
"I immediately ran to the box and there saw the President sitting in the arm chair with his head thrown back on one side was Mrs. L. and on the other Miss Harris. ... While going towards him I sent one for Brandy and another for Water, then told Mrs. L. that I was a surgeon. When she asked me to do what I could he was then in a profound Coma, pulse could not be felt, eyes closed, stertorous [labored] breathing. I immediately with assistance placed him in a recumbent position on the floor."
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Leale had Lincoln carried across 10th Street to the Petersen House, now a museum maintained by the Park Service. The president died there the next morning.
The words “Important Papers. Keep This.” appear to be written on the letter’s envelope. But Hoagland said that, based on the handwriting on the letter, Leale didn’t write that note.
The exhibit will run from March 23 to May 25, and Ford’s Theatre will hold an overnight candlelight vigil April 14 and 15.
Among other artifacts that will be displayed are the top hat that Lincoln wore to the theater, the bloody cuff of Laura Keene, the leading actress of "Our American Cousin," and the contents of Lincoln's pockets.
Handling the Deringer 150 years later, Anderson said she could feel the heft and great moment of the pocket-size pistol.
"For a lot of people, it can be seen as ... a shift in history," she said. "You think, 'What would have happened if Lincoln had lived?' "
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