Printed and Manuscript Americana

No date, ca. 1880s-1900s. Two ruled sheets, 8 x 5 1/8 in. (203 x 130 mm). Autograph document in the hand of Dr. Charles A. Leale, with a small doodle of a figure representing John Wilkes Booth at bottom. Creasing from old folds.

Rare autograph notes recounting President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, by Dr. Charles A. Leale, the first doctor to aid the mortally wounded President at Ford's Theatre the night of April 14, 1865.

Reads in full: "Brief Appearance of Mr. L. as he entered the theatre As he paced to the box Enthusiastic reception by audience Describe the usher opening the door closing it after they all had entered Mr. L. Mrs. L. Major Rathbone and Miss Harris Usher then closing the door and taking a seat for himself First saw J. Wilks Booth endeavoring to persuade
the usher to let him in creating considerable confusion saw him go in the box close the door, when all was quiet for a brief space of time Report of a pistol I heard supposed it was a sensational part of the play but soon saw Booth in mid air--fall upon the stage (doodle) heard cries etc. It took some seconds to remove the inside fastenings on the door of the box I was the first to enter the box Describe the position of occupants especially Mr. L Low high backed arm chair Mrs. L's request Taft and King soon coming in".

Charles A. Leale (1842-1932) was 23 years old the night of President Lincoln's assassination. An Assistant Surgeon in the U.S. Army Volunteers, he had received his medical degree only six weeks earlier from Bellevue Hospital Medical College in New York City, and was then assigned to duty as the surgeon in charge of the Wounded Commissioned Officers’ Ward at the General Hospital at Armory Square in Washington, D.C. Having read that the President was likely to attend, Leale bought tickets for the April 14 production of Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre. According to testimony given by Leale after the shooting, he had been seated less than 40 feet from the Presidential box, and had witnessed President Lincoln's arrival, accompanied by his wife Mary Todd and Major Henry Rathbone and his guest. At about half past ten Leale heard a gunshot and screaming and then saw assassin John Wilkes Booth, with dagger in hand, leap from the Presidential box onto the stage, where he then made a quick exit. Answering pleas for a doctor, Leale rushed to the Presidential box where he was the first person to aid the mortally wounded president. He found Lincoln unresponsive in his chair with labored breathing. Placing him in a recumbent position, Leale searched Lincoln's body for what he at first thought was a knife wound. He soon discovered a bullet hole in the back of Lincoln's head, and upon dislodging a blood clot, noticed that the President's breathing improved. Despite this, he understood Lincoln's wound to be fatal.

Leale was soon joined in the box by Dr. Charles S. Taft and Dr. Albert F.A. King. They determined that the president would not survive a carriage ride back to the White House, and agreed that he should be removed immediately to the nearest house. With the aid of others, the three men carried the president out of the theater and across the crowded street to the home of William A. Peterson. Placing him diagonally on a bed in a back room, the men stripped the president of his clothes and retrieved water and blankets to keep him comfortable. Shortly after, the President's family physician, Dr. R.K. Stone, and Surgeon General Henry H. Crane arrived. Taking charge of the situation, Stone, along with Leale and company, monitored the president's pulse and breathing throughout the night, while probing the wound for the bullet, and removing coagula to help sustain the President's breathing. Throughout the night and into the morning Leale remained at the President's beside and held his right wrist to monitor his pulse, until 7:20 when the President succumbed to his wound. Due to Leale's quick action and medical care, the President survived for another ten hours into the morning of April 15.

Only hours after the passing of the president, Leale sat down and penned an account of his actions that night for the Surgeon General. Two years later, in 1867, he wrote another account for a congressional committee, largely copied from his original report, but containing some minor changes. In the years that followed, Leale rarely spoke about the night's events, and only publicly discussed it for the first time 44 years later in 1909 during the centennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, after a request from the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States. 

According to Helena Iles Papaioannou and Daniel W. Stowell there are seven extant accounts by Leale of his experience. Five date to 1865, four being copies of his first report (two at the National Archives and two at the New York Public Library), each in a clerical hand (the original report in Leale's hand has not been located), and one letter by Leale, dated May of 1865, to physician Dwight Dudley (in the Shapell Collection). One is from 1867, addressed to Representative Benjamin F. Butler, chair of a committee in the United States House of Representatives investigating Lincoln’s assassination (in the Library of Congress). The last is from 1909, the aforementioned speech given to the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States (published in Harper's Weekly and separately as Lincoln's Last Hours).

As the above notes attest, decades after the assassination Leale was still recording the events of that night to keep them fresh in his mind, such was the magnitude of them that would loom over him for the remainder of his life, and to keep for posterity the details of his actions in aiding the mortally wounded president.