How Abraham Lincoln died is no mystery, but what did his autopsy report say about his
assassination's effects on the men who conducted it, and the country?
Keep watching for the details.
On April 14, 1865 — just days after the surrender of Confederate General Robert E.
Lee — Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth
while the president and his wife attended the comedic play "Our American Cousin."
Booth, himself a famous stage actor at the time, entered the box where the Lincolns and
their guests were seated and waited for a moment in the play he knew would elicit a
big laugh.
At that point, he burst through the box's inner door and shot Lincoln in the back of
his head with a .44 caliber derringer pistol.
He slashed one of Lincoln's guests with a knife and then jumped onto the stage, where
he yelled either "The South is avenged!"
or…
"Sic semper tyrannis!"
…which is Latin for "thus always to tyrants," and the state motto of Virginia.
It's a phrase that has long been associated with another famous assassination, that of
Julius Caesar.
The shooting occurred at some point between 10 and 10:30 p.m., according to documents
obtained by the Shapell Manuscript Foundation.
Booth escaped from the theater, and the 26-year-old actor would not be located by federal troops
until 12 days later; he died in the ensuing standoff.
Lincoln, meanwhile, immediately fell unconscious and paralyzed in the theater.
An army surgeon, Charles Leale, ran to treat Lincoln and surmised that the wounds were
likely fatal.
The president was carried to a nearby boarding house and observed throughout the night by
Dr. Robert King Stone, Lincoln's personal doctor.
Stone recorded the change in Lincoln's appearance throughout the night.
When Stone arrived, Lincoln was breathing softly, and he hoped that this might mean
his wounds were not mortal, but his respiration soon became more labored.
Stone noticed that Lincoln's right eye was surrounded by discoloration, and the pupil
itself was dilated, while the left eye appeared normal.
Throughout the night, however, the left pupil grew, and by the time of Lincoln's death,
both pupils were equally enlarged.
At one point, Stone made an unsuccessful attempt to locate the bullet by probing the wound,
potentially causing Lincoln more harm in the process.
Eventually, Stone concluded, "all aid was useless in a wound of this character."
After a long night, Lincoln was pronounced dead at 7:22 a.m. on April 15.
Lincoln's autopsy was performed at the White House by Army Surgeons Edward Curtis and Joseph
Woodward, with Surgeon General Joseph K. Barnes also in attendance, according to the U.S.
National Library of Medicine.
In a letter to his mother, Curtis wrote that Lincoln's body was placed on boards and covered
with sheets and towels.
He and Woodward began by removing the top of Lincoln's skull to trace the path of the
bullet that killed him.
They didn't locate it until they removed Lincoln's brain, at which point the bullet fell out
into a china platter below his head.
Curtis wrote:
"There it lay upon the white china, a little black mass no bigger than the end of my finger
— dull, motionless and harmless, yet the cause of such mighty changes in the world's
history as we may perhaps never realize."
In Woodward's autopsy report, the doctor noted that the bullet entered through the occipital
bone, about one inch left of center and just above the left lateral sinus, according to
the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
The bullet lodged in the white matter of the cerebrum, according to the report, damaging
the left lateral ventricle in the process and filling the brain with blood.
The track of the bullet was found littered with clotted blood and bone fragments, according
to the autopsy, as well as fragments of the bullet itself.
Externally, the area around Lincoln's eyes were discolored, and his eyes themselves were
slightly bulging, which was the result of the build-up of blood in this area.
When Curtis washed and weighed the brain, he found that it was of ordinary size and
weight, apart from the sections damaged in the shooting.
In addition to performing the autopsy, the doctors also cut off a lock of Lincoln's hair
at the request of his widow, Mary Todd Lincoln.
The embalmer then prepared Lincoln's body for its public viewing.
His body would be on display in an open coffin in the White House, the Capitol, and across
the country on a 13-day train journey.
Reportedly, millions of Americans traveled to a point on the route to pay their respects.
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