The Afterlife of Abraham Lincoln
On April 14, 1865, Abraham Lincoln was shot dead by John Wilkes Booth. The moment of the president’s assassination has been well-preserved in the collective memory of the United States. Many Americans still remember Booth's infamous war cry, “Sic semper tyrannis.” There are innumerable portraits of Lincoln sitting in the upper balcony of Ford's Theatre, frozen in shock at the moment of the fatal pistol shot.
But what image do Americans have of the 16th president—and the nation he left behind—in the moments after the bullet passed through?
In a trove of images held in the Meserve Kunhardt Collection, one of the most interesting themes that emerges is this representation of the final, tangible traces of Lincoln's life in the aftermath of his death. (The photographs, and the family that collected and preserved them, are the subject of Living With Lincoln, a documentary premiering on Monday night on HBO.)
The eight photos provided below help to reveal, in part, a material history of the events that followed Booth's fatal shot. But they also provide an affective history: a record of emotions and
