Tears for Abraham Lincoln

But, how was the play, Mrs Lincoln?

Suddenly that is simply not funny. Not when one is at Ford's Theatre.

The assassination of Abraham Lincoln is one of those vile tragedies which galls people today almost as much as it appalled them 151 years ago.

Today the place where he was killed having a nice night out with his wife, a civilized evening of good theatre, is a strange Washington shrine.

It was in the Ford's Theatre that actor John Wilkes Booth did the heinous act on April 14, 1865. Oh, what a piece of hideous theatre did he perform.

Lincoln, a cultured man for whom theatre was one of life’s joys, was escaping from the immense stress which the American Civil War had placed upon him.

He had done his best to give guidance and support to a conflict which clearly caused him pain - a battle between fellow countrymen over not just constitutional imperative but the institution of slavery. There is a lot of complex politics betwixt and between the drivers of this most awful of all wars and I am not the person to articulate them all in the space of a mere travel blog. Historians and a vast realm of Civil War experts have analysed and documented this context for the past 150 years. There are enough books on the Civil War to fill a library. All I have to add, in the great scheme of things, is my tears. All wars are unconscionable. This most heartbreakingly so.

However, there were heroes in this war and above all, there was Abraham Lincoln and his clear-eyed view of how things should be. So, as this awful war rode into its fourth year of bloodshed and privation, seeing the writing on the wall and having the opposing generals in his purview, he was to recommend that the end, when it came, be dignified.

This he decreed just two weeks before his death, as the war was approaching its end. He barely survived the formal end of the war.

The South was still swarming with raggle taggle soldiers finding their way home.

The Ford Theatre is not prepossessing from the outside. It is pretty bland. The historic entrance is extremely understated.

And we can’t see inside the auditorium on the steamy, hot day we visit because it is still a working theatre and a new production is in rehearsal.

We are directed downstairs to the museum

which tells the story of Lincoln and his assassination.

But first we must have tickets to gain access.

The tickets are free but you have to have one.

The museum is run by America’s National Park Service and so, oddly, it is manned by rangers.

This is a superbly designed narrative museum.

The stories of the conspirators are clearly told and compartmentalised but linked together as one moves around.

The lighting is masterful, some of it atmospheric, some aesthetic and come conservationist. There are life-sized models of the people of the day so one can put oneself among them, or away from them as the sentiment dictates.

The profile of Lincoln is clearly presented. Even the play he was attending, Our American Cousin.

And, oh my heavens, there is the gun which killed him. Just sitting there behind a piece of glass. The actual gun. It seems so small.

And, oh, there in that dark display case are the very clothes he was wearing.

And a blood stained pillow.

I did not expect to see this.

It is desperately immediate. Intimate.

Here too are Mrs Lincoln’s opera glasses and the bunting which draped the Lincolns’ box in the theatre. There is the rip in the bunting where the athletic Booth caught his spur while leaping down to the stage, causing him to fall badly and break his leg.

And here is Arthur Doyle, a park ranger guide who is one of the world’s great experts in this tragedy. He answers our questions and adds immense depth to the story.

They carried Lincoln across the road for treatment.

Our free tickets also include admission to this place.

We trot over the road into the Peterson House where, amid all the drama and panic of the day, the paralysed president was laid upon the bed in a back bedroom.

But Lincoln had been shot in the back of the head.

He could not be saved.

The house has never been the same. It is another shrine, another museum run by the National Park Service and it, too,

has well-informed rangers giving life and colour to the history.

We encounter a particularly vivid story-teller, a park ranger with theatrical flair. He regales us with tales of the terrible fates of all those involved. Booth had a Dr. Mudd set his leg and went on the run but was shot a week or so later. Everyone touched by the assassination seemed to go mad or come to some awful end according to the ranger.

The Peterson house has three floors and we toddle around all of them looking at yet more well-presented documentation and exhibits.

Perhaps the most spectacular display is the most current. It grows pretty much by the day.

In the Peterson house they have arrayed it as a massive spiral rising over all three floors; all of the books written about Abraham Lincoln. Thousands of them. Towering metres of them. The New York Times estimated 15,000 books to have been written about the 16th President. And the output shows no sign of stopping.