The Fathers and Saviors of Our Country: A Presidential Sale

25 x 17 1/2 in. (visible area) printed newspaper with mourning borders. (Old folds, few small tears near and folds, visible repairs verso.) Contemporary wood frame (unexamined out of frame).

"AWFUL CRIME!! MURDER OF THE PRESIDENT. MR. SEWARD STABBED! HIS TWO SONS MORTALLY INJURED." Edwin Stanton remarks that Stanton's wounds will soon be fatal.

At 10:10 p.m. on 14 April 1865, a knock was heard at the door of Secretary of State William Seward, then recovering at home from a carriage accident. Unbeknownst to Seward or to his maître d' William Bell, at that moment John Wilkes Booth was creeping into the presidential box at Ford's Theatre with a Derringer pistol clenched tightly in one hand. Upon opening the door, Bell was greeted by a tall man in a tan hat and a long coat who claimed to have medicine for Seward but insisted that he be allowed inside to show him how to use it. The tall man, whose name was Lewis Powell, was escorted inside.

Powell made his way up to Seward's third-floor bedroom but was stopped at the door by Seward's son, Frederick, who became suspicious upon hearing Powell's story and refused him entry. At that moment, Seward's daughter Fanny walked out of the room to tell her brother that their father was awake. Realizing that his target was just on the other side of the door, Powell suddenly removed a revolver from his coat, aimed at Frederick's forehead, and pulled the trigger. The gun misfired, however, and so Seward proceeded to bludgeon Frederick into unconsciousness with it instead before pushing past Fanny and into Seward's room, where he leapt upon the Secretary's bed with a long knife in hand.

Again and again, Powell brought the knife down, but the brace Seward wore around his neck protected him from the most severe blows. Seward's son, Augustus, and Sergeant George F. Robinson rushed into the room and pulled Powell off the bed, receiving multiple stab wounds from the frenzied would-be assassin as they did. Powell eventually broke free and rushed out of the house, stabbing a State Department messenger as he did, shouting, "I'm mad! I'm mad!" By then, Powell's escort, David Herold, had become frightened by the screams coming from the house and taken off to rendezvous with Booth in Maryland.

Powell wandered the streets for three days before eventually making his way back to Mary Surratt's boarding house; unfortunately for both of them, he arrived just as Mary Surratt was being interrogated by members of the Metropolitan Police Department. Both were taken into custody, and both were eventually tried for their roles in the assassination conspiracy. Seward recovered from his wounds and continued to serve as Secretary of State under Lincoln's successor, Andrew Johnson.

Other notable mentions include a front-page list of Pennsylvania prisoners at Andersonville and an advertisement for mourning badges sold less than 12 hours after Lincoln's death.