Was the pistol John Wilkes Booth used
to shoot Abraham Lincoln
stolen from Ford's
Theatre?
By Wesley Harris, America's Civil War, May 2005
A small pistol lies in a display
case in Ford's Theatre in Washington, identified as the weapon used by John
Wilkes Booth to assassinate President Abraham
Lincoln. But is it the gun
used to kill Lincoln, or a fake
planted during a burglary in the 1960s?
In 1997 a man cleaning out his deceased
mother’s home found some items he suspected were stolen by his brother, an
incarcerated burglar. He called the police, and when they questioned the thief
about the stashed goods, the career criminal startled the officers with an
amazing revelation: Members of his gang had stolen the original Booth pistol
from Ford's Theatre in the late 1960s, replacing it with a replica.
The National Park Service was
notified, and its historical records of the Booth pistol were unable to resolve
the issue of authenticity. Suzanne Kelley, the site manager at Ford's Theatre,
was skeptical of the report, but the jailed burglar insisted his story was
true. "It seemed too fantastic," Kelley said, "but we wanted to
be sure."
In May 1864, Booth had ended his
stage career, and within months he was working actively with the Confederates.
A plan to kidnap President Lincoln
and exchange him for Confederate prisoners of war brought Booth together with
Dr. Samuel Mudd, John Surratt and his mother Mary, Lewis Powell, David Herold,
George Atzerodt and others. An attempt was set for March 17, 1865, but
collapsed when Lincoln changed
his itinerary and did not pass where the conspirators were waiting.
Following that failure, Union troops
captured Richmond, and on April 9, Robert E. Lee reluctantly surrendered his
army. Those setbacks filled the conspirators with a sense of urgency. Booth
decided to assassinate Lincoln.
Powell was to kill Secretary of State William Seward, and Atzerodt's target was
Vice President Andrew Johnson.
On April 14, 1865, Lincoln and his wife, in the
company of Army Major Henry Reed Rathbone and his fiancee, Clara Harris,
attended a Fords Theatre performance of Our American Cousin. At about 10:15
p.m., Booth entered the president's box unchallenged, as the police bodyguard
had slipped away to a nearby saloon.
Booth fired one .41-caliber bullet
into Lincoln's head, mortally
wounding him. The actor dropped the pistol, stabbed Major Rathbone in the arm
with a knife, vaulted over the railing of the box to the stage, and escaped
through the back of the theater to his horse. Though he broke his left leg
during the leap to the stage, Booth made good his getaway.
Lincoln was carried across the street to
William Petersen's boardinghouse. He died early the next morning, April 15,
about nine hours after the assault.
On April 26, Booth and Herold were
surrounded while hiding in a tobacco shed in Port Royal, Va. Herold surrendered
to the Union troops, but Booth held out, and the barn was set on fire. That
failed to force him from the barn, but a shot rang out, and Booth was dragged
from the burning structure with a mortal wound. Sergeant Boston Corbett of the
16th New York Cavalry took credit for the fatal round, but the contention is
disputed.
Atzerodt, Herold, Powell and Mrs.
Surratt were arrested, found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging. Mudd and
two others involved in the original capture plan were sentenced to life in
prison. Edrnan Spangler, who helped hold Booth’s horse during the
assassination, was sentenced to six years hard labor. In 1869 President Andrew
Johnson pardoned the surviving conspirators.
The pistol and the fatal bullet,
removed during an autopsy, remained in storage at the War Department until
1940, when they were offered to the Department of the Interior. In 1956 the
bullet was returned to the Army, and it can be viewed today along with
fragments of Lincoln's skull
at the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington.
The pistol was a silver-inlaid model
produced by Henry Deringer, a Pennsylvania armsmaker. In 1806 Deringer
established a factory in Philadelphia and began manufacturing flintlock
pistols, muskets and then percussion rifles for the U.S. Army. Deringer also
gained renown as a producer of popular percussion pistols.
Deringer pocket pistols, known as
derringers, were small, short-barreled, single-shot percussion weapons. The
barrels ranged from under 1 inch to 4 or more inches in length, and they were
made from chemically browned wrought iron. Partly round and partly octagonal, derringer
barrels were flattened and slotted on top to accept a blade-style front sight,
and their caliber varied from .33 to .51 inches.
A typical derringer had a black
walnut stock with a checkered grip, a checkered hammer thumb piece and an
S-shaped trigger guard. The mountings of the pistol were engraved German silver
or sometimes gold or gold plate. The lockplate and barrel were stamped with the
trademark "Deringer Philadela" and sometimes included an additional
stamping on the top of the barrel indicating an agent's name and address.
Deringer did not use serial numbers, but letters or digits were sometimes
stamped or punched on various parts of the pistol.
Deringer's pocket pistols achieved
their greatest popularity during the mid-1850s among civilians seeking a
compact, easily concealed firearm. To compensate for their single-shot
capacity, derringers were sold as pairs for approximately $22 to $25.
The lack of a standardized caliber
for derringers meant that each pair included a specific bullet mold, and the
loss of the mold precluded the proper fit of ammunition for the set. With its
obvious inadequacy as a military weapon, sales of derringers during the Civil
War were low. Following the death of Henry Deringer in 1868, the market for
pocket pistols opened to competitors eager to apply a breechloading system to a
concealable weapon.
The Lincoln assassination ensured the permanent notoriety of
the Deringer pistol while simultaneously introducing the word
"derringer" into the American lexicon as describing a concealable,
short-barreled, single-shot pistol. Derringer refers to a pocket pistol of any
make, Henry Deringer's included.
On July 28, 1997, an NPS curator and
a U.S. Park Police captain removed the most famous and notorious derringer from
its case at Ford's Theatre and carried the firearm to the Federal Bureau of
Investigation for examination and to determine if it was the same weapon used
to kill Lincoln. To aid
in the analysis, the park service provided technical descriptive materials and
photographs predating the time of the alleged theft.
FBI scientists started with a basic
physical examination that determined the pistol in question was an authentic
Deringer-produced firearm and not a contemporary copy or a modern reproduction.
Casts of the pistol's barrel,
however, revealed that unlike most Deringer-made pocket pistols, this one had
seven grooves that turned in a counterclockwise direction (left twist) rather
than the typical clockwise (right twist). How frequently this rifling pattern
occurred during the production of Deringer's original pocket pistols is
unknown.
The examination of Booth's alleged
weapon revealed a number of imperfections unique to the firearm. The most
obvious was a significant fracture or crack in the forestock that showed evidence
of previous repair. If this was the Booth pistol, perhaps the crack occurred
when the assassin dropped the pistol in the presidential box, or it could have
predated the assassination.
Impression tool marks in the barrel
above the fractured portion of the stock and an S-shaped defect in the metal of
the pistol's barrel were additional unique features found on the Booth
derringer. Variations in the shading and grain of the pistol's black walnut
stock were also noted for comparison purposes.
The examiners requested permission
to examine the lead bullet removed during President Lincoln's autopsy, in order to try and determine if
the bullet had been fired from the pistol in question, but the bullet had
corroded with the passage of time and was too oxidized for an accurate
ballistics comparison. Because of the age and historical value of the derringer
- if it was the Booth pistol - no attempt was made to test-fire the weapon for
fear of damaging it. Analysis of the bullet, therefore, could not answer the
question of authenticity of the pistol.
Vintage photographs, however, solved
the mystery. Photographic superimpositions using the display pistol and images
dating from the 1930s showed similar features. Much as if they were comparing
fingerprints, the FBI examiners matched up unique identifying characteristics,
including swirl patterns in the wood grain, damage to the stock and pit marks
on the barrel. All the pistol's unique marks and flaws matched the historical
photographs submitted by the National Park Service for comparison. The FBI
concluded beyond a reasonable doubt that the derringer displayed at Ford's
Theatre was the same pistol photographed during the 1930s, eliminating the
possibility that the pistol had been stolen from the theater and replaced with a
replica during the 1960s.
Suzanne Kelley was relieved that the
authentic Booth pistol was still in the possession of the National Park
Service. Without revealing any secrets about Ford's Theatre security, Kelley
said the historic site has a state-of-the-art system. "We have it
all," she said. "I don't lose any sleep over the security of our
artifacts." In addition, Kelley believes that visitors to the famous
theatre help deter thefts. Many Americans consider Washington landmarks sacred
places, according to Kelley, and most would not hesitate to report any activity
that might deface the structures.
Deringer-made pocket pistols like
the one used by John Wilkes Booth were normally sold in matched pairs. Was the
one used by Booth to kill Lincoln
one of such a pair? If so, what became of its mate? Perhaps one day the FBI
will be called upon to examine a second pistol to determine if it is the mate
to a weapon that changed the course of America.
Note: Comment from Jim Paldan, 6/16/14: "I read the May 2005 article on John Wilkes Booth Derringer. The last paragraph asked about the whereabouts of the second gun as they were sold in pairs. Well, Wane State University (Detroit, MI) has it locked up in its vault. It's a part of a Civil War special collection."
