Description:

Lincoln Abraham

Abraham Lincoln Blood-Stained Large Shirt Fragment from the Night of His Assassination, with Superb Provenance

 

[ABRAHAM LINCOLN], Fragment of Shirt Worn by Abraham Lincoln on Night of His Assassination, April 14, 1865.   Also includes copy of David T. Valentine, comp., Obsequies of Abraham Lincoln, in the City of New York, Under the Auspices of the Common Council (New York: Edmund Jones & Co., 1866), 254 pp., measures 7" x 10.5" given by John Straiton to Henry Spear in 1867. The shirt fragment is pinned to page 120 and measures 1.5" x 10."

 

President Abraham Lincoln was shot shortly after 10:00 p.m. on Friday, April 14, 1865, while attending a play at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. The unconscious president was soon moved across 10th Street to a boarding house owned by William Peterson. There, Lincoln’s coat and shirt were removed, as doctors examined his fatal wound. Too tall for the bed that was available, Lincoln’s body was laid diagonally on the bed. Lincoln died the next morning at 7:22 a.m.

 

Shortly after 9:00 a.m., undertaker Frank T. Sands directed the placement of Lincoln’s body into a temporary coffin, which six young men from the quartermaster’s department carried to the White House. An escort of cavalry escorted the body and were followed by General Christopher C. Augur, commander of the Washington department; General Daniel H. Rucker, depot quartermaster; Colonel Louis H. Pelouze, of the War Department; Captain Finley Anderson, Assistant Adjutant General with General Hancock’s corps; Captain Daniel G. Thomas, fittingly, of the clothing depot; and Captains and assistant quartermasters John H. Crowell and Calvin Baker.

 

Captain Daniel G. Thomas of the clothing depot apparently acquired this fragment of Lincoln’s shirt and later presented it to a friend or acquaintance.

 

There is an incorrect date on this rare fragment, however, neutralizing this is the fact that a cuff from the same shirt acquired by John T. Farnham, a clerk in the Adjutant General’s office, has the same error of April 13th, corrected to April 14th.  The other fragment is inscribed in the same hand as our fragment is, making that mistake consistent.  Our fragment has notable blood stains, mostly visible on the back. 

 

Transcript of Note on Shirt Fragment

Piece of the sleave of the Shirt worn by Abraham Lincoln

at the time he was assassinated at Washington April 13th 1865

Presented by Capt Thomas

 

Daniel G. Thomas (1831-1870) was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He married Josephine Hazard Sherman (1830-1904) in 1854, and they had at least one child. In 1860, he was a merchant in Philadelphia. In August 1861, he moved to Washington, where he was military storekeeper in charge of clothing in the quartermaster’s department. In 1863, he received appointment as an acting assistant quartermaster. After the end of the war in 1865, Thomas supervised the public auction of millions of dollars of excess military clothing that was no longer needed by the army. Because military storekeepers, like chaplains, held rank without command, they were not entitled to brevet promotions. However, Congress changed the law in July 1866 to give military store keepers the “rank, pay, and emoluments of Captains of Cavalry.” In November 1867, Thomas applied to Commanding General Ulysses S. Grant for brevet promotion, but Grant did not approve the request. Thomas served in the clothing depot in Washington until April 1870, when he transferred to Camp Douglas, Utah, where he died in November.

 

John Straiton (1829-1893) was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, and engaged in the tobacco trade. In 1868, he joined the company of Schmitt and Storm, which specialized in making Havana cigars. By 1890, the company manufactured more than one million cigars per week. He served as president of the Scottish Thistle Benevolent Association, created in 1832 to provide assistance to “the deserving poor” and as a director of two banks.

 

Henry Spear (1817-1880) was born in Massachusetts. He was a printer in New York City from at least 1850 to 1876. He moved to Rahway, New Jersey, around 1860. There, he was president of the Owl Club.

 

 

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