149th anniversary of Lincoln's assassination today

[cbdo2007]

I am currently obsessed with the Lincoln assassination and have been for about 5 years now. Anybody want to talk about it? There are a lot of news articles out today spreading mis-information about the assassination, but that seems to be a general observation about media these days. They are much more concerned with speculation than actual historical facts.

[geardaddy]

1. I was obsessed with it as a kid.

I remember going to D.C. with my family when I was six and going to Ford's Theater and then across the street to the boarding house where Lincoln died. I became obsessed with the sight of the dried blood on the pillow on display at Ford's Theater.

[cbdo2007]

3. It's amazing the amount of historical items that survived and are in collections....

the pillow from the Peterson House, all of the clothes Lincoln was wearing, Booth's gun, bullet, knife, boot, etc.....it really brings the history alive when you see these things in person. It was right on the cusp of having photography so we can actually see some of the people and places, etc, yet it was enough in our past to seem like a long time ago.

[Aristus]

2. I find it amusing how many people forget that Lincoln's assassination was part of a conspiracy

instead of a single-shooter event; whereas the Kennedy assassination was a single-shooter event that many people still think was a conspiracy.

I've also always been interested in the many concidental factors in both assassinations.

[cbdo2007]

4. Good point!

It's interesting though how groups of people always think there is MORE to the story.....like even to a lot of people it isn't enough that Booth was involved in a conspiracy, they have to try to attach Secretary Stanton or Jefferson Davis to it as well. Many people always assume there is a bigger conspiracy encompassing all smaller conspiracies.

[geardaddy]

5. My dad was a history major in college

So, he had a lot of history books and one of the ones I loved to leaf through as a kid was about Lincoln complete with text and photos about the conspiracy.