Assassination of Abraham Lincoln - Chapter 3

<body link="0000ff" alink="ff0000" vlink="000000" bgcolor=000033> <table width="100%" bgcolor=000033> <tr> <td align=center valign=top> <table width=90% bgcolor=ffffff> <tr> <td align=center valign=top> <tr> <td> <div align=center><p><b><font face="arial, helvetica" size=5 color=000000><b>LINCOLN'S ASSASSINATION</p> <p><font size=4>CHAPTER 3 - WARNINGS AND OMENS</font></p> </font> </div> <center> <table width="90%"> <tr> <td align="left" valign="top"> <div align="justify"> <p><font face="arial, helvetica" color="000000" size="3">It wasn’t just letters from others that warned the <a href="http://media.nara.gov/media/images/7/14/07-1348a.gif" target="_blank"><b>President</b></a>.</p> <p>Shortly after his second election, Lincoln told <a href="http://www.mrlincolnswhitehouse.org/templates/display.search.cfm?ID=41" target="_blank"><b>Noah Brooks</b></a> (a Civil War <a href="http://lookinside-images.amazon.com/Qffs+v35leq7cZ2x0bKH/wuAUglHZjwEkLieP3A7aGXrmmOCFvMIOZ3gn7RNKPPY2NzdFP3F0zw=" target="_blank"><b>journalist</b></a>) about an incident that had frightened <a href="http://media.nara.gov/media/images/8/12/08-1173a.gif" target="_blank"><b>Mrs. Lincoln</b></a>. In <i>Recollections of Abraham Lincoln</i>, reported in the July 1865 <a href="http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpcoop/moahtml/title/lists/harp_V31I182.html" target="_blank"><b>issue</b></a> of <i>Harper’s New Monthly Magazine</i> (at pages 224-225), Brooks retold the story using the President’s own words:</p> <blockquote><font face="Times New Roman"><b><i>It was just after my election in 1860, when the news had been coming in thick and fast all day, and there had been a great "Hurrah, boys!” so that I was well tired out, and went home to rest, throwing myself down on a lounge in my chamber. Opposite where I lay was a bureau, with a swinging glass upon it...and, looking in that glass, I saw myself reflected, nearly at full length; but my face, I noticed, had two separate and distinct images, the tip of the nose of one being about three inches from the tip of the other. I was a little bothered, perhaps startled, and got up and looked in the glass, but the illusion vanished. On lying down again, I saw it a second time - plainer, if possible, than before; and then I noticed that one of the faces was a little paler, say five shades, than the other. I got up and the thing melted away, and I went off and, in the excitement of the hour, forgot all about it - nearly, but not quite, for the thing would once in a while come up, and give me a little pang, as though something uncomfortable had happened. When I went home I told my wife about it, and a few days after I tried the experiment again, when [with a laugh], sure enough, the thing came again; but I never succeeded in bringing the ghost back after that, though I once tried very industriously to show it to my wife, who was worried about it somewhat. She thought it was ‘a sign’ that I was to be elected to a second term of office, and that the paleness of one of the faces was an omen that I should not see life through the last term.</b></i></font></blockquote> <p align="justify"><font face="arial, helvetica">Some accounts record that it was the President himself who saw the reflected “ghost” as an omen he would not survive his second term.</p> </div> <p align="center"><font size="2"><a href="abraham_lincoln_ch2.htm">GO TO LAST CHAPTER</a>   <a href="abraham_lincoln_ch1.htm">BACK TO FIRST CHAPTER</a>   <a href="abraham_lincoln_ch4.htm">GO TO NEXT CHAPTER</a></p><br> </font> </td> </tr> </table> </center> </td> </tr> </table> </td> </tr> </table> </body>