Yesterday in La Crosse
The Lincoln assassination on this date, Good Friday, 1865
On this date in 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was fatally shot while attending a play at Ford’s Theater in Washington…less than a week after the end of the Civil War. Secretary of State William Seward was stabbed and wounded as part of the conspiracy, along with others in his home. The Wisconsin State Journal in Madison wrongly reported on the 15th that both Lincoln and Seward had died, saying ‘Both are gone.’ Seward lived for another seven years, and is remembered today for arranging the purchase of Alaska.
William Tenney of Viola, Wisconsin was among the witnesses to Lincoln’s murder. Tenney was 7 years old, and claimed he saw the president slump in his seat, followed by John Wilkes Booth leaping from the presidential box to the stage. As an old man, Tenney recalled that people in Viola had not heard about the shooting until his family returned from Washington.
The last surviving witness to the assassination, Samuel Seymour, was 5 on the night of the shooting. Shortly before he died in 1956, Seymour told his story on TV, on the game show ‘I’ve Got a Secret,’ saying he was ‘scared to death’ when Booth fell to the stage, not realizing Lincoln had been shot.
La Crosse’s current Lincoln Middle School was built in 1923…nearly 60 years after the Lincoln assassination.