The copper country evening news. [volume] (Calumet, Mich.) 18??-1907, 1897-06-23
SAW LINCOLN KILLED
. MAN WHO WAS AT FORD'S THEA
TER ON THE FATAL NIGHT.
q ~. Lewis Was In the Gallery When He
Heard the Shot Fired and Saw the Pres
dents Head Drop He Also Saw the
rir.t Shot In the War.

,rn correspondent asking III The Sun had
no,er heard of or from any body who at
.ordcd the theater i'm Washington on the
.,,bt that Abraham Lincoln was shot be-
e,Scs those who became moro or less well
tnovn bv their connection with the Incl
dents Of that night"
Tho sun has received several letters from
,orsons who were in Ford thoater on the
r,oht of Lincoln s assassination or know of
atbors who were there. One of these let
,rs said that Henry w. Lewis of 81 VOL
,ott street, Brooklyn, witnessed the muir
dor Of the president. A sun reporter went
20 SEQ MIR. Lewis. MIR. Lewis is GO years
old and somewhat feeble in health, but has
a vigorous memory. He recalls with lively
interest the occurrences in Ford theator
ON the night of April il, 1865 In his
vopnner days Mr. Lewis used TO be a sea-
man. BY the time he was 90 years old he
hod been around the world. He saw the
cold rush to California and that to Aus
trolia. which country he visited in 1850.
In the latter part Of the civil war Mr..
Lewis was employed on the government
transport Constitution, which Piled be-
.,-oen Washington and the Army of the
Potomac in Virginia.
On April II tho Constitution reached
Washington from City Point, where she
had delivered a cargo Of bread for the
army. She brought back part of the Ninth
corus to Washington. When she reached
town. the members OF the crow read that
lincoln and Grant would attend Ford S
tbeater that night
al had often seen Lincoln" said Mr..
Lewis, "but had never seen Grant, and l
proposed TO several Of my mates to go to
fine theater to see Grant and the play, Oar
American Cousin. We arrived at the
tbeatcr Just before the performance was to
begin. There were no seats TO be had, and
we passed in on admission prices and stood
up behind the seats in the upper gallery.
Wewatched the incidents of the night ca
'eerly, and in the third act of the play heard
the pistol shot that Booth fired.
"Instantly there was much confusion.
l think the excitement in the gallery was
as great us that in the other parts of the
theator of which so much has been writ
ten. There was great commotion and
great Craning Of necks. l remember dis
tinctly seeing Lincoln's head drop to his
arm He Was unconscious, of course, and
no one had yet reached him. | also saw
Booth jump to the stage and sink to the
floor on one knee. We could tell that he
was saying something just before he drag
ged himself off the stage. The noise in
the place was that Of u roar by this time.
Those in the gallery were on their feet,
and we could see no more A stampede
began, such as l suppose occurs at time
of fire in theater. To this day do not
know how l reached the street.. / have
absolutely no recollection about it and
never had. My mates also did not remcm-
Der how they got out. All we knew was
that we were swept out of the place and
found the street thronged. 1t was a sad
night and we were late in reaching our
quarters.
"CUriously enough, in all my work and
on what few journeys have made since, /
have never met a man and never heard of
one except the officials who were in Ford's
theater on that night. Instead of there
being 900 persons present, as The Suns
correspondent suggested, there must have
been $500. There was standing room
only, and it is strange that so few of those
present have been heard from. For years
the incidents of that night came to me
with sense of horror. 1t was a long
time before l could shake 1t off.
Mr.. Lewis has another reminiscence that
his friends have always liked to hear him
tell. He saw tho first shot fired at the out
break of the civil war. 1t was in Charles
ton harbor on April IL, 1861, but he
says it was not at Fort Sumter. 1t was at
the coaster Nashville at 80 o'clock in the
morning. Mr.. Lewis was the lookout on
the Nashville. The Union fleet, consisting
Of the transport Baltic and the warships
Pawnee, Pocahontas and Harriet Lane,
had left New York before the Nashville,
but the Nashville passed them and arrived
OIL the bar of Charleston harbor first. The
Nashville, which belonged to line run
ming boats between Charleston and New
York regularly, and had carried arms and
ammunition to tho southerners, resembled
The Harriet Lane in her size and rig, and
when she approached the bar the southern
ers thought she was tho Harriet Lane.
Ihey had been warned that the Harriet
Lane was coming down. The famous bat
terry on Morris island threw a shot at the
Nashville on this superstition, and this
opened the hostilities in Charleston harbor.
The shot fell half a mile from the Nash
Vllie' 1t was followed by another, which
came within quarter of mile of the YES
sci captain Murray, who commanded the
Nashville, gave orders Mt once to retire
from the bar. TO have gone in would have
peen certain destruction.
AS the Nashville was leaving the bar
tne Harriet Lano hove in sight Captain
murray didn't want the captain of the
lane TO examine his papers, and no shout
ca TO his chief engineer, named Hood, to
shake her up" The cal tain of the Lane
saw what was going q; and fred Il blank
shot as warming 10 Ap The Nashville
went on. The Harriet ono su ung around
DrO0U sill - as. y 4 y .t,,