President Abraham Lincoln was shot at 9:30 p.m. on Friday, April 14, 1865, at Ford’s Theater. He was moved to a house across the street where he died at 7:22 a.m. on Saturday, April 15. The news bulletins through 2 a.m. reached the New York Herald by telegraph in time to make its first edition, making it the first national report.

Interestingly, the news is still so fresh in the first edition of the April 15 New York Herald that there is still doubt about the assassin. One dispatch describes “the person who fired the pistol” as a “man about thirty years of age, about five feet nine, spare built, fair skin, dark hair, apparently bushy, with a large mustache.”

The very next sentence, however, quotes a witness who identified the shooter. “Laura Keene and the leader of the orchestra declare that they recognized him as J. Wilkes Booth the actor, and a rabid secessionist. Whoever he was, it is plainly evident that he thoroughly understood the theatre and all the approaches and modes of escape to the stage.”

An interior report isn’t so quick to name Booth — “The assassin had not been arrested up to the hour of our latest despatches. Who he is is not positively known, though suspicion points strongly to a certain individual.”

Perhaps the most bloodcurdling report from the Herald‘s first edition was the news of Lincoln’s brain oozing out of the bullet hole in his head.

Historic newspapers are the first drafts of history.  And this fist edition — known as the 2 a.m. edition — of the April 15, 1865 New York Herald is certainly the first draft of a major event, printed just hours after Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theater.

According to Wikipedia, “despite the speech’s prominent place in the history and popular culture of the United States, the exact wording of the speech is disputed. The five known manuscripts of the Gettysburg Address differ in a number of details and also differ from contemporary newspaper reprints of the speech.”

Considering the disputed wording, one would consider contemporary newspaper printings of Lincoln’s speech — similar to the manuscript versions — highly desirable. Rag Linen is fortunate to have one such printing in its collection.

Exactly one week after the dedication of the Soldier’s National Cemetery in Gettysburg, and almost five months after the great battle, the November 26, 1863 Boston Weekly Journal printed Lincoln’s famous words. The issue’s back page is almost entirely reserved for complete printings of Edward Everett’s two-hour oration and Lincoln’s two-minute address. Having the Everett speech in a Boston newspaper is special because he had served as president of Harvard University, Governor of Massachusetts, and U.S. Senator and U.S. Representative for Massachusetts.

Below are images from the back page of the Boston Weekly Journal, including the headlines, introduction and the full printing of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. As you can see, the newspaper indicates that the speech was interrupted five times by applause, including one “long continued applause” followed by “three cheers” at its conclusion.