On Good Friday, April 14, 1865, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, decided to attend a performance of the play, Our American Cousin, later that evening, at Ford’s Theater. The Lincolns invited several people to accompany them, including General Ulysses S. Grant and his wife, but all of them declined for various reasons. Mrs. Lincoln finally invited Major Rathbone and Clara Harris, and they accepted. The young couple had recently become engaged. Although technically, brother and sister, they were not related by blood. During the play, John Wilkes Booth, surreptitiously entered the Presidential Box, and shot Lincoln with a Deringer pistol. Rathbone grappled with the assassin, and was severely wounded by Booth, who also wielded a large dagger. After stabbing Rathbone in the arm and slashing at his head, the assassin leapt from the box onto the stage and cried out “Sic semper tyrannis,” and escaped. The dying Lincoln was taken across the street to the Petersen House, where Clara Harris remained with Mrs. Lincoln during her vigil, which lasted through the night. Rathbone recovered from his wounds, and married Clara Harris on July 11, 1867. They had three children. In 1882, Rathbone was appointed U.S. Consul to Hannover, Germany, and his family accompanied him there. For some time there had been signs of mental instability in Rathbone, which culminated in him murdering his wife, Clara, on December 23, 1883. Henry Rathbone spent the rest of his life in the asylum for the criminally insane in Hildesheim, Germany. TLS signed “H. R. Rathbone,” one page both sides, 7.75 x 9.75, War Department, Adjutant General’s Office letterhead, May 21, 1864. Letter to a New York Army recruiter who writes seeking reimbursement for expenses. In part, “I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your communication…requesting to be informed where to make application for the payment of a claim for the reimbursement of monies alleged to have been expended by you while raising your regiment in 1861…I am directed by the Adjt. General of the Army to inform you that all expenses of recruiting, subsisting and equipping the regiments of Volunteers from the State of New York…were to be paid for by the State, out of the three million dollars appropriated by an act passed by the State Legislature, April 16, 1861, for that purpose.” Several mailing folds, slight separation to one fold and a light shade of toning, otherwise fine condition. R&R COA.
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