April 14, 1865: President Lincoln Shot

APRIL 14TH, 1865:  President Lincoln was shot shortly after 10 p.m. while watching "Our American Cousin" at Ford's Theatre.  He died at 7:22 a.m. the next morning.

Rear Admiral Porter, who had departed Hampton Roads on the 14th, learned, when his flagship, the USS Tristram Shandy, put into Baltimore on the morning of the 15th, that the President had been shot.

The admiral immediately went to Washington, D.C., where he learned the President had died.  The reaction of the tough, battle-hardened sea dog to the news expressed the grief of the nation.  Porter, who had bid a merry farewell to Lincoln exactly one week before at City Point, bowed his head a and wept.

--Old B-Runner