The Chicago History Museum (which was previously the Chicago Historical Society) has a number of fascinating sources online for the viewer. This booklet, Wet With Blood, is one of them.

"Being a full and graphic account from a reliable authority of the BLOODY EVIDENCE of PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S assassination, including sketches of all principal characters in any way connected with the lamented event and other items of FACT and INTRIGUE not to be found in any other work of the kind. Full of illustrative engravings. Published by the Chicago Historical Society & Northwestern University, price 50 cents."

Prologue

"One of the most powerful artifacts in the Chicago Historial Society's collection is a cloak allegedly worn by Mary Todd Lincoln on the evening her husband Abraham was assassinated in April, 1865."

"Mary purportedly gave the cloak to Elizabeth Keckly, a former slave and personal confidante, who swore that it was 'wet with blood' on the fateful night."

"Join a collaborative team of historians and scientists exploring the mysteries of the cloak ..."

"America was suffused in blood in April 1865. The first presidential assassination stunned the nation just five days after the end of the Civil War, the deadliest conflict in American history..."

"The public obsession with Lincoln's murder continued in the wake of the Civil War. Charles Gunther, a Chicago confectioner and politician, purchased Mary Todd Lincoln's cloak and other Lincoln relics for his popular Libby Prison Civil War Museum in the 1890's. Typical of early museum collectors, he gathered a hodgepodge of relics, both genuine and sham. Gunther's holdings became the cornerstone of the Chicago Historical Society's collection of twenty million artifacts and archival records documenting American and Chicago history."

Read the rest of the booklet online and take a tour of the Textile Conservation Laboratory's effort to document the authenticity of the cloak.

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