(ABRAHAM LINCOLN ASSASSINATION). AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED ("LAURA J. MORGAN"), TO WILLIAM H. THURSTON, 15 APRIL 1865

Four pages (5 x 8 in.; 126 x 203 mm), 15 April 1865; old folds, some toning and spotting or soiling.

A moving letter from a young woman to her fiance touching upon the assassination of President Lincoln: "All the church bells are tolling and all the flags are half-mast, mourning the sudden death of the President. This sad intelligence has thrown darkness over the glory of yesterday...This horrible affair transpired in a theatre. If ’tis true I don’t think a theatre was the place in which the President ought to have been found, if he had been noble and good as Gen Washington was, he would have been at home on his knees thanking God for what has been achieved by his armies during the last week. ’Tis perfectly awful that such an act should be perpetrated after the closing of the war, and that too in the north..."

On 18 April, Thurston responded that he considered Booth a “cowardly ruffian” and his assassination of the President made him feel like “exterminating every Rebel in the South.”