Abraham Lincoln's Ascension Into Heaven and The Bow of The Assassin

Chapter One

April 14th, 1865

10:17 P.M., The Presidential Box Ford’s Theater, Washington City, USA

Bright lightning exploding in his eyes, and a crackling thunder jolting his head, United States President Abraham Lincoln furiously flung himself backward in the rocking chair.

Right next to him, the sharp pistol blast shocked Mary Todd Lincoln to her feet. Snapping her head left toward her husband, she saw him rock violently backward, then forward and back again, to where he stopped. Seeing her spouse sitting in the chair with his head slumped forward, she placed her hand on his chest and screamed.

Pandemonium blew across the theater. A wild knife fight erupted in the presidential box. A short little man stumbled onto the stage waving a bloody dagger. Shrieks and shouts burst from hundreds of seats.

At the same time, for Abraham Lincoln, the long war ended. He sat peacefully in his rocking chair.

Chapter Two

10:18 P.M.

Like most everyone else watching the play at Ford’s Theater that night, the doctor at first thought it all part of the play . Nevertheless, Our American Cousin told the story of an inheritance scorning fool. It had nothing to do with gunfire, or crazed little men leaping to the stage while shouting, waving bloody daggers, and stumbling before scrambling behind the curtains.

When a panicked male voice boomed: Stop that man! Stop that man! Followed by a woman screaming, He shot the president! Everything changed dramatically. Hundreds from the audience charged the stage. Hundreds more rushed into the aisles. Others anxiously jumped up, stood in their seats, and craned their necks to see what had happened.

The same voice that shouted, Stop that man, called out again. We need a surgeon! A surgeon! Help!

The doctor, already up and in the aisle on the same side of the theater as the presidential box, reacted immediately. He leapt over seats, shoved people aside, and barked, I’m a doctor! I’m a doctor! He reached a door, yanked it open and bounded up some steps. He pushed toward another door through a narrow hallway full of shouting men. Someone lifted the lock bar and let him inside.

Dr. Charles Leale, twenty-three years old—a short, slightly built, and dark haired man with a mustache breathlessly identified himself as an assistant surgeon of the U. S. Volunteers. In the darkness he saw Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States sitting slumped forward—held tenuously in his chair by First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln’s trembling hands.

My Lord! Dr. Leale glanced upward, and quickly gushed in excited prayer. Have you already lifted this man, or need I assist you!? Amen!

Chapter Three

10:25 P.M.

"If we could first know where we are

And whither we are tending

We could better judge what to do

And how to do it." A. Lincoln 1858

To those now crowded around him in shock and despair, President Lincoln appeared dead. Dr. Leale, having given him close examination, and finding both slight pulse and breath, would indeed determine the wounds—a lead ball now lodged behind his right eye—to be quite severe, and yes, ultimately mortal .

However, Abraham Lincoln wasn’t dead yet.

He stirred. Though not in the detectable manor of lifting eyelids or twitching fingers and toes, he began waking.

Confused, groggy, and in foggy, partial consciousness, Abraham stared straight ahead. Surprise clearing his mind, he glanced around. Instead of the stage, curtains, his wife, and other theater patrons, all he could see was a curious, white swirl of smoke. It hung motionless just inches from his eyes.

Huh? He asked. The play stopped—where’s the play?

He kept still.

Did a light blow out? He wondered.

Pausing for a moment, he slowly turned his head left and right. He listened. Odd… No creaking floorboards so constantly heard in large buildings like the Ford Theater. No coughs, sneezes, and throat clearing one would quite naturally expect in a large auditorium filled with hundreds of people during the spring cold and flu season either.

Even more curious, he could not hear the loud laughter that had broken out just moments before. What’s wrong with the audience? He wondered. Why would they stop laughing so quickly? Laughs don’t end suddenly unless something’s amiss. Good laughter, like a careful bird, tends to land slowly. So what’s stopped the guffaws and bellows with such abruptness? Did the gas stage lights blow up? That would surely stop the play… But of course, if that be the case, shouldn’t I hear the audience finish their laughter before they grumble about this untimely break in the performance?

Still, he heard nothing.

A few seconds dragged by. Abraham listened closely for any kind of noise—whether angry patrons, doors opening and closing, stage crews scrambling to fix the lights, or even an announcement about this mishap from the director. For though he could not see a thing other than the smoke, the silence bothered him more. I can understand where smoke from blown stage lights surrounds me, engulfs me, and covers my eyes, for I would know and understand where the smoke comes from, he thought, but why in God’s good name can’t I hear? This silence, he hesitated with his next thought, so absolute in its completeness, it takes on what must be for those deceased the final cold tones of death. However, such a chilling comparison would not apply to me sitting in this theater as I do tonight.

Still, with his ears strained, he began feeling the creeping fear of something unknown.

How peculiar that I should be uneasy, he thought. For someone with his own background shouldn’t be leery of silence. Hadn’t he spent plenty of time by himself in the Indiana forests chopping wood, where the only sounds other than his cracking ax would be birds chirping softly in the background? Hadn’t he also known silence from his years spent as a lonely prairie farmer—Quiet so exceptional that when working fields he not only heard his own shuffling footsteps, but the dropping hooves and forced breath of the straining plow horse as well? Why does he feel uneasy now? Perhaps, he conceded, because it not only seemed without cause, but in addition to that so completely silent—so utterly barren of any noise. For no matter how quiet it got anywhere he’d ever been, couldn’t he always hear something in the background? Like, if you laid down for a quiet rest in a dark cabin at night, wouldn’t you expect silence—even though at the same time anticipate crackling embers in the fireplace, or the soft rustle of someone sleeping next to you?

Silence, as he’d always known it, was never completely silent.

And what, he wondered again, would be with this smoke? It holds still. From exploded stage lights or not, doesn’t it usually lift upward? Even in buildings like this theater, smoke always rises!

Abraham scratched his head. Like the silence, this smoke seemed far removed and different from what he knew and was familiar with. He recalled it peacefully wafting from the warming cabin fires of his boyhood home in the Kentucky forest, and also smelling so sweet in emanating from those hot and crackling fires he built to burn away fallen timber in Indiana. He realized something else, and sniffed. Hm… Also peculiar: The smoke has no smell to it either! He noticed something even more unusual, and scratched his head in amazement…Where the smoke touched his face, cheeks, forehead, and ears, it felt cool! Now that’s really unusual, he said to himself. Cool smoke! Who’d ever think such a thing could be! I never, in all my years have heard of something so strange! How in great heavens could a fire, which must be hot in the first place, produce cool smoke? He thought for a minute. Perhaps that’s what comes from those gas stage lights when they explode—cool smoke instead of hot. What other explanation would I have?

Chapter Four

Though life passes quickly, death can come and go in the blink of an eye. In fact, death can strike so suddenly that the victim never realizes it’s happening; never knows death has come. It would be different for Abraham Lincoln. Dying but yet alive, he would have several hours to discover his fate.

Now he stood on a stairway of sorts: an upward passageway where each step taken would lift him further away from mortality and closer to immortality… A mysterious course so powerful and potent in its allure, that knowledge about it has been sought by all civilizations throughout history. Abraham Lincoln, though still quite unbeknownst to him, had started his own stepping up and through this stairway. He’d begun his ascension into heaven.

For him, having slipped into this place quite unexpectedly, at first he would be confused. Now isolated and removedd from his so recently destroyed mortal senses, he’d for the last few hours of his life drift aloft as the spiritual powers of his soul took over…Though Abraham appeared quite dead to those now surrounding him in sadness, fear, and grief, he, in fact would soon live the most important hours of his life.

Although completely oblivious to anything around him, including the panic and chaos, Abraham, not yet dead, would see. He’d also recall and remember. Although nobody else would hear him, he’d speak and hold conversations. For the next few precious hours, rather than actors and actresses, the rich scripts and stories created and compiled during his fifty-six years of memories, feelings, and emotions would take to his personal life’s stage . In fact they‘d touch and inspire him like no stage play in any theater ever could have.

Chapter Five

10:29 P.M.

"Common people, take them as they run,

are more easily influenced and informed

through the medium of a broad illustration

than in any other way." A. Lincoln

Still confused, Abraham’s thoughts turned back to the play. Chuckling a bit, he repeated the last words he’d heard before the action stopped, ‘you sockdologizing old man trap!’ A hilarious line, he recalled. I loved it, and so did the rest of the audience. Their laughter roared like a thousand rolling train cars! And ah yes… What an actor, that Asa… Abraham mused, referring to one of the actors starring in the play that evening. What a character he’s played here tonight!

Abraham began laughing deeply and loudly: Something he’d done many times during his lifetime. Whether as a boy so isolated with his family in the wilderness, or as an adult leader holding meetings with his war department, laughter had always been his favorite salve and medicine. It poured from his melancholy face in the same stark contrast as would a cool stream running through the middle of a dry sandy desert. To him, nothing made life more bearable and endurable than telling humorous stories. Usually based upon his homespun Midwestern pioneer roots, the jokes he told would be short and move quickly to the punch line. His humor was easy to visualize by others, and quite often carried a message or quickly learned lesson. He always felt the louder he laughed, and he laughed louder than anyone else, the more others could be drawn deeper into his humor, and that anyone hearing him could also be treated with the same healing powers that laughter so joyfully emits. He loved and perhaps even needed his jokes and pranks.

Slowly, however, like that careful landing bird, Abraham continued feeling more concerned. His laughter began tapering off until it stopped altogether. He looked around. The smoke had finally begun pulling back from around him to about a foot away, and lifted into a ceiling perhaps ten feet above his head. Sitting in what had then become a white, cloud-ringed cylinder, he began growing impatient. So, he asked out loud, what’s happened? Let’s get on with the play already! Get the lights re-lit! On with the show! Surely this wouldn’t be the first time that lights have exploded in this theater! He paused, thought for a moment and said, Why do I not hear the audience mumbling impatiently in the background? Wouldn’t they like the play to commence as well? He turned toward where he assumed his wife still sat. Mary… he said, I can’t see you because the smoke hangs too thickly. Can you see anything? Mary? After getting no answer, he asked himself. Where did my wife go? Did she leave for a moment—perhaps to get away from this smoke? If she did leave, I pray she finds her way back before the play begins again. Major Rathbone? Miss Harris? He asked, calling to the others in the box that evening.

Hearing no answer from them either, he thought, They must have gone with Mrs. Lincoln. But you’d think they’d tell me before leaving. Moreover, you’d think I’d hear their footsteps on this rickety wooden floor; Especially Mrs. Lincolns’ small but heavy feet, he thought, chuckling once again to himself.

Nevertheless, he continued losing patience. I demand, he said, just a little bit louder, someone get those lights fired back up! Let’s finish this play! The president orders it! He shouted sarcastically, and continued. What’s the matter with the Ford Theater …? The stage crew moves so slowly. His voice nervously quivering, he began laughing again. Has my General McClellan taken over? If he has, it might be next week before we can start up again… However, assuming that he’s not become a stage foreman, I’ll command anyone else who might be down there… Please… Relight the lights!

Still, nothing happened.

Abraham looked again to his right, and once more spoke out loud. Major Rathbone? Miss Harris? Mother? Have you come back to your seats yet? Can anyone see what has happened? I can’t see or hear anything! Are you there—either of you three? Mother, where are you? Why have they stopped the play? What else goes on here? Guard! Mr. Parker! He called for his guard. Please tell me what has happened! Anyone…tell me in God’s good name… What goes on here! Has the audience all left because of the lights? Surely I would have heard their complaining before they left—If I leave without the play having commenced and finished, I’ll complain myself! If all the others here have made their way out, I’d at least heard them stumbling and tripping in the smoke: These dry wooden floors would rumble like battle drums! I’d most definitely hear the angry footsteps of a thousand!

A thought crossed Abraham’s mind… He remembered something he’d observed just a few minutes before. Major Rathbone… Miss Harris, he once again, looking to his right, addressed