Beschreibung:

Hand-colored photograph, 8.25 x 11 in., of Edwin Bates (1830-1887), South Carolina merchant who sat below Lincoln at Ford’s Theater on the night of April 14, 1865, and whose account of the assassination is one of the most informative of eyewitnesses accounts about that night on record. The photograph is dated 1860 on verso and includes a George S. Cook, Charleston, SC label. Considered the “Matthew Brady” of the South, Cook (1819-1902) took the first combat photograph known (i.e., Ironclads firing on Ft. Moultrie in 1863). Bates was born in Derby VT, and left for Charleston, SC, at age 16 to work as a clerk in a dry goods firm. A few years later, with a partner, Bates opened the dry goods firm of McGahan, Bates & Co. At the close of the war, he left Charleston to establish the clothing house of Edwin Bates & Co. with his brother, Charles K. Bates, in New York City. En route North, he stopped off at Washington D.C. Bates was one of the few witnesses seated in the front row of the orchestra level at Ford’s Theater, almost directly below Lincoln. His account of the assassination in a letter dated April 15, 1865,to his father, Jacob Bates of Derby VT, is one of the most informative of eyewitness accounts about the assassination. Bates begins “I went to the theater last night & saw him [Lincoln] for the first time- & soon after an event did occur – not happy as I than predicted in my letter, but one of the most horrible & atrocious that as ever been recorded in the annals of history – the assassination of Mr. Lincoln.” Bates then describes John Wilkes Booth’s appearance and escape in great detail. Bates wrote that he attended the show with a friend, Mr. Frederick A. Sawyer (1822-91, later a U.S. Senator from South Carolina, who was also sitting in the front row of the orchestra level. Bates and Mr. Sawyer were located nearly underneath the box occupied by Lincoln. After the gunfire shot, Bates describes “he [Booth] fell partly upon his side but instantly rose & with a long dagger in hand rushed rapidly across the stage & disappeared before any in the vast house full of people could realize what had occurred.” Bates adds that at first he initially thought that somebody had fired a pistol at him (i.e., Booth) and he had jumped down upon the stage for safety or had been knocked down.” He wrote that as Booth fled across the stage, the audience and casting crew began to comprehend what had happened; unfortunately it was too late to stop Booth. Bates also mentions that he heard Booth utter these words as he ran across the stage “Sic semper tyrannis.” He describes that in the theater there was “immediately a call for water & stimulates from those who first reached the box & the whole of the vast audience was under the wildest excitement and indignation when it became know that Lincoln was mortally wounded.” He then describes the general disposition of the crowd at Lincoln Theater and the surrounding community the morning after Lincoln’s assassination. The city was in a great sense of excitement with streets crowded with Yankees swearing in vengeance to all the rebels and the entire South. He and Sawyer speculated that the union forces would find the assassin, and that he would probably be classified as insane, and “that the lowest depths of human depravity even in a rebel of the worst type would not permit to commit such a horrible deed in so bold a manner before thousands of people & where there could be so little chance to escape.” Condition: Some wear, loss along the perimeter of the portrait, with few scratches, nicks in surface of image.