Diary of Orrin Brown, New Bern, North Carolina
Friday–Apr. 14th
We had a quite a cool night but it came off warm and pleasant with a gentle S. E. wind we drew our cup of Coffee and a small piece of Salt Poark for our breakfast but did not draw anything at noon. We fried our Poark and some Hardtack and one of the boys had a little ground Coffee so we steaped that and made a good dinner out of it. One of the men that came back with us went to the Hospital today. I read 3 Chapts. There was an order came today for all men that were able to do duty to go to their commands. We drew our cup of coffee and one day of Hardtack tonight. There was about 300 new recruits came in tonight.
On 14 April 1865, President Lincoln and his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, attended a performance of Our American Cousin with their guests Major Henry Rathbone and Clara Harris, at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C. The date was Good Friday.
The night of Lincoln’s shooting as a tragic culmination of Civil War hatreds, a chaotic and confusing event in the theater itself, and the opening act of a deeply contested Reconstruction.
After the war, the building was appropriated by the War Department. The building was restored in the 1960s, due in part to the influence of North Dakota Representative Milton Young.
Read More:
- Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer by James L. Swanson (Mariner Books, 2006)
adapted into a series on Apple TV+ - Backstage at the Lincoln Assassination: The Untold Story of the Actors and Stagehands at Ford’s Theatre by Thomas A. Bogar (Regnery History, 2013)
- Lincoln’s Peace: The Struggle to End the American Civil War by Michael Vorenberg (Knopf, 2025)
- Sherman’s March Through the Carolinas by John Gilchrist Barrett (Univ North Carolina Press, 1956)
- Fierce Patriot: The Tangled Lives of William Tecumseh Sherman by Robert L. O’Connell (Random House, 2014)
- The March to the Sea and Beyond: Sherman’s Troops in the Savannah and Carolinas Campaigns by Joseph T. Glatthaar (New York University Press, 1985)
- The Memoirs Of General William T. Sherman by W.T. Sherman (Library of America, 1990)
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