Scott McCabe, The Examiner
2008-03-14 08:00:00.0
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WASHINGTON -

The Metropolitan police department has recovered a historic booking log that they say is one of the first written records of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.

Much about the book’s 143-year journey back to police officials remains unclear, but department historian Sgt. Nick Breul says the bound blotter highlights the role D.C. police have played in American events.

“This has national historic value,” Breul said, “but also points out MPD’s standing in national history.”

Local lore has it that in the 1960s or ’70s, someone found the book in a police trash bin with other discarded files. The book circulated among retired police officers for years, until a former police chief recently convinced the previous owner to donate it to the Police Department.

In flowery prose, the writer reports on the actions and the mood of the members of the then-8th Precinct at E and Fifth streets southeast. It appears to have been written between the time of the assassination — around 10:30 p.m., April 14, 1865 — and the next day’s first arrest. John Wilkes Booth was already a suspect, and Lincoln had not yet succumbed to the gunshot wound.

The entry, on two pages in faded brown script, reports that a telegram was sent from police headquarters between 10 and 11 p.m., announcing that the president was shot at Ford’s Theatre and that Secretary of State William Seward was seriously wounded and his son fatally injured.

Police officers were anxious “to avenge the death of the beloved chief magistrate,” the author wrote.

“The assassin or assassins were at the time unknown. At a later hour it became currently reported J.W. Booth was the person who shot the president. The excitement was great throughout the precinct,” the book states. “The gloom that overshadows the nation by this sad occurrence deeply affects the whole force and brings forth many heartfelt sympathies for the nation’s loss.”

The book likely had been moved from the Civil War-era precinct at E and Fifth streets southeast to a new station at 500 E St. SE in 1904, where it remained until was tossed out with the trash. Breul plans to place it in a hermetically sealed case in the department’s museum on the sixth floor of police headquarters.

“This is something that’s bigger than anybody here,” Breul said, “not something that belongs in someone’s basement.”

smccabe@dcexaminer.com