Oops.
Contrary to the information seen in this broadside, Secretary of State William H. Seward did not die in the April 15, 1865 attack that killed President Abraham Lincoln. In fact, after surviving the brutal stabbing attempt on his life, Seward would go on to serve several more years as Secretary of State; he was indeed very much alive until 1872.
The broadside, faulty facts and all, was recently digitized in order to be contributed to Remembering Lincoln, an Institute of Museum and Library Services grant-funded project of Ford’s Theatre; as of March 18th, the date of the site’s public launch, it’s now available for high resolution download. The Remembering Lincoln project has been many months in the making and will continue to grow during the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s death; repositories all over the world are contributing collections material relating to responses to the assassination.
In addition to diary entries and mourning relics (and printed material like the items contributed by the Historical Society), the project has a great blog to bring audiences through the process of creating a collaborative platform such as this – including a guest post on the issue of historic misinformation.
Remembering Lincoln is one of several grant-funded collaborations to which the Historical Society of Washington, D.C. is proud to contribute. Other projects currently in the works include house history workshops with the D.C. Public Library, Humanities DC, and Historic Preservation and the D.C. Africana Archives Project, lead by The George Washington University. And up next: tickets are now available for the April 22nd opening reception of For the Record: Artfully Historic D.C., representing a partnership with the D.C. Preservation League and Capitol Hill Art League!