# data[].attributes.body
“O, fatal day. O, noble victim. Treason has done its worst. The President has been assassinated.” This hand-written diary entry, dated half past 10 o’clock PM, April 14, 1865, concludes simply, “I have just come from near the scene, it is too True.

# data[].attributes.body
The writer, Horatio Nelson Taft, is mourning the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. For Taft, though, Lincoln was more than just a political leader–he was a family friend. An examiner for the U.S. Patent Office, Taft lived in Washington, D.C., during the Civil War. His younger sons played regularly with the Lincoln boys, Willie and Tad. His older son, Charles, was one of the doctors who attended the wounded president from Ford’s Theater to the nearby boarding house where Lincoln ultimately died.