In Boots Likely Worn on Fateful Night, Expert Finds Clues to Lincoln's Persona
The flashlight beam lit up the dark interior of Abraham Lincoln's left boot, as if the inside of a tomb, and at the bottom was the smooth and shiny indentation made by the martyred president's heel.
The odor of fine leather still clung to the top of the boot, where white cloth pull straps were sewed. When the light hit a maroon section of the hide, bootmaker Michael Anthony Carnacchi whispered: "Aha. There's your original color."
A group of National Park Service curators and conservators craned to peer inside -- and, in a way, back in time, to the night in 1865 when Lincoln pulled on his boots and clomped to the carriage that took him to Ford's Theatre.
It was a solemn moment this week when Carnacchi, along with Park Service museum curator Gloria Swift and other Park Service experts, probed the interior and exterior of the hallowed items simply labeled "Boots, Lincoln's" on a typed catalogue card.
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The odor of fine leather still clung to the top of the boot, where white cloth pull straps were sewed. When the light hit a maroon section of the hide, bootmaker Michael Anthony Carnacchi whispered: "Aha. There's your original color."
A group of National Park Service curators and conservators craned to peer inside -- and, in a way, back in time, to the night in 1865 when Lincoln pulled on his boots and clomped to the carriage that took him to Ford's Theatre.
It was a solemn moment this week when Carnacchi, along with Park Service museum curator Gloria Swift and other Park Service experts, probed the interior and exterior of the hallowed items simply labeled "Boots, Lincoln's" on a typed catalogue card.