Chicago Historical Society Northwestern University Wet With Blood

Forbes and Pendel signed notarized affidavits authenticating the coat at the time of the Logan purchase. Logan described them as "sincere, simple, uneducated men, imbued with reverent affection for their dead hero, each holding these things as sacred as the belongings of a dead relative." Forbes' 1867 gift of the coat to Pendel was not explained. Logan noted that "there was a coolness between the two men" at the time of his purchase. (LOGAN)

Thomas Pendel's notarized affidavit identifying Logan's purchase as "the identical and same coat worn by President Abraham Lincoln on the night he was assassinated." (PENDEL)

Charles Gunther wrote to Pendel in 1890, hoping to see Lincoln's coat, but it was purchased two years later by rival Lincoln collector Frank Logan, a noted philanthropist, art connoisseur, and former vice-president of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Details of the Forbes/Pendel frock coat, including the buttons and the cut of the lapel and sleeves, are identical to details of Lincoln's coats in numerous photographs. They also match garments worn by many other men during the Civil War years.

Most American men wore ready-made garments in 1865, although gentlemen's tailors still prospered in large cities. Men's clothing manufacturers were established in New York, Boston and Philadelphia by the late 1830s, and the sewing machine facilitated large-scale production in the 1850s. (SEVERA 2, 85, 208) Lincoln wore a suit with a Brooks Brothers label at his second inauguration in March 1865.

Abraham Lincoln in frock coat, February 1861, by Alexander Gardner.

Charles Leale, the first physician to reach Lincoln after he was shot, described his efforts to find the president's wound:

With the assistance of two gentlemen I immediately placed him in a recumbent position while doing this and holding his head and shoulders my hand came in contact with blood on his left-shoulder, the thought of the dagger then recuffed to me, and supposed that he might have been stabbed in the subclavical artery or some of its branches. I asked a gentleman near by to cut his coat and shirt off that shoulder to enable me if possible to check the supposed hemorrhage, as soon as his arm was bared to a distance below the shoulder, and I saw that there was no wound there...(GOOD 61)

The cut area appears to have been enlarged by souvenir hunters.

A wool fragment attributed to Lincoln's assassination coat was purchased as a souvenir for $25.00 and subsequently donated to the Chicago Historical Society. The remnant is similar to the fabric of the Forbes/Pendel coat.

Wool fragment labeled A piece of black broadcloth from the coat worn by [Lincoln] when assassinated. (CHS XA-1207).