Lincoln Page #40

The President has been shot at

Ford's Theater!

The theater is a scene of complete pandemonium. People cry,

jam the aisles, call to each other across rows of seats,

shout questions at Grover, who's calling for calm, inaudible

in the uproar.

Tom Pendel is frozen in shock, then turns to draw Tad close

to him. Tad pulls away and begins shrieking, clinging to the

railing so tightly that Pendel can't pry him loose. Tad can't

stop screaming, his eyes wide open, seeing nothing.

INT. THE BEDROOM IN PETERSON'S BOARDING HOUSE - MORNING

Mary is gently escorted into a tiny room. A small, hissing

gas jet in the wall bathes the scene with green light.

Stanton, Speed, GENERAL HENRY HALLECK and a MINISTER, are

standing. Welles sits by the head of the bed. DR. CHARLES

LEALE, a young army surgeon, and DR. ROBERT STONE, the

Lincoln family's doctor, stand uselessly by the foot of the

bed, while DR. JOSEPH BARNES, the Surgeon General, listens to

Lincoln's faint breathing.

125.

Robert, in uniform, red-eyed, pale as a ghost, sits at the

bedside and stares at his father, barely breathing.

Lincoln lies in a crooked diagonal, his knees bent, on a bed

he's too tall to fit properly, clad only in a nightshirt.

Barnes moves his head closer, then closer. The room is

utterly still. Barnes takes out his watch, looks at the time,

softly clears his throat.

DR. BARNES

It's 7:
22 in the morning, Saturday

the 15th of April. It's all over.

The President is no more.

No one talks, or moves.

Stanton looks at Lincoln's body.

STANTON:

Now he belongs to the ages.

Robert begins to weep.

LINCOLN (V.O.)

Fondly do we hope, fervently do we

pray, that this mighty scourge of

war may speedily pass away.

EXT. THE EAST PORTICO OF THE CAPITOL - NOON

Lincoln, wearing spectacles, stands at a podium before the

Capitol Dome, still under scaffolding, under cloudy skies. He

reads from the two pages.

LINCOLN:

Yet, if God wills that it continue

until all the wealth piled by the

bondman's two hundred and fifty

years of unrequited toil shall be

sunk, and until every drop of blood

drawn with the lash shall be paid

by another drawn with the sword, as

was said three thousand years ago,

so still it must be said "the

judgments of the Lord are true and

righteous altogether."

He glances at his audience: 40,000 people from all over the

country, wounded soldiers, civilians in black. And for the

first time, in the crowd, not at its edges, hundreds of

African Americans, civilians and soldiers.

126.

LINCOLN (CONT'D)

With malice toward none, with

charity for all, with firmness in

the right as God gives us to see

the right, let us strive on to

finish the work we are in, to bind

up the nation's wounds, to care for

him who shall have borne the

battle, and for his widow and his

orphan, to do all which may achieve

and cherish a just and a lasting

peace among ourselves and with all

nations.

FADE TO BLACK.

THE END:

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