It was a cool evening, and the stage manager's wife noticed that Mary and Clara left their wraps on in the unheated theatre; the president stood up during the play to put his overcoat back on. A young woman seated in the nearby dress circle wrote:

It is Friday night and we are at the theatre. Cousin Julia has just told me that the President is in yonder upper right private box so handsomely decked with silken flags festooned over a picture of Washington. The young and lovely daughter of Senator Harris is the only one of the party we can see, as the flags hide the rest. It has been announced in the papers he would be there. How sociable it seems, like one family sitting around their parlor fire. How different this from the pomp and show of monarchical Europe. Everyone has been so jubilant for days, since the surrender of Lee, that they laugh and shout at every clowning witticism. (GOOD 55)

The Lincolns' box seat at Ford's Theatre. Photograph by Mathew Brady, April 1865 (ICHi-30487).
"Stage and Proscenium Boxes of Ford's Theater as They Appeared on the Night of President Lincoln's Assassination," John G. Nicolay and John Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History, 1890 (ICHi-30943); floor plan of presidential box and outer vestibule.

Booth was a Baltimore native and secessionist whose loyalties were clear: "So help me holy God! My soul, life, and possessions are for the South." Maryland, a slave state allied with the Union, was deeply torn by the Civil War; John's brother was an ardent Lincoln supporter. The president had suspended state rights in Maryland, which surrounded Washington, D.C. Booth declared that "Lincoln would be made king of America...[and this] drove him beyond the limits of reason." (FURTWANGLER 62, 49)

Entering the theatre, Booth quietly made his way to the president's box. Booth planned to murder the president while fellow Confederate sympathizers stalked the vice president and secretary of state. His passage attracted the attention of a witness in the dress circle:

I thought first that he was intoxicated. There was a glare in (his) eye...he had a dark slouch hat, a dark coat, jet black hair, dark eyes, a heavy black [mustache]... (GOOD 30)

Carte de visite of John Wilkes Booth (ICHi-29763).
The Lincolns and their guests were late for the play, arriving during the second act. Actress Laura Keene stopped the performance while the orchestra struck up "Hail to the Chief" and the audience applauded.
John Wilkes Booth, a prominent actor who often performed at Ford's Theatre, also stopped at Taltavull's for a drink during the intermission.

The Lincolns were accompanied by a Metropolitan Police guard and Charles Forbes, the president's footman and messenger.

Forbes and the guard were stationed in an outer vestibule of the presidential box, but left their post for seats with a view of the stage. During the intermission, they stopped at Taltavull's Star Saloon for a whisky.