BOSTON DAILY JOURNAL, April 14, 1865  

* Actors John Wilkes & Edwin Booth 
* Day of Abraham Lincoln's assassination 

This is one of those fascinating newspapers that "reports" one of the great ironies in American history.
This was the date when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated while attending a performance of "Our American Cousin" at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. Page 3 of this newspaper has an advertisement for the Boston Theatre, noting: "This (Friday) Evening Benefit and Positively Last Night of EDWIN BOOTH who will appear as Sir Edward Mortimer..."To-Morrow (Saturday Afternoon, Farewell Appearance of EDWIN BOOTH, Who will sustain his Great Character of Hamlet...".
The very evening that famed actor Edwin Booth was performing in a Boston theater, his younger brother was assassinating the President in a theater less than 400 miles away.
This advertisement, logically, would only be found in a Boston newspaper.
There are various reports on the closing events of the Civil War, but they pale in comparison to the Edwin Booth advertisement.
Four pages, large folio size, never bound nor trimmed, minor wear at margins and folds, generally in good condition. Folder size noted is for the issue folded in half.

Background: The April 14, 1865, issue of the Boston Daily Journal stands as a poignant historical artifact, inadvertently capturing a dramatic irony that highlights the complex intersection of tragedy, fame, and family lineage during the American Civil War. On the very day John Wilkes Booth used his backstage theatrical access to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln during a performance of "Our American Cousin" at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., his renowned older brother, Edwin Booth, was headlining an advertisement on page 3 for his farewell performance as Hamlet at the Boston Theatre. This juxtaposition underscores the stark division within the Booth family and American society as a whole: while John Wilkes executed a treasonous plot driven by Confederate sympathy, Edwin—a staunch Union supporter who had ironically saved the life of Lincoln's son, Robert Todd Lincoln, on a train platform just months earlier—was celebrated as the nation's premier Shakespearean actor. The newspaper advertisement serves as a eerie snapshot frozen in time, documenting the final hours before an unthinkable national tragedy cast a permanent shadow over the family legacy, plunging Edwin into a temporary retirement and forever entangling the Booth name with the tragic climax of Lincoln's presidency.