"...It was researched by one of the special interns selected for the project, Mary Brazelton, a Harvard University student from Washington's Maryland suburbs. She found that one member of the play's audience that night -- T.D. Bancroft -- saved the fragment and later wrote that the dark stains were blood that dripped from President Lincoln as he was carried out of the theater after being shot by John Wilkes Booth.

Bancroft wrote about his treasure in a pamphlet issued to celebrate Lincoln's 100th birthday, preserved among the library's rare books. He donated the stained fragment to the Kansas Historical Society and took the precaution of copyrighting a photo of it."

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