Eventually a ranger let us in, and we walked down a narrow staircase with a display case at the bottom. I stopped to examine its contents: a knife, brass knuckles and what appeared to be swim goggles. A label explained that these items were carried by one of Lincoln’s bodyguards — the one who, I’m assuming, specialized in fending off known Southern sympathizer Aquaman.

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Confusion gave way to chaos as I entered the main exhibit hall. Thunder clapped and strobes flashed around an imitation Oval Office as a tornado of schoolchildren swirled through the room. I froze, not knowing which direction to walk.

“The exhibits go chronologically,” a ranger explained. “Start here, at the first inauguration.”

He pointed me toward a couple of displays that seemed more focused on how crappy D.C. used to be than on Lincoln’s presidency. On my right was a replica of the half-built Capitol dome; on my left were mid-19th-century photos of the city. The accompanying text was unflattering.

“Washington City … was a raw, unsanitary place,” it said. “From the White House, the new president could look across the malarial Potomac Flats to the marble stump of the Washington Monument … Worse, he could smell the rotting City Canal, an open sewer … into which local residents tossed dead animals.”

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It’s as if Ford’s Theatre was speaking directly to tourists, saying, “D.C. may be crowded and pricey, but at least it’s not still an open-air pet cemetery.”

I was almost up to Lincoln’s second inauguration when a ranger announced that our time was up and herded everyone into the theater.

“It happened right there,” a frizzy-haired girl said in a near-whisper while pointing at the president’s box. “Can you see the blood?” her friend replied. (You can’t, because the entire interior of the theater was redone in the 1960s.)

A tall woman in an elaborate red dress swept down the aisle on the arm of a dashing Union soldier, and took the stage.

“My name is Liz,” she said. “I’m a volunteer, and Lincoln is my favorite president.”

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That was an understatement. Liz talked about Lincoln as if she knew him personally. “He had a great sense of humor,” she said.

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When Liz got to the gruesome part, she rattled off details with the numbed precision of a traumatized witness.

“Booth pulls out the one-shot derringer, holds it less than 6 inches from the president’s head, and fires a bullet … 2 inches from the president’s left ear,” she said. “The president slumped forward in his chair.”

It was an inspired performance, but I was unsatisfied. From the Capitol dome to the president’s box, almost everything I had seen was fake. With a ranger’s permission, I returned to the museum to search for real artifacts.

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After ducking underneath a red velvet rope and walking back downstairs, I found myself at the end of the exhibit, the part that covers Lincoln’s assassination and its aftermath. I peeked behind a partition, and saw a little gun in a clear plastic box.

“Is that it?” I asked a ranger. “Is that John Wilkes Booth’s gun?”

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“Yes,” he said. “A lot of people miss it.”

It turns out that Ford’s Theatre has lots of fascinating things on display that are easy to miss. I also found Booth’s left boot, split to fit his swelling, broken ankle, and the medical kit of Samuel Mudd, a doctor who treated Booth’s injuries.

Then, I saw some artifacts that made my stomach turn: the suit that Lincoln wore that fateful night and a bloodstained pillowcase upon which his head had rested.

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A world that had previously seemed so distant — where livestock roamed muddy streets and the president went out in public like it was no big deal — was suddenly close enough to make me feel a little sick.

It’s too bad that Ford’s hides its authentic treasures behind replicas and reconstructions. I suspect that’s why it doesn’t get as many visitors as it should. That said, I definitely recommend checking it out for yourself. But don’t make my mistake: Skip the facsimiles and seek out the real objects that, like America, still bear the marks of Lincoln’s tragic death.