Charles Augustus Leale was a surgeon in the Union Army during the American Civil War and the first doctor to arrive at the presidential box at Ford's Theatre on April 14, 1865, after John Wilkes Booth fatally shot President Abraham Lincoln in the head. His prompt treatment allowed Lincoln to live until the next morning. Leale continued to serve in the army until 1866, after which he returned to his home town of New York City where he established a successful private practice and became involved in charitable medical care. One of the last surviving witnesses to Lincoln's death, Leale died in 1932 at the age of 90.

Henry Reed Rathbone was a United States military officer and lawyer who was present at the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln; Rathbone and his fiancé Clara Harris were sitting with Lincoln and Lincoln's wife Mary Todd Lincoln when the president was shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theatre. When Rathbone attempted to apprehend Booth, Booth stabbed and seriously wounded him. Rathbone may have played a part in Booth's leg injury. Although he recovered, Rathbone's mental state deteriorated afterwards, and in 1883, he murdered his wife, Clara, in a fit of madness, later being declared insane by doctors and living the rest of his life in a lunatic asylum.