Chief Clerk of the Judge Advocate General plays with Booth's deringer

In 1940, the Judge Advocate General’s Office of the War Department gave the Lincoln Museum a number of artifacts related to the assassination, including the boots Booth wore and the deringer he used to kill Lincoln. (These objects had been held as criminal evidence by the War Department for many decades.) A spike in the Lincoln Museum’s popularity ultimately led to successful legislation for the restoration of Ford’s Theatre and the Petersen House.