At the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, we're not just preserving history – we're making it. Beginning with a spectacular temporary exhibit, Blood on the Moon, commemorating the 140th anniversary of the Lincoln assassination, and coinciding with the Museum's April 19th opening. Thanks to the generosity of the Chicago Historical Society, visitors to the ALPLM will be able to see the bed on which Abraham Lincoln died. This marks the first time the bed has ever left its home at the CHS. For six months it will be the centerpiece of a show unlike any other.

Visitors to Blood on the Moon will be swept into the undercurrent of seething hatred and physical danger that Lincoln confronted daily as president. They will see the plot take shape, and they will simultaneously follow Abraham Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth over the course of Good Friday April 1865. They'll be eyewitnesses to the heartrending scene at the president's deathbed, and they will track the conspirators from their capture to their incarceration, trial, and execution – including the execution of the first woman in history put to death by the United States government.

Covering over 3,000 square feet in the museum's Illinois Gallery, BLOOD ON THE MOON brings together artifacts from the world-renowned private collection of Louise and Barry Taper, as well as the Chicago Historical Society, the Studebaker National Museum, the Indiana Historical Society, the Historical Society of Quincy and Adams County, and the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum's own collections.

This intriguing mix of personal memorabilia, furniture, letters, broadsides, and rare images will enable visitors to experience for themselves one of America's greatest tragedies. Along with the Lincoln death bed, some of the historic items you ill see:

• The carriage in which Abraham and Mary Lincoln rode to Ford's Theater (courtesy of the Studebaker National Museum)
• Pieces of Lincoln's jacket and blood stained shirt and gloves, and pieces of Mary's dress and fan from Ford's Theater (courtesy of Louise and Barry Taper)
• An ambrotype of John Wilkes Booth with locks of his hair and other personal items given by the famous actor to one of his love interests (courtesy of Louise and Barry Taper)
• Furniture from the funeral train that brought Lincoln's body back to Springfield (from the collection of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum)
• Canvas hood and iron wrist manacles used on conspirators during the Lincoln murder conspiracy trial (courtesy of the Quincy & Adams County Historical Society)
• Sketches of the conspirators by General Lew Wallace (future author of Ben Hur) drawn from life during the conspiracy trial (courtesy of the Indiana Historical Society)
• And more than 60 other artifacts

This stunning exhibition can only be seen at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum – and only for a limited time.