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On April 14, 1865, Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, was shot by John Wilkes Booth while attending the play Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. Shot in the head as he watched the play, Lincoln died of his wounds the following day at 7:22 am in the Petersen House opposite the theater.
- Overview
- Planning the attack
- The assassination of Lincoln
- Mourning, manhunt, and aftermath
The assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, took place at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., on the evening of April 14, 1865. Lincoln died the next morning on April 15.
What play was Abraham Lincoln watching when he was assassinated?
Abraham Lincoln was attending a performance of the comedy, Our American Cousin, at Ford’s Theatre, when he was shot by John Wilkes Booth in the back of the head with a .44 caliber derringer.
Who was John Wilkes Booth?
John Wilkes Booth, a member of one of the United States’ most distinguished acting families of the 19th century, was the assassin who killed U.S. President Abraham Lincoln.
Who were the two other politicians who were also supposed to be assassinated along with Abraham Lincoln?
Booth was a member of one of America’s most renowned families of actors. His brother Edwin Booth was widely regarded as the country’s leading actor, a mantle he had inherited from their father, Junius Brutus Booth, and John Wilkes Booth was an acclaimed performer in his own right, celebrated for his charisma, athleticism, and dashing good looks. He grew up in the border state of Maryland but was particularly popular as an actor in Richmond, Virginia, and considered himself a Southerner. Moreover, he passionately advocated the slave system. Having promised his mother that he would not fight for the Confederacy, Booth remained in the North during the Civil War, and his hatred of abolitionists and Lincoln deepened. In March 1865 he and a group of conspirators in Washington, D.C., plotted to abduct Lincoln, though none of those plans came to fruition.
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Abraham Lincoln
On the morning of April 14, 1865, Booth—distraught over the collapse of the Confederacy—learned that the president would be attending a performance of the comedy Our American Cousin that evening at Ford’s Theatre. Gathering his fellow conspirators, Booth outlined a plan to assassinate not just President Lincoln but also Vice Pres. Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward. Booth tasked Lewis Powell, a tall and powerful former Confederate soldier, with the attack on Seward, to be aided by David Herold. George Atzerodt, a German immigrant who had acted as a boatman for Confederate spies, was to kill Johnson. Booth himself was to assassinate Lincoln. All three attacks were to occur at the same time (about 10:00 pm) that night.
At Ford’s Theatre Booth made his way to the private box in which Lincoln and his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, were watching the play with their guests, Clara Harris and her fiancé, Union officer Maj. Henry Rathbone (there because a number of more prominent people had declined the Lincolns’ invitation). Finding the president’s box essentially unguarded, Booth entered it and barred the outside door from inside. Then, at a moment in the play that he knew would elicit a big laugh, Booth burst in through the box’s inner door. He shot Lincoln in the back of the head once with a .44 calibre derringer, slashed Rathbone in the shoulder with a knife, and leapt from the box to the stage below, breaking his left leg in the fall (though some believe that injury did not occur until later). What Booth said while committing the attack and when he said it are a matter of some dispute. Audience members variously reported that he exclaimed, “Sic semper tyrannis” (“Thus always to tyrants,” the state motto of Virginia) or “The South is avenged!” or both, before disappearing through a door at the side of the stage where his horse was being held for him. On the other hand, in a note written a few days after the assassination, Booth claimed that he had shouted “Sic semper” before he fired (though it seems likely that this was Booth’s attempt at dramatizing history). In any case, Booth rode off into the night and out of Washington, meeting up in Maryland with Herold, who had fled the scene of the Seward attack without Powell.
Lincoln was attended to immediately by several doctors who were in the audience. It was felt that the president should not be moved far, so he was taken across the street to the house of William Petersen, who rented extra rooms to lodgers. In one of those rooms Lincoln was laid diagonally across a bed, for which he was otherwise too tall. Doctors had little hope that the unconscious Lincoln would recover, and throughout the night various cabinet members, officials, and physicians kept vigil in the small room. Mary grieved hysterically. When Lincoln was pronounced dead at 7:22 am on April 15, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton famously pronounced, “Now he belongs to the ages” (or “to the angels”; witnesses disagree).
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The next day was Easter Sunday, and throughout America sermons in Christian churches equated Lincoln’s martyrdom with Jesus’ sacrificial death. A period of national mourning ensued. Observers reported that African Americans felt Lincoln’s loss particularly keenly. Historians have noted that Lincoln—whom many even in the North deeply disliked—became much more revered in death than in life as the myth surrounding him grew. After public viewing in both the White House and the Capitol, Lincoln’s body, in an elaborate open coffin, was taken on a 13-day train journey across the country to his home in Springfield, Illinois, stopping en route to lie in state in Independence Hall in Philadelphia and to be paraded in a hearse down 5th Avenue in New York City, among other stops. Millions of people lined the train route to pay their respects.
As for the perpetrators, the fleeing Booth had his leg treated in Maryland by Dr. Samuel Mudd, who would later be convicted of conspiracy, though his descendants waged a protracted battle to prove his innocence. While a massive manhunt, fueled by a $100,000 reward, filled the countryside surrounding Washington with troops and other searchers, Booth and Herold, aided by a Confederate sympathizer, hid for days in a thicket of trees near the Zekiah swamp in Maryland. While hiding, Booth kept a diary in which he recorded his incredulity at the almost universal condemnation of his actions. He had expected to be heralded as a hero. Having undertaken further efforts to escape, Booth and Herold were tracked down by federal troops on April 26 at a farm in Virginia, near the Rappahannock River. There Herold surrendered before the barn in which he and Booth were hiding was set aflame. Refusing to surrender, Booth was shot, either by a soldier or by himself, and died shortly thereafter. Rumours persisted that it was not Booth but another man thought to be him who was killed, but there is no acceptable evidence to support that notion.
Mar 15, 2024 · The assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Three days after his address, on 14 April 1865, Lincoln went to Ford’s Theatre in Washington DC to see the popular comedy, Our American Cousin. He arrived late, causing the production to stop while he took his seat in the presidential box to the sounds of Hail to the Chief and a rousing ovation.
Oct 29, 2009 · Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, to Nancy and Thomas Lincoln in a one-room log cabin in Hardin County, Kentucky. His family moved to southern Indiana in 1816. Lincoln’s ...
Jul 21, 2022 · The Assassination of President Abraham Lincoln took place on April 14, 1865, when Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln during a play at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C. Lincoln died from his wounds early the next morning. After a massive manhunt, Booth was shot and killed, and eight others were found guilty of conspiring to ...
- Randal Rust
President Abraham Lincoln Dies. On April 15, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln died. He had been shot by an assassin the night before and died of a head wound early on the morning of the 15th. President Lincoln had been sworn in to his second term of office on March 4, 1865.
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6 days ago · Abraham Lincoln (born February 12, 1809, near Hodgenville, Kentucky, U.S.—died April 15, 1865, Washington, D.C.) was the 16th president of the United States (1861–65), who preserved the Union during the American Civil War and brought about the emancipation of enslaved people in the United States. Lincoln and his cabinet.
