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On the evening of April 14, 1865, while attending a special performance of the comedy, “Our American Cousin,” President Abraham Lincoln was shot, at Ford’s Theatre in Washington. Accompanying him at Ford’s Theatre that night were his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, a twenty-eight-year-old officer named Major Henry R. Rathbone, and Rathbone’s fiancée, Clara Harris. After the play was in progress, a figure with a drawn derringer pistol stepped into the presidential box, aimed, and fired. The president slumped forward.
Why was President Abraham Lincoln?
Actor John Wilkes Booth, who carried out the murder, yelled, “Sic semper tyrannis! (Ever thus to tyrants!) The South is avenged,” before leaping onto the stage and escaping on a horse. The next morning, President Abraham Lincoln passed away.
Despite having Confederate sympathies, Booth stayed in the North throughout the war, and his initial plan was to kidnap President Abraham Lincoln and transfer him to Richmond, the Confederate capital. The intended kidnapping took place on March 20, 1865, but the president did not show up at the location where Booth and his fellow conspirators were waiting. Richmond was conquered by Union soldiers two weeks later. The Confederacy was on the verge of collapse in April, and Booth devised a desperate plot to save it.
As soon as Booth learned that President Abraham Lincoln would be attending Laura Keene’s critically praised performance of Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theater on April 14, he devised a plan to kill him, Vice President Andrew Johnson, and Secretary of State William H. Seward all at once. By assassinating the president and two of his potential successors, Booth, and his accomplices sought to paralyze the American government.
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On the evening of April 14, a conspirator named Lewis T. Powell broke into the home of Secretary of State Seward, gravely injuring him as well as three other people. Vice President Johnson’s aide George A. Atzerodt lost his composure and left.
Booth, meanwhile, sneaked into President Abraham Lincoln’s private theater box shortly after 10 p.m. and shot the president once in the back of the skull. Even though Booth fractured his left leg after leaping from Lincoln’s box, he managed to get away from Washington.
President Abraham Lincoln was taken to a small hotel next to Ford’s Theater after being fatally wounded. President Abraham Lincoln became the first American president to be killed, he passed away the next morning around 7:22.
Before the Civil War, Booth was a well-liked performer who was especially popular in the South. He remained in the North during the war and grew resentful when audiences there weren’t as taken with him as they were in Dixie. Booth hatched a plan to kidnap President Abraham Lincoln and send him to the South with the help of his associates Samuel Arnold, Michael O’Laughlin, and John Surratt.
The group got together in a Washington bar on March 17 with George Atzerodt, David Herold, and Lewis Powell to plan the president’s kidnapping three days later. The president, however, changed his mind, and the idea was abandoned. Soon after, the South submitted to the Union, prompting the conspirators to change their original strategy. On the same night, they made the decision to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson, and Secretary of State William Seward.
When April 14 rolled around, Atzerodt decided not to participate in the murder of Johnson. Booth was upset and went to a saloon nearby Ford’s Theatre to drink. He entered the auditorium and made his way to the president’s box around 10 o’clock. John Parker, Lincoln’s guard, was absent because he had become tired of the play and abandoned his post to buy a beer.
The president was shot in the back of the head by Booth, who entered the room with ease. Major Rathbone, a close friend of the president, tried to seize Booth but was cut by the blade in the struggle. When Booth sprang on the stage to flee, he severely hurt his leg, yet he was still able to limp outside to his horse.
While this was going on, Lewis Powell broke into William Seward’s home and stabbed the secretary of state multiple times before running away. David Herold and Booth rode to Virginia, where they halted at the house of Dr. Samuel Mudd, who bandaged Booth’s leg. While tens of thousands of Union soldiers searched the region for them, they took cover in a barn on Richard Garrett’s farm. With the exception of John Surratt, the other conspirators were all apprehended.
On April 26, when the military eventually caught up with Booth and Herold, they gave them the chance to give up before the barn was set on fire. Herold made the decision to give up, but Booth stayed inside the barn as it caught fire. Corporal Boston Corbett then fired a shot that killed Booth inside the barn that was on fire. George Atzerodt, Lewis Powell, David Herold, and Mary Surratt, John Surratt’s mother, were all executed by hanging in Washington on July 7.
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Some people think there was an injustice committed in Mary Surratt’s execution. Although Surratt was implicated in the original kidnapping plot, there is no doubt that her actions pale in comparison to those of the other conspirators who were put to death.
When her son John was eventually located in Egypt and brought back to court, he was able to obtain an acquittal thanks to some cunning attorneys.
Other than President Abraham Lincoln three other sitting US presidents have been killed: James A. Garfield (1881, by Charles J. Guiteau), William McKinley (1901, by Leon Czolgosz), and John F. Kennedy
