At 7:22 a.m. Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, died of a gunshot wound inflicted the night before by John Wilkes Booth, an actor and Confederate sympathizer. The president’s death came just six days after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his massive army at Appomattox Court House, ending the American Civil War.
Booth, who remained in the North during the war despite his Confederate sympathies, initially plotted to capture President Lincoln and take him to Richmond, the Confederate capital. However, on March 20, 1865, the day of the planned kidnapping, the President failed to show up where Booth and his six fellow conspirators were waiting. Two weeks later, Richmond fell to Union forces. In April, as the Confederate armies were on the verge of collapsing in the south, Booth hatched a desperate plan to save the Confederacy.
READ MORE: The Lincoln Assassination
Learn that Lincoln was to attend Laura Keene’s acclaimed performance in Our American cousin at Ford’s Theater on April 14, Booth plotted the simultaneous assassination of Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William H. Seward. By assassinating the president and two of his possible successors, Booth and his conspirators hoped to plunge the U.S. government into crippling disarray.
On the evening of April 14, conspirator Lewis T. Powell stormed into Secretary of State Seward’s home, seriously injuring him and three others, while George A. Atzerodt, assigned to Vice President Johnson, lost his blood -cold and ran away. Meanwhile, just after 10 p.m., Booth entered Lincoln’s private dressing room unnoticed and shot the president with a single bullet in the back of the neck. Hitting an army officer who rushed at him, Booth jumped on stage and yelled “Sic semper tyrannis! [Thus always to tyrants]- the South is avenged! Although Booth broke his left leg while jumping out of Lincoln’s box, he managed to escape Washington.
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The fatally injured President was transported to a cheap shelter across from the Ford Theater. An hour after dawn the next morning, Abraham Lincoln died, becoming the first president to be assassinated. His body was taken to the White House, where it rested until April 18, when it was transported to the Capitol Rotunda to rest undisturbed on a catafalque. On April 21, Lincoln’s body was taken to the train station and boarded a train that transported him to Springfield, Ill., His home before he became president. Tens of thousands of Americans staked the train tracks and paid homage to their fallen leader during the train’s solemn advance through the North. Lincoln was buried on May 4, 1865 in Oak Ridge Cemetery near Springfield.
Booth, pursued by the military and Secret Service forces, was eventually cornered in a barn near Bowling Green, Virginia, and died from a gunshot wound as the barn was set on fire. Of the other eight people ultimately charged with the conspiracy, four were hanged.
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