The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
On April 9th, 1865, after four years of bloody warfare that cost the lives of 620,000 Americans, Confederate General-in-chief Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia officially surrendered to the Union Army of the Potomac under the Commanding General of the United States.
The surrender took place at the McLean House in Appomattox Court House, Virginia, after one of the final battles of the Civil War. Less than a week later, the American nation would shudder at the loss of one of its most historic and impactful leaders.
Lincoln Assassination at the Ford Theatre
On April 14th, 1865, after a long day tending to the nation’s business, the 16th American President and his wife, Mary, went to Ford’s Theater in Washington DC to take in the wildly popular stage play comedy, Our American Cousin.
Due to his national fame as a stage actor, Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth maintained ready access to all part of Ford’s Theater, using his carte blanche access for the planned assassination of President Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William H. Seward.
John Wilkes Booth
While Booth’s co-conspirator Lewis Powell was tasked with killing Seward, George Atzerodt was tasked with killing the Vice President. Arriving late to the theater with Major Henry Rathbone and his fiancee Clara Harris, the play was interrupted so that the orchestra could play “Hail to the Chief” as the packed house of some 1,700 theatergoers rose in applause.
As the play resumed, Booth, who knew the play by heart, entered the Lincoln’s skybox from behind, timing his lone shot to coincide with one of the funniest lines of the play.
As laughter pealed throughout the theater, Booth approached the President and shot him in the back of the head with a six inch single-shot derringer. The bullet entered Lincoln’s skull behind his left ear, passed through his brain and came to rest near the front of his skull, fracturing both his orbital plates.
Major Rathbone jumped from his seat and struggled with Booth, who dropped his derringer and drew a knife, stabbing Rathbone in his left forearm. Rathbone again grabbed at Booth, just as the assassin jumped from the skybox to the stage—a twelve-foot drop, but not before one of his spurs became entangled with the Treasury flag decorating Lincoln’s skybox.
Booth’s fall to the stage was a painful one, landing him awkwardly on his left foot, but as he began to cross the stage, many in the audience thought he was part of the play and began to laugh. Before Booth fled into the night, most eyewitness accounts indicate that Booth held up his bloody knife and yelled “Sic Semper Tyrannis,” which is Latin for thus always to tyrants.
Abraham Lincoln’s Death and Conspirators Brought to Justice
With the help of three doctors in attendance that night, the comatose President was moved across the street to a first-floor bedroom in tailor William Petersen’s house. More physicians arrived to offer aid, but the 16th president of the United States left this earth the following day at 7:22 in the morning.
Lincoln’s death was mourned around the world. Hundreds of thousands attended his funeral procession through the streets of Washington DC on April 19th, followed by a 1,700-mile train ride procession from New York to Lincoln’s hometown of Springfield, Illinois, often passing trackside tributes in the form of bands, bonfires and hymn-singing.
The hunt for the conspirators quickly became the largest in U.S. history, involving thousands of federal troops and countless civilians. Booth was cornered by the 16th New York Cavalry while he was sleeping in a barn in Virginia.
A lone soldier snuck up behind him and shot Booth in the back of the head—a just reprisal for what the assassin had done to the President of the United States. Many of Booth’s co-conspirators were freed after lengthy trials, while Marry Surratt, Lewis Powell, David Herold and George Alzerodt were hanged by the neck on June 30th, 1865.