Assassination of Lincoln

Five days after Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, Abraham Lincoln attended a performance of "Our American Cousin" at Ford's Theatre in Washington on the evening of April 14, 1865. At approximately 10:15 p.m., actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth entered the presidential box and fired a single .44-caliber derringer shot into the back of Lincoln's head. Lincoln was carried across the street to the Petersen House and died the following morning at 7:22 a.m., becoming the first American president to be assassinated.

Booth's act was the centerpiece of a coordinated conspiracy. That same night, co-conspirator Lewis Powell attacked Secretary of State William Seward at his home, stabbing him seriously but failing to kill him. A third conspirator lost his nerve and never moved against Vice President Andrew Johnson. Booth escaped the theater but was tracked down 12 days later to a Virginia tobacco barn and shot dead. Eight co-conspirators were tried by military tribunal; four were hanged, including Mary Surratt — the first woman executed by the federal government.

The timing gave Lincoln's death an almost mythological weight. The war was over; Reconstruction had barely begun. The man who had guided the nation through its worst crisis — and who possessed the political skill and moral authority for a humane restoration of the South — would not guide the peace. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, standing at Lincoln's deathbed, reportedly said: "Now he belongs to the ages." What followed under Andrew Johnson confirmed what had been lost.