Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
On April 14, 1865, Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, was shot at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., one month into his second term and towards the conclusion of the American Civil War. Lincoln was watching the play Our American Cousin with his wife Mary Todd, Major Henry Rathbone, and Rathbone's fiancé Clara Harris when John Wilkes Booth, an actor and Confederate sympathizer, shot him in the head. Lincoln was taken to the Petersen House across the street, where he died the following morning.
With Union victory imminent, Booth and his conspirators, including Lewis Powell, David Herold, and George Atzerodt, originally plotted to kidnap Lincoln to aid the Confederacy. After that plan failed to materialize, they decided to assassinate him, Secretary of State William H. Seward, and Vice President Andrew Johnson. Booth hoped that eliminating the three most important officials of the federal government would revive the Confederate cause. Powell and Herold were assigned to kill Seward, while Atzerodt was assigned to kill Johnson. Booth succeeded in killing Lincoln, but Powell only managed to wound Seward, while Atzerodt became drunk and never targeted Johnson.
Booth fled into Maryland after shooting Lincoln and rendezvoused with Herold. Lincoln's secretary of war, Edwin Stanton, directed the largest manhunt in US history at the time, involving thousands of troops. After a 12-day search, on April 26, Booth and Herold were located at a tobacco farm in King George County, Virginia; Booth was fatally shot by Sergeant Boston Corbett after refusing to surrender. The other conspirators were captured by the end of April 1865, except for John Surratt, whom the US captured in Egypt in November 1866. Powell, Herold, Atzerodt, and Mary Surratt were hanged in July 1865, while John Surratt was released after a mistrial in 1867 and never retried.
Johnson was hastily sworn in as the 17th president on April 15 and served for the remainder of Lincoln's second term. Lincoln's state funeral was held on April 19, after which a funeral train transported his remains through seven states for burial in Illinois. He was the third US president to die in office, and the first by assassination. The assassination drew international condemnation and left a profound impact on the US. It made Lincoln a national martyr and led to a lengthy period of mourning as the US entered the Reconstruction era.
Background
Abandoned plan to kidnap Lincoln
John Wilkes Booth, born in Maryland into a family of prominent stage actors, had by the time of the assassination become a famous actor and national celebrity. He was also an outspoken Confederate sympathizer; in late 1860 he was initiated in the pro-Confederate Knights of the Golden Circle in Baltimore, Maryland.In May 1863, the Confederate States Congress passed a law prohibiting the exchange of black soldiers, following a previous decree by President Jefferson Davis in December 1862 that neither black soldiers nor their white officers would be exchanged. This became a reality in mid-July 1863 after some soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts were not exchanged following their assault on Fort Wagner. On July 30, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued General Order 252 to stop prisoner exchanges with the South until all Northern soldiers would be exchanged without regard for their skin color. Stopping the prisoner exchanges is often wrongly attributed to General Grant, even though he was commanding an army in the west in mid-1863 and became overall commander in early 1864.
Booth conceived a plan to kidnap Lincoln in order to blackmail the Union into resuming prisoner exchanges, and he recruited Samuel Arnold, George Atzerodt, David Herold, Michael O'Laughlen, Lewis Powell, and John Surratt to help him. Surratt's mother, Mary Surratt, left her tavern in Surrattsville, Maryland, and moved to a house in Washington, D.C., where Booth became a frequent visitor.
Booth and Lincoln were not personally acquainted, but Lincoln had seen Booth at Ford's Theatre in 1863. After the assassination, actor Frank Mordaunt wrote that Lincoln, who apparently harbored no suspicions about Booth, admired the actor and had repeatedly but unsuccessfully invited him to visit the White House. Booth attended Lincoln's second inauguration on March 4, 1865, writing in his diary afterwards: "What an excellent chance I had, if I wished, to kill the President on Inauguration day!"
On March 17, Booth and the other conspirators planned to abduct Lincoln as he returned from a play at Campbell General Hospital in northwest Washington. Lincoln did not go to the play, however, instead attending a ceremony at the National Hotel. Booth was living at the National Hotel at the time and, had he not gone to the hospital for the abortive kidnap attempt, might have been able to attack Lincoln at the hotel.
Meanwhile, the Confederacy was collapsing. On April 3, Richmond, Virginia, the Confederate capital, fell to the Union army. On April 9, General Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant and his Army of the Potomac after the Battle of Appomattox Court House. Confederate president Jefferson Davis and other Confederate officials had fled. Nevertheless, Booth continued to believe in the Confederate cause and sought a way to salvage it; he soon decided to assassinate Lincoln.
Previous assassination attempt
In mid-August, 1864, Lincoln was heading to his cottage at the Soldiers' Home in Washington D.C., about 3 miles northeast of the White House. Lincoln was riding alone on his horse, Old Abe, to the home at about 11 p.m., deep in thought. Between 1862 and 1864, Lincoln was known to spend the summer months at the Soldiers' Home with his family, starting between mid-June and early July of each year to escape the heat, and staying until early November.On that night, John W. Nichols, a sentry of the property, was on duty, and was stationed at the gate of the home. When Lincoln arrived at the foot of the hill of the path to the Soldiers' Home, Nichols suddenly heard a rifle shot in the distance, and shortly after, Lincoln appeared at the gate on his horse, missing his stovepipe hat.
After Lincoln dismounted his horse, he stated, "He came pretty near getting away with me, didn't he? He got the bit in his teeth before I could draw the rein." Nichols replied by asking where the president's hat was, and Lincoln replied by stating that someone fired a sniper rifle at him at the foot of the hill. Afterwards, his horse had become frightened, and took off at "breakneck speed", jerking his hat off of his head.
Nichols soon allowed Lincoln into his cottage, and calmed Lincoln's horse, who was still frightened. Nichols then sought another corporal at the home, before both men went to investigate the road Lincoln had taken. At the intersection of the path to the Soldiers' Home and a main road, the men found Lincoln's hat. Upon inspection, Nichols and the corporal found that the hat had a bullet-hole through its crown. However, Lincoln himself sustained no injuries. Nichols remarked that the bullet had been fired upward, and it was evident that the person who fired the rifle had "secreted himself close to by the roadside".
The following day, Nichols returned Lincoln his hat, and called special attention to the bullet-hole in the hat's crown. After seeing the bullet hole, Lincoln replied by stating that he was probably fired at by an incompetent hunter, and it was not the shooter's intention to fire at him. However, Lincoln requested that the matter be kept quiet, which Nichols followed, although he felt confident that the shooter intended to kill Lincoln.
According to Ward Hill Lamon, who was Lincoln's personal bodyguard, Lincoln had the following to say about the event:
After this event, it was required that Lincoln should always have a bodyguard, and he would never ride on his horse alone again. The gunman's identity remains unknown, but some have theorized that it was none other than John Wilkes Booth, who was a "crack shot".
Motive
There are various theories about Booth's motivations. In a letter to his mother, he wrote of his desire to avenge the South. Doris Kearns Goodwin has endorsed the idea that another factor was Booth's rivalry with his well-known older brother, actor Edwin Booth, who was a loyal Unionist. David S. Reynolds believes that, though disagreeing with his cause, Booth greatly admired the daring of abolitionist John Brown; Booth's sister Asia Booth Clarke quoted him as saying, "John Brown was a man inspired, the grandest character of the century!"On April 11, Booth attended Lincoln's last speech, in which Lincoln promoted voting rights for emancipated slaves; Booth said, "That means nigger citizenship.... That is the last speech he will ever give." Enraged, Booth urged Powell to shoot Lincoln on the spot. Whether Booth made this request because he was not armed or considered Powell a better shot than himself is unknown. In any event, Powell refused for fear of the crowd, and Booth was either unable or unwilling to personally attempt to kill the president. However, Booth said to David Herold, "By God, I'll put him through."
Lincoln's premonitions
According to Ward Hill Lamon, three days before his death, Lincoln related a dream in which he wandered the White House searching for the source of mournful sounds:However, Lincoln later told Lamon that "In this dream it was not me, but some other fellow, that was killed. It seems that this ghostly assassin tried his hand on someone else." Paranormal investigator Joe Nickell wrote that dreams of assassination would not be unexpected, considering the Baltimore Plot and an additional assassination attempt in which a hole was shot through Lincoln's hat.
For months, Lincoln had looked pale and haggard, but on the morning of the assassination he told people how happy he was. First Lady Mary Lincoln felt such talk could bring bad luck. Lincoln told his cabinet that he had dreamed of being on a "singular and indescribable vessel that was moving with great rapidity toward a dark and indefinite shore", and that he had had the same dream before "nearly every great and important event of the War" such as the Union victories at Antietam, Murfreesboro, Gettysburg, and Vicksburg.