The assassination of Abraham Lincoln
The Civil War was nearing its end when Robert E. Lee submitted to Ulysses Grant at Appomattox Court on April 9, 1865. Maryland-born John Wilkes Booth remained in the North during the Civil War. He was a well-known theatrical performer who supported the Confederacy and thought harshly of Abraham Lincoln. Booth became desperate when his original attempt to kidnap Abraham Lincoln on March 20, 1865, failed and Confederate General Lee submitted to his captors a few weeks later. When Lincoln learned that he would be seeing Laura Keene's critically praised production of "Our American Cousin" at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., he devised a cunning scheme to assassinate three important Union leaders and destabilize the government.
On April 14, 1885, at 10:15 p.m., John Wilkes Booth crept up behind Lincoln and shot him in the back of the head with a 44-caliber single-shot derringer pistol. Then, after leaping onto the stage, he escaped. Lewis Powell's attempt to assassinate Secretary of State William H. Seward and George Atzerodt's attempt to assassinate Vice President Andrew Johnson were both unsuccessful. On April 26, Booth was shot to death because he refused to give up. On July 7, 1865, his co-conspirators were hanged after being found guilty of their involvement in the murder.
