Lincoln's Assassination A Turning Point

Historical Turning Point
On April 14, 1865 President Lincoln was shot in the head by John Wilkes Booth in Ford’s Theatre in the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C. John Wilkes Booth was a Confederate sympathizer and was very upset about the Union victory five days prior to this very dark day in this nation’s history. Booth had been cooperating with the rebels in small ways through the duration of the war, and later planned to kidnap the president. He gathered some people that respected him and he knew would follow him and he planned it all out; his plan was a suicide mission and most of his men wouldn’t go through with it because they valued their lives and thought that Booth could be their leader, but they were not going to let him end their

lives for no good reason.
At the time, Booth had given up on his aspirations to kidnap the president, because he didn’t have enough people to actually go through with it.

He felt like he had failed his duty and was more than a little upset about the whole situation. Until one day when he went to pick up his mail from Ford’s Theatre, where they held his mail; when he was leaving he heard mention that the president would be at the theatre for the show that night. He went into a frenzy to get everything prepared for the assassination. He went home to get his gun ready and make sure that it was functional, going into an assassination with a faulty weapon would get him killed; he went to the stables to secure his horse for his quick escape; and he let his men know that they were going to kill the president that night. Obviously, they were a little rattled by the short notice that they were going to attempt something so extreme with such little planning to it. But the men that he still had were ready to do what they had to please John Wilkes Booth. He told the two of them that they were to simultaneously assassinate the secretary of state and the vice

president.
That night only two of the three would fill their quarry, and unfortunately for history, it was Booth. He walked into Ford’s Theatre with absolutely no trouble, he was a famous actor and could pretty much get into anywhere he wanted; he walked up the stair and handed his card to the man standing guard, again he was famous and could get in anywhere that he wanted; then he jammed the door shut so that he wouldn’t be disturbed while fulfilling his duty; and he walked into the booth and shot the president in the back of the head. He made his escape, but was recognized by almost everyone there and, somehow, successfully left the city without any trouble. He later got what was coming to him in a barn down south when he was hunted down by the authorities.
It makes you wonder, what would have happened if Booth had failed and one of our greatest presidents would have served out his term.

This was one of the biggest turning points in American history, without Lincoln to serve as the lamp in the dark to lead his people to a new age of peace and prosperity in America. Without him rebuilding America was a disaster and the slaves that he had done so much to free, were left out on the streets with no help from the government. Lincoln could have done something about that if he would have survived, but Booth had to take out all of his anger on Lincoln and these poor people were left out on the streets of the Deep South with a lot of tension and anger directed towards them. This tension would exist in the South for so long and in many ways it still exists today, Lincoln may not have been able to change people racial prejudices toward the African American community, but he may have been able to do something to help protect them from all of the harm that was caused to them by angry

Southerners.
With all of the passion that he had to rebuild our nation and make it as great as it could be, it is very likely that if he would have survived he would have done a very good job coordinating the effort to rebuild the nation after one of the most detrimental wars in our nation’s history. Not to mention all of the short term effects of the assassination, the nation was sent into a panic, people were running around the streets freaking out about the fact that their president was dead and every horse they saw they thought was booth. Long story short, people were terrified and didn’t know what to do; this was the first time in the nation’s history that something like this had happened, and it was done by somebody that was loved and adored by many people in the country, which probably made the wound hurt that much more.