The Assasination of President Abraham Lincoln

The assassination of Lincoln was planned and carried out by the well known stage actor John Wilkes Booth, as part of a larger conspiracy to revive the Confederate cause. Booth's co-conspirators were Lewis Powell and David Herold. They were assigned to kill William H. Seward. George Atzerodt was supposed to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson.

In March of 1864 John Wilkes Booth, a Southern Confederate sympathizer, conceived a plan to kidnap Abraham Lincoln and deliver him to the Confederate Army, to be held hostage until the North agreed to continue exchanging prisoners. In late 1860, Booth had been initiated in the pro-Confederate Knights of the Golden Circle in Baltimore. He attended Lincoln's second inauguration on March 4, 1865, as the invited guest of his secret fiancée Lucy Hale, daughter of John P. Hale. On March 17, 1865, Booth informed his conspirators that Lincoln would be attending a play, Still Waters Run Deep, at Campbell Military Hospital. He intended that his men should join him on a nearby stretch of road in order to capture the President on his way back from the hospital. Booth found out that Lincoln had not gone to the play after all. Instead, he had attended a ceremony at the National Hotel in which officers of the 142nd Indiana Infantry presented Governor Oliver Morton with a captured Confederate battle flag.

On April 3, Richmond, Virginia, the Confederate capital, fell to the Union army. And six days later they surrendered at Appomatox Court House. Lincoln's day started well for the first time in a while. For months, the President had looked pale and haggard. Lincoln told everyone how happy he was. This caused Mary Todd Lincoln some concern, as she believed that saying such things out loud was bad luck. While...

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...wkwardly on his left foot. He walked onto the stage and held the bloody knife up saying, “Sic semper tyrranus!”(meaning Thus always to tyrants) In 1865 the hunt for Booth was over they found him in a barn. They lit the barn to try to smoke him out, but Booth wouldn’t budge. One of the soldiers disobeyed orders and shot at booth breaking his spine, thus paralyzing him. Booth was just barely dragged out before the flames completely engulfed the building. Two and a half months later Booth’s fellow conspirators were hung, making Mary Surratt the first and only woman to be hung by the United States government. Lincoln’s death was a horrible tragedy for everyone especially the south. Lincoln was going to be very easy on the south, but now they were going to have to deal with the radical republicans.

Works Cited

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln_assassination