Assassination of Abraham Lincoln

The assassination of United States President Abraham Lincoln took place on Good Friday, April 14, 1865, after the American Civil War had ended. The assassination occurred five days after the commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, General Robert E. Lee, surrendered to Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant and the Union Army of the Potomac. Lincoln was the first American president to be assassinated, though an unsuccessful attempt had been made on Andrew Jackson thirty years before in 1835. The assassination was planned and carried out by the well-known stage actor John Wilkes Booth, as part of a larger conspiracy in a bid to revive the Confederate cause.

Booth's co-conspirators were Lewis Powell and David Herold, who were assigned to kill Secretary of State William H. Seward, and George Atzerodt who was to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson. By simultaneously eliminating the top three people in the administration, Booth and his co-conspirators hoped to sever the continuity of the United States government.

Lincoln was shot while watching the play Our American Cousin with his wife Mary Todd Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. on the night of April 14, 1865. He died early the next morning. The rest of the conspirators' plot failed; Powell only managed to wound Seward, while Atzerodt, Johnson's would-be assassin, lost his nerve and fled Washington.

Original Plan: Kidnapping the President
In March 1864, Ulysses S. Grant, the commanding general of all the Union's armies, decided to suspend the exchange of prisoners-of-war. Harsh as it may have been on the prisoners of both sides, Grant realized the exchange was prolonging the war by returning soldiers to the outnumbered and manpower-starved South. John Wilkes Booth, a Southerner and outspoken Confederate sympathizer, conceived a plan to kidnap President Lincoln and deliver him to the Confederate Army, to be held hostage until the North agreed to resume exchanging prisoners. Booth recruited Samuel Arnold, George Atzerodt, David Herold, Michael O'Laughlen, Lewis Powell (also known as "Lewis Paine"), 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. Prosecutors later pointed out that her move coincided with Booth's need for a base of operations in the federal capital[citation needed].

In late 1860, Booth was 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, soon to become United States Ambassador to Spain. Booth afterwards wrote in his diary, "What an excellent chance I had, if I wished, to kill the President on Inauguration day!"

On March 17, 1865, Booth informed his conspirators that Lincoln would be attending a play, Still Waters Run Deep, at Campbell Military Hospital. He assembled his men in a restaurant at the edge of town, intending that they should soon join him on a nearby stretch of road in order to capture the President on his way back from the hospital. But 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. Booth was living at the National Hotel at the time and could have had an opportunity to kill Lincoln had Booth not been at the hospital.

Meanwhile, the Confederacy was falling apart. On April 3, Richmond, Virginia, the Confederate capital, fell to the Union army. On April 9, the Army of Northern Virginia, the main army of the Confederacy, surrendered to the Army of the Potomac at Appomatox Court House. Confederate President Jefferson Davis and the rest of his government were in full flight. Despite many Southerners giving up hope, Booth continued to believe in his cause.

On April 11, 1865, two days after Lee's army surrendered to Grant, Booth attended a speech at the White House in which Lincoln promoted voting rights for blacks. Furiously provoked, Booth decided on assassination and is quoted as saying:

'' "That means nigger citizenship. Now, by God, I'll put him through. That is the last speech he will ever give." ''

Lincoln's premonitions
It is widely believed that Lincoln anticipated his assassination.

Shortly after his election in 1860. Lincoln received the news of his victory by telegraph and celebrated at home with some friends. Exhausted from the day's events, he fell asleep on the sofa. When he awoke in the morning, he happened to glance in a bureau mirror and was startled to see a double image of himself reflected. He related the strange event to Harper's Magazine: Looking in that glass, I saw myself reflected, nearly at full length; but my face, I noticed, had two separate and distinct images, the tip of the nose of one being about three inches from the tip of the other. I was a little bothered, perhaps startled, and got up and looked in the glass, but the illusion vanished.

On lying down again, I saw it a second time -- plainer, if possible, than before; and then I noticed that one of the faces was a little paler, say five shades, than the other. I got up and the thing melted away, and I went off and, in the excitement of the hour, forgot all about it -- nearly, but not quite, for the thing would once in a while come up, and give me a little pang, as though something uncomfortable had happened. When Lincoln told his wife Mary of the phenomenon, her interpretation was prescient: "She thought it was 'a sign,'" Lincoln said, "that I was to be elected to a second term of office, and that the paleness of one of the faces was an omen that I should not see life through the last term."

According to Ward Hill Lamon, Lincoln's friend and biographer, three days before his assassination Lincoln discussed with Lamon and others a dream he had, saying:

'' "About ten days ago, I retired very late. I had been up waiting for important dispatches from the front. I could not have been long in bed when I fell into a slumber, for I was weary. I soon began to dream. There seemed to be a death-like stillness about me. Then I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping. I thought I left my bed and wandered downstairs. There the silence was broken by the same pitiful sobbing, but the mourners were invisible. I went from room to room; no living person was in sight, but the same mournful sounds of distress met me as I passed along. I saw light in all the rooms; every object was familiar to me; but where were all the people who were grieving as if their hearts would break? I was puzzled and alarmed. What could be the meaning of all this? Determined to find the cause of a state of things so mysterious and so shocking, I kept on until I arrived at the East Room, which I entered. There I met with a sickening surprise. Before me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; and there was a throng of people, gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose face was covered, others weeping pitifully. 'Who is dead in the White House?' I demanded of one of the soldiers, 'The President,' was his answer; 'he was killed by an assassin.' Then came a loud burst of grief from the crowd, which woke me from my dream. I slept no more that night; and although it was only a dream, I have been strangely annoyed by it ever since." ''

On the day of the assassination, Lincoln had told his bodyguard, William H. Crook that he had been having dreams of himself being assassinated for three straight nights. Crook tried to persuade the president not to attend a performance of the play Our American Cousin at Ford's Theater that night, or at least allow him to go along as an extra bodyguard, but Lincoln said he had his mind fixied. As Lincoln left for the theater, he turned to Crook and said "Goodbye, Crook." According to Crook, this was the first time he said that. Before, Lincoln had always said, "Good night, Crook."

After Lincoln was shot, Mary was quoted as saying, "His dream was prophetic."

Day of the Assassination
On April 14, Booth's morning started at the stroke of midnight. Lying wide awake in his bed at the National Hotel, he wrote his mother that all was well, but that he was "in haste". In his diary, he wrote that "Our cause being almost lost, something decisive and great must be done".

Lincoln's day started well for the first time in a long time; he woke up cheerful. Senator James Harlan remembered taking a drive with the Lincolns only days before the president's assassination, and found him transformed. "His whole appearance, poise and bearing had marvelously changed. He was, in fact, transfigured. That indescribable sadness which had previously seemed to be an adamantean element in his very being, had been suddenly exchanged for an equally indescribable expression of serene joy as if conscious that the great purpose of his life had been achieved." Hugh McCulloch, the new Secretary of the Treasury, remarked that on that morning, "I never saw Mr. Lincoln so cheerful and happy". Edwin M. Stanton said: "At the earliest moment yesterday, the President called a cabinet meeting, at which Gen. Grant was present. He was more cheerful and happy than I had ever seen him. He rejoiced at the near prospect of a firm and durable peace at home and abroad, which manifested in a marked degree the soundness and honesty of his disposition, and the tender and forgiving spirit that so eminently distinguished him." No one could miss the difference. For months, the President had looked pale and haggard. Lincoln himself told people how happy he was. This caused First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln some concern, as she believed that saying such things out loud was bad luck. Lincoln paid her no heed. Lincoln told members of his cabinet that he had dreamed that he was on a "singular and indescribable vessel that was moving with great rapidity toward a dark and indefinite shore." He also revealed that he'd had the same dream repeatedly on previous occasions, before "nearly every great and important event of the War" such as the victories at Antietam, Murfreesboro, Gettysburg and Vicksburg. He met with his cabinet that day and later had a brief meeting with Vice President Andrew Johnson, the first between the two since Johnson had shown up drunk to take the vice presidential oath on Inauguration Day, six weeks prior.

At around noon, while visiting Ford's Theatre to pick up his mail (Booth had a permanent mailbox there), Booth learned from the brother of John Ford, the owner, that the President and General Grant would be attending the theatre to see Our American Cousin that night. Booth determined that this was the perfect opportunity for him to do something "decisive". He knew the theater's layout, having performed there several times, as recently as the previous month.

That same afternoon, Booth went to Mary Surratt's boarding house in Washington, D.C. and asked her to deliver a package to her tavern in Surrattsville, Maryland. He also requested Surratt to tell her tenant who resided there to have the guns and ammunition that Booth had previously stored at the tavern ready to be picked up later that evening. She complied with Booth's requests and made the trip, along with Louis J. Weichmann, her boarder and son's friend. This exchange, and her compliance in it, would lead directly to Surratt's execution three months later.

At seven o'clock that evening, John Wilkes Booth met for a final time with all his fellow conspirators. Booth assigned Lewis Powell to kill Secretary of State William H. Seward at his home, George Atzerodt to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson at his residence, the Kirkwood Hotel, and David E. Herold to guide Powell to the Seward house and then out of Washington to rendezvous with Booth in Maryland. Booth planned to shoot Lincoln with his single-shot derringer and then stab Grant with a knife at Ford's Theatre. They were all to strike simultaneously shortly after ten o'clock that night. Atzerodt wanted nothing to do with it, saying he had only signed up for a kidnapping, not a killing. Booth told him he was in too far to back out.

Powell attacks Secretary William Seward and Booth shoots President Lincoln
Contrary to the information Booth had overheard, General and Mrs. Grant had declined the invitation to see the play with the Lincolns, as Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Grant were not on good terms. Several other people were invited to join them, until finally Major Henry Rathbone and his fiancée Clara Harris (daughter of New York Senator Ira Harris) accepted.

There is evidence to suggest that either Booth or his fellow conspirator Michael O'Laughlen, who looked similar, followed Grant and his wife Julia to Union Station late that afternoon and discovered that Grant would not be at the theater that night. Apparently, O'Laughlen boarded the same train the Grants took to Philadelphia in order to kill Grant. An alleged attack during the evening took place; however, the assailant was unsuccessful since the private car that the Grants were riding in had been locked and guarded by porters.

Booth had assigned Lewis Powell to murder Secretary of State William H. Seward. On April 5, Seward was thrown from his carriage, suffering a concussion, a jaw broken in two places, and a broken right arm. Doctors improvised a jaw splint to repair his jaw (this is often mistakenly called a neck brace). On the night of the assassination, he was still restricted to the bed at his Washington home in Lafayette Park, not too far from the White House. Herold guided Powell to Seward's residence. Powell was carrying an 1858 Whitney revolver, which was a large, heavy and popular gun during the Civil War. In addition, he carried a silver-handled bowie knife.

The Lincoln party arrived late and acsended the red carpeted stairs to the Presidental box. They  settled into the Presidential Box, which was actually two corner box seats with the dividing wall between them removed. Ford's Theater was full with 1,700 in attendance.

Meanwhile, Powell knocked at the front door of the house a little after 10:00 p.m. William Bell, Seward's butler, answered the door. Powell told Bell that he had medicine for Seward from his physician, Dr. Verdi, and that he was to personally deliver and show Seward how to take the medicine. Upon gaining admittance to the residence, Powell began making his way up the stairs to Seward's third-floor bedroom after much persuasion on his part. At the top of the staircase, he was stopped by Seward's son, Assistant Secretary of State Frederick W. Seward. Powell told Frederick the same story that he had told Bell. Frederick was suspicious of the intruder, and told Powell that his father was asleep. Powell then lunged at him and stabbed, with the butler William Bell crying, "Murder! Murder!" before running away.

After hearing voices in the hall, Seward's daughter Fanny opened the door to Seward's room and said, "Fred, Father is awake now", and then closed the door, thus revealing to Powell where Seward was located. Initially, Powell started back down the stairs when suddenly he jolted around and drew his revolver, pointing it at Frederick's forehead. He pulled the trigger, but the gun misfired. Instead of pulling the trigger again, Powell panicked and bludgeoned Frederick Seward about the head with it. Seward crumpled to the floor unconscious, but Powell's gun was damaged beyond repair. Fanny, wondering what all the noise was, looked out the door again. She saw her brother bloody and unconscious on the floor and Powell running towards her. Powell shoved her aside, ran to Seward's bed and began stabbing him repeatedly in the face and neck. He missed the first time he swung his knife down, but the third blow sliced open Seward's cheek. Seward's splint was the only thing that prevented the blade from penetrating his jugular vein.

Sergeant Robinson and Seward's son Augustus tried to drive Powell away. Augustus had been asleep in his room, but was awakened by Fanny's screams of terror. Outside the residence, David Herold also heard Fanny screaming. He became frightened and ran away, abandoning Powell, who had no directional knowledge of the escape route from the capital city. The force of Powell's blows had driven Secretary Seward off the bed and onto the floor behind the bed where Powell could not reach him. Powell fought off Robinson, Augustus, and Fanny, stabbing them as well.

When Augustus went for his pistol, Powell ran downstairs and headed for the front door. Just then, a messenger named Emerick Hansell arrived with a telegram for Seward. Powell stabbed Hansell in the back, causing him to fall to the floor, and leaving him permanently paralyzed. Before running outside, Powell exclaimed, "I'm mad! I'm mad!", untied his horse from the tree where Herold left it, and rode away, alone. Fanny Seward cried, "Oh my God, father's dead!" Sergeant Robinson lifted the Secretary from the floor back onto the bed. Seward spat the blood out of his mouth and said, "I am not dead; send for a doctor, send for the police. Close the house." Seward was covered with blood, but Powell's wild stabs in the dark room had not hit anything vital, and he recovered. His face, however, was permanently scarred.

Meanwhile, the Lincolns, Major Henry Rathbone and Miss Clara Harris were enjoying the play. often called his attention  to  some humorous situation  on the  stage . She seemed  to  take great pleasure <span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(84,84,84);font-family:arial,sans-serif;line-height:18.2px;"> in  <span style="font-size:small;font-weight:bold;color:rgb(106,106,106);font-family:arial,sans-serif;line-height:18.2px;">witnessing his enjoyment <span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(84,84,84);font-family:arial,sans-serif;line-height:18.2px;">. Mrs. Lincoln whispered to her husband, who was holding her hand, "What will Miss Harris think of my hanging on to you so?" The president smiled and replied, "She won't think anything about it". Those were the last words ever spoken by Abraham Lincoln.

The box was supposed to be guarded by a policeman named John Frederick Parker who, by all accounts, was a curious choice for a bodyguard. During the intermission, Parker went to a nearby tavern with Lincoln's footman and coachman. It is unclear whether he ever returned to the theatre, but he was certainly not at his post when Booth entered the box. Nevertheless, Booth's celebrity status as a premier actor did not warrant any questioning from audience members, who assumed he was coming to call on the President.

Upon gaining access through the first door of the entry to the Presidential Box, Booth barricaded the inward-swinging door behind him with a wooden stick that he pried between the wall and the door. He then turned around, and looked through the tiny peep-hole he had carved in the second door (which granted entry the Presidential Box) earlier that day.

At 10:15 pm, Booth opened the door, crept forward and stood behind Lincoln from a few feet away. On stage, actor Harry Hawk (playing the lead role of the "cousin", Asa Trenchard), said the funniest line of the play: "Don't know the manners of good society, eh? Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal; you sockdologizing old man-trap!" With the line said, hysterical laughter started permeating the theatre. Booth rasied the pistol and shot the President in the back of the head at point-blank range. The bullet entered Lincoln's skull behind his left ear, fractured part of it badly and went through the left side of his brain before lodging just above his right eye. Lincoln <span style="color:rgb(1,44,87);font-family:'LucidaGrande','TrebuchetMS','GillSans',Verdana,'URWGothicL','NimbusSansL',sans-serif;font-size:14px;line-height:14px;"><span style="color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:21px;">immediately lost consciousness. Mary-Todd reacted to the shot, still clutching her husband's hand. She reached out to her husband, and then screamed when she realized what happened.

Upon hearing the gunshot, Rathbone quickly jumped from his seat to defend the president, Booth was grabbed by Rathbone. Booth stabbed the major violently in the arm reaching the bone and pushed him to the floor. Rathbone quickly sat up and grabbed Booth's coat as he was preparing to jump from the sill of the box. Booth fell over the rail of the box down to the stage below (about a twelve-foot drop). In the process, his riding spur became entangled on the Treasury flag decorating the box, and he landed awkwardly on his left foot, fracturing his left fibula just above the ankle. He raised himself up despite the injury and began crossing the stage, making the audience believe that he was part of the play. Booth held his bloody knife over his head, and yelled either "Sic semper tyrannis!" the Virginia state motto, meaning "Thus always to tyrants" in Latin or "The South is avenged!".

Mary Lincoln's and Clara Harris' screams and Rathbone's cries of "Stop that man!" caused the audience to realize that this was not part of the show, and pandemonium immediately broke out. Booth ran across the stage just when Rathbone shouted and left just before anybody could lunge at him, and ran out the side door to the horse he had waiting outside. Some of the men in the audience chased after him when they noticed what was going on, but failed to catch him. Booth struck "Peanuts" Burroughs (who was holding Booth's horse) in the forehead with the handle of his knife, leaped onto the horse, kicked Burroughs in the chest with his good leg, and rode away into the night.

Katherine M. Evans, a young actress in the play, who was in Ford's offstage green room when Lincoln was shot but rushed on the stage after Booth's exit, stated "I looked and saw President Lincoln unconscious, his head dropping on his breast, his eyes closed, but with a smile still on his face".

Death of President Lincoln
Charles Leale, a young Army surgeon doctor on liberty for the night, and attending the play, made his way through the crowd to the door at the rear of the Presidential box when he saw Booth finish his performance to the audience and saw the blood on Booth's knife. The door would not open. Finally, Rathbone saw a notch carved in the door and a wooden brace jammed there to hold the door shut. Rathbone shouted to Leale, who stepped back from the door, allowing Rathbone to remove the brace and open the door.

Leale entered the box to find Rathbone bleeding profusely from a deep gash in his chest that ran the length of his upper left arm as well as a long slash in his arm. Nonetheless, he passed Rathbone by and stepped forward just as Lincoln slumped over in his rocking chair, held up by Mary, who was sobbing and could not control herself. Leale discovered Lincoln <span style="color:rgb(1,44,87);font-family:'LucidaGrande','TrebuchetMS','GillSans',Verdana,'URWGothicL','NimbusSansL',sans-serif;font-size:14px;line-height:14px;">un conscious, paralyzed, and barely breathing. Leale lowered the President to the floor believing that Lincoln had been stabbed in the shoulder by the knife. A second doctor in the audience, Charles Sabin Taft, was lifted bodily from the stage over the railing and into the box.

Taft and Leale cut away Lincoln's blood-stained collar and opened his shirt, and Leale, feeling around by hand, discovered the bullet hole in the back of his head right next to his left ear. Leale attempted to remove the bullet, but the bullet was too deep in his head and instead Leale dislodged a clot of blood in the wound. Consequently, Lincoln's breathing improved. Leale learned that if he continued to release more blood clots at a specific time, Lincoln would still breathe. He allowed actress Laura Keene  to cradle the wounded President's head in her lap. Then Leale finally announced that it made no difference: "His wound is mortal. It is impossible for him to recover."

Leale, Taft, and another doctor from the audience, Albert King, quickly consulted and decided that while the President must be moved, a bumpy carriage ride across town to the White House was out of the question. After briefly considering Peter Taltavull's Star Saloon next door, they chose to carry Lincoln across the street and find a house. The three doctors and some soldiers who had been in the audience carried the President out the front entrance of Ford's Theatre. Across the street, a man was holding a lantern and calling "Bring him in here! Bring him in here!" The man was Henry Safford, a boarder at William Petersen's boarding house opposite Ford's who had been startled by the commotion across the street. The men carried Lincoln into the boarding house and into the first-floor bedroom, where they laid him diagonally on the bed because his tall frame would not fit normally on the smaller bed.

A vigil began at the Petersen House. The three physicians were joined by Surgeon General of the United States Army Joseph K. Barnes, Charles Henry Crane, Anderson Ruffin Abbott, and Robert K. Stone. Crane was a major and Barnes' assistant. Stone was Lincoln's personal physician. Robert Lincoln, home at the White House that evening, arrived at the Petersen House after being told of the shooting at about midnight. Tad Lincoln, who had attended Grover's Theater to see Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp, was not allowed to go to the Petersen House, although he was at Grover's Theater when the play was interrupted to report the news of the President's assassination.

Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles and United States Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton came and took charge of the scene. Mary Lincoln was so unhinged by the experience of the assassination that Stanton ordered her out of the room by shouting, "Take that woman out of here and do not let her in here again!" While Mary Lincoln sobbed in the front parlor, Stanton set up shop in the rear parlor, effectively running the United States government for several hours, sending and receiving telegrams, taking reports from witnesses, and issuing orders for the pursuit of Booth.

Lincoln died at 7:22:10 am on April 15, 1865. He was 56 years old. According to some accounts, at his last drawn breath, on the morning after the assassination, he smiled broadly and then expired. Mary Lincoln was not present at the time of his death and neither were his children. The crowd around the bed knelt for a prayer. When they were finished, Stanton made a statement, though there is some disagreement among historians as to what exactly the statement was. All agree that he began "Now he belongs to the..." with some stating he finished with ages while others believe he finished with angels. Hermann Faber, an Army medical illustrator, was brought into the room immediately after Lincoln's body was removed so that Faber could visually document the scene.

Though some experts have disagreed, Dr. Leale's treatment of Lincoln has been considered good for its time. He was honored for his efforts to save the President by participating in various capacities during the funeral ceremonies.