Abraham Lincoln Dies After Shooting at Ford's Theatre

Context

As the American Civil War reached its final weeks in April 1865, Union armies had achieved decisive victories that made Confederate defeat inevitable. General Robert E. Lee's surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Court House on April 9 removed the largest remaining Confederate force in the field and cleared the way for the restoration of federal authority across the South.

What Happened

On the evening of April 14, Lincoln attended a performance of the comedy Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre with his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, Major Henry Rathbone, and Clara Harris. The party occupied the presidential box. John Wilkes Booth, who had performed at the theater and knew its layout, entered the box shortly after 10 p.m. and fired a single shot from a small derringer pistol into the back of Lincoln's head. Booth then jumped from the box to the stage, crossed it, and escaped through a rear door into an alley where a horse awaited him.

Aftermath

Lincoln was carried across Tenth Street to the Petersen House, a boarding house, where attending physicians could do little more than keep him comfortable through the night. He died at 7:22 a.m. on April 15. Vice President Andrew Johnson was sworn in as president the same day. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton immediately organized a massive manhunt that led to Booth's death twelve days later in a Virginia barn and the arrest of several co-conspirators.

Legacy

Lincoln's assassination transformed him into a national martyr whose image came to embody the Union's cause and the promise of emancipation. It removed the leader most inclined toward a lenient postwar settlement and left Andrew Johnson to navigate Reconstruction amid growing conflict with Congress over the treatment of the former Confederate states and the rights of freed people.