It was Good Friday. April 14, 1865. The Civil War had basically ended just days prior when Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox. Washington D.C. was practically vibrating with relief. People were literally dancing in the streets. Abraham Lincoln, looking aged and worn out from four years of bloodletting, finally felt like he could breathe. He decided to catch a play. Our American Cousin was the show. It was a comedy. He wanted to laugh. Instead, he became the first American president to be murdered.
The assassination of Abraham Lincoln wasn't just some random act of violence by a lone madman. It was a calculated, desperate plot to restart the war. John Wilkes Booth wasn't just an actor; he was a celebrity, a sympathizer for the South, and a man obsessed with a "lost cause." He didn't just want Lincoln dead. He wanted the entire Union government decapitated in a single night.
Most people think of the tragedy as a single gunshot in a dark theater. It was so much more than that. It was a messy, terrifying night that almost worked better than Booth could have hoped.
The Plot That Almost Took Out the Whole Government
Booth didn't act alone. Not even close. He had a small circle of co-conspirators meeting at Mary Surratt’s boarding house. They were a ragtag group: Lewis Powell, George Atzerodt, David Herold. The plan was terrifyingly ambitious. While Booth was at Ford's Theatre, Powell was supposed to kill Secretary of State William Seward. Atzerodt was tasked with killing Vice President Andrew Johnson.
Imagine the chaos. If all three had died, the line of succession would have been in absolute shambles. The government would have had no leader.
Powell actually made it inside Seward's house. Seward was already in bed, recovering from a carriage accident. It was brutal. Powell stabbed him repeatedly in the face and neck. But Seward was wearing a metal neck brace because of his accident. That brace literally saved his life by deflecting the blade. Atzerodt? He got cold feet. He spent the night drinking at a bar and never even approached the Vice President.
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But Booth didn't miss his chance.
That Fateful Moment at Ford's Theatre
Lincoln arrived late. The play stopped, the orchestra played "Hail to the Chief," and the crowd of about 1,700 people went wild. Lincoln sat in a rocking chair in the State Box. He was guarded—or supposed to be—by a policeman named John Frederick Parker. Parker was a bit of a mess. He had a history of being disciplined for drinking on the job. That night, he left his post. Some say he went to a nearby tavern for a drink. Some say he just wanted a better view of the play. Either way, the door was unguarded.
Booth knew the play by heart. He knew exactly when the biggest laugh would happen. During the third act, an actor named Harry Hawk delivered the line: "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!"
The crowd roared. Booth stepped into the box.
He held a .44-caliber derringer in one hand and a dagger in the other. He fired once. The ball entered behind Lincoln’s left ear. Major Henry Rathbone, who was a guest in the box, lunged at Booth. Booth stabbed him deep in the arm, then jumped from the box to the stage. It’s a 12-foot drop. He caught his spur on a Treasury flag, which caused him to land awkwardly and break his leg.
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He stood up, shouted "Sic semper tyrannis!" (Thus always to tyrants), and vanished into the night through a back door where his horse was waiting. People thought it was part of the play for a few seconds. Then the screaming started.
The Medical Nightmare in the Petersen House
Lincoln didn't die instantly. He was carried across the street to a boarding house owned by William Petersen. The President was too tall for the bed, so they had to lay him diagonally.
It was a grim scene. Doctors realized immediately the wound was fatal. They used their fingers to probe the wound to relieve pressure. No such thing as sterile environments back then. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton took charge of the room, turning the small house into the temporary nerve center of the United States government.
Lincoln lingered for nine hours. His breathing was labored. His face was distorted. At 7:22 AM on April 15, he passed away. Stanton famously remarked, "Now he belongs to the ages."
The Manhunt and the End of Booth
The assassination of Abraham Lincoln sparked the largest manhunt in U.S. history at that point. Thousands of soldiers scoured the countryside. Booth, with a broken leg, was struggling. He stopped at Dr. Samuel Mudd’s house to get his leg set—a move that would eventually land Mudd in prison.
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For 12 days, Booth and David Herold hid in the woods and tobacco barns of Maryland and Virginia. They were eventually cornered in a barn belonging to Richard Garrett. The soldiers set the barn on fire to flush them out. Herold surrendered. Booth stayed inside.
A soldier named Boston Corbett—a man who had literally castrated himself years earlier to avoid temptation—saw Booth through a crack in the barn walls. He claimed he saw Booth raising a rifle. Corbett fired, hitting Booth in the neck. The bullet paralyzed him. He was dragged to the porch of the house, where he died hours later. His last words, while looking at his hands, were: "Useless, useless."
Why the Conspiracy Theories Still Flourish
Even today, people argue about the "real" story. Was the Confederate Secret Service involved? Did Stanton let it happen to take power? Most historians, like James McPherson or Doris Kearns Goodwin, stick to the facts: Booth was a radicalized individual who led a group of incompetent followers. The gaps in security were more about 19th-century laxity than a deep-state conspiracy.
Lincoln had survived threats before. He often walked alone at night. He hated the idea of "beating the air" with bodyguards. He felt that if someone was determined to kill him, they eventually would. He was, sadly, right.
What You Can Do to Learn More
If you want to really understand the weight of this event beyond a textbook, there are a few things you can actually do.
- Visit Ford’s Theatre in D.C. It’s still a working theater. You can see the box where Lincoln sat and the museum downstairs that holds the actual derringer Booth used. It’s chilling.
- Read "Manhunt" by James L. Swanson. It’s a day-by-day account of the 12-day search for Booth. It reads like a thriller and uses primary source documents to keep everything accurate.
- Check out the Surratt House Museum. Located in Clinton, Maryland, this was a safe house for the conspirators. It gives a weirdly intimate look at the people who helped Booth.
- Look into the Trial of the Conspirators. Eight people were tried by a military commission. Four were hanged, including Mary Surratt, the first woman executed by the U.S. federal government. The transcripts are available online and offer a bizarre look into the 1860s underworld.
The death of Lincoln changed the course of Reconstruction. Without his moderate hand, the South was treated much more harshly, and the wounds of the Civil War took much longer to heal. It’s one of the great "what ifs" of history. Understanding the nuances of that night helps us understand the fractured nature of American politics today. There's no better way to grasp the story than by looking at the primary accounts of those who were actually in the room when the world changed.