It happened on a Friday. Good Friday, actually.
Most people know the name Abraham Lincoln, but they don't always grasp the sheer, chaotic mess that was the United States in 1865. The Civil War was technically winding down, but the air in Washington D.C. was thick with a kind of desperate, jagged tension. If you’re asking who was the first president to get assassinated, the answer is Lincoln, but the "how" and "why" are way more complicated than a guy in a top hat getting shot in a theater.
It wasn’t just a lone act of madness. It was a decapitation strike.
The Night at Ford’s Theatre
Lincoln didn't even really want to go to the theater that night. He was exhausted. You can see it in the photographs from that year; his face looks like a map of every death he’d authorized during the war. He wanted to laugh, so he went to see a comedy called Our American Cousin.
John Wilkes Booth, the man who pulled the trigger, wasn't some random drifter. He was a celebrity. Imagine a famous Hollywood actor today deciding to kill the President. That’s the level of shock we’re talking about. Booth was a staunch Confederate sympathizer who thought Lincoln was a tyrant. He knew Ford’s Theatre like the back of his hand. He’d performed there.
Around 10:15 PM, Booth slipped into the presidential box. The timing was precise. He waited for a specific line in the play that always got a huge laugh—"you sockdologizing old man-trap"—using the noise to mask the sound of his .44-caliber derringer.
He shot Lincoln once in the back of the head.
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The chaos that followed was pure, unadulterated nightmare. Major Henry Rathbone, who was sitting with the Lincolns, tried to grab Booth. Booth stabbed him nearly to the bone with a hunting knife, leaped from the box to the stage, and shouted "Sic semper tyrannis!" (Thus always to tyrants). He broke his leg in the jump, but in the confusion, he still managed to limp out to his horse and vanish into the night.
A Conspiracy Much Bigger Than One Man
Here’s what usually gets left out of the history books: Lincoln wasn't the only target that night.
Booth had organized a small army of conspirators. While he was at the theater, Lewis Powell was barging into the home of Secretary of State William Seward. Seward was already in bed, recovering from a carriage accident and wearing a heavy neck brace. That brace actually saved his life; Powell stabbed him repeatedly, but the metal kept the blade from hitting the jugular.
Another man, George Atzerodt, was supposed to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson at the Kirkwood House hotel. He got cold feet, spent the night drinking at the bar, and eventually just wandered away.
The plan was to throw the entire U.S. government into a tailspin. If they’d succeeded in killing the President, the Vice President, and the Secretary of State all at once, the Union might have actually collapsed. It’s a terrifying "what if" that historians like James L. Swanson have dissected in great detail.
Why Lincoln was the first
It’s kinda weird to think about, but before Lincoln, presidents didn't really have bodyguards. Not in the way we think of the Secret Service today. In fact, Lincoln signed the legislation creating the Secret Service on the very day he was assassinated, but their original job was to stop counterfeiters, not protect the commander-in-chief.
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There had been attempts before. Andrew Jackson was approached by a guy named Richard Lawrence in 1835. Lawrence pulled two different pistols; both misfired. Jackson, being the absolute madman he was, proceeded to beat the guy with his cane until his aides pulled him off.
But Lincoln was the first to actually die.
The medical care he received—or rather, the lack of it—is painful to read about. Dr. Charles Leale, the first doctor on the scene, reached into the wound with his fingers to clear a blood clot so Lincoln could breathe. By today's standards, the lack of sterilization is horrifying, but back then, they were doing their best with zero resources. They carried him across the street to the Petersen House because they didn't want the President to die in a theater. He lingered for nine hours, finally passing away at 7:22 AM on April 15.
The 12-Day Manhunt
The aftermath was the biggest manhunt in American history up to that point. The government put a $100,000 reward on Booth’s head—a massive fortune in 1865.
Booth was hiding out in tobacco barns and swamps, his leg broken and festering. He was genuinely shocked that the newspapers weren't praising him. He kept a diary during those 12 days, writing about how he thought he’d be seen as a hero like Brutus. Instead, he was being hunted like an animal.
Eventually, Union cavalry cornered him in a barn owned by Richard Garrett in Virginia. They set the barn on fire to flush him out. A soldier named Boston Corbett—a guy who had actually castrated himself years earlier for religious reasons—shot Booth through a crack in the barn walls. Booth’s last words, as he looked at his hands, were "Useless, useless."
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The Legacy of the First Assassination
When we look back at who was the first president to get assassinated, we have to look at how it changed the American psyche.
The country went into a period of mourning that felt like a collective nervous breakdown. Lincoln’s funeral train traveled 1,600 miles through 400 cities. People stood by the tracks at night, lighting bonfires just to watch the train pass. It solidified Lincoln as a martyr and, arguably, made the Reconstruction era much harsher than it might have been if he’d lived to lead it.
Andrew Johnson took over, and honestly, he was a disaster. He didn't have Lincoln’s political capital or his temperament. The friction between Johnson and Congress set the stage for decades of racial tension and political gridlock that we’re still dealing with in some forms today.
What you should do next
History isn't just about names and dates; it's about the physical reality of these moments. If you want to really understand the weight of this event, here are the most effective ways to engage with it:
- Visit Ford’s Theatre in D.C. They’ve preserved it incredibly well. Standing in that space makes the event feel terrifyingly small and intimate. You can see the actual derringer Booth used in the museum downstairs.
- Read "Manhunt" by James L. Swanson. It reads like a thriller and covers the 12 days Booth was on the run. It’s the gold standard for this specific topic.
- Look at the Library of Congress digital archives. They have high-resolution scans of the items found in Lincoln's pockets the night he died—a pocket knife, a linen handkerchief, and a weathered five-dollar Confederate note. It humanizes him in a way a textbook never can.
- Research the trial of the conspirators. Four of Booth's associates, including Mary Surratt (the first woman executed by the U.S. federal government), were hanged. The photos of the execution are haunting and show just how much blood the government wanted in exchange for Lincoln’s life.
Understanding Lincoln’s death means understanding that democracy is surprisingly fragile. It only takes one person with a $15 pistol to change the trajectory of an entire planet.