Abraham Lincoln

Shot on 14 April 1865 at Ford Theatre in Washington by the actor John Wilkes Booth; the president died the next morning, straining the Reconstruction to come.

Overview

Days after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox, the celebrated actor and Confederate sympathizer Booth entered the presidential box during Our American Cousin and shot Lincoln behind the ear with a derringer. The president died across the street early on 15 April. The wider conspiracy attacked Secretary Seward, who survived, and failed against Vice President Johnson. Booth was tracked to a Virginia barn and shot on 26 April; four conspirators, including Mary Surratt, were hanged. Lincoln murder deprived the nation of its most skilled political healer in the hour of victory, embittered northern opinion, and hardened the Reconstruction imposed on the defeated South under Andrew Johnson. He was mourned as the martyred savior of the Union and the Great Emancipator, and buried after a thirteen day funeral train across the states.