Assassination of Abraham Lincoln

On April 14, 1865, Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, was shot at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., one month into his second term and towards the conclusion of the American Civil War. Lincoln was watching the play Our American Cousin with his wife Mary Todd, Major Henry Rathbone, and Rathbone's fiancé Clara Harris when John Wilkes Booth, an actor and Confederate sympathizer, shot him in the head. Lincoln was taken to the Petersen House across the street, where he died the following morning.

With Union victory imminent, Booth and his conspirators, including Lewis Powell, David Herold, and George Atzerodt, originally plotted to kidnap Lincoln to aid the Confederacy. After that plan failed to materialize, they decided to assassinate him, the Secretary of State William H. Seward, and Vice President Andrew Johnson. Booth hoped that eliminating the three most important officials of the federal government would revive the Confederate cause. Powell and Herold were assigned to kill Seward, while Atzerodt was assigned to kill Johnson. Booth succeeded in killing Lincoln, but Powell only managed to wound Seward, while Atzerodt became drunk and never targeted Johnson.

Booth fled into Maryland after shooting Lincoln and rendezvoused with Herold. Lincoln's secretary of war, Edwin Stanton, directed the largest manhunt in US history at the time, involving thousands of troops. After a 12-day search, on April 26, Booth and Herold were located at a tobacco farm in King George County, Virginia; Booth was fatally shot by Sergeant Boston Corbett after refusing to surrender. The other conspirators were captured by the end of April 1865, except for John Surratt, whom the US captured in Egypt in November 1866. Powell, Herold, Atzerodt, and Mary Surratt were hanged in July 1865, while John Surratt was released after a mistrial in 1867 and never retried.