Teater

Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth on Good Friday, April 14, 1865, while attending the play Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., as the American Civil War was drawing to a close.[1] The assassination occurred five days after the commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, General Robert E. Lee, surrendered to Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant and the Union Army of the Potomac. Lincoln was the third American president to die in office, and the first to be murdered.[2] An unsuccessful attempt had been made on Andrew Jackson 30 years prior, in 1835, and Lincoln had himself been the subject of an earlier assassination attempt by an unknown assailant in August 1864. The assassination of Lincoln was planned and carried out by the well-known stage actor John Wilkes Booth, as part of a larger conspiracy in a bid to revive the Confederate cause. Booth's co-conspirators were Lewis Powell and David Herold, who were assigned to kill Secretary of State William H. Seward, and George Atzerodt, who was tasked with killing Vice President Andrew Johnson. By simultaneously eliminating the top three people in the administration, Booth and his co-conspirators hoped to disrupt the United States government. As the President was watching the play, Booth shot Lincoln from behind at a distance of perhaps three or four feet,[3] hitting him in the back of the head. At 7:22 a.m. the following day, Lincoln died in the Petersen House across the street from the theater.[4] The rest of the conspirators' plot failed; Powell only managed to wound Seward, while Atzerodt, Johnson's would-be assassin, lost his nerve and fled. Booth made a dramatic escape, resulting in a lengthy manhunt that ended in his death. Several other conspirators were later tried and hanged. The funeral and burial of Abraham Lincoln was a period of extended national mourning.