Posted on 04/14/2005 6:40:53 PM PDT by kellynla
At Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C., John Wilkes Booth, an actor and Confederate sympathizer, fatally wounds President Abraham Lincoln. The attack came only five days after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his massive army at Appomattox, effectively ending the American Civil War.
Booth, who remained in the North during the war despite his Confederate sympathies, initially plotted to capture President Lincoln and take him to Richmond, the Confederate capital. However, on March 20, 1865, the day of the planned kidnapping, the president failed to appear at the spot where Booth and his six fellow conspirators lay in wait. Two weeks later, Richmond fell to Union forces. In April, with Confederate armies near collapse across the South, Booth hatched a desperate plan to save the Confederacy.
Learning that Lincoln was to attend Laura Keene's acclaimed performance in Our American Cousin at Ford's Theater on April 14, Booth plotted the simultaneous assassination of Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson, and Secretary of State William H. Seward. By murdering the president and two of his possible successors, Booth and his conspirators hoped to throw the U.S. government into a paralyzing disarray.
On the evening of April 14, conspirator Lewis T. Powell burst into Secretary of State Seward's home, seriously wounding him and three others, while George A. Atzerodt, assigned to Vice President Johnson, lost his nerve and fled. Meanwhile, just after 10 p.m., Booth entered Lincoln's private theater box unnoticed, and shot the president with a single bullet in the back of his head. Slashing an army officer who rushed at him, Booth jumped to the stage and shouted "Sic semper tyrannis! [Thus always to tyrants]--the South is avenged!" Although Booth had broken his left leg jumping from Lincoln's box, he succeeded in escaping Washington.
The president, mortally wounded, was carried to a cheap lodging house opposite Ford's Theater. About 7:22 a.m. the next morning, he died--the first U.S. president to be assassinated. Booth, pursued by the army and secret service forces, was finally cornered in a barn near Bowling Green, Virginia, and died from a possibly self-inflicted bullet wound as the barn was burned to the ground. Of the eight other persons eventually charged with the conspiracy, four were hanged and four were jailed.
Didn't FDR die on April 15, 80 years later?
LOL!
I swear this on my grandmother's grave. I asked the guy in the information booth at the train station how to get to Ford's Theater. He was about thirty years old. He gave me this blank stare and said, "Ford's Theater, Ford's Theater...no...I'm not familiar with that one."
So I said, "It was the place where Lincoln was shot."
He gave me that same blank stare and said, "Lincoln, Lincoln...no...I guess I didn't hear about anyone being shot.?"
I said, "Never mind." As we walked away, my wife, who would no more denigrate another soul than she would deliberately kick a blind dog, just burst out in loud laughter. I confess that it was funny, as tragic as such idiocy is.
(s)
Obviously you have not read your revisionist history.
Lincoln was part of a consipiracy. Abraham Lincoln was actually the first president of the south as part of a secret society bent on not suceeding from the south but a southern takeover of the entire USA. The freeing of the slaves was just a distraction used to decieve.
By burning out the old plantations Licoln and his society members were able to buy land for a cheep price and move their New England operations from the north to the south using the cheep labor of freed slaves and cheep land taken from former plantations.
Thus largly ignored for over a century, the conspirators were able gradually take over local politics. Why was lincoln assasinated? He was popped off by the secret society when a faction in the group wanted to take over. This faction was in disagreement over how concentrated the develpment of south should be.
Of course the faction was lead by a particular group which can trace its lineage to a particular family known as "Bush". Thus the assassination was actually the fault of GWBush because he was a secret member of a conspiracy to have the south take over the United STates.
(/s)
ok i tried.
If you haven't read it, I highly recommend the new publication: "American Brutus" by Michael Kauffman. Mike is a long-time Lincoln Assassination expert, and his book is an extremely riveting study of the total event. Having shared research material with Mike over the years, I was pleasantly surprised to find a signed copy of his book in my mailbox and a very kind mention of my name in the acknowledgements.
They forgot to mention that John Wilkes Booth was a democrat.
In actuality, Dr. Mudd had met Booth 2-3 times prior to the assassination.
The confederate Loonies are gonna come out now. They love this day!
Will they be celebrating today, then?
Lincoln generally restrained his generals and civil officers, releasing men and allowing newspapers to reopen.
It is fascinating to me that people who get all upset about Ward Churchill's infantile comments seem to think that those actively encouraging sedition and rebellion against the government in the 1860s should have been unmolested.
Lincoln himself, as usual, said it best. Roughly, "Should I hang the young soldier who deserts and do nothing to the deadly enemy of the government who encourages him to do so?"
Thank God there wasn't a movie with Leonardo di Caprio as Abe and Kate Winslett as Mary Todd Lincoln.
you did notice ithe (/s) sarcasm tag?
If figured if everything else was bushes fault...
Yes, as a matter of fact, I cracked open a bottle of Jack Daniel, and flew the Stars & Bars in honor of the occasion :)
Remember to bow your knee, to the Yankee God, Great Abe the Emancipator, vanquisher of evil Confederates! (sarcasm)
That is entirely too coincidental to be coincidence! ;-)
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