Posted on 04/14/2010 5:54:59 AM PDT by central_va
On this day in 1865, John Wilkes Booth, an actor and Confederate sympathizer, fatally shoots President Abraham Lincoln at a play at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C. The attack came only five days after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his massive army at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, effectively ending the American Civil War.
Booth, a Maryland native born in 1838, 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 a performance of "Our American Cousin" at Ford's Theater on April 14, Booth masterminded 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 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 leapt to the stage and shouted "Sic semper tyrannis! [Thus always to tyrants]–the South is avenged!" Although Booth broke his leg jumping from Lincoln's box, he managed to escape Washington on horseback.
The president, mortally wounded, was carried to a lodging house opposite Ford's Theater. About 7:22 a.m. the next morning, Lincoln, age 56, died–the first U.S. president to be assassinated. Booth, pursued by the army and other secret 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 people eventually charged with the conspiracy, four were hanged and four were jailed. Lincoln, the 16th U.S. president, was buried on May 4, 1865, in Springfield, Illinois.
It’s also the day (night) the Titanic sank.
Another one of your confederate heroes?
First time I’ve heard the word “massive” used to describe the few scarecrows that decided not to carry on as guerillas and surrendered that day. Weren’t there only 20,000 left ?
Hey, go ahead and have your Lincoln love feast. I even provided the thread. Tell me how great he was, I am waiting.
If I recall correctly, Grant was also to have been a target as he was to have been in the box with Lincoln at the play, but he backed out at the last minute.
I think that's already been done by authors and historians far more qualified to do so than I. But by all means tell us how Booth was really a patriot and his actions were a noble strike against the tyrant and all the rest of that Lost Cause crap.
Actually, the soldiers from NC ans SC wera allowed to leave the A of No. Va. That is why Petersburg fell.
Hey, I am on record as saying Booth’s act was stupid. The Goon would have for sure screwed up reconstruction and not been a martyr.
Grant was supposed to go, but backed out because Mrs. Grant and Mrs. Lincoln couldn't stand each other. I don't think he was a target of the Booth conspiracy but he certainly would have been a target of opportunity had he been there.
The other targets that night as I recall were Vice President Johnson and Secretary of State Seward. Seward was severely injured but the man who was supposed to take out Johnson chickened out.
I’m always amazed at people who want to refight the civil war 145 years after it ended. It’s history. It’s open to interpretation of motives but it’s still history.
You should study a little harder, history repeats itself.
I must have missed that part. By all means repeat it. It'll be interesting to watch you fake sincerity as you do it.
Lincoln is NOT short. Lincoln is TALL.
I was looking for a martyr love feast, why all the hate?
sometimes.
I believe the term you were looking for is 'desertion'. In any case, Bratton's Brigade was with Lee at the end and they were all South Carolinians. There were some North Carolina troops among the artillery as well.
Oh I know your motives. Let's ping Idabilly and cowboyway. They can sing Booth's praises with you.
I get it.
Incidentally, as you fly over Washington and look down at the memorials, the lincoln memorial is three times the size of the Jefferson memorial.
I guess the size of the positive memory is inversely proportional to the contribution to the Constitution Republic they served.
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