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AWFUL EVENT: President Lincoln Shot by an Assassin; The Deed Done at Ford’s Theatre Last Night (4/15/1865)
New York Times - Times Machine ^ | 4/15/1865

Posted on 04/15/2025 7:06:29 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson

[OFFICIAL.]

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, April 15 -- 1:30 A.M.

Maj.-Gen. Dix:

This evening at about 9:30 P.M., at Ford's Theatre, the President, while sitting in his private box with Mrs. LINCOLN, Mrs. HARRIS, and Major RATHBURN, was shot by as assassin, who suddenly entered the box and approached behind the President.

The assassin then leaped upon the stage, brandishing a large dagger or knife, and made his escape in the rear of the theatre.

The pistol ball entered the back of the President's head and penetrated nearly through the head. The wound is mortal. The President has been insensible ever since it was inflicted, and is now dying.

About the same hour an assassin, whether the same or not, entered Mr. SEWARD's apartments, and under the pretence of having a prescription, was shown to the Secretary's sick chamber. The assassin immediately rushed to the bed, and inflicted two or three stabs on the throat and two on the face. It is hoped the wounds may not be mortal. My apprehension is that they will prove fatal.

The nurse alarmed Mr. FREDERICK SEWARD, who was in an adjoining room, and hastened to the door of his father's room, when he met the assasin, who inflicted upon him one or more dangerous wounds. The recovery of FREDERICK SEWARD is doubtful.

It is not probable that the President will live throughout the night.

Gen. GRANT and wife were advertised to be at the theatre this evening, but he started to Burlington at 6 o'clock this evening.

At a Cabinet meeting at which Gen. GRANT was present, the subject of the state of the country and the prospect of a speedy peace was discussed. The President was very cheerful and hopeful, and spoke very kindly of Gen. LEE and others of the Confederacy,

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: History
KEYWORDS: civilwar
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To: woodbutcher1963

Something about a “sockdologizing old mantrap”.


21 posted on 04/15/2025 10:19:35 AM PDT by rdl6989
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To: Ditto
You seem like the kind of guy the secret service should be watching closely.

Yeah, I might have a time machine and go back in time to kill Lincoln and save nearly a million people from death.

Sure. That might happen.

22 posted on 04/15/2025 10:20:48 AM PDT by DiogenesLamp ("of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty.")
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To: HereInTheHeartland
Sick comment

You don't like it because you, and pretty much all of us, have been taught that Lincoln is a hero.

If you look into it with an objective mind, you begin to realize he was a disaster.

23 posted on 04/15/2025 10:22:37 AM PDT by DiogenesLamp ("of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty.")
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To: BrexitBen
And slavery would have become obsolete peacefully, just as it did in every other Western nation.

The two-pronged U.S. would never have produced a Woodrow Wilson, to lie us into World War One, which led directly to World War Two.

This is exactly right.

What a lot of people don't grasp is that "slavery" wasn't the issue dividing the leadership of the North and the leadership of the South.

The Northern controlled congress passed the "Corwin Amendment" which would have made slavery permanent in the United States. They offered the South all the protection for slavery that was possible.

But what they would not tolerate is the South governing itself.

Independence from the Controlling Northern majority was not going to be allowed, and *THAT* is what the two sides fought over.

24 posted on 04/15/2025 10:26:10 AM PDT by DiogenesLamp ("of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty.")
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To: Greg123456
I bet he was already dead by the time the story was written

I doubt it. He was pronounced dead at 7:22 a.m. I imagine the NY Times had already gone to press by then.

25 posted on 04/15/2025 10:40:05 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson ("Every nation gets the government that it deserves." - Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821))
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To: DiogenesLamp

” For all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these:
‘What might have been ‘ “.

John Greenleaf Whittier


26 posted on 04/15/2025 10:56:33 AM PDT by BrexitBen
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To: woodbutcher1963

Lincoln was shot on Good Friday. If only he had gone to church instead to the theater to watch a comedy...


27 posted on 04/15/2025 11:04:01 AM PDT by Verginius Rufus
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To: Homer_J_Simpson
It looks like they did not know the identity of the assassin when they went to press.

John Wilkes Booth was not a "rebel"--he was a Marylander. Maryland did not secede and he never fought for the Confederacy.

28 posted on 04/15/2025 11:06:51 AM PDT by Verginius Rufus
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To: DiogenesLamp

Yeah I’ve heard all the arguments .
Bottom line he was a hero .
Slavery was a disgusting abhorrent practice .


29 posted on 04/15/2025 11:24:16 AM PDT by HereInTheHeartland (“I don’t really care, Margaret.”)
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To: Homer_J_Simpson

Also Titanic sinking anniversary April 14-15, 1912.


30 posted on 04/15/2025 11:43:30 AM PDT by mass55th (“Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.” ― John Wayne)
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To: Verginius Rufus
Lincoln was shot on Good Friday. If only he had gone to church instead to the theater to watch a comedy...

You know he was an atheist? His law partner (Herndon) made it clear that Lincoln didn't believe in religion.

When he went to church, it was just for show.

31 posted on 04/15/2025 12:13:37 PM PDT by DiogenesLamp ("of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty.")
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To: HereInTheHeartland
Yeah I’ve heard all the arguments .

I find this very unlikely. I think you just absorbed what we have all been brainwashed with, and never thought to question it.

Bottom line he was a hero .

What heroic thing did he do?

Slavery was a disgusting abhorrent practice .

So it was, but it had nothing to do with why the Northern armies invaded the South.

They invaded the South to prevent the Southern states from escaping their economic control.

The war was over money, but the propaganda was all about slavery.

32 posted on 04/15/2025 12:16:59 PM PDT by DiogenesLamp ("of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty.")
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To: Verginius Rufus

He needed to go to that play like he needed another hole in his head.


33 posted on 04/15/2025 12:17:56 PM PDT by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn...)
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To: DiogenesLamp
The war was over money, but the propaganda was all about slavery after the conscription act law was passed.

Fixed it.

34 posted on 04/15/2025 12:19:30 PM PDT by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn...)
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To: central_va
The war was over money, but the propaganda was all about slavery after the conscription act law was passed.

I'm trying to grasp your point here, but I can see two ways to interpret it.

1. Conscription = slavery.
2. "Slavery" was used as propaganda tool in an effort to rally popular support after unpopular conscription was imposed.

35 posted on 04/15/2025 12:47:36 PM PDT by DiogenesLamp ("of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty.")
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To: DiogenesLamp

3. It was a bait and switch. The war started out to “preserve the union”. When the volunteers were made into conscripts only then could the abolitionists have their war to end slavery.


36 posted on 04/15/2025 12:53:44 PM PDT by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn...)
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To: central_va
3. It was a bait and switch. The war started out to “preserve the union”. When the volunteers were made into conscripts only then could the abolitionists have their war to end slavery.

That's true as well. All three are true.

37 posted on 04/15/2025 1:02:48 PM PDT by DiogenesLamp ("of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty.")
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To: DiogenesLamp
He was a deist like Thomas Jefferson or Thomas Paine, at least in his younger years. He wrote an essay expounding his beliefs and showed it to a friend, who threw it into the fire, warning him of the fatal consequences to his career if that had been published.

During the war he starts talking about Providence. How much of that he actually believed, I don't know.

Politicians just going to church for show? Who could imagine that?

38 posted on 04/15/2025 1:49:02 PM PDT by Verginius Rufus
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To: central_va
If Lincoln had called for troops to invade the South to end slavery in April 1861, it would have failed. Northerners were not going to die to free the slaves, at least not in sufficient numbers. So it had to be "to save the Union."

Most Northern whites were racists and weren't concerned with the slaves. Those who were politically astute realized that slavery made the plantation owners powerful and wanted to end the disproportionate influence the Southern plantation-owners had at the federal level. After the war the Reconstruction measures were designed to prevent the former Southern political elite from regaining power.

39 posted on 04/15/2025 1:54:38 PM PDT by Verginius Rufus
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To: DiogenesLamp

“ The war was over money, but the propaganda was all about slavery.”

Nonsense.
Revisionist history made up by slavery apologists.


40 posted on 04/15/2025 2:32:10 PM PDT by HereInTheHeartland (“I don’t really care, Margaret.”)
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