April 14 1865 President Abraham Lincoln shot in Ford's Theatre by John Wilkes Booth

(snip)On the morning of Friday, April 14, Booth dropped by Ford's Theatre and learned that the President and General Grant were planning to attend the evening performance of Our American Cousin. He held one final meeting with his co-conspirators. He said he would kill Lincoln at the theatre (he had since learned that Grant had left town). Atzerodt was to kill Vice-President Andrew Johnson at the Kirkwood House where Johnson resided. Powell was assigned to kill Secretary of State William Seward. Herold would accompany Powell. All attacks were to take place simultaneously at approximately 10:15 P.M. that night. Booth hoped the resulting chaos and weakness in the government would lead to a comeback for the South.

The Presidential party arrived at Ford's at about 8:30 P.M. Armed with a single shot derringer and a hunting knife, Booth arrived at Ford's at about 9:30 P.M. Joseph Burroughs, a boy who worked at the theatre, held his horse in the rear alley. Booth went next door to a saloon for a drink. He entered the front of Ford's Theatre around 10:07 P.M. Slowly he made his way toward the State Box where the Lincolns were sitting with Clara Harris and Henry Rathbone. Lincoln's bodyguard, John Parker of the Metropolitan Police Force, had left his post. At about 10:15 P.M. Booth opened the door to the State Box, shot Lincoln in the back of the head at near point-blank range, and struggled with Rathbone. Booth stabbed Rathbone in the arm and jumped approximately 11 feet to the stage below. When he hit the floor he snapped the fibula bone in his left leg just above the ankle. Many in the theatre thought he yelled "Sic Semper Tyrannis" (Latin for "As Always to Tyrants"). Mrs. Lincoln screamed, Booth flashed his knife at the audience, and he made his way across the stage in front of more than 1,000 people. Everything happened so fast no one had time to stop him. Booth went out the back door, climbed on his horse, and escaped from the city using the Navy Yard Bridge.

Atzerodt made no attempt to kill Johnson, and Powell stabbed Seward but failed to kill him. Herold escaped from the capital using the same bridge as Booth. The two met in Maryland and stopped briefly around midnight at Mary Surratt's leased tavern in Surrattsville where Mrs. Surratt had earlier left the message to have supplies ready and had dropped off a wrapped package that contained Booth's field glasses. About 4:00 A.M. Booth and Herold arrived at Dr. Mudd's home where Mudd set and splinted Booth's broken leg. Back in Washington Lincoln never regained consciousness and passed away at 7:22 A.M. on the morning of April 15 at the Petersen House (across the street from the theatre).

Booth and Herold departed from Dr. Mudd's during the afternoon of April 15 and traveled south. Federal authorities caught up with them at Garrett's farm near Port Royal, Virginia, early in the morning of April 26. Hiding in a barn, Harold gave up. Booth refused, so the barn was set on fire. Booth still didn't come out and was shot to death by Sergeant Boston Corbett. Corbett had not been under orders to do this. Booth's body was searched, and a diary was among the things found. Booth's remains were returned to Washington where positive identification was made and an autopsy performed.

Within days Booth's co-conspirators were arrested by the government. They were tried by a military tribunal, and all were found guilty. Mrs. Surratt, Powell, Atzerodt, and Herold were all hanged on July 7, 1865. Dr. Mudd, O'Laughlen, and Arnold were given life terms in prison. Edman "Ned" Spangler, a Ford's stagehand who was convicted of helping Booth escape from the theatre, received a sentence of 6 years in prison. The convictions of Mary Surratt and Dr. Mudd have been hotly debated throughout the years. John Surratt escaped to Canada and then to Europe. He was captured abroad and was tried in 1867 in a civil court. The trial ended with a deadlocked jury, and Surratt went free. O'Laughlen died in prison (Ft. Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas near Key West) in 1867. Dr. Mudd, Arnold, and Spangler were all pardoned by President Andrew Johnson early in 1869.

May our greatest of our Presidents continue to smile down from Heaven upon the Union which he, above all others, did so much to save.

Whoever would understand in his heart the meaning of America will find it in the life of Abraham Lincoln...

-- Ronald Reagan , first inaugural address, January 20, 1981

A hundred and twenty years ago the greatest of all our Presidents delivered his second State of the Union Message in this chamber. "We cannot escape history," Abraham Lincoln warned. "We of this Congress and this Administration will be re membered in spite of ourselves." The "trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation." Well, that President and that Congress did not fail the American people. Together, they weathered the storm and preserved the union. Let it be said of us that we, too did not fail ; that we, too, worked together to bring America through difficult times. Let us so conduct ourselves that two centuries from now, another Congress and another President, meeting in this chamber as we're meeting, will speak of us with pride, saying that we met the test and preserved for them in their day the sacred flame of liberty this last, best hope of man on Earth.

-- Ronald Reagan , State of the Union Address -January 26, 1982

We knew then what the liberal Democrat leaders just couldn't figure out....I heard those speakers at that other convention saying "we won the Cold War" -- and I couldn't help wondering, just who exactly do they mean by "we"? And to top it off, they even tried to portray themselves as sharing the same fundamental values of our party! What they truly don't understand is the principle so eloquently stated by Abraham Lincoln: "You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the wage-earner by pulling down the wage-payer. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves." If we ever hear the Democrats quoting that passage by Lincoln and acting like they mean it, then, my friends, we will know that the opposition has really changed. Until then, we see all that rhetorical smoke, billowing out from the Democrats, well ladies and gentlemen, I'd follow the example of their nominee. Don't inhale.

---Ronald Reagan, 1992 Republican Convention Speech

It was this spirit that helped black folks in America to survive and even begin to move toward prosperity during the years of legalized oppression after the Civil War and well into the 20th century . It was also this spirit, when it came to light in the Civil Rights movement of the late 50's and 60's, that had the power to transform the hardened conscience of America. Surprised and edified by the quiet dignity of black Americans seeking justice, the people of this country were called back to some respect for the first principles of America's life. For the Civil Rights movement followed the example of the American Founders, and of Lincoln, who had proclaimed that every single human being had a worth that comes not from laws and constitutions, but from the hand of God. With quiet determination the freedom marchers insisted that every government, every law and every power whatsoever is obliged to respect that worth....the temptation to succumb to worldly judgment about the dignity of individuals, particularly those not favored by fortune with wealth, position and beauty, can be overwhelming. Black Americans have faced this temptation, and defeated it. Lincoln led the public battle against the doctrine of human inequality, but countless anonymous others have steadfastly done their work over the decades to keep the flame alive and to spread it

--Alan Keyes, Februrary 17, 2001

Restoring the mantle of Lincoln to the Republican Party is a noble goal and, indeed, an essential one. But it is not enough to adopt the slogan. To lead the party in the footsteps of Lincoln requires that we understand clearly and deeply the soul of Lincoln's own deepest ambition

-- the wellsprings of the sometimes heartbreaking and, ultimately, healing acts of political and presidential leadership that constitute the legacy of Lincoln. What was the real purpose that animated the striving of that great man, for which he spent the last resources of his noble soul and ultimately paid with his life? The answer occurring readily to most Americans would probably be that Lincoln's career, and his presidency, were devoted to the task of freeing the slaves. How then are we to understand the following words, written by Lincoln during the war, to one of the foremost abolitionists of the day? "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it."This quotation can seem almost scandalous in its apparent disregard for the abolitionist cause, particularly for those who are perceptive enough to realize that not all "unions" justify such devotion -- the Soviets, after all, had a "union" and freely accepted the necessity of slavery in their attempt to perpetuate it. Soviet acceptance of slavery in the cause of its union was, of course, deeply wrong. Was Lincoln wrong as well? If we wish to understand, to wear again, the mantle of Lincoln, we must follow his thought deeper, and ask what it was about the Union that could move such a man -- whose deepest moral sentiments were outraged by the institution of slavery -- to defer the cause of abolition if it meant allowing the end of the political union of the American Republic.At stake was the survival of a community of free men still devoted, however imperfectly, to the attempt at just self-government. Lincoln understood the Founders to have formed a Union dedicated to vindicating the possibility of such a community. He believed that the Founders had understood that the institution of slavery, although it ultimately contradicted the principles of the republic, did not vitiate the solemn founding commitment to the pursuit of just self-government.

Accordingly, Lincoln argued, the Founders had placed the institution of slavery "in the course of ultimate extinction" partly through a series of practical political concessions such as the constitutional time limit on the slave trade. Far more important, however, was the fact -- as Lincoln argued in scholarly depth -- that the founding generation universally understood that they were committing the country to a perpetual struggle to conform their lives and political institutions to the principles stated in the Declaration that gave birth to the Union itself. They, and Lincoln, knew that slavery could not survive such a commitment.A Union that had formally broken its commitment to the Declaration, Lincoln believed, would no more be the Union of the founding. It would in fact be no less broken than the divided polity which the secession of the Southern states threatened to cause. Preserving the Union meant preserving the national commitment to the pursuit of justice in self-government, a goal never perfectly attained, but most definitely not to be abandoned because of any dispute about the manner of its accomplishment. This, I believe, is what Lincoln meant in the famous words at Gettysburg, when he identified the "great task remaining before us." That task, he said, was "that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.".....or save the Union on the basis of the Declaration, Lincoln knew, required that slavery be returned to its condition at the Founding -- namely, that it be put firmly on the course of ultimate extinction. The delay in its extinction might be painfully long. But if it was necessary to endure that delay rather than admit that we could not govern ourselves under the principles of the Declaration, Lincoln was prepared to do so.....The resolve to evoke from his fellow citizens their assent to the eventual triumph of justice was Lincoln's greatest ambition, and his failure to do it without war was his greatest sorrow. In our time, the mantle -- the burden -- of the Declaration remains the source of what must be our own greatest ambition. The Republican Party must indeed reclaim the mantle of Lincoln -- we must highly resolve, as Lincoln said, to lead the nation to a renewed determination to seek justice according to the principles of the Declaration

. --Alan Keyes, August 12, 2000

Walt

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