President Abraham Lincoln was shot at Ford's Theatre
On this day · 14 April 1865
On April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln during a comedy at Ford's Theatre; the president died the next morning.
On the evening of April 14, 1865, Good Friday, President Abraham Lincoln sat in the presidential box at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, watching the comedy Our American Cousin. Around 10:15 p.m., actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth slipped into the box and fired a single shot into the back of the president’s head.
Booth leapt to the stage, shouted to the crowd, and fled despite breaking his leg. Lincoln, mortally wounded just days after the Civil War’s effective end, was carried across the street to the Petersen House.
He never regained consciousness, dying at 7:22 a.m. on April 15, 1865.
The shooting was part of a wider plot to decapitate the Union government; a co-conspirator wounded Secretary of State Seward the same night. Booth was tracked down and killed twelve days later.
Sources & references
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