On the evening of April 14, 1865, while attending a special performance of the comedy,
"Our American Cousin," President Abraham Lincoln was shot. Accompanying him at Ford's
Theater that night were his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, a twenty-eight year-old officer named
Major Henry R. Rathbone, and Rathbone's fiancee, Clara Harris. After the play was in
progress, a figure with a drawn
derringer pistol stepped into the presidential box, aimed, and fired. The president
slumped forward.
The assassin, John Wilkes Booth, dropped the pistol and waved a dagger. Rathbone lunged
at him, and though slashed in the arm, forced the killer to the railing. Booth leapt from
the balcony and caught the spur of his left boot on a flag draped over the rail, and
shattered a bone in his leg on landing. Though injured, he rushed out the back door, and
disappeared into the night on horseback.
A doctor in the audience immediately went upstairs to the box. The bullet had entered
through Lincoln's left ear and lodged behind his right eye. He was paralyzed and barely
breathing. He was carried across Tenth Street, to a boarding-house opposite the theater,
but the doctors' best efforts failed. Nine hours later, at 7:22 AM on April 15th, Lincoln
died.
1865
March 17 A plot hatched by John Wilkes Booth to kidnap President Lincoln is aborted
when the President fails to make a scheduled trip to a soldiers' hospital. The
possibility of political assassination increasingly enters the mind of the
bitter and restless Booth.
April 14 While attending an evening performance of "Our American Cousin" at Ford's
Theatre, the President is shot by John Wilkes Booth . After a medical
examination by
Dr. Charles Leale, Lincoln's body is carried to a bedroom in the nearby
Petersen House.
Booth and his accomplice David Herold escape Washington into southern
Maryland.
Confined to a sickbed at his home on Lafayette Square, Secretary of
State
William Seward is nearly killed from a vicious knife attack administered by
co-conspirator
Lewis Paine. George Atzerodt fails to follow through on a plan to assassinate
Vice President Johnson.
April 15 President Lincoln dies at 7:22 a.m. At his bedside, Secretary of War
Edwin Stanton remarks, "Now he belongs to the ages."
Having broken his right fibula while jumping to the stage at Ford's Theatre,
Booth stops at the house of Dr. Samuel Mudd near Bryantown, Maryland, to
have his leg splinted and bandaged.
April 21 Lincoln's body departs Washington in a nine-car funeral train. The 1,
700-mile trip back to Illinois would essentially be over the same tracks
that carried the then President-elect east in 1861. Cities along the route
that hold funeral processions include Philadelphia, New York City, Buffalo,
Cleveland, and Chicago.
April 26 Booth and Herold are apprehended in a tobacco barn near Bowling Green,
Virginia, by a cavalry detachment under the command of Lieutenant Edward
Doherty. After Herold gives himself up, Booth is shot and killed by Corporal Boston
Corbett.
May 4 Abraham Lincoln's body is finally laid to rest in a tomb at Springfield's
Oak Ridge Cemetery.
May 10 An army military commission is convened to try Mrs. Mary Surratt, David
Herold, Lewis Paine, George Atzerodt, Edman Spangler, Michael O'Laughlin,
Samuel Arnold, and Dr. Samuel Mudd for their parts in the conspiracy to
assassinate President Lincoln. Surratt, Herold, Paine, and Atzerodt will
eventually be given the death penalty, while the remaining defendants are
sentenced to imprisonment.
July 7 George Atzerodt, David Herold, Lewis Paine, and Mary Surratt are executed
by hanging at the Old Penitentiary in Washington, for their part in the
assassination conspiracy.
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