On this day in history, April 26, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth, was killed when Union soldiers tracked him down to a farm in Virginia 12 days after he fatally shot the president of the United States.
On April 14, 1865, Booth, 26, an actor, shot Lincoln during a performance at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C.
Booth entered the state box of Ford’s Theatre, according to the National Park Service (NPS) archives — getting past a bodyguard to do so.
“It was then that John Wilkes Booth shot President Abraham Lincoln in the back of the head with a .44 derringer pistol during a performance of the play ‘Our American Cousin,’” the site says.
Lincoln, immediately unconscious, was examined by physician, Dr. Charles Leale, who “determined that the head wound was mortal. He made the decision to have President Lincoln carried to the closest bed that was available in proximity to the theater.”
Dr. Leale and several men carried the unconscious president to the Petersen Boarding House across the street from the theater, the site notes.
“A boarder at the house, Henry Safford, directed the group to the boarding house, and ushered them into a small room at the end of a first floor hallway. Lincoln was laid down onto a wood-framed spindle bed, diagonally as the bed was too short, and there died 9 hours later at 7:22 a.m. on April 15, 1865,” says the site.
Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles spent the night in the Petersen House with the dying president, along with his wife, who was close to Mrs. Lincoln, says History.com.
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Welles wrote this in his diary: “It was a dark and gloomy morning, and rain set in […]. Large groups of people were gathered every few rods, all anxious and solicitous,” the site chronicles.
One “or more from each group stepped forward as I passed, to inquire into the condition of the president, and to ask if there was no hope. Intense grief was on every countenance when I replied that the president could survive but a short time. The colored people especially — and there were at this time more of them, perhaps, than of Whites — were overwhelmed with grief,” Welles also wrote, using the terminology of the day.
Booth was a Maryland native and a strong supporter of the Confederacy, says History.com.
As the Civil War entered its final stages, Booth hatched a conspiracy to kidnap the president and also enlisted the help of several associates — but the opportunity never presented itself, according to the same source.
“After the surrender of Robert E. Lee’s Confederate army at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, on April 9, Booth changed the plan to a simultaneous assassination of Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson, and Secretary of State William Seward,” the site indicates.
“Only Lincoln was actually killed, however. Seward was stabbed by Lewis Paine but survived, while the man assigned to kill Johnson did not carry out his assignment.”
After shooting Lincoln in Ford’s Theatre, Booth jumped down from the president’s box and tumbled onto the stage, says History.com.
Booth shouted, “Sic Semper Tyrannis” — the same line spoken by Brutus when he assassinated Julius Caesar, meaning “thus always to tyrants,” as the American Battlefield Trust notes.
Meanwhile, “at almost the same moment Booth fired the fatal shot, his accomplice, Lewis Powell (alias Lewis Paine, Lewis Payne), attacked Lincoln’s Secretary of State William Henry Seward at his home on Lafayette Square. Seward lay in bed, recovering from a carriage accident,” the Library of Congress notes.
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Powell entered the mansion, claiming to have a delivery of medicine from the secretary’s doctor, the site also says.
“Seward’s son, Frederick, was brutally beaten while trying to keep Powell from his father’s door. Powell slashed the secretary’s throat twice, and then fought his way past Seward’s son Augustus, an attending hospital corps veteran, and a State Department messenger.”
Even though Booth broke his leg when he leaped onto the Ford’s Theatre stage, he still managed to escape the building through a side exit.
In the alley outside the theater, he mounted a horse and rode away, joined by an accomplice David Herold, the site also says.
A manhunt ensued. Booth and Herold rode through the night on horseback, arriving at about four o’clock in the morning at the house of Dr. Samuel Mudd in southern Maryland.
“Mudd splinted Booth’s broken leg and allowed the pair to rest in his home,” the same source indicates. “Mudd had been a conspirator in Booth’s earlier plot to kidnap Lincoln, but he didn’t know that Booth killed the president.”
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The next day, Mudd read about Lincoln’s assassination in the morning newspaper, says History.com.
“Upon realizing he was housing a fugitive, Mudd kicked Booth and Herold out of his home — but he did not turn them in.”
By this time, more than 1,000 Union soldiers were searching for Booth and Herold.
The bounty for the capture of Booth, Herold and a third accomplice totaled $100,000, says History.com
Booth and Herold continued their escape south on horseback. For four days the fugitives hid out in Zekiah Swamp and were given supplies, food, water and newspapers by sympathizers and accomplices.
On April 26, 12 days after the shooting, troops arrived at a farm in Virginia, “just south of the Rappahannock River, where Booth was hiding in a tobacco barn,” notes Brittanica.com.
Herold “gave himself up before the barn was set afire, but Booth refused to surrender,” the site says. After being shot by Union troops, he was moved to the porch of the farmhouse — where he died.
“The body was identified by a doctor who had operated on Booth the year before, and it was then secretly buried,” the site says.
The Library of Congress says there were at least four conspirators in addition to Booth involved in the incident.
“Four co-conspirators, Lewis Powell, George Atzerodt, David Herold and Mary Surratt, were hanged at the gallows of the Old Penitentiary, on the site of present-day Fort McNair, on July 7, 1865,” says the website.
President Lincoln, who served as president from 1861 to 1865, issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 that declared forever free those slaves within the Confederacy, says Whitehouse.gov.
Lincoln delivered the 272-word Gettysburg Address on Nov. 19, 1863, on the battlefield near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, as Cornell University and other sources note.
The first sentence is, “Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
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President Lincoln’s legacy is based on his momentous achievements: He successfully waged a political struggle and civil war that preserved the Union, ended slavery and created the possibility of civil and social freedom for African Americans, notes the Smithsonian.
Says the site, “One of the great unanswerable questions in American history centers on how our nation’s social trajectory might have changed had Lincoln lived to serve out his second term.”
On May 4, 1865, Lincoln was laid to rest in Lincoln Tomb in his hometown of Springfield, Illinois.
