Assassination of Abraham Lincoln

On April 14, 1865, Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, was shot at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., and died the next day, one month into his second term and near the conclusion of the American Civil War. Lincoln was watching the play Our American Cousin when John Wilkes Booth, an actor and Confederate sympathizer, shot him in the head; Lincoln was taken to the Petersen House across the street, where he died the following morning. Booth and his conspirators had originally plotted to kidnap Lincoln to aid the Confederacy, but instead decided to assassinate him, Secretary of State William H. Seward, and Vice President Andrew Johnson.