American Civil War era · 14–15 April 1865

Why Was Abraham Lincoln Assassinated?

A war just won, a president just killed

The timing is the story's cruelest detail. On 9 April 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, effectively ending four years of civil war that had killed an estimated 620,000-750,000 Americans. Washington was celebrating. On 11 April, Lincoln gave a speech from the White House hinting he supported voting rights for at least some Black Americans — the first American president ever to do so publicly. In the crowd listening was John Wilkes Booth, who reportedly turned to a companion and said, "That means n***** citizenship. That is the last speech he will ever make." Three days later, Booth acted on it.

Who was John Wilkes Booth, and what did he want?

Booth was not a marginal figure — he was one of America's most famous actors, from a celebrated theatrical dynasty, performing regularly to full houses across the country while secretly working as a Confederate sympathizer and occasional courier. For over a year he had run a kidnapping scheme with a small group of conspirators, intending to seize Lincoln and ransom him for Confederate prisoners — a plan that collapsed multiple times when Lincoln's schedule changed unexpectedly.

Lee's surrender destroyed the logic of kidnapping — there was no army left to trade prisoners for. Booth, convinced the South's cause was righteous and Lincoln its destroyer, pivoted within days to a coordinated assassination plot: kill the president, the vice president, and the secretary of state on the same night, decapitating the government's top three officials at once and, he hoped, throwing the Union into chaos it couldn't recover from.

The night at Ford's Theatre

Booth's theatrical connections gave him the access an outsider could never have gotten. As a famous performer at Ford's Theatre, he moved freely backstage, and in the hours before the play Our American Cousin, he bored a small peephole into the door of the presidential box and jammed a wooden bar behind the outer door to delay anyone trying to follow him in. Lincoln's assigned guard that night left his post during intermission to watch the play from the audience and never returned in time.

Around 10:15 pm, during a line in the play guaranteed to draw a loud laugh — timed deliberately to mask the sound — Booth entered the box and shot Lincoln once in the back of the head with a .44-caliber derringer. He then fought briefly with an officer in the box, leapt roughly 12 feet to the stage (breaking his fibula on landing), and reportedly shouted the Virginia state motto, "Sic semper tyrannis" — "thus always to tyrants" — before escaping on horseback through the alley behind the theater. Almost simultaneously, co-conspirator Lewis Powell forced his way into Secretary of State Seward's home and stabbed him repeatedly; Seward survived, saved partly by a metal neck brace he was wearing from an unrelated carriage accident days earlier. The third target, Vice President Andrew Johnson, was never attacked — his assigned assassin lost his nerve.

The manhunt, the trial, and what came after

Lincoln was carried to a boarding house across the street, where he died the next morning, 15 April 1865, without regaining consciousness — the first American president ever assassinated. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton reportedly said at his bedside, "Now he belongs to the ages." Booth, despite his broken leg, evaded a massive manhunt for 12 days across Maryland and Virginia before Union cavalry cornered him in a tobacco barn near Port Royal, Virginia; he was shot and killed — accounts differ on whether by a soldier's bullet or his own hand — on 26 April.

Of the wider conspiracy, four accomplices — including Mary Surratt, the first woman executed by the U.S. federal government — were hanged in July 1865 after a military tribunal. The assassination transformed Lincoln instantly from a contested, often-criticized wartime president into a martyred symbol of national unity, and threw Reconstruction policy to his far less capable successor, Andrew Johnson, with consequences historians still debate today.

Frequently asked questions

Why did John Wilkes Booth kill Lincoln instead of kidnapping him?

Booth had spent over a year planning to kidnap Lincoln and trade him for Confederate prisoners of war. Robert E. Lee's surrender on 9 April 1865 made that plan pointless — there was no war left to leverage. Convinced Lincoln was destroying the South's cause, Booth pivoted to assassination within days.

Were other government officials attacked the same night as Lincoln?

Yes — it was a coordinated plot. Secretary of State William Seward was stabbed in his own home the same night by co-conspirator Lewis Powell and survived. A third conspirator was assigned to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson but lost his nerve and never attempted it.

What happened to the people who helped plan Lincoln's assassination?

Booth was tracked down and killed 12 days later in Virginia. Four accomplices, including Mary Surratt — the first woman executed by the U.S. federal government — were convicted by a military tribunal and hanged in July 1865.