The greatest murder since Caesar, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln shook the world

On April 9, 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee signed the surrender of his forces, effectively ending the American Civil War. It cost the lives of 750,000 Americans, more than the combined number of deaths in all wars with American participation before and after. The lion’s share of the fact that the United States of America finally survived this darkest period of its history without falling apart was due to President Abraham Lincoln.

And yet he was the only one who died five days after the surrender of Robert E. Lee by the hands of a fanatic assassin. This marked one of the closing chapters of the period known as “the war of the North against the South.” Before we take a closer look at the assassination itself, it is necessary to imagine more closely all its main protagonists.

Abraham Lincoln was 1861-1865 the sixteenth president of the United States and also the first to be elected as the candidate of the Republican Party. Born in 1809 into a farming family in Kentucky, his childhood was marked by poverty and a hard struggle for survival. When Lincoln became independent in his twenties, he made a living as a lumberjack, shipwright, and farmer, among other jobs.

Lincoln worked hard on his education and was no stranger to politics. He first addressed that at the Illinois state level, in 1846 he was elected to Congress, where he focused on the issue of slavery and individual states’ rights. In 1860, Lincoln was elected President of the United States. As an opponent of slavery, he was considered a threat in the southern states. It was mainly about the prohibition of the spread of slavery to new territories, which Lincoln promoted, and which Southerners considered the first step towards the abolition of slavery as such.

In 1861, the first shots of the civil war were fired. Abraham Lincoln, as the political leader of the Union, achieved not only the defeat of the Confederacy, but above all that its states returned to the Union and the United States of America thus survived in the form in which we know it today. At the same time, there was actually the abolition of slavery, with which, of course, it would not be possible to consider the USA as a land of freedom. Although there was still a long way to go before full equality between non-white and white citizens, Abraham Lincoln’s contribution was crucial.

Today, Abraham Lincoln is considered to be greatest president in US history and its magnificent monument is one of the most prominent in all Washington. But he also made many enemies with his actions. It ended up costing him his life…

John Wilkes Booth was born in 1838 in Maryland. Both his parents were actors, and Booth learned from them a love of the theater and followed in their footsteps. Booth had real talent and appeared in many successful plays during his career.

But so was Booth an ardent supporter of Confederate ideals and was strongly opposed to the abolition of slavery. The victory of the Union in the American Civil War was literally a disaster for Booth, and together with several co-conspirators, he decided to assassinate Lincoln and other top Union officials, which should lead to the reversal of the outcome of the war.

Booth was by all accounts a very intelligent and complex personality. It was definitely not the executor of someone else’s will, Booth himself was the initiator and architect of the whole conspiracy.

Washington was in a celebratory mood after General Lee’s surrender. Abraham Lincoln went with his wife to Ford’s Theater on April 14th to see the play “Our American Cousin.” They both settled into bed with Major Rathborne and his fiancée. John Wilkes Booth and his accomplices had been preparing for action against the top brass for quite some time. He originally planned Lincoln’s kidnapping back in March. But the president changed his plans and did not arrive at the theater on the day in question.

But this time Abraham Lincoln was sitting in his bed. At that time still there was no presidential bodyguard in the form we know it today. Lincoln had one bodyguard, and it wasn’t even his official job. Although he originally set up a chair in front of the box entrance, he later left to watch the game.

John Wilkes Booth thus had the way clear. Because he practically knew the play by heart, he waited for the passage where the audience always laughs and he opened the door to the box, pistol ready in hand. Immediately afterwards, he aimed at the president’s head from behind and fired. After a brief struggle with Major Rathborne, Booth fled across the stage.

Lincoln was immediately attended by physicians, and was removed to one of the houses near the theater. Doctors agreed that even if the president was still breathing, the injuries were inevitably fatal. And indeed, Abraham Lincoln died the next morning with his wife and older son by his side. It is not without interest that in this day and age Lincoln would most likely be saved by doctors. Her injuries were actually very similar to those suffered by Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who was shot in the head in 2012 at a political rally in Arizona.

John Wilkes Booth was on the run for the next 12 days. He and his accomplice, David Harold, were holed up in the swamps of southern Maryland with thousands of Union soldiers on their trail. With the help of other Confederate sympathizers, they then moved on to Virginia. At that time, Booth already knew what response the assassination had caused and was disillusioned by the fact that even many southern newspapers expressed sympathy for Lincoln and considered him an ordinary murderer.

The soldiers caught up with the two fugitives on a tobacco farm. Harold quickly gave up, Booth was going to fight. The soldiers set fire to the barn he was hiding in, and as Booth ran out of it, a soldier named Boston Corbett fired a shot that proved fatal. Booth died a few hours later.

Abraham Lincoln was not to be the only victim that evening. Other conspirators also planned to assassinate Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward. However, he was only wounded during the attack and the attacker who was supposed to kill Johnson got drunk before the action and the assassination did not happen at all.

However, Abraham Lincoln was dead. The same fate befell President James Garfield less than twenty years later, in 1881. The third assassinated president was William McKinley in 1901, followed by the aforementioned JFK in 1963. Failed assassinations were then carried out on Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, Franklin Roosevelt in 1933, and Ronald Reagan in 1981.

News of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination soon spread around the world, and statesmen in Europe and elsewhere expressed America’s condolences and admiration for Abraham Lincoln. His death was and is considered one of the most significant events in American history.

1) Lincoln’s Assassination

2) The Death of Abraham Lincoln

3) 10 facts about Abraham Lincoln’s assassination