jan 1, 1865 - Lincoln Assassination

Description:

On the evening of April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth, a famous actor and Confederate sympathiser, assassinated President Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., attending the play Our American Cousin. The act was a part of a larger conspiracy intended to revive the Confederate. The attack came only five days after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his massive army at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, effectively ending the American Civil War. He and his co-conspirators believed the simultaneous assassination of Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson (assigned to be killed by George Atzerodt) and Secretary of State William H. Seward (assigned to be killed by Lewis Powell and David Herold) - the president and two of his possible successors - would throw the U.S. government into disarray. Only the assassination of Lincoln succeeded, the other 2 victims remaining alive. Booth entered the Presidential Box at 10:00 p.m. and fired one shot into the back of Lincoln’s head. The motives for the killing were politics, since Wilkes and his group were not happy about Lincoln’s anti-slavery ideologies. The sketch was created in 1865 (same year as the assassination) by an unknown artist.

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