Abraham Lincoln assassination conspiracy was the plot to kill United States President Lincoln and other federal officials in April 1865. The actor John Wilkes Booth , a Confederate sympathizer, planned the assassination with the help of several conspirators. Booth himself shot Lincoln on April 14 during a performance at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. Lincoln died the following morning.
Background.
Lincoln won election as president in November 1860. Nearly all of Lincoln’s popular votes had come from the Northern States. Many Southern leaders believed Lincoln would end or limit slavery , and they had threatened to withdraw their states from the Union if Lincoln should win. By the time Lincoln took office in March 1861, seven Southern States had seceded. The American Civil War began a month later. Over the next four years, the war caused the deaths of as many as 750,000 men. Also as a result of the war, slavery was outlawed, and the South’s agriculture-centered economy lay in ruin.
The conspiracy.
In the fall of 1864, the well-known actor John Wilkes Booth—a proslavery Southern sympathizer—began a plot to kidnap Lincoln and exchange him for Confederate prisoners. The plot came to include John Surratt, a member of the Confederate secret service, a Southern spy network; Lewis Powell , a Confederate soldier who joined the network; German-born carriage repairman George A. Atzerodt; and David E. Herold, Booth’s childhood friend. The group held meetings at a Washington, D.C., boarding house operated by Mary Surratt , John’s mother. Early meetings of the conspirators also included Booth’s childhood friends Samuel Arnold and Michael O’Laughlen.
In early April 1865, the main Confederate army surrendered, and the war would soon be over. Booth’s anger grew after he heard a speech in which Lincoln supported extending the vote to blacks. Booth changed the plot from kidnapping to murder. Booth was to kill Lincoln and he assigned Atzerodt to assassinate Vice President Andrew Johnson . Powell’s task was to kill Secretary of State William H. Seward .
Assassination.
On the evening of April 14, 1865, Lincoln attended a performance of the comedy Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theatre in Washington. At 10:22 p.m., Booth entered the rear of the theater’s presidential box. He shot Lincoln in the back of his head. A Washington policeman named John Frederick Parker had been assigned to guard the president as he traveled to and from the theater. At the time of the shooting, however, Parker may have been watching the play from another seat or drinking at a saloon next door. He was later charged with failing to protect the president, but the charge was dismissed.
In leaping to the stage, Booth caught his spur in a flag draped in front of the box. He fell and broke his leg. He limped across the stage brandishing a knife and crying: “Sic semper tyrannis” (Thus always to tyrants), the motto of Virginia. Booth slashed at men who attempted to block his exit and made his way outside the theater. Edman (also known as Edward or Ned) Spangler, a friend of the Booth family who performed various backstage roles at Ford’s Theatre, helped to care for Booth’s horse that night while Booth carried out the assassination in the theater. He would be among the first suspects arrested.
After exiting the theater, Booth mounted his horse and crossed into Maryland. David Herold followed minutes later. He and Booth then met at a prearranged rendezvous point in the Maryland countryside. They picked up rifles at a Clinton, Maryland, tavern owned by the Surratts. They then stopped at the house of Samuel Mudd , a physician and Southern sympathizer. At Mudd’s home near Bryantown, Maryland, the doctor set Booth’s broken leg. Later evidence suggested that Mudd had been involved in the earlier plot to kidnap Lincoln, but the details remained unknown to the public during Mudd’s lifetime.
About 10:15 p.m. on the same evening, Powell entered Seward’s home and stabbed him several times. He also injured several members of Seward’s family, including Seward’s son Frederick. Atzerodt failed to carry out his assignment to assassinate Vice President Andrew Johnson. Atzerodt, attempting to summon the courage for his crime, went to the hotel where the vice president was staying, ordered and drank a whiskey, and then abandoned his task. John Surratt, Jr., was not in Washington at the time of the assassination. He escaped capture until 1866 and was later released.
Lincoln was carried unconscious to a boarding house across the street from Ford’s Theatre. He died at 7:22 a.m. the following morning. Seward survived his wounds but the attack left him disfigured.
Investigation and manhunt.
Secretary of War Edward M. Stanton ordered members of his department to capture Booth and his fellow conspirators. Authorities, including hundreds of police and soldiers, then commenced a manhunt up to that time unparalleled in American history. During the investigation they arrested hundreds of people, frequently for merely having sympathies with the Southern cause.
On the night of April 17, officers, operating under a tip that John Surratt had been a coconspirator of Booth’s, visited the Washington, D.C., boarding house operated by Mary Surratt. Detectives arrested Mrs. Surratt and the building’s other occupants, intending to later sort out possible suspects from witnesses. While the detectives remained at the boarding house, Lewis Powell knocked on the door and asked for Mary Surratt. Powell had been hiding out for three days after attempting to murder Seward. Detectives arrested him.
On April 20, cavalry soldiers arrested Atzerodt at a cousin’s home in Germantown, Maryland. Samuel Mudd, who had set Booths’ broken leg, was arrested on April 24 at his home.
For several days, Booth and Herold hid in a pine thicket. From their hiding place, they even heard the passing hoof beats of federal cavalry. Thomas Jones, a Confederate agent and smuggler, brought them provisions and brought the pair to a boat to cross the Potomac River into Virginia. Booth and Herold then pretended to be soldiers on their way home after the war. They made their way south to the Rappahannock River. While waiting for a ferry, they encountered three Confederate soldiers, including Private Willie Jett. The soldiers directed them to the Garrett family’s farm, where they arrived on April 24. On April 25, they slept in the family’s barn, planning to leave the next day. Jett was arrested nearby shortly after midnight on April 26. Jett led federal cavalry soldiers to the Garrett homestead at about 2 a.m., when they surrounded the fugitives. Herold surrendered, and Booth was shot. Booth died of his wounds within a few hours.
Trial and punishment.
President Andrew Johnson, who succeeded the murdered Lincoln, ordered that the prisoners face a military commission (court) instead of a civilian one. On April 29, authorities transferred six of the suspects—Powell, Atzerodt, Herold, Spangler, Arnold, and O’Laughlen—to the federal penitentiary at the Washington Arsenal. Mrs. Surratt followed on April 30. Mudd arrived at the penitentiary on May 4.
The trial began on May 10, 1865, and lasted until June 30. Hundreds of witnesses were called to the stand. Jett testified for the prosecution against Herold and was later released after signing an oath of allegiance to the United States. The prosecution also attempted to show that Confederate President Jefferson Davis had personally ordered the assassination. Prosecutors produced no significant proof of Davis’s participation in the plot, however.
The commission convicted all eight defendants and sentenced Atzerodt, Herold, Powell, and Surratt to death. They were hanged on July 7. Arnold, Mudd, and O’Laughlen received sentences of life imprisonment, and Spangler received a six-year sentence. O’Laughlen died in prison of yellow fever in 1867. President Johnson pardoned Arnold, Mudd, and Spangler in 1869.
