The Assassination of President Lincoln

On the night of April 14th, 1865, five days after General Lee had surrendered at Appomattox, President Abraham Lincoln was shot in the back of the head by John Wilkes Booth while attending a play at Ford’s Theater in Washington D.C. The next morning “The Great Emancipator” was dead. Minutes later Secretary of War Edwin McMasters Stanton telegrammed this message to General John A. Dix in New York, where it was printed on newspapers and posters.

For months, Booth had been hatching various aborted plans for himself and a number of accomplices to either abduct or kill the president and other leaders in Washington. On the morning of April 14th, Booth had gone to Ford’s Theater, where he often performed, to pick up his mail. He discovered that the president would be in attendance that night for the performance of “Our American Cousin.” Booth decided this was his chance to act and also set in motion plans for his co-conspirators to murder Secretary of State William Seward and Vice President Andrew Johnson.

Evening Star, April 14, 1865 (GLC00339.02)

Booth returned to the theater that night and the well-known actor was admitted into the president’s box by Charles Forbes, the Whitehouse footman who was watching the door. The municipal policeman who was also supposed to be protecting the president had left the door to enjoy the play. Booth entered the box quietly, snuck up behind Lincoln’s rocking chair and, at 10:13 p.m., shot him once in the back of the head from two feet away. Booth then jumped down from the president’s box onto the stage and shouted “Sic semper tyrannis,” the Latin motto of for the state of Virginia, which means “Thus always to tyrants.”

Lincoln, unconscious and bleeding badly, was rushed across the street to a nearby house where he could be cared for in private. Stanton arrived at the house soon after being informed of the attack. Fearing for Lincoln’s safety, Stanton often advised the president not to go out in public too often and had specifically asked the president not to go to the theater that night. In the aftermath, as doctors tried to save the president’s life, Stanton tried to keep the nation from descending into chaos. From a room adjacent to the one where Lincoln lay dying, Stanton began directing all the affairs of state. Throughout that sleepless night he also orchestrated the manhunt for the president’s assassins, sending the army to search for the suspects, closing the bridges and railroads, and ordering testimony to be taken from witnesses at the theater. Booth was eventually killed on April 26th in a standoff with the army.

Though doctors tended to Lincoln throughout the night, his wound proved to be fatal and he stopped breathing at 7:22 a.m. on the morning of April 15th. After the doctors had pronounced the president dead, Stanton, who had been sitting next to Lincoln’s bed, is reported to have stood up and said, “Now he belongs to the ages.” He then dictated this telegraph to General Dix in New York with the intention that it be sent to all the major newspapers for publication. Thus the entire public would know what had occurred and chaos and confusion could be avoided. The message was also printed on posters such as this one, set in the largest possible type, and spread out around the city to inform citizens that “The President is Dead.”

Daniel Wolf

Donald, David. Lincoln. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995.

Thomas, Benjamin and Harold Hyman. Stanton: The Life and Times of Lincoln’s Secretary of War. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1962.

Peterson, Merrill. Lincoln in American Memory. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.

Kunhardt, Dorothy and Philip Kunhardt. Twenty Days. New York: Castle Books, 1965.


Mourning Ribbons from the Gilder Lehrman Collection
(click on an image to enlarge)

THE PRESIDENT IS DEAD!

WAR DEPARTMENT,

Washington, April 15, 1865.

To MAJ. GEN. DIX,

Abraham Lincoln died this

morning at 22 minutes after

Seven o'clock.

E.M. STANTON, Sec. of War.

GLC06680, The President is Dead, Broadside, 15 April 1865

GLC05502, Mourning ribbon made of gathered black cloth, 1865

GLC00382, Brown velvet funeral ribbon with silver fringe, 1865 (Participating mourners of the funeral procession were required to wear funeral ribbons)

GLC00739, White silk mourning ribbon with printed shield, 1865

GLC08500.03, Silk mourning ribbon with portrait of Lincoln. Below the portrait it reads, "The Late Lamented President Lincoln," 1865

GLC00339.02, Evening Star [Vol. 25, no. 3782, (April 14, 1865)]

For more information or to obtain copies, contact Ana Ramirez-Luhrs at reference@gilderlehrman.com or call (212) 787-6616 ext. 209.