A Night at Ford's Theatre — April 14, 1865: The Night Lincoln Was Shot
Five days after the Civil War ended, Lincoln went to a comedy with his wife. The audience was roaring with laughter, the President was smiling for the first time in years. Then, at 10:15 p.m., a single shot rang out.
The Week the War Ended
April 9, 1865. At a quiet parlor in Appomattox Court House, General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant. Four years of war were effectively over.
Five days later — Good Friday, April 14, 1865. That morning in the cabinet meeting, Lincoln reportedly said, "I had a strange dream last night. I was on a boat, drifting fast toward a dark, indefinite shore." One of his secretaries shivered. The President laughed it off.
That evening, he and First Lady Mary were scheduled to see the comedy Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre. General Grant and his wife were supposed to join them — but Mrs. Grant, who did not get along with Mary Lincoln, had cancelled.
That small change of plans would change history.
The Empty Guard
The presidential couple arrived around 8:30 p.m. The audience stood and applauded, the orchestra struck up "Hail to the Chief." Lincoln took his seat in the rocking chair of the state box on the second floor.
The problem was security. The officer assigned to guard the President, John Parker, grew bored with the play and left his post outside the box. By some accounts he wandered to a nearby saloon for a drink. The door behind the President stood unguarded.
Through that door, a man walked in.
John Wilkes Booth
John Wilkes Booth, 26 years old. One of the most famous actors of his era and a regular performer at Ford's Theatre. He knew the layout of the building by heart.
A Marylander and a fervent Confederate sympathizer, Booth could not accept the end of slavery or the defeat of the South. His original plan had been to kidnap Lincoln and exchange him for Confederate prisoners — but once the South surrendered, the plan became murder.
And it was not just one murder. Booth intended to decapitate the federal government in a single night: Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson, and Secretary of State William Seward — all to be killed simultaneously. He had accomplices for each target.
10:15 p.m.
On stage, the actor Harry Hawk delivered the play's famous line: "Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal — you sockdologizing old man-trap!" The audience exploded with laughter.
At that exact moment, Booth pulled the trigger of a single-shot derringer. Less than a meter away, the bullet entered behind Lincoln's left ear and lodged in his brain.
Mary screamed. Major Henry Rathbone, seated beside them, lunged at Booth — but Booth slashed his arm with a dagger, then leapt from the balcony to the stage below, a drop of nearly 12 feet.
As he landed, his spur caught on an American flag draped from the box, and he broke his left leg. Still, he rose, turned to the stunned audience, and shouted:
"Sic semper tyrannis!" (Thus always to tyrants!)
The motto of Virginia, and the words Brutus is said to have spoken as he stabbed Caesar. Booth limped out the stage door, mounted a waiting horse, and vanished into the night.
The Last Night Across the Street
Doctors rushed to the box, but there was no extracting the bullet. Lincoln was too tall for the theatre's seats, so they carried him across the street to a back bedroom at the Petersen House, a boarding house. The bed was too short; they had to lay him diagonally across it.
All night, cabinet members and physicians crowded that small room. Mary sobbed. Robert, the eldest son, stood rigid.
At 7:22 a.m. on April 15, 1865, Abraham Lincoln died. He was 56.
Secretary of War Edwin Stanton broke the silence with the words that have echoed ever since:
"Now he belongs to the ages."
The Other Targets
That same night, Booth's accomplice Lewis Powell burst into Secretary Seward's home and stabbed him repeatedly. Seward was recovering from a recent jaw surgery, and the metal splint around his jaw miraculously deflected the blade from his throat. He survived.
George Atzerodt, assigned to kill Vice President Johnson, lost his nerve, drank at a hotel bar, and fled without ever approaching his target.
Only one of the three targets died that night — but that one was the President of the United States.
Twelve Days of Manhunt
Booth hid among Confederate sympathizers across Maryland and Virginia. Ten thousand Union soldiers joined the chase, and a $100,000 reward (roughly $2 million today) was placed on his head.
April 26. A tobacco barn in Caroline County, Virginia. Union cavalry surrounded Booth and his remaining accomplice, David Herold. Herold surrendered; Booth refused. The soldiers set the barn ablaze, and as the flames rose, Sergeant Boston Corbett — defying orders to take Booth alive — fired a single shot through a crack in the wall.
Booth lingered a few hours. Looking at his own paralyzed hands, he is said to have whispered: "Useless... useless..."
What That Night Left Behind
Lincoln's funeral train traveled 1,700 miles from Washington to Springfield, Illinois over seven days. Millions lined the tracks, hats in hand, weeping.
Vice President Andrew Johnson took the oath — but he was not Lincoln. Reconstruction stumbled. Freed Black Americans would wait another century for full civil rights.
If Lincoln had lived four more years, how might America's wounds have healed?
That question's answer vanished, forever, in the dark state box of Ford's Theatre at 10:15 p.m. on April 14, 1865.
Date: April 14, 1865, 10:15 p.m. (Died April 15, 7:22 a.m.) | Location: Ford's Theatre, Washington, D.C. | Assassin: John Wilkes Booth (26, actor)
Get new posts by email ✉️
We'll notify you when new posts are published