1865
(Good Friday) US President Lincoln fatally shot
^top^
At Ford's Theater in Washington DC, John
Wilkes Booth [10 May 1838 – 26 April 1865], an actor and
Confederate sympathizer, fatally
wounds US President Abraham Lincoln. The attack comes only five days
after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his massive army at
Appomattox, effectively ending the US Civil War.
Booth, who remained in the North during the war despite his Confederate
sympathies, initially plotted to capture President Lincoln and take him
to Richmond, the Confederate capital. However, on 20 March 1865,
the day of the planned kidnapping, the president failed to appear at the
spot where Booth and his six fellow conspirators lay in wait. Two weeks
later, Richmond fell to Union forces.
In April, with Confederate armies near
collapse across the South, Booth hatched a desperate plan to save the
Confederacy. Learning that Lincoln was to attend Laura Keene's acclaimed
performance in Our
American Cousin at Ford's Theater on 14 April,
Booth plotted the simultaneous assassination of Lincoln, Vice President
Andrew Johnson, and Secretary of State William H. Seward. By murdering
the president and two of his possible successors, Booth and his conspirators
hoped to throw the US government into a paralyzing disarray.
On the evening of 14 April, conspirator
Lewis T. Powell burst into Secretary of State Seward's home, seriously
wounding him and three others, while George A. Atzerodt, assigned to Vice
President Johnson, lost his nerve and fled. Meanwhile Booth entered Lincoln's
private box unnoticed, and shot the president with a single bullet in
the back of his head at 22:13. Slashing an army officer who rushed at
him, Booth jumped to the stage and shouted "Sic semper tyrannis! -- the
South is avenged!" Although Booth had broken his left leg jumping from
Lincoln's box, he succeeded in escaping Washington.
The president, mortally wounded, was carried
to a cheap lodging house opposite Ford's Theater. About 07:22 the next
morning, Abraham Lincoln died, becoming the first US president to be assassinated.
Booth, pursued by the army and secret service forces, was finally cornered
in a barn near Bowling Green, Virginia, and died from a possibly self-inflicted
bullet wound as the barn was burned to the ground. Of the nine [8
??] other persons eventually charged with the conspiracy, four were
hanged and four were jailed.
President Abraham Lincoln is shot in the
head at Ford's Theatre in Washington DC. The assassin, actor John Wilkes
Booth, shouted, “Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged,”
as he jumped onto the stage and then fled on horseback. Lincoln died the
next morning. Booth was a well-regarded actor who was particularly loved
in the South before the Civil War. During the war, he stayed in the North
and became increasingly bitter when audiences weren't as enamored of him
as they were in Dixie. Along with friends Samuel Arnold, Michael O'Laughlin,
and John Surratt, Booth conspired to kidnap Lincoln and deliver him to
the South.
On 17 March, along with George Atzerodt,
David Herold, and Lewis Paine, the group met in a Washington bar to plot
the abduction of the president three days later. However, when the president
changed his plans, the scheme was scuttled. Shortly afterward, the South
surrendered to the Union and the conspirators altered their plan. They
decided to kill Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson, and Secretary
of State William Seward on the same evening. When 14 April came around,
Atzerodt backed out of his part to kill Johnson. Upset, Booth went to
drink at a saloon near Ford's Theatre. At about 22:00 he walked into the
theater and up to the president's box. Lincoln's guard, John Parker, was
not there because he had gotten bored with the play, Our American
Cousin, and left his post to get a beer. Booth easily slipped in
and shot the president in the back of the head. The president's friend,
Major Rathbone, attempted to grab Booth but was slashed by Booth's knife.
Booth injured his leg badly when he jumped to the stage to escape, but
he managed to hobble outside to his horse.
Assistant Surgeon Charles A. Leale, M.D.,
United States Volunteers, 23, responds to calls for a doctor, leaps over
chairs in the theater to reach the Presidential Box. Upon identifying
himself as a United States Army Doctor (he had received his medical degree
on March 1st), Dr.
Leale is the first person to be admitted to the box after the shooting.
Raising the President’s eyelids, Leale saw indication of brain damage.
Leale found the bullet wound behind the President’s left ear and probed
the wound for the bullet. Dr. Leale’s diagnosis was that the wound was
mortal. Acting Assistant Surgeons Charles S. Taft, MD, and Albert F. A.
King, MD, of the US Army arrived to assist. With doctor Leale, they transported
Lincoln across the street. Leale stayed with Lincoln through the night
until his death at 07:20 the next morning.
Meanwhile, Lewis Paine forced his way into
William Seward's house and stabbed the secretary of state several times
before fleeing. Booth rode to Virginia with David Herold and stopped at
the home of Dr. Samuel Mudd, who placed splints on Booth's legs. They
hid in a barn on Richard Garrett's farm as thousands of Union troops combed
the area looking for them. The other conspirators were captured, except
for John Surratt, who fled to Canada. When the troops finally caught up
with Booth and Herold on 26 April, they gave them the option of surrendering
before the barn was burned down. Herold decided to surrender, but Booth
remained in the barn as it went up in flames. When the dying Booth was
finally pulled from the flames, he reportedly said, "Tell my mother I
died for my country." On 17 July, George Atzerodt, Lewis Paine, David
Herold, and John Surratt's mother, Mary, were hanged in Washington. The
execution of Mary Surratt was an egregious miscarriage of justice. Although
there was no proof of her involvement in the conspiracy, she was nonetheless
killed. Her son John was eventually tracked down in Egypt and brought
back to trial, but he managed, with the help of clever lawyers, to win
an acquittal.
— Lincoln's
last full day
1866
In
a letter on 05 April 1887, Ann Sullivan wrote: “... something
very important has happened. Helen has taken the second great step
in her education. She has learned that everything has a name,
and that the manual alphabet is the key to everything she wants to
know. ... This morning, while she was washing, she wanted to
know the name for "water." When she wants to know the name of anything,
she points to it and pats my hand. I spelled "w-a-t-e-r" and thought
no more about it until after breakfast. Then ... we went out to the
pump-house, and I made Helen hold her mug under the spout while I
pumped. As the cold water gushed forth, filling the mug, I spelled
"w-a-t-e-r" in Helen's free hand. The word coming so close upon the
sensation of cold water rushing over her hand seemed to startle her.
She dropped the mug and stood as one transfixed. A new light came
into her face. She spelled "water" several times. Then she dropped
on the ground and asked for its name and pointed to the pump ...,
and suddenly turning round she asked for my name. I spelled "Teacher."
Just then the nurse brought Helen's little sister into the pump-house,
and Helen spelled "baby" and pointed to the nurse. All the way back
to the house she was highly excited, and learned the name of every
object she touched, so that in a few hours she had added thirty new
words to her vocabulary.” [on 01 April Helen knew 29 words
in all]
