The assassination was planned and carried out by the well-known stage actor John Wilkes Booth, as part of a larger conspiracy in a bid to revive the Confederate cause. Booth’s co-conspirators were Lewis Powell and David Herold, who were assigned to kill Secretary of State William H. Seward, and George Atzerodt who was to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson. By simultaneously eliminating the top three people in the administration, Booth and his co-conspirators hoped to sever the continuity of the United States government.
Lincoln was shot while watching the play Our American Cousin with his wife Mary Todd Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D. C. on the night of April 14, 1865. He died early the next morning. The rest of the conspirators’ plot failed; Powell only managed to wound Seward, while Atzerodt, Johnson’s would-be assassin, lost his nerve and fled Washington. In March 1864, Ulysses S. Grant, the commanding general of all the Union’s armies, decided to suspend the exchange of prisoners-of-war.
Harsh as it may have been on the prisoners of both sides, Grant realized the exchange was prolonging the war by returning soldiers to the outnumbered and manpower-starved South. John Wilkes Booth, a Southerner and outspoken Confederate sympathizer, conceived a plan to kidnap President Lincoln and deliver him to the Confederate Army, to be held hostage until the North agreed to resume exchanging prisoners. Booth recruited Samuel Arnold, George Atzerodt, David Herold, Michael O’Laughlen, Lewis Powell (also known as “Lewis Paine”), and John Surratt to help him.
The Essay on John Wilkes Booth Lincoln Stage President
Without any question, most people have a very clear and distinct picture of John Wilkes Booth a in their minds. It is April 1865, the night president Lincoln decides to take a much-needed night off, to attend a stage play. Before anyone knows it a lunatic third-rate actor creeps into Lincoln's box at Ford's theater and kills the president. Leaping to the stage, he runs past a confused audience and ...
Surratt’s mother, Mary Surratt, left her tavern in Surrattsville, Maryland, and moved to a house in Washington D. C. , where Booth became a frequent visitor. Prosecutors later pointed out that her move coincided with Booth’s need for a base of operations in the federal capital[citation needed]. In late 1860, Booth was initiated in the pro-Confederate Knights of the Golden Circle in Baltimore. He attended Lincoln’s second inauguration on March 4, 1865, as the invited guest of his secret fiancee Lucy Hale, daughter of John P. Hale, soon to become United States Ambassador to Spain.
Booth afterwards wrote in his diary, “What an excellent chance I had, if I wished, to kill the President on Inauguration day! ” The Old Soldiers Home, where Booth originally plotted to kidnap Lincoln. On March 17, 1865, Booth informed his conspirators that Lincoln would be attending a play, Still Waters Run Deep, at Campbell Military Hospital. He assembled his men in a restaurant at the edge of town, intending that they should soon join him on a nearby stretch of road in order to capture the President on his way back from the hospital.
But Booth found out that Lincoln had not gone to the play after all. Instead, he had attended a ceremony at the National Hotel in which officers of the 142nd Indiana Infantry presented Governor Oliver Morton with a captured Confederate battle flag. Booth was living at the National Hotel at the time and could have had an opportunity to kill Lincoln had he not been at the hospital. Meanwhile, the Confederacy was falling apart. On April 3, Richmond, Virginia, the Confederate capital, fell to the Union army.
On April 9, the Army of Northern Virginia, the main army of the Confederacy, surrendered to the Army of the Potomac at Appomatox Court House. Confederate President Jefferson Davis and the rest of his government were in full flight. Despite many Southerners giving up hope, Booth continued to believe in his cause. On April 11, 1865, two days after Lee’s army surrendered to Grant, Booth attended a speech at the White House in which Lincoln supported the idea of enfranchising the former slaves. Furiously provoked, Booth decided on assassination and is quoted as saying: That means nigger citizenship.
The Essay on John Wilkes Booth Lincoln April Herold
John Wilkes Booth John Wilkes Booth (A man with a mission) is known as killing one of our U. S presidents, Abraham Lincoln. How did he do it when did he doit and where did he do it at? Lincoln helping abolish slavery state by state to try to stop the civil war. John Wilkes Booth as he was known as a professional actor before the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Today his life is often forgotten ...
Now, by God, I’ll put him through. That is the last speech he will ever give. On April 14, Booth’s morning started at the stroke of midnight. Lying wide awake in his bed at the National Hotel, he wrote his mother that all was well, but that he was “in haste”. In his diary, he wrote that “Our cause being almost lost, something decisive and great must be done”. [10][13] Lincoln’s day started well for the first time in a while. Hugh McCulloch, the new Secretary of the Treasury, remarked that on that morning, “I never saw Mr.
Lincoln so cheerful and happy”. No one could miss the difference. For months, the President had looked pale and haggard. Lincoln himself told people how happy he was. This caused First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln some concern, as she believed that saying such things out loud was bad luck. Lincoln paid her no heed. [13] He met with his cabinet that day and later had a brief meeting with Vice President Andrew Johnson, the first between the two since Johnson had shown up drunk to take the vice presidential oath on Inauguration Day, six weeks prior. citation needed] At around noon, while visiting Ford’s Theatre to pick up his mail (Booth had a permanent mailbox there), Booth learned from the brother of John Ford, the owner, that the President and General Grant would be attending the theatre to see Our American Cousin that night. Booth determined that this was the perfect opportunity for him to do something “decisive”. He knew the theater’s layout, having performed there several times, as recently as the previous month. That same afternoon, Booth went to Mary Surratt’s boarding house in Washington, D. C. nd asked her to deliver a package to her tavern in Surrattsville, Maryland. He also requested Surratt to tell her tenant who resided there to have the guns and ammunition that Booth had previously stored at the tavern ready to be picked up later that evening. She complied with Booth’s requests and made the trip, along with Louis J. Weichmann, her boarder and son’s friend. This exchange, and her compliance in it, would lead directly to Surratt’s execution three months later. At seven o’clock that evening, John Wilkes Booth met for a final time with all his fellow conspirators.
The Essay on If I were President for the day
To be a president of this great nation is such an honor in my part. If I am given a chance to be a president for the day, I would spend it doing things what a president must be doing. Yes, it is a very short term however I will make sure that my agenda are attainable for that day but have everlasting results for the welfare of my nation and to my fellow country man; thus, making ordinary things ...
Booth assigned Lewis Powell to kill Secretary of State William H. Seward at his home, George Atzerodt to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson at his residence, the Kirkwood Hotel, and David E. Herold to guide Powell to the Seward house and then out of Washington to rendezvous with Booth in Maryland. Booth planned to shoot Lincoln with his single-shot derringer and then stab Grant with a knife at Ford’s Theatre. They were all to strike simultaneously shortly after ten o’clock that night. Atzerodt wanted nothing to do with it, saying he had only signed up for a kidnapping, not a killing. Booth told him he was in too far to back out.
