Abraham Lincoln's Assassination

Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves” (Lincoln). Lincoln believed in equality for all, and was willing to die for his beliefs. On April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth, a Confederate sympathizer, shot and killed President Lincoln at Ford 's Theatre in Washington, D.C. The assassination of the 16th president may have seemed like a simple process, but Booth spent a prolonged amount of time plotting against Lincoln. He originally planned an attack of less drastic measures, but the plot quickly escalated into a lust for Lincolnʼs blood on his hands. Booth believed that the death of Lincoln and his immediate successors would
His wife Mary, in shock, reached out to her slumping shot husband and let out a blood curdling screech. Booth in a hurry, jumped out of the Presidentʼs Box, breaking his ankle, and exclaimed, “Sic semper tyrannis!" This translates from Latin to “Thus always to tyrants," the Virginian motto.
The President was hastily carried out of the theater, and across the street to the Petersen House. The man living there, Henry Stafford, saw the President being carried into the street and yelled, "Bring him in here, bring him in here." The invitation was accepted. The President was carried into the parlor, and onto a bed where he remained for the next 9 hours, unconscious. The doctor “Then pronounced [his] diagnosis and prognosis: ʻHis wound is mortal; it is impossible for him to recover.ʼ” (Charles A. Leale). This message was telegraphed all over the country. Almost every doctor with in a day 's travel, who had heard of the President 's tragedy, offered to help, but the President never regained consciousness. He died the next morning, on April 15, at 7:22
With Booth and the conspiratorsʼ prolonged plans to kidnap and eventually kill Lincoln, they essentially set themselves and their cause up for failure. However, it was only a matter of time, before the 16th President of the United States was assassinated. His assassination boosted reconstruction and unification of the United States of America. His wish for equality was so strong, that he would fight for his cause until his assassination on April 14, 1865 in Washingtonʼs Ford Theater. Abraham Lincoln explains his devotion to equality in this quote: “[these] men ask for just the same thing, fairness, and fairness only. This, so far as in my power, they, and all others, shall have” (Lincoln).
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Austyn Laude
Work Cited
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Channel, History. "Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth dies — History.com This Day in History — 4/26/1865." History.com — History Made Every Day — American &
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"Lincoln Assassination." United States American History. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 May