...Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, was assassinated on April 14, 1865 by John Wilkes Booth. This tragic event took place at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. Lincoln's assassination shocked the nation and had a profound impact on American history. The assassination of Abraham Lincoln was a planned and coordinated attack by John Wilkes Booth, a Confederate sympathizer. Booth was a famous actor who had strong beliefs in the Confederacy and felt that by killing Lincoln, he would revive the Confederate cause. Booth carefully planned the assassination and enlisted the help of co-conspirators, including Lewis Powell and George Atzerodt. On the fateful night of April 14, Booth entered Lincoln's private box at the theatre and...
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...The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln April 14, 1865, a terrifying event happened that would have a long-lasting impact on the nation; the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. That night Lincoln was attending the play Our American Cousin at Ford’s theatre with his wife Mary Todd Lincoln and friends Henry Rathbone and Clara Harris. While he was watching the play, Lincoln was shot in the back of the head by the famous actor John Wilkes Booth. Booth was pro-confederate and was against the abolition of slavery, which led to his hatred of Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln became unconscious after he was shot and ended up dying the next morning at 7:22 a.m. His assassination was just five days after Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant., thus having the civil war come close to an end. Lincoln’s death created mourning all over the world...
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...Growing up, John Wilkes Booth lived in a household that owned slaves. Because of this, Booth was used to the idea of having slaves around. However, Lincoln campaigned against slavery and advocated the outlawing of the spread of slavery amongst the states. He supported extending the vote to educated African Americans and all black veterans. In January of 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation that said, “all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free” (PBS 1). The support President Lincoln had against slavery really bothered Booth. This disagreement gave John Wilkes Booth a motive for Lincoln’s...
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...Assassination is the killing of a prominent person, either for political or religious reasons or sometimes for payment. Throughout the history of the United States, eight Presidents have died while in office. Four of them died of natural causes, but four others died from assassination. The first assassination of a U.S. President was in 1865, and the last assassination that has occurred was in 1963. Stricter policies have been enforced to ensure the safety for people in office. The very last President to get assassinated was John F. Kennedy, but the very first President to get assassinated was Abraham Lincoln. Overall, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln impacted the world in a negative way and made the United States look weak. Abraham Lincoln...
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...Lincoln’s assassination set a series of events in order that would cause John Wilkes Booth to be hated by Southerners because of what he caused by his act of violence against the federal government. Vice President Andrew Johnson, who nobody seemed to like would now become President of the United Sates and would have to handle the chaos that the assassination caused around the nation. Booth and his actions caused Edwin Stanton to conduct the first nationwide police investigation for the assassin and his accomplices with the use of evidence and interrogations of known suspects. The manhunt for Booth was a massive and unprecedented one never before seen in American history. All who supported Booth and his actions were to be punished swiftly and harshly. People around the nation were attacked because they supported Booth or because they even looked like him. The United States was now in an even more state of chaos after the war because they have never experienced such an event as a Presidential assassination. The nation was determined to avenge the death of President Lincoln. The government was able to corner Booth on April 26, 1865 at Garrett's tobacco barn in Port Royal, Virginia and Booth was shot and killed. Once the trials were underway for...
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...Only a few short hours after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, amateur detectives and conspiracy theorists, questioned and debated the proven fact that the sixteenth president of the United States, was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865. Booth’s plans for the assassination were detailed, his co-conspirators followed-through on their parts of the plot and the escape route was all mapped out. The successful assassination of President Lincoln and escape of John Wilkes Booth, seemed a sure thing, until Booth was trapped in a barn on Garrett’s farm and ultimately shot dead by a Union soldier. Lincoln’s killer, John Wilkes Booth, had several reasons to murder the President on the night of April 14, 1865. According to Historynet:...
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...Only a few short hours after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, amateur detectives and conspiracy theorists, questioned and debated the proven fact that the sixteenth president of the United States, was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865. Booth’s plans for the assassination were detailed, his co-conspirators followed-through on their parts of the plot and the escape route was all mapped out. The successful assassination of President Lincoln and escape of John Wilkes Booth, seemed a sure thing, until Booth was trapped in a barn on Garrett’s farm and ultimately shot dead by a Union soldier. Lincoln’s killer, John Wilkes Booth, had several reasons to murder the President on the night of April 14, 1865. According to Historynet:...
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...As Booth began his bold escape, the fate of Abraham Lincoln was unknown. According to “Abraham,” Charles Leale heard the pistol fire and Mary’s scream, so the twenty-three year old doctor sprinted towards the wounded President . When Leale reached Lincoln, the young doctor saw the physical condition of the President. “He found the president slumped in his chair, paralyzed and struggling to breath” (History.com). “Assassination” states that the doctor reacted quickly by ripping the President’s shirt open for a physical examination, but Leale could not find the bullet wound. With that diagnosis, the focus shifted from saving the President to moving him out of Ford’s Theater (2009). “Abraham” states that Lincoln was transported to a home across the street and placed in...
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...Mary Surratt: Accomplice or Innocent Bystander Mary Surratt was a woman of many firsts. She was the first woman to ever be executed by the United States federal government. Her crime was suspected involvement in the first United States President assassination. This is better known as President Lincoln’s assassination by John Wilkes Booth. But how much did she really know about the scheme? Was she an accomplice to Booth, like many others including her son, or was she an innocent bystander who accidently got involved with assassins? Many people have heard of the John Wilkes Booth, Abraham Lincoln’s shooter, but few have heard of the people behind the scenes of the assassination. Some of the people suspected to be involved included Lewis...
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...detectives rushed into to retrieve Booth’s body before the entire barn was encompassed by the inferno. Corbett had shot Booth because he believed that Booth was ready to open fire on his fellow soldiers (Booth 19). They laid Booth on the porch, where he laid for hours, paralyzed. He disgustedly called his hands “Useless, useless” and his final words were “Tell my mother I died for my country” (Swanson 411). Around 7 A.M. on April 26, 1865, almost two weeks after assassinating the President of the United States, the paralyzed John Wilkes Booth died (Booth 19). Lincoln’s assassination dramatically changed how the North and South would be reconciled after the brutal four-year Civil War (White 8). Lincoln’s death brought out many different reactions from Americans across the country (White 28). According to Joel Achenbach, Lincoln’s assassination “was a true conspiracy, born of the war and its underlying causes” (Achenbach 49). At Lincoln’s...
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...O'Reilly, Bill, and Martin Dugard. Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination That Changed America Forever. New York: Henry Holt and, 2011. Print. Killing Lincoln is a book written by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard. The information about Martin Dugard on his website says that he is a running enthusiast and a successful cross country coach. He has written several novels on his own, as well as co-authored books with Bill O’Reilly and James Patterson. Bill O’Reilly is much more well known as a talk show host for FOX. Before his success in television O’Reilly was a high school history teacher, which could explain his background for writing a book like this. Of the two, O’Reilly would certainly have the resources to do extensive research to write a historically accurate book. Before the prologue, O’Reilly gives a note to the readers. He gives two key reasons as to why he is writing this book. The first is, “You will learn much in these pages, and the experience, I believe, will advance your understanding of our country, and how Lincoln’s murder changed it forever,” and the second is, “For those of us that want to improve the United States and keep it the greatest nation in the world, we must be aware of the true heroes who have made the country great as well as the villains who have besmirched it” (p 1-2). This is the purpose of the book and I feel that this is what O’Reilly is intending, so there does not seem to be any main thesis that he is arguing to prove. In my own...
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...the South demonstrated their freedom in numerous ways, large and small. Many bought dogs, some purchased firearms, and several held mass meetings without white supervision, all actions that were often denied them under slavery. While ex-slaves explored a life based on the free-labor vision, members of the defeated Confederacy sought to maintain as much of the old order as possible. To this end, they worked to prevent ex-slaves from acquiring economic autonomy or political rights. (pg. 276), this is how the diversity issues began between the North and the South, because the growing northern disinterest in the plight of America’s southern blacks population and southern resistance to Reconstruction. After the war, and following Lincoln’s assassination in April 1865, Southerners watched to see how the U.S might act against them. When they were not severely punished they pushed to regain as much power over former slaves as possible. Republicans in Congress launched...
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...improve the United States. He supported and signed the Homestead Act, which allotted 160 acres each of western to poor settlers (“Homestead Act”). This expanded the country and gave new opportunities to people, which stimulated the economy. Lincoln also signed the Morrill Act, which established schools of mechanics and agriculture in each state, improving the level of education, leading to an improved economy (Norton). Two more of Lincoln’s notable contributions to the improvement of the country are the National Banking Act, which...
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...He was puzzled and alarmed. What could be the meaning of all this? Determined to find the cause of a state of things so mysterious and so shocking, he kept on until he arrived at the east room, which he entered. There he met with a sickening surprise. Before he was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments, Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting all as guards; and there was a throng of people, gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose face was covered, others weeping pitifully. ‘Who is dead in the White House?’ he demanded of one of the soldiers, “The President’ was his answer; ‘he was killed by an assassin.’ then came a loud burst of grief from the crowd, which woke him from the dream, he had been strangely annoyed by it ever since. Abraham Lincoln just had dreamed about his own assassination. In August 1864, the Sixteenth President of the United States of America was nearly assassinated about nine months before he was actually assassinated. This is the story. Lincoln was dismissive of any danger to himself or his family. Lincoln complained to the Army Chief of Staff Henry Halleck that he “was more afraid of being shot by the accidental discharge of one of [the...
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...Journal A A plethora of causes contributed to the Civil War. Firstly, the Kansas-Nebraska Act was a large contribution to the Civil War. In 1854, Stephen Douglas helped push the Kansas-Nebraska Act through Congress. Douglas wanted lands to develop west of Illinois and a railroad built from Illinois through Nebraska to the Pacific Coast. This would create the Kansas and Nebraska Territories which would use popular sovereignty to determine slavery in order to please the South as they were upset that these territories were above the Missouri Compromise line. However, the North was upset as this undid the Missouri Compromise and reopened the debate on slavery where it hadn’t already existed. Thus, this would lead to the Civil War as these disagreements...
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