The Lincoln Assassination

The Lincoln Assassination

On April, 14 1865 President Abraham Lincoln was shot while watching a performance of An American

Cousin at Ford's Theater. President Lincoln died the next morning. The person who had killed Lincoln

was John Wilkes Booth.

A few days before he was killed, Lincoln had told his spouse about a dream he had, he saw a

president shrouded on a catafalque in the east room of the White House. Even after this dream he attended

An American Cousin at Ford's Theater.

John Wilkes Booth thought the president was determined to destroy the constitution, set aside the

rights reserved to the states, crush civil liberties, and restore monarchy. He saw the confederacy was the

only means to of upholding the values of the founding fathers. He devoted much of late 1864 and early

1865 to a series of plots to abduct Lincoln and use his capture to nullify the Union's war aims. Every

scheme ending in frustration. After Lee had surrendered to the Army of the Potomac, in the second week

of April, he saw that only the most desperate measures offered any hope of salvaging the Southern Cause.

Shortly before he went into the theater, he stopped at tavern for a drink. While in the bar an

acquaintance jokingly remarked that "he would never be as great as his father," Booth replied by saying

"When I leave the stage, I will be the most talked about man in America."

The Atlanta Campaign of 1864

In the spring of 1864, Gen. W. T. Sherman concentrated the Union armies of G. H. Thomas, J. B.

McPherson, and J. M. Schofield around Chattanooga. On May 6 he began to move along the railroad from

Chattanooga to Atlanta. Sherman had two objectives, one was to destroy the army of General J. E.

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