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Local historian talks about Lincoln's assassination
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- By Kate Cole
- Tuesday, April 17, 2012
- Hits: 340
The East Side Business Association April 11 heard local history buff, David Caswell, speak about the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. The assassination took place April 14, 1865, just days before the American Civil War ended and five days after the Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant.
"The Civil War was the bloodiest U.S. war ever," Caswell explained. "More than 660,000 people died."
"Lincoln was a very unpopular president during the war," Caswell continued. "He was not considered a gentleman like his counterpart in the Confederacy, President Jefferson Davis. A 'gentleman' at that time would not eat with black people or common laborers. Lincoln did both," Caswell said.
There were five attempts to assassinate the president and one kidnapping plot, Caswell said.
Lincoln was the first American president to be assassinated.
The president and his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, and Major Henry Rathbone and his date, Clara Harris, arrived in a carriage at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C., the evening of April 14. When the presidential party entered the theater, the play was stopped and the band struck up Hail to the Chief.
Then the presidential party took their box seats on the left side of the stage. During the second scene of the third act of the play Our American Cousins, actor John Wilkes Booth climbed the stairs to the mezzanine and entered a lobby door leading to the presidential box. Reaching the box, Booth pushed open the door.
The president's bodyguard had left his post of duty. The president sat in his armchair.
From a distance of about 4 feet behind Lincoln, Booth fired a bullet above the president's left ear into the brain, leaving Lincoln immediately brain dead, although he officially died the next day at 7:22 a.m.
Booth threw his .41-caliber Philadelphia Derringer to the floor and rushed to the front of the box, leapt over the railing and ran outside to his waiting horse. He escaped across the Naval Yard Bridge to Maryland.
"The assassination was planned and carried out by a well-known stage actor — the Brad Pitt of his day," Caswell said. "But he was not acting alone."
The assassination was part of a larger conspiracy with Lewis Powell, David Herold and John Surrant.
Powell and Herold were assigned to kill Secretary of State William H. Seward the same night as Lincoln was murdered. The Seward assassination attempt was a bloody but unsuccessful affair leaving Seward badly hurt.
Other targets included Vice President Andrew Johnson — also unsuccessful.
According to Caswell, Booth's evil deed was part of a larger conspiracy of Confederate sympathizers, whose goal was the destabilization of the entire federal government.
One of Booth's friends was Mary Surratt who owned a boarding house. She was convicted of taking part in the conspiracy to assassinate Lincoln. Sentenced to death, she was hanged, becoming the first woman executed by the United States federal government. She was the mother of John H. Surratt Jr. who was later tried but was not convicted of the assassination.
Lucy Hale, Booth's girlfriend, was a D.C. society playgirl to whom he was secretly engaged. Lucy's photograph was found in Booth's pocket after he was killed by Federal troops 12 days after he assassinated Lincoln.
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