On April 14, 1865, Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, was assassinated by a well-known actor named John Wilkes Booth. Lincoln was the first U.S. president to be assassinated, with his funeral and burial marking an extended period of national mourning.
Occurring near the end of the American Civil War, Lincoln’s assassination was part of a larger conspiracy intended by Booth to revive the Confederate cause by eliminating the three most important officials of the United States government. Two conspirators were assigned to kill Secretary of State William H. Seward. Another was assigned to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson. Except for Lincoln’s death, the plot failed: Seward was only wounded, and Johnson’s would-be attacker became drunk instead of killing the Vice Presi…