Discover the strange and tragic details of Abraham Lincoln's assassination. On April 14, 1865, while attending a play at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., President Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth, a well-known actor and Confederate sympathizer. The assassination was part of a larger conspiracy to revive the Confederate cause by eliminating key Union leaders.
Despite the chaos of that fateful night, Booth managed to escape the theater, initiating a massive manhunt. He was found 12 days later hiding in a barn in Virginia, where he was fatally shot by Union soldiers. Lincoln's assassination marked the first time a U.S. president was murdered, plunging the nation into deep mourning and altering the course of American history.
