John Wilkes Booth Assassinates Lincoln in Coordinated Conspiracy to Decapitate Union Government After Confederate Defeat

At approximately 10:20 p.m. on April 14, 1865, Confederate sympathizer and prominent actor John Wilkes Booth shoots President Abraham Lincoln in the back of the head at point-blank range while Lincoln watches a play at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. Lincoln dies the following morning at a private home across the street. The assassination is part of a coordinated conspiracy to decapitate the Union government—at almost the same moment, Booth’s accomplice Lewis Powell attacks Secretary of State William H. Seward at his home on Lafayette Square, while George Atzerodt is assigned to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson but loses his nerve and stays drinking in a hotel bar instead. Booth, a Maryland-born member of the prominent 19th-century Booth theatrical family, is a noted Confederate sympathizer who originally planned to kidnap Lincoln to aid the Confederate cause but changes to assassination after Lee’s surrender makes kidnapping pointless. On April 11, Booth is in the crowd when Lincoln speaks from the White House window about granting suffrage to formerly enslaved people; infuriated, Booth vows it will be Lincoln’s last speech and allegedly declares he will kill him.

Booth escapes Ford’s Theatre and becomes the most wanted man in the United States with a $100,000 reward on his head, evading capture for twelve days. He and accomplice David Herold cross the Anacostia River toward southern Maryland, stopping at Dr. Samuel Mudd’s home where Mudd treats Booth’s leg injury sustained during escape. On April 26, federal troops find Booth hiding in a tobacco barn on a Virginia farm south of the Rappahannock River. Herold surrenders before the barn is set afire, but Booth refuses to surrender and is shot—either by a soldier or by himself—dying on the farmhouse porch. The other conspirators are quickly captured: Powell, Atzerodt, Herold, and Mary Surratt are hanged at the Old Penitentiary on July 7, 1865, with Surratt becoming the first woman executed by the United States. John Surratt evades capture until November 1866 when the U.S. apprehends him in Egypt; he is released after a mistrial in 1867 and never retried.

The Lincoln assassination represents the ultimate act of political terrorism by Confederate sympathizers unable to accept democratic processes or military defeat. Booth’s conspiracy aims to destroy the Union government’s leadership simultaneously—killing the president, secretary of state, and vice president—creating chaos that might somehow reverse Confederate defeat or enable continued resistance. The plot exemplifies kakistocracy’s violent endpoint: when factional interests (preserving slavery and Confederate independence) cannot be achieved through democratic or military means, extremists resort to political murder to impose their will. Booth’s motivation—fury at Lincoln’s support for Black suffrage—reveals the assassination’s roots in white supremacist ideology and determination to prevent racial equality even after slavery’s military defeat. The conspiracy demonstrates how terrorism targets not just individuals but democratic institutions and processes, attempting to override electoral and military outcomes through violence. The broad conspiracy involving multiple assassins and safe houses shows organized resistance to Union victory extending beyond battlefield surrender, with Confederate sympathizers continuing the conflict through terrorism when conventional warfare fails. The relatively swift capture and execution of conspirators (except John Surratt) represents rare accountability for political violence, though it cannot restore Lincoln or prevent the damage to Reconstruction that his assassination causes, as successor Andrew Johnson proves far more sympathetic to white Southern interests and resistant to protecting freedpeople’s rights.