
Good Friday a good day for Republicans to stay away from the theater
April 14th 2017
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, on this day in 1865, Abraham Lincoln is shot by an assassin , John Wilkes Booth. Lincoln was shot on Good Friday. April 14 was Good Friday that year, just as it is this year.Unfortunately, as we all know, Lincoln would pass away the next day.
The President had decided to spend his Good Friday evening at a comedy at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. It had been only 5 days since General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant, effectively bringing the Civil War to a close. As the President watched the show from his box, an assassin burst through the door and shot Lincoln in the back of the head. The assassin, John Wilkes Booth, then dropped his pistol and began waving a dagger in the air.
Another occupant of the box, Major Henry R. Rathbone, lunged for Booth and forced him toward the railing. Booth slashed Rathbone in the arm and leapt from the box shouting “Sic semper Tyrannis! The South is avenged!” His boot caught on a flag as he jumped, and his leg was broken when he landed. Despite his injury, Booth managed to flee the scene.
In the meantime, a doctor in the audience had made it upstairs to Lincoln’s box. The bullet had lodged behind the President’s right eye. Lincoln was carried, barely breathing, across the street to a boardinghouse. Lincoln passed away at 7:22 a.m. the nest day.
Booth had co-conspirators who were trying to assassinate other members of Lincoln’s administration. One accomplice, Lewis Powell (a.k.a. Lewis Payne), attacked the Secretary of State, William Henry Seward, on the same night that Lincoln was shot. Through luck Seward survived .
Booth and his co-conspirators also intended to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson and General Ulysses S. Grant. Grant however changed his mind about attending Ford’s Theatre with the President that night.
In the end, four of Booth’s co-conspirators were captured, convicted, and hung.. One of them, Mary Surratt, became the first woman to be executed by the U.S. government. A few others were imprisoned for their involvement and Booth was discovered hiding in a barn in Virginia two weeks after he assassinated Lincoln, and mortally wounded during the attempt to capture him. It was the first time in American history, a President had been assassinated.