From left to right: Major Henry Rathbone, Clara Harris, Mary Todd Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln, and John Wilkes Booth. The print, by Currier & Ives, erroneously suggests that Rathbone saw Booth before Booth shot Lincoln.

Location Washington, D.C. Date April 14, 1865 Target Abraham Lincoln Weapon(s) Philadelphia Derringer pistol Death(s) 1 (Lincoln) Injured Henry Rathbone Perpetrator(s) John Wilkes Booth

The assassination of United States President Abraham Lincoln took place on Good Friday, April 14, 1865, as the American Civil War was drawing to a close. The assassination occurred five days after the commanding General of the Army of Northern Virginia, Robert E. Lee, and his battered Army of Northern Virginia surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant and the Army of the Potomac. Lincoln was the first American president to be assassinated, though an unsuccessful attempt had been made on Andrew Jackson thirty years before in 1835.

The assassination was planned and carried out by well-known stage actor John Wilkes Booth as part of a larger conspiracy in a bid to help the Confederacy's cause. Booth's co-conspirators were Lewis Powell and David Herold, who were assigned to kill Secretary of State William H. Seward and George Atzerodt who was to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson as well. By simultaneously eliminating the top three in the line of succession in the Federal government, Booth and his co-conspirators hoped to throw the Union government into disarray.

Lincoln was shot while watching the play Our American Cousin with his wife Mary Todd Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C.. He died early the next morning and the rest of the plot failed. Powell only managed to wound Seward, while Atzerodt, Johnson's would-be assassin, lost his nerve and fled Washington.

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