Assassination of Abraham Lincoln

The assassination of Abraham Lincoln was a plot by John Wilkes Booth and three co-conspirators were who were assigned to simultaneously eliminating the top three people in the administration, Booth and his co-conspirators hoped to sever the continuity of the United States government.

Members of the plot

• Samuel Arnold (kidnapping plot)

• George Atzerodt (assassination plot)

• John Wilkes Booth (President Lincoln's assassin)

• David Herold (assassination plot)

• Michael O'Laughlen (kidnapping plot)

• Lewis Powell (assassination plot)

• Edmund Spangler (kidnapping plot)

• John Surratt (kidnapping plot)

• Mary Surratt (assassination plot)

Attack on Lincoln

Lincoln was laughing at this line when he was shot.

Triva

• It is believed that that Lincoln knew he might be assassinated. Shortly after his election in 1860. Lincoln received the news of his victory by telegraph and celebrated at home with some friends. Exhausted from the day's events, he fell asleep on the sofa. When he awoke in the morning, he happened to glance in a bureau mirror and was startled to see a double image of himself reflected. He related the strange event to Harper's Magazine: 

  Looking in that glass, I saw myself reflected, nearly at full length; but my face, I noticed, had two separate and distinct images, the tip of the nose of one being about three inches from the tip of the other. I was a little bothered, perhaps startled, and got up and looked in the glass, but the illusion vanished. On lying down again, I saw it a second time -- plainer, if possible, than before; and then I noticed that one of the faces was a little paler, say five shades, than the other. I got up and the thing melted away, and I went off and, in the excitement of the hour, forgot all about it -- nearly, but not quite, for the thing would once in a while come up, and give me a little pang, as though something uncomfortable had happened.

  When Lincoln told his wife Mary of the phenomenon, her interpretation was prescient: "She thought it was 'a sign,'" Lincoln said, "that I was to be elected to a second term of office, and that the paleness of one of the faces was an omen that I should not see life through the last term." It is reported by different sources that Lincoln had dreams about being assassinated several nights before he was shot by Booth. According to Ward Hill Lamon, Lincoln's friend and biographer, three days before his assassination Lincoln discussed with Lamon and others a dream he had, saying: 

  About ten days ago, I retired very late. I had been up waiting for important dispatches from the front. I could not have been long in bed when I fell into a slumber, for I was weary. I soon began to dream. There seemed to be a death-like stillness about me. Then I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping. I thought I left my bed and wandered downstairs. There the silence was broken by the same pitiful sobbing, but the mourners were invisible. I went from room to room; no living person was in sight, but the same mournful sounds of distress met me as I passed along. I saw light in all the rooms; every object was familiar to me; but where were all the people who were grieving as if their hearts would break? I was puzzled and alarmed. What could be the meaning of all this? Determined to find the cause of a state of things so mysterious and so shocking, I kept on until I arrived at the East Room, which I entered. There I met with a sickening surprise. Before me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; and there was a throng of people, gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose face was covered, others weeping pitifully. 'Who is dead in the White House?' I demanded of one of the soldiers, 'The President,' was his answer; 'he was killed by an assassin.' Then came a loud burst of grief from the crowd, which woke me from my dream. I slept no more that night; and although it was only a dream, I have been strangely annoyed by it ever since.

  On the day of his assassination, Lincoln had told his bodyguard, William H. Crook, that he had been having dreams of himself being assassinated for three straight nights. Cook advised Lincoln not to go that night to Ford's theater, but Lincoln did not change his plans. As Lincoln left for the theater, he turned to Crook and said "Goodbye, Crook." According to Crook, this was the first time. Lincoln always said: "Good night, Crook." Crook later recalled "It was the first time that he neglected to say ‘Good Night’ to me and it was the only time that he ever said ‘Good-bye’. I thought of it at that moment and, a few hours later, when the news flashed over Washington that he had been shot, his last words were so burned into my being that they can never be forgotten."