Shot in the back of the head the previous evening while watching a play at Ford's Theatre, Lincoln never regained consciousness. He died in a boarding house across the street, surrounded by cabinet members and his son Robert. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton reportedly said, 'Now he belongs to the ages.' Lincoln's death, just five days after Lee's surrender at Appomattox, plunged a nation on the cusp of peace into fresh grief and complicated Reconstruction.
Lincoln had been carried unconscious to the Petersen House boarding house because moving him further seemed impossible; the bed there was too short for his 6-foot-4-inch frame, so he lay diagonally across it. Doctors could do nothing but keep vigil through the night as the wound proved fatal. His wife Mary Todd Lincoln was so distraught that Stanton reportedly ordered her removed from the room.
John Wilkes Booth, a Confederate sympathizer and celebrated actor, leapt to the stage after firing the shot, shouted 'Sic semper tyrannis,' and fled on horseback despite a broken leg from the jump. He evaded capture for twelve days before being cornered in a Virginia barn and killed. Lincoln's death transformed him instantly into martyr and myth; his funeral train's 1,700-mile journey back to Springfield, Illinois, drew millions of mourners and reshaped how Americans understood their fractured, war-torn republic.
Key people: Abraham Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth, Edwin Stanton