On April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. Lincoln was attending a play when Booth entered his box and fired a pistol at close range. The attack came just days after General Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. Booth, a Confederate sympathizer, hoped to destabilize the federal government and revive Southern resistance. Lincoln was carried to a nearby boardinghouse, where doctors tried to save him. The shooting stunned a nation already worn down by four years of war.
