Killing Lincoln summary

After the fall of Richmond, Robert E. Lee’s Confederate army, half-starved, was tired and on the run. But even though their food supplies were gone, Lee’s men were extremely close to escaping the Union forces that were hot on their heels.

Lee had a plan. His army was headed toward food rations that were waiting for them in Farmville, Virginia, and, from there, it was a short march across High Bridge, which they could burn down after crossing, thus slowing the Union troops. This would give them time to regroup and continue the fight.

After four horrific years of Americans killing one another and over 600,000 lives lost, there was much rejoicing when the war finally came to an end. That is, as long as you were a Union sympathizer.

In Washington, there was indeed cause for celebration, but Abraham Lincoln knew that a great challenge lay ahead: to heal the wounded nation and bring the Southern states back into the Union.

Abraham Lincoln was raised in a Christian home and read the Bible each and every day, so he always observed Good Friday as a day to reflect upon the death of Jesus Christ.

But on April 14, 1865, the Lincolns were scheduled to see a play at Ford’s Theater, for which the First Lady, Mary Lincoln, had purchased tickets.

Not far from the theater where the Lincolns were enjoying the play, a man named Lewis Powell knocked on the door of a building known as the “Old Clubhouse,” the home of Lincoln’s colleague, the US Secretary of State William Seward.

Powell was a co-conspirator of John Wilkes Booth; it was his job to murder Seward.

As word spread of Lincoln’s death, the flags in Washington were moved to half-mast and people everywhere fell into a state of shock. Certainly, the once beloved Ford’s Theater would now be forever associated with this tragic event.

Soon after, Vice President Andrew Johnson was sworn in as the seventeenth president of the United States.