Reference Entry
LINCOLN IS SHOT AT FORD’S THEATRE
Four years after the war’s outbreak, the nation seemed on the brink of healing when a final shock struck. On the evening of April 14th, 1865, President Lincoln attended a play at Ford’s Theatre in Washington City, only days after Confederate forces in Virginia had surrendered a major army. An assassin slipped into the presidential box and fired a pistol shot at close range, mortally wounding the commander in chief.
Dated Historical Context
A RECORDED MOMENT IN HISTORY
Lincoln is shot at Ford’s Theatre
Four years after the war’s outbreak, the nation seemed on the brink of healing when a final shock struck. On the evening of April 14th, 1865, President Lincoln attended a play at Ford’s Theatre in Washington City, only days after Confederate forces in Virginia had surrendered a major army. An assassin slipped into the presidential box and fired a pistol shot at close range, mortally wounding the commander in chief. Lincoln’s death early the next morning threw the capital and the wider country into grief and uncertainty. For the armed forces, the assassination meant the sudden loss of the leader who had steered the Union through war and had already begun to shape the outlines of peace. His absence affected reconstruction policy, civil-military relations, and veterans’ futures in ways that would echo for generations. The event also drove home how even after the guns fell silent in the field, violence could still shape the fate of a nation at war’s end.
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