April 14, 1865: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln

摘要

The first stanza of Walt Whitman's beautiful, yet somber, poem, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd," recalls one of the most tragic events in American history: the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., on the evening of April 14, 1865. It was Good Friday-two days before Easter-and Lincoln, an avid theatergoer, took time from his busy schedule to attend a performance of the play Our American Cousin. The evening's performance would serve to continue the celebratory atmosphere that permeated Washington that week, with General Robert E. Lee's surrender to his Union counterpart, General Ulysses S. Grant, effectively ending the Civil War just five days earlier.