The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln - Research Paper Example

The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln Who assassinated Abraham Lincoln? Did other politicians hire the killer or was the killer himself a politician? Did the man behind the shooting of President Abraham Lincoln have any personal interests in his death? What exactly did he stand to gain if the president died? Where exactly did the assassination of Abraham Lincoln take place? What kind of weapon did the assassinator use to perpetrate the act? The person who killed Abraham Lincoln was not a politician but a renowned actor, John Wilkes Booth. The death of the president as he thought would put an end to the civil war, giving the Confederates victory over the Union. To understand the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, it is important to know the person who killed him and the motive behind the assassination. Moreover, the factors that facilitated the killing of the president will help in shedding light on the issue. A myriad of questions focusing on the main reason why Booth had to assassinate the president arose shortly after he killed him. At the time he was killing Abraham, Booth was not only rich but famous too, owing to his acting prowess. Coming from a family of successful actors, he was a highly rated actor, earning approximately $20,000 while most of the people in the United States earned an average of $3,000 annually. John Wilkes Booth on 14th April 1865 managed to pull the trigger of a .44 caliber derringer pistol, from the president’s box in a full Ford Theatre, firing a single bullet that killed the president (Good, 11). As Streers writes, “at approximately twenty minutes past ten o’clock on that fateful night of April 14th 1865, the famous actor John Wilkes Booth entered the box above and fired a bullet from a small derringer pistol into the brain of Abraham Lincholn” (12). Amid the laughers of the audience, the actor took aim at the president, shot at his head before jumping into the stage and escaping into the night. However, after two weeks of chasing Booth, the police found him at a barn in Maryland, where a Union officer shot him in the neck killing him two hours later. Box and John (18) argue that, “I do not look upon the murder of the President as an act of mere private vengeance; it was a blow aimed at the people who elected him and for the principles he represented.” According to Steers (20-30), having been born in Maryland, Booth openly supported the Confederate during the civil war of America. Additionally, he advocated for slavery, which was in contrary to Abraham’s perception on slavery (McCarty 50). Booth reasoned that by supporting the slaves, Lincoln was out to overthrow the constitution of the United States and destroy the south, which he so much loved. Booth was unsatisfied and angry with the management of the war, especially the handling of the war prisoners (McCarty 5). Moreover, when general Ulysses Grant stopped the exchange of the war prisoners as the war approached its end, Booth became even more agitated. Inspired by his personal opinion of how things ought to have been, the ardent supporter of slavery believed that the south had every right to be free to decide on its own on issues such as slavery and governance (Box and John 18). The progress of the war greatly wrecked the south, a region where slavery was legal, which motivated them to fight effortlessly to win the war. Lincoln on the other hand supported the north, the segment that was against slavery in the United States. Nevertheless, Booth thought that the death of the president as well as other high-ranking politicians among them the vice president, Johnson and the Secretary of The State, Steward would help the south in winning the civil war. According to Booth, if the three politicians died simultaneously, it would throw the union government into a turmoil that would automatically give the Confederates an upper hand in the war. As he learned from the media and from Lincoln’s character and media, Lincoln was easy to reach. Fradin (19) writes, “Lincoln made easy target during frequent visits to the theatre and when he relaxed by playing baseball outside the white house.” This must have run through the mind of Booth, who knew exactly when and where to shoot from to avoid missing. Initially, Booth’s intentions did not involve killing Lincoln; rather, it came as a desperate step after his initial plan of kidnapping him flopped. From the first step, Booth wanted to kidnap the president and use him as a bite to win the war on slavery and trade him for the detained Confederate soldiers (Streers 38). Kidnapping the president would serve two purposes according to Booth’s plan. One would be trading him with the Confederate prisoners, while the other would make Lincoln a factor that would bring to an end the long stalemate between the south and the north on the slavery conflict (McCarty 50). However, a day before the day of the kidnap, General Robert Lee surrendered, an event that made Booth change his strategy from kidnap to assassination. Political party affiliations also featured in the assassination plan, as some authors point out. According to the Confederates, being a Republican, Lincoln and others in the political party were traitors to the Union and thus deserved to die. However, it is worth noting that not everybody in the south was concerned with the problem of slavery as not everybody embraced slavery. Their main concern however was state rights and as well as the pride of winning the war. Such were ideas that lingered in Booth’s mind as he planned to kidnap the president. Additionally, Abraham’s speech in which he made promises of suffrage to the newly freed African slaves agitated Booth even more. The speech acted as the catalyst to his anger, taking his plans into a dramatic twist. In the 1864 presidential elections, Abraham Lincoln was re-elected to office for the second term as the 16th president of the United States. Prior to the elections, Booth hoped that Lincoln would lose the elections. His re-election though did not go well with Booth as he started devising a plan that involved kidnapping the president, taking him to Richmond where he would trade him for a section of Confederate prisoners suffering in North American jails. With the understanding that he could not implement the plan single-handed, he put together, a group of highly trusted friends to aid him with the plan. The winter of 1864 saw Booth and his men plot, two carefully thought plans to kidnap the president. The first involved cornering Lincoln in the presidential box at the Ford’s theatre, and then levelling him to the stage using ropes. This plan came with sacrifices for Booth, as he had to give up acting to focus on the plan. Further, he spent up to $10,000 dollars in purchasing supplies and outfits for his gang. In case this plan was to fail, they had a second plan that involved a plot to capture the president on March 17th as he travelled in his carriage, then taking him hostage to trade him with some of the Confederate prisoners if not all locked in the northern jails. However, these plans collapsed the day the president changed his plans and when the war took a different turn. Following this development, a number of people left the group, leaving Booth devastated. Standing on the balcony of the white house on April 11th, Lincoln gave a speech about his plans for the United States to a few people who gathered around him listening. If the war ended, indications pointed out on the likelihood of the Union emerging from the war victorious. In his speech, Lincoln pointed out various plans he had for the country, especially his intentions of reconstructing America. He was also concerned with the incorporation of the defeated Confederate states into the Union. Moreover, he expressed his desire of extending favour to some of the African American slaves, especially those who had supported the Union during the war as a reward. Finally, he expressed his desire for the southern states to extend their vote in liberating the black people from slavery and oppression. Booth was part of the people who listened to the president’s speech, which seems to have boosted his anger towards to the president. In his own words, Booth said to Lewis Powell a member of his band, “That means nigger citizenship” referring to the freedom of the slaves. He swore to Powell that, “Now, by God, I’ll put him through. That is the last speech he will ever make.” This meant that regardless of the fact that a huge number of his members had left the gang, he would go on with his plan. Only that this time it meant an assassination of the president. On April 14th, three days after the president’s speech, Booth actualized his plan, finally making good his promise. When he learnt that Lincoln and his wife would attend the play, “Our American Cousin” staged at the Ford’s Theatre, he used his connections in the theatre to gain access to the president’s box (Good 11). He also targeted other top officials in Lincoln’s government (General Grant, Secretary of State William Seward as well as Vice President Andrew Johnson). In his plan, he envisioned a simultaneous assassination of four government officials that would throw the government into a confusion and chaos giving the Confederacy an opportunity and time to reorganize itself and strike the Union. Although he managed to kill the president, other plans failed terribly. As if by fate, all his group members failed in their assignments, leaving him the only successful assassin that night. A number of things went wrong; General Grant did not honour his invitation to watch the play, keeping out of danger, Lewis Powell successfully entered the house of the secretary of the state and found Seward bedridden recuperating from an earlier accident with his carrier. Despite stabbing him severally, the secretary did not succumb to the wounds, as he recovered from the wounds in hospital. George Azterodt, a third member of the gang managed to gain access to the hotel where the Vice President slept but did not manage to kill him as he got drunk and lost his nerve and left the hotel without even confronting Johnson. In conclusion, the assassination of the president was not a well thought out idea. Killing him was bound to bring more problems than solutions to the south. Even if the initial plan succeeded, kidnapping a president seemed insane and impossible too. Despite being a supporter of the Confederates, it was impossible for Booth to trade the president for the prisoners after kidnapping him. The whole plan was bound to fail; on the other hand, the war was about to end and the south would was to lose anyway. Due to this reason, Booth should have abandoned his dream of securing the south from the Union and continuing with the slavery. There were other politicians in the Republican Party who would continue with Abraham’s plans. Works Cited Box, Henry W, and John C. Lord. In Memoriam: Abraham Lincoln Assassinated at Washington, April 14, 1865 : Being a Brief Account of the Proceedings of Meetings, Action of Authorities and Societies, Speeches, Sermons, Addresses and Other Expressions of Public Feeling on Reception of the News, and at the Funeral Obsequies of the President, at Buffalo, N.y. Buffalo [N.Y.: Printing House of Matthews & Warren, 1865. Internet resource. Fradin, Dennis B. The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln. New York: Benchmark, 2006. Print. Good, Timothy S. We Saw Lincoln Shot: One Hundred Eyewitness Accounts. Jackson: Univ. Press of Mississippi, 1995. Print. McCarty, Burke. The Suppressed Truth About the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Pomeroy, WA: Health Research, 1993. Print. Streers, Jr E. Blood on the Moon. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001. Print. Read More