Lincoln's Assassination - Essay Example

The Civil War had major implications in the life and death of Lincoln. In 1865, five days after the Civil War ended, Lincoln was shot dead by John Wilkes Booth while attending a play at the Ford’s Theatre with his wife.2 The factors that led to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln did not eventually justify its outcome in the preceding days. Though Booth was convicted for his crimes, not many of those other conspirers were. This indeed created lots of perplexity among the historians and the researchers, in asserting who may or may not have been involved in the assassination along with Booth.

There were many conspiracies as whether Booth was solely responsible or he was just a tool in a major plot conspiracy hatched by a group of people. However, the idea that the assassination was a result of grand conspiracy of the Confederates arose immediately after the tragic happening. There exist many facts and evidences to support the possibilities of Confederates plotting the assassination of Lincoln. . ain.3 This is mainly because the Proclamation freed only the slaves in the seceded states while others had to wait until the Constitution was amended in 1865.

To add up to the circumstances, the proclamation blocked the intervention of Britain or France into the war, for the support of the Southern states, as they did not want to be portraying it as a war for slavery. All these incidences created hatred against the Lincoln’s presidency, personating him as a tyrant. Though the South had hatred for Lincoln and was fighting for their independence, the Confederate’s plot to abduct or kill Lincoln arose after an Dahlgren incident of discovering Union cavalry officer’s concealed papers, which revealed the attempts of Union soldiers to kill Davis.

4 When those Dahlgren Papers were distributed as evidences for plot to kill President Davis, it created outrage and disapproval for the Union government across the Southern states. “In the resulting uproar Southern newspapers blasted Lincoln and Union leaders as depraved murderers and ferocious criminals and demanded that they be held personally accountable.”5 Booth was suspected as the Confederate’s secret services operative. One of the strong reasons behind it was that, there were coded letters found in the belongings of Booth, revealing his connection with the Confederates.

In addition to that, when Booth escaped, he travelled using an underground path, which the Confederate spy network used to secretly transport resources to and fro. Also, the testimony given by George Atzerodt, a fellow Confederate conspirator, implicated that there were also plans to explode the White House for killing the President.6 However, there is also objection to the fact that Booth was solely a puppet in the hands of Confederate. Being a