Apr 13, 2015 2 min read

President Abraham Lincoln, who died 150 years ago Wednesday, never knew a time of peace as president. Southern states had already begun seceding when he took office in March 1861. He was a wartime president, so, on April 9, 1865, after four long years of war, when Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, it must have been an answered a prayer that peace had finally come.

During the war, there were numerous assassination plots and some attempts on Lincoln. John Wilkes Booth’s initial plan was to kidnap Lincoln and exchange him for thousands of Southern prisoners of war, but when Lee surrendered, his plans changed to killing Lincoln. It was at 10:20 p.m. April 14, 1865, Good Friday, when Booth sneaked into the presidential box at Ford’s Theatre and assassinated Lincoln using a single-shot Derringer. He shot the President behind his left ear. President Lincoln lingered until the next morning.

There are many stories about Lincoln’s dreams of death. One such story is that on that fateful Friday, as he was leaving the White House for the theater, President Lincoln told his personal bodyguard, William H. Crook, to take the night off. Crook was hesitant to obey, but Lincoln insisted. On every other night, Lincoln would always say, “good night” to Crooks. On this night, as he left the White House, Lincoln said, “goodbye.” It was almost as if he knew.

April is a significant month in U.S. history, but April 1865, is significant as the end of the bloodiest war in American history and the first assassination of a U.S. president.

Gary Ford

Washington