The man who killed Abraham Lincoln was John Wilkes Booth, a well-known actor and member of the Confederate secret service. He planned the attack on Lincoln in advance and shot him in the head while the President was watching a play at Ford’s Theater.
Lincoln had been elected president in 1860 and re-elected in 1864. Lincoln’s policies were controversial; he wanted to end slavery and reunite the country after the Civil War. The South disagreed with his policies and wanted to keep slavery legal.
Booth was motivated by political reasons: he wanted to create chaos in the Union before it could be reunited, so he could help win the war for the Confederacy. The Confederacy had been defeated by Union forces in 1865, but that didn’t stop some people from wanting to keep fighting against Lincoln’s policies—including John Wilkes Booth.
He committed the crime on April 14th, 1865—just six days after Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, effectively ending the Civil War. Booth escaped after the assassination and was later found and killed by Union soldiers on April 26th.
The assassination of Lincoln was a turning point in American history because it changed almost everything about how people organized themselves politically and economically in America.
