Highlights Archives
Eyewitness to History: Lincoln's Assassination
One hundred and forty years ago a handful of terrorists almost toppled the U.S. government. On the night of April 14, 1865, simultaneous attacks were planned on the president, vice president, secretary of war and secretary of state in Washington, D.C. The nation was stunned and shaken by the vicious murder of President Abraham Lincoln, gunned down by actor John Wilkes Booth, while enjoying a rare evening out with First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln at Ford's Theatre. The attack took place only five days after the April 9 surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia by Gen. Robert E. Lee to Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, Virginia, signaling the end of four years of Civil War.
Almost simultaneously, on April 14, Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton narrowly missed assassination, while Secretary of State William H. Seward and his children were viciously stabbed in their home by Booth's co-conspirators. Former Wisconsin Governor Leonard Farwell, an eyewitness to the assault on Lincoln at Ford's Theatre that night, saw the shooting and immediately ran from the theater to warn Vice President Andrew Johnson that a conspiracy was underway to murder high-ranking officials in the federal government. Farwell's swift action probably saved not only Johnson but also the orderly succession of power at the highest level of government. Farwell left this account of that fateful evening.
 By morning on April 15, President Abraham Lincoln was dead. Andrew Johnson was sworn in as the new president. A Wisconsin soldier, W. D. Kenzie of Beloit, was an eyewitness to the manhunt for Lincoln's assassin John Wilkes Booth. Kenzie, who had seen Booth (image at right) escape from Ford's Theatre, was also on the scene 12 days later when Booth was surrounded and killed in Port Royal, Virginia. Kenzie's account of that event, however, differs wildly from the accepted historical record.
Meanwhile, as the nation prepared for a state funeral, Lincoln's remains traveled through several major cities on the way to burial in Springfield, Illinois. This engraving (image at right) shows the funeral train in New York. Another Wisconsinite, Frank Pond of Wausau, was the engineer on that funeral train. Ironically, it was Pond who five years earlier staffed the train that brought Abraham Lincoln to Washington for his first inauguration as President.
:: Posted April 14, 2005
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