President Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth, a Confederate sympathizer and American stage actor, on the evening of April 14, 1865, at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C.
Booth entered the presidential box during a performance of the play Our American Cousin and shot Lincoln in the back of the head with a .44 caliber derringer pistol. Lincoln was carried across the street to a nearby boarding house, where he died the next morning on April 15, 1865, at 7:22 a.m.
Booth's assassination of Lincoln was part of a larger conspiracy intending to revive the Confederate cause by eliminating key government officials. While Booth killed Lincoln, his co-conspirators attempted attacks on Secretary of State William H. Seward and Vice President Andrew Johnson, though those attempts failed to kill their targets.
After the assassination, Booth fled the scene but was pursued by Union soldiers and was killed 12 days later during a standoff in Virginia.
