It’s the 150th anniversary of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth in 1865.
The assassination of Abraham Lincoln is an interesting subject. There are so many facts about it that it may be hard to take it all in. To help with that, InvestorPlace has collected a list of facts about Lincoln’s assassination.
Here are 15 facts about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, as collected from Yahoo News.
- Lincoln didn’t want to go to the play at Ford Theater, but did because General Ulysses S. Grant couldn’t make it.
- Grant elected not to go to the play so that he could visit family with his wife in New Jersey.
- Several other political figures, including Vice President Andrew Johnson, Secretary of State William Seward and House Speaker Schuyler Colfax, were also supposed to be assassinated the same nigh at Lincoln.
- The Secret Service didn’t exist in 1865 and Lincoln’s bodyguard had left his post to get a drink during the play’s intermission.
- Lincoln signed a bill to create the Secret Service before he left to go to the theater.
- The original plan was to kidnap Lincoln, not kill him.
- Both Lincoln and his wife were running late to the play.
- It took 12 days for Booth to be caught after assassinating the president.
- Booth vowed to kill Lincoln after attending his April 11, 1865 speech and hearing his thoughts on slavery.
- The assassination of Lincoln was originally thought to be part of the play by the crowd.
- Lincoln had seen Booth perform at the Ford Theater before his assassination.
- The funeral train for Lincoln traveled 1,600 miles and through 400 cities for around two weeks.
- Lincoln kept a file of death threats in a folder labelled “A” for “Assassination”.
- He didn’t believe that assassination was in the American Spirit and didn’t fear for his life because of this.
- Lincoln once said “If someone wants to get at me, there is nothing I can do to prevent it.”
To learn more about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, follow these links.
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