Deringer Pistol, Philadelphia 1850

Lincoln and Mary Todd left to attend a performance at Ford's Theater. The play was Our American Cousin, a musical comedy. As Lincoln sat in the box, John Wilkes Booth, a Maryland actor, Virginia resident and Southern sympathizer, fired a single shot from a round-shot Derringer pistol at the president's head and shouted "Sic semper tyrannis!" ("So always to tyrants", Virginia state motto). Booth jumped from the balcony onto the stage; The audience believed that when he stood up he was bowing, but the truth is that he had broken his leg.

Booth limped to his horse and managed to escape. The president, mortally wounded and after being treated by the young military doctor Charles August Leale, present at the theater, was taken to a house across the street where he fell into a coma until he died ten hours after the attack. Booth and several of his companions (some of them were later proven innocent) were eventually captured and hanged or imprisoned. The exception to this is the case of Booth who was killed by a police officer.

Lincoln's funeral procession train. Lincoln's body was carried by train in a magnificent funeral procession through several states. The nation grieved for a man many considered the savior of the United States and the protector and defender of what Lincoln himself called "the government of the people, by the people, and for the people." His critics argue that it was in fact the Confederates who were defending the right of "government for the people" and that it was Lincoln who suppressed that right.

His remains rest in Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield, Illinois.