Admission: Free
 

About Ford's Theater:    
America's transfer from civil war to peace was made more difficult on April 14, 1865, when Abraham Lincoln was shot and killed, just five days after General Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House. A well-known actor, John Wilkes Booth, desperate to aid the dying Confederacy, stepped into the president's box. Booth's decision to pull the trigger altered the nation's power to reconstruct after the war. Booth escaped into the night as Abraham Lincoln was carried to the Petersen boarding house across the street. It was there that President Lincoln died early the next morning, and became the first American president to be assassinated. 

About the Assassination of President Lincoln:

John Wilkes Booth, a popular actor, ended his full-time stage career in May of 1864. The Maryland native wanted to spend most of his time on his primary interest--supporting the Confederate States of America. Within months, Booth was working actively with Confederate partisans. A Plan to capture President Lincoln and exchange him for Confederate prisoners of war brought Booth into contact with Dr. Samuel Mudd, John Surratt, his mother Mary, Lewis Thorton Powell, David Herold, George Atzerodt, and others. This plan failed when on the day chosen for the capture, President Lincoln changed his plans and did not travel on the road where conspirators were waiting.

This March 17, 1865 failure was quickly followed by two major Confederate defeats. Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy, was abandoned to Union troops and on Palm Sunday, April 9th, Robert E. Lee surrendered his army to General Grant.

Soon after these defeats, Booth decided to assassinate President Lincoln while Powell was to kill Secretary of State Seward, and Atzerodt was to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson. Booth hoped to throw the country into political chaos.

Within hours of Lincoln's shooting, Booth fled Washington on horseback and met Herold on the road. Both men rode into southern Maryland. The pain from the broken small bone in his left leg (broken in the escape from the State Box at Ford's Theatre) led Booth and Herold to stop at Dr. Mudd's home for medical aid.

On April 26th, twelve days after having killed the President, Booth and Herold were surrounded while hiding in a tobacco shed in Port Royal, Virginia. Herold surrendered to the Union troops, but Booth held out and was shot while the shed burned down around him.

The other conspirators were soon arrested. Atzerodt, Herold, Powell, and Mrs. Surratt were all found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging. Dr. Mudd and two others involved in the original capture attempt were sentenced to life in prison. Edman Spangler, who held Booth's horse during the assassination, was sentenced to six years hard labor. In 1869, President Andrew Johnson pardoned the surviving conspirators.

Ford's Theater Today:

Ford's Theatre is a live, working theatre located in downtown Washington, DC. As a living tribute to President Abraham Lincoln's love of the performing arts, Ford's Theatre produces musicals and plays that embody family values, underscore multiculturalism, and illuminate the eclectic character of American life.
For nearly three decades Frankie Hewitt has been the driving force behind the dynamic new chapter in Ford's history. Lobbying first to have the structure renovated as a working theatre as well as a museum, then building new audiences, enriching the fabric of Washington's downtown theatre scene and developing new American theatre works.

One desperate act assigned Ford's a permanent place in the history of our nation. Ford's Theatre Society, under Frankie Hewitt's leadership, has gone beyond that tragedy to reclaim the Theatre as a national treasure and to transform it into a celebration of America's cultural heritage.

Additional Information:

http://www.nps.gov/foth/index2.htm

http://www.nps.gov/foth/