On the evening of 14 April 1865, just days after the effective end of the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln was shot in the head by actor and Confederate sympathiser John Wilkes Booth while attending a play at Ford’s Theater in Washington, DC.
Lincoln succumbed to his injuries the following morning on 15 April, becoming the first US president to be assassinated.
The event shocked the nation and had profound consequences for the post-war Reconstruction era.
