The Northern States were celebrating the end of the Civil War when President Abraham Lincoln was shot at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C. shortly after 10 p.m. on April 14, 1865. When the president passed away at 7:22 a.m. the next morning, the celebration abruptly stopped and the nation mourned the passing of its wartime leader.
Conflicting eyewitness accounts of nearly every major news story happen frequently and the Lincoln assassination is no exception. Historians still differ on several points surrounding the events of April 1865. Did Laura Keene enter the Presidential Box and cradle Lincoln's head in her lap (Harbin, 1966)? What was Mary Surratt's role in the conspiracy (Larson, 2008)? Yet the one thing that all historians seem to agree on is that the man who pulled the trigger at Ford's Theater on that fateful night was actor John Wilkes Booth.
President Lincoln wasn't even buried when the first myths about his assassination began to surface.
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