Assassination of Abraham Lincoln Assassination of Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, was assassinated by well-known stage actor John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865, while attending the play "Our American Cousin" at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. Shot in the head as he watched the play, Lincoln died the following day at 7:22 a.m., in the Petersen House opposite the theater. He was the first American president to be assassinated, and Lincoln's funeral and burial marked an extended period of national mourning. Occurring near the end of the American Civil War, the assassination was part of a larger
Abraham Lincoln (Flannery) an 18-foot (5.5 m) high marble column atop a 6-foot (1.8 m) high octagonal base. A reporter asked Lot Flannery why the statue was set on such a high pedestal. He responded: "I lived through the days and nights of gloom following the assassination. As to every one else, it was a personal lamentation. And when it fell to me to carve and erect this statue I resolved and did place it so high that no assassin's hand could ever again strike him down." Inscriptions on the monument include the following: Abraham Lincoln (Flannery) Abraham Lincoln is a marble sculpture