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
Memorials to Abraham Lincoln Memorials to Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln, U.S. president 1861–65, has been memorialized in many town, city, and county names, Along with George Washington, he is an iconic image of American democracy and nationalism. Barry Schwartz, a sociologist who has examined America's cultural memory, states that in the 1930s and 1940s, the memory of Abraham Lincoln was practically sacred and provided the nation with "a moral symbol inspiring and guiding American life." During the Great Depression, he says, Lincoln served "as a means for seeing the world's disappointments, for making its sufferings not so much explicable as meaningful." Franklin D. Roosevelt,