The Civil War had ended and a few days later, on April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth while attending the performance of a play at Ford's Theatre. Lincoln died the following morning. Whitman was at his mother's home when he heard the news of the president's death; in his grief he stepped outside the door to the yard, where the lilacs were blooming. Many years later, Whitman recalled the weather and conditions on the day that Lincoln died in "Specimen Days" where he wrote: