Ford's Theatre. Red brick. Arched windows. Looks like a perfectly nice place to see a show.
On April fourteenth, eighteen sixty-five, they were performing Our American Cousin. A comedy. Abraham Lincoln loved the theater. He particularly admired one actor — a twenty-six-year-old matinee idol named John Wilkes Booth. Lincoln had seen Booth perform at this very theater. Even sent a note backstage inviting him to the White House.
Booth never responded. He was too busy planning to kill him.
The assassination wasn't a solo act. It was a three-man operation. Booth would kill Lincoln here at Ford's Theatre. Lewis Powell would kill Secretary of State William Seward at his home. George Atzerodt would kill Vice President Andrew Johnson at his hotel. Three targets. Same night. Same hour. A coordinated decapitation of the United States government.
Two of them failed.
Atzerodt lost his nerve entirely. Went to a bar. Got drunk. Never went anywhere near the Vice President. Powell actually made it
inside Seward's house — talked his way past the butler claiming he was delivering medicine from the doctor. Made it up to the third-floor bedroom. Attacked Seward with a Bowie knife. Slashed him across the face and neck. Should have killed him.
But nine days earlier, Seward had been thrown from his carriage and shattered his jaw. He was wearing a metal and canvas splint bolted around his face an
