The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln Research Paper

The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln - Research Paper Example Who assassinated Abraham Lincoln? Did other politicians hire the killer or was the killer himself a politician? Did the man behind the shooting of President Abraham Lincoln have any personal interests in his death? What exactly did he stand to gain if the president died? Where exactly did the assassination of Abraham Lincoln take place? What kind of weapon did the assassinator use to perpetrate the act? The person who killed Abraham Lincoln was not a politician but a renowned actor, John Wilkes Booth. The death of the president as he thought would put an end to the civil war, giving the Confederates victory over the Union. To understand the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, it is important to know the person who killed him and the motive behind the assassination. Moreover, the factors that facilitated the killing of the president will help in shedding light on the issue. A myriad of questions focusing on the main reason why Booth had to assassinate the president arose shortly after h e killed him. At the time he was killing Abraham, Booth was not only rich but famous too, owing to his acting prowess. Coming from a family of successful actors, he was a highly rated actor, earning approximately $20,000 while most of the people in the United States earned an average of $3,000 annually. John Wilkes Booth on 14th April 1865 managed to pull the trigger of a .44 caliber derringer pistol, from the president’s box in a full Ford Theatre, firing a single bullet that killed the president (Good, 11). As Streers writes, â€Å"at approximately twenty minutes past ten o’clock on that fateful night of April 14th 1865, the famous actor John Wilkes Booth entered the box above and fired a bullet from a small derringer pistol into the brain of Abraham Lincholn† (12). Amid the laughers of the audience, the actor took aim at the president, shot at his head before jumping into the stage and escaping into the night. However, after two weeks of chasing Booth, the po lice found him at a barn in Maryland, where a Union officer shot him in the neck killing him two hours later. Box and John (18) argue that, â€Å"I do not look upon the murder of the President as an act of mere private vengeance; it was a blow aimed at the people who elected him and for the principles he represented.† According to Steers (20-30), having been born in Maryland, Booth openly supported the Confederate during the civil war of America. Additionally, he advocated for slavery, which was in contrary to Abraham’s perception on slavery (McCarty 50). Booth reasoned that by supporting the slaves, Lincoln was out to overthrow the constitution of the United States and destroy the south, which he so much loved. Booth was unsatisfied and angry with the management of the war, especially the handling of the war prisoners (McCarty 5). Moreover, when general Ulysses Grant stopped the exchange of the war prisoners as the war approached its end, Booth became even more agitat ed. Inspired by his personal opinion of how things ought to have been, the ardent supporter of slavery believed that the south had every right to be free to decide on its own on issues such as slavery and governance (Box and John 18). The progress of the war greatly wrecked the south, a region where slavery was legal, which motivated them to fight effortlessly to win the war. Lincoln on the other hand supported the north, the segment that was against slavery in the United States. Nevertheless, Booth thought that the death of the president as well as other high-ranking politicians among them the vice president, Johnson and the Secretary of The State, Steward would help the south in winning the civil war. According to Booth, if the three politicians died simultaneously, it would throw the union government into a turmoil that would automatically give the Confederates an upper hand in the war. As he learned from the media and from Lincoln’s character and media, Lincoln was easy t o reach. Fradin (19) writes, â€Å"