1865 April 14. On the calendar, this day is the martyrdom day of Jesus.
On this day, Lincoln arranged the schedule for himself like this:
Go to work before eight o'clock, then have breakfast and meet the guests before the cabinet meeting at ten o'clock;
Lunch, and then meet the guests;
In the evening, my wife and I went by carriage and met my old friend informally in Illinois.
Twice to the war department;
Meet again, and then go to the Ford Theatre to watch the performance with his wife and several entourage.
At ten o'clock in the morning, some important people attended the cabinet meeting, such as the Secretary of the Army, Acting Secretary of State Frederick Seward and General Grant who returned to Washington from the front. But the meeting was short, and they just decided to hold a serious meeting on how to heal the wounds of the national war on April 18.
At lunch, a black woman named Nancy Bushrod came to the White House and asked to meet the President. However, the guard stopped her and told her that the president was having lunch and could not receive her now. Unexpectedly, Nancy suddenly shouted, "For God's sake, let me meet Mr. Lincoln;" I endured hunger and walked five miles to get to this hellhole! " Her cry caused a small commotion and several guards immediately surrounded her. At this moment, the door opened and Lincoln came out and said gently, "Let this kind lady in. I have time to talk to all the people who need my help. "
Nancy told the president that she and her husband Tom were slaves in a plantation near Richmond, and they didn't come to Washington until the Emancipation Declaration was published. At present, Tom has joined the Potomac Army, leaving a pair of twin boys and a baby girl at home. At first, Tom was paid monthly, but now he doesn't know where to get Tom's salary. Her children are starving, and she wants to ask the president if he can help her get Tom's salary. After hearing this, the president said to her, "You have the right to get your husband's salary. Come back this time tomorrow and I'll give you signed notes. " When Nancy was ready to leave in tears, the president stopped her again and said to her, "My kind woman, maybe you will encounter more difficult days in the future, even if all the food at home is just a piece of bread;" Even so, give each child a piece and send them to school. " After that, the president bowed deeply to the black woman. Later, Nancy told others: "When he talked to me, he always had a wonderful smile that made people feel happy, as if I was born a noble lady." "
In the afternoon, sitting in the carriage, Lincoln and his wife were talking and laughing. He hopes to travel abroad once after his second term expires, and then return to his hometown, or return to his old job as a lawyer, or run a farm on the grassland by the Sagaman River.
In the evening, after talking about business at the War Department, Lincoln suddenly said to Crook who came with him, "Crook, I believe someone wants to kill me, do you know?" Everyone present was surprised. Because he always laughs when others often tell him to pay attention to his own safety. Seward once warned him again, and he even wrote the word "assassination" on a large envelope containing more than 80 threatening letters, and then said to Seward, "I know I am in danger, but I don't want to take this threat to heart." This time, however, it was he who first raised the question. At that time, he looked very serious. After a while, he said to himself, "I have no doubt that they will do this." Out of caution, Crook advised him to cancel his plan to go to Ford Theatre at night, but the president said easily, "Now that we have advertised to go there, I can't let the people down."
In the evening, Lincoln and his wife went to Ford Theatre as promised. In order to ensure the president's safety, in addition to the four White House guards accompanying the president, the War Department also sent a trusted military attache, Major Henry Reed Rathbone. The major took his fiancee.
The group entered the theater around 9 pm and was taken to their box by an usher. When the president came in, a thousand spectators here stood up and applauded, and many people cheered. Before entering the box, Lincoln stopped several times to nod to the audience who welcomed him.
On the stage, 14 years ago, Our American Cousins by British playwright tom tyler was staged. Later, this mediocre drama became famous for the events of this day.
President Lincoln's box has two doors, the front door and the back door, and both are locked. President Lincoln sat in an armchair. Besides the actors on the stage, he could see his wife sitting in the box with him and several guards standing around him. All this looks very safe. However, no one expected that the back door of the box had already been tampered with. Obviously, the peephole on the door was only drilled by hand drill, and the big lock in name only has been broken open. This door is less than five feet from the president. As it happens, the guard assigned to guard this door has a hobby of drinking. He sneaked out and tasted a small bottle of whisky that he took with him during the scene change.
Just then, John Wilkes Booth, who was notorious for killing Lincoln, opened the back door of Lincoln's box. Holding an eight-ounce single-shot large-caliber pocket pistol in his right hand and a dagger in his left hand, he approached Lincoln unhurriedly, and then shot a lead warhead less than half an inch in diameter into the back of the president's head.
At the moment when the gunfire rang, Major Rathbone jumped up and saw a hideous assassin in black casual clothes holding a dagger and stabbing him in the heart. When the major fended off the dagger with his arm, a sharp pain made him back half a step, but when he saw the assassin seize the opportunity to climb the The Upper Terrace fence in an attempt to escape, he swooped down again. The assassin stabbed him again and then jumped down. But the federal pennant that decorated the box entangled the spurs on his riding boots, which made him lose his balance and suddenly fell to the stage from a height of ten feet. Although he broke his tibia, he rushed across the stage and ran out of the theater gate at an amazing speed. Later, people calculated that booth fired a shot and ran out of the door, only after 60 or 70 seconds.
However, no matter how fast Booth is at this time, his broken tibia makes him have nowhere to hide. On the morning of April 26th, this spy and killer sent by slave owners who hated Lincoln in the southern United States was shot through the neck by a bullet outside a burning warehouse near Bolingreen, Virginia. When the murderer died, he asked to raise his hands so that he could see his sinful hands clearly.
Although President Lincoln did not die immediately after being shot, although his wife held his hand tightly and told him over and over again, "Live! You must live! " However, President Lincoln's last breath stopped at 7: 00 am on April 15/2 1: 55. His last heartbeat was at 7: 22, 10 second.
Abraham lincoln, a child who grew up in the wilderness of lightning and Changhong, a legend whose name is closely related to the struggle for freedom of people all over the world, passed away. Everywhere is immersed in grief, and people cherish the newspapers that published the Emancipation Declaration, the Gettysburg Address, the Letter to Mrs. bixby and the second inaugural address. Because what he left to people was his life and its glory. On an arch covered with black gauze and decorated with white flowers on Broadway in new york, there is a saying: "This great man is a miracle of history."