7 Abraham Lincoln 7The Assassination of President Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre—After the
Act, wood engraving from Harper’s Weekly, April 29, 1865. Library of
Congress, Washington, D.C.
dissension, the party united behind the president for the
1864 election, which Lincoln won with a large popular
majority over his Democratic opponent, General George
B. McClellan.
On the question of Reconstruction, Lincoln and the
extremists of his own party stood farther apart in early 1865
than a year before. However, in April 1865 Lincoln began to
modify his own stand in some respects to narrow the gap
between himself and the Radicals. On the evening of April
14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth—an actor and a rabid advo-
cate of slavery—shot Lincoln as he sat in Ford’s Theatre in
Washington. Early the next morning, Lincoln died.