Lincoln had met frequently with Lt. Gen. Ulysses 
S. Grant as the war drew to a close. The two men planned matters 
of reconstruction, and it was evident to all that they held 
each other in high regard. During their last meeting, on April 
14, 1865 (Good Friday), Lincoln invited Grant to a social engagement 
that evening. Grant declined (Grant's wife, Julia Dent Grant, is 
said to have strongly disliked Mary Todd Lincoln). The President's 
eldest son, Robert Todd Lincoln, also turned down the invitation.

Without his bodyguard Ward Hill Lamon, to whom he related his 
famous dream of his own assassination, the Lincolns left to 
attend a play at Ford's Theater. The play was Our American Cousin, 
a musical comedy by the British writer Tom Taylor (1817-1880). As 
Lincoln sat in his state box in the balcony, John Wilkes Booth, a 
well-known actor and Southern sympathizer from Maryland, crept up 
behind the President and aimed a single-shot, round-slug .44 
caliber Deringer at his head, firing at point-blank range. He 
shouted "Sic semper tyrannis!" (Latin: "Thus always to tyrants," 
and Virginia's state motto; some accounts say he added "The 
South is avenged!") and jumped from the balcony to the stage 
below. Booth managed to limp to his horse and escape, and the 
mortally wounded President was taken to a house across the street, 
now called the Petersen House, where he lay in a coma for some 
time before he quietly expired. Abraham Lincoln was officially 
pronounced dead at 7:22 AM the next morning, April 15, 1865 
(Easter Saturday). Upon seeing him die, Secretary of War Edwin 
Stanton lamented either "Now he belongs to the angels" or "Now 
he belongs to the ages", the latter often repeated.

Booth and several other conspirators had planned to kill a 
number of other government officials at the same time, but for 
various reasons Lincoln's was the only assassination actually 
carried out (although Secretary of State William H. Seward was 
badly injured by an assailant). Several of the conspirators 
were eventually captured. Four people were tried by military 
tribunal and hanged for the assassination plot (David Herold, 
George Atzerodt, Lewis Powell (aka Lewis Payne), and Mary 
Surratt, the first woman ever executed by the United States 
government.) Three people were sentenced to life imprisonment 
(Michael O'Laughlin, Samuel Arnold, and Dr. Samuel Mudd). Edward 
Spangler was sentenced to six years imprisonment. John 
Surratt, tried later by a civilian court, was acquitted. The 
fairness of the convictions, particularly of Mary Surratt, have
been called into question, and there are doubts as to the exact 
degree of her involvement, if any. Booth himself was shot when 
discovered holed up in a barn (the barn itself collapsed in the 
1930s and the site is now the median of a state highway in 
Virginia).