to be cheerful and happy in the days to come.  As Mrs. Lincoln remembered his words:  “We have had a hard time since we came to Washington; but the war is over, and with God’s blessings, we may hope for four years of peace and happiness, and then we will go back to Illinois and pass the rest of our lives in quiet.  We have laid by some money, and during this time, we will save up more, but shall not have enough to support us.  We will go back to Illinois; I will open a law office at Springfield or Chicago and practise law, and at least do enough to help give us a livelihood."(11)

They returned from their drive and prepared for a theatre party which had been fixed for that night.  The management of the Ford’s Theatre, where Laura Keene was to close her season with a benefit performance of Our American Cousin, had announced in the afternoon paper that “the President and his lady” would attend.  The President’s box had been draped with flags.  The rest is a twice told tale—­a thousandth told tale.

An actor, very handsome, a Byronic sort, both in beauty and temperament, with a dash perhaps of insanity, John Wilkes Booth, had long meditated killing the President.  A violent secessionist, his morbid imagination had made of Lincoln another Caesar.  The occasion called for a Brutus.  While Lincoln was planning his peaceful war with the Vindictives, scheming how to keep them from grinding the prostrate South beneath their heels, devising modes of restoring happiness to the conquered region, Booth, at an obscure boarding-house in Washington, was gathering about him a band of adventurers, some of whom at least, like himself, were unbalanced.  They meditated a general assassination of the Cabinet.  The unexpected theatre party on the fourteenth gave Booth a sudden opportunity.  He knew every passage of Ford’s Theatre.  He knew, also, that Lincoln seldom surrounded himself with guards.  During the afternoon, he made his way unobserved into the theatre and bored a hole in the door of the presidential box, so that he might fire through it should there be any difficulty in getting the door open.

About ten o’clock that night, the audience was laughing at the absurd play; the President’s party were as much amused as any.  Suddenly, there was a pistol shot.  A moment more and a woman’s voice rang out in a sharp cry.  An instant sense of disaster brought the audience startled to their feet.  Two men were glimpsed struggling toward the front of the President’s box.  One broke away, leaped down on to the stage, flourished a knife and shouted, “Sic semper tyrannis!” Then he vanished through the flies.  It was Booth, whose plans had been completely successful.  He had made his way without interruption to within a few feet of Lincoln.  At point-blank distance, he had shot him from behind, through the head.  In the confusion which ensued, he escaped from the theatre; fled from the city; was pursued; and was himself shot and killed a few days later.