Was Lincoln's Assassination Justified Essay

Was Lincoln’s Assassination Justified? On April 14, 1865, Lincoln became the first sitting US president to be assassinated. The day started off as any other day, and Lincoln was set to go to Ford Theater with his wife to see the play “Our American Cousin” (Swanson 21). Then, the day took a tragic turn for the worse when shortly after 10 P.M, Lincoln was shot in the head by an actor, John Wilkes Booth, who managed to escape from the theater, and the search for the assassin became one of the grandest manhunts in history. Over 10,000 federal troops, detectives and policemen tracked him down, and, on April 26, federal troops caught up with Booth and he was shot by an officer. Even though John Wilkes Booth was a confederate, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln was not justified because every person’s life is valuable, Lincoln led the US to countless achievements, and his assassination created a lot of chaos. The assassination of Lincoln was not justified because, above all, Lincoln was a father, a husband, and a friend. Lincoln was married to Marry Todd and was a father to four children who all suffered the pain of their …show more content…
When Abraham Lincoln took the oath of office on March 4, 1861, in Washington, he confronted the greatest crisis in American history with a nation torn in two (Foner 2). Remarkably, Lincoln was able to end the civil war with a Union victory, abolish slavery, and sign the Emancipation Proclamation. “He was the last victim of the violence necessary to secure the bond between the states. That makes him all the more heroic” (1). Furthermore, Lincoln signed the first Homestead acts which gave the poor opportunities to own land, established the US Department of Agriculture, and established the US National Banking System which is still used today (Wallenfeldt 1). Therefore, the assassination of Lincoln was a tremendous loss to the whole