April 14, 1865: President Abraham Lincoln was shot as he attended a play at Ford's Theatre in Washington. He died the next morning without regaining consciousness. His assassin, John Wilkes Booth, murdered the president to avenge the South's defeat in the Civil War. He had stalked the president for weeks, glaring down at him during Lincoln's second inauguration ceremony, and coming within feet of him as the president strolled through the Capitol rotunda. Lincoln became the first of four presidents to be murdered — Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy are the others.
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