The New York Post — previously The Evening Post — front page from April 15, 1865.One hundred fifty years ago today, President Abraham Lincoln was enjoying a play at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, DC, when an assassin shot him at point-blank range in the back of the head. He died the next morning, the day this edition of The New York Post was published. At that time, The Post — then midway through its 64th year of operation — was printed for evening distribution and was called The Evening Post.
The president died just 42 days after being sworn in for his second term and six days after Gen. Robert E. Lee, commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, surrendered to Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and the Union Army of the Potomac, at Appomattox Court House, Va., effectively ending the American Civil War.
The assassination of Lincoln was part of a larger plot to eliminate the president, as well as Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William H. Seward. But the rest of the plot failed. The vice president’s would-be assassin chickened out at the last minute. Seward was stabbed repeatedly in the face and neck as he lay in his bed at home, but recovered from his injuries.
Lincoln was the first of four American presidents slain by assassins, the others being James Garfield (1881), William McKinley (1901) and John F. Kennedy (1963).
Today, The Post republishes, word for word, its coverage of President Lincoln’s assassination, first printed the day he died in a first-floor bedroom at a boarding house across the street from the theater where the fatal shot was fired.
A prominent stage actor, John Wilkes Booth, armed with a Philadelphia Derringer pistol, fired the shot.
Lincoln died less than 9½ hours later — at 7:22 a.m. April 15. He was 56 years old.
