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The scheme took a more violent turn when Booth decided that Lincoln must die. He went to Ford’s Theatre in Washington on Good Friday, April 14, 1865, where Lincoln and his wife Mary Todd were attending a performance of the comedy Our American Cousin. Booth entered the presidential box when the policeman on guard stepped away from his post. Approaching from behind, he shot Lincoln once in the back of the head. Laughter and applause from the audience nearly drowned out the sound of the fatal gunshot. Booth jumped over the balcony and landed on the stage, where he yelled “Sic semper tyrannis!” before running out of the theater. A distraught Mary Todd Lincoln cried out, “They have shot the President!” as a doctor raced to the mortally injured man.

The president was taken to a boarding house across the street from the theater, but never regained consciousness. He died on April 15, 1865, at 7:22 a.m., the first American president to die at the hands of an assassin. A grief-stricken Secretary of War Edwin Stanton pronounced him dead with the famous line, “Now he belongs to the ages.”

A funeral carriage brought Lincoln’s body back to the White House. Doctors performed an autopsy and undertakers prepared his body for burial. Lincoln was dressed in the same black suit he had worn just weeks before for his second inaugural.

Funeral arrangements were extensive. The White House was heavily draped in black and church bells tolled throughout the city. Government offices and businesses closed. Lincoln’s body lay in state first at the Capitol rotunda in Washington, then in cities across the country. Inconsolable, Mary Todd Lincoln refused to join in the national funeral services.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans lined the 1700-mile route as a train carried Lincoln’s body back home to Springfield, Illinois. The “Lincoln Special,” as it was known, retraced the path the president traveled on his way to the White House in 1861. Its stops included Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and Chicago. When Lincoln’s body arrived in Springfield after two weeks on display, his discolored features so distressed spectators that an undertaker was called in to conceal the decay.

After a public viewing at the Illinois State Capitol, the martyred president’s remains were taken for burial at Oak Ridge Cemetery. His mahogany coffin was interred together with that of his beloved son Willie, who had died in the White House at the age of eleven. Mary Todd Lincoln was buried with them in the family tomb when she died in 1882.

John Wilkes Booth was captured twelve days after the assassination and died as a result of the struggle. Historians are uncertain whether he was wounded by his pursuers or by his own hand. Four of his co-conspirators were found guilty and hanged for their roles in the scheme.

Touring Abraham Lincoln’s Tomb at Oak Ridge Cemetery

The Lincoln Tomb State Historic Site is located at Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield, Illinois. It is open Labor Day through February, 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. (closed Sunday and Monday), and March through October, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. daily. It is closed on major holidays. Admission is free.

From the South: Take I-55 North to the Sixth Street exit. Follow Sixth Street through downtown Springfield. Take a left onto North Grand Avenue. From North Grand Avenue, take a right onto Monument Avenue to reach Oak Ridge Cemetery.

From the North: Take I-55 South to the Sherman exit. From the exit, follow Business Route 55 (Veterans Parkway). Take a left onto J David Jones Parkway. Go approximately one mile, then take a left into Oak Ridge Cemetery.

Lincoln’s tomb is clearly visible from the cemetery’s main road.

The receiving vault where Lincoln’s body was first held

For additional information

Site Manager

Lincoln Tomb State Historic Site

Oak Ridge Cemetery

1500 Monument Avenue

Springfield, IL 62702

Phone: (217) 782-2717

www.illinoishistory.org

“Over the next quarter century, Springfield’s city fathers buried and reburied their most famous citizen.”

—Richard Norton Smith

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