April 14, 1865

As just about everyone knows, today, April 14, 1865, exactly 150 years ago, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth in Ford's Theatre at about 10:30pm. But the assassin's plan was for far more than that.

Booth had worked with a group that supported him and said they were willing to help with a coup d'etat against the United States. One of Booth's allies was George Atzerodt who was assigned to assassinate V.P. Andrew Johnson. However, Atzerodt was a coward and instead of killing the V.P. he drank all day, walked the streets of Washington, and was finally arrested in Germantown in Montgomery County, Maryland, at a cousin's house.

Despite his failure to kill the V.P., Atzerodt was tried with some of the other conspirators and he was hanged on July 7, 1865, in what is now the tennis court of Ft. McNair in Washington, D.C.

If both the President and V.P. had been assassinated, the next in line for the presidency at that time was the President Pro Tem of the Senate. That was Senator Lafayette Foster, a Republican from Connecticut. He was undistinguished but would have  become our 17th president if Atzerodt had carried out his mission.

Another of Booth's allies was Lewis Powell. He had been a Confederate soldier and part of their Secret Service. He was assigned to kill the Secretary of State, William Seward, and he almost succeeded. He attacked Seward and others in his house, inflicting grievance wounds on many. Seward had a terrible cut on his face that resulted in his always turning whenever his photo was taken in the future.

If all this had succeeded, there is no telling how much the U.S. would have been harmed. The Civil War was not over even though Robert E. Lee had surrendered his army. There were still at least three significant Confederate armies in the field and many willing to engage in guerrilla warfare, and Jefferson Davis and his cabinet were still at large and setting up a new Confederate capital.

More importantly, our best president, Abraham Lincoln, was replaced by our worst, a man who showed now skills at working with others or handling the military and political affairs of Reconstruction. America was completely changed by the events of this day 150 years ago.