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| First Prev [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ] Next Last |
| OFFICE | NAME | TERM |
| President | Abraham Lincoln | 1861–1865 |
| Vice President | Hannibal Hamlin | 1861–1865 |
| Andrew Johnson | 1865 | |
| Secretary of State | William H. Seward | 1861–1865 |
| Secretary of the Treasury | Salmon P. Chase | 1861–1864 |
| William P. Fessenden | 1864–1865 | |
| Hugh McCulloch | 1865 | |
| Secretary of War | Simon Cameron | 1861–1862 |
| Edwin M. Stanton | 1862–1865 | |
| Attorney General | Edward Bates | 1861–1864 |
| James Speed | 1864–1865 | |
| Postmaster General | Horatio King | 1861 |
| Montgomery Blair | 1861–1864 | |
| William Dennison | 1864–1865 | |
| Secretary of the Navy | Gideon Welles | 1861–1865 |
| Secretary of the Interior | Caleb B. Smith | 1861–1863 |
| John P. Usher | 1863–1865 | |
Lincoln appointed the following Justices to the Supreme Court of the United States:
Lincoln met frequently with Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant as the war drew to a close. The two men planned matters of reconstruction, and it was evident to all that they held each other in high regard. During their last meeting, on April 14, 1865 (Good Friday), Lincoln invited Grant to a social engagement that evening. Grant declined (Grant's wife, Julia Dent Grant, is said to have strongly disliked Mary Todd Lincoln).
The assassination of Abraham Lincoln. From left to right Henry Rathbone, Clara Harris , Mary Todd Lincoln, Lincoln, and Booth.
Without the General and his wife, or his bodyguard Ward Hill Lamon, to whom he related his famous dream of his own assassination, the Lincolns left to attend a play at Ford's Theater. The play was Our American Cousin, a musical comedy by the British writer Tom Taylor (1817-1880). As Lincoln sat in the balcony, John Wilkes Booth, a well-known actor and Southern sympathizer from Maryland, crept up behind Lincoln in his state box and aimed a single-shot, round-slug .44 caliber Deringer at the President's head, firing at point-blank range. He shouted " Sic semper tyrannis!" (Latin: "Thus always to tyrants," and Virginia's state motto; some accounts say he added "The South is avenged!") and jumped from the balcony to the stage below, breaking his leg in the fall.
Booth and several other conspirators had planned to kill a number of other government officials at the same time, but for various reasons Lincoln's was the only assassination actually carried out (although Secretary of State William H. Seward was badly injured by an assailant). Booth managed to limp to his horse and escape, and the mortally wounded president was taken to a house across the street, now called the Petersen House, where he lay in a coma for some time before he quietly expired.
Abraham Lincoln was officially pronounced dead at 7:22 AM the next morning, April 15, 1865. Upon seeing him die, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton lamented, "Now he belongs to the angels." However, not long after he or others decided that 'ages' was more pleasing to the ear and appropriate to the occasion, so the quote itself was changed to Now he belongs to the ages.
Booth and several of his conspirators were eventually captured, and either hanged or imprisoned. Booth himself was shot when discovered holed up in a barn. Four people were tried by military tribunal and hanged for the assassination plot ( David Herold, George Atzerodt, Lewis Powell (aka Lewis Payne), and Mary Surratt, the first woman ever executed by the United States government.) Three people were sentenced to life imprisonment ( Michael O'Laughlin , Samuel Arnold , and Samuel Mudd). Edward Spangler was sentenced to six years imprisonment. John Surratt, tried later by a civilian court, was acquitted. The fairness of the convictions, particularly of Mary Surratt, have been called into question, and there are doubts as to the exact degree of her involvement, if any, in the conspiracy.
Lincoln's body was carried by train in a grand funeral procession through several states on its way back to Illinois. The nation mourned a man whom many viewed as the savior of the United States, and protector and defender of what Lincoln himself called "the government of the people, by the people, and for the people." Critics say that in fact the Confederates were the ones defending the right to self-governance and Lincoln was suppressing that right. They further insist that Lincoln only preserved the Union in a geographical sense while destroying its voluntary nature.
Many medical experts now believe that Lincoln may have been dying before he was assassinated. He was showing signs late in his Presidency of congestive heart failure. Lincoln, who was 6 feet 4 inches tall (the tallest President) had large hands and long, lanky arms and legs. Many doctors believe that this was evidence that Lincoln also suffered from Marfan's Syndrome . Both diseases have been known to be fatal.
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