Why Did John Wilkes Booth Kill Abraham Lincoln ?
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Abraham Lincoln was elected as the President of United States of America in March 1961. Exactly one month later, after Lincoln assumed office, the Civil War broke out in the country. The war was a result of different schools of thought regarding the practice of slavery in the country.
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The Civil War lasted four years, and ended when Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth. Lincoln was assassinated when he went to a watch play in the Ford's Theater, Washington D.C., on Good Friday of 1865. On his way back, along with his wife and a couple of other guests, he was shot by Booth.
Booth was born to a well to do family, his father was an actor called Junius Booth. They lived with many slaves in their house hold in a farm in Bel-Air in Maryland.
Booth also became an actor like his father and acted in Shakespearean plays and some popular movies. Paradoxically, Abraham Lincoln had watched a play enacted by Booth in the same Ford's Theater, named the Marble Heart on November 9, 1863. Booth entered politics in 1850, and supported slavery because he grew up in an environment where the practice of slavery seemed justified.
During the Civil War, Booth worked as a secret agent for the Confederate which was in favor of slavery. Even before assassinating Lincoln, Booth had hatched several plans of kidnapping the President. The original plan was to exchange the Confederate prisoners for the president. The plan was never implemented as it was too difficult to get close to Lincoln.
The main reason for assassinating Abraham Lincoln was because Booth held the Republican Party responsible for the downfall of southern states wealth and status.
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