April 9-15, 2015, Current Events Lesson Plan
Current Event: 150th Anniversary of Lincoln Assassination Commemorated
April 14, 2015, marks the 150th anniversary of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. On that night, Lincoln attended a performance of the comedy Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. At 10:22 p.m., John Wilkes Booth, one of the best-known actors of the day and a Confederate sympathizer, shot Lincoln in the head. Lincoln was carried unconscious to a boarding house across the street where he died the following morning. After shooting Lincoln, Booth jumped to the stage, caught his spur in a flag draped in front of the box, and fell and broke his leg. Booth fled to Maryland and later escaped to Virginia. Federal troops later trapped Booth in a barn in Virginia, and shot and killed him. Booth’s shooting of Lincoln was part of a larger plot to not only assassinate the president, but to also kill Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward. (Johnson was not attacked and Seward survived the attempt on his life.) Eight people were charged with conspiracy to assassinate federal officials and put on trial. A military commission convicted all eight defendants and sentenced four of them to be hanged.
Objective:
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) led the United States during the Civil War (1861-1865). He helped end slavery in the nation and kept the Union states together during the war. Lincoln began his political career in 1834, when he was elected to the first of his four successive two-year terms in the lower house of the Illinois General Assembly. From 1847 to 1849, Lincoln represented Illinois in the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1858, Lincoln ran for the U.S. Senate. Even though, Lincoln lost the election, he became a national figure. Two years later, Lincoln was elected president of the United States. The Civil War began not long after Lincoln took office. Lincoln became a remarkable war leader. Some historians believe he was the chief architect of the Union’s victorious military strategy. He also helped keep up Northern morale through the horrible war, in which many relatives in the North and South fought against one another and hundreds of thousands died. Lincoln was assassinated just as the Northern victory was near. The Behind the Headlines news story and related World Book articles explore Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War.
Words to know:
- Abraham Lincoln
- American Civil War
- Andrew Johnson
- Ford’s Theatre National Historic Site
- John Wilkes Booth
- President of the United States
- Slavery
- Washington, D.C.
- William Seward
Discussion Topics:
1. Ask your students to name some famous U.S. presidents. (Students might say George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Thomas Jefferson, John F. Kennedy, Andrew Jackson, Barack Obama, Ronald Reagan, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, George Washington, Woodrow Wilson.)
2. Ask your students to name people other than Abraham Lincoln who were assassinated. (Students might say Benazir Bhutto, Julius Caesar, Franz Ferdinand, Mohandas Gandhi, James Garfield, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., William McKinley, Yitzhak Rabin, Anwar Sadat.)
3. Ask your students to discuss, “How would American history be different if Abraham Lincoln had not been assassinated?” (Or, pick another historical event and ask how history would be different if that event had never occurred.)
4. Ask your students to debate, “Who was the greatest person that ever lived?”
5. Ask your students to use World Book’s Timelines feature to view or add to the Abraham Lincoln timeline. (Students may wish to use World Book’s “Abraham Lincoln” article for help.)