He decided that Lincoln had to die for his crimes and conspired with David Herold, John Surratt, George Atzerodt, and Lewis Powell not just to kill Lincoln, but for Powell to break into Secretary of State William Seward’s house and stab him to death, and for Atzerodt to shoot ice President Andrew Johnson at the Kirkwood Hotel.Ītzerodt lost his nerve and fled without attacking Johnson. Regardless of this sentiment, Booth was from Maryland, considered himself a southerner, and considered Lincoln the root cause for the destruction of the South, the deaths of its brave men, and the dishonor done to its institution of slavery. Lincoln ended his speech with these words: “With malice toward none with charity for all …let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation’s wounds to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan.” There is a photograph of him giving this speech, showing John Wilkes Booth standing above and behind him on a balcony. After some 600,000 American men had died of wounds or grossly unsanitary medical practice, Abraham Lincoln gave his second inaugural address, the famous “charity for all” speech, on March 4, 1865, one month before his death. In hindsight, this seems the only way America’s worst moment could end.
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