The Assassination of President Lincoln at Ford's Theatre, Washington D.C., April 14th, 1865

The Assassination of President Lincoln at Ford's Theatre, Washington D.C., April 14th, 1865

Currier & Ives

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This lithograph records the shocking moment when Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth. As a famous actor, Booth had free access to Ford’s Theatre and had gone there to collect his mail on April 14, when he learned of the president’s intention to attend a play that evening. Booth was the leader of a group of pro-Confederate conspirators determined to prevent the South’s defeat and, when Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant on April 9, they decided to kill Lincoln and other key Union leaders, hoping to destabilize the war effort and allow Confederate armies still in the field to rally. Major Henry Rathbone, who rises at left to restrain Booth, was subsequently stabbed but survived. Lincoln died the next morning.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Assassination of President Lincoln at Ford's Theatre, Washington D.C., April 14th, 1865The Assassination of President Lincoln at Ford's Theatre, Washington D.C., April 14th, 1865The Assassination of President Lincoln at Ford's Theatre, Washington D.C., April 14th, 1865The Assassination of President Lincoln at Ford's Theatre, Washington D.C., April 14th, 1865The Assassination of President Lincoln at Ford's Theatre, Washington D.C., April 14th, 1865

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.