Apr 14 1865

[datasuspect]

President Abraham Lincoln receives a cranial gunshot wound from the nation's most famous actor, John Wilkes Booth. Lincoln dies the following day, primarily from ill-advised attempts to extract the bullet lodged in his brain.

[Westegg]

1. It was a mortal wound from the start...

...and there was nothing they could have done, at that time, to save him. That's my understanding, anyway. I may be wrong.

Carl Sandburg writes eloquently about the assassination, and the efforts to save Lincoln, in "Abraham Lincoln-- The Prairie Years and the War Years." I have read no better book on the man, and the events surrounding his death. I have read several.

Not to seem churlish, but I think Edwin Booth was a more famous actor at that time. John Wilkes certainly became the most "infamous," in the final days of his life.

"Useless, useless..."

[Stuart G]

2. I wonder.......

Let's say Lincoln had lived till the end of his term. What would reconstruction have been like? What would be different, and what would have been the same. Never know.

[Westegg]

3. Great questions. I wonder the same about JFK and Vietnam.

[Brigid]

4. I think that . . .

Lincoln's assassination was the worst thing that could have happened to the South. He wanted a magnanimous policy toward the south, but after his death hard-line Reconstructionists took over. :(

[poiuytsister]

5. Same day that the Titanic hit the iceberg

All in all not a great day

[Archae]

6. WRONG! Booth did not shoot Lincoln!

It was the Mafia, hired by the CIA, to stop Lincoln from ending any more incursions into Vietnam!

And then the Warren Comission covered up the Booth (who was a patsy) -CIA-Mafia connection! :tinfoilhat:

:-)