Now He Belongs to the Ages
4/16/202615 min
April 15, 2026
Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd Lincoln spent the evening of April 14 at Ford’s Theater in Washington, That night, John Wilkes Booth entered the presidential box and fatally shot Lincoln, As Americans mourned Lincoln’s death, Andrew Johnson restored the political power of the Confederates, Congress fought back, and after discrimination based on race became punishable, the Confederate rhetoric turned to economics, Right wing movements, claiming they fought for individual liberty expanded, eventually joined the planning and execution of the January 6 attack on the Capitol in 2021, Trump pardoned the participants, On April 15, President Abraham Lincoln died, breaking the hearts of those who supported his actions to preserve American democracy.
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Transcript preview
First 90 secondsHeather Cox Richardson· Host0:00
[outro music] April 15th, 2026. On the evening of April fourteenth, eighteen sixty-five, President Abraham Lincoln and First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln went to Ford's Theatre in Washington, DC, to see a production of the comedy Our American Cousin. The Lincolns had spent the afternoon taking a carriage ride together and discussing the future, including the travel they hoped for, to Europe and to California to see the Pacific Ocean. One of the last men to speak with the president before he left for the theater said it seemed the cares of the previous four years were melting away. The Confederacy was all but defeated, and the nation seemed to be on its way to a prosperous, inclusive new future. The very heavens seemed to reflect the dawn of a new era. Poet Walt Whitman noted that after months of fog and clouds, the weather had cleared. "The western star, Venus, in the earlier hours of evening, has never been so large, so clear," he wrote. "It seems as if it told something, as if it held rapport indulgent with humanity, with us Americans." When the Lincolns and their guests arrived at the theater at about eight-thirty, the people in the audience leaped to their feet to applaud, and the actors stopped the production