Topdog/Underdog | Historical Context
The Assassination of President Abraham Lincoln
As the American Civil War was drawing to a close, President Abraham Lincoln and his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, attended a performance of Our American Cousin, a musical comedy, at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. While Lincoln sat in his box seat in the balcony, John Wilkes Booth, an actor and rebel sympathizer from Maryland, sneaked into the president’s box and fired one shot at point-blank range from his Deringer, shouting, “Sic simper tyrannis!” (“Thus always to tyrants”). Some reports have...
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