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1865] Assassination of Lincoln. 545 evacuation of the city, and to various points which the war had rendered historic. From Richmond the President returned to City Point, whence he took steamer for Washington, called back by a severe accident that had happened to Secretary Seward. For a week after his return, Lincoln and his Cabinet were fully occupied with important details of administration, particularly with the serious question of reconstruction, which the recent military successes so suddenly forced upon them. On the evening of April 11, in response to a serenade, after thankfully expressing the national joy at the prospect of speedy peace, the President dwelt at some length upon the difficult problems by which the question was environed. Neither he nor his listeners had any premonition that this was to be the last public address he would ever make. The subject of reconstruction was again discussed in the Cabinet meeting held on Friday, April 14. Lincoln spoke hopefully of being able to restore the machinery of civil government in the Southern States without encountering too much objection from extreme radicals on the one hand or obstinate conservatives on the other, and without excessive friction between the conquering and the conquered authorities; and an unusual feeling of gratitude and generosity per- vaded his words. The Cabinet meeting was made doubly interesting by the presence of General Grant, who had arrived that morning from the field, bringing with him Captain Robert Lincoln, the President's son. The day itself had a historic significance. It was the anniversary of the fall of Fort Sumter ; and a great celebration was then in progress inside the battered walls of that fortress, in which General Robert Anderson again raised the identical flag which his own hands had hauled down four years before. In Washington on that evening, the President and Mrs Lincoln, accompanied by two young friends, went to Ford's Theatre to see the comedy of Our American Cousin. At about ten o'clock, while the President, seated in an arm-chair in the upper right-hand stage-box, was deeply absorbed in the progress of the play, a young actor named John Wilkes Booth, a fanatical Secessionist, having gained entrance to the little corridor, noiselessly opened the box-door imme- diately behind Lincoln, and, holding a pistol in one hand, and a knife in the other, put the pistol to the President's head and fired. Major Rathbone, who was in the same box, sprang to seize the murderer, but the latter dealt him a savage cut on the arm with his knife, and, advancing through the box, placed his left hand on the railing and leaped from its front to the stage below. A spur that he wore caught in the folds of the American flag which draped the front of the box, causing him to break the small bone of one leg in the fall. Nevertheless, he raised himself to his full height and, brandishing his knife as he turned to the audience, shouted the State motto of Virginia, C. M. H. VII. CH. XVI. 35