(ProsperNews.net) – Two tickets to the theater on the night that Abraham Lincoln was assassinated have sold at auction for $262,500 – more than twice the expected price. The original owners of the tickets are unknown, but the belief is that they were present when Lincoln was killed by an assassin at the Ford’s Theater in Washington, DC, on April 14, 1865. The current seller purchased the tickets in 2002 for $83,650.
The 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, died at the hands of Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth. Days earlier, the Army of Northern Virginia under General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union forces led by General Ulysses S. Grant, effectively ending the American Civil War.
Booth was an actor from a prominent family, and despite seeing himself as a Southerner, he lived in the North during the war. He was reportedly a passionate proponent of slavery and was distraught by the end of the Confederacy. When he learned that Lincoln was to attend a performance of Our American Cousin on the fateful day, he and a group of conspirators plotted to kill both the President and Vice President Andrew Johnson.
During a loud scene in the performance, Booth rushed into the President’s private viewing box and shot him in the back of the head with a .44 caliber derringer. The President died the next day.
What followed was the largest manhunt in the United States up to that date. Booth was tracked down on April 26 at a farm in Virginia, where he was shot and died. Eight co-conspirators went on trial, were found guilty, and were hanged.
Andrew Johnson was inaugurated as President but was reportedly not as committed to abolishing slavery as Lincoln. He opposed Congressional moves to give former slaves the right to vote and, as a result, narrowly avoided impeachment in 1868.
Johnson was succeeded in 1869 by pro-abolitionist and Civil War military leader Ulysses S. Grant.
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