On July 7, 1865, three men and one woman were hanged for the crime of conspiring to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln.
After the surrender of Confederate general Robert E. Lee and the announcement that Lincoln would serve a second term as president, John Wilkes Booth, a young southern actor and patriot of the Confederacy, began plotting the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. After hearing the announcement that President Lincoln would be attending a performance at the Ford Theater, Booth assigned the tasks of assassinating both Secretary of State William Seward and Vice President Andrew Johnson to a group of fellow conspirators.
Although it was Booth who fired the bullet that killed the 16th president, this group of eight lesser-known conspirators aided Booth in his scheme.
