Sample Topic #1: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
On April 14, 1865, five days after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox effectively ended the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln was fatally shot as he and his wife were watching a play at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, DC.
Depiction of John Wilkes Booth leaning forward to shoot President Abraham Lincoln as he watches Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C. (Click button for citation)
Lincoln’s assassin was John Wilkes Booth, a well-known actor and Confederate sympathizer. Booth headed a conspiracy that aimed to decapitate the Union government; Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward, the next two figures in the line of Presidential succession, were also marked for death that night, but both survived.
Lincoln’s death had profound implications for post-Civil War America. In elevating to the Presidency Andrew Johnson, a poorly educated Southern populist Democrat who clashed repeatedly with Congressional Republicans over the course of Reconstruction, it set the stage for another century of political and legal conflicts over the civil rights of African Americans.
The following sources will give you some background on Lincoln’s assassination and its aftermath. Read them over—along with any other articles on this subject that you might like to consult—and then formulate research questions that would be appropriate for an analysis of some aspect of this historical event:
Module 1 Short Responses – Question 5
If you had to write a paper on the Lincoln assassination, what would you like to know more about? Create three research questions that would be appropriate for a historical analysis essay, keeping in mind the characteristics of a critical research question. The three questions can be related, or they can address different aspects of the topic.
