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The Events That Defined When did Abraham Lincoln Die Are Not Necessarily All to do With the Theater.

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When did Abraham Lincoln Die? Official records show that Abraham Lincoln died at 7:22 am on April 15th, 1865.

Clinical death records such as these give the moment when all life effectively ceased, but Lincoln had also been in a coma for the preceding 9 hours.

Modern medicine might possibly have saved him, although from the reports on the extent of the damage, it is difficult to know if this would have been possible and if so in which state Lincoln might have survived.

The assassination itself happened in Ford’s Theatre, Washington, D.C. the evening before.

As such it was the culmination of various plans by actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth.

Booth, a supporter of slavery angered by Lincoln’s stance and actions towards abolition, had already plotted to abduct the President to force an exchange of Confederate prisoners.

The latest speech of Lincoln on April 11th, in which he advocated giving voting rights to blacks, pushed Booth into mounting a commando-style assassination.

With his own pronounced phobia of blacks, Booth interpreted the speech as heralding an unacceptable danger that should be stopped immediately.

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Life Lived to the Full Before Death

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The Facts of the Matter

Booth timed the assassination to coincide with what he considered to be the funniest line of the play.

At that moment, he entered the state box of the theatre and fired his gun at point blank range into the President’s head.

Among the first people to aid the wounded Lincoln was the army doctor, Charles Leale, whose initial opinion was that the wound was fatal.

The bullet had penetrated deeply into the skull and later examination showed that it lay at a depth of six inches (fifteen centimeters) inside the cranial cavity, and that fragments of bone had also penetrated.

Given the situation, the gravity of the wound and the state of medical techniques at the time, it might be said that Lincoln was effectively dead from then on, and this is one answer to the question “when did Abraham Lincoln die”.

The nine hours of coma, during which he never regained consciousness were simply a pause until he ceased to breathe.

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Death by Assassination or Inadvertence

However, on considering the events that led up to the assassination, it might be argued that “when did Abraham Lincoln die” was defined before the night at the theatre.

Security was extraordinarily lax by modern standards.

Just one security agent patrolled various parts of the theatre and access to the state box was possible to virtually anyone.

Although it was true that up till that time, no U.S. President had ever been assassinated, feelings in the South against Lincoln ran high.

An attack of one sort or another might have been foreseen.

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The Death Certificate Doesn’t Tell all

Booth also took the decision to assassinate Lincoln some days before acting.

He marshaled the assistance of accomplices in the plan, which he formulated to attack Lincoln at the theatre, having found out the President’s plans to be present at the play Our American Cousin.

Was it Lincoln’s speech on April 11th that effectively signed his death warrant?

Was there collusion concerning the lack of security and the fact that Lincoln’s main bodyguard was not present at the time?

What would have happened if one of the actors in the play had omitted or forgotten to say “the funniest line” of Our American Cousin?

And to what extent did saying this line contribute albeit it unknowingly to defining the moment of death of Abraham Lincoln?

Whatever the case, the question of “when did Abraham Lincoln die” is not merely answered by the last breath he drew on the morning of April 15th, 1865.

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