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In April 1865, church bells rang across the North as the brutal four-year Civil War finally came to an end.
Just five days after the Confederate army surrendered, a single gunshot inside a crowded theater changed American history forever.

Tragedy at Ford's Theatre

On the evening of April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln attended a comedy play at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C.
An actor and Confederate supporter named John Wilkes Booth crept into the presidential box and shot Lincoln, hoping to revive the fallen Confederacy.
Lincoln died the next morning, becoming the first American president ever assassinated.
Millions of Americans stood along train tracks in stunned silence as a funeral train carried Lincoln's body 1,700 miles back home to Illinois.
For four million newly freed African Americans, grief mixed with terror — the leader who had signed the Emancipation Proclamation was gone.
With the war over and Lincoln gone, who would decide how to rebuild the broken country?

The Big Question: Reconstruction

Reconstruction was the period right after the Civil War (1865–1877) focused on rebuilding the Southern states and bringing them back into the United States.
Leaders in Washington faced two giant challenges: how easily should former Confederate states be welcomed back, and how would the nation protect the rights of newly freed Black Americans?