Steve Miller: Hello, everyone! This is Steve Miller; and welcome to “Shocking History”. In this episode, we are remembering the assassination of a very popular American president, Abraham Lincoln. The conspiracy started around the time the president took the oath of office for his second term, sometime after March 4th, 1865. After four years of intense war, the Confederacy was finally defeated by the Union on April 9th, 1865. At the time the Union won the Civil War, hate towards victorious Lincoln started to arise. In the following days, the president would be stalked by John Wilkes Booth, an actor who had allegiance to the South; Booth knew he needed more men to commit a major injury to the US Government. The plan was to overthrow the entire American government, killing President Lincoln, Vice-president Andrew Johnson, and Secretary of State William Seward. On the night of Friday, April 14th, 1865, the conspiracy was carried out by Booth when he succeeded in assassinating President Lincoln by shooting him when he was attending a theater show. The attempts on Johnson and Seward were not successful, but after a long night, the morning of April 15th, 1865, would be struck by sad news: President Lincoln was dead. Reconstruction after the Civil War had to be started by another president, Andrew Johnson.