Huff 2The assassination of President Abraham Lincoln and the plot to overthrow the federal governmentThe assassination of President Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth was part of a conspiracy broader aim of killing the leaders of the federal government. The federal government supported secessionist and pro-slavery movements. Booth hoped this would create chaos in the government and prompt the South to resume its war of secession. In March 1864, during the Civil War, General Ulysses S. Grant, commander of Union forces, suspended the prisoner of war. exchanges between the Union and the Confederacy in the hope that this policy change would help end the war. John Wilkes Booth and several Confederate sympathizing co-conspirators had plotted to kidnap the president, with the goal of demanding the release of Confederate prisoners of war as ransom for Lincoln's release (Kauffman, 130-134). Lincoln used to ride horses in the countryside without an escort. In March 1865, the kidnapping plot failed when the president changed his plan at the last minute to visit a military hospital (assassination of President Abraham Lincoln). On April 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee, commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, the main body of the Confederate forces, surrendered to General Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia. This effectively marks the end of the civil war. Booth, frustrated by the South's defeat, decides that drastic action must be taken and plans a plot to kill Lincoln and other high-ranking government officials. John Wilkes Booth, 26, was a well-known actor from a prominent Southern family of Shakespearean actors. He was a strong advocate of secession and slavery who had plenty of presidential credentials when Lincoln's administration would have been much more sympathetic to the South. of Abraham Lincoln. Encyclopedia Britannica Online. 2013. December 3, 2013. (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1762443/assassination-Abraham-Lincoln). “Assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.” Abraham Lincoln Papers. Np.Web..December 4, 2013. (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/alhtml.alrintr.html).Bogar, Thomas A. Behind the Scenes of the Lincoln Assassination. Washington, DC: Regnery History, 2013. Print.Kauffman, Michael W. American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracy. New York: Random House, 2004. Print. "Lincoln." The New Britannica Encyclopedia. Fifteenth edition, 2010. Print. O'Reilly, Bill and Martin Dugard. Kill Lincoln. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2011.Print.