so gallantly defended, and in the presence of the army
and navy raised the tattered flag he pulled down in 1861.

That night Lincoln went to Ford's Theater in Washington, and while he
was sitting quietly in his box, an actor named John Wilkes Booth came in
and shot him through the head, causing a wound from which the President
died early next morning. His deed done, the assassin leaped from the box
to the stage, and shouting, "Sic semper tyrannis" (So be it always to
tyrants), the motto of Virginia, made his escape in the confusion of the
moment, and mounting a horse, rode away.

The act of Booth was one result of a conspiracy, the details of which
were soon discovered and the criminals punished. Booth was hunted by
soldiers and shot in a barn in Virginia. His accomplices were either
hanged or imprisoned for life.[1]

[Footnote 1: The best account of the murder of Lincoln is given in "Four
Lincoln Conspiracies" in the _Century Magazine_ for April, 1896.]

%479. Andrew Johnson, President.%--Lincoln had not been many hours
dead when Andrew Johnson, as the Constitution provides, took the oath of
office and became President of the United States. Before him lay the
most gigantic task ever given to any President.

%480. Reconstruction.%--To dispose of the Confederate soldiers and
politicians was an easy matter; but to decide what to do with the
Confederate states proved most difficult. Lincoln had always held that
they could not secede. If they could not secede, they had never been out
of the Union, and if they had never been out of the Union, they were
entitled, as of old, to send senators and representatives to Congress.

[Illustration: Andrew Johnson]

But whether the states had or had not seceded, the old state governments
of 1861, and the relations these governments once held with the Union,
were destroyed by the so-called secession, and it was necessary to
define some way by which they might be reestablished, or, as it was
called, "reconstructed."

Toward the end of 1863, accordingly, when the Union army had acquired
possession of Tennessee, Arkansas, and Louisiana, Lincoln issued his
"Amnesty Proclamation" and began the work of reconstruction. He
promised, in the first place, that, with certain exceptions, which he
mentioned, he would pardon[1] every man who should lay down his arms and
swear to support and obey the Constitution, and the Emancipation
Proclamation. He promised, in the second place, that wheneve