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 plot broader to kill the leadership of the federal government in support of the secessionist and slave movements. Booth's hope was that this would create chaos in the government and inspire the South to renew the Civil War. In March 1864, during the Civil War, General Ulysses S. Grant, commander of Union forces, suspended prisoner of war exchanges between the Union and the Confederacy in hopes that this change in policy would help end the war. John Wilkes Booth and several Confederate-sympathizing co-conspirators had plotted to kidnap the president, intending to demand the release of Confederate prisoners of war as ransom for Lincoln's release (Kauffman, 130-134). Lincoln was in the habit of riding into the countryside without an escort. In March 1865, the kidnapping plot fails when the president makes a last-minute change to his plans to visit a soldiers' 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, in effect, 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 top government officials. John Wilkes Booth, age 26, was a well-known actor from a prominent Southern family of Shakespearean actors. He was a passionate secessionist and supporter of slavery who had a major role in the presidency when the Lincoln administration would be much more sympathetic to the South.Huff 8Works Cited"Assassination 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". Np.Web..4 December 2013. (http: //memory.loc.gov/ammem/alhtml.alrintr.html).Bogar, Thomas A. Behind the Scenes of Lincoln's Assassination. Washington, DC: Regnery's Story, 2013. Print.Kauffman, Michael W. American Brutus : John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracy. NewYork: Random House, 2004. “Lincoln.” New Encyclopedia Britannica. Henry Holt and Company, 2011.Print.