On April 14, 1865, the Civil War ends with the North's victory. Lawyer, and Union veteran Frederick Aiken, with his friends, William Thomas Hamilton and Nicholas Baker, celebrate. Aiken and his girlfriend Sarah Weston decide to take a walk. Later that same night, Southerner Lewis Payne unsuccessfully attempts to kill Secretary of State William Seward, only seriously wounding him. German immigrant and carriage repair business owner George Atzerodt is assigned to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson but becomes afraid and runs away. Meanwhile, actor John Wilkes Booth, enters Ford's Theatre and sees his target, President Abraham Lincoln. Booth sneaks into the President's box and shoots Lincoln, mortally wounding him. Booth stabs diplomat and military officer Henry Rathbone who was a guest in Lincoln's box, and leaps onto the stage, shouting, "Sic Semper Tyrannis! The South is avenged!" before escaping. Everyone, including Aiken, Hamilton and Baker, watch in horror with the crowd as the unconscious President is taken to a nearby boarding house where he dies early the next morning.