The forgotten victim of the Lincoln assassination plot: The attack on William Seward.

Today, April 14, is the 161st anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C. As I’m sure you know, Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth while watching the play Our American Cousin on Friday night, April 14, 1865; he lingered a few hours and died early on the morning of April 15. This article is not about Lincoln or that tragic event. Instead, I thought I’d devote an article to another part of the story of that terrible night, and the one that rarely gets remembered in its own right: the very nearly successful attempted assassination of William H. Seward, U.S. Secretary of State, by one of Booth’s cronies. Seward, incidentally, was a major character in my recent video on the biography and presidency of Millard Fillmore, who was a major political rival to Seward in New York State before the Civil War.

Although much less consequential historically than the assassination of the President—Seward not only survived, but continued on as Secretary of State under Lincoln’s successor Andrew Johnson—the attack on Seward was definitely more violent and brazen than Booth’s shooting of Lincoln, and its perpetrator, Lewis Powell, was undoubtedly crazier and more depraved than Booth was. Booth sneaked up on his victim with a tiny gun whose victim never knew he was there and probably suffered no pain; Powell, by contrast, brutally stabbed, beat and slashed no less than six victims, up close and face-to-face. Furthermore, although Booth’s plot involved a number of people, Powell was the only one besides Booth himself who actually had the courage to go through with his part of the plan. Obviously we’re fortunate Seward survived, but the outcome could easily have been very different.