John Wilkes Booth, along with spies from the Confederacy, originally planned to kidnap the president, and use him as a bargaining tool for the release Confederate prisoners. However, after Robert E. Lee surrundered at Richmond, the plan was changed, and Booth decided to kill him instead.
Union General Ulysses S. Grant was supposed to be murdered, too. He was supposed to attend the play with Lincoln. However, Grant’s wife had been insulted by Mary Todd Lincoln and refused to go. So Grant told Lincoln that he and his wife were traveling to visit their children in New Jersey.
Vice President Andrew Johnson and William Seward, the Secretary of State were to be murdered, also. But the man who was supposed to kill the vice president lost his nerve. The other conspirator broke into Seward’s home and stabbed him repeatedly, but the Secretary of State survived the attack.