Video: 'Lincolns Final Speech - April 11, 1865 - Audio'

(Tuesday, April 11, 1865, approximately 8:00 p.m. local time; during the American Civil War) — Two days after Lee’s army surrendered to Grant at Appomattox, President Abraham Lincoln delivered his last public speech from a White House window to a crowd on the lawn, saying, “We meet this evening, not in sorrow, but in gladness of heart.”

Lincoln discussed Reconstruction and, for the first time publicly, expressed his support for black suffrage.

Furiously provoked by Lincoln’s support for enfranchising former slaves, actor John Wilkes Booth, who attended the speech, decided on assassination and is quoted as saying to Confederate soldier Lewis Powell, “That is the last speech he will ever give.”