With both Lincoln’s determination to preserve the Union and his subsequent declaration of the emancipation of those slaves residing within the States of the Confederacy, Booth came to believe that if the North prevailed over the South, President Lincoln would then make himself into a permanent ruler or king monarch similar to Ancient Rome’s Julius Caesar and as a result, America’s republican form of government would be forever...

Occurring near the end of the American Civil War, the assassination was part of a larger conspiracy intended by Booth to revive the Confederate cause by eliminating the three most important officials of the United States government .