Seward's son, Frederick, was brutally beaten while trying to keep Paine from his father's door. Paine slashed the Secretary's throat twice, then fought his way past Seward's son Augustus, an attending hospital corps veteran, and a State Department messenger. Paine escaped into the night, believing his deed complete. However, a metal surgical collar saved Seward from certain death. The Secretary lived another seven years, during which he retained his seat with the Johnson administration, and purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867.
With Lincoln's assassination, the talk of a conspiracy almost immediately developed. Since 1865, with the publication of new books and articles in the 1980's, 1990's, and beyond, the quest to find what really happened has continued. Was Booth solely responsible for the assassination? Or was Booth simply a tool in a much larger conspiracy? .
As John Wilkes Booth being the soul mastermind of all the suspected conspirators, one of the many theories state that Lincoln died by way of a simple conspiracy organized by John Wilkes Booth himself along with John Surratt. .
Booth met Surratt while planning a capture of President Lincoln in exchange for him and for Confederate prisoners or war. The simple conspiracy theory distinguishes Booth as a Southern patriot and racist who originally planned to kidnap the President, take him to Richmond, and hold him in exchange for Southern prisoners of war. When the kidnapping plans fell through, Booth turned to assassination as his means for revenge. The entire plot consisted simply of John Wilkes Booth as the leader of a small band of co-conspirators. No other people were to be involved. .
Another theory relies on the result of a confederate plot. Coded letters found in Booth's trunk back at the National Hotel tied him to the Confederacy. This theory has undergone a marked revival in the past 20 years. In 1977, a statement by suspected conspirator George Atzerodt made before the trial in 1865, was uncovered.
