On April 14, Booth's morning started at midnight.

He wrote his mother that all was well, but that he was
"in haste". In his diary, he wrote that "Our cause being almost lost, something decisive and great must
be done".[13]:728[24]:346

While visiting Ford's Theatre around noon to pick up his mail, Booth learned that Lincoln and Grant were
to see Our American Cousin there that night. This provided him with an especially good opportunity to
attack Lincoln since, having performed there several times, he knew the theater's layout and was
familiar to its staff.[12]:12[8]:108–9 He went to Mary Surratt's boarding house in Washington, D.C., and asked
her to deliver a package to her tavern in Surrattsville, Maryland. He also asked her to tell her
tenant Louis J. Weichmann to ready the guns and ammunition that Booth had previously stored at the
tavern.[12]:19

The conspirators met for the final time at 7 p.m. Booth assigned Lewis Powell to kill Secretary of
State William H. Seward at his home, George Atzerodt to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson at the
Kirkwood Hotel, and David E. Herold to guide Powell (who was unfamiliar with Washington) to the
Seward house and then to a rendezvous with Booth in Maryland.

John Wilkes Booth was the only well-known member of the conspiracy. It is likely he reasonably (but
ultimately, incorrectly) assumed that the entrance of the Presidential Box would be guarded and that he
would be the only plotter with a plausible chance of gaining access to the President, or at least to gain
entry to the box without being searched for weapons first. Booth planned to shoot Lincoln at point-
blank range with his single-shot Deringer, and then stab Grant, at Ford's Theatre. They were all to strike
simultaneously shortly after ten o'clock. [8]:112 Atzerodt tried to withdraw from the plot, which to this
point had involved only kidnapping, not murder, but Booth pressured him to continue. [7]:212