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 The Expansion of the United States 369 in the defeated states. On the evening of April 14th he went to Ford's theatre in Washington, and as he sat looking at the stage, he was shot in the back of the head and killed instantly by an actor named Booth who had some sort of grievance against him, and who had crept into the box unobserved. But Lincoln's work was done ; the Union was saved. At the beginning of the war there was no railway to the Pacific coast ; after it the railways spread like a swiftly growing plant until now they have clutched and held and woven all the vast territory of the United States into one indissoluble mental and material unity — the greatest real cemmunity- — until the common folk of China have learnt to read — in the world.