Historical Figure
John Wilkes Booth
1838–1865
American stage actor and assassin (1838–1865)
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Biography
John Wilkes Booth was an American stage actor who assassinated United States president Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865. A member of the prominent 19th-century Booth theatrical family from Maryland, he was a noted actor who was also a Confederate sympathizer; denouncing Lincoln, he lamented the then-recent abolition of slavery in the United States.
Timeline
The story of John Wilkes Booth, told in moments.
Touring actor earning $20,000 a year. He invests in oil fields. He's a vocal Confederate sympathizer in a border state. His first plan isn't assassination. It's kidnapping Lincoln and trading him for Confederate prisoners of war.
Enters the presidential box at Ford's Theatre during the third act of Our American Cousin. He knows the play. He waits for the line that always gets the biggest laugh. Fires a .44 caliber derringer into the back of Lincoln's head. Jumps to the stage, breaking his left leg. Shouts 'Sic semper tyrannis.'
Lincoln dies at 7:22 a.m. in a boarding house across the street from the theater. His body is too long for the bed. They lay him diagonally. Booth is already miles away, crossing into Maryland with a broken leg and a doctor named Samuel Mudd.
Cornered in a tobacco barn in Port Royal, Virginia. Soldiers set the barn on fire. Sergeant Boston Corbett shoots him through a gap in the wall. The bullet severs his spinal cord. He dies on the farmhouse porch at dawn, paralyzed. He's 26. His last words: 'Tell my mother I died for my country.'
Artifacts (15)
Edwin Booth (IA edwinboothhutton00hutt)
Hutton, Laurence, 1843-1904 Booth, Edwin, 1833-1893
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