- See also: Abraham Lincoln
assassination
John Wilkes Booth (May 10, 1838 – April 26, 1865) assassinated Abraham
Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, at
Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. on
April 14, 1865. Lincoln died the next day from a single gunshot
wound to the head, becoming the first American president to be assassinated.
Booth was a successful professional stage actor from Maryland, and a member of the prominent
Booth family of actors. He was also a Confederate sympathizer who expressed vehement dissatisfaction with the South's defeat in
the Civil War and Lincoln's proposal to extend voting
rights to freed slaves.
Booth and a group of co-conspirators led by him planned to kill Abraham Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson, and
Secretary of State William
Seward in a desperate bid to help the tottering Confederacy's cause. Although Robert E.
Lee's Army of Northern Virginia had surrendered four days earlier,
Booth felt that the war was not yet over because Confederate General Joseph
Johnston's army was still fighting Union Army General Sherman. Of the conspirators, only Booth was successful in carrying out his part of the
plot.
Following the shooting, Booth fled by horseback to southern Maryland and eventually to a farm in rural northern Virginia,
where he was tracked down and killed by Union soldiers two weeks later. Several of the other conspirators were tried and hanged
shortly thereafter.
Background and early life
The noted British Shakespearean
actor Junius Brutus Booth and his actress wife Mary
Ann Holmes emigrated to the United States from England in 1821, purchasing a farm near Bel Air, Maryland, where John Wilkes Booth was born
in 1838.[1][2] He was named for the British revolutionary John
Wilkes, whom the family claimed was a distant relative.[3]
Booth was educated in the classics, in particular Shakespeare. He attended the Bel Air Academy, where his headmaster described
him as "Not deficient in intelligence, but disinclined to take advantage of the educational opportunities offered him. Each day
he rode back and forth from farm to school, taking more interest in what happened along the way than in reaching his classes on
time".[4]
In 1850-1851, he attended Milton Boarding School for Boys located in Sparks,
Maryland.[5] As recounted by Booth's sister,
Asia Booth Clarke, in her book entitled "The Unlocked Book," the future actor met an
old Gypsy woman in the woods near the school who gave him a grim assessment of his life and said he would die young.[6] In 1851, at age 13, Booth attended St. Timothy's Hall, a
military academy in Catonsville, Maryland. Following in the footsteps of their
father (who had died in 1852), Booth and his brothers Edwin and Junius Brutus, Jr. would become well-known actors in mid-nineteenth century America.[7]
Theatrical career and Civil War
John Wilkes Booth, Edwin Booth and Junius Brutus Booth, Jr. in
Shakespeare’s
Julius Caesar in 1864.
At the age of 17, Booth played the Earl of Richmond in Shakespeare's Richard III, but did not act again until 1857, when he joined the
stock company of the Arch Street Theatre in Philadelphia. At his request
he was billed as "J.B. Wilkes", a pseudonym meant to divert attention away from his famous thespian family. In 1858 he was accepted as a member of the Richmond Theatre,
Virginia, stock company, and became increasingly popular, called "the handsomest man in America" by reviewers. He stood
5 feet, 8 inches tall, had jet-black hair, and was lean and athletic. He was also an excellent swordsman. His
performances were often characterized by his contemporaries as acrobatic and intensely physical.[8] A fellow actress once recalled that he occasionally cut himself with
his own sword.
On December 2, 1859, Booth attended the hanging of militant
abolitionist John Brown, who was
executed for leading a raid on the Federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (in present-day West Virginia).[8]
Booth bought a uniform from a member of the Richmond Grays militia unit, which was heading for Charles Town, and he joined the Grays, who stood guard for Brown's trial. When Brown was
hanged, Booth stood at the foot of the scaffold.[1]
Abraham Lincoln was elected president on November 6, 1860,
and the following month Booth wrote a long speech that decried what he saw as Northern abolitionism and made clear his strong
support of the South and the institution of slavery. On April
12, 1861, the Civil War erupted, and eventually eleven Southern states seceded from the
Union. Booth's family was from Maryland, a border
state which remained in the Union during the war despite a slaveholding portion of the population that favored the
Confederacy. Because Maryland shared a border with Washington, D.C., Lincoln declared martial
law in Maryland and ordered the imprisonment of pro-secession Maryland political leaders at Ft. McHenry to prevent the state's secession, a move that many, including Booth, viewed as unconstitutional.[9]
Although Booth was pro-Confederate, his family, like many Marylanders, was divided, and to preserve harmony among his
brothers, Booth promised his mother that he would not enlist in the Confederate
Army. As a popular actor in the 1860s, he travelled extensively to perform in both North and South, and as far west as
New Orleans.[8] Booth was outspoken in his love for the South, and equally outspoken in his hatred for
Lincoln. In early 1862, Booth was arrested by a provost marshal in St. Louis for making anti-government remarks.
Booth and Lincoln crossed paths on several occasions. Lincoln was an avid theater-goer and especially loved Shakespeare. On
November 9, 1863, President Lincoln saw Booth playing Raphael
in Charles Selby's The Marble Heart at Ford's Theatre in Washington. At one point during the performance, Booth was said to have shaken his finger in Lincoln's
direction as he delivered a line of dialogue. Lincoln sat in the same "presidential box" in which he would later be
assassinated.[1]
Booth made a final appearance at Ford's on March 18, 1865,
when he played Duke Pescara in The Apostate in what was the last appearance of his career. However, Booth's family were
long time friends with John T. Ford, the theater's owner, and Booth was in and out of the
theater so often during the war that he even had his mail sent there.[8] This granted Booth complete access to Ford's Theatre, day and night.
Plotting to kidnap Lincoln
By 1864, the tide of the war had shifted in the North's favor. The North halted prisoner exchange in an attempt to diminish
the size of the Confederate Army, and because the Confederates refused to exchange captured African-American soldiers. Booth
began devising a plan to kidnap Lincoln from his summer residence at the Old Soldiers Home three miles from the White House and smuggle
him across the Potomac and into Richmond. He would be exchanged for the release of around 10,000 Southern soldiers held captive
in Northern prisons. He successfully recruited his old friends Samuel Arnold and Michael O'Laughlin as accomplices.[10]
In the summer of 1864, Booth met with several well-known Confederate sympathizers at The
Parker House in Boston, Massachusetts. In October, 1864, he made an
unexplained trip to Montreal. At the time, Montreal was a well-known center of
clandestine Confederate activities. He spent ten days in the city and stayed for a time at St. Lawrence Hall, a meeting place for
the Confederate Secret Service, and met at least one blockade runner there. It is possible that it was here that he also met
Confederate Secret Service director James D. Bulloch as well as George Nicholas Sanders, a one-time U.S. ambassador to Britain. Booth is believed to have been
active in the "Knights of the Golden Circle", described as a "nest of 'Secesh' spies" (that is, pro-secessionist).[1]
There has been much scholarly attention devoted to why Booth was in Montreal at this time, and what he was doing there. No
solid evidence has ever linked Booth's kidnapping or assassination plot to a conspiracy involving any elements of the Confederate
government, although this possibility had been explored at some length in two books; Nathan Miller's Spying For America
and William Tidwell's Come Retribution: the Confederate Secret Service and the Assassination of Lincoln.
Booth began to devote more and more of his energy and money to his plot to kidnap Abraham Lincoln after his re-election in
early November, 1864. He assembled a loose-knit band of Southern sympathizers, including
David Herold, George Atzerodt, John Surratt, and Lewis Powell (also known as Lewis
Payne). They began to meet routinely at the boarding-house of Surratt's mother, Mrs. Mary
Surratt.
On November 25, 1864, John Wilkes performed for the first
and only time with his two brothers, Edwin and Junius, in a single engagement production of
Julius Caesar at the Winter Garden
Theater in New York. The proceeds went towards a statue of William Shakespeare for Central Park which still stands today.
The performance was interrupted by a failed attempt by clandestine Confederate agents to burn down several hotels, and by
extension the city of New York, with Greek fire. One of the hotels was next door to the
theater, but the fire was quickly extinguished. The following morning, Booth argued bitterly with his brother, Edwin Booth, about
Lincoln and the war.
Three months later, Booth attended Lincoln's second inauguration on March 4, 1865 as the invited guest of his secret fiancée, Lucy Hale. (Lucy's father, John P.
Hale, was Lincoln's minister to Spain.) In the crowd below were Powell, Atzerodt, and
Herold. There seems to have been no attempt to kidnap or assassinate Lincoln during the inauguration. Later, however, Booth
remarked about "what a wonderful chance" he had to shoot Lincoln, if he had so chosen.[1]
On March 17, Booth learned at the last minute that Lincoln would be attending a performance of the play Still Waters Run
Deep at a hospital near the Soldier's Home. Booth assembled his team on a stretch of road near the Soldier's Home in the
attempt to kidnap Lincoln en route to the hospital, but the president never showed up. Booth later learned that the President had
changed his plans at the last moment to attend a reception at the National Hotel in Washington, which ironically was staying at
the time.[1]
The assassination
Currier and Ives depiction of Lincoln's assassination.
l-to-r:
Maj. Rathbone, Clara Harris, Mary Todd Lincoln, Pres. Lincoln, and Booth
-
On April 10, after hearing the news that Robert E.
Lee had surrendered at Appomattox Court House, Booth told Louis J. Weichmann, a friend of John Surratt, and a boarder at Mary Surratt's house that he was done
with the stage and that the only play he wanted to present henceforth was Venice
Preserv'd. Although Mr. Weichmann did not understand the reference, Venice Preserv'd is about an assassination
plot.
On April 11, Booth was in the crowd outside the White House when Lincoln gave an impromptu
speech from his window. When Lincoln stated that he was in favor of granting suffrage to the
former slaves, Booth declared that it would be the last speech Lincoln would ever make.[1] "Our cause being almost lost", Booth wrote in his journal, "something
decisive and great must be done."[11]
On the morning of Good Friday, April 14,
1865, Booth learned that the President and Mrs. Lincoln would be attending the play
Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre. He immediately set about making plans
for the assassination, which included a getaway horse waiting outside, and an escape route. Booth informed Powell, Herold and
Atzerodt of his intention to kill Lincoln. He assigned Powell to assassinate Secretary of State Seward and Atzerodt to
assassinate Vice-President Johnson. Herold would assist in their escape into Virginia.[8]
Wanted poster for Booth, Surratt, and Herold
By targeting the President and his two immediate successors to the office, Booth seems to have intended to decapitate the
Union government and throw it into a state of panic and confusion. Booth also planned to assassinate the Union commanding
general, Ulysses S. Grant; however, Grant's wife had promised to visit family and so
they were heading to New Jersey. Booth had hoped that the assassinations would create sufficient chaos within the Union that the
Confederate government could reorganize and continue the war.
As a famous and popular actor, Booth was a friend of the owner of Ford's Theatre, John T.
Ford, and had free access to all parts of the theater. Boring a spyhole into the presidential box earlier that day, the
assassin could see if his intended victim had made it to the play. That evening, at around 10 p.m., as the play progressed, John
Wilkes Booth slipped into Lincoln's box and shot him in the back of the head with a .44 caliber Deringer. Booth's escape was almost thwarted by Major Henry Rathbone,
who was present in the Presidential box with Mrs. Mary Todd Lincoln.[8]
Booth then jumped from the President's box and fell to the stage, injuring his leg when it snagged a U.S. Treasury Guard flag
used for decoration.[12] Witnesses said he shouted
"Sic semper tyrannis" (Latin for "Thus always to tyrants", the Virginia state
motto) from the stage, while others said he added, "The South is avenged."[11][13]
Aftermath — pursuit and Booth's death
In the ensuing pandemonium inside Ford's Theatre, Booth fled by a stage door to the alley, where he had a horse waiting, and
galloped into southern Maryland, arriving before dawn on April 15 at the home of
Dr. Samuel Mudd, who treated the injured leg.[14]
A detachment of 25 Union soldiers from the 16th New York Cavalry Regiment, led by Lieutenant Edward P. Doherty and accompanied
by Detective Everton Conger, pursued Booth through Southern Maryland and across the
Potomac and Rappahannock rivers to Richard
Garrett's farm, just south of Port Royal, Caroline County, Virginia. Booth and his companion,
David E. Herold, had been led to the farm by William S. Jett, formerly a private in the 9th
Virginia Cavalry, whom they had met before crossing the Rappahannock.[15]
Booth was surprised when he found little sympathy for his action, and wrote of his dismay in a journal entry on
April 21, just before crossing the Potomac River into Virginia (see map, left), "[W]ith
every man's hand against me, I am here in despair. And why; For doing what Brutus was honored for ... And yet I for striking
down a greater tyrant than they ever knew am looked upon as a common cutthroat".[16]
Detective Conger tracked down Jett and interrogated him, learning of Booth's location at the Garrett farm. Early in the
morning of April 26, 1865, the soldiers caught up with Booth
there. Trapped in a tobacco barn, David Herold
surrendered. Booth refused to surrender and the soldiers then set the barn ablaze.[13] Sergeant Boston Corbett fired at
Booth — whether orders to shoot were given is uncertain — fatally wounding him in the neck. Booth was dragged from the barn and
died on the porch of the Garrett farmhouse at age 26.
The porch of the Garrett farmhouse, where Booth died in 1865
The bullet had severed his spinal cord, paralyzing him. His last words were reportedly, "Useless, useless."[15][17]
Booth's body was taken to the ironclad USS
Montauk at the Washington Navy Yard for identification and an
autopsy. The body was then buried in a storage room at the Old Penitentiary at the Washington
Arsenal. When the prison was razed in 1867, the body was moved to a warehouse on the Arsenal
grounds. In 1869, the remains were once again identified before being released to the Booth family,
where they were buried in the family plot at Greenmount Cemetery in
Baltimore.[18]
"Booth escaped" theories
An early popularizer of "Booth Escape" theories was Finis L. Bates who claimed to have
met Booth in Granbury, Texas in the 1870s and later to have taken possession of Booth's
body after his suicide in Enid, Oklahoma in 1903. He toured the mummified body in
carnival sideshows and wrote The Escape and Suicide of John Wilkes Booth (1907) in order to authenticate the mummy.
Some have claimed that it was not Booth who had been trapped in the tobacco barn at Garrett's farm, but a look-alike double
agent named James William Boyd, who died in his place. In this scenario, the
government went to great pains to cover up the blunder. These theories are seen by most historians as having no substance.
The Lincoln Conspiracy (ISBN 1-56849-531-5) details the
assassination, the Boyd plot, and Booth's escape to the swamps. The Curse of Cain: The Untold Story of John Wilkes Booth
(ISBN 1-58006-021-8) continues with the claim that Booth escaped, sought refuge in Japan and
eventually returned to the United States where he died in Enid, Oklahoma in
1903. Another is that a man claiming to be Booth lived into the 1900s in Missouri. In recent years, a legal attempt was mounted to force the exhumation of Booth's presumed remains in
order to conduct a photo-superimposition study. This was blocked by Baltimore Circuit Court Judge Joseph H. H. Kaplan, who cited,
among other things, "the unreliability of petitioners' less-than-convincing escape/cover-up theory" as a major factor in his
decision. The Maryland Court of Special Appeals upheld the ruling. [19] FBI records that were made public give no information to support the escape theory.[20] [21][22]
See also
Notes and References
- ^ a b c d e f g Geringer, Joseph.
John Wilkes
Booth: A Brutus of His Age. Crime Library. Court TV. Retrieved on 2007-10-17.
- ^ The Booth family's house, "Tudor Hall", was built in 1847 and still stands
today; it was acquired by Harford County in 2006, to be eventually opened to
the public as an historic site and museum.
- ^ Booth's uncle Algernon Sydney Booth was said to be the
great-great-great-grandfather of Cherie Blair (née Booth), wife of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. – Phil Westwood. The Lincoln-Blair
Affair.However, Algernon Sydney Booth died at the age of 5 in 1803. Archer, S. Junius Brutus Booth: Theatrical
Prometheus (1992): 282
- ^ Stanley Kimmel, The Mad Booths of Maryland. Indianapolis:
Bobbs-Merrill, 1940
- ^ The Milton Boarding School building in Sparks, Md., which John Wilkes Booth
once attended, still stands and is now the Milton Inn restaurant.
- ^ Clarke, Asia Booth. The Unlocked Book (1938):56-57
- ^ Booth is sometimes connected to historical assassin Marcus Junius Brutus, for whom Booth's father was named. On November 25, 1864, Booth acted in a
version of Shakespeare's Julius
Caesar where he played Mark Antony. His brother Edwin played the larger role of
Brutus. – R.J. Norton.
John Wilkes Booth.
- ^ a b c d e f George Alfred Townsend, The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes
Booth. New York: Dick & Fitzgerald, 1865.(ISBN 978-0976480532)
- ^ Kauffman, M. American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln
Conspiracies (2004):104-114
- ^ Benjamin P. Thomas, Abraham Lincoln, a Biography. New York: Random
House, 1952.
- ^ a b David Herbert Donald, Lincoln. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995
(ISBN 0-684-80846-3)
- ^ One historian, Michael W. Kauffman, in his book American Brutus: John
Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies (ISBN 0-375-75974-3) written in 2004, contends that Booth actually broke his leg
when his horse fell on him later in the escape, and that Booth's diary entry claiming it occurred jumping to the stage is a
typical Booth dramatization.
- ^ a b Linder, Douglas (2002). Biographic Sketch of John Wilkes Booth. University of
Missouri–Kansas City. Retrieved on 2007-10-16.
- ^ Dr. Samuel Mudd was convicted of
conspiracy by a military court and sentenced to life in prison at Fort
Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas islands, west of Key West, Florida. He was
pardoned in 1869.
- ^ a b John Wilkes Booth's Escape Route. Ford's Theatre, National Historic Site. National Park Service (December 22, 2004). Retrieved on 2007-10-15.
- ^ Linder, Douglas (2002). Last
Diary Entry of John Wilkes Booth. University of Missouri–Kansas
City. Retrieved on 2007-10-16.
- ^ James L. Swanson, Manhunt: The 12-day chase for Abraham Lincoln's
Killer. (ISBN 0-7499-5134-6)
- ^ Kauffman, M. "Fort Lesley McNair and the Lincoln Conspirators."
Lincoln Herald 80 (1978):176-188
- ^ Francis J. Gorman. Exposing the Myth that John Wilkes Booth
Escaped.
- ^ FBI. John Wilkes Booth.
- ^ Kauffman, M."Historians Oppose Opening of Booth Grave," Civil War
Times, May-June 1995
- ^ Virginia Eleanor Humbrecht Kline and Lois White Rathbun v. Green Mount
Cemetery, Case no. 94297044/CE187741, Baltimore City Circuit Court (1995)
External links
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