John Wilkes Booth was an American actor and assassin, who murdered President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D. C. on April 14, 1865.
Background
Booth was born on May 10, 1838 in Bel Air, Maryland. His parents were noted British Shakespearean actor Junius Brutus Booth and his mistress Mary Ann Holmes, who moved to the United States from England in June 1821. Booth was the ninth of ten children.
Education
Booth attended the Bel Air Academy (now Bel Air High School), and was a sometimes indifferent student. In 1850-1851, he attended the Quaker-run Milton Boarding School for Boys located in Sparks, Maryland, and later St. Timothy's Hall, an Episcopal military academy in Catonsville, Maryland, beginning when he was 13 years old. At the Milton school, students recited classical works by such authors as Cicero, Herodotus, and Tacitus. Students at St. Timothy's wore military uniforms and were subject to a regimen of daily formation drills and strict discipline. Booth left school at 14, after his father's death.
Career
A strikingly handsome youth, Booth attracted many people, and early decided to try the stage. Although unwilling to work at his parts, native talent enabled him to win acclaim as a Shakespearean actor, especially in the Richmond, Virginia stock company. In 1860 - the year Lincoln was elected president - Booth achieved recognition across the country and played to approving audiences. Contemporary actors praised him as a "comer, " and his reputation seemed assured. A respiratory problem in 1863 forced Booth to leave the stage temporarily, and he began conceiving a romantic "conspiracy" to abduct President Lincoln and deliver him to Richmond for a ransom of peace or an exchange of Confederate prisoners. Unlike the rest of the Booth family, John had always been a Southern sympathizer. He believed the Civil War to be a simple confrontation between Northern tyranny and Southern freedom. He enrolled six other Confederate sympathizers in his kidnapping scheme. Their efforts in March 1865 to capture Lincoln on the outskirts of Washington, D. C. were foiled by the President's failure to appear. Booth's frustration undoubtedly contributed to his decision to assassinate Lincoln. Booth learned at noon on April 14 that Lincoln would attend Laura Keene's performance of Our American Cousin at Ford's Theater in Washington that evening. Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward were also to be killed, but Booth's confederates failed to carry out these murders. Booth went to the theater in the afternoon and fixed the door of the President's box so that it could be barred behind him. At about ten o'clock Booth entered the theater, shot Lincoln, and jumped to the stage, shouting "Sic semper tyrannis! (Thus ever to tyrants!) The South is avenged!" Breaking a leg in his leap to the stage, Booth dragged himself from the theater to a waiting horse. The pain slowed him, and he and another conspirator were forced to seek a doctor. Dr. Samuel A. Mudd set the leg and fed the fugitives. For several days they tried to cross the Potomac, and when at last they succeeded, they journeyed to the farm of Richard H. Garrett, south of the Rappahannock River. Pursuers found them in Garrett's barn on April 26. When Booth refused to surrender, the barn was set afire. His figure was glimpsed briefly just as a shot was fired. Although one of the pursuers claimed to have shot Booth, it is unclear whether he was killed or committed suicide. Booth's accomplices were rounded up and tried in one of the wildest travesties of justice ever perpetrated. Four of the conspirators were condemned to death. Dr. Mudd received a life sentence, as did two of Booth's accomplices. One accomplice died in 1867; the other and Mudd were pardoned by President Johnson in 1869.
Achievements
Religion
On January 23, 1853, the 14-year-old Booth was baptized at St. Timothy's Protestant Episcopal Church. The Booth family had traditionally been Episcopalian. Clergyman Charles Chiniquy stated that Booth was a convert to Roman Catholicism later in life. Historian Constance Head also declared that Booth was of this religion.
Politics
Booth was also a Confederate sympathizer, vehement in his denunciation of Lincoln, and strongly opposed to the abolition of slavery in the United States.
Connections
In February 1865, Booth became infatuated with Lucy Lambert Hale, the daughter of U. S. Senator John P. Hale of New Hampshire, and they became secretly engaged when Booth received his mother's blessing for their marriage plans.