John Wilkes Booth

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John Wilkes Booth
John Wilkes Booth
Born(1838-05-10)May 10, 1838
Bel Air, Maryland, U.S.A.
DiedApril 26, 1865(1865-04-26) (aged 26)
Port Royal, Virginia, U.S.A.
OccupationActor
Known forAbraham Lincoln assassination
Parent(s)Junius Brutus Booth
and Mary Ann Holmes
See also: Abraham Lincoln assassination

John Wilkes Booth (May 10 1838 – April 26 1865) was an American stage actor and Confederate sympathizer who 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 expressed vehement dissatisfaction with the South's defeat in the Civil War and Lincoln's proposal to extend voting rights to recently emancipated slaves.

Booth and a group of co-conspirators led by him planned to kill Abraham Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson, Secretary of State William Seward, and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton 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 believed the war was not yet over since Confederate General Joseph Johnston's army was still fighting the Union Army under 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

His parents, 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 classic literature, particularly 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

Booth's plan was to kidnap Lincoln from the Old Soldiers Home

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 (5 km) 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, where ironically Booth 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
Main article: Abraham Lincoln assassination

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 Derringer. 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 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]

The porch of the Garrett farmhouse, where Booth died in 1865

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 three hours later, at age 26, on the porch of the Garrett farmhouse. 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

Historic Site marker on Route 301 near Port Royal

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 [19] details the assassination, the Boyd plot, and Booth's escape to the swamps. The Curse of Cain: The Untold Story of John Wilkes Booth.[20] 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. [21] FBI records that were made public give no information to support the escape theory.[22][23]

See also

Notes and References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Geringer, Joseph. "John Wilkes Booth: A Brutus of His Age". Crime Library. Court TV. Retrieved 2007-10-17.
  2. ^ 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.
  3. ^ 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.
  4. ^ Stanley Kimmel, The Mad Booths of Maryland. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1940.
  5. ^ The Milton Boarding School building in Sparks, Md., which John Wilkes Booth once attended, still stands and is now the Milton Inn restaurant.
  6. ^ Clarke, Asia Booth. The Unlocked Book (1938):56-57.
  7. ^ 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".
  8. ^ 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).
  9. ^ Kauffman, M. American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies (2004):104-114.
  10. ^ Benjamin P. Thomas, Abraham Lincoln, a Biography. New York: Random House, 1952.
  11. ^ a b David Herbert Donald, Lincoln. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995 (ISBN 0-684-80846-3).
  12. ^ 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.
  13. ^ a b Linder, Douglas (2002). "Biographic Sketch of John Wilkes Booth". University of Missouri–Kansas City. Retrieved 2007-10-16.
  14. ^ 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.
  15. ^ a b "John Wilkes Booth's Escape Route". Ford's Theatre, National Historic Site. National Park Service. December 22, 2004. Retrieved 2007-10-15. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  16. ^ Linder, Douglas (2002). "Last Diary Entry of John Wilkes Booth". University of Missouri–Kansas City. Retrieved 2007-10-16.
  17. ^ James L. Swanson, Manhunt: The 12-day chase for Abraham Lincoln's Killer. (ISBN 0-7499-5134-6).
  18. ^ Kauffman, M. "Fort Lesley McNair and the Lincoln Conspirators." Lincoln Herald 80 (1978):176-188.
  19. ^ ISBN 1-56849-531-5.
  20. ^ ISBN 1-58006-021-8.
  21. ^ Francis J. Gorman. "Exposing the Myth that John Wilkes Booth Escaped".
  22. ^ Kauffman, M."Historians Oppose Opening of Booth Grave," Civil War Times, May-June 1995.
  23. ^ 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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