Library of Congress Why did John Wilkes Booth assassinate President Lincoln?John Wilkes Booth was a very famous Shakespearean actor and strong Confederate States of America sympathizer. The Booth family lived in Maryland, which was a divided state during the American Civil War. Some Booth family members, like John Wilkes’s famous actor brother Edwin, supported the Union. John Wilkes Booth, however, firmly supported the cause of the Confederacy. Booth fully believed in principles of racism and white supremacy, as demonstrated in some of his surviving writings. In a letter written in 1864, Booth wrote that “This country was formed for the white not for the black man.” He also expressed his feeling that slavery was “one of the greatest blessings (both for themselves [the enslaved people] and us,) that God ever bestowed upon a favored nation.” Booth saw the Confederacy as the ideal model for a society, built upon the South’s codes of honor and chivalry as well as its racial stratification. The Civil War was reaching its end in April 1865, and John Wilkes Booth saw his dreams of the Confederacy crumbling around him. The Confederate capital city of Richmond fell to Union forces on April 2. Robert E. Lee surrendered his Confederate Army of Northern Virginia to Ulysses S. Grant on April 9. On April 11, Abraham Lincoln delivered what became his final speech from a balcony at the White House. John Wilkes Booth was part of the crowd that gathered as Lincoln talked about his plans for the future. This included Lincoln's hope that African American men who had served in Union armies would receive the right to vote. Booth seethed with rage at hearing this, turning to one of his fellow conspirators (likely Lewis Powell) standing next to him and snapping “By God, that’s the last speech he’ll ever make!” John Wilkes Booth was simply unable to fathom a world in which African Americans shared the same rights as him. Booth also opposed other controversial measures Lincoln had taken during the war, particularly in his own home state of Maryland. In 1861, Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus and arrested pro-secession state legislators in Maryland to prevent the state from leaving the Union. Lincoln saw these measures as necessary to ensure the safety of Washington, DC. Booth viewed them as the actions of a would-be tyrant figure. By 1865, John Wilkes Booth saw Abraham Lincoln as the man responsible for all the nation’s ills. He looked at himself as the new Brutus who would take down the American Julius Caesar. His yelling of “Sic Semper Tyrannis” on stage after shooting President Lincoln provides another window into Booth’s thoughts that led him to commit this great crime. Was John Wilkes Booth able to roam the theatre at will?Booth was a personal friend of the theatre's owner, John T. Ford. Because of this relationship and because of his fame as an actor, it was not unusual for Booth to be seen around the theatre. Booth had also performed at the theatre several times. In November 1863, he had starred in The Marble Heart at Ford's, with President Lincoln in attendance. Booth also had his mail delivered to the Theatre whenever he was staying in Washington, DC. Since actors in those days generally did not have a permanent home address, they had their mail delivered to where they often worked as performers. Booth learned of Lincoln's plans to attend Ford’s while picking up his mail on the morning of April 14, 1865.Was John Wilkes Booth carrying any other weapons when he entered the state box?Yes, Booth was also armed with a large dagger. The assassin knew that something could go wrong with the single-shot pistol, and he wanted to have a backup option at the ready. After shooting the president, Booth dropped the derringer to the floor of the box and gripped the dagger in his right hand. Booth struggled with Major Henry Rathbone, one of Lincoln's guests in the box, and attempted to stab the major in his chest. Rathbone lifted his arm in defense and was wounded with a deep cut from Booth’s dagger in the left upper arm. The wound cut an artery and bled profusely. After jumping to the stage, numerous witnesses mention Booth brandishing the dagger while shouting “Sic Semper Tyrannis” and running out to the back of the stage. Booth tossed the dagger aside in the alley before mounting his horse, and it was later discovered by a government official.
Library of Congress What is the distance from the state box to the stage?The distance from the state box's wooden balustrade, where the American flag is draped, to the stage floor is approximately 12 feet. Some eyewitness accounts suggest that the original height was closer to 9 feet. A sketch done soon after the assassination suggests the distance was 10 feet, 7 inches. We may never know the original distance, as the theatre was gutted for renovation in 1866. None of the original box remained intact to be precisely measured. How did John Wilkes Booth break his left leg?Many people believed that John Wilkes Booth broke his leg when jumping from the state box onto the stage. Booth wrote this in a datebook that he used as a diary during his time on the run. He stated that "in jumping broke my leg" after shooting the president. Today however, some historians speculate that Booth may have in fact broken his left leg in a horseback riding accident while escaping Washington. Booth supposedly told David Herold, his fellow conspirator with whom he went on the run, that he had hurt his leg in such an incident. The left side of the horse Booth was riding was injured as well. In any event, by the time Booth arrived at the Surratt Tavern that night at around midnight, his left fibula was definitely broken. He was clearly in great pain as a result. This led him to seek out his former kidnapping plot co-conspirator, Dr. Samuel Mudd, for medical treatment. Ultimately, it’s likely that we will never know for sure exactly how the actor broke his left leg.How did Booth escape the theatre?John Wilkes Booth ran across the stage and escaped out of the theatre through a back door at stage right (left from the audience's perspective). That door led out to an alleyway, where his horse was being held by a young theatre worker named Joseph “Peanuts John” Burroughs. Booth mounted his horse and escaped down the alley, turning and heading up to F Street. In 1865, this passageway was known as Baptist Alley. The first theatre building originally served as a Baptist church, established around 1833. The Ford brothers purchased the old church building, converting it into a theatre around 1860-61.
Library of Congress Did John Wilkes Booth act alone, or was he part of a larger conspiracy?John Wilkes Booth was the mastermind and ringleader of the plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865. This plot also included attempts on the lives of Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward. Booth sent conspirators George Atzerodt and Lewis Powell, respectively, to carry out those assassinations. David Herold was tasked with accompanying Powell to the Seward home and rendezvousing with Booth for an escape. These four men definitively knew of, and were thus complicit in, the president’s murder. Mary Surratt, owner of a boarding house in Washington, DC and a tavern in Maryland, may also have known of the plot. Booth and his conspirators, including her son John Surratt, often used these properties as meeting places and safe houses. Mary Surratt was executed alongside Atzerodt, Herold, and Powell. Her guilt or innocence remains a topic of debate for historians today. Before he decided to murder President Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth had been orchestrating a conspiracy to kidnap the chief executive. This plot involved the conspirators mentioned above, as well as several others, including John Surratt, Samuel Arnold, Michael O’Laughlin, and Dr. Samuel Mudd. Booth made many contacts and connections among Confederate sympathizers in Maryland and Virginia. We may never know all those whom Booth attempted to recruit for his plot. Booth also traveled to Montreal, Canada during his planning to kidnap the president. There, he likely met with members of the loosely-writ “Confederate Secret Service.” It is possible, and perhaps even likely, that Booth’s group was not the only one trying to take Lincoln hostage. Other Confederate agents also hoped that, by holding Lincoln for ransom, the Confederacy could use the president as a bargaining chip to free Confederate prisoners of war or even force a negotiated peace. These activities by Booth and other Confederate agents remain shrouded in mystery to this day. John Wilkes Booth’s connections with Confederate agents have led some historians to speculate that the actor was part of a larger “grand conspiracy” to kidnap or kill Abraham Lincoln. These theories hold that these clandestine activities took place with the knowledge and sanction of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Lincoln’s Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, firmly believed that Davis was behind the assassination. This conviction led Stanton to accept some questionable testimony during the trial of the Booth conspirators in his attempt to link Davis to Booth. As of 2024, no hard evidence exists to confirm theories of Davis’s involvement. Much also remains unknown to historians today regarding the prevalence of covert “black flag warfare” operations during the Civil War. In 1864, a Union officer named Ulrich Dahlgren was killed in a raid outside Richmond. Papers found on Dahlgren supposedly confirmed that he had orders to free Union prisoners of war in the Confederate capital, then assassinate Confederate President Jefferson Davis and his cabinet. Union leaders strongly denied such a plan, and exactly what Dahlgren was tasked to do remains a mystery. On the other side, Confederate partisan raider John S. Mosby may have received a dastardly assignment just days before the assassination. Allegedly, Mosby’s men were to escort a Confederate bomb maker into Washington and blow up the White House while Lincoln met with his cabinet. Whether these attempts were real, and whether Lincoln or Davis knew of plots to eliminate their counterpart, may never be known for certain. In the years after the assassination, a whole host of unfounded conspiracy theories claimed that John Wilkes Booth was merely a puppet figure. These extreme theories have named the “real culprit” as Andrew Johnson, Edwin Stanton, the Catholic Church, and more. William Hanchett’s The Lincoln Murder Conspiracies is an excellent source for studying and appropriately dismissing these fringe theories. How many conspirators altogether were tried and convicted in their involvement with John Wilkes Booth?Altogether, eight of the conspirators were tried by a military court in time of war and convicted. Four of the conspirators were pronounced guilty of conspiracy to assassinate and given death sentences by hanging. They were George Atzerodt, David Herold, Lewis Powell, and Mary Surratt. Mrs. Surratt became the first woman ever executed by the federal government. Three other conspirators were found guilty of conspiracy to kidnap President Lincoln. They were Samuel Arnold, Michael O’Laughlin and Dr. Samuel A. Mudd, all of whom received life imprisonment sentences. The eighth conspirator sentenced was Edman "Ned" Spangler. Spangler was found guilty of aiding Booth’s escape out of Ford’s Theatre by having the assassin's horse held for him behind the theatre. For this crime, Spangler was sentenced to six years of hard labor imprisonment. Michael O’Laughlin died in prison in 1867. The three conspirators that remained alive were pardoned by Andrew Johnson as one of his last acts in office, in 1869. A ninth conspirator, John Surratt, was caught later and put on trial in civil court in June of 1867. John Surratt had been Booth's right-hand man in the kidnapping plot, but he was not in Washington when the murder took place. John Surratt’s trial resulted in a hung jury, and he was never brought back to trial. Want to Learn More?
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Last updated: November 24, 2024