John Wilkes Booth
John Wilkes Booth was born on the 10th of May, 1838, in a four-room log house on a 150-acre farm near Bel Air, Maryland, the ninth of ten children. A Romani fortune-teller once read his palm at Milton Boarding School and told him he would live a grand but short life, "meeting a bad end." He wrote the prediction down and showed it to his family, returning to it often in moments of melancholy.
By the time he died at 26, the prophecy had proven exact. He was one of the most celebrated stage actors in America, earning $20,000 a year. He was also the man who put a .41 caliber Deringer pistol to the back of Abraham Lincoln's head at Ford's Theatre on the 14th of April, 1865.
How does an admired artist become an assassin? What did Booth believe he was doing? And why did the nation he tried to save curse his name almost as loudly as the nation he attacked? These are the questions that drive the story that follows.
Junius Brutus Booth, John Wilkes' father, was a noted British Shakespearean actor who arrived in the United States from England in June 1821. He brought with him a secret: a wife still living in London, Adelaide Delannoy Booth. Thirty years after his departure, Adelaide was granted a divorce on grounds of adultery in 1851, and Junius married his American companion, Mary Ann Holmes, on the 10th of May, 1851 -- John Wilkes' 13th birthday.
Author Nora Titone argues in her 2010 book My Thoughts Be Bloody that the shame attached to that illegitimacy, combined with raw ambition, drove John Wilkes and his brother Edwin into an intensifying rivalry. Edwin became celebrated as a precise and cultured actor aligned with the Union. John Wilkes became the opposite in almost every respect.
The family maintained Tudor Hall, built on their Harford County property in 1851, as a summer home, while keeping a winter residence on Exeter Street in Baltimore. The 1850 census listed the Booth household as Baltimore residents. John attended the Bel Air Academy, a Quaker-run school in Sparks, Maryland, and later the Episcopal military academy St. Timothy's Hall in Catonsville, where he was baptized by Reverend Libertus Van Bokkelen. He left school at 14 after his father's death. He had been, his headmaster recorded, "not deficient in intelligence, but disinclined to take advantage of the educational opportunities offered him."
On the 14th of August, 1855, a 17-year-old John Wilkes Booth stepped onto the stage of Baltimore's Charles Street Theatre as the Earl of Richmond in Richard III. The audience jeered when he missed his lines.
He would not stay obscure for long. By 1857 he had joined the stock company at Philadelphia's Arch Street Theatre, where he billed himself as "J. B. Wilkes" to avoid comparisons with his famous family. In February 1858, he played in Lucrezia Borgia at the same theatre and lost his way mid-speech on opening night, stammering, "Madame, I am Pondolfio Pet -- Pedolfio Pat -- Pantuchio Ped -- dammit! Who am I?" The audience laughed. It did not hurt him.
Later that year, on the 5th of October, 1858, he played Horatio in Hamlet at the Richmond Theatre in Virginia, with his older brother Edwin in the title role. Afterward, Edwin led him to the footlights and asked the audience whether he had done well. The crowd applauded and cried, "Yes! Yes!" Booth performed in 83 plays in 1858 alone.
Some critics called him "the handsomest man in America" and a "natural genius." Civil War reporter George Alfred Townsend described him as a "muscular, perfect man" with "curling hair, like a Corinthian capital." His performances were famous for their physicality -- leaping across stages, gesturing with passion -- though a fellow actor once noted that Booth occasionally cut himself with his own sword. As the 1850s ended, he was earning $20,000 a year. The Boston Transcript, reviewing his performance of Richard III on the 12th of May, 1862, called him "the most promising young actor on the American stage."
On the 25th of November, 1864, Booth appeared for the only time alongside both his brothers, Edwin and Junius, in a single production of Julius Caesar at the Winter Garden Theatre in New York. He played Mark Antony. The performance was acclaimed as "the greatest theatrical event in New York history." The proceeds funded a statue of William Shakespeare for Central Park that still stood as of 2019. Booth's final stage appearance came on the 18th of March, 1865, at Ford's Theatre, playing Duke Pescara in The Apostate.
On the 2nd of December, 1859, Booth was rehearsing at the Richmond Theatre when he read about the upcoming execution of abolitionist John Brown, condemned for treason and inciting a slave insurrection after raiding the Federal armory at Harpers Ferry. Booth borrowed a uniform from the Richmond Grays, a volunteer militia of 1,500 men guarding the gallows, so he could gain access that ordinary citizens could not. He stood near the scaffold and afterward expressed great satisfaction at Brown's fate, though he admired the condemned man's bravery in facing death.
This was not a passing sentiment. After Lincoln won the presidential election on the 6th of November, 1860, Booth drafted a long speech decrying Northern abolitionism and affirming his support for slavery and the South. When the Civil War began and he found himself performing in Albany, New York, in April 1861, he called the South's secession "heroic" so publicly that local citizens demanded he be banned from the stage for making "treasonable statements."
In early 1863, he was arrested in St. Louis after being overheard saying that he wished "the President and the whole damned government would go to hell." He was released after taking an oath of allegiance and paying a fine. His sister Asia later recalled that he described Lincoln as a disgrace to the office, railing against what he called Lincoln "making himself a king." As the Confederacy weakened, Booth's fury intensified.
He was also allegedly a member of the Knights of the Golden Circle, a secret society whose early goal was expanding slave-holding territories. His sister Asia also recalled that he used his touring schedule to smuggle quinine, an anti-malarial drug in short supply because of the Northern blockade, to Southern residents during his travels.
Booth had promised his mother at the outbreak of war that he would not enlist as a soldier. That promise weighed on him. He wrote to her that he had begun "to deem myself a coward and to despise my own existence." His solution was a kidnapping scheme: seize Lincoln from his summer residence at the Old Soldiers Home, 3 miles from the White House, smuggle him across the Potomac River into Richmond, and use him as a bargaining chip to force the release of Confederate prisoners and, Booth believed, end the war.
He recruited Samuel Arnold and Michael O'Laughlen early in the plot. They met frequently at the Baltimore home of Confederate sympathizer Maggie Branson at 16 North Eutaw Street. In October, Booth traveled to Montreal, spending ten days at St. Lawrence Hall, a known meeting point for Confederate agents. He later expanded his group to include David Herold, George Atzerodt, Lewis Powell, and rebel agent John Surratt, meeting routinely at the boarding house of Surratt's mother, Mary Surratt.
On the 17th of March, 1865, the group assembled near the Soldier's Home to intercept Lincoln on his way to a hospital performance, but Lincoln had changed his plans at the last moment and went instead to a reception at the National Hotel -- where Booth was staying. The kidnapping never happened.
After Lee's surrender at Appomattox on the 12th of April, 1865, the abduction scheme collapsed. Booth had been in the crowd outside the White House on April 11 when Lincoln stated he favored granting suffrage to former slaves. Booth reportedly vowed on the spot to kill him. Three days later, on the morning of Good Friday, April 14, he went to Ford's Theatre to collect his mail and learned that Lincoln would be attending that evening. By 8:45 that night, he had assigned Powell to kill Secretary of State Seward and Atzerodt to kill Vice President Johnson, while he would take Lincoln himself.
At 10:10 pm on the 14th of April, 1865, Booth entered Ford's Theatre for the last time. He had free access to every part of the building as a frequently performing actor personally known to owner John T. Ford. He slipped into Lincoln's box at around 10:14 pm as the play Our American Cousin progressed, and shot Lincoln once in the back of the head.
Major Henry Rathbone, present in the box, lunged at Booth. Booth stabbed him. Rathbone's fiancee Clara Harris was also in the box and was not harmed. Booth then leaped from the box to the stage, where he shouted "Sic semper tyrannis" -- Latin for "Thus always to tyrants," also the state motto of Virginia. According to some accounts, he added, "I have done it, the South is avenged!" His spur caught a decorative flag on the way down, and witnesses reported he fractured or injured his leg in the fall.
Powell managed to stab Secretary Seward, who was bedridden from a carriage accident; Seward was severely wounded but survived. Atzerodt lost his nerve entirely, spent the evening drinking, and never approached Vice President Johnson. Booth was the only conspirator to succeed in killing his target.
Lincoln died the next morning. Booth, accompanied by David Herold, rode southward toward Maryland on a getaway horse arranged through livery stable owner James W. Pumphrey.
Before dawn on the 15th of April, Booth and Herold stopped at the home of Dr. Samuel Mudd in St. Catharine, 25 miles from Washington, for treatment of Booth's injured leg. The War Department offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to Booth's capture. Federal troops spread through southern Maryland while Booth hid in nearby woods, waiting for a chance to cross the Potomac.
Thomas A. Jones, a Confederate agent who had been overseeing spy operations in the area since 1862, brought Booth newspapers each day while he hid. On April 21, Booth wrote in his journal: "For six months we had worked to capture. But our cause being almost lost, something decisive and great must be done. I struck boldly, and not as the papers say. I can never repent it, though we hated to kill."
On the same day, Jones gave them a boat and compass to cross the Potomac at night. Instead of reaching Virginia, they navigated upriver and came ashore again in Maryland on April 22. They tried again; the pair finally reached the Virginia shore near Machodoc Creek before dawn on April 23. Booth wrote in his diary: "With every man's hand against me, I am here in despair. And why; For doing what Brutus was honored for."
On April 24, Lieutenant Edward P. Doherty was dispatched from Washington at 2 pm with a detachment of 26 Union soldiers from the 16th New York Cavalry Regiment. They steamed 70 miles down the Potomac and tracked Booth and Herold to Richard H. Garrett's tobacco farm, about 2 miles south of Port Royal, Virginia, where Booth had been introduced to the family as "James W. Boyd," a wounded Confederate soldier. The Garretts had been unaware of Lincoln's assassination until Booth was already sheltering there. Before dawn on the 26th of April, the soldiers surrounded Garrett's barn.
David Herold surrendered at Garrett's barn, but Booth refused to come out, saying, "I prefer to come out and fight." The soldiers set the barn ablaze. Sergeant Boston Corbett shot Booth in the neck as he moved inside the burning structure. Corbett later said he fired because Booth "raised his pistol to shoot" at them. Lieutenant Colonel Everton Conger's report to Secretary Stanton stated that Corbett had fired "without order, pretext or excuse" and recommended punishment for disobeying orders to take Booth alive.
Booth was dragged to the porch of the Garrett farmhouse. The bullet had pierced three vertebrae and partially severed his spinal cord. In his last moments, he reportedly whispered, "Tell my mother I died for my country." He asked that his hands be raised so he could see them, then said his final words: "Useless, useless." He died of asphyxiation as dawn broke, aged 26. Found in his pockets were a compass, a candle, pictures of five women including his fiancee Lucy Hale, and his diary.
His body was brought aboard the ironclad USS Montauk and taken to the Washington Navy Yard, identified by a tattoo on his left hand bearing the initials J.W.B. and a scar on the back of his neck. Three vertebrae removed during the autopsy were later displayed at the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington, D.C.
Of the eight conspirators convicted by military tribunal, Mary Surratt, Lewis Powell, David Herold, and George Atzerodt were hanged on the 7th of July, 1865. The others received prison sentences; the survivors were pardoned by President Andrew Johnson in February 1869.
At Lincoln's centenary in 1909, a border state official noted that Confederate veterans held public services expressing the sentiment that had Lincoln lived, Reconstruction "might have been softened and the era of good feeling ushered in earlier." Booth's remains were eventually buried at Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore -- barely a mile from where, in May 2025, playwright Matthew Weiner premiered John Wilkes Booth: One Night Only at Baltimore Center Stage.
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Common questions
Why did John Wilkes Booth assassinate Abraham Lincoln?
Booth was a Confederate sympathizer who despised Lincoln's policies on abolition and the conduct of the Civil War. After Lincoln's re-election in 1864 and the collapse of a kidnapping plot, Booth decided on assassination when he heard Lincoln publicly endorse voting rights for formerly enslaved people on the 11th of April, 1865. Booth believed killing Lincoln would avenge the South's defeat and potentially allow the Confederate cause to survive.
Where and when was John Wilkes Booth killed?
Booth was fatally shot on the 26th of April, 1865, at Richard H. Garrett's tobacco farm about 2 miles south of Port Royal, Virginia. Sergeant Boston Corbett shot him in the neck inside a burning barn. Booth died on the farmhouse porch a few hours later, aged 26.
What was John Wilkes Booth's acting career like before the assassination?
Booth made his stage debut on the 14th of August, 1855, at Baltimore's Charles Street Theatre, and by the late 1850s was earning $20,000 a year as one of the most celebrated actors in America. He was praised by critics as "the most promising young actor on the American stage" and appeared in 83 plays in 1858 alone. The Boston Transcript, Walt Whitman, and the Philadelphia Press all offered admiring assessments of his talent.
Who were John Wilkes Booth's co-conspirators in the Lincoln assassination plot?
Booth assembled a group that included David Herold, George Atzerodt, Lewis Powell (also known as Lewis Payne), and Confederate agent John Surratt. Samuel Arnold and Michael O'Laughlen had been recruited earlier for the original kidnapping plot. Atzerodt was assigned to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson but never made an attempt; Powell wounded Secretary of State William H. Seward but did not kill him.
What happened to John Wilkes Booth's body after his death?
Booth's body was taken aboard the ironclad USS Montauk to the Washington Navy Yard, where it was identified by a J.W.B. tattoo on his left hand and a scar on the back of his neck. Three vertebrae removed during autopsy were later displayed at the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington, D.C. His remains were eventually released to his family and buried at Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore in 1869.
Was there ever a credible theory that John Wilkes Booth escaped and survived the Garrett farm raid?
A theory that Booth escaped was popularized by Finis L. Bates in his 1907 book Escape and Suicide of John Wilkes Booth, which sold more than 70,000 copies by 1913. The 1977 book The Lincoln Conspiracy revived the claim and sold more than one million copies. In 1994, a Baltimore Circuit Court judge blocked an attempt to exhume Booth's body for DNA analysis, citing the "unreliability" of the escape theory. In December 2010, a museum also rejected a family request to extract DNA from preserved vertebrae.
All sources
84 references cited across the entry
- 1bookJohn Wilkes Booth: A Sister's MemoirAsia Booth Clarke — University Press of Mississippi — 1996
- 3bookAmerican Gothic: the story of America's legendary theatrical family, Junius, Edwin, and John Wilkes BoothGene Smith — Simon & Schuster — 1992
- 4bookAmerican Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln ConspiraciesMichael W. Kauffman — Random House — 2004
- 5webThe Lincoln-Blair AffairPhilip Westwood — Genealogy Today — 2002
- 6bookMy Thoughts Be Bloody: The Bitter Rivalry Between Edwin and John Wilkes Booth That Led to an American TragedyNora Titone — Simon and Schuster — 2010
- 7bookThe Mad Booths of MarylandStanley Kimmel — Dover Books — 1969
- 8newsThe body in John Wilkes Booth's graveLee McCardell — Tronc — December 27, 1931
- 9newsBirthplace of InfamyMichael E. Ruane — Nash — February 4, 2001
- 10webJohn Wilkes Booth's Family on North Exeter StreetTom — September 12, 2013
- 11bookThe Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes BoothGeorge Alfred Townsend — Dick and Fitzgerald — 1977
- 12bookThe Darkest DawnThomas Goodrich — Indiana University — 2005
- 13webOriginal Ad For John Wilkes Booth's Acting DebutTom — September 9, 2013
- 14webOriginal Ad for John Wilkes Booth's Acting DebutGhosts of Baltimore — September 9, 2013
- 15bookThe Day Lincoln Was ShotJim Bishop — Harper & Row — 1955
- 16bookBaltimore During the Civil WarScott Sheads et al. — Toomey — 1997
- 17bookThe Lincoln ConspiracyDavid Balsiger et al. — Buccaneer — 1994
- 18bookLincolnDavid Herbert Donald — Simon & Schuster — 1995
- 19bookAbraham Lincoln, a BiographyBenjamin P. Thomas — Knopf Doubleday — 1952
- 20webJohn Wilkes Booth was Shot at the RankinRichard Gardiner — Columbus State University
- 21bookJohn Wilkes BoothFrancis Wilson — Blom — 1972
- 22bookA New Birth of FreedomPhilip Jr. Kunhardt — Little, Brown — 1983
- 23webJohn Wilkes Booth Arranges to Appear in Ford's Theatre Play Which Lincoln Would Come to See, 1863Shapell Manuscript Foundation
- 24newsBooth's oil-field venture goes bustJohn Lockwood — March 1, 2003
- 25bookThe Blue and the GrayThomas B. Allen — National Geographic Society — 1992
- 26bookRight or Wrong, God Judge Me: The Writings of John Wilkes BoothUniversity of Illinois — 1997
- 27webStates Which SecededOhio State University
- 28webTeaching American History in Maryland – Documents for the Classroom: Arrest of the Maryland Legislature, 1861Maryland State Archives — 2005
- 29bookThe Life of Abraham LincolnStefan Lorant — New American Library — 1954
- 30bookShadow of the SentinelBob Brewer — Simon & Schuster — 2003
- 31bookTwenty DaysDorothy Kunhardt et al. — Newcastle — 1965
- 32bookThe Civil War – an illustrated historyGeoffrey C. Ward — Alfred A. Knopf — 1990
- 33bookThe Civil War in MarylandDaniel Carroll Toomey — Toomey — 1983
- 34magazineLincoln's Contested LegacyPhilip B. Kunhardt III — Smithsonian Institution — February 2009
- 35webJohn Wilkes Booth Letter February 1865: Lincoln Conspiracy, Fords TheatreShapell Manuscript Foundation
- 36bookThe Man Who Killed LincolnPhilip Van Doren Stern — Dolphin — 1955
- 37webFive little-known men who almost became presidentScott Bomboy — National Constitution Center — August 11, 2017
- 38newsFord's Theatre historical review of Bill O'Reilly's 'Lincoln' bookRae Emerson — November 12, 2011
- 39bookThe Assassination of President Lincoln and the Trial of the ConspiratorsMoore, Wilstach & Baldwin — 1865
- 40webThe Death of John Wilkes Bootheyewitnesstohistory.com
- 41bookThe Life of Dr. Samuel A. MuddSamuel A. Mudd — Neale — 1906
- 42journalThe funeral train, 1865Peter A. Hansen — Kalmbach — February 2009
- 44webJohn Wilkes Booth's Escape RouteNational Park Service — December 22, 2004
- 45newsJohn Wilkes Booth's Last DaysJuly 30, 1896
- 46journalA Chapter of Unwritten History: Richard Baynham Garrett's Account of the Flight and Death of John Wilkes BoothRichard Baynham Garrett et al. — Virginia Historical Society — October 1963
- 47bookJohn Wilkes Booth and Jefferson Davis – a true story of their captureByron B. Johnson — Lincoln & Smith — 1914
- 48bookThe Lincoln Murder ConspiraciesWilliam Hanchett — University of Illinois Press — 1986
- 49newsThe murderer of Mr. LincolnApril 21, 1865
- 50newsMissing body parts of famous peopleTerri Schlichenmeyer — CNN — August 21, 2007
- 51newsGrave of Lincoln's Assassin Disclosed at LastEdward Freiberger — February 26, 1911
- 52journalFort Lesley McNair and the Lincoln ConspiratorsMichael W. Kauffman — 1978
- 54bookBlood on the Moon: The Assassination of Abraham LincolnEdward Jr. Steers — University Press of Kentucky — 2001
- 56bookEscape and Suicide of John Wilkes BoothFinis L. Bates — J. L. Nichols — 1907
- 57webTexas Trails: Man of MysteryClay Coppedge — Country World News — September 8, 2009
- 58journalThe body of John Wilkes BoothWilliam M. Pegram — Maryland Historical Society — December 1913
- 59journalJohn Wilkes Booth on TourAlva Johnston — February 10, 1938
- 60newsDredging up the John Wilkes Booth body argumentDecember 13, 1977
- 61bookThe Curse of Cain: The Untold Story of John Wilkes BoothTheodore J. Nottingham — Sovereign — 1998
- 62newsNew Scrutiny on John Wilkes BoothOctober 24, 1994
- 63journalHistorians Oppose Opening of Booth GraveMichael Kauffman — May–June 1995
- 65webCambridge cemetery waiting to hear from John Wilkes Booth's family about digging brother upBrian Nanos — January 6, 2011
- 66newsBrother of John Wilkes Booth to Be ExhumedDecember 23, 2010
- 67webBooth mystery must remain so – for nowEdward Colimore — March 30, 2013
- 69webThe Cosgrove ReportNovember 23, 1979
- 70bookThe Cosgrove ReportGrove Atlantic — February 10, 2009
- 71webRegional Review: John Wilkes Booth: One Night OnlyMay 23, 2025
- 74webAssassinsInternet Broadway Database
- 75citationStaged reading of "Richard III"Harry Ransom Center — February 2, 2016
- 77webHollywood, CA- Bent on assassinating President Lincoln, John WilkesMarch 11, 2016
- 78newsTV TheatreJune 11, 1958
- 79bookThe Twilight Zone FAQ: All That's Left to Know About the Fifth Dimension and BeyondDave Thompson — Applause Theatre & Cinema — November 1, 2015
- 80webCopper: "A Day To Give Thanks"Farihah Zaman — October 14, 2012
- 82webJohn Wilkes Booth
- 83newsMorrow Adds Depth To John Wilkes BoothMichael E. Hill — April 12, 1998
- 84newsAnthony Boyle Is Moving Forward by Looking BackwardKuo Christopher — March 15, 2024
- 85newsHappy Boothday to you: An intrepid correspondent rides, rolls and rows his way into history chasing the ghost of John Wilkes BoothDavid Montgomery — April 18, 1999