John Wilkes Booth is one of the most infamous people in
American
history. He
murdered one of the greatest
presidents of all time,
Abraham
Lincoln. Booth was a some what popular
Shakespearean
actor, and an ex-
confederate soldier who had very strong political views about the South which
eventually drove him to drastic measures.
John Wilkes Booth was born on May 10, 1838 in a log cabin in rural
Maryland. He was one of ten children. He grew up in Bel Air, Maryland, 25
miles south of the Mason-Dixon line. His father, Junius Brutus Booth Sr.,
and older brothers, Edwin and Junius Booth Jr., were all famous actors in
Baltimore, Maryland.
John Wilkes Booth started acting in Baltimore, when he was 17. He
performed, when needed and then two years later on a regular basis, at the
Charles Street Theater in Baltimore. John had always been compared to his
father and once he started acting the comparisons got worse. He had hoped to
make a name for himself by becoming an actor but by the time he was 19 years
old the director of the theater told him he did not have a future in acting.
With no where else to turn and a war starting John enlisted into the
Confederate Army.
The Confederate Army was made up of men sympathetic to the
southern cause and those who believed in slavery. Although John grew up very
close to the Mason - Dixon Line, the separation point between the north and
the south , he decided to join up with the south because he believed the
southern confederate views were correct. Booth became a private in the
Richmond Grays, a unit of the Confederate Army based in Richmond, Virginia.
Booth did not like army life, he wanted to be promoted. He did not get along
with his army personal and was soon discharged. Without a job and no where
else to turn, John Wilkes Booth became a smuggler. He then started smuggling
medical supplies away from the Union soldier from the North, and sold them to
the Confederate Army of the South. Along with smuggling Booth became a spy
for the South. Although there are no documents, historians believe that he
worked for the Confederate Secret Service.
As the war raged on, John Wilkes Booth was very angry because the South
could possibly lose the war. There were many people who felt the same way as
John did and it was not long before John joined up with a group of these
unhappy confederate sympathizes. The conspirators as they were known,
numbered five not including Booth. The conspirators were: Lewis Powell, a
wounded Confederate veteran who had sworn allegiance to the south; David E.
Herold, a druggist's clerk, who was possibly mentally impaired; George
Atzerodt, a German-born painter who could barely speak English; and John H.
Surratt, a part-time Confederate spy, who's widow mother, Mary Surratt, kept a
boardinghouse outside of Washington, DC The group often met and had meeting at
the Surratt House. The group was angry about the Confederate prisoners of
war (POW), how they were treated and when their release would come. The group
thought President Lincoln was the main problem. They felt that everything
that had gone wrong for the south was Lincoln's fault. To help the southern
cause, the conspirators decided to kidnap President Lincoln once he was with
them, he would release the prisoners and the south could win the war. The plan
was to kidnap President Lincoln from the Soldiers Home, where the Lincoln
family sometimes slept. The group rode out to the Soldiers Home on March 17,
1861, but Lincoln was not there. Booth became very angry because of the
failed attempted. He then decided that the only recourse was to assassinate
President Lincoln.
The group then worked out a plan and almost four years
later, on April 14, 1865 John Wilkes Booth carried out the plan. President
Lincoln was attending a performance at Fords Theater near the White House in
Washington, DC. Booth knew a great deal about the theater and how it was laid
out, he also knew about the play the Lincoln's had come to see. He waited for
a joke to be said by one of the characters and for the noise of the crowd
laughing before he shot the president. John Wilkes Booth shot President
Lincoln in the back of his head. Booth then jumped from the balcony onto
center stage. He caught his boot spur on the American flag and fell breaking
his leg. Booth escaped from the theater on horseback and rode south. He
traveled through southern Maryland and stopped at the Surratt Tavern. None of
the conspirators were at the Surratt House, he did speak with Mary Surratt.
He rested at the tavern and then proceeded south to Dr. Mudd's house in
Waldorf, Maryland. Once Dr. Mudd set Booth's leg and John continued his
journey south. At the same time President Lincoln lay dying in a boarding
house across the street from Fords theater. Once the Union Army became aware
of the assassination of the President they trailed John Wilkes Booth through
southern Maryland. The Union Soldiers traced the southern Maryland route
asking people if they had seen a rider with a broken leg and everyone told the
soldiers what they knew of the rider. Many of the people questioned did not
even know that the rider had killed the president. Mary Surratt was arrested
and later hung for being a conspirator. She admitted to helping Booth giving
him a place to rest and a new horse. Dr. Mudd was arrested and imprisoned,
not for helping John Wilkes Booth but for lying. He told the union soldiers
that he had not seen Booth, many people had told them that he had in fact seen
Booth and set his leg. John Wilkes Booth was cornered by the Union Soldiers
in a Virginia at tobacco barn. Historian do not know if he was killed by the
soldiers of if he committed suicide. John Wilkes Booth died on April 26,
1865.