John Wilkes Booth and Lincoln's Assassination

April 1865. Tucked away in a desk drawer at the White House, Abraham Lincoln had an envelope marked, assassination, filled with written threats on his life. Abe must die and now. You can choose your weapons, the cup, the knife, the bullet. If you can imagine some foreign country electing a leader and sending him over to run your country, that's how a lot of Southerners seem to feel about Lincoln. One Southerner in particular let his feelings be known. The African-American. actor John Wilkes Booth. John Wilkes Booth was an ardent Confederate nationalist. He believed strongly in the cause of the South. He believed the North was the aggressor in the Civil War. He believed slavery was good. He was a white supremacist. And he hated Abraham Lincoln. Now that the war was finally over, the threat of danger had passed. It was two days before Easter. Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln were relaxing at the theater. Unnoticed, unimpeded, Lincoln's assassin walked slowly. through Ford's theater holding a knife a gun and a monstrous grudge a deadly passion that lay buried for years was about to play out in the most memorable role of the young actors life as the audience laughed uproariously. The assassin slipped easily into the president's box. He moved like a shadow, with a grace at odds with his purpose. John Wilkes Booth positioned himself behind the president, pointed his fancy pistol, and fired. John Wilkes Booth fired one single bullet that coursed through history and haunts us still. Before the assassination, he was known throughout the country as a great performer, the handsomest man in America. In the aftermath, Booth was called insane. A mad bad actor whose extreme political conviction led him to disaster. Yet the words used to describe Booth's life apart from those final fatal days tell a different story. If you deduct from his life the 12 days after he shot Abraham Lincoln, you have a very happy, very open, very captivating, loving, and very much loved guy. Attractive, clever, appealing, bright, smiling, happy, and ultimately so, so tragic. He was so young, so bright, so gay, so kind. There are two or three different people in every man's skin. Who shall draw a line and say, here genius ends and madness begins? Clara Morris, actress and friend of John Wilkes Booth. Not long after John Wilkes Booth was born on May 10, 1838, his mother had a vision. According to family history, Marianne Holmes prayed to know what fate her infant son would have. As she sat with the baby by the fire, Marianne saw the flames lit together, spelling out a word. Country. The child would grow to affect their country in a way his mother could never fathom. John Wilkes Booth was the son of Marianne Holmes and Junius Brutus Booth, both British. In his day, Junius Brutus was the greatest actor known to America, but began his career on the stage in London. When Junius and Marianne met, they quickly fell in love. But Junius was not without commitments. He was about 25 years old. He was married and he had a child. He met Booth's mother, who was Marianne Holmes. She was a flower girl. She sold flowers from a basket in the theater. He apparently fell in love with her and his feelings for her were very strong. His feelings were so strong that he deserted his wife and his young son. He runs off with this young lady. He not only runs off with her, but he runs off to the United States. He has by her ten children, and all the while he is writing to the real wife in England that I'm doing great here in America, I'm sending you money. Meanwhile, he has his second family in the United States. Because he intended to deceive his first wife, Junius and 19-year-old Marianne could not wed. But in 1821, they came to America and settled on 150 acres near Baltimore, Maryland. Within a year of their arrival, Junius was the most successful actor on the American stage. Intelligent, spiritual, and explosive, Junius ruled the stage for decades, but was plagued all the while by alcoholism and madness. He drank excessively, but was enormously popular. Theaters could count on a full house when Junius was born. Junius was booked, even when they could not count on Junius to be there. Sometimes he was drunk, but sometimes he seems to have been genuinely out of his mind. His fits of madness were apparently exacerbated by his drinking, and unfortunately nobody could stop him from drinking. The mad tragedian Junius Booth lived in two worlds. Touring on stage was balanced by a more peaceful existence at the farm. It was during one of these times at home with Marianne that their ninth child, John Wilkes, was born in 1838. Junius and Marianne had lost a child about two years before John Wilkes was born. And I think when John Wilkes Booth came along, he was much wanted, much loved, and filled a great role in the old man's life. He had a playful nature that made any parent fond of him. Through it all, Marianne was a steady influence on Junius and the children, especially John Wilkes. She liked to read and write, and young Johnny was her favorite child. His older brother was Edwin Booth, who toured with Junius and later became a great Shakespearean actor in his own right. Growing up in Maryland, John Wilkes was closest to his older sister, Asia Booth. Don't let us be sad, he would say. Life is short and the world is so beautiful. Just to breathe is delicious. Yet there was a taint of melancholy. As if the shadow of his mother's vision fell with the sunshine. Perhaps the forecast of his awful doom lay over him. Asia Booth, John's sister. John's parents bestowed on him the gifts of love, esteem, and security. But in 1848, the child discovered his foundation was not what it had seemed. His father's wife back in England had learned of the fact that he was a man of faith. Booth family in America. She wrote a letter to I believe it was her sister saying I shall go to America and I shall fall upon his back like a bomb. She arrived in Baltimore and when he would go to the market with his products from the phone She would appear and she would harangue him in tones that were discernible throughout Baltimore for precisely what he was. He was an adulterer and his children were bastards. So more and more they hid out at the farm. I think this was probably difficult on the whole family because their parents had been together for 30 years, but they'd never been legally married. And this fact came out. Eventually, the first wife was able to get a divorce and some kind of financial settlement. And Junius Brutus and Marianne Holmes were finally married. The day they married, coincidentally, was the 13th birthday of John Wilkes Booth. Only 18 months later, Junius Brutus Booth gave his final performance. Announcing his death, one critic said, There are no more actors. It was perhaps inevitable that John Wilkes Booth would follow in the footsteps of his father and brothers, but his theatrical debut in 1855 was unsuccessful. He vowed to practice his craft under a pseudonym to preserve the honor of the family name. Within ten years, that same name would be buried, bloodied, and dishonored beyond redemption. I have no brother. I am no brother. I am myself alone. John Wilkes Booth playing Shakespeare's Richard III. John Wilkes Booth spent his first season on stage in 1857 at the Arch Street Theatre in Philadelphia. The job paid $8 a week, six days. The shows changed nightly. Booth played every part they gave him, just one of many in the resident stock of performers. Theatrical people were little known and even less understood. Even the people who did not think all actors drunkards and all actresses immoral did think they were a lot of flighty, silly buffoons and not to be taken seriously for a moment. Clara Morris Theater in mid-century was enormously popular. Audiences jeered, they hissed, they cheered, they booed, they clapped, they stamped their feet. It was a very rowdy, popular form. People were very hungry for entertainment, and it was one of the few things they had to go see and to go watch. And the actor's lifestyle in the mid-18th century wasn't... Well, it wasn't very good. They were vagabonds and strolling players and they followed the wagon to the next town. It had always been so. John played the classics with an emphasis on Shakespeare, often without rehearsal. John was not known for preparing well. In fact, there's a story about him pacing up and down the floor of his Philadelphia boarding house while he was with the Art Street Stock Company, marching up and down saying, I must have fame, fame! And his friends all wondered how he was going to get it if he didn't work for it. Booth played at the Arch Street Theater through the summer of 1858, but was never charmed by the northern city. Philadelphia was the one city that he felt most uncomfortable in whenever he acted. And later, when his brother performed there, John sent him a note saying, if the critics are as good to you as they have been to me, God help you. Booth traded Philadelphia for the entertainment center of the South, Richmond, Virginia. Tickets to the Richmond Theater cost 12 to 15 cents each. Booth's salary went up to $20 a week. He got better parts and better recognition. John Wilkes Booth was known not only as a result of being the younger Booth. But a great actor or an upcoming star He was known for his physical prowess on stage Very athletic Very lithe, very impulsive Impulsive, very passionate. And in his roles, be it Romeo or Richard III, he was known for his swashbuckling abilities. And he fit the part. He dressed accordingly. And he acted his own way. He was blustery, he was passionate, he was exceedingly good-looking, women could not resist him. He had wonderful dark eyes and a beautiful melodious voice, and that was his stock in trade. Now it is scarcely an exaggeration to say the sex was in love with John Booth. At the theater, good heavens, as the sunflowers turn upon their stalks to follow the beloved sun, so old or young, our faces smiling, turn to him. Clara Morris. This extremely handsome man, the handsomest man most people had ever seen, was elegantly dressed. He would wear long coats with elegant kid gloves with gold and silver handled canes with... which he never failed to doff to a lady in the street. He wore spats. He wore elegantly done-up riding attire and in general was a showpiece, a walking advertisement for what a distinguished and handsome gentleman of the stage with a little bit of rakishness to him should appear to be. A colleague once said Booth was so glamorous and beautiful, he cast a spell over most men, and over all women without exception. John Wilkes sort of had this rep... mutation as a real womanizer and kind of strike whenever you can. He had been the target of one woman who tried to kill him one time because of spurned affections. And we know that another woman thought that she was engaged to marry him. And so it's hard to get much of a fix on it because like most womanizers, he kept his individual relationships a secret. Women would suggest assignations. Let us say an old-fashioned word that means brief romances with little emotional commitment, shall we say. He would always tell them that I'm a man of the world, I have sufficient desire for you, but no affection, and you should know that if you're going to come in. And most of them took him at his word. As Booth's popularity began to increase, so did the likelihood of war. Richmond, Virginia would become the capital of the new Confederate States of America. Booth went to Richmond in the fall of 1858. He stayed there two years. He always felt reborn from his time in this city. The Southerners, I think, were a little more receptive to the theater, and he quickly established himself as a... favorite there. He really blossomed in that city and I think that has something to do with the assassination of Lincoln. He felt a particular kinship with Richmond and its people and as capital of the Confederacy, you know, he felt involved in his fate as the war went along. John Wilkes Booth loved Richmond. He loved the South. Perhaps too much. The coming war would challenge him and his country, and ultimately ruin them both. John Wilkes Booth left behind a few handwritten documents which testify to his inherent beliefs. This country was formed for the white, not for the black man. And looking upon African slavery, I have ever considered it one of the greatest blessings, both for themselves and us. Witness our wealth and power, witness their elevation in happiness. and enlightenment above their race. I have lived among it most of my life and have seen less hard treatment from master to man than I have beheld in the north from father to son. John Wilkes Booth Booth wasn't racist. He believed that black people should be slaves, that that was the happiest condition they could aspire to, and that abolition was an evil. He felt that the movement against slavery was destroying the country. These were very common ideas that people had in the mid-19th century. As the 1860s approached, the argument between advocates of slavery and those who wished to abolish the institution was building to a climax, providing a clear line on which countless other debates would rage. On October 6th, 1860, the Constitution of the United States was passed. On the 16th, 1859, an ardent, violent abolitionist named John Brown led a raid on the government armory and arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. His plan was to make weapons available for a great uprising that would effectively end slavery in the United States. Instead, the Raiders, including John Brown, were captured. After a sensational trial, John Brown was convicted of treason against Virginia and sentenced to hang. John Wilkes Booth was working at the Richmond Theater when the local militia received orders to guard John Brown prior to his execution. Booth borrowed a uniform from a friend who was in the Richmond Grays and then went up to Harper's Ferry and Charlestown to help stand guard for the trial of John Brown. He was in that uniform and standing near the scaffold when John Brown was hanged in December. It always left a very, very deep impression on him, the fact that this man, whom he detested, incidentally, had done something in furtherance of his beliefs. The execution of John Brown was one of the most significant events in John Wilkes Booth's life. He spent several days there guarding the site of the execution. It gave Booth a sense that he was a... southern soldier, that he was fighting for the South. He actually wore a uniform. Booth, at the execution, saw himself as someone who was fighting to preserve slavery. But at the same time, he admired John Brown, and he was impressed that John Brown had the His vision of changing history through a single violent act. One section of our country believes slavery is right and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute. In your hands, my dissatisfied countrymen, and not mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. Abraham Lincoln. First inaugural address, March 4th, 1861. A month after Abraham Lincoln was elected 16th President of the United States, artillery shells burst high over Fort Sumter, and the Civil War began. Lincoln ordered a blockade of southern ports and called for volunteers. These acts electrified the South, electrified the South. They interpreted to mean that Lincoln was planning an aggressive war. Booth's home state, Maryland, did not secede the Union, but did maintain its southern sympathies. Maryland was strategically located next to the U.S. Capitol. Washington, D.C. was surrounded by Confederate states. Lincoln acted quickly to keep Maryland in line. He conveniently detained state legislators who might have voted for secession. He closed down newspapers in the state that dared to question any of his policies. Their editors were thrown into prison. the biggest piece of unconstitutional legislation that he did was to suspend the writ of habeas corpus in the state of Maryland during the Civil War. If you had done something the government felt made you a danger, they could arrest you. you. If you seemed to contemplate something that made you a danger, they could arrest you. In short, they didn't really need a reason because there was no longer the requirement that you be brought into a court and that your case be heard. Lincoln's action in Maryland and elsewhere further inspired Booth's fear of an oppressive government that would take away the freedom of the American people. He was afraid a tyranny would develop and perceived Abraham Lincoln as the tyrant. Abraham Lincoln now is probably everyone's favorite American president. What we don't always understand is that while he was president, Abraham Lincoln was hated. Hated by Southerners and Northerners alike. certainly the most controversial and unpopular president while he was in office. Southern people, and certainly John Wilkes Booth, felt that Lincoln was a tyrant, that he was violating the Constitution, that his emancipation policies threatened to overthrow white society. Despite his belief in the Southern cause, Booth did not join the Confederate Army. The story is that Booth promised his mother that he would stay out of the war once it began. The first time I heard that story, I just couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe that anyone with his spirit and political feelings could possibly have done that or made that promise. But I underestimated Booth's devotion to his mother and his concern for her because by this time she was a widow. His older brother Junius was living in California. His other older brother Edwin was about to leave for Europe. Who else was there? As war raged across the country, John Wilkes Booth became a star. In 1862, he performed in St. Louis, Chicago, Baltimore, New York, Boston, Louisville, Lexington, and Cincinnati. He was Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, and Romeo. Appearing 167 times, Booth played 18 different roles in the course of a single year. Booth flourished during the war. He was a very successful actor. He would usually play in a given theater for a week or two, supported by the stock company, and then would travel on to another theater. weren't always good, but in terms of box office, he was very successful. He would sometimes make a thousand dollars a night, which was a great deal of money at the time. He was well known, he was a matinee idol, and of course at this time he's only 24, 25 years old. John Wilkes Booth was a very young celebrity, full of passion and impulse. He was highly regarded in the classics. Compared to his brother Edwin, he was the passionate one, where Edwin was the poetic one. He was the Richard III, where Edwin was the Hamlet. Despite success, the brothers had no great jealousy toward one another. Their only disagreements had to do with politics. Edwin had voted for Abraham Lincoln, and as the war dragged on, John Wilkes became increasingly consumed with his hatred of Lincoln and the injustice of the war. At Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., ten days before Lincoln gave his famous speech at Gettysburg, he saw John Wilkes Booth perform In the Marble Heart. History makes no note of Lincoln's reaction to the play or the actor, but the actor's reaction to the president is remembered. Lincoln asked Booth to come back and see him later that he wanted to shake hands with him, and it is said that John Wilkes Booth said, I would rather have the applause of a nigger. As John Lewis Booth acted in 1862, 3 and 4, the hard years of the Civil War, he performed and stayed out of politics to a great extent, but he was an avid reader of newspapers and he kept a fairly close eye on events of the war. I think as long as the South held the upper hand or at least held its own, it was okay. But when things began to go bad for the South, it affected Booth. For four years I have lived a slave in the north, not daring to express my thoughts or sentiments, constantly hearing every principle dear to my heart denounced as treasonable. And knowing the savage acts committed on my countrymen, I have cursed my willful idleness and began to deem myself a coward and to despise my own existence. John Wilkes Booth Dearest beloved mother, I have always wished to be a good and dutiful son, and even now would wish to die sooner than give you pain. But dearest mother, though I owe you all, there is another duty, a noble duty for the sake of liberty and humanity to my country. John Wilkes Booth promised his mother he would not fight in the war. That was one reason he did not join the Confederate Army. The other explanation, though, is that he was much more valuable to the Confederacy as a secret agent than he would have been as a soldier in the ranks. And that's probably the real explanation. He led others on to talk while he held silence and acquired much knowledge that served against them. My hero was a spy, a blockade runner, a rebel. Asia Booth Clark, John Wilkes'sister. Booth told his sister that he had been a spy throughout the war, that the fact that he was an actor meant he could travel anywhere, he could cross the Union lines, which many people couldn't do. It also meant that he could move in the highest circles of society. He could meet politicians, generals, wives of important men. In this way, he could gather information for the Confederacy. While the youngest star in America was known to have smuggled quinine across the Confederate border, other specifics of his work for the rebel underground remain unknown. But one thing is clear. Booth grew maniacal on the subject of Southern rights and seemed to blame everything that was wrong with the country on Abraham Lincoln. In 1864, Booth was talking with a friend in Pennsylvania, and the friend said that whenever Lincoln's name was mentioned, Booth just went ballistic, that no one could be around him for any time and not understand that Booth had a very intense, personal hatred for Abraham Lincoln. This was more than a year before the assassination. He whispered fiercely, That sectional candidate should never be made president. He is made the tool of the North to crush out slavery by robbery, slaughter, and bought armies. He is making himself a king. Asia Booth Clark, quoting John Wilkes Booth. The object of the actor's rage, though commonplace, controversial was popular enough to satisfy the northern voters. In 1864, Abraham Lincoln was re-elected to an historic second term as president. Lincoln was the first president elected to two terms in Booth's lifetime. In his whole 26 years, there had never been a president take a second term. Those facts, coupled with the revolutionary changes that the war was producing in America, I think alarmed him. I know they alarmed him and made him ultimately dangerous. Seemingly at the peak of his career, in 1864 Booth's main focus drifted away from acting and into something else. There's been some superficial theories that his voice was giving away on him, that he had not had the proper training that his older brother had had, and that he had sort of reached his peak and there was nowhere else to go. I have a sneaking suspicion that his Confederate sympathies were taking over. He realized that his beloved South was going downhill. I think his strong Maryland background kicked in. Booth apparently had tired of acting and was determined finally to react to the war. In October, he traveled to a northern hotbed of southern sympathies, Montreal, Canada. After meeting with Confederate agents, Booth returned to Maryland and began slowly to assemble a plan to kidnap Abraham Lincoln. His horrible plot had a humanitarian appeal. Booth hoped to trade the president back to the U.S. in exchange for Confederate prisoners of war hopelessly trapped in northern prison camps. Right or wrong, God judge me, not man. For be my motive good or bad, of one thing I am sure, the lasting condemnation of the North. John Wilkes Booth. Booth began meeting with a group at the Washington boarding house of Mary Surratt and her son John. Including a pharmacy clerk and a stagehand, they would be known to history as the Lincoln Conspirators. John Surratt Jr. was recruited because he was a Confederate courier. He could literally get through Union lines with no problems whatsoever. Samuel Arnold and Michael O'Loughlin were boyhood friends of Booth. George Axelrod spoke with a very thick German accent, which would throw anyone off, but he was also very good at running the blockade across the Potomac River. And then Louis Thornton Powell. This was a man who had been trained very effectively as a Confederate soldier. He had been trained as a killer, which is what you need in wartime. So Booth had gathered around him a group that was a lot more than just ragtag. Months of plotting resulted only in an unsuccessful kidnap attempt. By April of 1865, the bloody war was over, and Booth was in despair. It is unknown precisely when his plans began to change from kidnap to killing, but several great events together seemed to have pushed him over the edge and into murder. The flickering candle of the Confederacy had at last burned out. Booth's beloved Richmond had fallen to the federal government, and Robert E. Lee's army surrendered at Appomattox. Fireworks lit the sky where only cannon fire had shone before. The long war was finally over, and people gathered in the streets in Washington, jubilant over peace and cheering with joy. In contrast to this, Booth was described as being fairly drunk some of the time. He was drinking a quart of brandy at a time. He was clearly very unhappy. He simply was very unhappy with history. He could not accept the outcome of the Civil War, and he hoped he could do something to change it. John Wilkes Booth and some of his fellow conspirators were in the crowd gathered on April 11th at the White House. Abraham Lincoln spoke and suggested the newly reconstructed government offer the right to vote to African American citizens. This outrage booth, he said, this means nigger citizenship. Now I'm going to get him. That's the last speech he'll ever make. So three days later, when he heard that Lincoln was going to be attending a play at Ford's Theater, I think he began to make his plans for an assembly. assassination. Ford's Theatre in Washington DC was like a second home to Booth. Abraham Lincoln had long loved the theatre. Therein on April 14th 1865 their paths again would merge. There had been a long-standing view going back millennia to the effect that when a person takes over the reins of government to the degree that Lincoln actually did, they were then tyrannical. And the way to get rid of a tyrant is to kill him, not vote him out of office, not suggest that he leave, not ask for his resignation. You kill the tyrant. Booth spent the last day of Lincoln's life coordinating an elaborate plan to overthrow the federal government by eliminating its principal players. His co-conspirators would strike out at two high-ranking officials while Booth took on the president himself. It was known within Booth's family that he was secretly engaged to wed. His fiancée's family would not have preferred their marriage. Lucy Hale was the daughter of a U.S. senator. Booth dined with Lucy and others that evening, then continued on alone to Ford's Theatre, where Abe and Mary Lincoln were enjoying a rousing comedy, Our American Cousin. Security was lax, despite several threats from the American public. threats on the president's life. After several shots of whiskey, the great actor walked easily through a side entrance and slipped quietly up the stairs in Ford's theater. Booth entered the presidential box, barricaded the door behind him, and aimed a Derringer pistol at Lincoln's head. By killing the president, Booth had effectively ended his own life as well. But it would take him 12 more days to die. As President Lincoln slumped forward from the assassin's bullet, John Wilkes Booth leapt from the presidential box to the stage at Ford's Theater and shouted, Sic semper tyrannis! Thus always to tyrants. Breaking his leg in the leap, Booth fled Washington accompanied by David Herold. For twelve tortured days, the two escaped through Virginia and Maryland. Desperate, hiding in a swamp, Booth wrote in his journal. After being hunted like a dog through swamps, woods, and last night being chased till I was forced to return wet, cold, and starving, with every man's hand against me, I am here in despair. And why? For doing what Brutus was honored for, what made Tell a hero, and yet I, for striking down a greater tyrant than they ever knew, am looked upon as a common cutthroat. John Wilkes Booth felt that by killing Lincoln, he was striking a blow for his nation, the Confederacy, and also for his race, the white race. I desire to return to Washington and in a measure, clear my name, which I feel I can do. When John Wilkes Booth was hiding out in the swamp, wet and cold and hungry and miserable, with a broken leg, one of the things he particularly wanted to have were newspapers, because he was very anxious to learn how the world regarded what he had done. The irony is that Booth really deeply loved the country as he understood it. It was a country that he had been taught to value, had been taught really to revere by his parents. The war changed that. He ironically thought he was doing the country a favor at the time that he killed Lincoln. He found out to his great, great shock and disappointment that he was universally condemned. Hailed not as a hero, but as a fiend with a heart as black as hell, the tragic actor was unconditionally despised. The handsomest man in America was tracked to a barn in Virginia on April 26th, 12 days after he killed the President. Federal cavalry could not persuade him to surrender. Booth wanted to fight. When soldiers threw burning straw into the barn, Booth was forced to the front. Despite orders to capture him alive, Booth was shot by Boston Corbett, a religious fanatic who said God told him to kill the... assassin. He wanted to be killed. He might have killed himself if someone hadn't shot him. He then was dragged from the burning barn and was put on the porch of the nearby farmhouse. He lived for several hours. He'd been shot through the neck. His spinal cord had been severed. Paralyzed from the neck down, Booth slowly, painfully died. Barely able to speak, he said, Tell my mother I died for my country. And his mother's early vision of his fate was realized. The family of John Wilkes Booth was devastated. Edwin Booth never spoke his brother's name again, but died with John Wilkes'portrait above his bed. Family connections allowed Booth's fiancée Lucy Hale one last look at his body. The Hale family then fled to Europe. Four of the convicted conspirators were hanged, including the mistress of the boarding house where they held meetings. Mary Surratt was the first woman executed in the United States. The nation mourned the death of their leader. No president had been assassinated before. Lincoln's death by Booth's hand was a horrible end to a devastating war. John Wilkes Booth was a massive contradiction. The bigoted, murdering son of a pacifist. Kind to women and children. Wildly successful in the public eye. Deeply disturbed beneath the surface. Madman or patriot? There were people in the South who felt that Abraham Lincoln got what he deserved and that Booth was somewhat of a hero, but those people in 1865, they weren't going to speak out too loudly. Otherwise, they could have been torn to pieces. There were some really hard emotions at that time. The notion that Booth was a hero really hasn't survived very well, though. I think Abraham Lincoln certainly won the battle of the ages. Poor John, he thought he was doing right, and had brooded so much over the terrors of war that he had reached a point where he looked upon his act as patriotic. John Matthews, friend of Booth since childhood. There's no reason to think that there was anything wrong with John Wilkes Booth. He just hated Lincoln. And at a time, he was a true believer. He believed in the cause of the South. And this was a time when hundreds of thousands of American men were willing to kill and to die for what they believed in. Booth saw himself as a Southern soldier, and he saw his act as an act of war. I love peace more than life, have loved the Union beyond expression. For four years I have waited, hoped, and prayed for the dark clouds to break, and for a restoration of our former sunshine. To wait longer would be a crime. All hope for peace is dead. God's will be done. I go to see and share the bitter end. John Wilkes Booth Bet you didn't know Teddy. Aw, hi Teddy. But he'd just be a regular bear if it wasn't for this Teddy, Roosevelt. In addition to inspiring the Teddy Bear, he also renamed a famous building. Was it the Smithsonian? The White House? The Capitol? The White House! And that's something I bet you didn't know.

One Southerner in particular let his feelings be known. The African-American. actor John Wilkes Booth. John Wilkes Booth was an ardent Confederate nationalist.

He believed strongly in the cause of the South. He believed the North was the aggressor in the Civil War. He believed slavery was good. He was a white supremacist. And he hated Abraham Lincoln.

Now that the war was finally over, the threat of danger had passed. It was two days before Easter. Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln were relaxing at the theater.

Unnoticed, unimpeded, Lincoln's assassin walked slowly. through Ford's theater holding a knife a gun and a monstrous grudge a deadly passion that lay buried for years was about to play out in the most memorable role of the young actors life as the audience laughed uproariously. The assassin slipped easily into the president's box. He moved like a shadow, with a grace at odds with his purpose.

John Wilkes Booth positioned himself behind the president, pointed his fancy pistol, and fired. John Wilkes Booth fired one single bullet that coursed through history and haunts us still. Before the assassination, he was known throughout the country as a great performer, the handsomest man in America. In the aftermath, Booth was called insane.

A mad bad actor whose extreme political conviction led him to disaster. Yet the words used to describe Booth's life apart from those final fatal days tell a different story. If you deduct from his life the 12 days after he shot Abraham Lincoln, you have a very happy, very open, very captivating, loving, and very much loved guy.

Attractive, clever, appealing, bright, smiling, happy, and ultimately so, so tragic. He was so young, so bright, so gay, so kind. There are two or three different people in every man's skin.

Who shall draw a line and say, here genius ends and madness begins? Clara Morris, actress and friend of John Wilkes Booth. Not long after John Wilkes Booth was born on May 10, 1838, his mother had a vision. According to family history, Marianne Holmes prayed to know what fate her infant son would have.

As she sat with the baby by the fire, Marianne saw the flames lit together, spelling out a word. Country. The child would grow to affect their country in a way his mother could never fathom. John Wilkes Booth was the son of Marianne Holmes and Junius Brutus Booth, both British. In his day, Junius Brutus was the greatest actor known to America, but began his career on the stage in London.

When Junius and Marianne met, they quickly fell in love. But Junius was not without commitments. He was about 25 years old.

He was married and he had a child. He met Booth's mother, who was Marianne Holmes. She was a flower girl.

She sold flowers from a basket in the theater. He apparently fell in love with her and his feelings for her were very strong. His feelings were so strong that he deserted his wife and his young son. He runs off with this young lady. He not only runs off with her, but he runs off to the United States.

He has by her ten children, and all the while he is writing to the real wife in England that I'm doing great here in America, I'm sending you money. Meanwhile, he has his second family in the United States. Because he intended to deceive his first wife, Junius and 19-year-old Marianne could not wed. But in 1821, they came to America and settled on 150 acres near Baltimore, Maryland.

Within a year of their arrival, Junius was the most successful actor on the American stage. Intelligent, spiritual, and explosive, Junius ruled the stage for decades, but was plagued all the while by alcoholism and madness. He drank excessively, but was enormously popular. Theaters could count on a full house when Junius was born.

Junius was booked, even when they could not count on Junius to be there. Sometimes he was drunk, but sometimes he seems to have been genuinely out of his mind. His fits of madness were apparently exacerbated by his drinking, and unfortunately nobody could stop him from drinking. The mad tragedian Junius Booth lived in two worlds.

Touring on stage was balanced by a more peaceful existence at the farm. It was during one of these times at home with Marianne that their ninth child, John Wilkes, was born in 1838. Junius and Marianne had lost a child about two years before John Wilkes was born. And I think when John Wilkes Booth came along, he was much wanted, much loved, and filled a great role in the old man's life.

He had a playful nature that made any parent fond of him. Through it all, Marianne was a steady influence on Junius and the children, especially John Wilkes. She liked to read and write, and young Johnny was her favorite child.

His older brother was Edwin Booth, who toured with Junius and later became a great Shakespearean actor in his own right. Growing up in Maryland, John Wilkes was closest to his older sister, Asia Booth. Don't let us be sad, he would say. Life is short and the world is so beautiful.

Just to breathe is delicious. Yet there was a taint of melancholy. As if the shadow of his mother's vision fell with the sunshine. Perhaps the forecast of his awful doom lay over him. Asia Booth, John's sister.

John's parents bestowed on him the gifts of love, esteem, and security. But in 1848, the child discovered his foundation was not what it had seemed. His father's wife back in England had learned of the fact that he was a man of faith. Booth family in America.

She wrote a letter to I believe it was her sister saying I shall go to America and I shall fall upon his back like a bomb. She arrived in Baltimore and when he would go to the market with his products from the phone She would appear and she would harangue him in tones that were discernible throughout Baltimore for precisely what he was. He was an adulterer and his children were bastards.

So more and more they hid out at the farm. I think this was probably difficult on the whole family because their parents had been together for 30 years, but they'd never been legally married. And this fact came out. Eventually, the first wife was able to get a divorce and some kind of financial settlement. And Junius Brutus and Marianne Holmes were finally married.

The day they married, coincidentally, was the 13th birthday of John Wilkes Booth. Only 18 months later, Junius Brutus Booth gave his final performance. Announcing his death, one critic said, There are no more actors. It was perhaps inevitable that John Wilkes Booth would follow in the footsteps of his father and brothers, but his theatrical debut in 1855 was unsuccessful.

He vowed to practice his craft under a pseudonym to preserve the honor of the family name. Within ten years, that same name would be buried, bloodied, and dishonored beyond redemption. I have no brother.

I am no brother. I am myself alone. John Wilkes Booth playing Shakespeare's Richard III. John Wilkes Booth spent his first season on stage in 1857 at the Arch Street Theatre in Philadelphia.

The job paid $8 a week, six days. The shows changed nightly. Booth played every part they gave him, just one of many in the resident stock of performers. Theatrical people were little known and even less understood. Even the people who did not think all actors drunkards and all actresses immoral did think they were a lot of flighty, silly buffoons and not to be taken seriously for a moment.

Clara Morris Theater in mid-century was enormously popular. Audiences jeered, they hissed, they cheered, they booed, they clapped, they stamped their feet. It was a very rowdy, popular form. People were very hungry for entertainment, and it was one of the few things they had to go see and to go watch. And the actor's lifestyle in the mid-18th century wasn't...

Well, it wasn't very good. They were vagabonds and strolling players and they followed the wagon to the next town. It had always been so.

John played the classics with an emphasis on Shakespeare, often without rehearsal. John was not known for preparing well. In fact, there's a story about him pacing up and down the floor of his Philadelphia boarding house while he was with the Art Street Stock Company, marching up and down saying, I must have fame, fame!

And his friends all wondered how he was going to get it if he didn't work for it. Booth played at the Arch Street Theater through the summer of 1858, but was never charmed by the northern city. Philadelphia was the one city that he felt most uncomfortable in whenever he acted.

And later, when his brother performed there, John sent him a note saying, if the critics are as good to you as they have been to me, God help you. Booth traded Philadelphia for the entertainment center of the South, Richmond, Virginia. Tickets to the Richmond Theater cost 12 to 15 cents each. Booth's salary went up to $20 a week.

He got better parts and better recognition. John Wilkes Booth was known not only as a result of being the younger Booth. But a great actor or an upcoming star He was known for his physical prowess on stage Very athletic Very lithe, very impulsive Impulsive, very passionate.

And in his roles, be it Romeo or Richard III, he was known for his swashbuckling abilities. And he fit the part. He dressed accordingly.

And he acted his own way. He was blustery, he was passionate, he was exceedingly good-looking, women could not resist him. He had wonderful dark eyes and a beautiful melodious voice, and that was his stock in trade. Now it is scarcely an exaggeration to say the sex was in love with John Booth.

At the theater, good heavens, as the sunflowers turn upon their stalks to follow the beloved sun, so old or young, our faces smiling, turn to him. Clara Morris. This extremely handsome man, the handsomest man most people had ever seen, was elegantly dressed.

He would wear long coats with elegant kid gloves with gold and silver handled canes with... which he never failed to doff to a lady in the street. He wore spats. He wore elegantly done-up riding attire and in general was a showpiece, a walking advertisement for what a distinguished and handsome gentleman of the stage with a little bit of rakishness to him should appear to be.

A colleague once said Booth was so glamorous and beautiful, he cast a spell over most men, and over all women without exception. John Wilkes sort of had this rep... mutation as a real womanizer and kind of strike whenever you can.

He had been the target of one woman who tried to kill him one time because of spurned affections. And we know that another woman thought that she was engaged to marry him. And so it's hard to get much of a fix on it because like most womanizers, he kept his individual relationships a secret.

Women would suggest assignations. Let us say an old-fashioned word that means brief romances with little emotional commitment, shall we say. He would always tell them that I'm a man of the world, I have sufficient desire for you, but no affection, and you should know that if you're going to come in.

And most of them took him at his word. As Booth's popularity began to increase, so did the likelihood of war. Richmond, Virginia would become the capital of the new Confederate States of America. Booth went to Richmond in the fall of 1858. He stayed there two years.

He always felt reborn from his time in this city. The Southerners, I think, were a little more receptive to the theater, and he quickly established himself as a... favorite there.

He really blossomed in that city and I think that has something to do with the assassination of Lincoln. He felt a particular kinship with Richmond and its people and as capital of the Confederacy, you know, he felt involved in his fate as the war went along. John Wilkes Booth loved Richmond. He loved the South.

Perhaps too much. The coming war would challenge him and his country, and ultimately ruin them both. John Wilkes Booth left behind a few handwritten documents which testify to his inherent beliefs. This country was formed for the white, not for the black man.

And looking upon African slavery, I have ever considered it one of the greatest blessings, both for themselves and us. Witness our wealth and power, witness their elevation in happiness. and enlightenment above their race.

I have lived among it most of my life and have seen less hard treatment from master to man than I have beheld in the north from father to son. John Wilkes Booth Booth wasn't racist. He believed that black people should be slaves, that that was the happiest condition they could aspire to, and that abolition was an evil.

He felt that the movement against slavery was destroying the country. These were very common ideas that people had in the mid-19th century. As the 1860s approached, the argument between advocates of slavery and those who wished to abolish the institution was building to a climax, providing a clear line on which countless other debates would rage.

On October 6th, 1860, the Constitution of the United States was passed. On the 16th, 1859, an ardent, violent abolitionist named John Brown led a raid on the government armory and arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. His plan was to make weapons available for a great uprising that would effectively end slavery in the United States. Instead, the Raiders, including John Brown, were captured. After a sensational trial, John Brown was convicted of treason against Virginia and sentenced to hang.

John Wilkes Booth was working at the Richmond Theater when the local militia received orders to guard John Brown prior to his execution. Booth borrowed a uniform from a friend who was in the Richmond Grays and then went up to Harper's Ferry and Charlestown to help stand guard for the trial of John Brown. He was in that uniform and standing near the scaffold when John Brown was hanged in December.

It always left a very, very deep impression on him, the fact that this man, whom he detested, incidentally, had done something in furtherance of his beliefs. The execution of John Brown was one of the most significant events in John Wilkes Booth's life. He spent several days there guarding the site of the execution.

It gave Booth a sense that he was a... southern soldier, that he was fighting for the South. He actually wore a uniform. Booth, at the execution, saw himself as someone who was fighting to preserve slavery.

But at the same time, he admired John Brown, and he was impressed that John Brown had the His vision of changing history through a single violent act. One section of our country believes slavery is right and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute.

In your hands, my dissatisfied countrymen, and not mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. Abraham Lincoln. First inaugural address, March 4th, 1861. A month after Abraham Lincoln was elected 16th President of the United States, artillery shells burst high over Fort Sumter, and the Civil War began. Lincoln ordered a blockade of southern ports and called for volunteers. These acts electrified the South, electrified the South.

They interpreted to mean that Lincoln was planning an aggressive war. Booth's home state, Maryland, did not secede the Union, but did maintain its southern sympathies. Maryland was strategically located next to the U.S. Capitol. Washington, D.C.

was surrounded by Confederate states. Lincoln acted quickly to keep Maryland in line. He conveniently detained state legislators who might have voted for secession.

He closed down newspapers in the state that dared to question any of his policies. Their editors were thrown into prison. the biggest piece of unconstitutional legislation that he did was to suspend the writ of habeas corpus in the state of Maryland during the Civil War.

If you had done something the government felt made you a danger, they could arrest you. you. If you seemed to contemplate something that made you a danger, they could arrest you. In short, they didn't really need a reason because there was no longer the requirement that you be brought into a court and that your case be heard.

Lincoln's action in Maryland and elsewhere further inspired Booth's fear of an oppressive government that would take away the freedom of the American people. He was afraid a tyranny would develop and perceived Abraham Lincoln as the tyrant. Abraham Lincoln now is probably everyone's favorite American president.

What we don't always understand is that while he was president, Abraham Lincoln was hated. Hated by Southerners and Northerners alike. certainly the most controversial and unpopular president while he was in office. Southern people, and certainly John Wilkes Booth, felt that Lincoln was a tyrant, that he was violating the Constitution, that his emancipation policies threatened to overthrow white society. Despite his belief in the Southern cause, Booth did not join the Confederate Army.

The story is that Booth promised his mother that he would stay out of the war once it began. The first time I heard that story, I just couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe that anyone with his spirit and political feelings could possibly have done that or made that promise. But I underestimated Booth's devotion to his mother and his concern for her because by this time she was a widow.

His older brother Junius was living in California. His other older brother Edwin was about to leave for Europe. Who else was there?

As war raged across the country, John Wilkes Booth became a star. In 1862, he performed in St. Louis, Chicago, Baltimore, New York, Boston, Louisville, Lexington, and Cincinnati. He was Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, and Romeo.

Appearing 167 times, Booth played 18 different roles in the course of a single year. Booth flourished during the war. He was a very successful actor.

He would usually play in a given theater for a week or two, supported by the stock company, and then would travel on to another theater. weren't always good, but in terms of box office, he was very successful. He would sometimes make a thousand dollars a night, which was a great deal of money at the time. He was well known, he was a matinee idol, and of course at this time he's only 24, 25 years old.

John Wilkes Booth was a very young celebrity, full of passion and impulse. He was highly regarded in the classics. Compared to his brother Edwin, he was the passionate one, where Edwin was the poetic one.

He was the Richard III, where Edwin was the Hamlet. Despite success, the brothers had no great jealousy toward one another. Their only disagreements had to do with politics. Edwin had voted for Abraham Lincoln, and as the war dragged on, John Wilkes became increasingly consumed with his hatred of Lincoln and the injustice of the war. At Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., ten days before Lincoln gave his famous speech at Gettysburg, he saw John Wilkes Booth perform In the Marble Heart.

History makes no note of Lincoln's reaction to the play or the actor, but the actor's reaction to the president is remembered. Lincoln asked Booth to come back and see him later that he wanted to shake hands with him, and it is said that John Wilkes Booth said, I would rather have the applause of a nigger. As John Lewis Booth acted in 1862, 3 and 4, the hard years of the Civil War, he performed and stayed out of politics to a great extent, but he was an avid reader of newspapers and he kept a fairly close eye on events of the war.

I think as long as the South held the upper hand or at least held its own, it was okay. But when things began to go bad for the South, it affected Booth. For four years I have lived a slave in the north, not daring to express my thoughts or sentiments, constantly hearing every principle dear to my heart denounced as treasonable. And knowing the savage acts committed on my countrymen, I have cursed my willful idleness and began to deem myself a coward and to despise my own existence. John Wilkes Booth Dearest beloved mother, I have always wished to be a good and dutiful son, and even now would wish to die sooner than give you pain.

But dearest mother, though I owe you all, there is another duty, a noble duty for the sake of liberty and humanity to my country. John Wilkes Booth promised his mother he would not fight in the war. That was one reason he did not join the Confederate Army. The other explanation, though, is that he was much more valuable to the Confederacy as a secret agent than he would have been as a soldier in the ranks.

And that's probably the real explanation. He led others on to talk while he held silence and acquired much knowledge that served against them. My hero was a spy, a blockade runner, a rebel. Asia Booth Clark, John Wilkes'sister.

Booth told his sister that he had been a spy throughout the war, that the fact that he was an actor meant he could travel anywhere, he could cross the Union lines, which many people couldn't do. It also meant that he could move in the highest circles of society. He could meet politicians, generals, wives of important men. In this way, he could gather information for the Confederacy. While the youngest star in America was known to have smuggled quinine across the Confederate border, other specifics of his work for the rebel underground remain unknown.

But one thing is clear. Booth grew maniacal on the subject of Southern rights and seemed to blame everything that was wrong with the country on Abraham Lincoln. In 1864, Booth was talking with a friend in Pennsylvania, and the friend said that whenever Lincoln's name was mentioned, Booth just went ballistic, that no one could be around him for any time and not understand that Booth had a very intense, personal hatred for Abraham Lincoln. This was more than a year before the assassination. He whispered fiercely, That sectional candidate should never be made president.

He is made the tool of the North to crush out slavery by robbery, slaughter, and bought armies. He is making himself a king. Asia Booth Clark, quoting John Wilkes Booth.

The object of the actor's rage, though commonplace, controversial was popular enough to satisfy the northern voters. In 1864, Abraham Lincoln was re-elected to an historic second term as president. Lincoln was the first president elected to two terms in Booth's lifetime.

In his whole 26 years, there had never been a president take a second term. Those facts, coupled with the revolutionary changes that the war was producing in America, I think alarmed him. I know they alarmed him and made him ultimately dangerous.

Seemingly at the peak of his career, in 1864 Booth's main focus drifted away from acting and into something else. There's been some superficial theories that his voice was giving away on him, that he had not had the proper training that his older brother had had, and that he had sort of reached his peak and there was nowhere else to go. I have a sneaking suspicion that his Confederate sympathies were taking over. He realized that his beloved South was going downhill. I think his strong Maryland background kicked in.

Booth apparently had tired of acting and was determined finally to react to the war. In October, he traveled to a northern hotbed of southern sympathies, Montreal, Canada. After meeting with Confederate agents, Booth returned to Maryland and began slowly to assemble a plan to kidnap Abraham Lincoln. His horrible plot had a humanitarian appeal.

Booth hoped to trade the president back to the U.S. in exchange for Confederate prisoners of war hopelessly trapped in northern prison camps. Right or wrong, God judge me, not man. For be my motive good or bad, of one thing I am sure, the lasting condemnation of the North.

John Wilkes Booth. Booth began meeting with a group at the Washington boarding house of Mary Surratt and her son John. Including a pharmacy clerk and a stagehand, they would be known to history as the Lincoln Conspirators.

John Surratt Jr. was recruited because he was a Confederate courier. He could literally get through Union lines with no problems whatsoever. Samuel Arnold and Michael O'Loughlin were boyhood friends of Booth. George Axelrod spoke with a very thick German accent, which would throw anyone off, but he was also very good at running the blockade across the Potomac River.

And then Louis Thornton Powell. This was a man who had been trained very effectively as a Confederate soldier. He had been trained as a killer, which is what you need in wartime. So Booth had gathered around him a group that was a lot more than just ragtag. Months of plotting resulted only in an unsuccessful kidnap attempt.

By April of 1865, the bloody war was over, and Booth was in despair. It is unknown precisely when his plans began to change from kidnap to killing, but several great events together seemed to have pushed him over the edge and into murder. The flickering candle of the Confederacy had at last burned out. Booth's beloved Richmond had fallen to the federal government, and Robert E. Lee's army surrendered at Appomattox.

Fireworks lit the sky where only cannon fire had shone before. The long war was finally over, and people gathered in the streets in Washington, jubilant over peace and cheering with joy. In contrast to this, Booth was described as being fairly drunk some of the time. He was drinking a quart of brandy at a time. He was clearly very unhappy.

He simply was very unhappy with history. He could not accept the outcome of the Civil War, and he hoped he could do something to change it. John Wilkes Booth and some of his fellow conspirators were in the crowd gathered on April 11th at the White House. Abraham Lincoln spoke and suggested the newly reconstructed government offer the right to vote to African American citizens. This outrage booth, he said, this means nigger citizenship.

Now I'm going to get him. That's the last speech he'll ever make. So three days later, when he heard that Lincoln was going to be attending a play at Ford's Theater, I think he began to make his plans for an assembly. assassination.

Ford's Theatre in Washington DC was like a second home to Booth. Abraham Lincoln had long loved the theatre. Therein on April 14th 1865 their paths again would merge.

There had been a long-standing view going back millennia to the effect that when a person takes over the reins of government to the degree that Lincoln actually did, they were then tyrannical. And the way to get rid of a tyrant is to kill him, not vote him out of office, not suggest that he leave, not ask for his resignation. You kill the tyrant. Booth spent the last day of Lincoln's life coordinating an elaborate plan to overthrow the federal government by eliminating its principal players.

His co-conspirators would strike out at two high-ranking officials while Booth took on the president himself. It was known within Booth's family that he was secretly engaged to wed. His fiancée's family would not have preferred their marriage. Lucy Hale was the daughter of a U.S. senator.

Booth dined with Lucy and others that evening, then continued on alone to Ford's Theatre, where Abe and Mary Lincoln were enjoying a rousing comedy, Our American Cousin. Security was lax, despite several threats from the American public. threats on the president's life. After several shots of whiskey, the great actor walked easily through a side entrance and slipped quietly up the stairs in Ford's theater.

Booth entered the presidential box, barricaded the door behind him, and aimed a Derringer pistol at Lincoln's head. By killing the president, Booth had effectively ended his own life as well. But it would take him 12 more days to die. As President Lincoln slumped forward from the assassin's bullet, John Wilkes Booth leapt from the presidential box to the stage at Ford's Theater and shouted, Sic semper tyrannis!

Thus always to tyrants. Breaking his leg in the leap, Booth fled Washington accompanied by David Herold. For twelve tortured days, the two escaped through Virginia and Maryland.

Desperate, hiding in a swamp, Booth wrote in his journal. After being hunted like a dog through swamps, woods, and last night being chased till I was forced to return wet, cold, and starving, with every man's hand against me, I am here in despair. And why?

For doing what Brutus was honored for, what made Tell a hero, and yet I, for striking down a greater tyrant than they ever knew, am looked upon as a common cutthroat. John Wilkes Booth felt that by killing Lincoln, he was striking a blow for his nation, the Confederacy, and also for his race, the white race. I desire to return to Washington and in a measure, clear my name, which I feel I can do. When John Wilkes Booth was hiding out in the swamp, wet and cold and hungry and miserable, with a broken leg, one of the things he particularly wanted to have were newspapers, because he was very anxious to learn how the world regarded what he had done. The irony is that Booth really deeply loved the country as he understood it.

It was a country that he had been taught to value, had been taught really to revere by his parents. The war changed that. He ironically thought he was doing the country a favor at the time that he killed Lincoln.

He found out to his great, great shock and disappointment that he was universally condemned. Hailed not as a hero, but as a fiend with a heart as black as hell, the tragic actor was unconditionally despised. The handsomest man in America was tracked to a barn in Virginia on April 26th, 12 days after he killed the President. Federal cavalry could not persuade him to surrender.

Booth wanted to fight. When soldiers threw burning straw into the barn, Booth was forced to the front. Despite orders to capture him alive, Booth was shot by Boston Corbett, a religious fanatic who said God told him to kill the...

assassin. He wanted to be killed. He might have killed himself if someone hadn't shot him. He then was dragged from the burning barn and was put on the porch of the nearby farmhouse.

He lived for several hours. He'd been shot through the neck. His spinal cord had been severed.

Paralyzed from the neck down, Booth slowly, painfully died. Barely able to speak, he said, Tell my mother I died for my country. And his mother's early vision of his fate was realized.

The family of John Wilkes Booth was devastated. Edwin Booth never spoke his brother's name again, but died with John Wilkes'portrait above his bed. Family connections allowed Booth's fiancée Lucy Hale one last look at his body.

The Hale family then fled to Europe. Four of the convicted conspirators were hanged, including the mistress of the boarding house where they held meetings. Mary Surratt was the first woman executed in the United States. The nation mourned the death of their leader.

No president had been assassinated before. Lincoln's death by Booth's hand was a horrible end to a devastating war. John Wilkes Booth was a massive contradiction.

The bigoted, murdering son of a pacifist. Kind to women and children. Wildly successful in the public eye.

Deeply disturbed beneath the surface. Madman or patriot? There were people in the South who felt that Abraham Lincoln got what he deserved and that Booth was somewhat of a hero, but those people in 1865, they weren't going to speak out too loudly. Otherwise, they could have been torn to pieces. There were some really hard emotions at that time.

The notion that Booth was a hero really hasn't survived very well, though. I think Abraham Lincoln certainly won the battle of the ages. Poor John, he thought he was doing right, and had brooded so much over the terrors of war that he had reached a point where he looked upon his act as patriotic.

John Matthews, friend of Booth since childhood. There's no reason to think that there was anything wrong with John Wilkes Booth. He just hated Lincoln. And at a time, he was a true believer. He believed in the cause of the South.

And this was a time when hundreds of thousands of American men were willing to kill and to die for what they believed in. Booth saw himself as a Southern soldier, and he saw his act as an act of war. I love peace more than life, have loved the Union beyond expression. For four years I have waited, hoped, and prayed for the dark clouds to break, and for a restoration of our former sunshine. To wait longer would be a crime.

All hope for peace is dead. God's will be done. I go to see and share the bitter end.

John Wilkes Booth Bet you didn't know Teddy. Aw, hi Teddy. But he'd just be a regular bear if it wasn't for this Teddy, Roosevelt.

In addition to inspiring the Teddy Bear, he also renamed a famous building. Was it the Smithsonian? The White House?

The Capitol? The White House! And that's something I bet you didn't know.

Transcript for:John Wilkes Booth and Lincoln's Assassination

Transcript for:
John Wilkes Booth and Lincoln's Assassination