Booth, John Wilkes (1838-1865), assassinated President Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865. He entered Lincoln’s private box and shot him in the head during the play Our American Cousin. Booth approved of slavery and sympathized with the South in the American Civil War (1861-1865). He believed that Lincoln was responsible for the war.
Booth was born on May 12, 1838, near Bel Air, Maryland. His father, Junius Brutus Booth, and his brother Edwin Booth were famous actors, and John himself was one of the most promising performers of the time. At first, Booth organized a group that planned to kidnap Lincoln and exchange him for captured Confederate soldiers. Booth changed the plot to murder after the main Confederate army surrendered on April 9, 1865. The group then planned to kill Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson, General Ulysses S. Grant, and Secretary of State William H. Seward. They managed to kill only Lincoln.
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After shooting Lincoln, Booth leaped to the theater stage shouting what some understood as Sic Semper Tyrannis (Thus Always to Tyrants), the Virginia state motto. Booth broke his leg in the jump but escaped on horseback to Virginia. Federal troops trapped him in a barn near Port Royal, Virginia. There, on April 26, 1865, Booth was shot to death.
