Booth was the son of the actor Junius Brutus Booth,
born in Bel Air, Maryland. From 1860 to 1863 he was a successful
actor of Shakespearean roles. He was a violent partisan of the
cause of the South in the American Civil War and in 1864 organized
an unsuccessful conspiracy to abduct President Abraham Lincoln.
A Confederate secret agent, Booth, along with select
co-conspirators, plotted throughout 1864-65 to abduct Lincoln,
but their several attempts failed. Learning that the president
was to attend a performance by Laura Keene in Our American Cousin
at Washington, D.C.'s Ford Theatre (Good Friday, Apr. 14, 1865),
Booth and his band hastily mapped out a plan to assassinate not
only Lincoln but also Vice-President Andrew Johnson and Secretary
of State William H. Seward, hoping to thus promote the South's
victory in the war. On the night of April 14, 1865, while Lincoln
was sitting in a box at Ford's Theatre, Washington, D.C. Booth
shot him through the back of the head with a pistol after he
entered the unguarded presidential box during the third act of
the play., and then leaped down onto the stage, shouting "Sic
semper tyrannis! The South is avenged!" He escaped from
the theater but was overtaken 12 days later in a barn near Bowling
Green, Virginia.
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Union troops surrounded Richard Garret's farm near Bowling
Green, Va., where Booth was allegedly hiding in a barn. The troops
set fire to the building, and Booth probably died during the
ensuing gun battle or may even have shot himself. His body was
never positively identified, leading to the persistent myth that
he escaped his captors. |
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