John Wilkes Booth

Overview

John Wilkes Booth was a renowned American stage actor of the mid-nineteenth century. However, he is more well known today as the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln, whom Booth shot on April 14, 1865. Booth was a Confederate sympathizer and plotted the assassination as revenge for the defeat of the Confederacy in the American Civil War, which had ended earlier that year.

Booth killed Lincoln by shooting him from behind while the president was seated in the Presidential box at Ford's Theater. He then leaped from the box and landed on the stage before making his escape. He was found two weeks later on April 26, holed up in a barn. After Booth set fire to the barn from the inside, he was fatally shot by a federal officer.