John Wilkes Booth facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
John Wilkes Booth
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Booth c. 1865
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| Born | May 10, 1838 Bel Air, Maryland, U.S.
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| Died | April 26, 1865 (aged 26) |
| Cause of death | Gunshot wound |
| Resting place | Green Mount Cemetery, Baltimore, Maryland, U.S. |
| Other names | J.B. Wilkes |
| Occupation | Actor |
| Years active | 1855–1865 |
| Known for | Assassination of Abraham Lincoln |
| Political party | Know Nothing (with support of southern Democrats) |
| Family | Booth |
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John Wilkes Booth (May 10, 1838 – April 26, 1865) was an American actor who shot and killed U.S. president Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865, in Washington, D.C. Lincoln died the next morning. Booth was born in Bel Air, Harford County, Maryland to English immigrant parents. He was a very well-known stage actor who supported the Confederacy during the American Civil War. He was angry with Lincoln for supporting voting rights for former slaves, and he hoped to rally the remaining Confederate troops to keep fighting the war, which was coming to an end. Booth was chased by United States soldiers and killed at a farm in Virginia 12 days after the assassination.
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Background and early life
Booth's parents were noted British Shakespearean actor Junius Brutus Booth and Mary Ann Holmes, who moved to the United States from England in June 1821. They purchased a 150-acre (61 ha) farm near Bel Air, Maryland, where John Wilkes Booth was born in a four-room log house on May 10, 1838, the ninth of ten children. He was named after English radical politician John Wilkes, a distant relative.
Booth's father built Tudor Hall on the Harford County property as the family's summer home in 1851, while also maintaining a winter residence on Exeter Street in Baltimore. The Booth family was listed as living in Baltimore in the 1850 census.
As a boy, Booth was athletic and popular, and he became skilled at horsemanship and fencing. He attended the Bel Air Academy and was an indifferent student whom the headmaster thought was "not deficient in intelligence, but disinclined to take advantage of the educational opportunities offered him." In 1850–1851, he attended the Quaker-run Milton Boarding School for Boys located in Sparks, Maryland, and later St. Timothy's Hall, an Episcopal military academy in Catonsville, Maryland. At the Milton school, students recited classical works by such authors as Cicero, Herodotus, and Tacitus. Students at St. Timothy's wore military uniforms and were subject to a regimen of daily formation drills and strict discipline. Booth left school at 14 after his father's death.
While attending the Milton Boarding School, Booth met a Romani fortune-teller who read his palm and pronounced a grim destiny, telling him that he would have a grand but short life, doomed to die young and "meeting a bad end". His sister recalled that he wrote down the palm-reader's prediction, showed it to his family and others, and often discussed its portents in moments of melancholy.
By age 16, Booth was interested in the theater and in politics, and he became a delegate from Bel Air to a rally by the Know Nothing Party for Henry Winter Davis, the anti-immigrant party's candidate for Congress in the 1854 elections. Booth aspired to follow in the footsteps of his father and his actor brothers Edwin and Junius Brutus Jr. He began practicing elocution daily in the woods around Tudor Hall and studying Shakespeare.
Theatrical career
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Booth made his stage debut at age 17 on August 14, 1855, in the supporting role of the Earl of Richmond in Richard III at Baltimore's Charles Street Theatre. In 1857 he joined the stock company of the Arch Street Theatre in Philadelphia, where he played for a full season. At his request, he was billed as "J.B. Wilkes", a pseudonym meant to avoid comparison with other members of his famous thespian family. In 1858, Booth played the part of Mohegan Indian Chief Uncas in a play staged in Petersburg, Virginia, and then became a stock company actor at the Richmond Theatre in Virginia, where he became increasingly popular with audiences for his energetic performances. On October 5, 1858, he played the part of Horatio in Hamlet, alongside his older brother Edwin in the title role.
Some critics called Booth "the handsomest man in America" and a "natural genius", and noted his having an "astonishing memory"; others were mixed in their estimation of his acting. He stood 5 feet 8 inches (1.73 m) tall, had jet-black hair, and was lean and athletic. Noted Civil War reporter George Alfred Townsend described him as a "muscular, perfect man" with "curling hair, like a Corinthian capital". Booth's stage performances were often characterized by his contemporaries as acrobatic and intensely physical, with him leaping upon the stage and gesturing with passion. He was an excellent swordsman, although a fellow actor once recalled that Booth occasionally cut himself with his own sword.
Booth's political activity
Booth became politically active in the 1850s, joining the Know-Nothing Party, a group that wanted fewer immigrants to come to the United States. Booth strongly supported slavery. In 1859, he joined a Virginia company that helped with the capture of John Brown after his raid on Harpers Ferry.
During the Civil War, Booth worked as a Confederate secret agent. He met frequently with the heads of the Secret Service, Jacob Thompson and Clement Clay, in Montreal.
Failed plots against President Lincoln
In the summer of 1864, Booth began making plans to kidnap Abraham Lincoln. The plan called for Lincoln to be taken south to Richmond, where he would be held until traded for Confederate prisoners-of-war. Booth recruited friends and known southern-sympathizers for his mission, including the eight persons tried by the 1865 military commission. Some who resisted his persuasive efforts, such as actor Samuel Chester, became key government witnesses in the trial.
On March 4, 1865, Booth attended Lincoln's second inauguration as President, as can be seen in photographs taken that day. On March 15, Booth and most of his fellow conspirators met at a restaurant three blocks from Ford's Theatre to plan the kidnapping. Soon thereafter, Booth heard that the President would be attending a matinee performance of Still Waters Run Deep on March 17 at the Campbell Hospital on the outskirts of Washington. This, he decided, would the perfect opportunity for a kidnapping and—according to John Surratt—Booth developed a plan to intercept Lincoln's carriage en route to the play. Booth's plans were stopped, however, when the President changed his plans and decided instead to speak to the 140th Indiana Regiment and present a captured flag.
Booth's next plan was to kidnap the President at a future performance at Ford's Theatre (where the actor had several friends). This plan failed to win the support of some of his co-conspirators, who dismissed it as unworkable.
The assassination of Lincoln
After the fall of the Confederate capital at Richmond (April 4) and General Lee's large-scale surrender of Confederate forces (April 9), Booth decided to assassinate Lincoln instead of kidnapping him. According to Booth's former friend, Louis Weichmann, Booth may have made the decision to kill the President after hearing Lincoln deliver a speech on April 11 urging Negro suffrage.
On April 14, 1865, while picking up his mail at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., Booth discovered that Lincoln would be attending a play with his wife there that evening. Booth knew the play well. Booth met with his co-conspirators and established a plan to kill President Lincoln, Vice-President Johnson, Secretary of State Seward, and possibly General Grant—all around 10:15 that evening. That afternoon Booth prepared a peep hole into the balcony room the Presidential party would use. During the play, Booth quietly entered the unguarded balcony room. At 10:15 pm, following a line in the play he knew would get a laugh, Booth fired a pistol at point-blank range into the back of Lincoln's head. Booth escaped by jumping from the balcony onto the stage, where he shouted a triumphant line to the audience. He broke his leg during the jump, but escaped out the back door and onto his horse.
The mortally wounded Lincoln was carried across the street to Petersen House, where he died the next morning. One co-conspirator did attack Secretary of State Seward with a knife the night of the 14th, but Seward survived the attack. The conspirator who planned to attack Vice-President Johnson did not follow through with the plot.
Booth fled with an accomplice south through Maryland to Virginia. An army troop caught up with him on April 26. His accomplice surrendered but Booth refused. During his capture, he died from a shot fired by Sergeant Boston Corbett, despite the order to take Booth alive.
His remains were buried in the family plot at Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore.
Images for kids
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Boston Museum playbill advertising Booth in Romeo and Juliet, May 3, 1864
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Left to right: Booth with brothers Edwin and Junius, Jr. in Julius Caesar
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Lucy Lambert Hale, Booth's fiancée in 1865
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The Old Soldiers Home, where Booth planned to kidnap Lincoln
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March 18, 1865, Ford's Theatre playbill—Booth's last acting appearance
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The porch of the Garrett farmhouse, where Booth died in 1865
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The Historic Site marker on U.S. Route 301 near Port Royal, where the Garrett barn and farmhouse once stood in what is now the highway's median (2007)
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Booth Family gravesite, Green Mount Cemetery, where Booth is buried in an unmarked grave (2008)
See also
In Spanish: John Wilkes Booth para niños
