John Wilkes Booth

He fell in love with Lucy Lambert Hale, the daughter of U.S. senator John P. Hale in 1865. He persistently courted the beautiful lady and became engaged to her secretly. Their engagement came to an end when he killed the President.

After killing the President he escaped along with his co-conspirators. After crossing the Potomac River they took refuge at the Garret farm in Virginia. The investigators caught up with them by 26 April 1865. They set fire to the barn where he was hiding and shot Booth when he refused to surrender. He died of his injuries hours later.

He was the ninth of ten children born to the stage actor Junius Brutus Booth and his mistress Mary Ann Holmes. He was named after the radical politician John Wilkes. His parents got married after his father divorced his first wife.

He was an athletic and popular boy though he did not like school. He entered St. Timothy’s Hall, a military academy, where students were made to wear uniforms and were subjected to strict discipline. He left the academy within a year.

He aspired to become an actor like his father and made his stage debut in a production of Shakespeare’s ‘Richard III’ in 1855 when he was 17 years old. He was very handsome and exuded a certain charisma which made him a very popular actor.

He was highly energetic and very passionate in his acting. He spent the early 1860s on a national tour as a leading actor. A family friend, John T. Ford opened a 1,500 seat Ford’s Theatre in 1863 and Booth was one of the first leading men to appear there.

The Civil War began on April 12, 1861 and Booth took sides with the Confederate States of America. He was a strong supporter of slavery and vehemently opposed abolitionism. He was also against black suffrage.

He developed a deep hatred for Abraham Lincoln who had become the President in 1860. He hoped that the Confederacy would win in the next presidential elections but as the 1864 elections drew near he realized that Lincoln might win the re-election.

Lincoln’s re-election in 1864 almost drove Booth crazy. He plotted an elaborate plan to kidnap the President along with some other co-conspirators.

Booth was a famous actor who became notorious for assassinating the President Lincoln. He always harbored a deep hatred for Lincoln and had plotted an unsuccessful attempt at kidnapping him. He assassinated the President by shooting him fatally as Lincoln was watching a play.