Abraham Lincoln’s Assassin: Who Was John Wilkes Booth?

Disclaimer: This article contains mentions of murder. Reader discretion is advised.

Abraham Lincoln , the 16th president of the United States, served from 1861 to 1865. However, after getting reelected in 1864, he was assassinated the following year. He died days after Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s surrender, which ended the four-year American Civil War. Lincoln, 56 at the time, was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865. The planned killing has been the subject of several documentaries and series over the years.

Who was Abraham Lincoln’s killer, John Wilkes Booth?

Born in 1838 in Maryland, John Wilkes Booth was an actor, reported History . He eventually took the stage after being born into a family of actors. Booth appeared in Shakespeare’s Richard III in Baltimore in 1855. During the Civil War, he remained in the North despite being a Confederate sympathizer. While the war was entering its final stages, Booth and several associates plotted to kidnap Abraham Lincoln and take him to the Confederate capital, Richmond.

The outlet reported that the planned abduction failed when the president didn’t appear at the spot. After General Robert E. Lee surrendered, Booth desperately tried to save the Confederacy as he came up with another plan to attack the president. After learning that Lincoln would attend Laura Keene’s performance of Our American Cousin on April 14 at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., Booth and his co-conspirators planned a simultaneous assassination of the president and his possible successors.

On the day of the murder, John Wilkes Booth fired a shot into the back of Lincoln’s head after slipping into the presidential box inside the theater. Following the attack, Booth managed to escape from Washington. Lincoln was declared dead on April 15, 1865.

Per AP News , several Confederate supporters helped the murderer hide during the aftermath of the assassination. Meanwhile, the search for Lincoln’s killer was initiated and led by Edwin Stanton, the then-Secretary of War. After 12 days of manhunt, Booth was finally discovered hiding in a barn and was subsequently shot.

The documentary Assassination of Lincoln previously depicted the president’s killing. It can be watched on Prime Video.

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