John Wilkes Booth

John Wilkes Booth (1838-1865) was a popular American stage actor, a member of the famous Booth family. He was also Confederate sympathizer and a proponent of slavery. He led a conspiracy to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson, Secretary of State William Seward, and General Ulysses S. Grant in 1865 after the South lost the American Civil War. Booth personally fatally wounded Lincoln at the Ford Theater in Washington, DC on April 14 (Lincoln did not die until April 15), but his accomplices failed to kill any of the other targets. Intending to flee to Mexico, Booth bungled his escape path, and was tracked down and killed by soldiers of the United States Army on April 26 in Maryland. Three men and one woman were hanged as Booth's coconspirators on July 7, 1865, and some others were jailed, although three of them were pardoned in early 1869 after outgoing President Johnson reviewed the evidence against them and found it lacking. Historians still debate how many of the accused were really guilty as charged, and a number of conspiracy theories that widen the net beyond Booth's known associates have been posited. Some of these even claim that Booth lived to old age in the western part of the US, after a similar-looking man was killed in his place.

John Wilkes Booth in "Before the Beginning"
Recordings of John Wilkes Booth murdering Abraham Lincoln became quite popular with the invention of the time-viewer.

John Wilkes Booth in Southern Victory
John Wilkes Booth (1838-after 1882) was a popular actor during the 19th century. After the War of Secession, Booth toured the United States and Confederate States with his elder brothers, Edwin and Junius. They became very popular in both countries.

On April 22, 1882, the day that the Second Mexican War ended, Samuel Clemens began to prepare an editorial for The San Francisco Morning Call, and discovered he had a case of writer's block. He likened it to an instance of veteran actors like the Booth brothers suddenly struck with stage fright.

By the early 20th Century, Booth and his brothers were still remembered as the greatest actors of all time.