John Wilkes Booth, a well-known actor, was a staunch supporter of slavery and the Southern Confederacy during America’s Civil War. On the night of April 14, 1865, he entered Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C., and assassinated Abraham Lincoln, 16th president of the United States.

When newspapers announced Lincoln and Grant would both attend Ford’s Theater on the night of April 14, Booth decided to strike. He had played Ford’s Theater for the second time just the previous month, and at any rate he was well known; his presence there did not arouse suspicion. Showing his card to a White House footman, he obtained entry to the box where Abraham and Mary Lincoln were enjoying the comedy Our American Cousin. Grant wasn’t there, only Major Henry R. Rathbone and his fiancé, Clara, seated on the far side of the box from where Booth entered around 10 pm. Booth almost certainly ascertained this before entering, by peering through a hole in the door that had been drilled so guards could check on the president without interrupting him. After entering, he secured the door with a wooden bar.

Absorbed in the evening’s entertainment, Lincoln was leaning forward and was unaware of Booth’s approach. The assassin shot him from behind, the bullet entering the left side of his head and lodging beneath an eye; Lincoln would linger through the night, dying a little before 7:30 the next morning. Rathbone leapt to seize Booth, who cut a deep slice in the major’s arm with a large knife before vaulting over the flag-draped rail of the box to the stage below. One foot caught on the flag, and he broke his leg when he landed. Most witnesses say he shouted the motto of Virginia, "Sic semper tyrannis" ("Thus always to tyrants"); others claim he said, "The South is avenged." He may have shouted both before making his leg-dragging escape through a read door.

Doctor Samuel Mudd set the broken leg, and Booth avoided detection in Virginia for two weeks before a cavalry detachment cornered him and co-conspirator David E. Harold in a tobacco shed on the farm of Richard H. Garrett near Port Royal. Garrett’s son claimed his father had been afraid of the men when he acquiesced to their demands for a place to stay that night.

Harold surrendered, but Booth refused. The troopers set the shed on fire, a shot rang out, and Booth fell, mortally wounded. Whether he committed suicide or was shot by Sergeant Boston Corbett is uncertain. Most of those accused of conspiring with him were tried by a military tribunal and hanged, including Mary Surratt, who owned the boarding house where Booth stayed and met with his confederates in the days leading up to the assassination.

Booth had expected to be hailed as a hero of the South and was surprised to find his actions almost universally condemned. While their public expressions of regret were more muted than those of the North, Southerners feared Northern retaliation and dreaded the ascension of Vice President Andrew Johnson of Tennessee to the presidency, a man known to have no love for the Southern plantation class. This last, public role of John Wilkes Booth’s had ended in his death... Or did it?