John Wilkes Booth: A Brief Biography

After that, the book speaks to how John Wilkes Booth and his accomplices planned and executed the assassination of President Lincoln. The book then details John Wilkes Booth and his perils of getting away to a place where he can seek refuge from the manhunt. Next, Andrew Johnson is sworn in and takes the office ofhte presidency as the seventeenth president. Booth continues running for twelve days following the assassination of President Lincoln. It was on the twelfth day that Booth was apprehended in a tobacco warehouse on Garrett Farm. After setting the barn containing John Wilkes Booth ablaze, a firefight ensued. Though the soldiers were ordered not to kill John Wilkes Booth, a corpral named Boston Cobrett shot and killed John Wilkes Booth, claiming that God has instructed him to do it. With the head of the conspiracy dead, there were still other people that were somehow involved with the plot to assassinate Lincoln, Mary Surratt, David Herald, George Atzerodt, and Lewis Powell faced trial on July 6, 1865, and were all four hanged on July 7,

April 14, 1865, Friday, in the theatre Lincoln who was attending to a performance of “ Our American Cousin” and also brought Gen. Grant along to the performance. John Wilkes Booth found out that Lincoln was attending to the evening performance. Booth, then held a meeting with his partners and notified them about his master plan to kill the president in the Ford’s Theatre. One of the partners of of Booth, name George Atzerodt, who was assigned to killed Vice President, and another partner name Lewis Powell who was assigned to killed Secretary of State William Seward. The master mind, Booth who plan to attack all of them around the time of 10:45 pm.

Some of the key events from an excerpt from the book Chasing Lincoln’s Killer, a historical thriller written by James L. Swanson that outraged John Wilkes Booth and led him to assassinate President Lincoln, was the Union victory and Lincoln allowing blacks and former slaves to vote, and President Lincoln going to see a play. In the text entitled Chasing Lincoln’s Killer, the author shows us that Booth detested President Lincoln’s idea that blacks and former slaves would be allowed to vote, “He turned to his companion, David Herold, and objected to the idea that blacks and former slaves would become voting citizens. In the darkness Booth threatened to kill Lincoln: ‘Now, by God, I’ll put him through.’” (Swanson Paragraph 7). This shows that John Wilkes Booth objects to President Lincoln’s idea of how slaves and black people can become voting citizens of the US.

John Wilks Booth, an actor and hater of the south and blacks, makes plans to tear apart the United State’s government by planning his assassins timing to kill part of Lincoln’s Cabinet along with the president’s death. However, his original plan involved only capturing President Lincoln, then holding him hostage in exchange for confederate prisoners of war. But not long before his plans were going to take place,

He believes that God sent him to be the Confederate savior, and that his new plan will bring him widespread fame in the South. On the evening of April 15, 1865, Wilkes accidently runs into Bella in the theater. Afraid she may hinder his plan, he locks her in a cabinet in the basement, tied up and gagged. That night, Wilkes enters the theater and shoots Lincoln. After jumping off the balcony onto the stage and breaking his foot, Wilkes flees on horseback.

The book essentially goes over Lincoln’s killer and his plans and what his thoughts were before, during and after the shooting of President Lincoln. It is a book that mainly focuses on John Wilkes Booth , the killer, and his plans and how it panned out. John Wilkes Booth was an actor and lived a wealthy life, he was someone who was considered very handsome by many and someone with fine clothes. His tactics per se were not well planned out. John Wilkes Booth had tried to kidnap President Lincoln before, but he failed to do so he planned on bringing Lincoln to the South and demanding peace, Boothe had recently heard about the appearance the Lincolns would be given at the Ford 's theatre, he knew the Lincoln’s would have a box inside the theatre where he would sit . Although he committed the act of assassinating President Lincoln he did not plan on how he was going to get through to him,the obstacles he would have to overcome, he just knew he would do whatever he needed to do to get the task done. Booth was someone who did not like Lincoln’s plans for America, especially the south. He yelled “ The South is avenged” after killing the president of the United States. Not only were his thoughts on ending the President but also the Vice President and the Secretary of State because of what they stood for.

There was a total of ten conspirators who had a role in the conspiracy. These conspirators had other motives that varied slightly from John Wilkes Booth’s motive. Lewis Powell, who stabbed the Secretary of State William Seward, agreed to participate in Booth’s plot to assassinate powerful government officials in hope to turn the federal government of the United States into chaos. Another conspirator named David Herold, was barely an adult, at age 23, when he agreed to participate in the plot to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln and other government officials. When describing David Herold, Dr. Samuel McKim stated, “In mind, I consider him about eleven years of age.” David Herold was easily persuaded by other people, and when he met John Wilkes Booth, he did not have the proper judgement to disagree and not follow through with John Wilkes Booth’s plan. Other conspirators, such as Samuel B. Arnold initially thought that the original plan was a good idea, but as the plan evolved, he began to be opposed to the whole plan, stating in his confession made on April 18th, 1865, “I said no I wanted to have a chance and I intended to have it, that he could be the leader of the party but not my executioner.” Booth was trying to convince Samuel Arnold to go along with his plan to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln. But Samuel Arnold had

Booth was now in the box of the theatre. On April 14, 1865, just after 10 p.m., Booth pulled a .44-calibre derringer and shot President Lincoln in the back of the head. “He grappled briefly with Union officer Maj. Henry Rathbone (who, along with his fiancée, was in the box as the Lincoln’s guest), swung himself over the balustrade, and leaped off it, reportedly shouting, “Sic semper tyrannis!” (the motto of the state of Virginia, meaning “Thus always to tyrants!”) or “The South is avenged!” or both” (Encyclopedia Britannica 2017). Booth next jumped off the stage, breaking his leg in the process, but managed to make it to his getaway horse before anyone in the shocked crowd could stop him (Biography April 28, 2017). The attempt to kill Seward did not succeed, but Lincoln died shortly after seven o’clock the following morning. (Encyclopedia Britannica 2017).

They had hoped that with the capture of the president that the Union would release captured Confederate soldiers in exchange for the safe return of the president back to the Union (law2.umkc.edu). Though his plan was ultimately foiled with General Robert E. Lee’s surrender (law2.umkc.edu). At which point it became clear to Booth that the only way to avenge the South was to murder the president (law2.umkc.edu).

In the article, Abraham Lincoln’s Assassination it states that there had been a group of 7 that were conspiring to kidnap the President, led by John Wilkes Booth, but that plan never worked out like Booth planned. March 20th 1865 which was the day the kidnapping was supposed to happen but Lincoln never did show up to the spot that Booth and

On the fateful night of April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln attended a special performance of the comedy, Our American Cousin, accompanied by his wife, Mary Todd, Major Henry Rathbone, and Rathbone’s fiancee, Clara Harris. Little did he know that a figure, armed with a drawn pistol, would step into his presidential box and fatally wound him to appease the appetite for vengeance shared by many Confederate sympathizers. Yelling “Sic semper tyrannis,” the figure scrambled to safety in the dark of the night after tasting the short-lived sweet taste of revenge, while his accomplice ran for his life after a failed assassination attempt of Secretary William Seward. This assassin had embarked on

John Wilkes Booth, born May 10, 1838, was an actor who performed throughout the country in many plays. He was the lead in some of William Shakespeare's most famous works. Additionally, he was a racist and Southern sympathizer during the Civil War. He hated Abraham Lincoln who represented everything Booth was against. Booth blamed Lincoln for all the South's ills. He wanted revenge.

On April 14, Lincoln held a Cabinet congregation to talk over post-war reconstructing exhaustively. President Lincoln wanted to have southern state governments in operation prior to Congress met in December in order to keep away from the oppression of the vengeful Radical Republicans. That same night, during the time that Lincoln was watching a play at Ford’s Theatre, a fanatical Southern actor, John Wilkes Booth, crept up at the back Lincoln and shot him in the head. Lincoln died the following day, leaving the South with little wish for a non-revengeful Reconstruction.

John Wilkes Booth was born in Maryland and remained in the North during the Civil War. However, he sympathized for the Southern Confederate states.

He thought that God had put him here to correct the tyranny of Lincoln. He felt the need to justify why he was fighting in the war so he starting taking small jobs for the Confederate Underground. It was during this time that he came up with the plan to kidnap Lincoln and hold him for ransom. He knew Lincoln was not protected and often traveled alone. So he thought it was more than feasible to carry out his plan. He recruited several co-conspirators to help him including John Surratt, George Atzerodt, David Herold, Lewis Powell, Samuel Arnold and Mike O’Laughlen. They had nothing in common except the fact that they all admired Booth. Two weeks after Lincoln’s Second Inauguration, Booth laid out his plan of kidnapping him out of his theatre box, tying him up and lower him onto the stage in front of an audience including soldiers and many police outside of the theatre. They thought he was mad. On April 3rd, the war was over. Robert E. Lee had surrendered and the kidnapping plan ruined. So Booth began to hatch another plan of assassinating the president. One the morning of April 14th, 1865, Lincoln awoke gitty and happy, Booth awoke late and to his amazement found out that Lincoln would be at the Ford