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The Man Inside The Tobacco Barn

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In April of 1865, Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth president of the United States, was assassinated at Ford’s Theater in Washington, DC. His assassin was John Wilkes Booth, who was a very famous actor at the time. Less than two weeks after he committed the horrible deed, Booth was cornered by the Sixteenth New York Cavalry in a tobacco barn in Virginia. John Wilkes Booth refused to surrender, so the forces responded by setting the barn ablaze. Although the Cavalry wanted to keep Booth alive, Sergeant Boston Corbett defied orders and shot Booth in the neck. The gunshot proved to be fatal and Booth died a few hours later. The body of Booth was identified by Dr. John Frederick May, who examined the body in Washington, DC. He may have …show more content…

He then secretly saw a doctor, and continued fleeing from the authorities while being hidden in the back of a wagon. Booth carried papers with him at all times that identified him as the assassin of Lincoln, although they were very risky and could cause his demise. One day, during his escape in the wagon, Booth was informed that the soldiers were approaching. As he fled the wagon, he dropped his papers. When he was back in safety, John Wilkes Booth sent a messenger to go and retrieve the lost papers. While the messenger was searching for the papers, another person informed Booth that soldiers were once again approaching. Booth had to retreat from his hideout once more and therefore could not wait for the messenger to return with his papers. While Booth was somewhere else, the messenger himself was cornered and killed by the cavalry in the tobacco barn, since the papers seemed to legitimately identify their holder as the infamous John Wilkes Booth. Thus, his unfortunate messenger was the recipient of the fatal gunshot, not Booth himself.
John Wilkes Booth was able to escape to the southwest instead of being shot in the tobacco barn shortly after he assassinated Abraham Lincoln. He was living under the pseudonym “John St. Helen” while residing with his friend, Finis Bates, in Texas in 1877. While St. Helen was very ill, he confessed to Bates that he himself killed Lincoln. When St. Helen recovered, Bates questioned him about his

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