Ciekawostka: John Wilkes Booth’s brother once saved the life of Abraham Lincoln’s son

Evidence: 69 • authority: 72

Edwin Thomas Booth (November 13, 1833 – June 7, 1893) was an American stage actor and theatrical manager who toured throughout the United States and the major capitals of Europe, performing Shakespearean plays. In 1869, he founded Booth's Theatre in New York. He is considered by many to be the greatest American actor of the 19th century. However, his achievements are often overshadowed in modern discourse by his relationship with his younger brother, actor John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated the 16th president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln.

Evidence: 69 • authority: 72

John Wilkes Booth (May 10, 1838 – April 26, 1865) was an American stage actor who assassinated United States president Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865. During the American Civil War he served as a Confederate spy; he opposed the then-recent abolition of slavery in the United States. Booth was a noted actor from the prominent 19th-century Booth theatrical family from Maryland. During the Civil War, he was a Confederate sympathizer who denounced Lincoln and joined the Confederate Secret Service. Originally, Booth and his co-conspirators had plotted to kidnap Lincoln to aid the Confederacy before later deciding to murder him, Vice President Andrew Johns…

Evidence: 60 • authority: 72

On April 14, 1865, Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, was shot in the head while attending a play at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C.. He died the following day, six weeks into his second term and a month before the conclusion of the American Civil War. Lincoln was watching the play Our American Cousin with his wife Mary Todd, Major Henry Rathbone, and Rathbone's fiancé Clara Harris when John Wilkes Booth, an actor and Confederate sympathizer, shot him from behind. Lincoln was taken to the Petersen House across the street, where he died the following morning. With Union victory imminent, Booth and his conspirators, including Lewis Powell, David Herold, and George At…

Evidence: 60 • authority: 72

Mary Elizabeth Surratt (née Jenkins; May 4, 1823 – July 7, 1865) was an American boarding house owner in Washington, D.C., who was convicted of taking part in the conspiracy which led to the assassination of U.S. president Abraham Lincoln in 1865. Sentenced to death by hanging, she became the first woman executed by the U.S. federal government. Surratt maintained her innocence until her death, and the case against her was and remains controversial. She was the mother of John Surratt, who was later tried in the conspiracy, but was not convicted. Born in Waterloo, Maryland in the 1820s, she attended school in Alexandria, Virginia. She wed John Harrison Surratt in 1840 and had three children w…

Evidence: 58 • authority: 80

John Wilkes Booth and Abraham Lincoln: The Reenactment of a Murder

Evidence: 58 • authority: 80

Lincoln's Last Night: Abraham Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth,and the Last 36 Hours Before the Assassination, by Alan Axelrod; American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies, by Michael W. Kauffman; Blood on the Moon: The Assassination of Abraham…

Evidence: 58 • authority: 80

Booth, John Wilkes (1838-1865), actor and assassin of President Abraham Lincoln

Evidence: 52 • authority: 72

Lewis Thornton Powell (April 22, 1844 – July 7, 1865) was an American Confederate soldier who attempted to assassinate William Henry Seward as part of the Lincoln assassination plot. Wounded at the Battle of Gettysburg, he later served in Mosby's Rangers before working with the Confederate Secret Service in Maryland. John Wilkes Booth recruited him into a plot to kidnap Lincoln and turn the president over to the Confederacy, but then decided to assassinate Lincoln, Seward, and Vice President Andrew Johnson instead, and assigned Powell the task to kill Seward. Co-conspirator David Herold was to guide Powell to Seward's home, then help him escape, but fled before Powell was able to exit the S…

Evidence: 52 • authority: 80

John Wilkes Booth in the Bollinger Lincoln Collection

Evidence: 52 • authority: 80

Fortune’s Fool: The Life of John Wilkes Booth

Evidence: 52 • authority: 80

American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies

Evidence: 43 • authority: 72

Robert Todd Lincoln (August 1, 1843 – July 26, 1926) was an American lawyer and businessman. He was the eldest son of President Abraham Lincoln and First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln and the only one of their four sons to live past age 18. Lincoln became a business lawyer and company president, serving as both United States Secretary of War (1881–1885) and the U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain (1889–1893). Lincoln was born in Springfield, Illinois, and graduated from Harvard College. He then served on the staff of General Ulysses S. Grant as a captain in the Union army in the closing days of the American Civil War. After the war was over, Lincoln married Mary Eunice Harlan, and they had three chil…