John Wilkes Booth: Garnet Character

The real history

John Wilkes Booth was born on May 10, 1838, in Bel Air, Maryland, into a celebrated acting family. His father and two of his brothers were famous performers, and he made his own stage debut at 17. He became a popular actor known for energetic performances.

Booth wanted the Confederacy to win the Civil War. The National Park Service notes that he believed in slavery and white supremacy, and that he secretly shipped the medicine quinine to the South past the Union blockade. In 1864 he began gathering a ring of conspirators to kidnap Lincoln, but the scheme never succeeded.

According to the Miller Center, after Booth heard Lincoln publicly support voting rights for some Black men on April 11, 1865, he plotted with accomplices to kill the president, Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward. On the night of April 14, during the play Our American Cousin, Booth shot Lincoln in the back of the head, jumped to the stage and escaped. Lincoln died the next morning. That night Lewis Powell stabbed Seward and others in Seward's home, while George Atzerodt, assigned to kill Johnson, lost his nerve.

Booth fled south toward Virginia with David Herold, chased by what the Park Service calls the largest manhunt in United States history. On April 26 Union troops found the pair at the Richard Garrett farm. Booth refused to surrender and was fatally shot.

A military commission tried eight people accused in the plot. Four of them, Powell, Atzerodt, Herold and Mary Surratt, were hanged on July 7, 1865. The others went to prison.

Sources

1. The Lincoln Conspirators, Ford's Theatre National Historic Site, National Park Service
2. John Wilkes Booth, National Park Service
3. Abraham Lincoln: Death of the President, Miller Center, University of Virginia

Checked against these sources on October 2, 2026. Spot a mistake? Report an error. How we check facts.