Abraham Lincoln
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Samuel Arnold, Michael O’Laughlin and John Surratt
- Along with friends Samuel Arnold, Michael O’Laughlin and John Surratt, Booth conspired to kidnap Lincoln and deliver him to the South. On March 17, along with George Atzerodt, David Herold and Lewis Powell, the group met in a Washington bar to plot the abduction of the president three days later.
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The investigators settled on ten individuals they believed were responsible for the crime. One, John Wilkes Booth himself, had been cornered and killed on Garrett's farm on April 26, 1865. Another, John Surratt, had fled the country and would not be tried until 1867. The remaining eight were charged in the conspiracy and tried by a military ...
Nov 30, 2017 · When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, John Wilkes Booth was not acting alone. He had a number of conspirators, four of whom were hanged for their crimes a few months later. In early 1864, a year before the Lincoln assassination, Booth had hatched a plot to kidnap Lincoln and hold him hostage.
Mar 14, 2024 · A new series dramatizes Edwin Stanton’s hunt for John Wilkes Booth and his co-conspirators in the aftermath of the president’s 1865 assassination. Tobias Menzies (right) as Secretary of...
- 2 min
- Vanessa Armstrong
May 9, 2024 · John Wilkes Booth was part of a family of celebrated actors, but he is remembered as the assassin who mortally wounded U.S. Pres. Abraham Lincoln in Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865, as part of a broader conspiracy that included an attempt on the life of Secretary of State William H. Seward.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
- John Wilkes Booth was part of one of the most distinguished acting families in the 19th century United States. His father, Junius Brutus Booth, an...
- John Wilkes Booth was an actor. After an unsuccessful Baltimore, Maryland, theatrical debut in 1856, he played minor roles in Philadelphia until 18...
- John Wilkes Booth was a vigorous supporter of the Southern cause. He was outspoken in his advocacy of slavery and his hatred of U.S. Pres. Abraham...
- John Wilkes Booth fled after shooting U.S. Pres. Abraham Lincoln. During the massive manhunt he was discovered by Federal troops while hiding in th...
- John Wilkes Booth
- David Herold
- George Azterodt
- Lewis Powell
- Mary Surratt
- Michael O'Laughlen
- Samuel Arnold
- Samuel Mudd
- Edmund Spangler
- John Surratt
A member of a famous acting family, and a fierce partisan of the Confederacy, Booth was the subject of a 12-day manhunt through Maryland and Virginia after he shot Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre. Union cavalry pursued him to the Garrett farm, burned down the barn to flush Booth out, then, as he rushed out, killed him with a bullet to the neck.
An impressionable and dull-witted pharmacy clerk, Herold led Booth on the escape route into Virginia. He surrendered at the Garrett farm, was tried and convicted, and was executed by hanging in July 1865.
German-born Azterodt was a carriage painter and boatman who had secretly ferried Confederate spies across Southern Maryland waterways during the war. Recruited by Booth into the conspiracy, he was assigned to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson, but lost his nerve and stayed in a hotel bar, drinking, instead. Azterodt was executed by hanging in July...
Powell was a former Confederate prisoner of war. Tall and strong, he was recruited to provide the muscle for the kidnapping plot. When that plan failed, Booth assigned Powell to kill Secretary of State William Seward. He entered the Seward home and severely injured Seward, Seward’s son, and a bodyguard. Powell was tried and convicted, and was execu...
Surratt owned a boarding house in Washington where the conspirators met. The subject of some controversy, she received the death sentence and was put to death by hanging in July 1865, becoming the first woman executed by the United States.
Booth’s childhood friend was an ex-Confederate soldier. After he turned himself in to the authorities, he was tried as a conspirator, though his role remained unclear. O’Laughlen was sentenced to life in prison and sent to Fort Jefferson, off of Key West, Florida, where he died of yellow fever in 1867.
Another long-time friend of Booth, Arnold was not in Washington at the time of the assassination. However, investigators tied Arnold to Booth’s original kidnapping plot. Sentenced to life in prison, Arnold was pardoned by President Andrew Johnson, and survived until 1906, when he died of tuberculosis.
Prosecutors succeeded in showing that Mudd, a doctor who set Booth’s broken leg during the night of April 14, was well acquainted with Booth before the night of the assassination. He escaped hanging by one vote of the military commission that had been convened to try the conspirators. Like Arnold, Mudd was sentenced to life in prison but pardoned i...
A stagehand and carpenter at Ford’s Theatre who was also known as Edward, Edman, and Ned, Spangler knew Booth well and assisted him on April 14 at the theater. He was not connected to the kidnapping plan, but he was found guilty and sentenced to six years in prison. Pardoned by President Andrew Johnson in 1869, Spangler moved to Maryland, where he ...
Booth’s most valuable conspirator was a Confederate spy with a college education. Surratt introduced Booth to Herold and Azterodt, and conspired with the others to kidnap the president, but was not in Washington several months later when the assassination was carried out. Surratt fled the U.S. when he heard news of the crime, and lived in Europe as...
After the Lincoln assassination conspirators were arrested, federal authorities jailed them in Washington. For seven weeks in May and June 1865, the nation’s attention was riveted on the third floor of Washington’s Old Arsenal Penitentiary (now Fort McNair), where John Wilkes Booth’s conspirators were on trial for their lives.
John Wilkes Booth Didn't Act Alone: The Conspiracy to Kill Lincoln. By: Patrick J. Kiger. John Wilkes Booth went down in history as the killer of President Abraham Lincoln, but the plot that ended Lincoln's life was a vast conspiracy that went far beyond Booth himself. Library of Congress/HowStuffWorks.
