John Wilkes Booth

John Wilkes Booth (1838-65), American actor, assassin of United States President Abraham Lincoln. He was the son of the actor Junius Brutus Booth, born in Bel Air, Maryland. From 1860 to 1863 he was a successful actor of Shakespearean roles. He was a violent partisan of the cause of the South in the American Civil War and in 1864 organized an unsuccessful conspiracy to abduct President Abraham Lincoln. On the night of April 14, 1865, while Lincoln was sitting in a box at Ford's Theatre, Washington, D.C., Booth shot him through the head. Booth jumped down to the stage, breaking his leg, but escaped from the theater. He was overtaken 12 days later in a barn near Bowling Green, Virginia, and was shot there or possibly committed suicide.