John Wilkes Booth was an American stage actor who assassinated United States President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865. A member of the prominent 19th-century Booth theatrical family from Maryland, he was a noted actor who was also a Confederate sympathizer; denouncing President Lincoln, he lamented the then-recent abolition of slavery in the United States.
Edwin Thomas Booth 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 by his relationship with his younger brother, actor John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated the 16th president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln.
Laura Keene was a British stage actress and theatre manager. In her twenty-year career, she became known as the first powerful female manager in New York. She is most famous for being the lead actress in the play Our American Cousin, which was attended by President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theater in Washington on the evening of his assassination.
The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum documents the life of the 16th U.S. president, Abraham Lincoln, and the course of the American Civil War. Combining traditional scholarship with 21st-century showmanship techniques, the museum ranks as one of the most visited presidential libraries. Its library, in addition to housing an extensive collection on Lincoln, also houses the collection of the Illinois State Historical Library, founded by the state in 1889. The library and museum is located in the state capital of Springfield, Illinois, and is overseen as an agency of state government. It is not affiliated with the U.S. National Archives and its system of libraries.
The National Theatre in the United States is located in downtown Washington, D.C., just east of the White House, and functions as a venue for live stage productions with seating for 1,676. Despite its name, it is not a governmentally funded national theatre, but operated by a private, non-profit organization. It is the second-oldest continuously operating theater in the United States.
The Petersen House is a 19th-century federal style row house in the United States in Washington, D.C., located at 516 10th Street NW, several blocks east of the White House. On April 15, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln died there after being shot the previous evening at Ford's Theatre, located across the street.
Henry Reed Rathbone was a United States military officer and lawyer who was present at the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln; Rathbone and his fiancé Clara Harris were sitting with Lincoln and Lincoln's wife Mary Todd Lincoln when the president was shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theatre. When Rathbone attempted to apprehend Booth, Booth stabbed and seriously wounded him. Rathbone may have played a part in Booth's leg injury. Although he recovered, Rathbone's mental state deteriorated afterwards, and in 1883, he killed his wife, Clara, in a fit of madness, later being declared insane by doctors and living the rest of his life in a lunatic asylum.
On April 14, 1865, Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, was shot by John Wilkes Booth while attending the play Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. Shot in the head as he watched the play, Lincoln died of his wounds the following day at 7:22 am in the Petersen House opposite the theater. He was the first U.S. president to be assassinated. His funeral and burial were marked by an extended period of national mourning.
Charles Augustus Leale was a surgeon in the Union Army during the American Civil War and the first doctor to arrive at the presidential box at Ford's Theatre on April 14, 1865, after John Wilkes Booth fatally shot President Abraham Lincoln in the head. His prompt treatment allowed Lincoln to live until the next morning. Leale continued to serve in the army until 1866, after which he returned to his home town of New York City where he established a successful private practice and became involved in charitable medical care. One of the last surviving witnesses to Lincoln's death, Leale died in 1932 at the age of 90.
The Booth family was an English American theatrical family of the 19th century. Its most known members were brothers Edwin Booth, one of the leading actors of his day, and John Wilkes Booth, also a fellow actor most remembered for assassinating Abraham Lincoln.
John Thompson Ford was an American theater manager and politician during the nineteenth century. He is most notable for operating Ford's Theatre at the time of the Abraham Lincoln assassination.
Louis Frederick Schade was a German-American lawyer and newspaper editor who was prominent in political and social circles of Washington, D.C., in the United States. He is most famous for defending Confederate States of America Major Henry Wirz in a war crimes trial in 1865. Wirz was condemned to death for his supervision of the prisoner-of-war camp.
The Lincoln assassination flags were the five flags which decorated the presidential box of Ford's Theatre, and which were present during John Wilkes Booth's assassination of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865. Lincoln and his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, were in this box watching a production of Our American Cousin. Booth's spur was allegedly caught by one of the flags when he began his escape from the theatre and broke his leg; this part of the story, however, is disputed. Three of the flags were American flags and the other two were Treasury Guard flags. According to Civil War historians, three of these five original flags are currently accounted for.
The Day Lincoln Was Shot is a 1998 American television film based on the book by Jim Bishop. It is a re-creation of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, co-written and directed by John Gray, and stars Lance Henriksen as Abraham Lincoln and Rob Morrow as John Wilkes Booth.
There are many coincidences with the assassinations of U.S. Presidents Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy, and these have become a piece of American folklore. The list of coincidences appeared in the mainstream American press in 1964, a year after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, having appeared prior to that in the GOP Congressional Committee Newsletter. In the 1970s, Martin Gardner examined the list in an article in Scientific American, pointing out that several of the claimed coincidences were based on misinformation. Gardner's version of the list contained 16 items; many subsequent versions have circulated much longer lists.
Our American Cousin is a 2008 opera in three acts by American composer Eric Sawyer with libretto by poet John Shoptaw. The opera depicts the assassination of Abraham Lincoln from the standpoint of the actors presenting Tom Taylor's play of the same name at Ford's Theatre at the end of the American Civil War. It aims to offer something new in the realm of American contemporary opera, an American myth told in an unfamiliar way, with both poetic and musical language drawing from the past but refracted through the present.
Peter Taltavull played a minor role in the events surrounding the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. John Wilkes Booth stopped at Taltavull's Star Saloon just before going to Ford's Theatre next door and assassinating President Abraham Lincoln.
The Mary E. Surratt Boarding House in Washington, D.C. was the site of meetings of conspirators to kidnap and subsequently to assassinate U.S. President Abraham Lincoln. It was operated as a boarding house by Mary Surratt from September 1864 to April 1865.
Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination That Changed America Forever is a book by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard concerning the 1865 assassination of U.S. president Abraham Lincoln. The book was released on September 27, 2011, and is the first of the Killing series of popular history books by O'Reilly and Dugard.
