John Wilkes Booth

Booth, John Wilkes (1838–65), U.S. actor who assassinated Abraham Lincoln. A son of the actor Junius Brutus Booth, he was a Confederate sympathizer; eager to avenge the South's defeat, he shot President Lincoln during a performance at Ford's Theater, Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865. Booth, breaking a leg, escaped but was finally trapped in a barn near Bowling Green, Va., where he either was shot or shot himself.