As to the murderer of Lincoln, who was identified as John Wilkes Booth, it was ascertained that he had been inspired by an implacable and sincere fanaticism. Son of a celebrated English tragedian who had lived several years in the United States, John Wilkes Booth was himself an actor of considerable ability, who had frequently played on the very stage which he was to desecrate by one of the most infamous assassinations of modern times. Young, handsome, eloquent, and audacious as he was, Booth had a certain prestige among his companions and great success with the ladies of his profession. He was an enthusiastic Democrat, became a prominent member of the “Knights of the Golden Circle,” and believed in the divine origin of the institution of slavery. He had been among the lynchers of John Brown and frequently boasted of his participation in that crime. He often expressed the wish that all such abolitionists should die on the gallows. He and some others, equally extreme in their views on the slavery question, met frequently at the house of a Mrs. Surratt, who was also fanatically devoted to the Southern cause, and concocted there the plot to murder the President and his associates.
After having performed that part of the plot which he had reserved for himself--the assassination of the President--with almost incredible boldness, Booth fled to Virginia. He had intended to continue his flight until he had reached the extreme South, and possibly Mexico, but his injury prevented him from carrying out this plan. In company with one of his accomplices he hid himself in an isolated barn on the banks of the Rappahannock, hoping that as soon as the first storm of indignation had blown over, the search for the murderer would gradually relax, if not cease altogether, and that he would then have an opportunity to escape. But in this calculation he was mistaken. A roving detachment of federal soldiers discovered him in his hiding-place, during the night of the twenty-sixth of April. His companion, realizing that all resistance would be useless, surrendered immediately. But Booth wanted to sell his life as dearly as possible. He tried to break out and escape from his pursuers, but a pistol-shot brought him down with a fatal wound in his head, from which he soon afterwards died. The assassin who had assaulted and seriously wounded Secretary Seward had, a few days before, been captured at Mrs. Surratt’s house.