John Wilkes Booth
While the nation mourned Lincoln's death, federal officials investigated his assassination. The man who had shot Lincoln in Ford's Theater was an actor, John Wilkes Booth. He had fled the theater after the murder. china flightsThe government offered a reward of one hundred thousand dollars to anyone who captured Booth and his helpers. The investigation produced the names of several people who were friends of Booth. One was John Surratt. Like Booth, he supported the southern Confederacy during the Civil War. Another was David Herold, a young man who worked in supra shoesa store in Washington. Others were George Atzerodt, Lewis Paine, Sam Arnold, and Michael O'Laughlin. Most of these men had stayed at a house owned by John Surratt's mother, Mary.
VOICE TWO: A poster offering money for the capture of those involved in Lincoln's killing One by one, in the days light boxfollowing Lincoln's death, these people were arrested. Anyone else who might have had a part in the plot was seized. Soon, hundreds of suspects were being held in jails in and around Washington. At the end of a week, only two of the plotters were still free: David Herold and John Wilkes Booth. Booth broke his leg when he jumped timberland shoesfrom the presidential box to the stage at Ford's Theater. A few hours later, he and Herold stopped at the home of a Doctor Samuel Mudd. They reportedly gave the doctor false names. They asked him to fix Booth's broken leg. Doctor Mudd agreed. And he let the two men sleep at his home. Federal troops chasing the assassins arrested the doctor. They accused him of being part of the plot. VOICE ONE: John Wilkes Booth and David Herold ran and hid for six days. They crossed the Potomac River from Maryland into Virginia. Finally, twelve days after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, soldiers found the two men. They weredie casting hiding in a tobacco barn near the town of Port Royal. Herold agreed to surrender. He came out of the barn with his hands in the air. He shouted again and again that he was innocent. Booth refused to come out. The soldiers set fire to the barn.
VOICE TWO: The fire forced Booth to move close toCHI Hair Straighteners the door. The soldiers could see him now. He was aiming a gun at them. The soldiers had been ordered to capture Booth alive. But one of them raised his gun and shot Booth in the neck. The actor fell. Some of the soldiers ran to the burning barn and pulled him out. They carried him to a nearby house. He died two hours later. VOICE ONE: John Wilkes Booth carried a notebook. Hetimberland boots wrote in it every day. On the day Lincoln was killed, he wrote: "For six months we had worked to kidnap Lincoln. But with the Confederacy being almost lost, something decisive and great must be done. I struck boldly." Booth described how and why he had shot the president. "Our country," Booth wrote, "owed all her troubles to him. And God simply made me the instrument of his punishment." Booth's body was returned to Washington. Men whoair max knew him confirmed that it was the body of John Wilkes Booth. The body was buried under the stone floor of the Washington prison. A few years later, his family received permission to move the body to a cemetery in the city of Baltimore. VOICE TWO: Evidence showed that only a few people were actually involved in the plot against the president. Most had agreed to work with Booth because they believed he planned to kidnap Lincoln, not kill him. Of the hundreds of persons arrested, only eight wereTAPE EDGE MACHINE brought to trial. The secretary of war decided that they would be tried by a military court. He argued that Lincoln had been commander-in-chief of all military forces and had been murdered during wartime.
VOICE ONE: The military commission that tried the case. From left, Judge Joseph Holt, General Robert Foster, Colonel H. L. Burnett, and Colonel C. R. Clendemin The trial began almost two months after the adidas shoesassassination. The prisoners seemed in poor condition. All wore heavy chains on their arms and legs. And the men had been forced to wear thick cloths over their heads. Officials said the cloths were necessary to prevent them from talking to each other. The secretary of war announced that the prisoners could not meet privately with their defense lawyers. They could meet only in the courtroom. Guards could hear everything they said. One of the defense lawyers recognized that the Converse all starjob was hopeless. He said the trial was a contest between the defense lawyers and the whole United States. There was no question, he said, what the military court's decision would be. VOICE TWO: The government tried to prove that Lincoln's assassination was a Confederate plot. Witnesses told how Confederate supporters reportedly planned to cause trouble in the North. But none could prove that Confederate President Jefferson Davis -- or any other southern leader -- played a part in Booth's plot to kill Lincoln. Four hundred witnesses appeared. Many of the important ones had been arrested as suspects. They agreed to give evidence if the government dropped the charges against them. For six weeks, the court heard evidence against the eight prisoners. The prisoners themselves could say nothing. They could only listen.