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biography
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1839–65)
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| biography:
| Actor and assassin, born near Bel Air, Maryland, USA. A member of the well-known Booth family of Shakespearean actors, he was a somewhat erratic, if popular actor. He had come to support slavery and the South, and as a member of a Virginia militia company had participated in the arrest and execution of John Brown (1859). In the autumn of 1864 he hatched a plot to kidnap Lincoln, but the scheme failed. He then concocted a plot to assassinate Lincoln, vice-president Andrew Johnson, and secretary of state William Seward. Booth's co-conspirators failed in their attempts on Johnson and Seward, but Booth shot Lincoln in Ford's Theatre (14 Apr 1865) before jumping to the stage and allegedly crying out, ‘Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged!’ He was located and killed 12 days later, although it is not certain whether he was killed by his captors or died by his own hand. Rumours inevitably persisted for years that he had escaped. |
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