Around ten minutes after 9:00 p.m. on Good Friday, April 14, 1865, the celebrated stage actor John Wilkes Booth entered the alleyway in back of Washington, DC’s famous Ford’s Theatre.
The British comedy, Our American Cousin, had been underway for more than an hour.
At this time, Booth, only 26 years old, was one of the most famous and best paid actors in America.
Holding the reins, Booth led his rented horse to the back door of the theatre, calling softly for a stage carpenter and scene changer named Ned Spangler. It was a cold, rainy night.
Spangler quickly appeared and began chatting with the actor.
While he was speaking to Spangler, the call boy, a young lad named Will Ferguson, appeared in the back doorway of the theatre, announcing that Act Two of the play was about to begin. He overheard Booth and Spangler speaking.
“Ned, help me all you can, will you?” Booth asked the carpenter.
This remark, overheard by other crew members as well, would cost the hapless carpenter dearly in the months and years ahead.
As Act Two began, Spangler, the prompter John DeBonay, just seventeen years old, and a man named John Selecman went outside to speak with Booth again. Click here to purchase the book on Amazon.
Booth handed the reins of his horse to Spangler and asked him to hold them for a while, and then he, DeBonay and Selecman went to the far right of the back stage.
With the play going on, they couldn’t move across the stage even with the back curtain down.
As a result, Booth lifted a trap door at the right corner of the back stage, just inside the outside door, that led to a passageway under the stage and near the orchestra pit.
Booth and DeBonay were able to cross underneath the stage to the left side without being seen, coming up in the wings beneath the presidential box.
Spangler, who was needed for the many scene changes in the play, didn’t have time to stand there holding the reins of Booth’s horse, so he asked another stagehand to do it, who refused, and then finally laid eyes on young “Peanut John” Burroughs who was in charge of the back door.
“Hold Mr. Booth’s horse,” he told the boy.
Spangler promised Peanut John that Booth would pay him fifty cents if he did what he was told. The boy agreed.
For the next forty-five minutes or so, Burroughs would sit outside in the light rain, holding the reins of Booth’s horse.
From the wings of the theatre, Booth and DeBonay headed down the narrow side passage way that ran along the south wall of the theatre and came out on Tenth Street, directly in front of the Star Saloon next-door to the theatre.
Witnesses saw Booth enter the saloon and order a whisky and water, drinking it down in one big gulp.
Yet if he was nervous, no one seemed to notice.
Booth sauntered out of the saloon’s front door, smoking a cigar. He then strutted into the theatre front lobby. Once there, Booth chatted amiably with the doorman, John Buckingham, and asked him what time it was.
By this time, Booth was likely a little drunk. He had been drinking most of the day, off and on.
As it was getting close to ten o’clock, Booth ambled over to the ticket window on the right side of the lobby where young Harry Ford, the brother of the theatre owner, John Ford, was counting the evening’s receipts.
Even at this late stage, when most people would be extremely nervous, Booth was capable of having a little fun.
He placed his cigar on the ledge of the ticket window, and, according to Ford, announced in a mocking way, “Whoe’r this cigar dares displace must meet Wilkes Booth face to face.”
It was an obscure allusion to a comedy both men knew, and Booth got a laugh out of Ford.
Booth walked back to the center of the lobby, brushed off a young ticket taker who demanded a ticket from him, asked again what time it was, and then walked to the back of the ground-floor orchestra seating.
He stared over the heads of the audience at the presidential box diagonally opposite. Incredibly, Booth was heard humming quietly to himself.
Still, his actions did arouse some suspicion.
A former Metropolitan policeman who helped out in the ticket booth, Joe Sessford, walked over to the boy taking tickets.
“I wonder what he’s up to,” the ex-cop muttered out loud. “He was in here this afternoon, too.”
Act II of the play came to an end around 9:50, the house gas lights came up and the play’s second, briefer intermission was announced. Half of the house, it seemed, and more than a few members of the cast, jumped up from their seats and quickly repaired next-door to the Star Saloon for another quick drink.
As Spangler and other stagehands rearranged the set, Booth walked over to the ticket boy and bummed a plug of tobacco off of him. He was also watching the large clock in the lobby closely. (Click here to purchase the book.)
Although likely tipsy, Booth had planned his move down to the minute.
Booth knew the play by heart, and he knew that, at roughly 10:15, there would be only one actor on the stage – the journeyman character actor and his rival in romance, Harry Hawk – and that this was the moment when Hawk would deliver the biggest laugh line of the evening.
The abstemious Abraham Lincoln, sitting with his wife Mary in the presidential box above the stage on the right, stayed in his seat, looking nonchalantly over the balcony of his box at the audience below.
Setting the Scene
Booth was back in the Star Saloon, drinking again. Incredibly, so were all three of Lincoln’s attendants – his police bodyguard John Parker, the carriage driver Ned Burke and footman Charles Forbes.
The audience members only had a few minutes for refreshments, however.
At around ten o’clock, they were called back to the theatre for the start of the third act.
Apparently only Charles Forbes, Lincoln’s trusted valet, had enough sense of duty to return to his post outside the door leading to the presidential box.
No one knows for sure, but the police bodyguard Parker likely tarried in the saloon.
Parker would only discover what had happened to the president when he staggered into the Washington Police Station, sometime after midnight, with a prostitute named Lizzie Williams he had arrested (allegedly for not granting him free favors).
Burke would eventually return to his carriage, like Parker oblivious to what was happening inside the theatre.
As the patrons hurried out of the saloon to their seats, Booth ran into an old friend, Edwin Brink, who was the last person to speak with Booth before what came next.
“Ted, old fellow, I’m going to have my name hung in a place where my father’s never was,” Brink would later claim Booth said. Booth was referring to his late father, Junius Brutus Booth, until his death in 1857 considered the greatest actor on the American stage.
Brink and Booth left the saloon and walked back into the theatre lobby together.
Brink went to the left, and Booth followed him up the narrow staircase to the balcony seats in the Dress Circle.
It was precisely 10:10 p.m.
At the top of the stairs, Booth walked quickly along the south wall of the theatre towards the presidential box. He passed by a friend, Abner Brady, who owned the gym on Pennsylvania Avenue where Booth had been working out, but didn’t even give him a nod in greeting.
Directly in front of the outer door of the presidential box, watching the play, sat two army officers, Alexander Crawford and Theodore McGowan. The chairs of the two men were blocking Booth’s way.
In his diary later, Booth would, with characteristic exaggeration, refer to these men as a “thousand” of the president’s friends he had to somehow pass through.
Booth gruffly insisted on going by and the two men reluctantly moved their chairs so he could pass, one of them thinking to himself that Booth was drunk.
Booth paused for a moment, removed his hat, and looked down at the play in progress. The distance was not great, perhaps twenty feet.
For a brief moment, Booth caught the eye of an actress he knew on stage, the southern belle Helen Truman, playing the character of Augusta, who subtly nodded a hello.
On the opposite side of the theatre, another witness, James Ferguson, the owner of the Greenback Saloon on the north side of the theatre where Booth often ate lunch, was watching Booth’s every move.
He had come to the theatre precisely to see General Ulysses S. Grant, who had been expected to attend the play with President Lincoln this evening but who, instead, left Washington that afternoon. With the help of his girlfriend’s opera glasses, Ferguson had been eyeing the presidential box all evening. He knew Booth well, and was now perplexed about what the actor was doing there standing outside the presidential box.
The police bodyguard Parker was not present, likely still in the saloon next-door, but loyal Charles Forbes, Lincoln’s personal assistant, was back in his seat outside the outer door leading to the presidential box.
There was a single step down from the aisle where Booth stood to the level of the doorway entrance, and Booth took it.
Forbes, a burly immigrant from Ireland, looked up at the bleary-eyed actor. He was not a guard but his expression no doubt expressed the question of what Booth wanted.
“This is the president’s box, sir, no one is permitted to enter,” Forbes whispered to Booth.
“I am a senator,” Booth reportedly lied, not missing a beat. “Mr. Lincoln has sent for me.”
Booth then reached into his pocket and took out a calling card of some kind as a pretext. The young Washington socialite Lucy Hale, Booth’s secret fiancée, later believed it was one of her senator father’s calling cards that Booth used.
In any case, the pretext worked.
Forbes, assuming Booth had permission to enter, nodded for Booth to pass.
In Forbes’s defense, two other men had come to the presidential box earlier that evening, bearing messages for the president – one a newspaper reporter. Both had been allowed to enter without incident.
Booth reached for the door knob, on the left side closest to the theatre, and tried to open the door. But it was stuck. He had to lean against it and give a little shove with his knee, forcing it open.
Booth quickly entered the narrow passageway leading to the private boxes, and closed the outside door behind him. He then found a wooden shaft lying behind the door along the base of the wall.
Putting one end of the shaft into a small niche cut in the plaster wall behind the door to the left, Booth jammed the other end tight against the door knob, effectively blocking the door from being opened from the outside. Later, the shaft had to be pried away before anyone could enter the presidential box.
Getting into Position
It was now almost 10:30. Booth was inside the short, narrow passageway, or vestibule, which was about four feet wide and eight feet long, that led to the two inner doors that opened to the two boxes.
Both of these inner doors normally had locks on them but at least one of them was broken. The theatre crew had mislaid the keys and, just a few days earlier, found it necessary to force the locks to get into the boxes.
The two boxes also normally had a partition between them separating box number seven and box number eight, but the theatre crew had removed it earlier in the day to create the state box.
Box number seven, closest to the audience, was much smaller, with just enough room for two large chairs. Box number eight was larger, extending to the right toward the stage. Each of the boxes had a large opening above the stage, below an arch from which hung large gold and white satin curtains pulled to the sides.
A wooden column, painted white, separated the two openings. In front of the openings a curved wooden balustrade about three feet high, topped with a long red velvet cushion, kept the box patrons from falling.
Covering the wooden balustrade were two American flags, draped carefully over the top. In the center, below the pillar, workers had installed a new painting of George Washington.
Booth stood silently in the dimly lit passageway. At the end of the passage were the doors to the boxes, one on the left and one straight ahead. The door on the left, which was closed and probably locked, led to box number seven.
Later, investigators found a small hole bored into it, about four and a half feet up from the floor, through which Booth could have peered and seen Lincoln. One of the disputed points of what happened next was whether Booth or an accomplice had bored that hole earlier that day or whether it had existed before.
The son of Harry Ford, one of the theatre employees, would later insist the hole had been there for some time and was used by management to monitor box patrons without disturbing them; on the other hand, a gimlet, a carpentry tool for boring holes, was later found in Booth’s room at the National Hotel.
The door directly ahead led into box number eight; it was open and slightly ajar.
The Performance of a Lifetime
Booth could hear the actors on stage through the doorway. He stepped silently down the carpeted passageway, pausing in front of the door.
Peering in and looking slightly to his left, Booth could see that Lincoln sat just a few steps, about four feet, from the doorway opening. He was in his upholstered rocking chair set back a small distance from the balcony.
Lincoln and his wife were enjoying themselves immensely. Mary was once again holding her husband’s hand.
“What will Miss Harris think of my hanging on to you so,” Mary asked coyly. Lincoln smiled.
“Why, she will think nothing about it.”
On stage, the Lincolns watched as all of the actors except for Harry Hawk strutted off the stage. From their position right above the stage, the Lincolns watched the action closely.
“I am aware, Mr. Trenchard, you are not used to the manners of good society, and that, alone, will excuse the impertinence of which you have been guilty,” huffed the character of Mrs. Mountchessington as she strutted off stage right.
The back of Lincoln’s head was directly in front of Booth. Mrs. Lincoln sat next to him on his right.
To the right, sitting on the other side of the column that divided the two boxes, about ten feet from Lincoln, sat the Lincoln’s two guests – the Washington socialite Clara Harris and her fiancé, Major Henry Rathbone. Harris sat in an upholstered chair and Rathbone on a small sofa next to her. All were transfixed by the action on the stage.
No one noticed Booth hovering silently in the doorway. The moment had finally arrived, the moment when, Booth’s biographer would later write, Booth would deliver the “performance of a lifetime.”
Booth held a single-shot .44 caliber Derringer in his right hand. In his left, he clutched a long dagger with the word “Liberty” engraved on it, a backup weapon in case the single-shot Derringer misfired. As usual, Booth was waiting for his cue, the moment when the actor Harry Hawk would say his famous laugh line.
“Don’t know the manners of good society, eh?” Hawk suddenly bellowed after the woman. “Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal—you sockdologizing old man-trap!”
The audience exploded in laughter. Lincoln turned his head slightly to the left, watching the audience.
It was time.
At the sound of the laughter, Booth pushed the narrow door open further.
He glanced to his right at Major Rathbone, took two steps forward, and reached out so the Derringer was just six inches or less from the back of Lincoln’s head.
Lincoln may have heard him enter because witnesses testified that the president turned his head slightly to the left, looking down towards the orchestra below, with his hand leaning on the balustrade railing.
Booth squeezed the trigger.
A loud gunshot ricocheted throughout the theatre. The president immediately slumped forward, his head dropping toward his chest.
The slow-moving .41 caliber bullet, traveling at just 400 feet per second, had entered the lower half of Lincoln’s skull slightly to the left of the centerline, lodging behind one of his eyes.
The physicians who examined Lincoln and later performed an autopsy did not agree on where the bullet came to rest, behind his left or right eye, and so the path the bullet took remains uncertain to this day.
The Leap to the Stage
The explosive laughter in the theatre had dulled the sound of the shot but white smoke instantly filled the box, briefly blinding Rathbone.
Nevertheless, the major instantly leapt to his feet and sprang at Booth, grabbing him from behind and pulling him back from the railing.
Booth dropped the Derringer on the floor of the presidential box and, twisting around, raised his dagger. There was a brief struggle.
“Let me go of me, or I will kill you!” Booth hissed at the major.
“No, I will not!”
The major grabbed for Booth’s throat but the actor, who worked out regularly at Brady’s gym near the White House, was able to break free from the major’s grasp.
“I might as well have attempted to hold a giant,” Rathbone would say later. “He seemed endowed with sinews of steel.”
Booth stabbed at Rathbone’s chest with the razor-sharp, double-edged dagger.
The major instinctively raised his left arm to parry the blow upward, but that only resulted in Booth’s knife slicing through Rathbone’s forearm and bicep from his elbow to his shoulder, narrowly missing his brachial artery.
Within seconds, there was blood everywhere.
Without hesitating, Booth then quickly stepped up on the velvet-covered balustrade that overlooked the stage. He did not, as later illustrations would portray it, “vault” over the ledge like a gymnast but rather awkwardly lowered himself partially down the front side of the box, gripping the decorative flags with both hands and dropping down only the last six or seven feet onto the stage.
Yet Rathbone managed to catch hold of Booth’s coat as he went over the balustrade, knocking him off balance, and then one of Booth’s spurs caught on the decorative flag draped over the balcony.
As a result, Booth landed hard on the green stage carpet, his boots making a loud crash that was heard backstage. He quickly stood up.
“Sic semper tyrannis!” Booth bellowed — thus always to tyrants, the motto of the Virginia Commonwealth.
In an entry in his diary, written a few days later when he was on the run, Booth claimed he had said these words before he had fired. Booth was responding to newspaper denunciations of him as a coward who had shot an unarmed man. Yet this scenario is unlikely. Such a shout would have startled Lincoln.
Hawk, the actor closest to Booth but facing away from him at the moment the shot was fired, yelling his insult off stage right, thought he heard Booth say the whole phrase from the box, Sic semper tyrannis.
One eyewitness, James Ferguson, who claimed to have witnessed the entire event, insisted Booth said the words from the stage. Another patron who sat only a few feet away from the outer door, Army Captain Theodore McGowan, writing three days later in the New York Tribune, also reported that Booth had yelled the words from the stage.
The leap from the stage did not go well. In a diary entry after the assassination, Booth wrote that he broke his leg during the fall and that, as he rode away later, he could feel “the bones of my leg tearing the flesh at every jump.”
In later testimony, Dr. Samuel Mudd stated that he examined Booth’s leg later that night and found only a simple fracture two inches above the left ankle, not a compound fracture that pierced the skin.
Yet once on the stage, his natural habitat, the young actor couldn’t resist an encore.
Booth spun around, faced the audience and raised the bloody dagger dramatically in the air, as he had done in many plays over the years.
“The South shall be free!” he yelled out, according to the actor Hawk, standing just feet away from him on the stage. Others heard him say, “The South is avenged!”
Above the stage in the box, Major Rathbone, who saw Lincoln slumped over in his chair and instantly realized what had just happened, screamed, “Stop that man!”
Yet almost no one moved.
Not realizing what was happening, the audience simply froze in astonishment.
Some in the audience were Union officers fresh from combat, a few carrying revolvers on them. Yet many assumed that both the explosion and Booth’s dramatic entrance were simply part of the play.
Booth then turned to his right, toward the actor Hawk, his dagger still in his hand, and walked diagonally across the stage toward him. As he did so, Booth glanced up at the audience in the Dress Circle and at the seats opposite.
According to saloon-keeper Ferguson, Booth caught Ferguson’s eye and even raised his dagger above his head in a kind of victory salute, mouthing or whispering the words, “I have done it!”
For his part, Hawk took one look at the wild-eyed actor, and, not yet realizing what had happened and assuming Booth had found out that he was still seeing the call girl Ella Starr, fled for his life off the stage and up the stairs that led to the dressing rooms at the far left of the theatre.
Escape
Booth walked quickly offstage to the wings on the left side of the theatre, bumping roughly into the British actress and theatre producer Laura Keene as he passed her.
He leaned for a second with both hands against the brick wall that formed the north side of the theatre, catching his breath, before he bolted down the dark narrow side passageway along the north wall, heading for the outside door to the alley.
Yet another obstacle stood in Booth’s path.
Blocking the outside door was the twenty-eight-year-old orchestra leader William Withers, Jr., and his girlfriend Jeannie Gourlay – neither of whom had a clue about what had just transpired.
“Let me pass!” Booth screeched at Withers.
The orchestra leader froze and Booth plodded into him.
“Damn you,” the actor bellowed, slashing at Withers with his dagger and just nicking him slightly on the neck before he, Withers, fell to the floor.
Another stage hand, the twenty-four-year-old French carpenter Jacob Ritterspaugh, stood in Booth’s way but backed off when the actor slashed at him with the knife.
Booth then burst through the outside door to the alley where a cold rain was falling.
He was looking around desperately for Ed Spangler, the stage carpenter with whom he had left his rented mare.
But the busy Spangler, with scenery to change between acts, had handed the reins to the teenage stagehand John “Peanuts John” Burroughs. Booth spotted the mare.
“Give me that horse!” Booth yelled, startling Burroughs. The boy hesitated, not knowing who Booth was.
As a result, the actor reached out, and, with the butt of his dagger, cracked the befuddled teenager hard on his head, tearing the reins from his hands as he did so.
His left foot throbbing from the fall onto the stage, Booth then struggled up into the saddle, a process he later said took “five minutes” but which probably only took a few seconds. Only at that moment did someone try to intervene.
One of the few audience members who instantly understood what had just happened, an Army colonel named Joseph B. Stewart, had leapt to his feet the moment he saw Booth crossing the stage with the dagger in his hand.
A lawyer and former Army officer who stood six feet six inches tall, taller even than Abraham Lincoln, Stewart had clambered up on the stage and proceeded to chase after Booth down the dark passageway that ran along the north wall. He saw Booth go through the outside door but, unfamiliar with his surroundings, and unable to see clearly with the dim light backstage, it took Stewart a few seconds to open the outside door.
Once outside, however, as Booth struggled to gain control of his skittish horse, Stewart just barely missed grabbing the reins of the bay mare.
But Booth spotted him, jerked the reins hard to the right, and kicked his spurs into the horse’s muscular sides. A lifetime of dedicated horsemanship kicked in. The spirited mare exploded down Baptist Alley at full gallop.
Within seconds, Booth disappeared into the cold rain… and was gone.
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