-John Wilkes Booth (May 10, 1838 – April 26, 1865) was an American stage actor who assassinated United States President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865. A member of the prominent 19th-century Booth theatrical family from Maryland, he was a noted actor who was also a Confederate sympathizer; denouncing President Lincoln, he lamented the then-recent abolition of slavery in the United States. Originally, Booth and his small group of conspirators had plotted to kidnap Lincoln to aid the Confederate cause.

-Booth was a touring actor from 1860 to 1864, and also performed at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. in 1863:

1860–1861
Booth's first national tour as a leading actor began after the 1859–1860 season in Richmond, Virginia. He played in cities across the country, including New York, Boston, Chicago, and St. Louis.

1863–1864
Booth's schedule included shorter engagements in smaller cities, which were financially successful but left him exhausted.

November 1863
Booth starred in The Marble Heart at Ford's Theatre, where President Lincoln was in attendance.

-On the morning of Good Friday, April 14, 1865, Booth went to Ford's Theatre to get his mail. While there, he was told by John Ford's brother that the President and his wife Mary Todd Lincoln would be attending the play Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre that evening, accompanied by General Ulysses S. Grant and his wife

-After spending time at the saloon during intermission, Booth entered Ford's Theatre one last time at 10:10 pm. In the theater, he slipped into Lincoln's box at around 10:14 p.m. as the play progressed and shot the President in the back of the head with a .41 caliber Deringer pistol. Booth's escape was almost thwarted by Major Henry Rathbone, who was in the presidential box with Mary Todd Lincoln. Booth stabbed Rathbone when the startled officer lunged at him. Rathbone's fiancée Clara Harris was also in the box but was not harmed.

Booth then jumped from the President's box to the stage, where he raised his knife and shouted "Sic semper tyrannis"—Latin for "Thus always to tyrants", attributed to Brutus at Caesar's assassination, also having been adopted as the state motto of Virginia, and mentioned in the new "Maryland, My Maryland", future anthem of Booth's Maryland. According to some accounts, Booth added, "I have done it, the South is avenged!" Some witnesses reported that Booth fractured or otherwise injured his leg when his spur snagged a decorative U.S. Treasury Guard flag while leaping to the stage. Historian Michael W. Kauffman questioned this legend in his book American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies, writing that eyewitness accounts of Booth's hurried stage exit made it unlikely that his leg was broken then. Kauffman contends that Booth was injured later that night during his flight to escape when his horse tripped and fell on him, calling Booth's claim to the contrary an exaggeration to portray his own actions as heroic.

-Before dawn on April 26, the soldiers caught up with the fugitives, who were hiding in Garrett's tobacco barn. David Herold surrendered, but Booth refused Conger's demand to surrender, saying, "I prefer to come out and fight." The soldiers then set the barn on fire. As Booth moved about inside the blazing barn, Sergeant Boston Corbett shot him. According to Corbett's later account, he fired at Booth because the fugitive "raised his pistol to shoot" at them. Conger's report to Stanton stated that Corbett shot Booth "without order, pretext or excuse", and recommended that Corbett be punished for disobeying orders to take Booth alive. Booth, fatally wounded in the neck, was dragged from the barn to the porch of Garrett's farmhouse, where he died three hours later, aged 26. The bullet had pierced three vertebrae and partially severed his spinal cord, paralyzing him. In his dying moments, he reportedly whispered, "Tell my mother I died for my country." Asking that his hands be raised to his face so that he could see them, Booth uttered his last words, "Useless, useless", and as dawn was breaking he died of asphyxiation as a result of his wounds. In Booth's pockets were found a compass, a candle, pictures of five women (actresses Alice Grey, Helen Western, Effie Germon, Fannie Brown, and Booth's fiancée Lucy Hale), and his diary, where he had written of Lincoln's death, "Our country owed all her troubles to him, and God simply made me the instrument of his punishment."

Follow the escape route of John Wilkes Booth, one of history’s most notorious assassins, as he fled from Washington, D.C., and hid for several days in Southern Maryland before being cornered.

instead of being buried in the family plot, Booth's body was believed to have been interred elsewhere in an unmarked grave "in order to prevent desecration …

In lieu of flowers or stones, people leave pennies on John Wilkes Booth's headstone, as if to give Lincoln the final word.