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John Wilkes Booth was born into a well-known family of actors. His father immigrated from England to the US in the 1820s and soon made his name in the theater circles. John Wilkes was the ninth of the tenth children, all but one of whom were born out of wedlock. John Wilkes became a fairly successful actor himself, and was known for his emotional instability and egocentricity, probably not so unusual for someone in his profession.

It was while touring the South with a theater company that Booth was enamored with the southern life.  He attended many social functions in Richmond and enlisted with the Virginia militia to participate in the arrest and hanging of abolitionist John Brown. In 1864 Booth tried his hand with oil business in western Pennsylvania but had no luck with it. It was later that year that he returned to Washington DC and plotted, with a group of conspirators, the abduction of President Lincoln.  They failed several times in their attemp, on one occasion, waiting for the president at a hospital only to learned that Lincoln had changed his plan and gone to a luncheon at the National Hotel, where Booth was lodged while he was in DC.

In the evening of April 14, 1965, days after the fall of Richmond and the General Lee's surrender, Booth shot Lincoln in the back of his head at the Ford Theater, where Booth used to perform. He died eleven days, at a farm in Virginia, either killed by the Federal troops who cornered him there or in a suicide.