John Wilkes Booth

John Wilkes Booth (May 10, 1838 – April 26, 1865) was an American actor who is most famous for assassinating Abraham Lincoln. A professional and extremely popular stage actor of his day, Booth was a Confederate sympathizer who was dissatisfied by the outcome of the American Civil War.

Possible ties to the Confederacy

In the summer of 1864, Booth met with several well-known Confederate sympathizers at The Parker House in Boston. In October 1864 he made an unexplained trip to Montreal. At the time, Montreal was a well known center of clandestine Confederate activities. It is known that he spent ten days in the city and stayed for a time at St. Lawrence Hall, a meeting place for the Confederate Secret Service, and met at least one blockade runner there. It is possible that it was here that he also met Confederate Secret Service director James D. Bulloch (later an uncle to Theodore Roosevelt) as well as George Nicholas Sanders, a one-time US ambassador to England with revolutionary sentiments who had once called for the assassination of French ruler Napoleon III.

Related Topics:
The Parker House - Boston - Montreal - St. Lawrence Hall - James D. Bulloch - Theodore Roosevelt - George Nicholas Sanders - Napoleon III

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There has been much scholarly attention devoted to why Booth was in Montreal at this time, and what he was doing there. No solid evidence has ever linked Booth's kidnapping or assassination plot to a conspiracy involving any elements of the Confederate government, although this possibility had been explored at some length in two books; Nathan Miller's Spying For America and William Tidwell's Come Retribution: the Confederate Secret Service and the Assassination of Lincoln. In her memoir of her brother, The Unlocked Book, Asia Booth Clarke later attested that Booth told her he was a blockade-runner for the South, and also smuggled quinine across the Potomac and into Virginia.

Related Topics:
The Unlocked Book - Asia Booth Clarke - Quinine

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