John Wilkes Booth (May 10, 1838 – April 26, 1865) was an American stage actor who assassinated 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 recent abolition of slavery in the United States.

Originally, Booth and his small group of conspirators had plotted to kidnap Lincoln, and they later agreed to murder him as well as Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William H. Seward, likewise to aid the Confederate cause.