On April 14th, 1865 he heard that Lincoln would attend a play there that evening. He promptly decided to murder the president
Booth rode to the theatre armed with a pistol, went into the presidentâs box and fired a single shot into the back of Lincolnâs head. He leapt down from the box onto the stage and escaped in the uproar to an alley outside where his horse was being held for him. Booth and a co-conspirator called David Herold rode away together and fled south into Maryland, hiding in the woods and presently crossing into Virginia.
By April 24th Booth and Herold had reached Port Royal in Virginia, almost 90 miles south of Washington. The war department had offered a reward of $100,000 (worth more than $1.5 million today) for information leading to the arrest of Booth and his accomplices and federal troops were searching for them. The fugitives took refuge at the farm of a man called Richard H. Garrett, who apparently knew nothing of what had happened and let them sleep in one of his barns.
A band of soldiers arrived at the farm in the early hours of April 26th and surrounded the barn. Herold surrendered to them, but Booth defied them and they set the barn on fire. One of them saw Booth raise his gun to shoot â or said he did â and fired at him. Mortally wounded, he was dragged to the farmhouse where he died, after saying âTell Mother I died for my countryâ.
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