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. Booth was a member of the prominent 19th-century
Booth theatrical family from
Maryland and, by the 1860s, was a well-known actor. He was also a
Confederate sympathizer, vehement in his denunciation of Lincoln, and was strongly opposed to the
abolition of
slavery in the United States.