Lincoln's Assassination: Booth's Flight

On the evening of 14 April 1865, five days after Lee's surrender, Lincoln watched Our American Cousin from the presidential box. Around 10:15 pm John Wilkes Booth, an actor who had played there and knew the layout, waited for a laugh line and shot him from behind. He stabbed Major Rathbone and jumped the twelve-foot drop to the stage, catching his spur in the flag on the box. Many in the audience thought he was part of the play. He left by the back door. The box is never occupied today.

Visitor guidance: The theater is a working playhouse and, with the Petersen House across the street, a National Park Service site; the museum beneath it holds the derringer.

Doctors judged a carriage ride to the White House too dangerous, so seven men carried Lincoln through the rain to a house across Tenth Street. In a first-floor bedroom the exceptionally tall president was laid diagonally on a small bed. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton essentially ran the government from the house that night, directing the hunt for Booth. Lincoln died there at 7:22 am on 15 April, aged 56. The original bed is now in the Chicago History Museum; replicas stand in its place.

Visitor guidance: A museum run by the National Park Service together with Ford's Theatre, directly across the street.

Within half an hour of leaving the theater, Booth crossed the Navy Yard Bridge over the Anacostia River into Maryland. A sentry, Silas Cobb, asked where he was going; Booth said he was going home to the town of Charles. Civilians were forbidden to cross after 9 pm, but the sentry let him through. David Herold, his companion, crossed the same bridge less than an hour later and rejoined him. Booth was now out of the capital, heading south.

Location precision: The 1865 bridge is long gone: a second bridge replaced it on the same crossing in 1872-1873, and the pin marks today's 11th Street Bridges.

In March, during the plan to kidnap Lincoln, Booth's circle hid carbines, ammunition and supplies at Mary Surratt's tavern in Surrattsville. On the afternoon of 14 April she delivered Booth's package there. That night Booth and Herold stopped briefly to pick up the rifles and binoculars, and the innkeeper John Lloyd gave them weapons and supplies. Mary Surratt was sentenced to death as a co-conspirator and hanged on 7 July 1865, the first woman executed by the US government.

Visitor guidance: The Surratt House Museum, open to the public since 1976, is at 9110 Brandywine Road in Clinton, Maryland.

Around 4 am on 15 April Booth and Herold reached the farmhouse of Dr. Samuel Mudd, 25 miles from Washington. Mudd splinted Booth's leg, gave him a shoe and arranged for a carpenter to make crutches; Booth paid $25. They told him Booth had fallen from his horse, and stayed twelve to fifteen hours. Mudd waited until after Easter Mass to alert the authorities. He was convicted and escaped execution by one vote; his guilt has stayed controversial.

Visitor guidance: St. Catharine, near Waldorf, Maryland, is operated as a historic house museum.

From Mudd's the fugitives went on to the home of Samuel Cox, who passed them to Thomas Jones. Jones hid them in Zekiah Swamp for five days while federal troops combed the woods and swamps of the region, and brought Booth the newspapers each day. On the night of 21 April he gave them a boat and compass for the Potomac. They navigated upriver by mistake and came ashore in Maryland again; only before dawn on 23 April did they reach Virginia, near Machodoc Creek.

Location precision: The sources place the hiding somewhere in this 21-mile swamp, not at one spot; the pin marks the swamp as a whole.

On 24 April Booth and Herold reached Richard Garrett's farm, about two miles south of Port Royal, Virginia, where Booth passed as a wounded Confederate soldier called James W. Boyd. Before dawn on 26 April the 16th New York Cavalry surrounded the tobacco barn. Herold surrendered; Booth cried out that he would not be taken alive, and the soldiers set the barn on fire. Sergeant Boston Corbett shot him, and he died on the porch of the farmhouse about three hours later, aged 26.

Location precision: The farm's exact site is not given in the sources; the pin marks the town of Port Royal, about two miles away.