John Wilkes Booth: From Matinee Idol to Assassin

Everyone knows what John Wilkes Booth did at Ford's Theatre on April 14, 1865, but few know the man behind the act. Born in 1838 in Bel Air, Maryland, the ninth of ten children of British theatrical star Junius Brutus Booth, he grew up in the long shadow of his refined older brother Edwin and built his own fame as a raw, physical, wildly popular actor.This episode traces Booth's journey from beloved matinee idol earning some 20,000 dollars a year to Confederate courier, smuggler, and finally assassin. We follow the failed kidnapping plot, Lincoln's speech on Black voting rights that pushed Booth to murder, the shooting itself, and the manhunt that ended at the Garrett farm.The Romani fortune teller's prophecy that Booth would live a grand but short life and meet a bad endHow he dropped his last name to perform as J.B. Wilkes and escape his family's legacyUsing his celebrity to smuggle quinine past Union blockades for the ConfederacyThe original plan to kidnap Lincoln and trade him for Confederate prisoners of warBooth's shock at being condemned even by Southern newspapers before his death at age 26