John Wilkes Booth

While it’s well known that Booth worked with multiple conspirators in the Lincoln assassination, including Lewis Powell, David Herold, Mary Surratt, and George Atzerodt, some speculate that Booth had additional conspirators.

The following is from the National Park Service.

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John Wilkes Booth was the mastermind and ringleader of the plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865. This plot also included attempts on the lives of Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward. Booth sent conspirators George Atzerodt and Lewis Powell, respectively, to carry out those assassinations. David Herold was tasked with accompanying Powell to the Seward home and rendezvousing with Booth for an escape. These four men definitively knew of, and were thus complicit in, the president’s murder.

Mary Surratt, owner of a boarding house in Washington, DC and a tavern in Maryland, may also have known of the plot. Booth and his conspirators, including her son John Surratt, often used these properties as meeting places and safe houses. Mary Surratt was executed alongside Atzerodt, Herold, and Powell. Her guilt or innocence remains a topic of debate for historians today.

Before he decided to murder President Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth had been orchestrating a conspiracy to kidnap the chief executive. This plot involved the conspirators mentioned above, as well as several others, including John Surratt, Samuel Arnold, Michael O’Laughlin, and Dr. Samuel Mudd. Booth made many contacts and connections among Confederate sympathizers in Maryland and Virginia. We may never know all those whom Booth attempted to recruit for his plot.

Booth also traveled to Montreal, Canada during his planning to kidnap the president. There, he likely met with members of the loosely-writ “Confederate Secret Service.” It is possible, and perhaps even likely, that Booth’s group was not the only one trying to take Lincoln hostage. Other Confederate agents also hoped that, by holding Lincoln for ransom, the Confederacy could use the president as a bargaining chip to free Confederate prisoners of war or even force a negotiated peace. These activities by Booth and other Confederate agents remain shrouded in mystery to this day.

John Wilkes Booth’s connections with Confederate agents have led some historians to speculate that the actor was part of a larger “grand conspiracy” to kidnap or kill Abraham Lincoln. These theories hold that these clandestine activities took place with the knowledge and sanction of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Lincoln’s Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, firmly believed that Davis was behind the assassination. This conviction led Stanton to accept some questionable testimony during the trial of the Booth conspirators in his attempt to link Davis to Booth. As of 2024, no hard evidence exists to confirm theories of Davis’s involvement.

Much also remains unknown to historians today regarding the prevalence of covert “black flag warfare” operations during the Civil War. In 1864, a Union officer named Ulrich Dahlgren was killed in a raid outside Richmond. Papers found on Dahlgren supposedly confirmed that he had orders to free Union prisoners of war in the Confederate capital, then assassinate Confederate President Jefferson Davis and his cabinet. Union leaders strongly denied such a plan, and exactly what Dahlgren was tasked to do remains a mystery. On the other side, Confederate partisan raider John S. Mosby may have received a dastardly assignment just days before the assassination. Allegedly, Mosby’s men were to escort a Confederate bomb maker into Washington and blow up the White House while Lincoln met with his cabinet. Whether these attempts were real, and whether Lincoln or Davis knew of plots to eliminate their counterpart, may never be known for certain.

In the years after the assassination, a whole host of unfounded conspiracy theories claimed that John Wilkes Booth was merely a puppet figure. These extreme theories have named the “real culprit” as Andrew Johnson, Edwin Stanton, the Catholic Church, and more. William Hanchett’s The Lincoln Murder Conspiracies is an excellent source for studying and appropriately dismissing these fringe theories.

National Park Service FAQ on John Wilkes Booth

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