John Wilkes Booth [murderer]

Calvin

Welcome to the infamous edition of the Headstones and Microphones where we use AI to step into the past through a researched, first-person simulation done through creative story telling of history's most infamous people. Now, let’s meet our guest.

Calvin

Welcome to the podcast. Let’s start at the absolute beginning, where the public narrative hasn’t yet distorted who you were. When and where were you born, and what was your given name?

White Male Guest

I was born on May 10, 1838, on our family farm near Bel Air, Maryland. My given name was John Wilkes Booth, named after the English radical politician John Wilkes, who was a distant relative of ours.

Calvin

What was your hometown and home life like as a child?

White Male Guest

Life was split between the peaceful rows of our Maryland farm and the cold months we spent at our city home on North Exeter Street in Baltimore. I was the ninth of ten children born to Junius Brutus Booth and Mary Ann Holmes. My father was a towering figure on the American stage, a true Shakespearean master, but his eccentricities ran deep. He fought heavy bouts with alcohol and sudden spells of madness, which cast a dramatic, unpredictable shadow over our household. We even held slaves on our farm, an institution that heavily shaped my views as I grew up in a divided border state.

Calvin

Was there a story behind your name, or a nickname that stuck with you?

White Male Guest

Aside from being named after John Wilkes, my family often just called me John or Johnny. Later in life, when I took to the stage, the playbills would proudly display my full name to capitalize on the grand legacy of my father, though behind the scenes, my closest companions simply knew me as a passionate, headstrong young man.

Calvin

What were you like as a child, and how many years of schooling did you actually attend?

White Male Guest

I was a high-spirited boy, far more interested in athletics, riding horses, and outdoor games than I ever was in opening a textbook. I attended a few private academies, including a boarding school run by Quakers in Cockeysville, and later St. Timothy's Hall, an Episcopal military academy in Catonsville. But my academic career was cut short. When my father passed away in 1852, I left school entirely to help manage the family farm, meaning my formal education ended in my early teenage years.

Calvin

What’s a decision that changed everything for you, but felt small at the time?

White Male Guest

It was the choice to step away from the plow and step onto the stage. My sister Asia always remembered me crying out that I must have fame. I chose to follow my father's footsteps, making my acting debut at just seventeen years old in Baltimore. That single step into the theater changed my path from a quiet Maryland farmer to a prominent public figure traveling the country, completely reshaping the trajectory of my life.

Calvin

Let's talk about your early run-ins with the law. Before the world knew your name for your most infamous actions, what was your very first arrest or interaction with law enforcement, and what were the consequences?

White Male Guest

Before April of 1865, I did not have a standard criminal record or early juvenile arrests that hindered my career. My early friction wasn't with local police, but rather with the shifting political landscape. In the 1850s, I aligned myself deeply with the Know-Nothing party, driven by a fierce desire to preserve what I believed was the rightful order of the country. My early actions were focused on applause and standing ovations, keeping my intense political plotting confined to shadows and secret circles until the war tore everything apart.

Calvin

At what moment did you realize your name would never be forgotten?

White Male Guest

It was the night of April 14, 1865, at Ford's Theatre. I knew the layout of that building like the back of my hand. I walked right into the presidential box, fired that single fateful shot into the back of Abraham Lincoln's head, and grappled with Major Rathbone. When I leaped from the balcony down to the stage, my spur caught on the decorative Treasury flag, causing me to break my left leg upon impact. Yet, I stood, brandished my dagger, shouted "Sic Semper Tyrannis!" to the stunned crowd, and escaped into the night. The moment I rode out of Washington, I knew the national media frenzy would ensure my name would echo forever.

Calvin

Did fame make you more dangerous, or did it simply expose who you already were?

White Male Guest

My fame as a leading actor gave me the perfect camouflage. It allowed me to move freely, to mix with high society, and to step into Ford's Theatre without raising a single eyebrow. But the war and the pending defeat of the South pushed my long-standing convictions to a boiling point. For months, I had worked with co-conspirators on a plan to kidnap the President to force a prisoner exchange. When our cause was almost lost, my resolve hardened. The notoriety didn't change my heart; it merely gave me the grand, tragic stage to execute what I believed was a necessary, decisive blow for my country.

Calvin

Who do you believe betrayed you first: a person, society, or your own instincts?

White Male Guest

Society betrayed me first. I thought I would be hailed as a grand hero, a savior of the South. Instead, when I hid in a pine thicket in southern Maryland, starving and cold, reading the newspapers supplied to me, I found only vicious condemnation. The very people I sacrificed everything for extended only cold hands. Later, at the Garrett farm, the family grew terrified and locked my companion David Herold and me inside their tobacco barn, essentially handing us over to the Union cavalry.

Calvin

What was your most unique habit or a random fact about you that would surprise people?

White Male Guest

People might be surprised to know that even while running for my life through swamps and woods, I kept a small, red leather 1864 appointment book in my pocket that I used as a diary to record my final thoughts. In the pockets of that very diary, I carried photographs of five different women. Even in the depths of a manhunt, pieces of my dramatic, romantic life as an actor remained with me.

Calvin

What did the public never understand about the pressure you were under at the time?

White Male Guest

They looked upon me as a common cutthroat, comparing me to a monster, when in my heart, my action was completely pure. I knew no private wrong and hoped for no personal gain. The public didn't see the agony of riding sixty miles that first night, the broken bone of my leg tearing through my flesh with every single jump of the horse, while carrying the weight of a dying nation on my shoulders.

Calvin

Did you have any known rivalries that defined your career?

White Male Guest

My defining rivalry wasn't with a fellow actor, but with the man I viewed as a total tyrant: Abraham Lincoln. I viewed him as the sole instrument of my country's destruction and the architect of a forced Union that I could never love.

Calvin

What personal battles were you fighting privately while the world was watching?

White Male Guest

Privately, I was fighting the sheer physical torment of my shattered leg. It was improperly set by Dr. Samuel Mudd during my escape, leaving me in constant, agonizing pain. I was hunting for safety, completely abandoned, fighting off the biting cold, wetness, and starvation while dodging the federal dragnet.

Calvin

What was your darkest moment, and was there ever a time you wanted to walk away from it all?

White Male Guest

My darkest moments were spent hiding in that pine thicket, hunted like a dog, realizing that the Government would never allow my side of the story to be printed to clear my name. I felt the curse of Cain upon me. There was a moment I had a great desire to return straight to Washington to face them and clear my name to man, but I knew the bloodhounds were closing in.

Calvin

What truth was hardest to escape when you were alone at night?

White Male Guest

The hardest truth was realizing that I had brought absolute misery upon my beloved mother and my family, and that I was completely alone in the dark.

Calvin

When the law finally closed in, how exactly were you brought to justice? Walk me through the final arrest, the charges that ultimately stuck, and the legal outcome of your trials.

White Male Guest

On April 26, 1865, the 16th New York Cavalry tracked us to Richard Garrett's tobacco barn near Port Royal, Virginia. They surrounded the barn and demanded our surrender. David Herold gave himself up, but I refused, demanding to be allowed to come out and fight bravely with my pistol and knife. The soldiers set the barn on fire to flush me out. As I moved through the smoke, Sergeant Boston Corbett shot me through a crack in the barn wall, severing my spinal cord. I never faced a courtroom or formal charges; I died on the porch of the Garrett farmhouse a few hours later.

Calvin

What’s the craziest rumor ever told about you, and what part of your story has been exaggerated the most?

White Male Guest

For ages, people debated the exact nature of my escape and whether I broke my leg directly from the leap or later during the flight. I wrote explicitly in my diary that night that in jumping, I broke my leg. The papers tried to say I slipped or doubted my resolve, but I walked with a firm step through a thousand of his friends to strike that blow.

Calvin

What is the biggest misconception people have about your life?

White Male Guest

The biggest misconception is that I acted out of malice, hatred, or a desire for personal glory. I did not hate Lincoln as a man, nor did I wish to shed blood needlessly. I truly believed I was acting as an instrument of God's punishment, performing a righteous deed just as Brutus was honored for striking down Caesar.

Calvin

What would surprise people most about your ordinary, human side?

White Male Guest

Despite the violent end, I didn't consider myself a violent man. In my final diary entries, I wrote that I blessed the entire world and had never hated or wronged anyone in my personal life before that fateful night.

Calvin

When, where, and how did you pass away?

White Male Guest

I passed away on the morning of April 26, 1865, on the porch of the Garrett farmhouse near Port Royal, Virginia. I died from the gunshot wound to the neck fired by Boston Corbett, completely paralyzed as my lungs slowly failed.

Calvin

Was your downfall caused more by your own flaws or by the world changing around you?

White Male Guest

It was a mix of both, but heavily because the world I loved was crumbling. The forced Union was not the country I loved, and I simply had no desire to outlive the old South.

Calvin

What past regrets did you carry with you to the end? If you could erase one decision from your life, would you—or was it necessary to become who you were?

White Male Guest

I explicitly stated that I could never repent the blow I struck, though we hated to kill. My only regret was that the world could not see my heart or the purity of my motives. I looked at my hands right before I died and muttered my final words: "Useless, useless."

Calvin

What scared you more: getting caught, losing power, or being forgotten?

White Male Guest

Dying like a common criminal scared me the most. I wrote that I had too great a soul for such a fate, and I prayed continuously that God would at least let me die bravely.

Calvin

When you look back now, do you see yourself as the villain, the hero, or something in between?

White Male Guest

The world has painted me as the ultimate villain, a common cutthroat. But I died viewing myself as a patriot who sacrificed everything—fame, wealth, family, and life itself—for the country and the principles I held dear.

Calvin

Do you have any closing remarks about the interview or the stories you shared that you would like to share with the listeners before signing off?

White Male Guest

I only ask that history looks past the theater reviews and the anger of that era to understand that a man's heart can be driven to extremes when he believes his homeland is facing total tyranny.

Calvin

And that wraps up another conversation from beyond the grave. Thanks for joining us on The Headstones and Microphones Podcast. Remember—Do better with the life you have been given and choose to do good in this life. Please help spread the word by sharing and following the pod.