High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! 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 the Lincoln Administration and outraged by the South`s defeat in the American Civil War. He strongly opposed the abolition of slavery in the United States and Lincoln`s proposal to extend voting rights to recently emancipated slaves.