John Wilkes Booth

A member of one of America's most famous theatrical families, John Wilkes Booth was fiercely dedicated to the Confederate cause. By the final months of the Civil War he had become obsessed with his deep hatred of President Lincoln. In late 1864, thinking that the southern cause could be salvaged with Lincoln out of the way, he conspired to kidnap the Union president and deliver him into Confederate hands in Richmond. After that scheme failed, he began planning Lincoln's assassination. On the evening of April 14, 1865, his plan tragically unfolded when he fatally shot Lincoln as the president sat watching a play at Ford's Theatre in Washington.

Cartes de visite, such as this one of Booth, were popular and inexpensive souvenirs distributed by the actors themselves and collected by admirers at the time of the Civil War.