Tom Able, age 14, of Twin Falls, Idaho, for his question:
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE MAN WHO SHOT PRESIDENT LINCOLN?
Most historians agree that Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, was one of the truly great men of all time. Attending the Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., on the evening of April 14, 1865, President Lincoln was shot. He died the next morning.
The man who shot the great president, John Wilkes Booth, as well as his conspirators paid for the crime.
After shooting the president in the head, Booth, a well known actor of his day, leaped from the presidential box to the stage and in doing so, fell and broke his leg. But he limped across the stage brandishing a dagger and escaped into the night.
After the president's assassination, Booth fled to Maryland on horseback. A friend named David Herold, a former druggist's clerk, joined Booth there and helped him escape to Virginia.
Then on April 26, 11 days after the assassination, federal troops. searching for Booth trapped both Booth and Herold in a barn near Port Royal, Va. Herold surrendered, but Booth was killed.
A number of persons were believed to have been involved with Booth in both Lincoln's assassination and also in a plot to kill other government officials. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton ordered agents of his department to investigate the conspiracy and arrest the culprits.
Arrested conspirators included George Atzerodt, a carriage maker, for planning the murder of Vice President Andrew Johnson; Lewis Paine, a former Confederate soldier, for attempting to kill Secretary of State William Seward; and Mrs. Mary Surratt, the owner of a Washington boarding house, for helping the plotters.
A nine man military commission tried a total of eight accused conspirators. All were found guilty. Herold, Paine, Atzerodt and Mrs. Surratt were convicted and sentenced to death. The four were hanged on July 7.
In addition to the four who paid for the assassination with their lives, four others were arrested, tried and convicted of being part of the conspiracy.
The Department of War accused Samuel Arnold and Michael O'Laughlin, boyhood friends of Booth's, of helping him plan the crimes. Samuel Mudd, a Maryland physician who had set Booth's broken leg after the assassination of President Lincoln, was charged with aiding the plotters. The fourth man, a stagehand at Ford's Theatre named Edward Spangler, was charged with helping Booth escape.
A trial of all eight conspirators began in Washington, D.C., on May 10, 1865, less than a month after President Lincoln had been assassinated. The trial lasted until June 30.
While four were sentenced to death, Arnold, Mudd and O'Laughlin received sentences of life imprisonment and Spangler, the stagehand, received a six year sentence.
O'Laughlin died in prison of yellow fever in 1867.
President Johnson pardoned Arnold, Mudd and Spangler in 1869.