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Introduction John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln in the back of the head at approximately 10:15 on Good Friday evening of April 14, 1865 while the nation’s sixteenth President sat in a private box at Washington’s Ford’s Theater watching a performance of the humorous Our American Cousin. However, this event was only one small part of a much larger conspiracy. At the same time that Booth was shooting Lincoln, other conspirators were attempting to kill Andrew Johnson and William Seward. This much is beyond dispute, but all of the events that took place after the shooting with the conspirators are not (Mills 1). In all there were eight people arrested, not including John Wilkes Booth. Booth was never officially arrested for the assassination of President Lincoln because a soldier, with the orders to take the killer alive, violated his orders and gunned down Booth. The soldier who claimed that he shot Booth, Boston Corbett, was never punished for disobeying his orders. The conspirators that were charged for being a part of the plot planning to murder Vice President Andrew Johnson were Mrs. Suratt, Lewis Powell, Herold, and Atzerodt. All four of them were found guilty of treason and on July 7, 1865,