On the evening of April 14, 1865, a witness looking from a Ninth Street home saw a man limp from the back door of Ford's Theatre, struggle onto a horse being held for him, and dash down the alley toward F Street. The man was John Wilkes Booth, a famous actor and Confederate supporter, who had just shot President Lincoln as he watched Our American Cousin from his box. Booth had spent months trying to capture Lincoln, but only hours earlier, at 6 p.m., he and his co-conspirators had agreed at the Herndon House that Lewis Powell would kill Secretary of State Seward, George Azerodt would kill Vice President Johnson, and Booth would kill Lincoln himself. Azerodt did not carry out his part, Powell severely wounded Seward, and only Booth succeeded in killing his target. Lincoln died at 7:22 the next morning in the Peterson House across from Ford's Theatre, and Booth was apprehended and killed in a Virginia tobacco shed 12 days later.
