Murder & Memory

Photograph

John Wilkes Booth, the supposed assassin of President Lincoln, on Friday night the 14th.  April 1865.  1865. Carte de visite.

This carte de visite of John Wilkes Booth was issued before he was certified as Lincoln’s assassin.  Within hours of Lincoln’s death, demand surged for images of the alleged assassin and his co-conspirators. Many of the images were pirated, as photographers copied the work of others and sold them as their own. 

*2006M-92    Purchased in 2006 on the Bayard Livingston & Kate Gray Kilgour Fund.