John Booth's Assassination Research Paper

As the Civil War continued to rage on, the Confederacy was faced with a problem that would greatly influence the results of the war. The Union army had possession of 20,000 Confederate prisoners and had ceased prisoner exchanges, this was because the Union knew that the Confederacy planed kill their black soldiers instead of imprisoning them. (Holzer, “The president is shot” 66-67) This left the Confederacy with at a significant disadvantage and in desperate need of more men. Believing that he could aid the Confederacy, Booth began to develop a plan to kidnap the president and find recruits to help with his scheme. Booth started his recruiting in August 1864, when he meet with friends and former Confederate soldiers, Michal O'Laughlen and Samuel B. Arnold, and convinced them to join his cause.
Mary Surratt, John Surratt jr.'s mother, also helped Booth by allowing him to use her boarding house as a meeting place, even though John soon left the group. Also recruited were David Herold, a drugstore clerk(Roscoe 56); George A. Atzerodt, a carriage repair man from Germany (Hanchett 49)and Lewis Powell, who was in the Confederate army.(Holzer “The president is shot” 67)The general plan Booth created was to capture the president and then take him across the Potomac river to Richmond, Virginia(Hanchett 43). Once he held the president captive, he could then demand the release of all the Confederate soldiers held by the Union.(Holzer “The president is shot” 71) Booth knew that if he could accomplish this he would be a hero for the Confederacy, possibly the reason for their victory, and by doing something so unheard of, he would be placed in history. He did not want to just kidnap the president, though, he wanted to do something to be remembered as bold and daring.