John Wilkes Booth, a famous actor and confederate sympathizer, became the first person to ever kill as U.S president when he fatally shot President Abraham Lincoln at a play at Ford’s Theatre in Washington D.C. Booth was a Marylander by birth, he was a supporter of slavery throughout the Civil War and believed Lincoln was determined to destroy the South. President Abraham Lincoln had been killed on Good Friday, April 14th 1865, five days after the Civil War had ended while attending the play, “Our American Cousin” at Ford’s Theatre. As the war had entered it's final stages, Booth and several associates created a plan to kidnap the president and take him to Richmond, the Confederate capital. However, on March 20, 1865, the day of the planned kidnapping, Lincoln failed to appear at the spot where Booth and his six fellow conspirators lay in wait. Two weeks later, Richmond fell to Union forces. In April, with Confederate armies near collapse across the South, Booth came up with a desperate plan to save the Confederacy. After learning that Lincoln was keen to attend Laura Keene's performance of "Our American Cousin" at Ford Theatre in Washington, D.C., Booth--as a well-known actor at the time--hatched a plan to murder the president, as well as Vice President Andrew Johnson, and Secretary of State William H. Seward. By murdering the president and his two possible successors, Booth and his co-conspirators hoped to throw the U.S. government into disarray. At 10:15, Booth slipped into the box and fired his .44-caliber single-shot derringer into the back of Lincoln’s head. After stabbing Rathbone, who immediately rushed at him, in the shoulder, Booth leapt onto the stage and shouted, “Sic semper tyrannis!” (“Thus ever to tyrants!”–the Virginia state motto). Vice President Andrew Johnson, members of Lincoln’s cabinet and several of the president’s closest friends stood close by Lincoln’s bedside until he was officially announced dead at 7:22 a.m. As the nation mourned their beloved President's death, Union soldiers were hot on the trail of John Wilkes Booth, who many in the audience had immediately recognized. On April 26, Union troops surrounded the Virginia farmhouse where Booth and Herold, a accomplice, were hiding out and set fire to it, hoping to flush the fugitives out. Herold surrendered but Booth remained inside. As the blaze intensified, a sergeant shot Booth in the neck, allegedly because the assassin had raised his gun as if to shoot. Carried out of the building alive, he lingered for three hours before gazing at his hands and uttering his last words: “Useless, useless.”