Note PARDON — Chapter XII
Reading edition
Page 539. Pardon. John Wilkes Booth was a son of Junius Brutus Booth and was twenty-six years old at the time of the assassination. His success as an actor had never been notable. There is some dispute as to whether he was hit by the bullet which Boston Corbett fired at him, or whether he shot himself. At any rate, he was brought out of the barn in which he had been cornered with a bullet in the base of his brain, and with his body paralyzed. He died the following morning. Eight accomplices were arrested, tried by a military commission, and found guilty. Four, one a woman, were hanged, and the others, with one exception, sentenced to hard labor for life.