Booth, Edwin Thomas

Life Span
to
    Full name
    Edwin Thomas Booth
    Place of Birth
    Birth Date Certainty
    Exact
    Death Date Certainty
    Exact
    Gender
    Male
    Race
    White
    Sectional choice
    North
    Origins
    Slave State
    Family
    Junius Brutus Booth (father), Mary Ann Holmes (mother), John Wilkes Booth (brother), Junius Booth Jr. (brother), Mary Devlin (first wife), Mary McVicker (second wife), Edwina (daughter)
    Occupation
    Other
    Other Occupation
    Actor
    Relation to Slavery
    White non-slaveholder

    Edwin Thomas Booth (American National Biography)

    Scholarship
    Booth retired temporarily from the stage after his brother John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., on 14 April 1865. In early 1866 he returned to, as he put it, "the only profession for which God has suited me." For the remainder of his life, however, he refused invitations to perform in Washington, D.C. Audiences attached no blame to Booth for his brother's crime. Drama critic William Winter described his return to the stage: "Nine cheers hailed the melancholy Dane upon his first entrance. The spectators rose and waved their hats and handkerchiefs. Bouquets fell in a shower upon the stage, and there was a tempest of applause, wherever he appeared." Booth continued his career with almost universal acclaim.
    Stephen M. Archer, "Booth, Edwin Thomas," American National Biography Online, February 2000, http://www.anb.org/articles/18/18-00132.html.
    How to Cite This Page: "Booth, Edwin Thomas," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/node/5132.