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/index.php/node/5132.