Posts Make Unfounded Claims About Political Affiliation of John Wilkes Booth
Quick Take
John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Republican President Abraham Lincoln in 1865, was affiliated with the anti-immigrant Know-Nothing Party and was a supporter of slavery and the Confederacy. Social media posts claim without evidence that Booth was a Democrat.
Full Story
President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by the actor John Wilkes Booth, a Confederate sympathizer and white supremacist. Enraged by Lincoln’s last public address, in which the president said he planned to grant some African-American men the right to vote, Booth — who had already been planning with other Confederates to abduct Lincoln — shot and killed the president at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865.
But posts
