English- Mr. Lebofsky
Chasing Lincoln’s Killer
Name: ______________________
Questions Chapters 1-4
The following questions help you to trace Booth’s actions and whereabouts before the
assassination takes place. They also cover details about Abraham Lincoln and his family.
1) How did Booth know Lincoln would be at Ford’s theater on the night of the 14th? (p. 11)
2) Booth went to Kirkwood House and left the message, “Don’t wish to disturb you. Are you at
home? J. Wilkes Booth.” For whom did he leave this message? (p. 15)
3) Booth visited Mary Surratt’s boarding house in order to ask her to deliver a
_________________________ wrapped in newspaper. He also asked her to tell the tavern
keeper in Surrattsville to have “everything ready”: ____________________________,
__________________________, ___________________________, and other supplies. (p. 16)
4) Did Mary Surratt deliver Booth’s package and message?
5) Booth took what two weapons with him to the theater?
6) What was the original plot against Lincoln and what happened? (p. 23-24)
7) In the plots against President Lincoln, Secretary of State William H. Seward, and Vice
President Johnson, what role was assigned to John Wilkes Booth ? (page 27)
to David Herold?
to Lewis Powell?
to George Atzerodt?
8) Who did not want to execute his role?
9) Even if anyone of the conspirators had backed out, what had Booth already done to implicate
each man in the crime and seal his fate? (p. 28)
10) What about the Lincoln family history do you learn? Be sure to provide at least two details
about the Lincoln family.
11) Chapter II sets up that Booth was likely to have been lurking in the
_____________________________ outside of Ford Theater as the Presidential carriage arrived.
It also reveals that after Booth went into the theater and heard the lines, he left to go to the
nearby___________________________ for a drink.
 The next set of questions cover the events that unfold on the night of April 14th, 1865, and
they cover the conspirators’ whereabouts and actions later that night.
12) After he shot Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth shouted what from the Presidential box? (p. 42)
13) What did Booth shout from the stage? “Sic ________________________
________________________!” which means, “Thus always to tyrants” (Swanson 43).
14) What did David Herold do when he heard Fanny’s screams? (p.57)
15) Did Atzerodt murder Vice President Johnson?
16) Why was it that David Herold thought that he had safely escaped? (p. 70)
17) Which of the conspirators did not know the city well and thus, could not seem to find his
way out of it? This same conspirator walked around Washington in a blood-stained coat!!!
18) Did John Lloyd ever receive nighttime callers on the night of April 14th, as Mary Surratt told
him he would? (p. 71)
19) Who among the four conspirators made it across the bridge and out of Washington?
20) Booth felt he needed one of the conspirators with him more than any other. Which
conspirator and why?
21) As Booth deliriously wandered in the woods, alone, his thoughts turned to the pain in his
______________________ and ________________________’s ___________________, the
meeting place for him and Herold. (p. 74)
22) John Wilkes Booth heard hooves pounding the earth. Who found Booth?
**23) Writing this kind of publication, historical nonfiction, is hard work, to say the least. It
requires hours and hours of digging into archives: researching newspapers, preserved journals
or letters, war records, trial records, police records. Inevitably there are gaps. At some
moments the author can present only what was likely thought or done, making educated
guesses, but being sure to present them as such. The author speculates about what likely
occurred. Where on page 75 do you notice an example of James Swanson’s speculating? Hint:
he uses the word “probably”.
24) From the theater Lincoln is carried where? This place is called a “safe house” in the text,
and it is where Lincoln took his last breath.