According to witnesses, what did John Wilkes Booth shout after shooting Abraham Lincoln?
Maryland in the American Civil War slavery may have been settled by the new constitution, and the legality of secession by the war, but this did not end the debate. On April 14, 1865 the actor John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. Booth was born in Harford County, Maryland, a northern county on the Pennsylvania border, which had few slaves. After he shot Lincoln, Booth shouted "Sic semper tyrannis" ("Thus always to tyrants"). Other witnesses — including Booth himself — claimed that he only yelled "Sic semper!" Some didn't recall hearing Booth shout anything in Latin. Some witnesses said
John Wilkes Booth John Wilkes Booth John Wilkes Booth (May 10, 1838 – April 26, 1865) was the American actor who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. on April 14, 1865. He was a member of the prominent 19th-century Booth theatrical family from Maryland and a well-known actor in his own right. He was also a Confederate sympathizer, vehement in his denunciation of Lincoln and strongly opposed to the abolition of slavery in the United States. Booth and a group of co-conspirators originally plotted to kidnap Lincoln but later planned to kill him, Vice President Andrew Johnson, and Secretary