ASSASSIN OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume 8, Issue 638, 25 July 1865, Page 2

ASSASSIN OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

The intelligence received by the mail on the subject of the murder of Mr. Lincoln, and more particularly ot his murderer, Wilkes Booth, is of so scant a character that we (Age) have been at pains to collate from gentlemen who were intimate with the latter in the United States, some facts as to his life and character which may be of interest to our readers. Junius Brutus Booth, the father of John Wilkes Booth — for that, it seems, was the murderer's real name — was the rival of the greatest actor the English stage has ever seen— Edmund Keau. The two played against each other for some time in London, and opinions were pretty much divided as to their relative merits. At last, some friends of the elder Kean induced Booth to appear at the same theatre with him — either Covent Garden or Drury Lane — and by a preconcerted scheme, succeeded in crushing for the time the rival actor. This affected him so much that it led to his final emigration to America. Here his name soon got to be looked upon with reverence by the people of the country, and he is declared to this day, in many parts of the States, to have been the greatest actor that ever lived. He married in America, and had issued four sons, of whom John Wilkes was the third. The two elder, Lucius and Edwin, are both at the present day actors of note in the States, and the latter has been the lessee ot a theatre in New York. He it was, too, at the commencement of the first rush to the gold-fields, visited Sydney and Melbourne in company with Miss Laura Keene. John Wilkes Booth was born in Baltimore, and from a very early age he adopted the stage as a profession. From the commencement of the dissensions between North and South, he showed a strong Southern proclivity At the time of the outbreak at Harper's Ferry, he was playing at Richmond, and was east for Cassio, in " Othello," Mr. Barry. Sullivan being the Moor of the night. When the news came to the city of the disaffection of the negroes, he abruptly left the theatre and went out with a company of volunteers to assist in quelling the insurrection. Whether he ever really bore arcns against the North we have not been able to ascertain, but he always expressed himself in very strong terms as an enemy to Lincoln and his Government ; and so loudly had he expressed his disaffection that his brother Edwin gave it as his opinion, some time ago, to a gentleman now in Melbourne, that he would one day or other bring himself into trouble. Of his personal attainments, we are told that lie was a young man of good parts, and that he promised, one day, with moderate perseverance, to hold as high a position on the stage as his brother. He is described by Mr. Barry Sullivan, who played with him both in Richmond and Philadelphia, to have been very good looking ; and, with the exception of his lache at the time of the Harper's Ferry outbreak, to have always shown a strong desire to get on in his profession, and a great steadiness in pursuit of that object. Our other informants, all of whom have known him intimately at a much later period of the wai*, say that he evinced a. degree of desperation when speaking of the North, which showed that he had fully made up his mind, as far as he was concerned, to go till lengths rather than that the side he had espoused should be worsted. His age is stated to be about six and twenty. The theatre in which he committed the murder is in Pennsylvania-avenue, Washington (not New York as stated in the telegrams,) and he had been playing there at intervals for some years. Mi*. Ford, the proprietor of the theatre, has an-

other establishment at Baltimore, and it is sup i posed that he endeavored to escape there ir order to get. amongst the professionals, by whoir he was well known, and with whom, possibly he expected to be able to conceal himself.