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Wilkes Booth's Private Confession and Oath of Vengeance

Unknown (attributed to John Wilkes Booth) · 1865

An 1865 English pamphlet claiming to present Booth's private confession of Lincoln's murder, though its authenticity is disputed.

This pamphlet claims to be Booth's own confession, though scholars dispute whether he actually wrote it.

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Wilkes Booth's Private Confession and Oath of VengeancePDF · 34 pages
Wilkes Booth's Private Confession of the Murder of President Lincoln, pamphlet, 1865. Scanned copy, Internet Archive.

About this source

What it is

This is a cheap English pamphlet published in 1865, priced at twopence, claiming to contain John Wilkes Booth's personal confession of murdering President Lincoln, supposedly supplied by an escaped Confederate. It was sold to a curious public eager for details of the assassination.

Why it matters

Historians question whether this text was genuinely written by Booth or invented to profit from public fascination with the crime. It shows how quickly sensational, possibly fabricated stories spread after Lincoln's death, and how Booth's name was used to sell print.

Look closer

  • What clues in the pamphlet's language and price suggest it was made to sell quickly to a popular audience?
  • Why might someone invent a false confession and attribute it to Booth?
  • How can historians tell the difference between a genuine and a fabricated historical document?

This book is part of the curated material that grounds the AI version of John Wilkes Booth on Humy.ai — when students ask about related events, the AI can quote it and cite it.

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