<P> Booth had free access to all parts of the theater as a famous and popular actor who had frequently performed at Ford's Theatre and who was well known to its owner John T. Ford, even having his mail sent there . He bored a spyhole into the door of the presidential box earlier that day so that he could check that his intended victim had made it to the play and observe the box's occupants . </P> <P> John Wilkes Booth slipped into Lincoln's box that evening at around 10 pm as the play progressed and shot the President in the back of the head with a . 41 caliber Deringer . Booth's escape was almost thwarted by Major Henry Rathbone, who was present in the presidential box with Mary Todd Lincoln . Booth stabbed Rathbone when the startled officer lunged at him . Rathbone's fiancée Clara Harris was also present in the box but was unhurt . </P> <P> Booth then jumped from the president's box to the stage, where he raised his knife and shouted "Sic semper tyrannis" (Latin for "Thus always to tyrants," attributed to Brutus at Caesar's assassination and the Virginia state motto), while others said that he added, "I have done it, the South is avenged!" Various accounts state that Booth injured his leg when his spur snagged a decorative U.S. Treasury Guard flag while leaping to the stage . Historian Michael W. Kauffman questioned this legend in his book American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies, writing in 2004 that eyewitness accounts of Booth's hurried stage exit made it unlikely that his leg was broken then . Kauffman contends that Booth was injured later that night during his flight to escape when his horse tripped and fell on him, calling Booth's claim to the contrary an exaggeration to portray his own actions as heroic . </P> <P> Booth was the only one of the assassins to succeed . Powell was able to stab Seward, who was bedridden as a result of an earlier carriage accident . Seward was badly wounded but he survived . Atzerodt lost his nerve and spent the evening drinking alcohol; he never made an attempt to kill Johnson . </P>

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