Break a Leg!

One of the truly enjoyable aspects of research is discovering what is truth and what is myth. One of the great myths of the Lincoln assassination is that John Wilkes Booth broke his leg in his leap from the stage.

The source of this tale was actually started by Booth himself, in the first melodramatic entry in his notebook. This diary was not made public until two years after the trial of the conspirators and was taken at face value as the truth. This was not Booth’s first attempt at twisting the facts to portray himself as a living legend. He did the same thing earlier in his career when he was able to spin his witnessing of John Brown’s execution into actually being involved in his capture. It made for good press, as the dramatist would have known, but the evidence brought forth by Michael Kauffman in his excellent biography American Brutus soundly contradicts this fairy tale.

J.W. Booth - Diary

I walked with a firm step through a thousand of his friends, was stopped, but pushed on. A colonel was at his side. I shouted Sic semper before I fired. In jumping broke my leg. I passed all his pickets, rode sixty miles that night with the bone of my leg tearing the flesh at every jump ……

The eyewitness accounts recorded in 1865 by members of the audience, give no hint that Booth fractured his leg while he was in the theater. They described him as running across the stage with no mention of a limp, much less a broken leg. All witnesses from the orchestra seats, described the assassin’s movement as “rushed” or indicate that he “ran” across the stage. The testimony of the young man who held Booth’s horse further dispels the myth:

Joseph “Peanuts” Borroughs

Q. What did he say when he came out?

A. He told me to give me his horse.

Q. Did he do anything besides that?

A. He knocked me down.

Q. With his hand or not?

A. He struck me with the butt of a knife.

Q. Did he do that as he mounted his horse?

A. Yes, sir, he had one foot in the stirrup.

Q. Did he also strike or kick you?

A. He kicked me.

Q. As he got on the horse?

A. Yes, sir.

Unquestionably, Booth was filled with alcohol and adrenaline as he ran off stage and onto his horse. However, putting a broken left leg into a stirrup and expecting it to support one’s full weight while getting into a saddle AND at the same time kicking with the right is a physical impossibility. Booth's mounting of his horse, as witnessed by Johnny Peanuts, was the last time he would ever get on a horse again without assistance.

Kauffman also points out that, Booth rode only thirty miles that night, not sixty as claimed in his diary. The broken leg he suffered was a simple fracture, not compound, so no bone could have been tearing at his leg with every jump. The entire passage was a complete falsification.

Despite the overwhelming evidence that Booth did not break his leg on his leap to the stage, the myth has become so strong that it will continue to be repeated whenever American history is taught. It has become an accepted truth similar to the ‘shots from the grassy knoll’ contention regarding the Kennedy assassination almost 100 years later.