July 1865
Of the cast which Abraham Lincoln’s assassin had so hopefully assembled in Washington for the roles he had assigned in the crime, five of them, including himself, were now dead on July 9. Booth, the star-tragedian of the historic melodrama, lay buried in secret under the floor in the southwestern end of the Arsenal penitentiary building. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton was afraid that Booth’s body would be made into a martyred symbol by ex-Confederates, and so it was likely that not ten people in the United States knew where the assassin, killed on April 26, was buried.