The last orders given to the squad pursuing Booth were: “Don’t shoot
Booth, but take him alive.” Just as Booth started to the door of the
barn this order was disobeyed by a sergeant named Boston Corbett, who
fired through a crevice and shot Booth in the neck. The wounded man was
carried out of the barn and died four hours afterward on the grass where
they had laid him. Before he died he whispered to Lieutenant Baker,
“Tell mother I died for my country; I thought I did for the best.” What
became of Booth’s body has always been and probably always will be a
mystery. Many different stories have been told concerning his final
resting place, but all that is known positively is that the body was
first taken to Washington and a post-mortem examination of it held on
the Monitor Montauk. On the night of April 27th it was turned over to
two men who took it in a rowboat and disposed of it secretly. How they
disposed of it none but themselves know and they have never told.