Before dawn on April 26, 1865, a detachment of the 16th New York Volunteer Cavalry found John Wilkes Booth, Abraham Lincoln's assassin, holed up in a Virginia tobacco barn. They were under strict orders from the Secretary of War to take Booth alive. But one man who rode with the 16th answered to a higher authority: Sergeant Thomas “Boston” Corbett.
Before dawn on April 26, 1865, a detachment of the 16th New York Volunteer Cavalry found John Wilkes Booth, Abraham Lincoln's assassin, holed up in a Virginia tobacco barn. They were under strict orders from the Secretary of War to take Booth alive. But one man who rode with the 16th answered to a higher authority: Sergeant Thomas “Boston” Corbett.