Wanted, 1865

“Let the stain of innocent blood be removed from the land,” called this poster, which was issued by the War Department on April 20, 1865, five days after the death of President Lincoln. The poster offered large rewards for the capture of John Wilkes Booth and his accomplices, John H. Surratt and David C. Herald, and warned that anyone who aided these men would be treated as accomplices and subject to the death penalty. Booth died resisting capture in Virginia on April 26th; four conspirators—including Herald and John Surratt’s mother, Mary—were later tried, sentenced to death, and executed (making Mary Surratt the first woman ever executed by the U.S. government).

Source: An American Time Capsule: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera—American Memory Collection, Library of Congress