Although Tom Taylor’s Our American Cousin was originally written for the British stage, its most notable performance occurred in the United States. On April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth fatally shot Abraham Lincoln while the president was watching a performance of this play at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C.
The play tells the story of an American named Asa Trenchard who goes to England to claim an inheritance and ends up saving his relatives from a greedy financial agent. Taylor, who wrote the farce in 1851, initially tried to get it produced in England, but the first staging took place by Laura Keene in New York in 1858. Joseph Jefferson III played the lead role, but many critics thought E.A. Sothern stole the show with his humorous portrayal of Lord Dundreary. Taylor’s comedy was finally performed in his homeland in 1861, and the play did well on both continents for much of the late 1800s.
Lincoln attended the theater that fatal night with his wife and two guests to celebrate the end of the American Civil War. Booth, who was an advocate of slavery, shot the antislavery president during the third act. He then jumped onto the stage and used a dagger to fend off pursuers before escaping. Booth was found and killed in a Virginia barn on April 26. (See also Booth, John Wilkes; Lincoln, Abraham.)