In the sixth episode of Manhunt, John Wilkes Booth and his accomplice are surrounded by Union soldiers, and Booth faces his ultimate fate, but as it turns out, the television series took creative liberties when it came to what happened to Booth after his death. In real life, and in episode 6 of Manhunt, Booth and Herold are cornered in a barn owned by the Garrett family. Though Herold surrenders, Booth refuses to come out, even as the barn burns. Eventually, Union solider Boston Corbett takes matters into his own hands and shoots Booth, killing him.
For the most part, Manhunt gets Booth’s capture and death historically correct. Booth and Herold were held up in a barn, and the soldiers set the building on fire to try and get Booth to escape. David Herold surrendered, but Booth was harder to capture. And finally, Boston Corbett saw an opportunity to take Booth down, so he shot the assassin through a gap in the barn, giving him a wound that was strangely similar to that of Abraham Lincoln’s. However, what happened to Booth’s body after this shoot out differs between real life and what Manhunt portrays.
In real life, John Wilkes Booth was killed by Boston Corbett on April 26, 1865. Long afterward, his remains were returned to his family. On that day, Corbett shot Booth in the back of the neck, giving him a wound so similar to Abraham Lincoln’s that many felt it was karmic justice. However, unlike Lincoln, Booth remained conscious for three hours after sustaining the injury, leaving him to suffer, paralyzed, up until his death. Booth’s final words included, “Tell my mother I died for my country,” and while looking at his hands, he said, “Useless, useless.”
Following his death, Booth’s body was set on a ship and brought to Washington D.C. for an autopsy. After he was identitifed, Booth’s body was buried at the Arsenal Penitentiary, and two years later, was sent to a warehouse at Washington Arsenal. It wasn’t until 1869, four years after his death, that Booth’s remains were returned to his family. The Booths buried John Wilkes in their family plot at Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore. His funeral was attended by many Southerners who still maintained hatred for Abraham Lincoln and his actions during the Civil War.
Despite what history says about John Wilkes Booth’s body, Apple TV+’s Manhunt portrays a very different fate for Abraham Lincoln’s assassin. When Secretary of War Edwin Stanton finally sees John Wilkes Booth’s body, he orders his son and the others working under him to dispose of Booth’s remains in a body of water. He tells the men not to tell him where Booth’s body is. And by the end of the episode, it is shown that Stanton’s men do exactly that, dumping his body unceremoniously in an unknown body of water just like Stanton ordered.
As soon as Lincoln died, Stanton decided to track down Booth himself. Fueled by grief and anger, Stanton found not only Booth but others who were allegedly involved in the plot. Therefore, when Stanton finally found Booth, he wanted to exact revenge, even though Booth was already dead. By casting his remains into a body of water, without ceremony or marker, Stanton is making Booth pay for what he did. And in reality, this fate would have hurt Booth immensely considering his ego.
If John Wilkes Booth’s body was not thrown in an unnamed body of water, then it is strange that Manhunt depicted it that way. However, the answer likely lies in the show’s main character. Although the series is about John Wilkes Booth’s escape from capture , the real main character is Edwin Stanton. Stanton’s close relationship with Lincoln and his role as Secretary of War made him the ideal candidate to seek out Booth after his crime. And over the course of the series, audiences have watched Stanton struggle emotionally and physically to complete this task.
Overall, it seems most likely that Manhunt portrayed Booth’s end in that way because it is what Stanton would have wanted. Despite the fact that, in real life, Booth’s remains went through a much more official journey, Stanton likely wished Booth to have nothing after death. In this way, Manhunt is following Stanton’s supposed wishes rather than the actual history. As a piece of fiction, this is an artistic choice Manhunt made that makes sense dramatically, despite its lack of accuracy.