Who was this person from the Civil War Era?

This man was Boston Corbett, also known as "Lincoln's Avenger."

Thomas Corbett was in England, in 1832. HIs family moved to Boston when he was 7 years old. He changed his name to "Boston" because he was "reborn" and became a radical street preacher in Boston.

He enlisted and reenlisted in the Union Army three times, and was captured by the Confederacy in 1864 and imprisoned at Andersonville. He was one of only two men from his company that survived Andersonville.

Two days before Booth’s murder, the government tapped Corbett’s unit, the 16th New York Cavalry, to pursue the assassin.

He was the Union soldier who against orders, shot John Wilkes Booth in a burning tobacco barn, while his company was trying to take Booth alive.

When his commanding officer asked why he defied orders, Corbett responded :

“Providence directed me.”