Posted on 04/15/2015 11:05:21 AM PDT by nickcarraway
John Wilkes Booth was the man who pulled the trigger, capping off a coordinated plot to murder President Abraham Lincoln.
But historian Terry Alford, an expert on all things Booth, says that there's much more to Booth's life. His new biography, Fortune's Fool: The Life of John Wilkes Booth, delves deep into his life — before Booth went down in history as the man who assassinated a president.
Booth was born into a prominent family of actors. According to Alford, he had good looks and an exceptional acting range, playing both dark roles as bad guys and softer roles such as Romeo. By 1865, the 26-year-old was a headliner on the American stage. As Alford tells Morning Edition's Renee Montagne, Booth was the first actor known to have "had his clothes torn by fans."
"When he was coming out of a theater in Boston, the manager had to come back and tell people, 'Back up, let him out, just let him walk to his hotel.' "
Alford says it's interesting that, "over the years, as people felt free to talk about Booth, and while they shrank away from what he did, they didn't really shrink from him. They remembered things about him like courtesies and acts of heroism."
Like this example:
"One time onstage, he saved a young woman whose dress caught on fire," he says, "a young actress who had wandered too close to the gas footlights."
Booth was not a madman, according to Alford. In fact, he was politically motivated to assassinate Lincoln.
"John Wilkes Booth was one of those people who thought the best country in the history of the world was the United States as it existed before the Civil War," Alford says. "And then when Lincoln came along, he was changing that in fundamental ways."
"John Wilkes Booth was one of those people who thought the best country in the history of the world was the United States as it existed before the Civil War. And then when Lincoln came along, he was changing that in fundamental ways." - Terry Alford Those ideological differences include increasing the power of the federal government and emancipating the slaves, both things Booth was vehemently against. He was angered that the government instituted an income tax and the military draft, and that the government occasionally suspended habeas corpus, a legal protection against unlawful imprisonment. All these things, Alford says, agitated Booth.
"But Booth brought to that agitation an extremism, the passion almost of a fanatic," Alford says. "And it was very dangerous, as we find out."
Booth's opposition to Lincoln's policies persuaded him to fight with the Confederate army during the Civil War. But, according to Alford, his mother was a widow and had already lost four of her children. So she pleaded for him to stay clear of the war. Booth agreed.
"But he felt like a slacker," Alford says. "He even uses the word 'coward' to describe himself because, as an actor, he played a hero onstage but really wasn't one."
One of the people closest to Booth was his older sister, Asia Booth Clarke. After Lincoln's assassination in 1865, Asia and her family went into exile in England. There she wrote a secret memoir about her brother, but it wasn't published until 1938. Alford wrote the forward in the latest edition. In her memoir, Clarke recalls a time where a psychic predicted John Wilkes' Booth's untimely death.
Revisiting The Night Abraham Lincoln Was Shot 150 Years Ago "The old gypsy said [to him], 'You've got a bad hand; it's full of sorrow. Trouble plenty everywhere I look. I see you'll break hearts. You'll die young, and you will leave many to mourn you. You'll be rich, you'll be free but you're born under an unlucky star,' " Alford says. "And his sister said, 'Oh, don't let that worry you. These gypsies will just say anything for money.' And he laughed and said, 'That's right.' "
Alford adds that Booth would refer to the gypsy's predictions years later in conversations.
"The little fortune he wrote down grew tattered from folding and unfolding, as he would get it out and look at it and put it back," he says. "So thoughts like that preyed on his mind."
Alford says the assassination of President Lincoln – one of the most heinous acts in American history - shattered the Booth family.
"The brothers were actors," he says. "In other words, you've got to get out in front of thousands of strangers and dozens of towns and be public again. And this was exceptionally hard, because a lot of people did feel you are your brother's keeper. 'Why didn't you do something about this? What did you know? Why didn't you take care of it?' And, so it was extremely hard to be a Booth for a long, long time."
Update at 12:00 p.m. ET: We have changed the headline of this post, which originally said "John Wilkes Booth Was Not A Deranged Longer, Historian Says," and clarified in the text that Booth was not a lone gunman, but rather, a part of a group of conspirators."
He was certainly a murderer. I wonder what basis you have for the opinion he was a coward.
Not all evil men are cowards. The world would be a much safer place if it were.
Sadly, some evil men are brave and competent. They just decide to use their courage and competence in the service of evil.
Perhaps the fact that he shot a man in the back colored his opinion? It sure does mine.
If he really felt so strongly for “The Cuase’’ he could have fought as a soldier. hell, with his connections he could have been an officer. And rather than confront Lincoln face to face he snuck up on him from behind, waited until the biggest laugh-line in the play and then fired. That’s what I base it on.
A reasonable point. But a sniper does not confront his target face to face. Are all snipers cowards?
BTW, I wish he had confronted Lincoln or his gun had misfired, as 30 years before Jackson’s attempted assassin’s did. Twice! Booth was 5’8” and slender. Lincoln, as old as he was, reportedly was still very strong. I suspect he would have kicked Booth’s ass.
Would you have considered the guy who tried to murder Hitler with a bomb hidden in the pillar of the beer cellar a coward?
I obviously don’t agree, but Booth considered Lincoln as evil as we consider Hitler to be.
The sniper scenario isn’t analogous (to me at least) because the war was over and (at any rate) he wasn’t in uniform. Outside of war scenarios I think it is entirely reasonable to consider an assassin who shoots someone in the back (and in the presence of his wife!) a despicable coward.
I fully agree that what Booth did was despicable. Given the extreme risk he willingly undertook, however, it doesn’t seem reasonable to me that it was cowardly. Shooting an unarmed man from the front would not have acquitted him of the charge of cowardice.
Americans have an odd relationship with cowardice/bravery. In its root meaning this refers to a person’s willingness, or lack thereof, to risk his own precious skin in the pursuit of a goal. It, of itself, has nothing to do with whether that goal or the methods used to achieve it are good or right or honorable.
The Waffen SS and the Japanese soldiery of WWII were, after all, incredibly brave and fought with as much courage as any group in history. The guys who drove planes into buildings on 9/11 weren’t cowards. Somebody who willingly detonates himself for a cause isn’t a chicken.
Which is not to say that all these men and groups didn’t do extreme evil. We have a, to my mind, peculiar tendency to denounce the evil of the cause (or its methods) and somehow morph that over into its supporters being cowardly.
Probably this is because we think of bravery as a virtue and cowardice as a vice, and we don’t like to assign any virtues at all to those we despise for the evil they do. The problem, of course, is that there simply is no rule that bravery will be limited to those who fight for a righteous cause, or for that matter that individuals on the side of right won’t be cowardly.
Bravery, like intelligence, competence and many other virtues, is value-free. It can be employed in the service of either good or evil.
You are so right.
I think people are being so glib and disingenuous when they claim our Moslem enemies are “cowards”. Like hell! I wish they were.
As for the Booth example, or snipers (sharpshooters), or the typical MO of Moslems, it is SMART to “hide” and sneak up. Otherwise, the cause is likely lost.
I wonder if this has stuck in our minds with the British view (often) that American rebels were cowardly for “hiding behind trees” around the RevWar. Are they cowards for trying this? No, smart. They also got more into trench warfare, which was EXTENSIVELY used in the so-called Civil War. Cowardly? Or smart? (And BTW, no, not nearly most of the rebel fighting under Washington was “hiding” - most was typical of the day, mass front volleys/charges. Not stupid, just adapting to the technology of the day.)
Thank. I have found in general that this is not a popular position. Lots of people like to think suicide bombers are cowards because they don’t stand up to and fight their enemies “man to man.”
As you point out, this is just untrue. ISIS is, more or less, attempting to do that now. Whenever we get sufficiently tired of them, they will find out why it does not work.
Which is not to say that certain tactics used by terrorists aren’t cowardly. I would put using women and children as shields at the head of that particular list.
Terrorists of course can be and probably often are cowards. My point is just that terrorists are not necessarily and always cowards. As you say, they’d be much easier to defeat if they were.
I don't think that my "relationship" is odd at all. I believe it to be quite balanced as a matter of fact.
In Booth's case if we take the time to look beyond the act itself - which is itself textbook cowardice - and look at the man himself we can easily see his motivations.
He was a narcissist (what actor isn't?). He was petulant, prissy, and consumed with delusional self-importance. He felt slighted by his father and upstaged by his brother. He wasn't content with the fame he had generated for himself and always felt like he was in the shadows of his father and brother's brighter flame. He thought himself invincible - not by anything that he did but by who he was. Sure, he had his opinion about the WBTS and his expectation that the south would prevail. But he never considered it cause-worth enough to actually deign to participate in any of it. It wasn't his cause or he would have fought for it all along.
I suspect that he romanticized the risks and wove it into another of his play-acting. He fully expected to get away with it and be met as a hero and savior.
Believe what you wish. I believe he was a despicable coward.
Thanks nickcarraway.
Thanks Civ
George Soros thinks he’s right too... and NPR...
Booth was a drunkard, no talent hack of a local actor who only had local reknown and who was too afraid to actually fight for what he believed in and instead shot an unarmed man from behind.
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