Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
An annotated collection of all of the known writings of John Wilkes Booth.
Synopsis
All of the known writings of John Wilkes Booth are included in this collection, a major new contribution to scholarship on Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War, and nineteenth-century theater history. More than one-half of this material has never been published before. Of this wealth of material, the most important item is a previously unpublished twenty-page manuscript discovered at the Players Club in Manhattan. Written by Booth in 1860 in a form similar to Mark Antony's funeral oration in Julius Caesar, it makes clear that his hatred for Lincoln was formed early and was deeply rooted in his pro-slavery and pro-Southern ideology. Also included in the nearly seventy documents are six love letters to a seventeen-year-old Boston girl, Isabel Sumner, written during the summer of 1864, when Booth was conspiring against Lincoln; several explicit statements of Booth's political convictions; and the diary he kept during his futile twelve-day flight after the assassination. The documents show that Booth, although opinionated and impulsive, was not an isolated madman. Rather, he was a highly successful actor and ladies' man who also was a Confederate agent. Along with many others, he believed that Lincoln was a tyrant whose policies threatened civil liberties.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. [161]-167) and index.