John Wilkes Booth. Did it? didn't do it?

[pres2032]

[AntiCoup2K4]

1. Open & shut case - theater full of eyewitnesses

Plus, I don't think he bothered denying it.

[pres2032]

2. ya never know, it may have been Robert E. Lee!!

ya, I know, hehe, it was a cheap attempt at a copycat. :P

[Spider Jerusalem]

3. Eh...he didn't have a chance to deny it.

An Army detachment caught up with him hiding in a barn outisde Baltimore and shot him. But considering that he was a rather famous face, especially to theatre-goers, there's no question.

[ashmanonar]

4. no, the question is...

was he told to do it or did he do it on his own initiative?

was there someone shadowy behind the scenes who wanted lincoln dead? i've heard rumors (although not really substantial) about his secretary...of war, was it?

i'm not all that remembering right now. but it wouldn't surprise me that there was more than met the eye on the lincoln assassination.

[pres2032]

5. my theory is that it was a member of the Confederate hierarchy

someone very much opposed to Lincoln's reconstruction plan. maybe jeff davis?

[Melynn]

7. Kind of suspicious that Booth was shot and not taken prisoner

I have to wonder if Booth was shot on purpose so he wouldn't talk about a wider conspiracy.

[ashmanonar]

9. wouldn't have surprised me.

certainly makes it easier to not have to hear his testimony.

[ashmanonar]

14. that's certainly the obvious suspect.

maybe too obvious? i still think it was someone in lincoln's own cabinet. edwin mcmasters stanton, secretary of war, stands out to me. first of all, he was most likely a spy for the republican party of that day.

otherwise: maybe it was the fact that every man in the succession for the presidency was attacked (except for stanton, and andrew johnson, apparently the man who was supposed to kill him failed miserably) and Stanton was clearly in control of the country for a brief time.

"Stanton was convinced the murder of Lincoln was part of a conspiracy , ‘planned and set on foot by rebels under pretense of a avenging the rebel cause'. Abandoning his plans to retire, Stanton was in control of the government. The Army was under his control, the new President Andrew Johnson was unsure of himself and Congress was not in session."

something about the whole situation isn't right.

you know what's strange: noone EVER talks about that whole sequence of events in history class; it wasn't just lincoln who was attacked, there were attempts on EVERYBODY in succession. except stanton. there was some funny business going on there.

Stanton

[pres2032]

15. that's really interesting

that probably answers post #13 too.

[ashmanonar]

16. heh.

just your friendly neighborhood nerd, who knows WAY TOO MUCH about some very inane topics.

and yes, i think that does answer post 13.

so see, DUers: conspiracy isn't a bushco invention. it's been going on for a LONG FUCKING TIME. people have always been conspiring against authority (often within authority itself)

bush is just particularly obvious at it.

[Dave Sund]

17. I think that one is a reach

Booth clearly had his own agenda, he wasn't a patsy like Oswald. He did meet with Confederate officials during the war to discuss a plan to kidnap Lincoln. It's no secret that he was a Confederate sympathizer, and there's really no evidence to suggest that Stanton had any contact with Booth or the other assassins. The main reason that only Seward, Lincoln, and Johnson were supposed to be attacked was because Booth only had two co-conspirators, and pretty lousy ones at that. He came up with the plan quite literally overnight.

On the issue of Johnson, and what might have gone differently... It's my understanding that Johnson is quite possibly the least powerful President in American history. He was a Democrat on a split party ticket (the Union party), with a HUGELY Republican Congress... after all, most of the Democrats were kicked out of Congress after their states seceded from the Union. He was basically impeached because Congress didn't like him, and almost thrown out of office. My limited understanding of what killed Reconstruction was the stolen election of 1876, with Rutherford B. Hayes selling out blacks in the south in order to become President.

[ashmanonar]

18. i think my point is mostly that we don't really know.

it happened a hundred fifty years ago. the grandchildren of anyone involved are dead.

and no, i don't have specific and concrete evidence on stanton: merely one of those circumstancial situations. but it all seemed to fall together too well for him, especially someone who was a "traitor" (he sold out to the republicans of the time.)

also: was lincoln being guarded? if he was, how did booth get past them? if not, why wasn't he? what are the specifics of booth's assassination?

[Dave Sund]

21. Lincoln

I believe he had one guard outside his door, but he had gone down to the floor during the show. Booth was so famous, that most people who saw him walking up to Lincoln's box assumed that the President had summoned him. Booth was aware of the play, and knew that one particular line was going to have the crowd roaring with laughter. (I can't recall the line, does anyone remember?) He used that line as a distraction to open the door to the box, and fire a bullet into Lincoln's head.

[Pendrench]

23. Although not really funny by today's standards....

The play's most famous performance came seven years later, however, at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C. on April 14, 1865. Halfway through Act III, Scene 2, the character Asa Trenchard (the titular cousin) utters one of the play's funniest lines -- however little sense it makes out of context:

Don't know the manners of good society, eh? Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal -- you sockdologizing old man-trap.

During the raucous laughter that followed this line, John Wilkes Booth, an actor who received his mail at Ford's Theater but who was not in the cast of Our American Cousin, assassinated Abraham Lincoln. He chose the timing in hopes that the sound of the laughter would mask the sound of his gunshot.

[Dave Sund]

6. I watched a thing on the History Channel last week

It seems like Booth was actually the mastermind of the whole plot. The original plan was to kidnap Lincoln, and use him as a hostage to get Confederate POWs freed. After the war ended, Booth changed the plan. He was very upset at Lincoln's reconstruction plans, particularly citizenship for blacks.

And, when he heard Lincoln was coming to Ford's Theatre that night, he devised a plan to assassinate the top 3 officials in the U.S. government, President Lincoln, Vice President Johnson, and Secretary of State Seward. The guy who was supposed to kill Seward used a knife and tried to stab him several times, and barely hit him at all. The guy who was supposed to kill Johnson got cold feet, and Booth of course was responsible for killing Lincoln.

[pres2032]

8. i think i saw that program too a while back.

makes you think of what would have happened had Johnson been killed too and how much better the south may be today.

[Dave Sund]

10. Or, in a less gruesome scenario, if he had been removed from office

IIRC, the Senate vote was about a vote short of convicting him.

[pres2032]

11. right

just to clarify, i wasn't advocating the assassination of Johnson. I wouldn't advocate the death of ANYONE. just looking at the possibility of not having Johnson as president at that time.

[Dave Sund]

12. Oh, I know

At the time Johnson was on trial, was there any means of succession? Did he have a Vice President? If not, who would have become President?

[pres2032]

13. i don't know

pretty sure he didn't have a VP. The 25th Amendment (succession) wasn't added until after Kennedy was shot. I have no idea who would've taken over. They could've placed a member of the cabinet, or even a supreme court Justice as interim president until a special election could be held.

[NoPasaran]

19. It would have been the President Pro Tempore of the Senate

Ben Wade, one of the leaders of the Radical Republican faction.

[Dave Sund]

20. And one of the chief advocates for conviction, no doubt

A lot of stuff in history that is really interesting but doesn't get a lot of attention... this may have been a copycat thread, but it's led to some real interesting discussion.

[NoPasaran]

22. I've never been able to understand Andrew Johnson

Here was man who denounced the South's "mud-sill aristocracy"; the only Senator not to go with his state when it seceded; served as Military Governor of Tennessee; was widely considered to be more vindictive toward the South than Lincoln; yet within a few months after becoming President started acting as an ally of the political forces he had opposed through all his previous career.