Well I have pretty well made it though this topic, may have not finished a couple. But like the others I loved it, look forward to more of the same.
The most interesting conspirator of them all was the actor Wilkes Booth. The only person in the world who actually knew him was his older sister, Asia. His last thoughts were of her...
After the assassination, investigators and police closed the theater and hauled in everyone who had ever known Wilkes Booth. It's interesting that they couldn't find even one person who had a bad word to say about him. They simply refused to believe that he was capable of violence. They thought he was a pacifist; a kind, gentle, sensitive, artist who loved people... He was educated in Catholic schools and several of the conspirators were former classmates. His outstanding talent was his phenomenal memory. As a boy growing up, he had memorized all of Shakespeare's plays by the age of 8...every line of every character...and would act out every part to his eternally worshipful audience of one: his sister Asia. She would applaud and laugh and cry at every performance; just the two of them for hours on end. The two of them created their own world. His older brother Edwin is still regarded as the greatest American actor of all-time, but Wilkes Booth had a career almost as remarkable. Billed as "The World's Youngest Star" he performed to sold-out theaters, north or south, from the time he was a teenager. It's NOT true that he was a "failed actor" He was the greatest box office draw of the age. It was said that as he walked back and forth across the stage, the faces and eyes of the women and girls in the audience would follow him back and forth "as the sunflowers follow the sun." In New York, Montreal, Philadelphia, Richmond, he often stopped traffic just crossing the street. By 1865, his carte-de-visite (business cards that were collected and traded) was the second most popular in the country after only President Lincoln himself. He was a huge star. The key to understanding Booth is the realization that he was ALWAYS acting. At Lincoln's Second Inaugural, you can see him standing just above the president with a gun in his pocket. He mentioned this in his diary too. He had obtained admission to this area by getting a ticket from Lucy Hale, the daughter of Senator Hale, who had recently announced that his daughter was engaged to be married to the famous actor. If you look just below the president in those same photos, you can see some familiar faces: Lewis Powell, Davey Herold, John Surratt, George Atzerodt. Those photos sat there for over 100 years and nobody looked at them closely, even though Booth had mentioned what happened in his writings. It was a college student my age (19) who made the discovery in 1969. So Booth and his band of spies and thugs finally pulled it off. They left a trail of misery and political devastation that exists to this day, but his motivation was purely personal. His last words were " Tell my mother that I died for my country" and "Tell Asia...useless...useless..." At the Players Club in New York, which he owned, Edwin Booth's room has been left exactly the way he left it on the night he died at age 63. On the nightstand is a picture of his younger brother Johnny. It was the last thing that he saw every night, for the rest of his life...
The crowd was hoping for a vengeful speech, but that wasn't Mr. Lincoln's style. Or perhaps they forgot that he too was a southerner from Kentucky. His speech urged forgiveness and tolerance in the new UNITED States of America. "With malice toward none and charity for all." Not everyone was in the mood to accept forgiveness. Directly below Mr. Lincoln is Lewis Powell, wearing the new soft felt hat that Booth had bought for him. To his right is Davey Herold; to his left John Surratt.
Booth claimed in his diary that he was standing on the balcony, amid some statuary, wearing his top hat and fingering his pistol and said, "I could have shot him right there."
Thanks Jo’Co for all of your contributions to this great thread. Moving article from a Canadian POW of his rescue from Japanese prison camp by Americans. On This Day in 1945, Japan Released Me from a POW Camp. Then US Pilots Saved My Life - Quillette
The three Booth brothers appeared together for the last time at the Winter Garden Theater in New York on November 25, 1864. Left to right, Wilkes Booth, Edwin Booth, Junius Brutus Booth.
I think that's a picture of Gipper on the left...with Dave on the right and Bill in the center rolling his eyes.
Name the Author of these two Editorials. Dec 20th 1890 “Sitting Bull, most renowned Sioux of modern history, is dead. “He was not a Chief, but without Kingly lineage he arose from a lowly position to the greatest Medicine Man of his time, by virtue of his shrewdness and daring. “He was an Indian with a white man’s spirit of hatred and revenge for those who had wronged him and his. In his day he saw his son and his tribe gradually driven from their possessions; forced to give up their old hunting grounds and espouse the hard working and uncongenial avocations of the whites. And these, his conquerors, were marked in their dealings with his people by selfishness, falsehood and treachery. What wonder that his wild nature, untamed by years of subjection, should still revolt? What wonder that a fiery rage still burned within his breast and that he should seek every opportunity of obtaining vengeance upon his natural enemies. “The proud spirit of the original owners of these vast prairies inherited through centuries of fierce and bloody wars for their possession, lingered last in the bosom of Sitting Bull. With his fall the nobility of the Redskin is extinguished, and what few are left are a pack of whining curs who lick the hand that smites them. The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians. Why not annihilation? Their glory has fled, their spirits broken, their manhood effaced; better that they die than live the miserable wretches that they are. History would forget these later despicable beings, and speak, in later ages of the glory of these grand Kings of forest and plain that Cooper loved to heroism. “We cannot honestly regret their extermination, but we at least do justice to the manly characteristics possessed, according to their lights and education, by the early Redskins of America.” The second editorial was printed on January 3, 1891, and is about the massacre at Wounded Knee: “The peculiar policy of the government in employing so weak and vacillating a person as General Miles to look after the uneasy Indians has resulted in a terrible loss of blood to our soldiers, and a battle which, at its best, is a disgrace to the War Department. There has been plenty of time for prompt and decisive measures, the employment of which would have prevented this disaster. “The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extermination of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth. In this lies future safety for our settlers and the soldiers who are under incompetent commands. Otherwise, we may expect future years to be as full of trouble with the redskins as those have been in the past. “An eastern contemporary, with a grain of wisdom in its wit, says that “when the whites win a fight, it is a victory, and when the Indians win it, it is a massacre.”
The author of those 2 editorials advocating genocide of the Native Americans is the beloved author of the Wizzard of Oz...L. Frank Baum. He at one time ran a newspaper in the Dakota's and those were his editorials.
Great find Terry. It was Harry S Truman who said, the only thing new in the world is the history you don't know.