Booth's Mental health

[Juan Marrero]

I've been very interested in Booth's mental health for a long while. Many people don't want to hear about it because they probably would feel as though a mental illness involved in the equation would be a way of letting Booth "off the hook" in a way for his actions.

Jenny, you raise the all important question of whether one can judge someone fairly without taking into account all the factors prompting a particular action. A Spanish philosopher of the last century said, "I am I and my circumstances." Booth committed the foulest murder in U.S. history but by his own lights he was acting heroically and selflessly. That seems absurd, but, on the other hand, I have a soft spot for John Brown.

Perhaps John Brown and Booth suffered from similar mental ailments, but one fought for abolition and the other acted for slavery. Neither I believe could change their intrinsically fanatical nature, but both were intelligent enough to change their direction if so persuaded. (I like to think of St. Francis as one who could not change his nature, but radically changed his direction.)

Whatever his mental problems, I think that Booth's greatest "sin" (aside from the murder itself) was not to exercise enough moral imagination to see slavery as the evil it was. He became fixated on the south and the injustices done to Copperheads without giving, apparently, much thought to the enormous evil of slavery.