Booth's Mental health

[Wild Bill]

Ok. Let’s look at the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, totally devoid of the modern hero worship, so aptly portrayed in the blogs of Juan Marrero, Herb Swingle, and others.

First, we must realize that we are talking about war, not crime. Under the system of government put forth by the Founding Fathers in the US Constitution of 1789, the civilian branches of government of the United States command the armed forces, with the president as commander in chief and backed by the branches of the Defense Department (as of 1947). In 1865, these branches of the Defense Department were individual cabinet offices. The Confederacy was run in exactly the same manner.

Thus the president was a legitimate military target. After the revelation of the plans of the Kilpatrick-Dahlgren operation to assassinate Jefferson Davis and his cabinet in 1864, the whole gentlemanly conduct of the war changed, brought about by the inability of either side to win the war in the field. This was before Gen. US Grant’s Overland Campaign of 1864, but the stalemate in the field as US forces failed to capture Richmond and Atlanta only increased the Union frustrations.

Copying what the Confederates saw as Lincoln’s changing the nature of the war with the failed Kilpatrick-Dahlgren raid, Jefferson Davis and his civilian advisors conceived of similar approach—take Lincoln out of the war. This would seriously affect the Union forces ability in an area known nowadays as C3I, i.e., Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence. The disruption of the Union C3I system would also allow the Confederates to institute their Campaign of 1865—the abandonment of Richmond and he joining the two major armies in the East (Lee in Virginia and Joe Johnston in North Carolina) under the command of Robert E. Lee. The Rebs were to travel by rail, destroying the tracks as they passed. Grant would be stuck in the Virginia mud, as April was a very rainy month. Lee and Johnston would defeat Sherman in NC and move back to Va and hit Grant as his army moved in a disjointed manner along the roads.

The man picked out to handle Lincoln’s removal was John Wilkes Booth. The Confederates saw not the madman that we have seen offered up in this blog, but a superb rider, smuggler of quinine, and a crack shot. He was he most famous actor of his day, a profession that allowed him great mobility and opportunity to travel without raising undue suspicion. Yeah, he was an egotist, womanizer, drinker, but he was also a loyal partisan of the South. When he sought help, he relied on friends (Arnold, O’Laughlen), fellow agents (Surratt), and those with talents he needed to carry out his plan (Herold, who knew Southern Maryland like the back of his hand; Atzerodt, who could cross the Potomac at will, day or night; and Powell, a superb rider with Mosby and a trained killer with4 years experience in war).

At first Booth was to capture (not kidnap—it is a war objective not a crime) Lincoln and spirit him to Richmond and try him for Northern excesses in prosecuting the war in the South. But as the war proceeded in favor of the North, more and more Southerners felt that Lincoln, whom they saw as a worse tyrant than George III, should pay the ultimate price for starting the war. It was too late to capture, now he would be assassinated.

Richmond sent powderman Thomas Harney to blow up the White house. But Harney was captured just outside Washington. He was to be led into the Whitehouse basement by Booth and his compatriots. Now Booth wondered where Harney was, found him in the Old Capitol Prison though informants, and decided to do Harney’s job for him. Explosives were beyond the ken of Booth and his men so they reverted to normal weapons—revolvers, knives. The targets were Lincoln (Booth), Johnson (Atzerodt), Seward (Powell), Stanton (Olaughlen), and Grant (Surratt). So Booth and his cohorts carried out a MILITARY OPERATION to nullify the C3I of the Union Forces in the field. At the time only Lee’s army had surrendered, and his was the smallest force in the field for the Confederacy.

That only Booth was successful is immaterial. What really killed the intent of the Confederacy’s Campaign of 1865 was that Grant’s army moved faster than it should have because the rain normal in Virginia in April did not arrive on time. This allowed Grant to beat Lee to Amelia Station and cut off the rails to the South and Johnston.

In this light, it has been the contention of historian and Lincoln Assassination scholar, William Hanchett, that we should accord Booth the “respectability of rational political motivation.” Booth, Hanchett suggested, “deserves a measure of respect we so generously and indiscriminately pay to men on both sides of the war who fought, killed, and died for what they believed. When we are able to make this concession to Booth,” Hanchett concluded, “we will truly understand how terrible the Civil War was.”
Booth was no madman. He was a soldier just like the others, doing his duty, however unsuccessfully it may have been done.

I give you all the following bibliography, most of which, regrettably, is xeroxed in my private collection:
David Winfred Gaddy, “Under a Southern Rose: Of a Time when CIA Meant “Confederate Intelligence Activities’.”
William Hanchett, “Lincoln’s Assassination as a Military Necessity.”
William Hanchett, “John Wilkes Booth and the Terrible Truth about the Civil War.”
William A. Tidwell, James O. Hall, and David W. Gaddy, Come Retribution.
William L. Richter, Last Confederate Heroes.