David Rankin Barbee

[L Verge]

I have been familiar with the name David Rankin Barbee and his work in the Lincoln and Lincoln assassination field for many years, but I never knew anything about the man except that and the fact that he had worked in Washington journalism in the first half of the 20th century. I just googled him and found some interesting things.

Mr. Barbee was born in October of 1874, in Tennessee. His father was a minister and was commissioned as a chaplain during the Civil War with his commission signed by Jefferson Davis - the first commission signed by Mr. Davis, in fact. A grand-uncle through the Rankin side of the family (mother's), however, Rev. John Rankin, was a founder of a Southern abolitionist movement in Kentucky back in 1818.

There were other political ties: His grandfather Rankin served with Andrew Johnson in the Tennessee legislature during the 1830s, and Johnson's maternal grandfather married Barbee's great-grandmother.

"Our" David Rankin Barbee went by his middle name of "Rankin," not David, nor David Rankin -- just Rankin Barbee. As such, he worked in the FDR administration as a public relations writer and also became fairly well-known for his writings on American history, specifically Lincoln and the assassination as well as a variety of Southern stories - including on Rose Greenhow. Barbee died in Orange, Texas on March 7, 1958.

I found this comment interesting in his bio: "Barbee viewed himself as an 'unreconstructed' Southerner, yet saw the Lincoln assassination as an act 'so cruel, so cowardly, so unnecessary and so tremendous in its consequences that by common consent, it has come to be regarded as the greatest incident in American history.'"