WHO Encouraged Booth To Kill Lincoln

[L Verge]

Back again - The name of Larry Tagg's book is The Unpopular Mr. Lincoln, and I do recommend it. He spoke at a Surratt conference a number of years ago and presented a well-balanced assessment of feelings on both sides as related to Lincoln's popularity or lack thereof. At our conference next month, Dave Taylor will be speaking on the ways a divided nation dealt with the assassination.

Ignore Thomas DeLorenzo, if you must, but he occasionally makes some cogent points. Another more recent book on both sides of Lincoln's popularity is Loathing Lincoln by John M. Barr. And finally, take a look at this article by Harold Holzer: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/w...180954325/

By the time Booth reached the pine thicket and access to newspapers, he may have thought that everyone's hand was against him, but that is not quite accurate. It wasn't just Southern newspapers that spoke against the martyred President; others from Chicago to New York did also. Booth may have been the one who had the guts to carry through to the end, but there were certainly many like him who harbored hatred against Lincoln -- and in the case of Southern Maryland citizens, were willing to assist anyone who captured (or ultimately killed) that tyrant. I was raised with old-timers (family and others) who said that half of Southern Maryland knew there was a kidnap scheme afoot, but they were not about to spill the beans to the Feds.