Did Booth want Johnson to be president?

[RJNorton]

If Andrew Johnson had also been assassinated, as I believe Booth had planned, Senate President Pro Tempore Lafayette S. Foster of Connecticut would have become Acting President pending an election of a new President (the process of electing a new President could only be set in motion by the Secretary of State; thus Booth felt Seward's assassination would throw the Union government into "electoral chaos"). A Presidential Succession law passed on March 1, 1792, was still in effect in 1865. It provided that the President Pro Tempore of the Senate was third in line to the Presidency and the Speaker of the House was fourth. This law didn't make any succession provisions beyond the Speaker.

On the day of the assassination Booth had a noontime conversation with John F. Coyle, part-owner and editor of the Washington Daily National Intelligencer. In the conversation Booth quizzed Coyle on the line of secession:

Booth: “Suppose Lincoln was killed, what would be the result?"
Coyle: “Johnson would succeed.”
Booth: “But if he was killed?”
Coyle: “Then Seward.”
Booth: “But suppose he was killed, then what?”
Coyle: “Then anarchy or whatever the Constitution provides.”

Coyle went on to say, “What nonsense, they don’t make Brutuses nowadays.”
Booth replied, “No, they do not.”

The above conversation was published in the Washington Post and is also included in the article entitled "Why Seward?" by Michael Maione and James O. Hall in the Spring 1998 edition of the Lincoln Herald.

Jerry, if this conversation be true, then I think there is a good argument that Booth's goal was to create chaos in the Union government, and Johnson's death was a part of that.