JWB-enjoyed many different women during his"fling time" didn't he!

Quote:"Booth reportedly expressed Union sentiments while in Montgomery. John Ellsler, a theatrical manager and later a business partner of Booth, wrote: “Wilkes was leading man in the stock company at Montgomery and his sympathy for, and utterances on behalf of the Union were so unguarded in their expression that his life was in jeopardy, and it became necessary for the manager of the theatre to resort to strategy and spirit Wilkes Booth out of the city to save his life. This I had from the lips of the manager [Matthew Canning] himself."

That explains a lot!! Anyone know what Booth was doing with the "pro-Union" stance in Montgomery? That doesn't sound like Booth...

I agree with you 100%.Booth was a madman!

Booth was a co-operationist in 1860-61, not a secessionist. He did not become secessionist until later in the war. His cooperationists attitude is in his Philadelphia Speech in Dec 1860, his secessionist attitude is in his 1864 To Whom It May Concern letter of 1864 and his attitude as an assassin in his letter to the National Intelligencer in 1865. It is all explained in my Book Sic Semper Tyrannis or in a longer version in my Last Confederate Heroes, take your choice. The originals are in Rhodehammer and Taper's collection of Booth's papers. Another version of the same is in Rick Stelnick's Dixie Reckoning.

He was not a madman, but like a lot of Southerners, he changed his stance as the war went on. The epitome was in Kentucky that "seceded" in 1865 during Reconstruction and Missouri by 1875. See Merton Coulter, Civil War and Readjustment in Ky; and TJ Stiles, Jess James: The Last Rebel of the Civil War

I don't think Booth was insane, Herb! He did apparently go through a lot of women though!

Thank you, Wild Bill! That makes perfect sense (and makes Louise Wooster's claim of knowing JWB much more believable). I need to buy The Last Confederate Heroes; been meaning to do it for a while now.

Wild Bill-If Booth was not a madman,then what kind of a man was he? Please educate me!How you describe him?

As a kind of fun fact, or weird fact, I came across another "lady of the night" with the name of Starr that links the Lincoln and Kennedy assassinations. I don't recall seeing this commonality mentioned before. A letter written by legendary Baltimore burlesque star/stripper Blaze Starr came up for auction with Nate Sanders. In her letter "To my Dear Friend" she related a story involving her "friendship" with JFK. One night she mentioned her "fantasy" to JFK involving the Lincoln bedroom, and in response, JFK brought her to the White House (Jackie was away on a cruise) where they had their "tryst". Afterwards (Kennedy left for a meeting) and as she was repairing her makeup she noticed " a life size statue, (I thought) of Lincoln in the corner. He was wearing a tall black hat, a dark suit, and a white shirt. Paul arrived [the CBS newsman who facilitated their tryst!] and as I was leaving, I turned and jokingly said, thank you President Lincoln, for the use of your bedroom. There was nothing there....".

Blaze Starr-Burlesque Queen can be seen on you tube, but let me save your the trouble. The act is quite dated. It looks like someone with lower back pain trying to avoid stepping in the wrong place while walking through a barnyard, and at the same time trying to slip out of her party dress on a hot day while repeatingly scratching her head.

At least, that was Fido's description.

Well, Gene, if a picture is worth a thousand words, a moving picture is good for at least a thousand more, none of them any good in this case. Marilyn Monroe she wasn't, even in her prime which had long since passed for Youtube. Kennedy's reputation, in his personal life, is getting creepier.

Well, Herb, you are a student of Albert Castel. He wrote on the Trans-Mississippi war. There you have people like Quantrell, Bloody, Bill George Todd, Dave Poole. You think Booth was worse than they? Have you ever seen pictures of the Missouri guerrillas 40 years after the war. Were there guys madmen? I have a paper that claims that Abe Lincoln and the Republicans intentionally started the war. Was Lincoln a mad man? War is a funny thing. Maybe that's why we have post traumatic depression? Maybe everybody was crazy? I think that one needs to be very careful in dismissing those you disagree with or those who lived in a past century as mad. Calling Booth a madman is the easy way out. I think e was a lot more complicated than simply being dismissed as mad. That's what people call me all the time! Uh, oh! I am mad just like Lewis Powell screamed as he ran from the Seward House, covered in blood.

Don't quite agree with you Bill, but I can't seem to find the words to express why. I will have to give it some time and thought, unless someone else can express it before I do.

(Don't think Booth was worse than Quantrell or Bloody Bill, but how bad do you have to be to be "bad"?
Who draws the line between sanity and madness?)

[There you have people like Quantrell, Bloody, Bill George Todd, Dave Poole. You think Booth was worse than they? Have you ever seen pictures of the Missouri guerrillas 40 years after the war. Were there guys madmen?]// quote Wild Bill

I confess to never having heard about Quantrill(?) and his gang until I read McPherson's "The Battle Cry of Freedom" a few years back. You are so right, JWB was Rev.Billy Graham in comparison.

Quantrill was a stone cold sociopathic madman who committed murder as casually as some people brush their teeth.

Thanks for your opinion Wild Bill,you have yours and I have mine! Isn't that was history is and isn't that what history is all about?Those outlaws that you mentioned, never assassinated a president-correct?

Herb, I sort of see where you are coming from. However, Booth killed one man; "those outlaws" killed many. John Brown killed many. What makes him different from Quantrell? This is a spitting contest that no one is going to win, imo.

A political assassin acts as judge, jury and executioner when he or(she) subverts the will of the people by destroying the person they have elected to lead them. A political assassination impacts history in a very serious-occasionally-devastating way.

Mass murderers/terrorists like Brown and Quantrell destroy more lives but affect the destinies of nations only rarely, although one could argue that John Brown's crimes did trigger events that influenced history.