Booth's Escape Route

[MaddieM]

What has the afterlife to do with history?

That was exactly my point. Some of the comments in this thread are for God to decide, not historians or anyone else (such as if Powell's remorse was genuine). And I do not think that he was a cold-blooded killer, BUT if he was, then it is for God to decide what to ultimately do with him and if that label should stick with him for all eternity.

And by that yardstick, he would never have been executed? Doesn't God forgive?

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While we're on the subject of dances -

It is probable that Booth, Powell, Herold and Atzerodt attended the Canterbury Music Hall. It sounds like a risque place, according to testimony given by one Lt.. Vanderpoel at the John Surratt Trial in 1867. He claimed to see the foursome seated at a table in the dance hall, drinking and talking earnestly while on stage a woman "flashed her legs around...."

However, according to Art Loux, the place must not have been that rowdy at times, as Lincoln took his son Tad there on occasion.

Haha. Were the women employed at such establishments still considered "respectable", or did they rank somewhere near the prostitutes?
What kind of dances were held during the Civil War anyway? I've heard that Baptists didn't dance, but this completely contradicts some of the more "Gone With the Wind" impressions I must have concerning grand balls in giant plantations.

Didn't the sight of a well turned ankle drive the men wild in those times?