Booths gun

[Bill Richter]

Ok, at the risk of being run out of town by y'all, in Rick Stelnick's manuscript version of Dixie Reckoning, pp. 29-30, Booth obtained his deringer from an acquaintance, Philip Henson, a southern born, later Union spy, in 1860 when Booth and Matthew Canning were presenting plays in Alabama, just before they were run out of the state. Booth was not a secessionist at the time (see my Last Confederate Heroes, or Sic Semper Tyrannis, for Booth's transformation from a Union man in 1860 to a secessionist late in the war in 1864 to an assassin by 1865) and was threatened with assault by a secessionist mob. After the incident, Henson, a new friend, handed Booth a deringer for protection. The pistol was one of a pair owned by Henson. He cites the Henson papers owned by a relative. Booth kept it thereafter and used it to kill Lincoln. I am sure this will not fly with most of my fellow bloggers, but you pays your money and you takes your choice.