What are you reading now?

[Susan Higginbotham]

Just a note on the Catholic medal: I believe that it is briefly mentioned as being put in someone's pocket at Garrett's farm. Did it ever surface again during the trial? Also, Booth was raised and educated in the Episcopal Church; so was I, and they award medals and also give them as presents. Who could distinguish between a Catholic and an Episcopal medal on Booth.

Another thought on the medal: There is mention of Booth donating to a project at the Surratts' church. Could it have been a token of thanks?

Asia said that her brother had supposedly converted, but we can't find records of it. And finally, under the natural order of things, a person who is born into a Catholic family still has to take serious instruction to be confirmed and able to take the sacraments. Supposedly, this conversion of Booth took place in March of 1865, I believe. When did the man have time to study while plotting his deed(s) against Lincoln?

He was also laid to rest at Green Mount Cemetery with an Episcopal priest reading the Episcopal burial service - for which the priest lost his job.

Asia in a letter of May 1865 writes that "Wilkes was of [the Catholic] faith--preferably". Perhaps she meant that he was at heart a Catholic, without having undergone the formal conversion process (which I suppose would have been necessary for him to receive a Catholic burial service)?

I looked in Kaufman's and Swanson's books and couldn't find a mention of the medal. Where does the story originate? (As a novelist, I'm rather taken with the idea of Mary Surratt handing him the alleged medal at her last meeting with him. Isn't she said to have converted some of her friends to Catholicism? Maybe he was one of her projects, and some of their private meetings were about religion rather than plots.)