The Legend Of John Wilkes Booth

[maharba]

Roger, I believe you, as much as any present day student of Lincoln, may have seen and noted countless books, papers, theses, articles, etc on even the tiniest minutiae of Lincoln. Many of these papers seem absurd to me: they will again revisit some facet, and will now 'switch' and to claim that...Lincoln did NOT do or say such and such...because of some (believed) opinion they have manufactured. Then, they write at great length on that breakthrough idea. I mention to the other poster, who maintains "all the work has been done, the experts have written all the books", that in fact it is easy to demonstrate that is not at all the case. I cite the lack of basic census work done in several instances. In a genealogy of even the most humble man, a researcher makes an effort to find the person in all the census years. If not found, he notes this and makes a comment or two why he thinks there is an absent listing. With Lincoln and the 1840 census, we are not dealing with a forgotten farmer, but a future War president "lost in a census in a formative period of his life', I think it bears mentioning. It actually speaks volumes that the past 'Lincoln experts' have neither made an effort to research this, or even made a passing mention of it. Then returning to the man/men calling himself John Wilkes Booth, I see the identical lack of basic research. Instead, lots of articles and books with copyover material about the traveling mummy, and which leads some to claim "all that work has been done".