What Really Happened - The Lincoln Assassination

[JMadonna]

(06-02-2021 07:49 AM)Tom Bogar Wrote:  Well, I can't take refuge in "artistic license." That's not how I work. I respect the historical research process too much to cut corners or invent things. I know, absolutely, that I would never have written a given sentence unless I had at the time the valid, credible source in front of me. I have been going back through my boxes of hard files and searching my electronic files for the source of "fifty cents," and will continue the process.

Don't knock yourself out, it happens to all of us. How someone did something is not as important as recording that that the horses were held by whom.

For example, John Wilkes Booth, pulled the trigger before a theater full of people, leaped from the presidential box to the stage, shouted something half intelligible then ran to the wings and made his exit. How did he do this?

According to one witness, he made a fifteen-foot leap, ran swiftly off-stage, and vanished. According to another, he slid down a flagpole (which did not exist), and crept away. One witness saw him limping painfully across the stage, moaning incoherently; while another saw him stalking off calmly, after delivering his “Sic semper tyrannis” line; another saw him running furiously, saying nothing at all; one woman claimed that his confederates swung a rope, lassoed him and whisked him into the wings.

What we know for certain was that he jumped to the stage and then left.
How he did it is a matter of interpretation, not necessarily 'artistic license'.