An American Marriage

[RJNorton]

Burlingame goes so far as to assign Mary a certain culpability in her husband’s assassination. Her rude treatment of Julia Grant reportedly prevented Gen. Ulysses S. Grant from accompanying the first couple to Ford’s Theater on April 14, when John Wilkes Booth fired the fatal shot. Had Grant been there, Burlingame asserts, his “own self-protective instincts, honed by long battlefield experience, would have made it unlikely that Booth would have succeeded.” If “An American Marriage” is to be believed, Booth put the president out of his misery.

IMO, Professor Burlingame is overstepping when he "assigns Mary a certain culpability" regarding the assassination. He apparently feels her "foresight" should have warned her about the danger of attending the theater without the Grants. I really do not think this is fair to Mary.