The Spur Question

[JMadonna]

I don't see how grabbing a flag that was at best tacked on would assist Booth is slowing his descent.

The spur theory states that Booth's spur made a hole in the flag as he jumped, tearing the flag. This means that the flag had to be secured by more than 'tacks'. To create a tear, the flag had to offer resistance to the spur otherwise it would have come down on contact and not created a tear. At most it would create only the original hole.

So the flag had to be more firmly secured than your 'at best' scenario otherwise neither the spur theory nor my 'grabbing the flag as he fell' theory would work.