Fortune's Fool

[Thomas Thorne]

I found Wild Bill's review of Alford's book most interesting but I believe his attempts to make Booth a deep political thinker do not fit the man. I have yet to encounter an acquaintance or friend of JWB who was struck by the profundity of his political thought.

Booth would have been delighted at today's campus idiocy of seeking to suppress speech that upsets listeners of certain political points of view as he sought to do in his "Allow Me" speech draft in which he equated the advocacy of abolition to an actual John Brown type insurrection.

It is true that Terry Alford has not solved the mystery of John Wilkes Booth but he has provided much useful information that will permits his readers to draw their own conclusions and will stimulate further studies of the man.

For me the question was why did not John Wilkes Booth with the opinions he shared with hundreds of thousands of Americans in 1861 join the Confederate armed forces? If he had, he might have died of disease or been killed in battle. He might have been survived-crippled or not- and gone home to family and friends with the magnificent prose of Robert E Lee's farewell to the Army of Northern Virginia:

"You will take with you the satisfaction that proceeds from the consciousness of duty faithfully performed, and I earnestly pray that a merciful God will extend to you his blessing and protection.

With an unceasing admiration of your constancy and devotion to your Country, and a grateful remembrance of your kind and generous consideration for myself, I bid you an affectionate farewell."
R.E.LEE

Booth's justification for not enlisting in the Confederate Army-he did not want to break his mother's heart -does not ring true. Mary Ann's Booth's sentiments were shared by the majority of American mothers whose sons believed that it was their patriotic duty to serve their country.

We are told that in 1911 a pacifist Kansas woman broke down and sobbed when her son joined the army. Fortunately, Dwight D Eisenhower was made of sterner stuff than John Wilkes Booth.

Tom