Booth's Mental health

[L Verge]

(05-16-2015 04:58 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  

(05-15-2015 11:05 AM)Wild Bill Wrote:  It is so wonderful to find that John Wilkes Booth was some kind of a nut. It is even more refreshing to see that his has been psychoanalyzed by pseudo-professional mind readers. The problem is that Americans seem to prefer that all of their presidential assassins be insane--it allows us to avoid difficult questions about real motive for pop psychology. I refer you all to the article by James W. Clarke, "Conspiracies, Myths, and the Will to Believe: The importance of Content," In Gabor S. Boritt and Norman O. Furness, Historian's Lincoln: Pseudohistory, Psychohistory, and History (Urbana: U Ills. Press, 1988), 365-73.

I have the book Bill mentioned. While I cannot post the entire article, I tried to pick out a paragraph that I think contains at least some parts of the point Bill is trying to make. Bill, if there is a better paragraph in the article that you'd like me to post I shall be glad to do so.

Thank you for culling that out and posting it, Roger. I am now going to enlarge it to poster-size and hang it on my office wall! It hits the two main points that I have preached for years: 1) Lincoln is revered more now in hindsight than he ever was in life, and 2) the pressure of the Civil War on the entire American people made them do things that we now consider evil.

Other civilizations for eons have considered assassination a viable method of politics. William Henry Seward understood that - even if he thought Americans were above such messes. I realize that several of you will now hop out of your seat and take after me, but please don't waste your time. I don't condone such action and I don't condone what Booth did (and what others wanted to do). I just think that I can understand motives.

I find it strange how we can take one man's evil and turn it around as a just cause. My point in this case is John Brown. His actions in Kansas and Harpers Ferry were evil, but he was lauded by many in the abolitionist cause. The human mind can sure make weird distinctions.