What are you reading now?

[Don1946]

(01-14-2014 06:22 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  Ex-priest, Charles Chiniquy, wrote a book titled Fifty Years in the Church of Rome which portrayed the assassination of Lincoln as a Catholic grand conspiracy. Among other things Chiniquy claimed to have met with Lincoln three times in Washington. Chiniquy quotes Lincoln saying things like, "Your friends, the Jesuits, have not yet killed me." He includes other slanderous comments allegedly made by Lincoln against the Catholic Church. Personally I have never seen any independent corroboration that these meetings ever took place. They are not included in Lincoln Day By Day. Unless there is independent corroboration of these meetings, I consider the conversations to be the creation of Charles Chiniquy and not fact.

Here is a link to Chiniquy's book: http://books.google.com/books?id=AhU3AAAAMAAJ I agree, he is not an impartial nor reliable scholar, and there is a lot to discredit. But the idea that Pope Pius IX was hostile to the Union and to the ideas of "fanatical egalitarianism" and "extreme democracy" thought to be represented by Lincoln and the Union were not based in mere prejudice toward the Church as religion. The pope was monarch of the Papal States, and important political and religious leader, and he was using his power to rail against his enemies and all things modern. In fairness, the Church did not condone slavery and that was a problem for CSA diplomats in Rome.
But Pius IX played an important and very public role in the summer and fall of 1862 in the scheme organized by Britain and France to intervene in the American Civil War, to mediate peace, and on terms of separation between North and South. That scheme fell apart not only because the Emancipation Proclamation (eventually) undermined southern support abroad, but also because of Garibaldi's heroic March on Rome in late August '62. It threw France and the Great Powers of Europe into turmoil and foiled the plot to end the American war. Garibaldi was regarded as an enemy of the Church and he continued to menace its hold on Rome until 1870 when the Italians stormed the gates and confined the pope to the Vatican.

All of which is to say there was a framework, a prevailing view at the time, that placed the Church in opposition to all things liberal.

I'm interested in Booth's religious, racial, and ideological thinking. I don't believe it is sufficient just to say he was drinking, angry, a frustrated actor, or otherwise psychologically screwed up. All that may be true, but he also was driven by ideas, hatreds, and an agenda for reinvigorating the South.

There were a lot of Booths out there in the end days of the Confederacy and long after. In fact I still meet a few of them now and then in South Carolina! I exaggerate, but only exaggerate.