Useless, useless

[Jenny]

Didn't someone report that John did say "I did what I thought was best" at some point while dying? I know there are a lot of different accounts of what he did/didn't say so I'm not for sure. If he did say it, that indicates some remorse to me (what degree I don't know). I agree he was referring to his hands with the "useless, useless" statement, but as for what John Wilkes Booth thought about his own actions in the end while dying there on the porch, paralyzed with his body in shock, I don't think we'll ever know.

As for his mother, I doubt she would have been appalled or angry to hear her son's "Tell mother I died for my country" quote. She would have been grieving her beloved son with all the sorrow of any mother who loses a child long before she learned of his dying words. If anything it would have caused her even more sorrow to know he was thinking of her at the end, politics be damned.