WHO Encouraged Booth To Kill Lincoln

[Gene C]

We know some of the people who supported Booth's decision to kill Lincoln, but who actually encouraged him to do the deed?
Who would Booth have looked up to?

Who helped plant the the seed and encouraged it to grow?
Who made him believe he could do it?

Who may have given him names and places to stop on his escape route?
Did he know before he hurt his leg and arrived at Mudd's, where his first, second and maybe third rest stop would be?

And when (sources please) did Booth last visit Richmond and how long was he there?

[RJNorton]

(03-02-2018 03:48 PM)Gene C Wrote:  We know some of the people who supported Booth's decision to kill Lincoln, but who actually encouraged him to do the deed?
Who would Booth have looked up to?

Who helped plant the the seed and encouraged it to grow?
Who made him believe he could do it?

Who may have given him names and places to stop on his escape route?
Did he know before he hurt his leg and arrived at Mudd's, where his first, second and maybe third rest stop would be?

And when (sources please) did Booth last visit Richmond and how long was he there?

Gene, I think it would take a very long reply to really attempt to deal with all you ask, but I shall give you a few short opinions on some of what you ask.

"Who actually encouraged him to do the deed?"

I think Booth was pretty much self-motivated. His feelings against Lincoln and the Union government were so incredibly strong that he didn't really need encouragement IMO.

"Who helped plant the the seed and encouraged it to grow?"

I think Lincoln's actions planted the seed in Booth's mind, and as the war went on, Booth got madder and madder. Booth looked for justification that a state could not secede from the Union; he found none. Lincoln's view was just the opposite. Lincoln felt the Constitution made the union of states perpetual; Booth said "no way." Booth saw Lincoln's actions during the war as extraconstitutional, and he hated it when Congress would later pass bills to approve what Lincoln had done (habeas corpus, for example).

I don't think the difference between the two men in how they viewed the government can be understated. Lincoln felt that ultimate sovereignty cannot be inherent in both the federal and state governments. Booth felt secession of states was perfectly legal and justified. Booth felt Lincoln's actions were illegal and tyrannical; Lincoln viewed the same actions as necessary in a crisis and in keeping with his oath of office as President.

"Who may have given him names and places to stop on his escape route?"

I am not sure this is known with 100% certainty, but Laurie has pointed out the probability that David Herold spent the few days before the assassination alerting the Confederate underground in the Maryland countryside that something big was afoot. I do not know how specific Herold was in what he told people.

[JMadonna]

Don't forget the Southern press whose constant hate for Lincoln had practically & actually called for a hero to kill him. The same people who condemned Booth's action.

[L Verge]

(03-03-2018 09:42 AM)JMadonna Wrote:  Don't forget the Southern press whose constant hate for Lincoln had practically & actually called for a hero to kill him. The same people who condemned Booth's action.

Excellent points, both of you - and don't forget "the NY crowd" and Copperheads who were not in love with Lincoln either. There have been several good books written on how the disenchanted sector felt about Lincoln, his policies, and his administration. I can't remember the title, but Larry Tagg wrote a very good one.

I'm on my way to work to assess wind damage as well as to my daughter's house (they went to Florida and escaped the wind - let's hope their house did). I'm sure I'll have some responses when I come back to the forum. Meanwhile - have at it Wild Bill, Rick Smith, Joe Beckert, and others who understand that there are two sides to most issues.

[L Verge]

Back again - The name of Larry Tagg's book is The Unpopular Mr. Lincoln, and I do recommend it. He spoke at a Surratt conference a number of years ago and presented a well-balanced assessment of feelings on both sides as related to Lincoln's popularity or lack thereof. At our conference next month, Dave Taylor will be speaking on the ways a divided nation dealt with the assassination.

Ignore Thomas DeLorenzo, if you must, but he occasionally makes some cogent points. Another more recent book on both sides of Lincoln's popularity is Loathing Lincoln by John M. Barr. And finally, take a look at this article by Harold Holzer: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/w...180954325/

By the time Booth reached the pine thicket and access to newspapers, he may have thought that everyone's hand was against him, but that is not quite accurate. It wasn't just Southern newspapers that spoke against the martyred President; others from Chicago to New York did also. Booth may have been the one who had the guts to carry through to the end, but there were certainly many like him who harbored hatred against Lincoln -- and in the case of Southern Maryland citizens, were willing to assist anyone who captured (or ultimately killed) that tyrant. I was raised with old-timers (family and others) who said that half of Southern Maryland knew there was a kidnap scheme afoot, but they were not about to spill the beans to the Feds.

[Wild Bill]

Don't forget the Canadian connection. I nominate George N. Sanders as Booth's eminence grise.

[JMadonna]

George N had an innate ability to persuade others to stick out their chin for him.

[L Verge]

I agree with both Bill and Jerry that the Canadian connection was the Confederacy's behind-the-scenes operatives during the last part of the war, and the main men - especially Sanders - had very few qualms about doing what was necessary to save the cause. I believe that Sanders was well-known for sanctioning the overthrow of other tyrannical governments before our Civil War became an issue.

I would also like to toss the ball over to the other side: While we condemn Booth and others for their action against Lincoln and his administration, why don't we consider what the Feds were up to? How does one judge the Wistar Raid and the infamous Kilpatrick-Dahlgren Raid against Richmond? Are we so naive as to think that the letter found in connection with the latter raid was really a forgery done by a Confederate operative to make it look like the Feds were coming to kill the heads of state? Do we really think that those raiders were only in town to find shoes and supplies a la Gettysburg?

The end of the war was near; it was just a matter of time in convincing the Confederates that they needed to surrender. Why waste more Yankee lives? Go get Davis, Stephens, Benjamin, and anyone else who could still give orders to keep the Confederacy alive. Most civilizations over the centuries went after the enemy's leadership in times of war, and political assassinations were nothing new -- except perhaps to Seward...

And, here's the big question that James O. Hall and Bill Tidwell once threw at me: Who is the ultimate person to authorize an attack on another head of state? Who was at the top of the Union food chain when it came to such orders? Now consider who could authorize an attack from the Confederate side? What happens when the chain of command is broken? Someone steps in with the duct tape.

From my perspective, Wistar, Kilpatrick, and Dahlgren didn't have to be duct tape because the chain of command for the Feds was still intact. After April 3, Booth became the duct tape for the Confederacy, and he knew who would be an easy target. He already knew that a line of operatives south of D.C. had been functioning very well during the war, and he expected their help - which he got until he crossed the Potomac into Virginia, a state that had really taken a beating for four years and knew when to give up.

After this long Sunday sermon, the point of it all is to not make Booth the only villain in this story just because Lincoln was the chief victim. I certainly don't sanction his deed, but he was not the lone wolf - and there were other hungry wolves on the Union side who were ready to be assassins also IMO. Who was encouraging them?

[SSlater]

I don't have any "Quotes", "to quote". Most of this reply will be a "review of the facts"
The very beginning of Booth's activities were all PLANS TO ABDUCT LINCOLN. He would be held for a short term and released - when the South accomplished the release of prisoners. No one gets hurt and we all go home happy.

Except -the abduction plans all failed, and time became critical. All that was left was "to blow up the White House". This PLANNING included Booth. He knew that thee were no fences around "the lawn".

Booth became aware that Killing Lincoln was an accepted solution.
However, With the capture of Harney, that plan failed, so Booth made plans of his own -and he was ordered specifically NOT TO KILL LINCOLN.

During all of this, Booth was made aware of h0w critical the situation had become. There will be no Harney-plan, Thus in 2 days or less, he made a new plan, and shot Lincoln. Problem solved.

[RJNorton]

(03-11-2018 07:30 PM)SSlater Wrote:  During all of this, Booth was made aware of h0w critical the situation had become. There will be no Harney-plan, Thus in 2 days or less, he made a new plan, and shot Lincoln. Problem solved.

John, I noticed you didn't mention Lincoln's last speech as a possible causative factor. On April 11 the president gave a speech from the White House. Booth, David Herold, and Lewis Powell were in the audience. Among other things, Lincoln discussed possible new rights for certain blacks. He suggested conferring voting rights "on the very intelligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers." According to many authors, Booth was enraged! He reportedly said, "Now, by God! I'll put him through. That is the last speech he will ever make."

I would ask anyone...was there "a trigger" prior to the assassination? Would it still have occurred as it did (April 14th at Ford's) had there been no planned/failed Harney mission? Would it still have occurred as it did had Lincoln given no final speech?

[L Verge]

I do not believe in one event triggering Booth's desire to kill Lincoln. If you have previously tried to struggle through Come Retribution (and most of us do struggle through at least the first ten or so chapters...), please go here to read a more succinct version of events during the last two years of the war: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/o...7860211fe7

That said, I think the final fuse was lit on Booth's dynamite vision on April 2, Evacuation Sunday in Richmond, Virginia, and quickly followed by Grant's taking the city on April 3. Six days later, Booth learns that Lee has surrendered; then he learns on April 10 that the Harney mission has failed and that the bomb expert was captured. On April 11, he hears Lincoln's controversial speech, and the die is cast. My personal belief is that Herold was sent into Southern Maryland on the afternoon of April 12 to alert the faithful underground and returns to D.C. in the early morning of April 14 -- and the rest is history.

I am not sure of the date, but there was one point where Booth saw chained Confederate POWs being led through the streets of D.C. and became enraged. To me, that's part of the timeline leading up to assassination also. By this time, Booth's anger and ego take over and Plan B - assassination - went into motion.