A Confederate Officer's Opinion of the Assassination

[RJNorton]

Laurie sends this link along with the following comment:

"Many Confederate prisoners may have despised Booth for doing a cowardly (as they saw it) deed instead of entering the military and fighting for four long years like many of them had. Also, I'm sure that many of the prisoners feared reprisals and revenge from their Union captors."

https://ghostsofbaltimore.org/2013/11/14...assination

[John Fazio]

(01-27-2019 06:11 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  Laurie sends this link along with the following comment:

"Many Confederate prisoners may have despised Booth for doing a cowardly (as they saw it) deed instead of entering the military and fighting for four long years like many of them had. Also, I'm sure that many of the prisoners feared reprisals and revenge from their Union captors."

https://ghostsofbaltimore.org/2013/11/14...assination

Roger:

This is a beautiful letter and a beautiful sentiment. I have no doubt, too, that the writer was a wonderful fellow, one, like so many, with the sensitive soul of a poet. It reminded me of what a Jewish woman said when she was told she should leave Germany in 1938 because horror was coming. She said she would stay because she could not believe that horror would come in the land of Goethe, Beethoven, Schiller and Lessing. The problem was that they weren't in power. In the same way, this Confederate officer and virtually all his comrades were not in power. Those who WERE in power did not see things the same way they did. The proof of the pudding, as my father was fond of saying, is in the eating. If you have not read about the Northwest Conspiracy and its major player, Thomas Henry Hines, I suggest that you do so. It speaks volumes about what those in power did, were prepared to do and tried to do from the spring of 1864 through the spring of 1865.

John