John Wilkes Booth and the Assassination of Tyrants
by From Hero or Villain: More Prisoners of Eternity.
" Crook, do you know I believe there are men who want to take my life? And I have no doubt they will do it." (Abraham Lincoln, to his bodyguard William H Crook, on the morning of his assassination).
In a letter he had written to his sister, Asia, that was to be opened only upon his death, he made plain his reasons for acting as he did, ” the very nomination of Abraham Lincoln four years ago, spoke plainly of war upon Southern rights and institutions. The institution of slavery is one of the greatest that God has ever bestowed upon a favoured nation.” He continued, ” I love justice more than a country that has disowned it, more than I do fame or wealth.”
John Wilkes Booth was an assassin and a murderer. His place in the pantheon of popular and historical demonology assured. It has since been common currency that his was a cowardly act and the cause for which he committed it an ignoble one. But he didn’t see it that way. He had witnessed his dream of Southern nationhood shattered, hundreds of thousands of his fellow countrymen killed, their homes burned, their way of life destroyed. All he had done was to avenge his people on the man who was responsible for all their misfortunes. As he said himself, ” Our country owed all its misfortunes to him. God simply made me the instrument of His punishment.”
Whatever we may think of John Wilkes Booth, and the rights or wrongs of what he did, he did not act for reasons of monetary gain, fame, glory, or immortality, but it was out of his devotion to a cause for which he was willing to make his own supreme sacrifice. In this respect, his deed was a brave and noble one. Yet just as Abraham Lincoln’s words echo through time, and monuments to his achievements dominate landscapes, his assassin lies in an unmarked grave, unheralded, unloved, and unforgiven.
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