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"Right or wrong, God judge me" : the writings of John Wilkes Booth / edited by John Rhodehamel and Louise Taper.
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Booth, John Wilkes, 1838-1865.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Booth, John Wilkes, 1838-1865--Archives.
- Booth, John Wilkes.
- Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865--Assassination--Sources.
- Lincoln, Abraham.
- Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865.
- Booth, John Wilkes, 1838-1865.
- Assassins--United States--Archives.
- Assassins.
- Archives.
- Assassination.
- United States.
- Physical Description:
- xii, 171 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
- Place of Publication:
- Urbana : University of Illinois Press, [1997]
- Summary:
- All of the known writings of John Wilkes Booth are included in this collection, a major new contribution to scholarship on Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War, and nineteenth-century theater history. More than one-half of this material has never been published before. Of this wealth of material, the most important item is a previously unpublished twenty-page manuscript discovered at the Players Club in Manhattan. Written by Booth in 1860 in a form similar to Mark Antony's funeral oration in Julius Caesar, it makes clear that his hatred for Lincoln was formed early and was deeply rooted in his pro-slavery and pro-Southern ideology. Also included in the nearly seventy documents are six love letters to a seventeen-year-old Boston girl, Isabel Sumner, written during the summer of 1864, when Booth was conspiring against Lincoln; several explicit statements of Booth's political convictions; and the diary he kept during his futile twelve-day flight after the assassination. The documents show that Booth, although opinionated and impulsive, was not an isolated madman. Rather, he was a highly successful actor and ladies' man who also was a Confederate agent. Along with many others, he believed that Lincoln was a tyrant whose policies threatened civil liberties.
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references (pages [161]-167) and index.
- ISBN:
- 0252023471
- OCLC:
- 36029710
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