All American Tragedy

All American Tragedy

Without a doubt, most Americans can distinctly draw a picture in their minds of John Wilkes Booth… The Civil War had ended five days previously with the surrender of General Lee. President Lincoln and the first lady had decided to take a night off and see a stage play at the Ford’s Theatre. An obviously enraged young actor preceded into the stage box a kills Lincoln, and then exits the theatre by jumping on to the stage and escaping through the back where a horse had been waiting. Booth tried to escape for good, but within two weeks he was killed in a violent ordeal near Bowling Green, VA.

From the moment the shot rang out in that theatre, the American people knew who Booth was. An interesting note was that if Lincoln had seen the men who avenged the South, he would have recognized Booth immediately. This would have not came as a surprise to many, since John Wilkes was one of the most recognizable men in the country, according to the National Preservation Society, or NPS. Lincoln was an avid theatregoer, and on Nov. 9, 1863, after Booth had preformed The Marble Heart, the President asked around back stage if he could meet with the star. Booth, being the outspoken supporter of the South that he was, declined the offer. This was the first major clue of Booth’s strong dislike of Lincoln. Booth was surely not in need of attention. “Thought the Civil War, the Northern newspapers fell over each other as they showered the young actor with praise.” (NPS 2)

Chris Mynk 71567

How then is it possible to reconcile the two conflicting impressions of John Wilkes Booth? The best answer would probably be that one must understand the environments in which produced him- the world of theater and the struggle between the North and the South. Booth was raised in a theatrical family, where Shakespearean works were recited as often as the bible. “As the struggle between the States wore on, the battlefields at Gettysburg and Antietam must not have seemed very different than the battlefield of Richard III.” (Williams 578) In his career, Booth died a dramatic death hundreds of times. Many scholars have voiced the opinion that the assassination was, perhaps, Booth’s greatest "performance". In 1899, Joel Chandler Harris, a contemporary of Booth's who would become famous for his Uncle Remus folk tales, wrote that Booth "had all the elements of genius but seemed powerless to focus them.