The infamous presidential assassin, John Wilkes Booth, succeeded in killing President Abraham Lincoln in 1865. Booth was captured and killed in Virginia that same year. We have known that for a long time. Little is known, however, about Booth's warped inner motivation, cowardice, and racial hypocrisy.
Booth was a disillusioned romantic coward, claiming that he would, heroically, "...live in history" for killing Lincoln. That might have been the case had Booth's crime been perpetrated 1863 when neither the Union nor the Confederacy had the upper hand in the war. But, the assassination took place in 1865, at the end of the war while the nation was in the process of trying to heal. In his warped mind Booth saw
Booth was a disillusioned romantic coward, claiming that he would, heroically, "...live in history" for killing Lincoln. That might have been the case had Booth's crime been perpetrated 1863 when neither the Union nor the Confederacy had the upper hand in the war. But, the assassination took place in 1865, at the end of the war while the nation was in the process of trying to heal. In his warped mind Booth saw
