Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire John Wilkes Booth

Hummmm. Seems like there is a lot of propaganda going on here--N&S.
The WAR didn't end for 50 years---then it turned into skrimaces--then into political skirmaces--then into down right ignorance.
The whole of the affair was downright ignorance started by SC--and followed by idiots.
Souths only hope was taht the North would quit, but that was the height of ignorance.
Booth was and idiotic murderer.
Nobody with any sense would have thought that it would do any good.
Blessings

I want to clear something up that I posted at 2:44AM when I was fighting low blood sugar.

I'm not calling EthanEdwards a liar. No sir. It's the story that is a lie. It keeps getting passed around by being repeated. It did not start, nor will it end, here. Democrats have been saying it for as long as I can remember; that they were the Republicans that freed the slaves.

The Civil War was 99% over.

John Wilkes Booth
(check all that apply)

___ Patriot

___ Traitor

___ Murderer

_X_ Late to the party

___ commie/[bleep]/junkie

___ Terrorist

_X_ Problem solver

___ Loon with an assault weapon of mass destruction

_X_ My hero

Whether you like the Confederacy or not, slavery aside, they were the ones fighting for Constitutional government, much more so than the Federals who set the thing aside. Secession itself, has to be legal in a free country. The Democrats of the day were much more in tune with the Constitution than were the Republicans, whom were newly-minted. Along about the time Grover Cleveland became President, there was a big shift and the Republicans started becoming the good guys. Anybody that doesn't believe me can simply do a cursory study of history and find out. I didn't take anybody here to raise. IOW y'all can find your own links.

Regarding the slaves...Many of my brothers like to say slavery wasn't the cause of the WBTS. IMO it was a big issue. The leaders of the North, as always, wealthy industrialists, could have cared less about the plight of the black man. When has it ever not been so? They don't care about anybody but themselves and possibly their own families and close friends. All else is devoted to obtaining wealth. There is ample evidence of this all around. It's such a basic thing that I'd feel stupid getting into it farther and looking up links, historical facts, etc. to prove it. Slavery was a big thing to many of their dupes...underlings who were foot soldiers and stirred up trouble as abolitionists before the war. Again, read your history, even that written by Yankees. An objective and critical reading will lead you to these conclusions. Slavery itself would be done for in the world in another twenty years or less. Neither the instigators of the war nor the common man probably thought much about it in basic terms. The Abolitionists, of which the Republican Party, especially the "Black Republicans" was representative of, were the ones who fervently cared about slavery and they were used to stir up the masses. Why have a war when something is finished anyway?

Communications were primitive in those days. It was not unheard of for one side to put out false information to the other side in order to cause chaos. Lee was not the head of the Confederacy. President Davis was. Lee was the commander of the Army of Northern Virginia. He only surrendered his army at Appomattox. Lee had no authority to surrender on behalf of the whole Confederacy. The Confederacy was still a government as of May 1865, about a month after Lincoln's death. There were still formidable Confederate Armies in the field after Lee's surrender and Lincoln's death. Gen. Johnston did not surrender until after the death of Lincoln.

So those that make the point that it was not dishonorable to attempt to assassinate President Davis under the guise of the two countries being at war and assassination of heads of state being acceptable during wartime have to acknowledge that Booth's killing of Lincoln was simply another act of war since the Confederacy itself had not surrendered at the time of Lincoln's death.

I am not standing up for Booth per se, but am just extending the logic used by some to justify the North's actions in conspiring to assassinate the President of the Confederate States of America.

There's no fool like an old fool.

Whatever you say, commie.

I would label him a murderer because he killed a defenseless person. He shot a guy in the back of the head. It immediately brought to mind The Coward Jack McCall who shot Wild Bill in the back of the head.

I also wonder if someone walked up behind Hitler and shot him. Would it be the same? During the war, when killing him would have saved a whole lot of lives? The guy would still be a murderer. He could still be a patriot if the result saved his country... Killing Lincoln after the war, to me was retribution. I've read that Lincoln ordered the assassination of Jefferson Davis. Retribution for that. For the damage done by the war... If that was the purpose of it all, I'd say murderer.

LOL AH, thats funny.

RobP, Booth may have not been able to see lincoln as a human being, much less a defenseless one.

Gunner

Would there have been a war without slavery? Maybe, and certainly the North would have been robbed of the moral imperative that Lincoln used with great effect with the Emancipation Proclamation to keep Britain from recognising the Confederacy.

Was the war ABOUT slavery, well the Confederate Veep in that famous speech plainly thought it was, said the whole Confederacy was designed around it in fact. Down here in Texas contemporary sources also thought it was about slavery. In fact, slavery had been a contentious issue from thhe very inception of our country, "a wolf by the ears" indeed, as Jefferson put it.

To claim that Lincoln was the monster is ludicrous, it weren't just HIM fighting the war, but also about 600,000 other guys, willing to fight and die on a truly unprecedented scale. The normal Yankee motivation? "To preserve the Union."

So it may be said that slavery was less of an issue to the North than it was the South. And in the very midst of their enormous losses, the Union army voted overhwhelmingly to reelect Lincoln over McClellan's pacifism in 1864.

Did Lincoln care nothing one way or the other about slavery? Well, in his own words plainly less than he cared about preserving the Union, but recall, his funal masterwork was the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, forever abolishing slavery EVERYWHERE in the United States, his labors to pass this Amendement occurring while the war was still going on.

As for the Dahlgren Affair, I'd guess that Judson Kilpatrick, Dahlgren's superior and scum on a stick by any measure, had something to do with it. A puzzle though that taking out Jefferson OR Lincoln should be potentially that hard, both men walked freely about their respective capitols virtually without guard.

The OP question. Was Booth a patriot? I suppose you could take that viewpoint. Sure seems to be an unlikeable man though, and the other plotters distasteful company.

Birdwatcher

You need to read more about what happened in Missouri during the war before dismissing out-of-hand that Lincoln was a tyrant.

Rob, you should read my post. Lincoln was killed before the war was over. The Confederacy had not surrendered. They still had a functional government and they still had armies in the field. This is far from the portrait somebody painted of just a few holdouts that hadn't surrendered.

I'm neither defending nor condemning Booth. I'm saying though, that if you think it is okay to assassinate heads of state during wartime, you have to think what Booth did was okay. I'm just pointing out the logic of the situation and the hypocrisy of it.

.

The voice of experience.

Defenseless or not he was an enemy to freedom. He needed dead long before he was, by whatever means possible, same as any other enemy.
There was a thread the other day where somone brought up Lincoln and effects we're still dealing with today. I said "150 years dead and STILL he's not dead enough!"

I say that was just a battle, the war isn't over yet. It won't be until enemies are either all eliminated or beat into submission and admit defeat.

Federal government needs to go back to DC. The only time it can justifiably be out here in the 50 states is if a state or local government is trampling the rights of the people and no other relief can be found. Other than that it needs to STAY AT HOME AND DO ITS JOB! It's been very negligent in that regard, hasn't it. It chewed off its leash. It runs rampant like a rabid dog. And if it isn't brought back under control and put back on its leash soon it's gonna have to be put down.

State rights trump the fed. Always have and always will.
It was put on a small piece of foreign soil not within a state and not part of any state for a reason. It is not part of this country. This country is sovereign unto itself. The 50 states are individually sovereign. And I believe some of them are ready to rise up from the ashes and chaos caused by the rampant running rabid dog and set the record strait.

It'll be a lesson they'll not soon forget.

Just so you know, "Never" destroys any credibility for most people.

Oh, but if you want to, describe for me the scenario where the North and South split if slavery never came to US shores.

About like Syria's without the internet.

Many Yankees wanted no part of the WAR,and went about killing Negros in NYC some even fought for the South.

Long read on History but worth it..

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/317749.html