How Political Parties have used the memory of lincoln. Let me introduce our next speaker. Michael kauffman is one of the leading historians of the lincoln assassination. He is author of american brutus John Wilkes Booth and lincoln conspiracies, which was named by the New York Times and the Washington Post as one of the best nonfiction books of 2004. There are copies of the paperback version on the Registration Table that you can purchase after our program is concluded. His other works include in the footsteps of an assassin and a modern edition of memoirs of a lincoln conspirator. His bus tours of the John Wilkes Booth escape route have been popular for many years. He has lectured throughout the country, appeared on Many Television documentaries. Civil war historian william c. Davis, jack davis, once wrote no one has studied booth longer or in more depth than michael w. Kauffman, a wellknown voice of reason in the field of assassination studies. Today, Michael Kauffman will talk to us about the assassination, mourning, and the security of president s. Michael. [applause] kauffman thank you for that. It is indeed an honor to be speaking in this place. Its humbling, and i very much appreciate being invited to speak here. The theme today is the legacy of Abraham Lincoln, how he changed the world, and i thought all along, what a wonderful opportunity to pick up ideas as i go to these commemorative events. All the sesquicentennial ceremonies. The vigil in front of fords theatre. All these events that have taken place over the last four years should certainly give plenty of thought and attention to the way that the war, and specifically the way in which Abraham Lincoln has changed the u. S. And indeed the world, but it is the modern world, of course. And as i stood at the vigil in front of fords theatre on the night of april 14, i took my camera and raised it up above, expecting to get a photograph of a sea of mourners. I was going to talk about morning and mpurning mourning and i wanted some insight. But i brought my camera down and looked at the picture, and what i got instead of a sea of mourners was a sea of cell phones of other people taking pictures. I thought, ok, well, i guess, to some extent, it is largely these days about the show, not so much about the analysis. But thats ok because theres plenty of material to work with, and there is never a shortage of new angles to take on Abraham Lincoln, on his assassination , and on the world that all of this left to us. History tells us that John Wilkes Booth, a southern actor killed Abraham Lincoln as the result of a conspiracy. A plot to capture lincoln that then evolved into a murder plot. He may have been employed by the confederacy, he may have been insane. Nobody will ever satisfy the whole world about any one theory behind it. Because the deeper you go into the story, the more complex it becomes, and its a little bit like anyone who has studied the politics of the war. When you realize that when you really start getting into peoples motivations, you are not only getting into the complexity of the human mind but you are talking about many minds. What motivates each and every one may depend on individual experience, individual taste and whatever sort of things a person might think makes sense at any given time. As i said, John Wilkes Booth was said to be a southerner. And even that, the most basic statement about booth and the conspiracy, is not quite right. Booth came from a place below the mason dixon line, but, actually, in an afternoon, you could walk from his house to the Pennsylvania State line. He was from a border state, and that was far more intense emotionally and politically than the war and the experience was maybe a little bit farther to the south. Take North Carolina for example. In border states, you were surrounded by people who might or might not agree with you on all the political questions of the day. That meant that the intensity of being right around people to fight with that amplified your feelings somewhat. And border states have not gotten a whole lot of attention in the civil war literature, although that is being remedied. But in hindsight, it kind of makes sense that lincoln was targeted by a person from a border state, especially the one that surrounded washington on three sides. Because that is what maryland was. It was the place where Troop Movement at the beginning of the war had been obstructed by marylanders. And because of that, Abraham Lincoln declared martial law first in maryland. And that First Impression stayed with a lot of people, including John Wilkes Booth. Its just the way they thought, the way their minds work. Because of martial law, because troops were sent into southern maryland, they were sort of pseudooccupation troops, thats the way they were thought of there. People started saying that lincoln was somewhat tyrannical. Every so often, the name of caesar came up. For a person with a classical education, as booth had, for a person who knew all about Julius Caesar, as booth did, this had a special resonance. Booth had played in the shakespearean drama of Julius Caesar. It was one of the last plays he had ever performed in. And he had what he thought was a pretty good working memory and understanding of the plot against caesar led by brutus. And as it so happened, booth from a theatrical background was also from a political background. His father was Junius Brutus booth. He was born in london. His uncle was Algernon Sidney booth. When you start naming your children after political heroes all of a certain stripe, you know there is something going on there. Not just like every child in london was named algernon sydney something. It was odd. This is the way the family was. And they, with their classical education, they had read all of milton who said that if you kill somebody, thats murder, but if the person you killed was a tyrant, thats not murder. And booths father had performed in a play called killing no murder that came from the titus oates letter to the same effect. Well, John Wilkes Booth sees all of this, and this is part of what would later be called evidence of insanity. But he knew things that other people did not know about the past and about all the cases in antiquity where people had dealt with extraordinary powers of centralized government. He saw modern day as a parallel, and he started to plot. Now some people believe that he was plotting to capture Abraham Lincoln. I personally i cannot read his mind, but i have a feeling that all along, it was going to be murder. What booth did was he consciously imitated the earlier case. He ritualized. He planned meticulously. He tried to gather people around him because it had to be a conspiracy. If he is doing it all alone, thats the one lone nut theory, as we call it today. He had to appear to have plenty of support. And the more time he spent in maryland, particularly in baltimore violence in baltimore it just keeps coming up, doesnt it . By the way, if you are interested, theres a wonderful book called hanging henry gambrill, which describes in detail the Political Violence in baltimore in the 1850s, and it was incredible. In researching american brutus i found something that i had never read before, that even such a benign character as James Buchanan coming down from pennsylvania just across the state line through baltimore on his way to become president of the United States he was beaten up by mobs in baltimore. Well, i guess that was just the way they welcomed people in those days. I must confess, im not too eager to go back up there any time in the near future. But when John Wilkes Booth, who well, i guess that was just the had grown up in this culture because he spent much of his time in baltimore they had a house right over near the shot tower, where the shot tower is now he saw a good deal of this violence, and im sure he took it in as being just kind of what politics is all about. He believed somewhat in fate. And he wanted to head off the fate that was in store for himself as he started to plot against lincoln. As he looked back, he knew that Marcus Brutus said, we need to make this clean. We need to make it public. We need to do it on a stage. We need to make sure that Everybody Knows this is above board. It is a ritual killing. We are doing it in a ceremonial way. We are letting everybody know who is doing this and why, and we cannot let anybody think of it as plain, old, coldblooded murder for selfish reasons. Theres nothing in it for us. Its for love of country. And so when booth planned out and by the way, of course, this is a different lecture, but he used a lot of shakespearean tricks to manipulate people into getting into this conspiracy and to keep them quiet and so forth, and that is a fascinating tale in and of itself. But it was brutus downfall that he let mark antony live. Mark antony stepped up and gave this famous oration over the corpse of Julius Caesar. In a few short minutes had taken the crowd shakespeare knows that crowds are very difficult. You can see it in any number of plays. They are all ready to kill very fickele. You can see it in any number of plays. They are all ready to kill candidate a, and in a few minutes, you can have them ready to praise candidate a and kill candidate b with the power of words. The power of words was very potent. Booth knew that. And he thought nevertheless, there was probably someone out there who probably would serve the same function that mark antony served for caesar. I think that will be william seward. Seward and lincoln had been somewhat in political lockstep throughout the war, and seward of course, agreed in all major points with Abraham Lincoln. He was his righthand man. And if you are going to kill lincoln and leave seward standing, so to speak he was in his sick bed but he could step right into that vacuum. And so booth said, ok, we will take care of seward, too because im not going to make the mistake that was made in the past. Well, it did not work out that way. Booth lost control of this from the very beginning. He had assigned a man named Lewis Thornton powell to assassinate seward. Powell botched the job and ended up brutally hacking five people in the seward household. It was unbelievably gory. And for all of booths effort and planning to make this whole thing seem like a sanitary ritual regime change, to do as brutus had said, this is a sacrifice. This is not carrion for the hounds. But lewis powell messed up. In looking at the carnage from that night, washingtonians were absolutely terrified. This was an act of terror, and everybody wondered what is next . We had two attacks at the same time. We all lived through 9 11. We all know the first plane goes into the tower, we think, what a terrible accident. Im not sure how that happened. But the second plane goes into the other tower, and right away, we all know. And so it was on the night of april 14 that everybody knew. Because there was not only the shooting of Abraham Lincoln, but there was the attack on william seward. And this made it an entirely different thing. Well, booth miscalculated. Just a monstrous miscalculation on so many levels. He chose the wrong people to be with him. He was absolutely wrong about the way the nation was going to take all of this. They had been told again and again, these are temporary war measures. Martial law is temporary. When the war is over, it will all go back. He says, sure, thats what we heard in the case of caesar, and they start offering him crowns. And, you know, those are trial balloons. Every time, he gets a little more reluctant, and nobody seemed to be doubting that some day, caesar would make himself permanent dictator, and that is when they struck caesar. So before lincoln can make himself permanent dictator, i think we should get him now. But the timing was everything. Booth had planned to do everything that would recall the earlier case, including attacking lincoln on the 13th of april. That was the day general grant came into town after appomattox, and everybody was going to celebrate the grand illumination. It would take place that night and grant would travel around town with the lincolns. Only, lincoln did not show up. First of all, he had a lot more work to do. The war was not really over yet. Secondly, he had a headache, so he stayed home that night. Booth was kind of counting on making the attack on that night because in the ancient roman calendar, the 13th in april was the ides. And there you get that other parallel. But no worries. We are still in town. He will get the next opportunity, as it turned out, the following day. And timing is everything because the next day happened to be good friday. It did not make lincoln look like caesar. In the minds of some, in the outpouring of grief and mourning that came after, lincoln looks like christ. There was some kind of deification in the mourning period. There was some sort of, i would say, secular sainthood mentioned. And certainly, one of the dominant themes throughout the north was lincolns martyrdom. But the truth is reactions to the assassination were incredibly varied. And even in the north, it did not always depend on how one had sided during the war, how one had felt politically about lincoln. It was a lot more complicated than that. In the north, in the south, in the border states. And John Wilkes Booth found out himself as he was escaping first through southern maryland, his home state and the most rabidly prosouthern part of the state. He found people willing to help him out. Even people who knew what he had done. They claimed, some of those people claimed at first that they approved of the assassination, but, you know, on second thought, later on, they sort of cooled to the idea and started to realize what so many people south of the masondixon line had also realized. Now, weve got Andrew Johnson. By comparison, Abraham Lincoln was our best friend. We should not be gloating or happy about this at all. It was ill considered, illconceived, just a bad idea. Well, as booth escaped through maryland, you know, he had planned out this whole Julius Caesar reenactment thing, but all anybody could think about was not shakespeares Julius Caesar. It was shakespeares macbeth, the bloodiest, goriest, darkest play written by shakespeare. The play about regime change. The play in which the whole plan goes completely awry. You know, its all about guilt and torment. The play in which the word assassination appears in writing the very first time. As booths escaping into virginia, he was in for a real shock because virginia was not maryland, was not his home state, and they did not feel the same way at all as the people of maryland did. The first person he encounters over there tells him to get lost. And the next person, get lost. And the next person, get lost. And one of the people he encountered, dr. Richard stewart, had said to him, what were you thinking . The war was over. Everybody is going to blame us for this. The the wrath is going to come down on us. Nobody elected you to change president s. Thats a smart person thinking. That is reason. That is not the emotional burst the first night. That is nine days later on the president s birthday and coming from a man who was a direct descendent of a person for whom macbeth was written. Not that anybody brought it up but when booth wrote a nasty note that man, a page in his diary, note to that man, a page in his diary, he was complaining about the hospitality that was grudgingly received. He quotes macbeth. He keeps coming up with macbeth. And he wanted this to be Julius Caesar. The protagonist in macbeth is not a hero to anybody. He is just a coldblooded murderer. And as booth lay dying in the searing glow of a burning tobacco barn 12 days after the shooting, i cannot help but think he had in mind those very nihilistic words near the end of macbeth when he has discovered that his wife has died and nothing has gone as he had planned. He regretted his reliance on the past for guidance, and he realized that there would be no glory, that he would not get any monuments or statues or cities named after him, and that most people would come to say John Wilkes Booth had gotten what he deserved. And he had come to accept this with the utmost sense of depression, and he may have thought of those lines tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle lifes but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing. You cant get any more depressing than that. And as i said, some people thought, well, thats appropriate. Look what he did. Now booth did have his mourners, but the best they could ever do for him was to say that he must have been insane. Insane people are not really responsible. Who, but a lunatic, would underestimate so drastically the effect his act would have on the nation . Who would miscalculate so badly the whole political situation . And again, if he had killed lincoln at any other time, booths place in history might have been different, but timing is everything. Just like the difference between the ides and good friday. He happened to kill lincoln right after lincoln had made this statement abo