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"Right or Wrong, God Judge Me"- The Writings ofjohn Wilkes Booth. Ed. by John Rhodehamel and Louise Taper. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997. xiv, 171 pp. $24.95, ISBN 0252-02347-1.)
War to the Knife, Bleeding Kansas, 1854-1861. By Thomas Goodrich. (Mechanicsburg: Stackpole, 1998. viii, 296 pp. $29.95, ISBN 0-81171921-9.)
These two books invite reflection on why quite different self-proclaimed patriots were driven to violence during the nation's sectional crisis. A Southern partisan, John Wilkes Booth thought himself "the worst letter writer alive." No scholar, he quit school at fifteen. Although he mastered roles in a half dozen Shakespeare plays, he wrote nothing imaginative or noteworthy. After he assassinated Abraham Lincoln in 1865, horrified friends and relations distanced themselves from his deed in part by destroying his letters. What survives of his sparse writings-about seventy documentsare gathered in this slender, meticulously edited volume.
Much of what scholars know or surmise about Booths personality and private life comes from the protective, sometimes misleading memoir of his doting older sister, Asia Booth Clarke. The present collection of John Wilkes's "poor scrawls" affords a rare opportunity to catch unmediated glimpses of Booth-as a free-spirited fifteen-year-old, a rising "star" and matinee idol, a passionate Southern partisan, and finally a hunted assassin.-
Along with brief letters about such everyday matters as bookings for theatrical tours are several Booth political testaments. A fivethousand-word draft of what the editors call a 11 wild, often disordered" undelivered speech in defense...