Book Review: My Thoughts Be Bloody

My Thoughts Be Bloody: The Bitter Rivalry That Led to the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln by Nora Titone (Free Press, 2011) paperback, 484 pages

John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Abraham Lincoln, is widely known to have been an actor.  In countless books, Booth's career has informed the retelling of the assassination and the surrounding conspiracy.  As an actor, Booth had a knowledge of the theater, which allowed him to plan his access to Lincoln, the timing of his act, and his escape.  More than this, though, there was a theatrical spectacle in the act, from the ambitious nature of the conspiracy to decapitate the government to Booth dramatically leaping from the president's box to the stage and uttering an exit line as he crossed the stage.

Despite his career as an actor and his relationship to the most famous acting family in 19th Century America, this aspect of Booth's life has been less explored by historians of Lincoln's assassination.  Nora Titone's recent joint biography of Edwin Booth and John Wilkes Booth, My Thoughts Be Bloody: The Bitter Rivalry That Led to the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, is an important corrective.  Chronicling the life of the acting family sired (out of wedlock) by Junius Booth, it begins with the extramarital relationship that forced the senior actor to flee his native England for the United States and then documents the family's up and down fortunes until 1865, when John Wilkes would ignominiously establish the family name in history.

The well-researched and beautifully written book is rather uninterested in the mechanics of the conspiracy and assassination.  Instead, and most helpfully, it offers a vivid presentation of two significant contexts for John Wilkes Booth's life and character: the theater profession and his family dynamics.

Through the Booths, Titone explores the travails of being an actor in early 19th Century America.  As a whole, actors and theater workers had a poor reputation as lower class people with very questionable morals.  Further, it was a risky business financially.  For backstage workers and company actors, the pay was measly, and even for established actors, earnings were directly tied to ticket sales.  To earn enough to support a family generally required extensive touring and mounting multiple different productions in each city, which led Junius Booth and then his sons to be away from home for extended periods of time.

As a young teenager, Edwin Booth began accompanying his father on tour, mostly to ensure that the famous actor was not drinking too much or gambling and losing his earnings.  Thus began Edwin's apprenticeship, watching his father perform famous roles again and again, and then taking ever more important parts in these performances.  After the untimely death of Junius Booth, Edwin became the main breadwinner in the family as an actor, eventually establishing himself in New York City.

While Edwin Booth seemed to have received or learned his father's substantial theatrical gifts, it was the impulsive younger brother John Wilkes Booth who inherited his father's smoldering good looks.  Trading on his close resemblance to his father and on the Booth family name, John Wilkes worked hard to break into acting, with initially frustrating results.  Even as he depended on his brother Edwin's financial support, he chafed under his brother's refusals to help advance his career, which apparently stemmed from a combination of sibling rivalry, a fear of professional competition, and a recognition that John Wilkes was not very talented as an actor.

After the early years where Junius struggled to establish himself in the American theater, the narrative alternatively focuses on Edwin Booth and John Wilkes Booth.  Seemingly required to grow up more quickly, Edwin always seems the more complete figure, while an increasingly frustrated John Wilkes moved around the edges of Edwin's orbit.  While this likely is a reasonable assessment of the relationship between the two brothers and their very different professional experiences as actors, it also betrays that Titone's interest here lies mostly with Edwin, certainly an intriguing and attractive biographical figure in his own right.  This leads to a fascinating dismissive tone toward John Wilkes Booth from both older brother Edwin and historian Titone.

As a result, not all of the psychological motivations of the assassin are fully explored here.  John Wilkes Booth's political sensibilities seem to form haltingly towards supporting the Confederacy, partially in rebellion to Edwin's support of the Union, but his interaction with the Confederate Secret Service is barely mentioned.  Neither is there much attention to the other conspirators, though I must confess that Titone's assessment of Booth Achieves a breakthrough -- here the assassin seems to have a personality compatible with the almost comical misfits assembled for the plot (with the exception of John Surratt, who has always seemed the smartest of the bunch to me).

Instead, what emerges is the story of the petulant, overgrown teenager who wants to prove he is his own man, whether in pursuing acting in a rather haphazard way or in aggressively -- and imprudently -- voicing his political views.  Driven to desperate lengths to make his name, this man eventually assassinates Abraham Lincoln.  This portrait of immaturity and petulance largely matches the personality quirks that John Wilkes Booth displayed during the 12 days after the assassination, as he tried to escape.  It does not, though, offer sufficient insight into Booth's association with the Confederate Secret Service, or more importantly, their willingness to associate with him and trust him as an operative -- and there is strong circumstantial evidence to suggest this is an important part of the story, as Edward Steers and others have argued.

Still, there is much here to recommend.  Despite the depth of research, the book is not dry or cumbersome.  Instead, it offers a compelling narrative more similar to a novel.  If it leaves questions about Booth's motives for assassinating Lincoln, it expertly demystifies key parts of his personality and life.  Instead of an actor playing a part (badly), here is a more nuanced and fleshed-out portrait of the man who would be Brutus.

Book Review: Lincoln Legends: Myths, Hoaxes, and Confabulations Associated with Our Greatest President

Lincoln Legends: Myths, Hoaxes, and Confabulations Associated with Our Greatest President

by Edward Steers Jr.

(University Press of Kentucky, 2007), hardcover, 288 pages

With so many books and articles written about Abraham Lincoln over the last 150 years, and with the interest in Lincoln being so perpetually strong, it is inevitable that a number of mistaken stories have seeped into several biographies. "Mistaken," of course, is often a polite term. Alongside a number of legends that have grown over the decades through incorrect remembrances and exaggerations are a number of outright fabrications.

Edward Steers Jr., a Lincoln historian most known for his research into the Lincoln assassination, wades into several of these stories in Lincoln Legends: Myths, Hoaxes, and Confabulations Associated with Our Greatest President. In this book, Steers focuses on fourteen such stories, considering how they are often told, where they originated, and what credence, if any, they should be given.

These stories touch on all time periods of Lincoln's life. Many, such as questions about Lincoln's paternity and his New Salem romance with Anne Rutledge, are well known. Others, like the person of Andrew Potter, who figures prominently in many of the recent conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination, are likely unknown by all except the most voracious students of Lincoln stories.

The opening chapter, focusing on the log cabin enshrined at the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace Memorial in Kentucky, shows the pattern of Steers' analysis. He first presents the most common form of a legendary story -- in this case, the veneration of this cabin. Then he carefully tells the history of the legend, which in the case of the birthplace cabin begins in 1895 (over 80 years after Lincoln's birth) with an entrepreneur named Alfred Dennett, who thought that he could turn Lincoln's birthplace into a profitable tourist attraction. The story of Dennett's efforts, which are stranger than fiction, is well told by Steers, who then offers testimony by those who have defended the cabin as being authentic and by those who have challenged those claims. Finally, Steers offers his conclusion, which is that the cabin is a fake.

Steers is an engaging author. He tells the stories well, with humor and a human touch. He then proves to be a fair arbiter, weighing the evidence and testimony before offering his conclusions. Several of the chapters are exceptionally well done, including the four legends he recounts regarding the assassination: the previously mention Andrew Potter saga, the involvement of Dr. Samuel Mudd in the conspiracy, the "missing" pages of Booth's diary, and questions surrounding the man who held Booth's horse outside Ford's Theatre that fateful night.

Occasionally, Steers is a bit quick to form an either/or judgment about one of the legends, leaving out slightly more complex options, especially around the recent furor of the claims that Lincoln was gay. These are generally harmless -- and I might add, I almost always agree fully with Steers' conclusions.

However, the chapter on Lincoln's paternity, in which Steers considers claims that Thomas Lincoln was not really Abraham Lincoln's biological father, omits one significant factor in that controversy, which explains its persistence if not its veracity -- Lincoln himself wondered whether he, or his mother, was an illegitimate child. The reasons for this seem a little uncharitable -- Lincoln felt that he was nothing like his father, especially intellectually, and so looked for another genetic source for his intelligence on both sides of his family tree -- but they are likely the reason that William Herndon, Lincoln's law partner and greatest early biographer, pursued the question. While Steers rightly believes that the illegitimacy stories are farfetched, he fails to name their key source -- Lincoln himself -- which will always be enough to lead some to investigate these claims.

On the whole, though, Lincoln Legends is a satisfying volume, helping readers sort out fact from fiction in Lincoln biography. It is clear and efficient, brimming with entertaining anecdotes. For those unfamiliar with Steers' other work -- including Blood on the Moon, which is by far the best single book on Lincoln's assassination -- this book features the stamp of approval from Lincoln scholar de jure Harold Holzer, who provides the introduction. These readers will discover what Holzer and others know, that Steers is a first-rate historian whose considered views demand attention.

This review is also available at LibraryThing.

New Lincoln Books This Week

When it rains, it pours.  The second significant edited resource related to the Lincoln assassination is released this week.  Last week, it was a first-hand account of the incarceration and trial of the eight conspirators arrested in the days after Lincoln's death.  This week, it is a massive volume of the documentary evidence of the main investigation into the murder of Abraham Lincoln and the attempted murder of Secretary of State William Seward.

Releasing March 23

The Lincoln Assassination: The Evidence edited by William C. Edwards and Edward Steers Jr. (University of Illinois Press, 2009, hardcover, 1488 pages)

This may be the essential resource book on the assassination.  Reportedly, this collection includes all of the documentary evidence amassed during the 1865 federal investigation into the plot surrounding the Lincoln assassination, including the attempted murder of Secretary of State William Seward.  This includes all "statements, affidavits, interviews, exhibits" gathered by the military investigation, according to Steers' personal website.

An image of the Table of Contents is available online, which is unhelpful.  Aside from the typical editorial introductory sections, the 1400 pages of documents are listed as "The Documents."  A parenthetical comment explains that the documents are grouped chronologically by the addresser's last name, or by subject of the document where no addresser is listed.  There does, however, appear to be a significant (50+ page) index, which should help in locating specific documents.

According to the University of Illinois, William Edwards has spent years transcribing many of the documents in this collection, most of which would have been handwritten.  I cannot even begin to fathom how much time and effort that would take.  Paired with Ed Steers, who is the foremost expert on things associated with the Lincoln assassination, this work is in good hands.  This huge effort puts a wealth of primary information at one's fingertips (if only at a research library because of the $100+ cost of the volume), and hopefully will influence more good analysis of these turbulent months in future years.

New Lincoln Books This Week

Over the next two weeks, two resources related to the Lincoln assassination are scheduled to be released, adding to the titles in that now thriving Lincoln subindustry.  Unlike many of those books, however, these are being released by large university presses.

Releasing March 15

The Lincoln Assassination Conspirators: Their Confinement and Execution, as Recorded in the Letterbook of John Frederick Hartranft edited by Edward Steers, Jr. and Harold Holzer (Louisiana State University Press, 2009, hardcover, 200 pages)

Ed Steers is currently the foremost expert on Lincoln's assassination, and not coincidentally, he is the author of the best recent book on Lincoln's assassination, Blood on the Moon (2001).  However, he is not a big name Lincoln scholar, so he is paired with the much better known Holzer, who has edited a previous volume on the assassination among his many Lincoln books. Between them, they should capably edit this volume.

This book marks the first time the detailed notebook of Hartranft, the military commander of the jail where the eight conspirators were jailed in 1865, have been published.  By all accounts, Hartranft kept meticulous records of the weeks these eight were jailed under his oversight.  Previous writers have quoted from Hartranft, whose letterbook is in the collection of the National Archives.

Here Holzer and Steers offer context and comment around Hartranft's records. The cynical part of me wonders if Steers carries the majority of the load given his expertise in this material, but there is little reason to believe that Holzer is just a marquee name put on the project to improve sales.  Together, they have plenty of insight and knowledge to flesh out the meaning of Hartranft's notebook.

This is not a book for all Lincoln students.  Even within the particular world of the Lincoln assassination, this book will probably mostly focus on the experiences of the conspirators between their arrest and sentencing, meaning that there is less about the assassination itself.  But for people with collections on the assassination, it will be a significant addition.

TV Review: "The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln" (PBS)

The stalwart PBS American documentary series "American Experience" returns to the subject of the sixteenth president with a new 90-minute documentary that offers a fairly straight-forward, and surprisingly straight-laced (even by PBS standards), look at "The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln." Having previously done a three-part, six-hour, dual biography of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln in 2001, this film on Lincoln's death serves as the series bicentennial year contribution.

Like all of the American Experience films, this documentary by writer/director Barak Goodman has high-quality technical elements, features a clear narration (by Oscar-winning actor Chris Cooper), and lots of good interviews. For anyone with a limited knowledge of the assassination, this film offers a basic introduction to the events surrounding the crime. It is especially strong in establishing the fundamental timeline of the night of the assassination and the days following.

The challenge for anybody tackling this particular aspect of the Lincoln biography is that the assassination has become quite a cottage industry, with significant numbers of books written over the years and, incredibly, multiple "assassination tours" offered by guides in the DC area of associated sites. Moreover, some of the information in many of these books, when carefully studied, is suspect when put under a historical microscope.

Happily, the documentary carefully wades through the material and stays, almost entirely, on solid evidential ground, except for a fleeting unsupported assertion of Mary Surratt's innocence at the film's end. And the interviews, liberally used, feature several good scholars and experts; alongside such strong general experts like Harold Holzer, Doris Kearns Goodwin, James McPherson, and Allen Guelzo are specific assassination experts: Terry Alford, editor of John Wilkes Booth's sister's memoir, Gene Smith, author of a book about the Booth family, James L. Swanson, author of the popular Manhunt about the chase for Lincoln's killer, and Edward Steers, Jr., who has published multiple books on Lincoln's assassination, including probably the best single volume, Blood on the Moon.

Early on, it becomes clear that the filmmakers are intent on exploring the assassin's motive for the crime, and there is a consistent focus on Booth's rationale for his actions before and after Lincoln's assassination. This focus leaves less time for other interesting and sizable pieces of the story, such as the public reaction and displays of grief during the elaborate two week funeral journey of Lincoln's body from Washington to Springfield. Unfortunately, the film only makes clear that Booth was not insane; the rest of the portrait is incomplete. This highlighted an omission in the film that surprised me; Michael Kauffman, author of the recent book on Booth American Brutus, was not interviewed, nor was there evidence that his careful (if sometimes unbelievable) study of this issue of motivation was consulted.

Aside from that, though, part of the problem dealing with Booth's motive is that the film devotes very little time to the kidnapping conspiracy from which the assassination eventually hatched. The kidnapping conspiracy is mentioned, as is the most particularly far-fetched plan that Booth tried to develop -- abducting Lincoln from Ford's Theater. But the very plausible plan to kidnap Lincoln riding alone between the White House and the Soldier's Home, which the conspirators testified was attempted, is never mentioned.

The reason for this, I suspect, is that the filmmakers don't want to touch the myriad conspiracy theories of who was behind this conspiracy, which have attempted to implicate everyone from Confederate leaders (notably Jefferson Davis) to Union government officials (including Edwin Stanton) to Northern businessmen. However, there is strong circumstantial evidence that Booth was somehow connected with the Confederate Secret Service, perhaps receiving funding and certainly receiving assistance during his escape from known Confederate operatives. Steers is convinced that parts of this conspiracy are highly plausible and incorporated them into his book. If he mentioned them during his interviews, those comments were not used. And I find Steers' logic persuasive.

This criticism aside, the documentary is a solid and steady retelling of Lincoln's assassination. Experts and Lincolnophiles will find almost nothing of note here -- though I was intrigued by Alford's colorful explanation of why Dr. Samuel Mudd evicted the injured fugitive Booth from his house: with his wife and children there, "Mudd simply could not afford a shootout in the family parlor." But it is a serviceable and informative film for others.

"The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln" premiered on Monday, February 9, 2009.