%0 Book %A Booth, John Wilkes, 1838-1865. %E Rhodehamel, John H. %E Taper, Louise. %I University of Illinois Press %D 1997 %C Urbana %G English %@ 0252023471 %@ 9780252023477 %@ 9780252069673 %@ 0252069676 %T Right or wrong, God judge me : the writings of John Wilkes Booth %U http://www.h-net.org/review/hrev-a0a8d7-aa %X All of the known writings of John Wilkes Booth are included in this collection. Of this wealth of material, the most important item is a previously unpublished twenty-page manuscript discovered at the Players Club in Manhattan. Written by Booth in 1860 in a form similar to Mark Antony's funeral oration in Julius Caesar, it makes clear that his hatred for Lincoln was formed early and was deeply rooted in his pro-slavery and pro-Southern ideology. Also included in the nearly seventy documents are six love letters to a seventeen-year-old Boston girl, Isabel Sumner, written during the summer of 1864, when Booth was conspiring against Lincoln; several explicit statements of Booth's political convictions; and the diary he kept during his futile twelve-day flight after the assassination. The documents show that Booth, although opinionated and impulsive, was not an isolated madman. Rather, he was a highly successful actor and ladies' man who also was a Confederate agent. Along with many others, he believed that Lincoln was a tyrant whose policies threatened civil liberties. --From publisher's description.