The scene of John Wilkes Booth shooting Abraham Lincoln in Ford's
Theatre is among the most vivid and indelible images in American
history. The literal story of what happened on April 14, 1865, is
familiar: Lincoln was killed by John Wilkes Booth, a lunatic
enraged by the Union victory and the prospect of black citizenship.
Yet who Booth really was--besides a killer--is less well known. The
magnitude of his crime has obscured for generations a startling
personal story that was integral to his motivation.
"My Thoughts Be Bloody, "a sweeping family saga, revives an
extraordinary figure whose name has been missing, until now, from
the story of President Lincoln's death. Edwin Booth, John Wilkes's
older brother by four years, was in his day the biggest star of the
American stage. He won his celebrity at the precocious age of
nineteen, before the Civil War began, when John Wilkes was a
schoolboy. Without an account of Edwin Booth, author Nora Titone
argues, the real story of Lincoln's assassin has never been told.
Using an array of private letters, diaries, and reminiscences of
the Booth family, Titone has uncovered a hidden history that
reveals the reasons why John Wilkes Booth became this country's
most notorious assassin.
These ambitious brothers, born to theatrical parents, enacted a
tale of mutual jealousy and resentment worthy of a Shakespearean
tragedy. From childhood, the stage-struck brothers were rivals for
the approval of their father, legendary British actor Junius Brutus
Booth. After his death, Edwin and John Wilkes were locked in a
fierce contest to claim his legacy of fame. This strange family
history and powerful sibling rivalry were the crucibles of John
Wilkes's character, exacerbating his political passions and driving
him into a life of conspiracy.
To re-create the lost world of Edwin and John Wilkes Booth, this
book takes readers on a panoramic tour of nineteenth-century
America, from the streets of 1840s Baltimore to the gold fields of
California, from the jungles of the Isthmus of Panama to the
glittering mansions of Gilded Age New York. Edwin, ruthlessly
competitive and gifted, did everything he could to lock his younger
brother out of the theatrical game. As he came of age, John Wilkes
found his plans for stardom thwarted by his older sibling's
meteoric rise. Their divergent paths--Edwin's an upward race to
riches and social prominence, and John's a downward spiral into
failure and obscurity--kept pace with the hardening of their
opposite political views and their mutual dislike.
The details of the conspiracy to kill Lincoln have been well
documented elsewhere. "My Thoughts Be Bloody "tells a new story,
one that explains for the first time why Lincoln's assassin decided
to conspire against the president in the first place, and sets that
decision in the context of a bitterly divided family--and nation.
By the end of this riveting journey, readers will see Abraham
Lincoln's death less as the result of the war between the North and
South and more as the climax of a dark struggle between two
brothers who never wore the uniform of soldiers, except on stage.
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