forbes never interviewed? why was he not part of the trial? why did force not -- forbes? they are looking for everyone else and they did not ask the person who opened the door for booth. what happened there? that is a considerable distance, as you can guess. i think when i was a kid, i fell out of a tree about that far and i saw in an imax years ago that someone jumped from this side for the filming was doing and he had ankles heavily tapes, a gel pack in his shoe. it sounded like a cannon went off when hit the stage. my theory is booth broke his leg right there. after david harold scatchard, he told people booth broke his leg on the stage. i think was less the speed of

his exit that got him out of the theater, it was that people were not sure what happened. it was a scene where one actor would be on stage. it was a front said. everything was right in front of the footlights for dramatic presentation to the audience. there was not much furniture on the stage for that scene. it was a perfectly selected time to commit the crime that he did. out the back door and down the alley. booth was on the run from quite a while. thomas hartman, a confederate agent, said he was surprised with his resourcefulness in heidi booth and some were ready to hand them off as a hot potato to the next person. he met his fate and garrett's barn.

booth is buried in washington in 1965 -- 1865. the body was turned over to the family and was taken to baltimore and identified by joseph, his youngest brother. mrs. booth was there but would not go and look at his son -- her son's remains. the funeral home in baltimore was right across the street from the home in baltimore theaters. there were a number of factors who identified them to their satisfaction. henry clay ford -- harry clay ford, who managed the theater said that is booth, no doubt about it. his future bride asked him, how do you know that is him he said i know him better than i know you. one look told me that was john wilkes booth. a friend of booth said if that is really john, look at the boot.

he and i went ice skating and there should be holes in it were skates were affixed. once you looked at the boots, you could see the holes where they screwded in ice skates to the boots at that time. when the weather improved in june of 1869, the family got together and buried him in greenmount cemetery. the grave is not marked but it was well-known to everybody. it was distinguished by a mount for a while. in the next year in 1870, that was the first year that confederate families in baltimore decorated the grace of their dead. "the baltimore american" said the grave that had more flowers on it than any other confederate grave was john wilkes booth. it had a pyramid of flowers on it, which i think says something

about postwar feelings about abraham lincoln, at least among the confederate element in baltimore. it is hard to know how to close out remarks like this with something -- there is nothing happy here, but something positive. i will tell you what i wanted to do today. nicholas dejesus is a friend of mine, an artist for mexico from aztec ancestry, and works in traditional formats, celebrating mexican traditional life, whimsical paintings. i commission him to do a painting to commemorate my time with his stuff. use important -- he is an important artist so i did not tell them what to do, just the lincoln assassination. i got the painting. it is neat because he works on the old traditional aztec paper. you just pound the inner bark of a mulberry tree into a paper.

it is rough, but it gives you that great stuff the aztecs used. give me a painting that was about three and a half feet tall. at the top was booth shooting lincoln, but booth was a small character in the corner and lincoln is shot. he is in his agony. there are white doves flying around lincoln, which means the war has come to an end and happen any moment of impending peace and at the central part of the penny was a slave whose chains are falling away. the chains are flying out and skeletons from the dead of the war and maybe from the legacy of slavery. at the bottom of the painting is a woman and she is giving birth to a child an infant with no chains because it is being born free. nicholas true thorns around the bottom part because he wanted to suggest that freedom would not be easy. this is not the end of a story but there would be more trouble to come for everybody.

the baby was free. no chains. plan earth -- the planet earth behind it all which suggest it was freedom not just important to the southern states of the united states, but something to the entire world. i think for abraham lincoln that is not a bad legacy, i don't think. not a bad legacy. thank you very much. thank you. [applause] no take some questions. >> -- i will take some questions. >> did you come to any conclusions about the extent of federal government authorities in the booth conspiracy? traveling to canada, supposedly getting money from confederate sources, and the person in charge of the secret service

leaving the country and never talking about anything involving the war. did that lead you to any conclusions? dr. alford: yes. i was attentive to questions. i wanted to know what connections booth had with the government. i did not find anything. i just did not find anything. i did help the conspiracy people out a little bit because i was able to discover that booth, and you will not see this in any of the other books, booth went to canada about 10 days before the murder, not just in the fall of 1864 but april of 1865 and he met with james gordon, who is the nephew of jacob thompson. i found a statement from jacob thompson that has never been published in the library in fort wayne. thompson said what they were doing their was they were working on the action plan -- an abduction plan with booth to force a peace conference, no longer to rescue prisoners, but to force a peace conference.

thompson told a friend in the postwar years, i'm sorry we had anything to do with them because i think maybe the assassination would not have happened if we had not thrown a log on that fire at that point. >> bel air maryland, is only a few miles from pennsylvania and the booth family was all pro-union to my knowledge. why did booth become pro-southern, in your opinion? dr. alford: it is interesting because the family are not traditional plantation people. the do not own slaves, essentially. they never made a living on slave labor. they were urban active people. i'm not sure his father became an american citizen. that is a good question. he just identified with the institutions of maryland. the white middle class and the white upper-class.

he just felt that the best country in the world was the united states before the civil war. that the status quo antebellum yes, it was a country with problems, but any day of the week he could look at the ports of new york nc 100,000 people trying to get into this place. that was the best country that there was. lincoln was destroying it essentially. he was not in a traditional slave owning family. >> because lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus and took strong measures against maryland -- dr. alford: in fact war, as it is pointed out in a book, more civilians were arrested for maryland than any other state in booth -- other state. booth knew by reputation many of these people. they arrested the police

marshall of baltimore who was a friend of the booth family and that enraged him. one of the things i would say if we had all day instead of a short amount of time i would tell you is that booth had many charming qualities of personality and that is why he had so many friends, even after the assassination, shrink from what he did but not him one thing was not so charming that if someone got under his skin, he could not let it go. it rankled him. the rest of the police chief who was thought to be pro-southern arrested at the beginning of the war, imprisoned 1/3 of the war released without trial, without charge, without apology or expedition, just arrested, thrown out, that was something in booth's mine. he could bring it up a year later and explode while talking about it. >> as you knowledge --

acknowledged, it was quite a jump to the stage. was that his planned exit or did he intend to go back down the steps? dr. alford: he intended to come right down that way. as scary as that looks according to john ford, he had made leaps of similar height and some of the plays, dramatic entrances that he liked to make. he could spring down from the scenery and make a really dramatic entry. if you don't get thrown off balance by catching your spur in the flag or don't have major rathbone pulling undercoat, you might have been able to do it. -- pulling on your coat, you might have been able to do it. it was still quite a jump but that was the way he was coming up. he barred the door after he went inside no one was coming in after him. i'm sorry. >> thank you.

one of the things i'm interested in, he has a lot of conspirators that he worked with. as a fifth part of the trial later on. how did he -- he is kind of organizing all of this. what was his relationship with all those people? was he an effective organizer? a lot of this plot does not come together that well in the final days. people don't deliver that cannot live up to what they promised. he's kind of on his own a lot. dr. alford: that is a very good question. i described him in the book as a passionate, private, but not a good captain. he was very charismatic. there were people he could win over with the force of his personality. i think you underestimate, at least in the abduction phase lincoln's accessibility, i don't think lincoln was successful as he had hoped as to the time this would take and expensive would take, because as far as i could

tell he funded this out of his own pocket. it was some money from john surratt and one other person. he was paying for this whole thing and as one of them said, we're all expensive-drinking people who wanted to eat as well. booth -- i would say that booth was effective conspirator, but not a natural -- i think he was more -- it was really hard for him to disguise what he was thinking with people. if he had not been a good actor i don't think he could not have done it well. he is in effect a conspirator but not a natural one. he played iago but did not have the craftiness of that guy. that is what i think. >> speaking about who continues to be one of the more controversial theaters today mary surratt, a movie made about her recently. is there anything about booth's

writing or what he said to people in the days proceeding the assassination that would make you think that she was, in fact, guilty and knew what what happen on april 14? was delivering guns that would be used that night etc., because those were the circumstances that got her hanged. powell happened to show but the boarding house when their rating it and said a-ha. dr. alford: i was able to add one fact of interest to that discussion that i have not seen in any book, and that was booth planned to duck lincoln from this -- to abduct lincoln from this theater in january of 1865. it did not come off but they got awfully close. lincoln did not show up that night. you went to another theater and came here the next night. that plan did not work. i don't know how it would have worked out.

that was the scheme. what i discovered was that when the january plot fizzled, booth said -- this is according to the statement of thomas hartman, the confederate agent -- books and mrs. surratt to tell her son to stand down, that no one will be coming out from this attempt. if you realize that she ran that aaron for them in january -- that errand into a were, to put later life -- in january, that puts later light on her other errands. she may have been more involved in this than people thought. >> i wanted to ask if you would consider the writings of two authors, the former roman catholic priest who lincoln defended as a client,

also the writings of brigadier general thomas harris, wrote a book called "rome's responsibility and the assassination of abraham lincoln." he investigated and tried the conspirators. if you could reflect on either of those writings. thank you. dr. alford: i guess a lot of us know that some of the cap leaders in catholic -- catholic leaders and catholic citizens were not enthusiastic for some of the programs lincoln had going. there was a new york friedmans register, a catholic newspaper which is interesting to read their complaints about lincoln and so forth. i did not see anything that let me to believe that was anything

along the lines of that. i cannot improve upon the book "the lincoln murder conspiracies" where he compared those books. i agree with him where i do not see a catholic hand in this plot, if that is what you are asking. >> i never learned growing up, high school, college anywhere, that the u.s. broke diplomatic relations with the vatican in 1867 over the assassination and did not restore relations until 1984, or that the pope of the time of the civil war had written to and acknowledged jefferson davis as the illustrious honorable president to be confederate states of america. dr. alford: i just cannot comment on that. i do not know. >> ok. it is not taught in schools. i was curious. thank you. dr. alford: i was not -- that was not taught in mind, i can tell you that. [laughter] of course, i went to school the mississippi delta. three minutes? thanks.

fred? >> some years ago at the ali, we had james hall and the daughter of one of the generals. dr. alford: tidwell. >> didn't they imply that booth had a strong connection to confederate intelligence? dr. alford: yes, they did. in fact, the old point in the book -- the whole point of the book was to see what extent that related to jefferson. i looked hard for that but i did not see anything like that. it is obvious that booth worked with payroll confederate people like thomas harvin who went back-and-forth across the river. at 1.i remember john's arrest -- at oine point john surma at

surratt -- john dr. alford: -- surratt said, should we check this with the confederates? [laughter] they may hit us over the head and turn this over to the yanks. that is something the as birders talked about. -- conspirators talked about. >> you describe booth's father as troubled. booth went into his father's profession. i'm interested about his attitude. did he reject his father or did he keep a compassionate view? dr. alford: is used were mixed and not very public. i found a couple of examples. actors are very clanish and isolated. particularly in that time because they had an odd

occupation by the standards of 1860 and one part of the religious part of the country looked down on. a lot of people would not go to the theater under a circumstances. they considered it inconsistent with the seventh commandment. i think some actors closed wagons when it dealt with outsiders. booth greatly admired his father's acting ability. did not think he was the greatest actor, but he felt the alcoholism put a dreadful curse on them. i did not see this in any other book. i know you're getting tired of this. his brother was acting in richmond. there was an english actor named ares sullivan in the audience. -- edwin sullivan in the audience. it distressed john to see that sullivan had been drinking.

distressing because he was embarrassing everyone in front of this distinguished actor. john went up to edwin and said, how can you appear onstage trunk like that? you cannot do that. it is humiliating. our father's legacy is troubling enough in that regard. i feel like attacking you. edwin, who was only four or five years older the job but much more worriedly, much more attuned to things in the world made a sarcastic response of blue them off and john reached around and grabbed a prop and probably would have hit his brother if his brother had not wisely headed off to the dressing room. that night, the action backstage was as interesting as what was out front because he had put on display in a rare occasion in front of other actors and staff the troubling dynamic in the

family. you love your dad because he is your dad. you admire him as an actor, but what a burden to have to be the son of the elder booth. and then, of course, the elder booth's success as an actor. you go on stage and you will be measured by him and also by your older brother. which could be trouble. thank you very much. i appreciate it. [applause] thanks. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org]

>> hi, everybody. hi again. we are now at the last scholarly section of the program today of the speakers panel. we have 30 minutes and will be delighted to take questions from the audience directed at any one of the speakers about the aspects of the talks they get today and any other aspect pertaining to lincoln that has come to mind. the floors questions. i see just one right here. >> i would like to follow up on dr. alford. you think booth was jealous of his older brother, his fame, and that sort of let him to do what he did on april 14, to get that fame which was missing from his career by doing something very dramatic? dr. alford: jealous of his brother edwin? >>'s fame.

a lot of himself, but his fame -- not of himself, but his fame. dr. alford: i think the rivalries overstressed in a recent book. you have the normal sibling rivalry that anyone would have. they are competing for space in the same profession. there are not that many theaters. there was a little tension there. i think edwin was about as jealous of john as fisa versa -- vice-versa. they were starting to excel in different lines of work. not totally, but they play different characters. edwin saw john do one play. he gave him his costume and said i can't do that. john fully admitted that edwin was a better othello edwin was a better hamlet. i think he wanted fame. it was not so much the atricure. he had that. -- so much theatrical.

he had that. i think it was a feeling of cowardice. he had the war go on. he had done absolutely nothing. he played at a soldier and lost one. i think it was over self approach and he wanted to distinguish himself in some way in getting hold of lincoln was some way. i do not see any abnormal jealousies in the family there. just normal ones. >> mr. goldman, and treatments relative to the treatment of veterans. any treatments about the bonus army in the aftermath of world war i? the veterans on the mall. the second is, are you familiar with jim wrighhtt's book, those who bore the burden?

mr. goldman: is there anything you want me to address? >> what happened to the bonus army veterans after the war. mr. goldman: those are good questions. what i'm trying to do is utilize the past to do with the present. there is no doubt that what we have built with treating veterans as not change. there have been things that change the peloponnesian war to afghanistan. both of my political research and research i've been doing in almost two decades, one of the most unacknowledged aspects of doing with veterans was to the

country with which they fought and the country to which they return. the fact that it was the american civil war in relation to the objectives of the war the fact that you had a despised minority who, for the second time in american history had proved themselves to be good soldiers as they had in the american war, and one thing we found over the years is that military service particularly tends to be not only radicalizing, but there are things they will not tolerate when they got home and we have seen that with or after war particularly in response to african-american sailors. particularly with that after desegregating the army. it was something most of the military oppose. you look at the military now and it is one of the showcase places where merit is rewarded, where women and minorities are the

highest position of authority or people are expected to achieve and people are expected to be trained. for many people, the service has been the way in which cigarette education and the way they were able to get out. we know of that. we also take a look at one country in particular that has been possibly fighting for 70 years. there is a lot of things coming out of the israeli defense forces and the information there and those our citizen soldiers where everyone serves, men and women. you put this all together. you take a look at what we have learned that we have learned a fair amount. i do have a caution that we mentioned before. the trail of veterans in the media, particularly -- the portrayal of veterans in the media is starting to

remind me of what we had in the vietnam area and it is disturbing because it is not a true representation of men and women who come home from service. i try to match it up with some of the graphics of afghanistan and iraq. -- the demographics of afghanistan and iraq. they match up with world war ii veterans in terms of the population, the president son's serving, people of all walks of life. you are not getting that with an all-volunteer army. does that answer the question you asked? moderator: over here. >> this question is for all of you, whoever wants to ask a nswer. it has to do with the emotional lincoln. i think we all know he was very emotional. there was the story that someone

sing for him "no one knows the trouble i've seen" and his alleged suicide moments when mary todd broke off their first engagement. he had great stoic character and did not show these i am just wondering, do you know of any scholarship that delves into that emotional side, that he did have. i have not come across a lot of it. and if not there because she hid it. that was very much there. >> i will start. that is about lincoln diagnosis clinical depression. the other