and said "let's see how you like being hit." that is a competent element in his personality. he did write childhood the articles. -- childhood theatricals. his brothers and him enjoy to doing that. at one point, he was supposed to shoot an arrow off of his son's head. the apple was on the head of a kid named martin. 12 euros john wilkes booth's he was trembling but that went successfully. those childhood theatrics were fun for everyone involved. john's education carried him through, as i interpreted, on a modern frame, early high school. he went to a very good school in

bel air, maryland. he went to a school in sparks, maryland, run by quaker elder and a military middle and high school in catonsville, maryland run by an episcopalian priest. these are good schools. it was difficult for him. his sister said his older brothers were more intuitive but for john, he had to really force himself to learn things. it was not easy. i see all sorts of clues that he was a good auditory learner. he would listen, especially to people he respected. we know this. you can pay attention. you can learn a lot with your ears. people have made a fortune with their ears. he was very good about picking up things just by listening other people. he became an actor in his late teens. he was in richmond for two years and was popular there. i was able to discover that the roles he played more than any

other role was lord gundry in "our american cousin." it was not known what role he had until recently and i was glad to see that in a source. he knew that play backward and forward. while he was in richmond, the john brown raid took place. the militia company of richmond was sent up there. booth joined them. if you want to see how good an author is on the subject, see what they see about booth joined ing the grays. he was not an intruder, a -- he was an enrolled soldier. he was a sergeant with the virginia first regiment and a friend and i found his pay voucher in the state archives in richmond. i don't think that had been seen in 100-plus years. it was tremendous to find that because i was pretty sure he was

not a hanger-on but had an official role. i hope you have a chance to see the illustration of the flag of the richmond grays. it shows the virginia seal and in dramatic letters, sic semper tyrannis. booth marched under that flag in 1859 during the john brown raid. when the civil war came along -- excuse me for synopsizing so much. one paper said fort sumter demanded everyone show your colors. what side are you on, here? booth, early during the secession crisis, had been opposed to secession. he was in montgomery when lincoln was elected and got in a good bit of trouble because he did not want to see the union

broken up. he did not think it was necessary. in that way, he probably shared the feelings of a lot of northern, mid-atlantic, people that fit in with them. once the shooting started, it was a moot point. booth came back to his hometown and fell in with a militia company that was organized to go down south. according to the officer in that company, they were going to come with booth's assistance, going to destroy a bridge over the susquehanna river. that ultimately leads on to philadelphia. you remember, it was part of the scheme to blow up the bridges leading out of maryland to prevent northern troops from coming down here. booth did not enter the confederate army. as almost everyone knows. i speculate on a number of reasons why. one of the ones i have not heard mentioned before is that booth suffered from hemophobia. he had an averse reaction to seeing blood and could not stand to see a dead face.

you will see a lot of references to blood in his writings. where he refers to the stripes on the flag as bloody gashes and things like that. i have speculation as to why that is. i think that would give anyone pause for someone who had such a physical reaction to bloodshed but also the promise we made to -- he made his mother, who was a widow, and he was very fond of her. she had shielded her from his dad from time to time and he promised as a child that he would always see that she was happy. that was a promise he made, a promise he kept, and it went against both his instinct and

i think was bad for him in the country. booth had a confederate flag in this time. it is an 11-star confederate flag and it is in the museum at richmond. during the war breaking out, he gave that to a friend in harford county and turned his back on the warm became an -- turned his back on the war became an actor. his career kicks off when he goes to st. louis. there was a theater being run by ben devar. this theater had a reputation of being cold, drafty, a rathole. but he wanted to give a shot -- john a shot on stage, and he did. ben was supportive as a manager, but he could vex you. i remember the complaint was made that your company was loaded with scrubs. they aren't any good. he said, hey, they have to work somewhere. sometimes devar would not pay them. one time his actors found him

dining on quail and demanded somewhere. their salary and mock surprise he says something like, what? demand salary when blackberries are in season? booth is very ambitious at this point. i'm reminded by that definition of ambition and determination. some remember the name of joe jacoby. he was a great lineman for the washington redskins -- he was a great linesman for the washington redskins in his heyday. he said, to win the super bowl i would run over my own mother. his teammate said, i would, too. i would run over joe's mother. [laughter] booth had that kind of determination. do not let anybody tell you booth was not a good actor.

booth was an exceptional actor. he was not perfect, but edwin forrest, who everyone agrees was a gigantic actor from this time, said an actor was great if he could play three major leads better than anyone else in the country and booth has no trouble doing that. his richard iii was without parallel. he played the sculptor raphael. i particularly like richard iii and the marble hart together. sincerity and openness are needed. the fact that he could be the best in the country to such time such diametrically opposed roles shows his ability as an actor. but booth was not really raved about in the south. he was not down in the south very much. there he briefly during the

secession crisis and then in richmond. it is not true they loved him in the deep south and because of that, that it sparked a love of the south in him. he was most popular, believe it or not, in boston. in chicago. in those two northern cities. those were the places he was most liked. i will say one last thing about booth as an actor. i don't think any actor in his time put more blood, sweat, and tears into a performance. his acting style was very physical. particularly the plays including with a sword fight would be quite protracted, sometimes dangerous. he got knicked, he gave knicks. when the curtain came down sometimes people said he would lay there five or 10 minutes without moving. he would be prostrate from the effort he put up.

booth had a number of affairs during the civil war years. if i could go back and find people that i could meet from the period of my work, i would want to meet maggie mitchell, a diminutive actor-singer-dancer a beautiful creature, very energetic. they say maggie was in her 20's when she died at the age of 81. [laughter] there was a story in the ford family that john were maggie are -- john and maggie were engaged. there are stories about booth being engaged to other women as well. i'm reminded thinking about john's affairs etc., i am reminded of a story of a madam. she said, i think i will tell my husband everything about my romantic past. everything. her friend said, everything?

you're going to tell him everything? she said, everything. everything? she said yes. one friend said, what courage. another friend said, what honesty. the third friend said, what a memory. [laughter] the lengthiest political thing booth wrote was a speech. never had occasion to deliver it. right after lincoln's election. it is thousands of words. abraham lincoln's name is not mentioned in the document. he has become the most discussed man in the united states and he has not even hit booth's radar yet.

as the war went on, he certainly did. in august of 1864 he began to recruit people abduct lincoln. john ford of ford's theater says this was not as crazy as it sounded, given that lincoln would travel without escort and he was regular about going to the soldiers' homes and ford thought it would be fair stroke in war. i don't have any reason to think lincoln would have resisted. what if there was a shootout or lincoln got hurt or killed in an abduction attempt? booth's feeling was that if they struck a blow most sufficiently daring and unexpected, they would be able to pull this thing off. booth gathered around him. if you young marylanders, people from the d.c. area.

some these people looked pretty common and low-order to their contemporaries. one of the people he recruited was david herold, who traveled on the escape route with booth and was hanged. my research does not suggest that herold was a dummy. one federal detective said he thought herold was naturally quick and smart. he is not a genius. i remember joe theismann, the redskin quarterback from the golden age. theismann said that not everyone is that smart. not everyone is a genius is someone like norman einstein. [laughter] i'm not saying that herold was a norman einstein by any means. when the confederate army surrendered, richmond was

captured, the confederates in virginia surrender. booth saw his chance to murder. booth had been thinking about it. at the time lincoln was signed the emancipation proclamation, who had been rehearsing. -- as was finishing a rehearsal in st. louis. dramatically and apropos of nothing, he put a prop pistol in the chest of the one of the actors and said, if you were lincoln, by god, i could make some history. that was january 1, 1863. that had been bothering him sometime. the night in the theater, booth came in after 10:00 as i reconstructed, dressed in ordinary clothing, had a pistol concealed in his hand. it is a touch less than six inches long.

and a bowie knife. there was an attendant at the box named forbes. he is an attendant, not a soldier. he is armed only with good intentions. people have been coming and going out of the box. forbes admitted i have a surprised exhalation for that, which i think i will teach you with an hope you buy the book. it is something that nobody speculated about before. i feel -- see if it makes any sense to you, about how we got in the box. it explains one kind of mystery about the assassination investigation. why was forbes never interviewed? why was he not part of the trial? how come forbes did not give a statement?

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, right, to jump. 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 taped, a gel pack in his shoes. it sounded like a cannon went off when he hit the stage. my theory is booth broke his leg right there. after david herold was captured, 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. -- it was a front set. 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 for quite a while. thomas hartman, a confederate agent, said he was surprised with his resourcefulness in assisting booth and some were willing to handle booth or hand him off as a hot potato to the next person. he met his fate in garrett's barn in fredericksburg. booth is buried in washington in 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 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 -- there were a number of actors 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. sure enough, once you looked at the boots, you could see the holes where they screwed in ice skates to the boots at that

time. this is february of 69. 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. 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 drew 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. the planet earth behind it all , suggesting this freedom was

not just important to the southern states of the united states, but something to the entire world. when i see that painting 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] i will take some questions. thank you. >> did you come to any conclusions about the extent of the involvement of federal government authorities in the booth conspiracy? booth 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 and see 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. but he just invite their principles. >> was it 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. 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. -- that was something that was in booth's mind. he could bring it up a year later and explode while talking about it. >> thank you very much. >> as you 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 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 a 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 errand 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 mine, 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 one point john 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 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 than john, but much more worriedly, much more attuned to things in the world made a sarcastic response and blew him 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] 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: relative to their treatment in the civil war -- 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 comment is that although lincoln is hard to read emotionally, what was so fascinating was that they spoke about loving lincoln. over and over again people right we loved him. they loved him as a father. people most often spoke of him as a brother and son. that speaks to his emotional distance. >> i have some questions on psychohistory. i am a licensed psychiatrist. i am bound not to speculate .

you can look at what information is available and put into some context. i caution against trying to utilize information on someone who has been dead since 1865, trying to put that into a category that is 150 years later in terms of that. i think at times with a figure as large as abraham lincoln, what would have not have been as large is made larger in that extent. i do have some concern about that. having said that, it was not clinical depression. it would be classified as this fine mia -- dysfimia.

one of the most astute psychological assessments of lincoln, it depends on what you are trying to find. i would make a point about lincoln. he is a man that a lot of people thought they knew. he is an ended my in a lot of ways day -- he is an engima and a lot of ways. when lincoln talked about slavery he talked about the economic consequences, he rarely mentions the breakup of families. he mentions the psychological aspects to that, and he never went to the funeral of his father. i find that very revealing and a man have the sympathy that we know lincoln have. i am us a psychiatrist. >> the spielberg movie is very

insightful, especially the scripts, and seeing the relationship he had with his 12-year-old son, as an essential part of that when willie died up until the end of lincoln's life. i think it supported lincoln and allowed him to do his political and policy work with strength. the point made is by the end of his life he has more or less moved beyond depression. that strength that he showed is strongly related to his relationship with the death of willie. >> thank you.

>> noted the problem with posthumous diagnosis. i do find in the case of both and the other presidential assassins, the in of the crime seems out of proportion to the specific issues that motivated the assassins themselves. i wonder whether or not that is an issue either of you would like to address. it is a point historians have made even oswald, i am left ambiguous with respect to booth. if it wasn't an ordnance identification with the confederacy that the in normandy of this crime seems to be somewhat difficult to explain . i wonder if anything in booth's riding may give motivation.

martha: the one piece of evidence we have based on riding his white supremacy. what his companion testified he said when lincoln was giving a speech on april 11, that this will be the last speech he ever makes, although that is in direct testimony booth did write a long letter that made the same point in his own handwriting before that was taken. that is not -- a lot of white supremacists and didn't murder lincoln. i think that is pretty clear. moderator: everyone is looking at you. jerry: the most interesting point about that to me, this is even with people's racial

attitudes of the 21st century, he didn't see how they could gain freedom without him losing his. if you can explain that, you will understand a good bit about what he was thinking. just traditional in his views. we also have to add in the irrational element here. that is not absent. my take is booth did not say it there, he said at the box. there is what he said here, which is overlooked, is revenge for the south. revenge is not a noble motive. it is an undeniably human one.

like i am hurting, and i want to share this with you. i'm going to share this feeling with other people. that is an element in his thinking that is not explained by political views and racial ones. he felt hurt by what had happened there. the history of this generation was being written by young men his age and he was playing a hero, not being one. i think that eight and to him. that is what john ford thought. >> a question for dr. fox. this is speculating to the carriage ride. i heard he talked with mary lincoln about going back to springfield after his term ended , and what they would do. he talked about let's take a trip to the holy land. i never quite knew if that was

something he wanted to do for diplomacy while he was president, or if that was in the future, and do you think he speculates he also talks about going back to the south during reconstruction, and being hands-on and peacemaker as it were. dr. fox: let me give you a tentative response. i believe that whatever reference he made to the holy land may have been characterized in virginia. they both were in virginia around the fifth or sixth of april. she had gone back to washington. then they returned with another party to virginia including sumner and the frenchman who was

visiting. i. really know what to make of this statement. -- i don't really know what to make of the statement. let's go to the holy land. lincoln would have nodded. [laughter] that turns into lincoln wanting to go to the holy land. and he said supposedly that evening of the assassination he would like to see california. i think he may have been like had you feel that going to california and he was like -- and that turns into the recollection that he wants to go to california. [laughter] i definitely think lincoln was cozying up to mary.

i don't know about any of the quotations being real. i do feel like it would make sense at that moment to make that gesture. they'd had a horrible experience on march 26 when she flew up -- blew up at the wife of the general. she had humiliated him. she had embarrassed herself. it makes sense it would have been an effort at reconciliation. that was an effort of their marriage. they were bad to each other, but they also had moments of restoring. it wasn't just april 14. it was a dynamic that probably made their marriage work, a version of codependency. certainly a strong love.

martha: he told his law partner when he left the white house he would come back to illinois and they would start practicing law together. we will pick up where we left off. >> anyone who can comment on what started in the 1960's, whether or not he had symptoms of the disease. >> that tends not to be the thought at this point. >> it has been ruled out? dr. goldman: the symptoms are not associated with that. my understanding that is not felt to be likely in his case. he may have some things, but not a full-blown case.

>> martha, you do a great job illustrating the difference between the north and south, to booth and the assassination. if you looked at similar reactions to harpers ferry and john brown, would you expect to see a similar difference as a predicted to the war? martha: john brown is a great example because abolitionists were so vocal, utterly outraged. the northern population was not the white population anti-slavery. people were really outraged at the execution of john brown. and the confederate, the future confederate white seven's were certain he should be put to death. john brought is a good example because it is so extreme. you have these extreme sides responding to something in what we now think of as becoming of

the civil war. at that moment when could not have said that. what i found in response to the assassination after the war is over, you could go back and see the roots of some of that in that very pivotal moment before several years before the war starts. >> can i add a comment? it is most remarkable in five years of his execution everything he predicted came true. african-americans being armed. i have agreed with the two latest books that were done on john brown, there were so many things that were done in the last 10 years before the war that back fired on slavery's advocates. it did nothing but galvanize

emancipation and abolition because they saw it up front. they became federal agents that had to return slaves. anthony burns being walked back to slavery with enraged bostonians following him back in a similar way. they waited too long to execute john brown because during that time he showed tremendous grace. i think there was an element when i look at the contemporary newspaper accounts, in the way he faced his imminent execution. >> dr. hodes, we all know that when lincoln was assassinated, there was a harsh editorial about lincoln.