JWB: Ballad of Booth

Ideas :
-towards the end... take off splint, to keep respect and honor
-Vulgar (b) High and Mighty Niggar Lover Never! Never, (b) Never, (b) Never. (b)


Support:

"Some say it was your voice had gone"
There's been some superficial theories that his voice was giving away on him, that he had not had the proper training that his older brother had had and that he had sort of reached his peak and there was nowhere else to go. - A&E Biography

"Some say it was booze"
In contrast the nations celebration of the war's end, he was known to be fairly drunk some of the time. He was drinking a quart of Brandy at a time. - A&E Biography

-It is also a country in which we want everything explained in ten-second sound bites. The Balladeer wants a neat and simple motive for John Wilkes Booth’s act of violence – bad reviews, sibling rivalry – but from the very beginning, Assassins declares that there are no easy answers. Booth believed in his cause, believed that the country he loved so deeply was being torn apart, believed that Lincoln was the cause.

The Case for Booth

The power of Assassins – like 1776 and other historical dramas – is its ability to make fully drawn human beings out of the one-dimensional cardboard figures of history books. In Assassins, John Wilkes Booth may be somewhat unbalanced thinking assassination will solve America’s troubles, but he honestly believes he is a patriot. He didn’t kill Lincoln for fame or glory; he killed him to save the country. Looking back, we may quarrel with Booth’s assessment of the state of the union, but it’s important to remember that Lincoln was a widely disliked president; he was not "the pride and joy... of all the U.S.A.," as the Balladeer sings. Booth’s indictments against him are true. Lincoln did throw political dissenters into prison without charge or trial. His decision to abolish slavery was more economic than moralistic. Booth loved his country deeply and saw quite accurately that it was on its deathbed. The issue of slavery is beside the point here. Though we can see in retrospect that slavery was unconscionable, it’s easy to see how it was condoned by society and by people like Booth; Thomas Jefferson and other very moral men owned slaves. From our modern vantage point, we can call Booth a racist, but at the time, his view of slavery was not outside society’s norm. All he could see was that Lincoln was effectively destroying the economy of the South.

The section of "The Ballad of Booth" that begins with "How the country is not what it was..." is profoundly moving. This is not a madman talking; this is a man who loves the U.S.A. and can’t bear to see it divided and its citizens murdered in a bloody war. Many historians have commented that had Booth killed Lincoln two years earlier, he might’ve been hailed as a hero instead. Are Booth’s concerns that different from those voiced by commentators today? Americans across our nation often feel that the president or other politicians are destroying our way of life. Booth wasn’t that different from the protesters during the Vietnam war. Certainly we can’t sanction his method of righting the perceived wrongs – cold-blooded murder – but we also can’t ignore the despair he must’ve felt over the destruction of his beloved country, a destruction that was very real. "The Ballad of Booth" can be a deeply moving, impassioned plea for understanding by a man who honestly believed he was doing what had to be done. Saddest of all in Booth’s hope that the history (i.e., the Balladeer) will pass on the truth; it won’t. Booth’s motivations, passions, and beliefs will be ignored or distorted.

What most people don’t know – what History (personified here by the Balladeer) has left out and distorted – is that John Wilkes Booth was at the top of his fame and wealthy beyond his dreams when he decided to give it all up to kill Lincoln. He’s being sincere when he says, "I have given up my life for this one act." And what he gave up was considerable – he was making about $20,000 a year, an incredible sum at that time. More than that, he was universally adored. He had tons of friends. He was friendly to both the rich ladies who craved his company and to the stable boys. He often gave money to kids on the street. When he dined out with friends, he usually picked up the bill. People thought of him as kind, charming, generous, and a genuinely good man. He absolutely did not kill Lincoln over bad reviews (he was getting stellar reviews) or a failing career (he was becoming an even bigger national star than his older brother) or the need for attention (he was always in the papers and was a big league celebrity wherever he went).

Booth’s motives were political and born out of a genuine and desperate love of his country. Yes, he was a racist, but then again, so were many of the greatest men in history – it’s naïve to condemn him for that any more than we would condemn Jefferson or Washington for it. That’s not say it’s excusable, but it is easy to understand. His racism had nothing to do with his hatred of Lincoln. He hated Lincoln for destroying his country, for killing thousands of American boys, and for trampling on the Constitution, taking powers from Congress that were not his to take. We now know that Abraham Lincoln desecrated in some ways the very foundation of our American government. He ignored – some would say overthrew – the careful construction of the three branches of government designed to hold each other in check, the structure our Founding Fathers so carefully created to avoid tyranny and corruption. He declared war without the approval of Congress. He threw innocent people into jail in both the North and the South without charges and without trials. And as a result, many people hated him, in both the North and the South. They believed he was destroying our country. So it wasn’t all that unreasonable for Booth to think he’d be hailed as a hero for killing Lincoln. Michael Phillips, producer of the political assassination film Taxi Driver, says, "The difference between a hero and a monster is such a fine line."

In "The Ballad of Booth" we can see Booth’s confusion and utter despair over the way the country turned its back on him (at least in his perception), as well as his great sorrow over the destruction of a country he loved with all his heart. He was misguided and he was a murderer – there’s no ignoring that fact – but he was also in many ways, very patriotic.

- http://www.newlinetheatre.com/assassins.html