Conspiracy Theories: The Lincoln Assassination

Five days after the Confederacy’s surrender, John Wilkes Booth had successfully killed one of the most influential presidents in American history to do what he believed would redeem power to the southern states. Booth’s main goal was to tear down the Union’s government by taking down their leader and his successors, but the original plan did not involve the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. Historian Christopher Hammer explained in his article "Booth's Reason for Assassination", the former actor had created a group of co conspirators and designed "a ploy on March 17 to capture Lincoln as he traveled in his carriage [and had] collapsed when the president changed his itinerary—and several of Booth’s conspirators ultimately left the group.” (Teaching History). Since the failed capture of the president, Booth hatred towards Lincoln grew after hearing the president’s goal to officially abolish slavery in his Second Presidential

The video "Conspiracy Theories ; The Lincoln Assassination" discussed the three theories that John Wilkes Booth either worked with the President of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis to kill Lincoln, the leader of the Confederate Secret Service in Montreal, or the Confederate Government. Based on Booth’s motives, diary entries, and plans, he most likely worked by himself to create the elaborate plot to foil the new victory of the Union. In all three theories, Booth was told to kill the president, which would go against his unhealthy form of southern patriotism. In Booth’s last journey entry before he died, he thought he had done nothing wrong and brought justice to the South by saying, “God cannot pardon me if I have done wrong; yet I cannot see any wrong, except in serving a degenerate people. The little, the very little, I left behind to clear my name, the Government will not allow to be printed. So ends all!” (House