Sic Semper Tyrannis

Posted: 4/15/2015

Prologue

Nothing in this blog post should be construed or interpreted that the assassination of U.S. president Abraham Lincoln was justified or is justifiable.

Trigger

On my commute to work this morning I listened to an interesting NPR feature on John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated U.S. President Abraham Lincoln almost exactly 150 years ago. Here is the link “Who Was John Wilkes Booth Before He Became Lincoln's Assassin?”

Surprisingly and unusually, NPR did a very good job to represent story about the assassin himself and his motivations.

Life & Motivations Of John Wilkes Booth

This short feature on the radio this morning has finally cleared up and gave some better perspective on some things in my mind that were lingering there for years.

Yes, I had read or heard about what the assassin shouted during or right after he fired the lethal shot, i.e. “Sic semper tyrannis!”. However, due to the Latin words (I do not speak Latin) or because U.S. President Lincoln has become such a martyr and revered president, nobody would easily associate him with tyranny.

Well, my opinion about this U.S. president has changed quite a bit in recent times. I have blogged about him several times. NPR nicely pointed out that Lincoln did a number of things that were previously unheard of like an increasing power of the federal government, the imposition of a new income tax, the draft, the suspension habeas corpus and so on.

I did not know or had forgotten that Booth came from a famous and wealthy actor family and was himself an accomplished actor. I would believe that this fact has been conveniently downplayed about him. He was not anything like a lone madman. “Alford [a recent biographer] says it's interesting that, "over the years, as people felt free to talk about Booth, and while they shrank away from what he did, they didn't really shrink from him. They remembered things about him like courtesies and acts of heroism."”. “Poet and journalist Walt Whitman said of Booth's acting, "He would have flashes, passages, I thought of real genius."”

Selected Quotes From Booth’s Last Letter

On 4/21/1865, the New York Times published a letter by Booth, which he had deposited in November of 1864 for safekeeping. I added emphasis.

1. “Right or wrong. God judge me, not man.”
2. “I love peace more than life. Have loved the Union beyond expression. For four years have I waited, hoped and prayed for the dark clouds to break, and for a restoration of our former sunshine. To wait longer would be a crime. All hope for peace is dead. My prayers have proved as idle as my hopes. God's will be done. I go to see and share the bitter end.”
3. “I have ever held the South were right. The very nomination of ABRAHAM LINCOLN, four years ago, spoke plainly, war -- war upon Southern rights and institutions. His election proved it. "Await an overt act." Yes, till you are bound and plundered. What folly! The South was wise. … But in a struggle such as ours, (where the brother tries to pierce the brother's heart,) for God's sake, choose the right.”
4. “People of the North, to hate tyranny, to love liberty and justice, to strike at wrong and oppression, was the teaching of our fathers. The study of our early history will not let me forget it, and may it never.”
5. “This country was formed for the white, not for the black man. And looking upon African Slavery from the same stand-point held by the noble framers of our constitution. … Yet, Heaven knows, no one would be willing to do more for the negro race than I, could I but see a way to still better their condition.”
6. “But LINCOLN's policy is only preparing the way for their total annihilation [of the South]. The South are not, nor have they been fighting for the continuance of slavery. The first battle of Bull Run did away with that idea.”
7. “I thought men, as now, that the Abolitionists were the only traitors in the land, and that the entire party deserved the same fate of poor old [John] BROWN, not because they wish to abolish slavery but on account of the means they have ever endeavored to use to effect that abolition.”
8. “I have also studied hard to discover upon what grounds the right of a State to secede has been denied, when our very name, United States, and the Declaration of Independence, both provide for secession. But there is no time for words. I write in haste.”
9. “I know how foolish I shall be deemed for undertaking such a step as this, where, on the one side, I have many friends, and everything to make me happy, where my profession alone has gained me an income of more than twenty thousand dollars a year, and where my great personal ambition in my profession has such a great field for labor.”
10. “... would pray the Almighty to create in the Northern mind a sense of right and justice, (even should it possess no seasoning of mercy,) and that he would dry up this sea of blood between us, which is daily growing wider.”

As I have argued here on my blog, the American Civil War was entirely unnecessary and avoidable. This total war certainly gave rise to the ever expanding Big Government in Washington at the expense of the individual states and individual liberty. Lincoln is to blame!

Post Script

I have previously published a blog post regarding John Wilkes Booth here. In light of what I realized today I would have to revise this earlier blog post.