Name: _________________________________ Period: _____________ Date: __________________________________
Read the diary of John Wilkes Booth and complete the activity below.
After John Wilkes Booth was shot at Garrett's farm on April 26, 1865, Colonel Everton Conger removed a small red
appointment book from Booth's body. The book, which served as Booth's diary, contained a final diary entry, written after
the April 14 assassination:
After being hunted like a dog through swamps, woods, and last night being chased by gunboats till I was forced to return
wet, cold, and starving, with every man's hand against me, I am here in despair. And why? For doing what Brutus was
honored for. And yet I, for striking down a greater tyrant than they ever knew, am looked upon as a common cutthroat.
My action was purer than (his). One hoped to be great himself. I struck for my country and that alone. A country that
groaned beneath this tyranny, and prayed for this end, and yet now behold the cold hands they extend to me. God cannot
pardon me if I have done wrong. Yet I cannot see my 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.
For my country I have given up all that makes life sweet and holy, brought misery upon my family, and am sure there is no
pardon in the Heaven for me, since man condemns me so. I have only heard of what has been done (except what I did
myself), and it fills me with horror. God, try and forgive me, and bless my mother. Tonight I will once more try the river with
the intent to cross. Though I have a greater desire and almost a mind to return to Washington and in a measure clear my
name - which I feel I can do. I do not repent the blow I struck. I may before my God, but not to man. I think I have done
well. Though I am abandoned, with the curse of Cain upon me, when, if the world knew my heart, that one blow would
have made me great, though I did desire no greatness. Tonight I try to escape these bloodhounds once more. Who, who
can read his fate? God's will be done. I have too great a soul to die like a criminal. Oh, may He, may He spare me that,
and let me die bravely. I bless the entire world. Have never hated or wronged anyone. This last was not a wrong, unless
God deems it so, and it's with Him to damn or bless me. As for this brave boy with me, who often prays (yes, before and
since) with a true and sincere heart - was it crime in him? If so, why can he pray the same?
I do not wish to shed a drop of blood, but 'I must fight the course.' 'Tis all that's left to me.
Outline how the central argument in each text is developed, including the types of the evidence and reasons used for
each claim (logos-facts; ethos-experts; pathos-emotion).
Booth's major claim: ______________________________________________________________
Supporting
Claim/Argument
Evidence and reasons
used to support the claim
Types of rhetoric used in
the evidence/
reasons
(logos-facts; ethosexperts; pathos-emotion).
Are the evidence and
reasons credible and
relevant to the argument?
Explain.
What is Booth's perception of Brutus? Cite specific word choices Booth uses that reveal his perspective.
Name: _________________________________ Period: _____________ Date: __________________________________
Read the following article and answer the questions below.
'American Brutus': The Lone Gunmen Book Review
By JAY WINIK
Published: December 19, 2004
IT is Friday, April 14, 1865. Four years of ghastly civil war are coming to a close. Teeming with hope, the North
celebrates heartily: in Washington, bonfires burn, flags snap festively, a 500-gun salute booms. Meanwhile, the president
is going to the theater. At Ford's, Abraham Lincoln acknowledges the audience's applause with a slight bow before
settling his tired frame into his chair. Then, at 10:15, a bullet tears into his brain, plunging the nation into chaos.
It was far worse than most people could have imagined -- then, or today. For now the story darkens: what was planned
was nothing less than the choreographed decapitation of the government. Across town, a second attack took place:
William Seward, the secretary of state, was knifed five times by an assailant. The vice president, Andrew Johnson, was
targeted too, surviving only because his assassin got cold feet. And there was widespread fear of more assassinations.
Rumors quickly spread that Union cities would be burned down, that a germ warfare attack was under way, that the New
York City water supply was about to be poisoned. Martial law was imposed, and with roads and bridges into Washington
shut, the most ambitious manhunt in the nation's history began. Hundreds of innocent suspects were rounded up, often on
the flimsiest of evidence. One frightened soldier lamented, ''Will peace ever come again to our dear land?''
Remarkably, the lone mastermind of this mayhem was a flamboyant actor named John Wilkes Booth.
In a year when the American people, with the help of the 9/11 commission, have struggled to understand how a motley,
poorly financed group of 19 terrorists was able to wreak horrific carnage, it is perhaps fitting, even instructive, that Michael
W. Kauffman, an independent historian, has written ''American Brutus,'' about the 9/11 analogue of a previous era.
In this thoroughly researched book, one of the first questions Kauffman asks is ''Why?'' Booth was a devastatingly
handsome man with dark wavy hair and enticing hazel eyes. Women found him irresistible, and so did his audiences, who
were drawn to his exotic demeanor, outsize gestures and athletic acting style. Kauffman explains that Booth was rich and
famous; almost uniquely during the Civil War, he moved with unfettered freedom across Northern and Southern borders,
playing in some 33 cities. In New York, his debut was a smash; in Brooklyn, people were ''pushing, crowding and
jamming'' to see him; in Louisville, there was an ''unprecedented'' rush for the box office; and in St. Louis, more than 2,500
braved freezing cold to thrill to his performances. He was a particular favorite in Boston; Kauffman reveals that Booth
even bought a lot in the Back Bay, intending to build a house there.
Yet it was all illusion. Beneath the facade, Booth, a fervent supporter of the Southern cause, was seething. As the
Confederate fortunes waned, he concocted the grandest role of all for himself -- as a larger-than-life character who would
bring down a tyrannical Caesar. At this point Kauffman asks a more complex question: was Booth ''a hotheaded loser''
dwelling solely in hate-filled fantasy and harebrained scheming, as most historians assert, or was he ''a heroic figure in the
ancient mold,'' ''a traitor'' as well as ''a patriot''? ''American Brutus'' argues that Booth was a bit of both. Kauffman reminds
us that Lincoln was routinely dismissed as ''a tyrant'' and ''a subverter of the Constitution.'' The New York Times wrote,
''No living man was ever charged with political crimes of such multiplicity and such enormity as Abraham Lincoln.'' To
Booth, but to countless others as well, including Northern Democrats, Lincoln was a despicable ''Bonaparte.''
Still, there is no denying that for Booth, hate became preoccupation, preoccupation became fixation, and fixation became
fanaticism. In Kauffman's vivid and often fresh telling, Booth was ruthless in pursuit of his goal. Of one man who refused
to join his conspiracy, he fumed, ''He is a coward, and not fit to live.'' But Booth was also a shrewd manipulator of people:
he feted his fellow assassins with oysters and Champagne, even as he kept his conspirators in separate groups (today
they would be called cells), ignorant of one another. He used his sexual conquests as pawns in his larger game: one of
his mistresses was Lucy Hale, the daughter of an abolitionist senator from New Hampshire. And he cultivated the air of
speaking as an agent for the Confederate government -- even though he almost certainly wasn't.
The standard view is that Booth recruited a band of misfits, dregs and old friends to carry out his scheme. Perhaps. But
what is so remarkable, as Kauffman amply demonstrates, is how close Booth actually came to killing the three leading
Name: _________________________________ Period: _____________ Date: __________________________________
executives of the United States. The narrative is at its most dramatic in the aftermath of Lincoln's fateful shooting. With
echoes for today, we see the tumult unfold. There is the utter confusion: Edwin Stanton, the war secretary, checks on
Seward first, rather than the dying president. There is the surfeit of erroneous information: rumors of more attacks, the
mistaken belief that Lincoln was shot in the hand and that Vice President Johnson was dead, and the authorities'
conviction that Booth would be caught almost immediately, or that he could hide indefinitely (his capture took 12 days).
And there are the rampant Booth sightings, all mistaken: in Chicago, in Canada, even in London, as well as the flaring
tempers and bureaucratic rivalries that pitted Booth's federal pursuers against one another.
The drama's familiar, final scene came on April 26, when Booth was shot by an overeager agent inside a flaming barn.
The fame-hungry Booth, as Kauffman says, ''immortalized himself,'' having forever mingled his fate with Lincoln's and the
history of the nation. But everything else backfired. Like many a fanatic, he jeopardized what he hoped to save, placing
any Union government's good will toward the South at total risk. Lincoln, instantly martyred, soon entered the pantheon of
greatness. And even Booth himself, while on the run, seemed to grasp history's eventual judgment. In despair, he
scribbled in a pocket diary. Much of what he wrote was contrived, dissembling or inflated. But not this observation: ''I am
abandoned, with the curse of Cain upon me.''
Questions
1. Look at the first paragraph and notice the description of the joyful Northerners at the end of the Civil
War. How is this similar to Act 1 of The Tragedy of Julius Caesar?
2. In the second paragraph, writer Jay Winik uses a figurative expression known as an idiom. Find and
write down the idiom. Then, explain the idiom’s intended (not literal) meaning. Why, do you suppose,
Winik chose to include this simple idiom in such a complicated article?
3. Winik tells us that in the aftermath of Lincoln’s assassination, hundreds of “innocent suspects were
rounded up, often on the flimsiest of evidence.” Explain the connection between this and the action of
Act 3, Scene 3 from The Tragedy of Julius Caesar.
4. The book being reviewed is called American Brutus, but it just as easily could have been called
American Cassius. Choose three descriptions of Booth from the article and compare them to similar
qualities/actions that can be connected to Cassius in the play.
Name: _________________________________ Period: _____________ Date: __________________________________
5. In the article, Winik says that many Americans in 1865 viewed Abraham Lincoln as a “Bonaparte.” This
is a reference to Napoleon Bonaparte, a self-important French military and political leader who
appointed himself emperor of France in the early 1800’s. Why would some people in post-Civil War
America hold this critical view of Lincoln, the man we celebrate today for ending slavery?
6. Winik effectively uses the techniques of repetition and parallel structure in a line that dramatically charts
Booth’s mental descent. Find and write down the line. Explain how these rhetorical strategies affect his
writing.
7. In the last paragraph, Winik says that the “drama’s familiar, final scene” played out in a barn, twelve
days after the shooting of Lincoln. Given Winik’s phrasing, how do you think The Tragedy of Julius
Caesar will end? Explain your thinking.
8. The final line of the article quotes a passage from Booth’s diary, wherein he alludes to the Biblical story
of Cain and Abel, the sons of Adam and Eve. Cain, the story goes, killed his brother due to jealousy
and anger. What is Winik’s point in ending his article with this allusion?
9. How does Winik structure his text? How does it impact your understanding of the text?
Summarizer: Pretend ghost Brutus meets ghost Booth after Booth's death. Write a dialogue between the two
men about Brutus's reaction to Booth's description of him.