Fortune's Fool: The Life of John Wilkes Booth by Alford Terry

Author:Alford, Terry [Alford, Terry]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Murder, True Crime, General, United States, Historical, Biography & Autobiography, History, Civil War Period (1850-1877)
ISBN: 9780195054125
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2015-03-01T06:00:00+00:00

Wentworth gave the envelope to Booth, who added his own sentiment just above Lucy’s:

Now in this hour that we part,

I will ask to be forgotten never.

But in thy pure and guileless heart,

Consider me thy friend, dear, ever.

J. Wilkes Booth40

Congressman Bingham thought Booth’s courtship of Lucy had been calculated in furtherance of his plot.41 But evidence is abundant from the Booth and Hale families that the couple were seriously attached. Moreover, Lucy was not close to the Lincolns. As a source of information, she knew no more about the president’s movements than any other belle in the city. Booth had better sources of intelligence, one of them a remarkable individual whose story has never been investigated in studies of the assassination.

Spiritualism was one of the more interesting social phenomena of the nineteenth century. The glad tidings of this movement—that the dearly departed were ever present and ready to offer comfort and advice to the living—were powerfully appealing. Critics denounced it as a superstition and a fraud, but the movement attracted great interest, amplified by the grief that the war brought to countless American homes. Spiritualist newspapers proclaimed the faith, and circles of believers established themselves in the leading cities. The Washington circle counted among its members a number of government officials. Warren Chase, a lecturer and missionary of the movement, thought the interest shown in spiritualism was greater in the capital than in any other place.42

Prominent among the mediums who served the movement was Charles J. Colchester.43 This English-born spiritualist, alleged to be the illegitimate son of a duke, had remarkable powers. He could read sealed letters, cry out the names of visitors’ deceased friends, cause apparitions to appear, and produce words on his forearm or forehead in blood-red letters. To the faithful he was an extraordinarily gifted intermediary with the other side. To skeptics he was a con man who employed sleight of hand, hypnosis, and sideshow magic in darkened rooms to fill his pockets at the expense of the troubled and the brokenhearted.

Still, spiritualism was in its adolescence, and until the movement was fully understood, who could say what it was that Colchester actually offered? The civil and military elite, from General Grant on down, all flocked to witness his manifestations.44

Mary Lincoln grew interested in the miracles of the séance table when her son Willie died in 1862. She met with a number of “spirit ministers” afterward.45 Dutiful husband that he was, the president tagged along with her on occasion. It seemed prudent, and it could be entertaining. However, he was not a believer, referring whimsically to the spirit world as “the upper country.” His secretaries Hay and Nicolay were indignant at claims that their chief took the hocus-pocus seriously.46

Colchester set up shop in Washington during the closing months of the war and before long was working his wizardry at the White House and the Soldiers’ Home. There, at private sittings, the handsome young soothsayer mystified the Lincolns. The president’s friend Noah Brooks, aware of the influence Colchester was

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