Would You Have Voted For A President John Wiles Booth

Realistically, any President was going to have to deal with the Radical Republicans during this period, who dominated both houses of Congress to the point that they could (and did) over-ride Presidential Vetoes. With that in mind, I think Reconstruction would have actually been more thorough and permanent had Lincoln been in power. Congress wouldn't have had to fight the President tooth-and-nail to get any sort of legislation correcting the post-war Southern abuses of the freedman  for 3 years (by the time Grant came to power in 1869, the damage had been done), and Lincoln was likely to support many of the same initiatives as the Radical Republicans (at the very least, an anti-slavery amendment to the Constitution was assured).As for Reconstruction itself, Dirk brought up the point that it was actually quite successful in promoting freedmen rights (Grant largely stamped out the Ku Klux Klan) and long overdue reforms in the South, until Hayes pulled out in 1877. I'd argue that the North actually didn't go far enough with Reconstruction, since they let the Confederate leadership (and particularly the "Fire-Eaters" who had spread Secession) get off unpunished, and those same elements were responsible for the violence and fraud-plagued movements in the South that wrested control away from anyone sympathetic to freedman rights.

Booth didn’t spend any time at the theater preparing for Lincoln’s assassination. He was planning a kidnapping that day. The plan to kidnap the president was on hold until Booth could learn of Lincoln’s whereabouts. His activities on the day of the assassination are well known. He got up and went to the barber for a shave (about 9:30 a.m.) and then he had a late breakfast with Carrie Bean (about 10:30 a.m.). Booth then went to the theater to read his mail on the steps of the theater (about 11:30 am). While reading his mail, he learned that Lincoln would be attending the theater that night. Now that he knew where Lincoln would be, he went to Maryland to get the kidnappers ready for tonight’s kidnapping. On his return, he was arrested and spent the afternoon in the guardhouse. He was released at five p.m. It was about this time the plan changed from kidnapping to murder. Booth had not been inside the theater that day. At 8 p.m., he met with Herold, Atzerodt, and Powell to plan the murder. It was about 9:30 p.m. that he went to the theater and had a talk with Ned Spangler. He then went to the tavern next to the theater and had a drink. Shortly after 10:00 p.m., he watched the president’s guard enter the tavern and Booth got up and walked over to the theater. He found his way to the unguarded presidential box. He entered the box and shot the president.It took a great deal of planning and preparation to kill Lincoln and Booth had nothing to do with it, someone else did. Booth accidentally fell into position to take advantage of the preparations.

Being the President of the most powerful nation in the world is not an easy job. It means bearing a lot of pressure and taking decisions that can not only change the course of the nation but the world itself. So, it might not be surprising to know that the president lives in constant danger as he has way too many enemies around.The Presidents of USA have always been under major assassination threats. Some of the presidential assassinations that were attempted and were successful have become a historical event in themselves. These are those gruesome murders and failed assassination plots that shook the nation and the world altogether.1. Abraham LincolnOne of the most famous men in world history and a noted figure, Lincoln was a major political figure and there were a lot of people who were snubbed by his stand.2. James GarfieldAnother assassination was that of James Garfield who was shot by Charles Guiteau on July 2, 1881.Explore more!

He didn’t. He was pursued in a massive unprecedented manhunt, hurt his leg during his flight, and was cornered and shot in a barn just across the Potomac in Virginia some ten days after the assassination.The manhunt was accompanied by this:A reward of up to $100,000 was offered — a lot of money today, but an absolutely enormous amount at that time.[1] Even many Southerners were angry at what Booth had done — Lincoln was a moderate and likely to treat the South better after the war than anyone else in the North, and they knew it. So practically everyone was out for Booth’s neck.[2]If you mean how did he succeed in killing Lincoln, the answer is simple. In those days, personal security for the President was minimal. The Secret Service did not exist yet (it was founded in the aftermath of Lincoln’s murder),[3] and usually the President had only one or two bodyguards — if at all. People routinely walked up to him and chatted. There were also few restrictions on entering the White House.On top of that, Booth — a professional actor who worked at Ford’s Theater — had access to all parts of the theater and could move about at will. He had drilled a spyhole in the Presidential box so he could spy on Lincoln and make sure he was truly present. (He had intended to murder Grant as well, but Grant declined the invitation at the last minute.)Booth meticulously planned the murder, and Lincoln’s personal security was lax. The tragedy was that even then, the Army major who was with Lincoln nearly saved him.Added footnotes (edit)As Dan Klein pointed out, in those days, dollars were backed by gold. Converting $100,000 in gold 1865 dollars to modern money comes out to roughly $6.6 million.Don’t forget, this was the first time a US president had been killed, so the shock was particularly intense. Additionally, Southerners (for all their flaws) prided themselves on honor, and the coldblooded murder of a leader off the battlefield ran totally counter to that.Several commenters like Dan Robrish and Graham Troy pointed out that the legislation for creating the Secret Service was (ironically) on Lincoln’s desk the very day he was murdered. That said, it initially was only responsible for counterfeit money and only later took on presidential security after President McKinley was killed in 1901.

Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by Confederate secret service agent John Wilkes Booth acting on instructions from an unknown entity in New York City. The assassination was aided by Edwin Stanton and Thomas Eckert, both of whom refused protection for the President that night although they were aware assassination plots were afoot. Since Thomas Eckert would soon become head of Western Union, some speculate Jay Gould may have been that New York entity. James Garfield was shot by Charles Guiteau and died from an infection a few days later. Guiteau was mentally ill and was hanged. William McKinney was assassinated by anarchist Leon Czolgosz, also probably mentally ill, although he was a member of at least two secret societies. John F. Kennedy was shot at by three assassins, one of whom was certainly John Roselli, an enforcer for the Chicago chapter of the Sicilian men-of-honor society. The assassination was ordered, aided and covered-up by the CIA, and the three shooters were each paid $50,000. JFK was killed because a consensus at the top of the national security state no longer trusted him as he was changing too fast, acting against the interest of the Pentagon and CIA, working for world peace and nuclear disarmament.

Other answers here have pointed out accurately that other presidents have had higher approval ratings.But I want to make a larger point. The action of an assassin should in no way be treated (with all due respect to the questioner) as correlated to the respect the country has for the leader generally.Assassinations, at least in American history, have always been the act of a mentally disturbed, seriously deranged individual, usually acting alone or as part of a small cabal of losers. John Wilkes Booth is an example. Although not precisely a “lone gunman,” the people in Booth’s secret little group of conspirators should not be taken as representatives of the country’s sentiment as a whole. They were a small group of self-deluded misfits.(In their case, I suppose you could say that they represented the anger and frustration of the South in losing the war. But even there, most Southerners at that time, inspired by the example of Robert E. Lee, were resigned to the loss of the war and relieved to finally end the years of bloodshed and horror.)As you know, some people STILL think the jury is out on whether Oswald acted completely alone. But even if you could find “the hidden gunman behind the grassy knoll,” or even if you could find a few evil conspirators deep within the CIA, I think it safe to conclude that there were, at most, a few conspirators acting in total defiance of the will of the country.Frankly, whether it’s Lincoln, Kennedy, or Reagan and Ford (who survived), the vast majority of Americans really hate it when some nutcase thinks that they can change the result of elections with a bullet.At least this is something Democrats and Republicans can agree on!