‘Manhunt’ for the believers
James Swanson has a real bone to pick with Americans — John Wilkes Booth got away with murder because of us. The Lincoln scholar, speaking at the Newseum Tuesday night, had a lot to say about Americans’ misconceptions, claiming we treat Booth as a “flawed and tragic young actor,” not the cold-blooded killer that he was.
Speaking on the 144th anniversary of the day Booth shot Lincoln just a few blocks to the northwest, Swanson said while researching his book “Manhunt,” it dawned on him while walking around Ford’s Theater that the “most dangerous myth of the Lincoln assassination” is we don’t think of Booth as we do other assassins.
He cited Washington’s tourist maps given out around 10th Street that have the face of Booth on it and the sale of a toy Derringer pistol at a Lincoln gift shop — a replica of the one Booth used to take Lincoln’s life.
“If you went to Texas, you wouldn’t want to see Lee Harvey Oswald on street banners, would you? And in Memphis, you wouldn’t expect to see a picture of James Earl Ray at the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King Jr. was shot,” he stated, clearly frustrated with our “leniency” on Booth.
