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PREFACE
PART ONE: THE STORY
PART TWO: THE LEGACY
PICTORIAL (24 rare photographs)
PARTH
THREE: THE RESEARCH
CONCLUSION
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
PREFACE
On the night of April
14, 1865 a gunshot from a small derringer interrupted the laughter at Ford's Theater and forever changed American history.
Hardly a week after the Confederacy's surrender at Appomatox, with Washington lavishly decorated to celebrate the end of the
bloody Civil War, Abraham Lincoln slumped down in his chair never to regain consciousness. The assassin leaped onto the stage
crying out "Sic Semper Tyrannis" -- "Thus always to tyrants."
He was recognized immediately.
Everyone in the theater knew him. Most had admired his charismatic presence on stage and hailed him as the finest actor of
the era. A dozen members of the audience had chatted with him that very day. At twenty-six years of age, John Wilkes Booth,
son of the great tragedian Junius Brutus Booth and brother to Edwin, America's most acclaimed Hamlet, was the toast of Washington.
His theatrical triumphs followed him from Richmond to Boston and his future was assured as a brilliant and beloved star. But
in one terrible instant, it all vanished. Why did he throw his destiny away? Who was he behind the handsome face and winsome
persona? What forces were at work at his side, opening the way for his entrance into the President's private boxseat and cutting
the telegraph wires between the capital and surrounding army posts? Did his story really end at the burning farmhouse? What
happened to the lives of those who loved him?
Our history books have been silent over mysteries kept hidden for
generations. But strange tales have come down to us through the friends and family of John Wilkes Booth that have yet to be
told. Tales of secret societies, escape to foreign lands, children fathered after the father's presumed death...And the shadow
of a curse, one recognized by Booth himself while on the run in the swamps near the Potomac.
Behold, Thou has driven
me out this day from the face of the earth; and from Thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in
the earth. This ancient curse is strangely fitting to Booth's destiny as a result of his terrible deed. It may even have become
a greater retribution than the accepted historical theory that his life was ended by a soldier's bullet. But the impact of
his terrible deed also reverberated down through the generations, overshadowing the lives of his descendants. I am one of
them, his great-grandson thrice removed. My great-grandmother was the grandaughter of the assassin of Abraham Lincoln. Her
mother, Ogarita, was Booth's daughter. She was six years old when he pulled the trigger at Ford's Theater and became transformed
from a revered matinee idol to a desparate fugitive and lonely wanderer upon the earth. Booth's great-grandson, C. Edward
Clutts, my grandfather, has recently turned ninety-one years of age. For most of his life, he would not speak of our ancestor
out of shame and concern for his own safety.
* * *
From earliest childhood, I had heard of the dark, brooding
ancestor who left a bloody mark on American history. The tragic tale of John Wilkes Booth has intrigued me ever since. From
my father's side of the family, I developed a great love for Abraham Lincoln with his homespun wisdom and compassion. Through
the writings of Carl Sandburg and the poems of Walt Whitman, Lincoln became for me a shining light of the American spirit
at its best. On my mother's side, there was an altogether different influence. Carved in my grandfather's featured were the
dark, almond-shaped eyes and pitch black hair of the Booth family. His mother (my great-grandmother) was one of those powerful
women of the theater who travelled across the country in the early part of this century presenting their art in the strangest
places. She was theater incarnate, with the temper of Medussa and the glare of Zeus. In her later years, still full of fire,
she ran a little theater in Keene, New Hampshire where she carried on the family tradition to the end of her life. That family
tradition was both grand and tragic. For she was the granddaughter of John Wilkes Booth. Her mother, Ogarita, was also an
actress who openly wore a picture of her father in a locket around her neck until she died at the young age of thirty-two.
That locket has been passed down to me and I recently dusted it off to show it to my daughter while iniating her into the
drama of our forefathers.
Throughout my youth, I felt particularly drawn to the twenty-six year old matinee idol
whose destiny was aborted by the most horrific of acts. I too was drawn early on to the theater and thereby felt a sort of
genetic connection with the Booths who in their day were the premiere American family of the theater. Also passed down through
the generations was the brooding mood of the Booths whose Spanish ancestry and dramatic flair fused into intense character
traits. For years, I heard the tale of the murder, of the lone killer, of the epic manhunt, and of the final capture and death
scene. In my teens, I studied the book written by my great-grandmother's sister, the journalist Izola Forrester. This One
Mad Act, published in 1937, was based on forty years of relentless research into the saga of John Wilkes Booth. My great aunt
interviewed the actual participants in those terrible events, old men haunted by memories that no history book has recorded.
Inspired by her efforts and discoveries, I undertook a similar research, studying all of the best historians on the subject.
The result won a Lilly Historical Scholarship. More importantly, it convinced me that the stories our teachers taught us in
school were not complete, and some were even falsified by those who had a stake in the retelling of American history.
It may be that no one will ever know the full truth on these matters. But there is a powerful story here which Americans
ought to know as part of their inheritance. Once the political issues and easy labels have been put aside, we are faced with
a tragedy that would have made Shakespeare himself envious. I have therefore taken the solid research that can be traced all
the way back to the day of the assassination and, based on feasible conclusions, have added dramatic narrative in order to
convey the emotional tone of the human experience behind the pictures of the history books. I believe that the story is best
represented in this way for it is more dramatic than any play in which the Booths displayed their mighty talents. Most of
all, this is a drama of human beings who found themselves caught up in the hurricane of events that tore them from their cherished
hopes and dreams. They deserve to have their story remembered.
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