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Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 32. (ed. Reverend J. William Jones), Why John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln. (search)
that his acts were only those of legitimate warfare, and that he was acting under instructions from the Confederate government. Booth went to Washington armed with these documents and secured from President Lincoln the promise that Captain Beall should not to be put to death, but should be treated as a prisoner of war. This promise of Mr. Lincoln's gave offense to Secretary Seward, who persuaded him, in the face of it, to sanction Beall's execution, and Captain Beall was hanged at Governor's Island, N. Y., on Feb. 24, 1865. John Wilkes Booth was not a well-balanced man at his best. Doubtless he inherited a streak of the insanity with which his father, though a great actor, was from time to time afflicted. Be that as it may, he was fearfully wrought up by the death of his friend in such circumstances. He denounced the killing in cold blood of a prisoner of war after he had surrendered as murder, and the doing it after the president had given his word that it should not be done a