The Secret Identities Of John Wilkes Booth

By Dirk Bontes

From a theatrical family, John Wilkes Booth is more famous, or even infamous, for the assassination of President Lincoln, than for his acting. This book aims to dive deeper into the man behind the mask, to find out if that man may not have inhabited multiple personas, who and what were his external influences and what his psychological make up may have been that ultimately led to that fateful day and the killing that robbed a nation of its leader.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dirk Bontes
• Release date: Jan 10, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005251840

Dirk Bontes

Won some short story contests. Runs another. All Scifi / Fantasy / Horror. Has written some uncompleted science books. Has translated and interpreted Aeneid VI: Aeneid Liber Sextus.

Book preview

The Secret Identities

Of

John Wilkes Booth

Cover: Anaïd Haen

John Wilkes Booth, ca. 1865: United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID ppmsca.19233

Andersonville pow tents, August 17, 1864: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. DIGITAL ID: (b&w film copy neg.) cph 3c22695 CARD #: 99400870.

Both photographs have been mirrored. So this is how John Wilkes Booth saw himself when he looked into a mirror.

Published by Dirk Bontes at Smashwords

Copyright 2021 Dirk Bontes

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Contents

1. Preface

2. Introduction

3. How other people experienced John Wilkes Booth’s psychology

4. About the nullary and the primary variants of the human mind

5. The psychologies of Abraham Lincoln and of his wife Mary Ann Todd (1818-1882)

6. About the human mind’s secondary variants and its tertiary variant

7. John Wilkes Booth’s father

8. Was the mysterious R.J. Morgan (1863-1864) an alias of Junius Brutus Booth Sr.?

9. John Wilkes Booth and the 'Gypsy'

10. John Wilkes Booth was John Brown: 1855-1859

11. John Wilkes Booth drills for oil: 1863-1864

12. The 'rift' between John Wilkes Booth and his relatives: 1864

13. John Wilkes Booth was his brother Joseph Adrian Booth: 1861-1865

14. The assassination of president Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

15. John Wilkes Booth was John Frederick Parker: 1855-1865

16. Clara Harris and Henry Rathbone

17. President Abraham Lincoln’s and Mary Ann Todd’s sons

18. Edwin Booth saves Robert Lincoln

19. John Wilkes Booth was Elias Cornelius Benedict

20. Was the introduction of the greenbacks another reason for the American Civil War?

21. The fate of the other members of the conspiracy

22. John Wilkes Booth was John Edward McCullough and in that guise he tipped off the police

23. John Wilkes Booth’s flight and ‘death’

24. John Wilkes Booth was Boston Corbett?

25. Edwin Thomas Booth was John Wilkes Booth?

26. Surname agreements and exclusive societies

27. About the author

28. Other titles by Dirk Bontes

29. Contact

Chapter 1. Preface

Updates of this E-book may be downloaded for free by buyers of earlier versions of this E-book.

There are quite a lot of quotes in this book. In all cases I claim scientific necessity and / or fair use and assert therefore to have violated no copyrights. In some cases permission to quote was requested and often granted. In one or two cases the copyright holder could not be found.

This book is not intended to provide a full survey of the life of John Wilkes Booth, nor of all circumstances concerning his assassination of president Abraham Lincoln, nor about Lincoln’s possible Jewish ancestry, nor about the possible motives for the American Civil War, nor about the many conspiracy hypotheses concerning these matters. Many other books and texts about those subjects have already been published. Some of them can be downloaded for free from https://z-lib.org/

The main purpose of this book is to argue that John Wilkes Booth lived several other lifes as other people.

For early texts about president Abraham Lincoln himself see: Andrew Boyd, Charles Henry Hart, A Memorial Lincoln Bibliography: Being an Account of Books, Eulogies, Sermons, Portraits, Engravings, Medals, Etc., Published Upon Abraham Lincoln, Sixteenth President of the United States, Assassinated Good Friday, April 14, 1865 (1870).

Chapter 2. Introduction

A part of this book's text about USA-president Abraham Lincoln's assassination by John Wilkes Booth was already written, but unpublished, in the first years of this third millennium, likely circa 2005.

However, as a spin off of my research into the English highwayman Dick Turpin – for a chapter about him in my E-book De essentie van Zwarte Piet (The Essence Of Black Pete) – I stumbled onto a new link – in the form of Old John Brown – to John Wilkes Booth at the end of 2017. That was the occasion to retrieve my earlier research into John Wilkes Booth in January 2018 and to – temporarily – add that as an update to my already published E-book about Black Pete, as well as to my already published Dutch language and English language E-books about Dick Turpin. During 2018, however, I kept adding material to the text, and at the end of February 2019, at the recommendation of a reader, I started the formidable task to rewrite my investigation into John Wilkes Booth for the purpose of publishing it as stand alone books in both Dutch and English.

This book required many hundreds of hours of – often fruitless – research. What was a person’s full name, when were they born and when did they die? Who was the ‘gypsy’? What does the initial C. mean in the name Sarah C. Hart? What do the initials in the name R.J. Morgan mean? Who was John P.H. Wentworth? I would love to know these and many other things, but they have been lost in the darkness of history and oblivion.

Other information, such as John McCullough’s sisters and his decline and death, I have not mentioned and I have left out, either because they were not pertinent, or because I doubted whether they conformed to the truth.

I here present you with the raisins out of the stuffing of publications about these matters that are relevant to my theses. Infrequently, during my research, I stumbled across a fact that I did not consider to be relevant at the time – and could not find again when I later regretted not having quoted it.

Chapter 3. How other people experienced John Wilkes Booth’s psychology

Ernest C[onrad] Miller, John Wilkes Booth in the Pennsylvania oil region (1948; p. 31):

"H. Stearns Smiley:

Delivered messages to Booth. The latter always had a very penetrat'ing gaze. Smiley became, after a while, afraid to enter the office where Booth was on account of the look he always gave him. It made one feel as though a creeping sensation had secured control of one's brain. Could fairly feel something gradually making its way through his (Booth's) [must be Smiley’s] mind; a kind of foreign sensitiveness that one could feel belonged to some'one else yet had not the power to stay it. It must have been similar to present day hypnotism, a power of stronger mind over the weaker one. Also had a twinkle in his eye that seemed to say, ‘If I could only think of a good joke to play on you I should be supremely happy' ".

Smiley must have had an Aphrodite psychology: that of a natural slave.

Ernest C[onrad] Miller, John Wilkes Booth in the Pennsylvania oil region (1948; p. 33):

"Ralph M. Brigham:

One peculiarity of Booth's was the fact that he never indulged in a hearty laugh. Nothing more than a smile could be brought to his face by the most amusing of actions or utterances on the part of his fellow members of the impromptu club. Booth never laughed; he merely smiled".

Ernest C[onrad] Miller, John Wilkes Booth in the Pennsylvania oil region (1948; p. 36):

"Oliver B. Steele:

Booth's personality was very striking. He had the keenest look imaginable and made one feel that he was looking right through one when he looked at a person".

Eleanor Ruggles, Prince Of Players: Edwin Booth (1953):

p. 200. Edwin, summoned by the defense, which was preparing a plea of insanity and trying to prove that Wilkes Booth had had such power over the minds of others as would easily sway his associates.

Chapter 4. About the nullary and the primary variants of the human mind

Psychopaths, sociopaths and narcissists often are grouped together – and qua definitions confused with one another – as people with an antisocial personality disorder.

In this chapter I present my own insights into the human mind and my own definitions. Undoubtedly much that is more specific may be