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The Legend of John Wilkes Booth: Myth, Memory, and a Mummy (Culture America) ReviewI bought this book because of its intriguing cover and title and because I have a fascination, like a lot of readers, with John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln's assassin. C. Wyatt Evans' work started out a lot different than the fun, mass audience-oriented book I expected. It reads like the over-analytical, pedantic works my professors forced me to read in grad school. Evans analyzes the long-running myth (both regional and national) that Booth was not fatally shot in a barn by Sergeant Boston Corbett's nervous trigger finger as government authorities claimed but had escaped and lived out his life in various ways depending on the storyteller. The suicide death of painter and drifter David George in 1903 in Enid, Oklahoma propelled the myth. George supposedly claimed he was Booth and his embalmed remains were put on display at various carnivals and exhibits for years. Evans' introduction is extremely pedantic to the point that I had to read very carefully and slowly (and sometimes several times) to follow along. A sample sentence: "Vernacular, counter, marginal, and associated terms serve as keywords in a cultural critical lexicon that employs them in a positive sense to connote the struggle of marginalized groups to preserve their identities in the face of the dominant group's rendition of the past" (p. 15). Much of the introduction reads this way and if it continued as such, I may have given up. Fortunately, Evans drops a lot of the intellectual buzz words and the rest of the book reads more smoothly. The following briefly describes the content per chapter:Chapter 1 takes a look at the David George story; why he was thought by some to be Booth and how his corpse ended up an attraction. In addition, Evans considers the history of Enid, OK including its famous land "runs." Chapter 2 explores the history of mummy exhibition in the United States and how the "Booth" mummy fits, for example, "Booth" represented the popular (curiosity of the notorious and horrific) and traditional (celebrated dignity) models of mummy displays. (p. 55). In chapter 3, Evans explains the northern origins of the Booth legend with a history of the assassination and press coverage. Chapter 4 shifts to the south and how many southerners regarded the assassination (relief, feigned mourning) and the legend of Booth's escape (a symbol of "white southern unreconstructedness").
Finis Langdon Bates' 1907 book Escape and Suicide of John Wilkes Booth is analyzed in chapter 5. Bates' attempt to document Booth's escape implicated VP Andrew Johnson but was done in a way to appease both North and South ("Booth" expressing regret for his deed). In chapter 6, the legend becomes a national phenomenon. The legend represented pre-modern views which clashed with the current times. He considers Lincoln's transition to national icon (p. 156), as well as Otto Eisenschiml and Izola Forrester's (who claimed to be Booth's granddaughter) contribution to the legend. Clarence True Wilson's historical and religious interpretation of the legend is examined in chapter 7. Wilson, a classic minister of reform who worshipped Lincoln, saw Booth's survival and sad existence as moral retribution for his act. Chapter 8 deals with the legend in contemporary America with the recent work Dark Union (2003) and 1977's book and film The Lincoln Conspiracy. In his conclusion, Evans states that "the legend's great lesson to the present is how subgroups in American culture appropriate deeply symbolic events for harmful purposes" (p. 218).
As a history of the myth of Booth's escape, Evans' book is thorough, insightful and extremely well researched. I think he over-analyzes the legend, however. Sure, many people through history have considered the possibility of Booth's escape and designated meaning to it. It is a curiosity and, back in the day, a political incendiary. A famous actor killing and president during a bloody war between the states with suspicious government reaction, how can this not make for intrigue and conspiracy theories? Evans makes a lot out of this legend to put forth American cultural meaning, but it seems to me that the people most obsessed with the issue are the ones hoping to profit from it either through books or by exhibiting a mummy claimed to be Booth. It is an interesting story, of course, without the analytical stuff. I'm just not convinced it is much more than an intriguing footnote to history.The Legend of John Wilkes Booth: Myth, Memory, and a Mummy (Culture America) OverviewA deformed thumb, a neck scar from a stage accident, and a broken left leg, the result of a dramatic leap. These were the telltale markings that for decades identified a sideshow attraction as the supposed body of John Wilkes Booth. They persuaded onlookers that Lincoln's assassin was not killed in 1865 but survived the assault on Garrett's barn to live on as a fugitive for thirty years afterwards. As Wyatt Evans shows, some popular stories, no matter how weird and improbable, simply refuse to die. Evans recounts how a mummified corpse came to embody the romantic image of the assassin and the legend of his survival. He traces the legend's development in the weeks following the assassination to the appearance of the "Booth Mummy," the remains of an Oklahoma drifter embalmed in 1903 and displayed in carnival sideshows throughout the West. He assesses the political and ideological motivations in both Southern and Northern cultures that made proliferation of the legend possible as well as profitable. He concludes by examining the legend's persistence in present-day America, the mummy's ironic fate, and the recent efforts to exhume Booth's real remains.Weaving a "vernacular intellectual history," Evans shows how the legend emerged from a tangle of cultural and historical events including white Americans' quest for a suitable racial pre-history, collective memories of the Civil War, and even incipient suspicions of conspiracy, since belief in Booth's escape automatically implied a government cover-up of Booth's capture and death. More than a sop to Confederate diehards for whom Booth's escape symbolized Southern vindication, the legend exemplified Americans' inability and unwillingness to enact closure over the tragedy of Lincoln's death.The Legend of John Wilkes Booth is a compelling story of how collective memories and popular histories collide with, clash, and sometimes overcome mainstream accounts of the past. It offers an alternate venue for studying the workings of Civil War memory in American culture and demonstrates how (and why) culture produced at the grassroots level can challenge the official version of events. Through his meticulous account, Evans sheds new light on our complex attitudes toward heroes and villains, our need to mythologize tragedies, and our unwillingness to let go of myths, however absurd.This book is part of the CultureAmerica series.
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