Booth's trial

WI Booth were captured alive.

How much impact would his trial have made.

My hope is that he would significantly discredit both racism and the 'lost cause' idea in the South.

However is there any risk that any significant number of people would see him as a martyr after his hanging.

(In an ideal asb world he would serve life imprisonment doing hard labor in chaine, probably being taken to scrub to latrines in schools for former slaves but in 1865 he would surely have been hanged)
 
WI Booth were captured alive.

How much impact would his trial have made.

My hope is that he would significantly discredit both racism and the 'lost cause' idea in the South.

However is there any risk that any significant number of people would see him as a martyr after his hanging.

(In an ideal asb world he would serve life imprisonment doing hard labor in chaine, probably being taken to scrub to latrines in schools for former slaves but in 1865 he would surely have been hanged)

Consider the fate of the other conspirators. At their trial, they were gagged and hooded; unable to comment or confront their accusers. Add Booth to the mix and I see no difference other than a fifth noose on the gallows.
 
Agreed, and one of the defendents was a woman who simply rented them a room. There is no evidence that she knew anything about the plot.
 
I agree that the OTL trial of the other apparent consiprators was a travesty, though there is little doubt that Booth did try to get others involved in his plan.

However if the main man were available for trial, and with large numbers of eye witnesses I wonder if things might have been handled differently.

Had Booth been allowed to speak he would have promoted his poisonous doctrines.

The point is that the murder of Lincoln was regarded as mosterstous even by large numbers of people who might not have been that progressive on issues around race and who may have sympathized with the original sessession
 
I agree that the OTL trial of the other apparent consiprators was a travesty, though there is little doubt that Booth did try to get others involved in his plan.
However if the main man were available for trial, and with large numbers of eye witnesses I wonder if things might have been handled differently.
Had Booth been allowed to speak he would have promoted his poisonous doctrines.
The point is that the murder of Lincoln was regarded as mosterstous even by large numbers of people who might not have been that progressive on issues around race and who may have sympathized with the original sessession

First off, the other conspirators never had a trial; they had a military court-martial where the verdict was known from the beginning. And a trial of this sort is forbidden by the Constitution.
But even if they were given a fair trial, I really don't see the outcome being much different. Azrodt and Payne were supposed to kill the Vice-President and Secretary of State respectively (okay, Azrodt chickened out, but Payne DID give it his best shot) but Mary Surratt might have known something was afoot through overhearing the cospirators and did carry guns and money for Booth to lower Maryland; neither of these is really a hanging offense. And David Harold was merely accompanying Booth out of Washington, he didn't have the brains to really be part of the conspiracy.
They all were hanged.
Booth would have joined him and he would not have been allowed to utter one word; indeed he was an actor and could deliver a rousing oration so the military would have made sure that his mouth was kept shut. I believe that even anything he would have tried to write would have been confiscated like his diary was.
 
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