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A 3 ACT PLAY
by T.M.Connolly
The rider in the night.
What nefarious deed's had he committed that would cause a man with a badly broken leg, to ride as if the hounds of hell followed at his heels?
If you had lived during the years of the
American Civil War 1861-1865
The chances of you recognizing the black clothed figure would have been excellent. However the reason for his crazed ride would have been as bewildering then as it is now.
44 Cal. Single Shot Derringer Knife with 7 1/4 inch blade
Barely minutes before, using the weapons
pictured above, the acclaimed Tragedian Actor.
John Wilkes Booth.
Son of the great Shakespearean Actor
Junius Brutus Booth. Brother to Edwin Booth,
also a Shakespearean actor of note, had assassinated
the President of the Northern States of America.
Abraham Lincoln.
The Ford Theatre Washington
April 14th 1865
The Theatre as it appeared on the night of the Assassination
Although President Lincoln has been deified by the ages. Poster's for his arrest or elimination were circulating in the Southern States of America long before a similar one for Booth was to be issued by Secretary of War. Edwin Stanton. A stern critic of Lincolns. Though a member of his cabinet.
This would be a natural propaganda ploy in any conflict, except for the fact that many of the voices baying for Lincolns head were tinged with a strong northern accent. Indeed even from within his own Cacaus.
The author offers to you a work of fiction steeped in fact. Every event in the play is based on recorded historical documents from the Library of Congress, and the most learned scholars of the Civil War .
The play questions what was done or was possible to have been done for and by the citizens of 
the divided States of America named in the Trial depositions. It bases all statements on the evidence of the Authorities given charge over the investigative proceedings linked to the assassination.
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The author, has woven a tale of an alternative series of possibilities. An intense unbiased look at the events occuring during the War, trying to understand the hearts and the minds of Booth and Lincoln.
Stripping away the hyperbole surrounding both in an attempt to understand and discover their motives,and passions, to interpret the events of their personal lives and find the benchmarks that drove and bedeviled the two Americans, finally leading them to act as they did. Enabling the events of April 14th 1865 to occour as played out in the history books.
Leaving the observer with an understanding that there were many roads they could have taken but like two halfs of the whole, they seemed destined to meet on that fateful night and enact their preordained? roles. Both featured players on the Worlds stage. They performed their parts to perfection! Only one recieved the accolades that he deserved, the other was to be damned and villified down through the ages.
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Who was John Wilkes Booth really? A crazed actor with a serious lack of self esteem? overshadowed by his brothers brighter stardom, dying slowly from consumption, his voice almost ruined by bronchial illness, made willing servant to bloodlust by to much Brandy, and nights spent riding the backroads of the South delivering medicine and messages to his compatriots in the greatest struggle America had ever faced.
Or was he truly the noble patriot. His mothers darling boy. The favored son, driven by righteous duty, to act against his gentle nature, and remove a man he saw as the ultimate threat to his beloved country.
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President Abraham Lincoln. Was he a strong gregarious leader of men. a vengeful Crusader for the causes that best served his purposes? A man who carried a bible with him, but who was investigated as being an heretic. Did he sell out his troops to start a bloody war that killed 600,000 Americans for his vanity? Or was he too set on the road to America's first Presidental Assassination by fates circumstances. Driven to melancoly by a father who denied him and the grief of losing two of his own children at a young age.One child dying in the White house itself.
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Gentle reader's we must leave the answer's for you to decide
For the men who shed their blood, and the blood of others in such a Cavalier manner are merely dust now. Shades without the means to make us privy to their most secret hearts.
This visit to the realm of the human psyche is the only one we are permitted to make with them, until we too are ciphers for our progeny to ponder.
If they should have the inclination to do so.
Let us hope that we to are still discussed 138 years from now like,
Lincoln and his Booth!
For they each gave the other some small measure of immortality. A dubious gift.
T.M.Connolly 2000 Copywright
Lincoln I had many noble reasons to fight this war.
