How a Lost Cause and FraudulentBook Caused the John Wilkes Booth Exhumation TrialJohn Wilkes Booth's assassination of President Lincoln is the most infamous political assassination in U.S. history. The assassination of Lincoln suddenly ended the prospect of peace with malice toward none, with charity for all. The collective expectations of the people - reconstruction, reconciliation, and equality -- were shattered. The assassination irrevocably joined Lincoln and Booth. The full history of Lincoln's presidency cannot be told without Booth, and the life of Booth is defined by his dastardly deed. How Booth met his fate cannot change Lincoln's life and presidency, but it can diminish trust in our own history. Booth was captured, shot, and died at Garrett Farm in Virginia. This is traditional history, but it was contradicted by a 1907 book entitled
The Escape and Suicide of John Wilkes Booth written by Finis L. Bates. The book ebbed in and out of public consciousness until two Booth escape proponents talked
Unsolved Mysteries into producing the Bates escape story in a 1991 episode. This emboldened the escape proponents to request the exhumation of Booth's remains buried in Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore, MD. An impasse was reached and the proponents sued, resulting in a 1995 trial that included anthropologists, a medical examiner, history scholars, and historians. In
Confronting Bad History, Frank Gorman who represented the Cemetery at trial, recounts the trial, the testimony, the tactics, and the surrounding history. He describes the testimony and evidence that the Bates book is unreliable and fraudulent. Gorman also exposes the Bates book as a Lost Cause false narrative. Yet the Booth escaped story persists, in large part because the trial is either unknown or ignored. This book gives voice to the trial that confronted bad history and confirms that Booth met his fate at Garrett Farm.
