the MADMAN and the ASSASSIN

Scott Martelle wrote a nonfiction book about a tragic occurrence that happened over 150 years ago...and yet he made it seem like a current event. Welcome to the world of Erik Larson’s narrative nonfiction. What I mean by that is this book was not your typical monotonous history book. It read like fiction but was factual. Yes, history can be written with verve. It’s the story of Boston Corbett (the madman) and John Wilkes Booth (the assassin). There have been many books written about Abe Lincoln, but this book focuses on the above mentioned men. By the way, the best book that I ever read about our 16th president was Gore Vidal’s 1984 book, Lincoln. Anyway, the author gives us a good lowdown on Corbett and Booth before they meet on 4/26/1865 at Garrett’s farm. The author has a knack for writing about interesting and unusual historical occurrences. In 2014, he wrote a book on the search in Paris, France for (the father of the American Navy) John Paul Jones’s body and gravesite in The Admiral and the Ambassador. The continuity and prose of the author kept the Sandman away from me for the entire 226 pages of the book.

Okay, Who is this Boston Corbett guy? He is a slender 5’ 4” New Yorker with a scraggly beard who was so religious (Methodist) that he castrated himself so he wouldn’t be tempted by another woman after his wife suddenly died. Since he was in the hat making business and inhaled the mercury infused mist that stiffened the fur, he was prone to fits of paranoia. Thus the term...mad as a hatter. How religious did he get? Well, “By the summer of 1858, Corbett-already converted-had followed his trade to Boston, where he fell in with members of the Methodist Episcopal Church and found a religious home and a calling. He became a proselytizer and street preacher, exhorting fellow sinners to heed the word of God and avoid the temptations of drink and sin.” When the Civil War broke out, he went back to New York and joined the Union Army. He served many terms and was ultimately captured by the Confederate Army and sent to the disgraceful Andersonville stockade. There he suffered from bouts of scurvy, chronic diarrhea, and rheumatism that would stay with him for the rest of his life. This is the man who would put a bullet in John Wilkes Booth’s head...almost in the exact headshot location as Booth's to Lincoln.

I can’t say, who is this John Wilkes Booth guy? Since every American knows that he was Lincoln’s assassin. He was a well known actor from a renowned acting family, who was a Southern sympathizer and Union adversary. During Lincoln’s run for reelection, Booth became very resentful, “Before the election, Booth was contemplating an audacious act: he would put together a group of fellow defenders of the South and kidnap Lincoln, spirit him away to Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy, and hold him as a bartering chip to gain the freedom of Rebel prisoners of war.” This plot fizzled, but others cropped up. With the aid of Mrs. Mary Surratt, Lewis Powell, George Atzerodt, David Herold, Dr. Mudd (here’s mud in your eye), and three other minor accomplices, Booth envisioned that he would kill Lincoln, and his co-conspirators would kill Vice President Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward. Two out of the three plots failed. After Booth shot Lincoln, he jumped awkwardly from Lincoln’s booth and fell ten feet to the stage where he broke his leg. The audience didn’t know if his jump was part of the play or not. Booth and Herold escape on horseback.

The rest of the book will answer the following questions: How did the Union Army corner the twosome? How did Corbett become the Booth killer and did he earn fame for his deed? What punishments did the co-conspirators get in their trials? What happened to Boston Corbett after he was mustered out of the Army? What judgement did Harry Wirz, the top Rebel at the horrendous Andersonville prison get? Okay, enough questions, but I only whet your appetite for the rest of this interesting publication. I’m a bigtime fan of historical anything, no less nonfiction that reads like fiction, so i say, “Congratulations, you got it right.”

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

Comment: Andersonville was a deplorable stockade and a cesspool of disease. More than 13,000 Union soldiers died because of no food, shelter, or clothes. The survivors would live the rest of their lives with major disabilities. The following are quotes from survivors courtesy of The Civil War Trust:

Sergeant Samuel S. Boggs said, “Two guards seized me, took my knife, hat, blanket, and shoes; this was done quickly, and I was ordered to keep quiet and go to the further end of the pen, where some guards had my stripped comrades herded in a corner like a flock of shorn sheep; some had lost all but their shirts and drawers; they skinned us of all the clothes that were not too much worn; then put us on a freight train, gave us some corn-bread, when we started for Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy.”

Volunteer Eugene Forbes said, “No improvements in our condition-terrible coughs and cramps in the bowels, verging on to chronic diarrhea and inflammation of the bowels.”

John L. Ransom said, “Can see the dead wagon loaded up with twenty or thirty bodies at a time, two lengths, just like four foot wood is loaded on to a wagon at the North, and away they go to the grave on a trot. Perhaps one or two will fall off and get run over. No attention paid to that; they are picked up on the road back after more. Was ever before in this world anything so terrible happening? Many entirely naked.”

Brigade Quarter Master, John L. Ransom said, “I walk around camp every morning looking for acquaintances, the sick, &c. Can see a dozen most any morning laying around dead. A great many are terribly afflicted with diarrhea, and scurvy begins to take hold of some. Scurvy is a bad disease, and taken in connection with the former is sure death. Some have dropsy as well as scurvy, and the swollen limbs and body are sad to see.”

Andersonville Prison: