Junius Booth in Podcasts

But in the South, in the American South, an actor had real social status. See, Booth had been burdened throughout his life by the shame of his birth and the periodic reappearance of his father's scandals in the papers. So he was amazed at how the people of Richmond, Virginia had brought him into their society and accepted him.

Well, John Wilkes Booth, he held the fairly common opinion, it was very common at this time, that black people were actually happier as slaves, that they were better off in bondage than they were even free in Africa, and that giving black people freedom would only make them miserable, and it would destroy America in the bargain. That's how a lot of people justified slavery.

Now, all this may just sound like gossip, and it is, but these are actually formative events when it came to forming the personality of John Wilkes Booth. See, the providence of John Wilkes' birth and the scandal concerning his father's first marriage, these things instilled a sort of inferiority complex in our assassin, born from the idea that he may or may not be a real Booth.