Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Justice League

I'm officially offering up my prediction that Jack will be a cop when he grows up. Or an investigator. Or a member of the Justice League - "Jackman" or "Wonder Jack". He is SO obsessed with crime and wrongdoings.

We had another conversation about Abe Lincoln yesterday. Jack was on the potty, I was holding his hands (he requests this a lot and I indulge him, but I'm hoping he grows out of it). Here's how it went:

Jack: "Momma, dat nice man got shot. Abraham Lincoln got shot and he die-did."
Momma: "Yes Bud, he did."
J: "Why did John Millman shoot Abraham Lincoln?"
M: "Why did John Wilkes Booth shoot Abraham Lincoln? Well, he made a very bad choice."
J: "Yes. He had a gun. Why did he have a gun?"
M: "I'm not sure."
J: "Did the policeman come and take him to jail?"
M: "Yes, I think they did."
J: "They put him in jail with his gun?"
M: "No, I think they took his gun away from him."
J: "And what did they do with his gun?"
M: "Well, they put it somewhere where he couldn't get it anymore, so he couldn't hurt anyone else."
J: "When can we go see John Wilkes Booth in jail?"
M: "Ummm, never. He died a long time ago."
J: "WHY? What happened to him?"
M: "I'm not sure Bud. Are you almost done?"

I was desperate to end the conversation. There is something slightly odd about talking about all this with him, for many reasons, not the least of which is that I don't actually remember what happened to John Wilkes Booth. And also we were in the bathroom.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

John Wilkes Booth
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

John Wilkes Booth

John Wilkes Booth
Born May 10, 1838
Bel Air, Maryland, U.S.A.
Died April 26, 1865 (aged 26)
Port Royal, Virginia, U.S.
Occupation Actor
Known for Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
Religious beliefs Episcopal
Parents Junius Brutus Booth
and Mary Ann Holmes
John Wilkes Booth (May 10, 1838 – April 26, 1865) was an American stage actor who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre, in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865. Booth was a member of the prominent 19th century Booth theatrical family from Maryland and, by the 1860s, was a popular actor, well known in both the Northern United States and the South.[1] He was also a Confederate sympathizer vehement in his denunciation of the Lincoln Administration and outraged by the South's defeat in the American Civil War. He strongly opposed the abolition of slavery in the United States and Lincoln's proposal to extend voting rights to recently emancipated slaves.
Booth and a group of co-conspirators whom he led planned to kill Abraham Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson, and Secretary of State William Seward in a desperate bid to help the Confederacy's cause. Although Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia had surrendered four days earlier, Booth believed the war was not yet over because Confederate General Joseph Johnston's army was still fighting the Union Army. Of the conspirators, only Booth was completely successful in carrying out his part of the plot—Lincoln died the next morning from a single gunshot wound to the back of the head, becoming the first American president to be assassinated.
Following the shooting, Booth fled on horseback to southern Maryland. He eventually made his way to a farm in rural northern Virginia; he was tracked down and killed by Union soldiers twelve days later. Eight others were tried and convicted, and four were hanged shortly thereafter. Over the years, various authors have suggested that Booth might have escaped his pursuers and subsequently died many years later under a pseudonym.