Everybody knows that John Wilkes Booth murdered Abraham Lincoln. But studies of an old letter have now shown that his father, well-known Shakespearean actor Junius Brutus Booth, had written a letter threatening to assassinate President Andrew Jackson years before!

Dismissed for 175 years as a fake, a letter threatening the assassination of President Andrew Jackson has been found to be authentic. And, says the director of the Andrew Jackson Papers Project at the University of Tennessee, the writer was none other than Junius Brutus Booth, father of Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth.

Dan Feller and his staff solved the mystery of the July 4, 1835, letter to Jackson. The story of their investigation will be featured this summer on PBS' "History Detectives."

The letter, which addressed Old Hickory as "You damn'd old Scoundrel," demanded that Jackson pardon two prisoners named De Ruiz and De Soto who had been sentenced to death for piracy in a high-profile trial of the day.

Interestingly enough, no one has ever taken the letter seriously. Even Jackson's staff filed the letter as an anonymous threat, assuming that such a well-known figure as the elder Booth would not have written it. That shows you how differently matters of presidential security were taken in the early days of the republic.

Given that Jackson had chased down and subdued a would-be assassin earlier that year, I'd argue that an attempt to slit his throat in his sleep would not have been a wise move from the standpoint of personal safety. But the letter does go to show that the instability of the son may well have been a hereditary family trait.

H/T Protein Wisdom

Posted by: Greg at 08:40 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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