As events ominously unfolded, Booth hit upon the idea of making a speech of his own, perhaps to some mass meeting like the Grand Union Rally. Shortly after the failure of the Crittenden Compromise, he penned an extensive address on the national crisis.65 Known as the “Allow Me” speech, it is more properly the “Alow Me,” as Booth misspelled the initial word of his address. The manifesto was twelve and a half pages long with an additional six-plus pages continuing the themes of the first section and perhaps to have been incorporated into it. At some five thousand words, it is the lengthiest surviving document written by the actor.
It has been stated that Booth used the basic structure of Antony’s funeral oration from Julius Caesar to frame the arguments of his speech. By addressing his listeners as “fellow countrymen,” Booth opened his remarks in a style reminiscent of Antony. But Booth lacked the subtlety with which Shakespeare endowed that orator. Booth’s address calls more readily to mind the bold remarks of Brutus on the dead Caesar. Brutus asserted that he acted for love of country alone, appealed directly to his listeners’ patriotism and honor, and offered himself and his views to their judgment. So did Booth. Like both Brutus and Antony, Booth made use of rhetorical questions. He would frame a question and record a cry of assent from his listeners. Booth actually wrote shouted ayes and noes in his text, a device that gives the speech elements of a theatrical script. But most of the address was in a more traditional form of political argument.
Since Booth disliked writing, the speech represented a major undertaking. He poured himself into the effort, quoting from the Bible, Shakespearean plays, and Edward Bulwer-Lytton, paraphrasing Andrew Jackson and Stephen Decatur, and invoking the names of the revered sectional peacemakers Henry Clay and Daniel Webster. On the plus side, Booth produced an address that was natural and energetic, and he avoided the excessive formality so fatal in novice speechwriters. But, as was true in all of his writing, Booth struggled in vain for poetic language and for dignity. Unoriginal, ill-organized, and repetitious, the speech had a turbulent and violent tone. It was an odd combination of harangue, lamentation, and threat. It had only one shining quality: it was deeply sincere.
The crisis of the age was at hand, declared Booth. “Can you with unmoved souls see the land, where once dwelt love and joy, fretted by internal dissentions? To see the land where dwell our fathers our mothers, our hearts, our loves, our all, upon the fearful brink of self-distruction. O what a triumph for the crowned world will it be to see this once proud union bend its head unto the dust!” The end of nationhood was an unthinkable disaster. Economic depression and social upheaval would follow in the North, chaos and violence in the South. Monarchy would be vindicated, and European nations would take advantage of the nation’s fragments. Horribly, civil war would follow.
In Booth’s view the South wished only to tend its own business and maintain its traditional rights. It held an unassailable moral high ground in any such calamity as civil war. Coercion would be the fastest way to precipitate this catastrophe, uniting the South and making the North “greater Tyrants! Than George the 3d ever was towards our fathers!” Should war result, “I will not fight for cesession. This union is my Mother. A Mother that I love with an unutterable affection. No, I will not fight for disunion. But I will fight with all my heart and soul, even if there’s not a man to back me for eaqual rights and justice to the South.
“You all feel the fire now raging in the nations heart,” he continued. “It is a fire lighted and faned by Northern fanaticism. A fire which naught but blood & justice can extinguish. I tell you the Abolition doctrine is the fire which if alowed to rage—will consume and crush us all beneath its ruins.” Abolitionists had caused all of the nation’s problems. “Continually preaching and crying” over slavery, they were fanatics who abused freedom of speech to whip up sectional hatreds. They were a set of ignorant hypocrites. “I have been through the whole South and have marked the happiness of master & man …. True I have seen the Black man wiped but only when he deserved much more than he received. And had an abolitionist used the lash, he would have got double.” Being “so good so gospell,” they declare slavery a sin. “You never saw it such until it became unprofitable,” Booth chided the North. “And you would even now share in that sin if it was necessary to you and could be made to pay.
“What is to be done with such men who are cold to all the blessings of freedom they possess? Who laugh at our country as it is. Scoff at her institutions as they are, And who not only would cry for a King, but endeavor to lead others to their views and spread their d——d opinions throughout the land. Now I call it treason to our common country, and it should not be alowed …. Such men I call trators and treason should be stamped to death.
“Now that we have found the serpent that madens us, we should crush it in its birth,” he urged. The crisis could be ended only by an explosion of antiabolitionist outrage so intense and universal that antislavery advocates would alter their views or be shamed into silence. “The Abolition party must throw away their principals. They must be hushed forever.” They must either agree to this or be compelled. “God grant, it may be done in a peaceful way. If not, it must be done with blood. Ay with blood & justice. I tell you Sirs when treason weighs heavy in the scale, it is a time for us to throw off all gentler feelings of our natures and summon resolution, pride, justice, Ay, and revenge, to take the place of those nobler passions in the human heart, respect, forgiveness, and Brotherly-love.”
The American people, he concluded, “are too wise, too good, too just” to refuse the South its rights. “Ill speak no more, think upon what I have said. For we can not live without the union as it was. The Union our fathers made. The union which God has blessed, And the flag of that union forever.”
Notably, the name of Abraham Lincoln is absent from this lengthy document. Although Lincoln had become the most widely discussed man in the nation, Booth had yet to focus on him. Only two antislavery figures are mentioned. One was John Brown, whose execution Booth acknowledged attending. Brown died “attempting in another way, mearly what these abolitionists are doing now,” wrote Booth. The Reverend Henry Ward Beecher of Brooklyn, New York, also drew Booth’s ire as a man “who takes shelter behind his white cravat! to belie his profession. And speak his treason.” The bedrock principle of Booth’s political philosophy was hence laid bare. He loved the Union as it was, and he hated the abolitionists who were destroying it. Before Lincoln ever drew Booth’s notice, the young actor loathed abolitionists.
A close reading of the speech reveals an interesting point. Booth stated that he wrote the address “to vindicate myself in the steps I intend to take.” He was contemplating some action. The “Alow Me” speech does not state what that was, and his meaning remains a mystery. It is improbable that he refers to joining the rebel army. He states specifically that he would not fight for secession. Given the tenor of the speech and the temper of the speaker, the possibility of an attack on a prominent abolitionist figure cannot be ruled out.
Whatever Booth intended to do, he apparently did nothing. His mother’s presence was always restraining, and no record of any rash act at this time has surfaced. It does not even appear that Booth found an occasion to deliver his “Alow Me” speech. Rapidly moving events made his ideas, unachievable as they were, obsolete as well. The speech disappeared into a pile of playbooks and clothes that in time were moved to Edwin’s home in New York. The older brother discovered it there many years later.
Unable to save the nation, Booth decided to salvage something for himself. He arranged a series of star engagements in several small Northern cities. To his Southern pieces he added Othello, The Merchant of Venice, Macbeth, and two swashbucklers titled The Corsican Brothers and Don Caesar de Bazan. Such additions to his repertoire required much preparation and indicate that not all of his time could possibly have been absorbed by politics. He opened for two weeks at the Metropolitan Theatre in Rochester, New York, on January 21, 1861. The best notices of his budding
career followed. “He has played here for ten nights to full and crowded houses,” stated the Union and Advertiser. “This fact speaks more than anything else that can be said as a tribute to this genius. His Othello, Richard III and Romeo were as faultless as the same characters in the hands of his illustrious sire at the same age, and there is no reason to doubt that he is destined to fill his place upon the stage and add new luster to the name he bears.” The Evening Express was particularly taken with his Richard. “There was but one opinion expressed—that nothing had ever excelled it in our theatre,” it asserted. “Mr. Booth was most warmly and deservedly applauded through the entire piece, and at the close was loudly and persistently called for. On his appearance before the curtain, he was greeted with a perfect storm of applause.”66
Booth split the next eleven weeks, from February 11 to April 26, 1861, between Albany’s Gayety Theatre and the Portland Theatre in Portland, Maine. Reviews continued favorable, and “the reception he met with was no doubt most flattering to his professional pride,” declared an editor.67 Booth clipped and mailed to June in San Francisco one particularly positive notice of his Othello, and the older brother pasted it into his own scrapbook.68 How much such acclaim meant in terms of dollars remains unclear, however. At Rochester, for example, houses said in the local press to be crowded were described in the New York trades as so-so and unfavorable to an extended run.69 Albany’s little Gayety, formerly a carpet store, was a gamble even for veteran stars, while in Portland, Booth was known to be short of cash. Horace C. Little, editor of the latter city’s Advertiser newspaper, alleged that Booth left town without paying his printing bill. When a collector called upon him to settle the small account, Booth referred the man to an agent, the agent referred him back to the actor, the actor back to the agent, “and so like a shuttlecock our collector was batted backward and forward between their falsehoods, wearing out more shoe leather than the whole thing was worth. We wish merely to say to our brethren of the press that when ‘J. Wilkes Booth’ may appear on the boards in their vicinity, if they make any contracts with him, the safest way is to adopt the advance principle.” In other words, get the cash up front.
Rebuked as irresponsible and ungentlemanly, Booth was also having bad luck in the form of a succession of stage accidents. Acting was a physical profession and the theater a hazardous workplace. Performers held swords, daggers, and pistols, and they worked around props, drops, platforms, ramps, gas footlights, smoke, and even horses at times. Space limitations could compound the problems. The stage at the Gayety was a laughably small seven by nine feet. Into this space were crowded actors who might be inexperienced, anxious, or exhausted. Amid the mad energy of a play, the recipe was always at hand for real-life drama. In Rochester, Booth was in combat with R. E. J. Miles when his sword broke. Its point flew down, striking Miles just above the eye and inflicting a severe wound. In Albany, Booth’s rapier cut J. A. Leonard on the head as the two dueled. Later in the same play Booth fell on his own dagger. The blade, “glancing from the ribs, cut away the muscles for some three inches” under his right arm, and Booth bled freely onstage. The ugly wound cost him several nights of his engagement. Frank Queen of the Clipper observed aptly, “In respect to these occurrences, Mr. Booth has been rather unfortunate.”70
Convalescing in his room at Stanwix Hall, Booth caught up on the deepening national crisis. The cotton states seceded and convened in Montgomery to form a new national government. To Booth their action was a justifiable measure of self-defense. He expressed this view openly on the morning of his arrival from Rochester, and he did so with a passion that H. P. Phelps, a contemporary journalist and historian of the Albany stage, described as violent. Friends of the theater alerted the management, and the Gayety’s treasurer, Jacob C. Cuyler, set out to track down the star. Cuyler found Booth at breakfast and explained to him that this far north, discretion was the better part of employment. “If Booth persisted in expressing his sentiments in public,” Cuyler cautioned, “not only would he kill his engagement, but endanger his person.” The choice being clear, “Booth accepted his situation and thereafter kept quiet.” The actor held no ill will toward Cuyler for the advice and remained friends with the treasurer during his stay there.71
In Montgomery on February 18, 1861, Canning and Albaugh witnessed the inauguration of Jefferson Davis as president of the Confederate States of America, an event crowned with Yancey’s memorable utterance “The man and the hour have met.” Abraham Lincoln arrived in Albany that same day en route to his own inauguration. Artillery boomed a welcome from Observation Hill as the mayor and common council went down to meet his train. An immense throng greeted the president-elect with cheers and enthusiasm.72 The streets were lined with people, the windows and balconies filled.
Baffled, Booth asked Cuyler, “Is this not a Democratic city?” Lincoln had not carried Albany County in the previous year’s election, so the question was a fair one. “Democratic? Yes,” replied Cuyler, “but disunion, no.” That evening, while Booth starred in The Apostate, Lincoln received the citizens of Albany at the Delavan House not half a mile away. Cuyler’s friend Phelps reflected, “How little did either then dream of the tragedy that was to link their names together in all coming time.”73
Lincoln was inaugurated in Washington on March 4, and on April 12 Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, starting the Civil War. Booth was in Portland at the time. His reaction to the event is not recorded. On April 19 soldiers of the 6th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, passing through Baltimore to reinforce the capital, were forced to fight it out with pro-Southern civilians. At least twelve citizens and four soldiers were killed and dozens wounded. In 1865 Booth claimed to have taken part in the April 19 riot, one of the most famous events in Baltimore history. This could not have been true.74 Booth remained in Portland until April 14 and was back in Albany in time to play on April 22. Since Marylanders destroyed railroad bridges connecting Baltimore with the North in an attempt to isolate the city, it would have been impossible for anyone to travel normally in this chaotic period.75
The Albany Evening Journal declared that Sumter required every person to show colors, and Booth unfurled his.76 “Booth at that time openly and boldly avowed his admiration for the rebels and their deeds, which he characterized as the most heroic of modern times,” declared Albert D. Doty, a news dealer. Booth stated “that the Southern leaders knew how to defend their rights and would not submit to oppression.”77 The incautious remarks drew indignation and threats in the New York capital. “People became incensed,” Doty wrote, “threatening him with popular violence.” Cuyler chronicled the distress these weeks caused Booth by noting the steady transformation in his personality as the war came on. “Each time he came here (his engagements commenced on February 11, March 4, and April 22), it was noticed that he grew more morose and sullen.” Cuyler watched Booth change “from a genial gentleman into a soured cynic.”
Booth’s final run at the Gayety was fittingly brief. He shared the bill with Samuel Canty, who performed as “Signor Canito, the Man-Monkey.” It seems absurd to later generations that Richard III would be followed immediately for the same audience by an acrobat dressed as an orangutan climbing trees and cracking nuts.78 Such was the variety of the nineteenth-century theater, however. The two entertainers held court for less than a week before the Gayety closed for lack of patronage due to the wartime distractions. After four nights, Booth’s first tour as an independent star came to a close. A painful postscript to the engagement was added by Booth’s leading lady.
Henrietta Irving, who began her acting career in 1855, was a capable theatrical hand and an ambitious and volatile young woman. Rarely described as beautiful, she was pretty enough to keep the boys on the benches interested. Praise of a performer’s art and person are often fulsome in sources of the period, but such references to Henrietta are infrequent. Perhaps a remark by the theatrical gossip Harry Hill reveals why. Replying in the 1880s to the
charge that actors of the Civil War era were more high-minded and generous than those of his day, Hill cited Irving to prove his point that the earlier generation had been equally cunning and selfish. No reader rushed to defend the woman whom Hill teasingly termed “the Irving.”79
A correspondent of the Clipper’s Frank Queen quipped that many actresses like Henrietta went about playing under the title of Miss despite having from one to three husbands each.80 Where husbands one to three might have been was unknown when “the Irving,” along with her sister Maria, supported Booth in his Rochester and Albany performances. Sparks flew, and the intimacies of their Romeo and Juliet continued after hours in the less Shakespearean setting of Booth’s hotel room at Stanwix Hall. There John and Henrietta “were as tender as love without esteem can ever be,” as the journalist Townsend, who dug out every scrap of Booth gossip he could mine, struggled with propriety to phrase it.81 When Booth tired of the relationship, Irving protested. He grew cold. She grew angry. On Friday, April 26, 1861, the situation exploded.
A Midwestern newspaper summed up the action:
All for Love and Murder.—Miss Henrietta Irving,
well known as an actress in Buffalo, entered the room
of J. Wilkes Booth, at Stanwix Hall, last Friday, and
attacked him with a dirk, cutting his face badly. She
did not, however, succeed in inflicting a mortal wound.
Failing in this, she retired to her own room and
stabbed herself, not bad enough to ‘go dead,’ however.
The cause was disappointed affection or some
little affair of that sort.82
Fortune's Fool: The Life of John Wilkes Booth Page 14
