"The Ballad of Booth," Steven Sondheim's Assassins

"...Booth was not a madman, according to Alford. In fact, he was politically motivated to assassinate Lincoln.

'John Wilkes Booth was one of those people who thought the best country in the history of the world was the United States as it existed before the Civil War,' Alford says. 'And then when Lincoln came along, he was changing that in fundamental ways.'

Those ideological differences include increasing the power of the federal government and emancipating the slaves, both things Booth was vehemently against. He was angered that the government instituted an income tax and the military draft, and that the government occasionally suspended habeas corpus, a legal protection against unlawful imprisonment. All these things, Alford says, agitated Booth,"  "Who Was John Wilkes Booth...," NPR.

Victor Garber- John Wilkes Booth

Patrick Cassidy-Balladeer

Sondheim Celebration

Carnegie Hall, 1992,

Assassins