Walt Whitman penned these words after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, devastated by the leader’s death. All throughout history, controversial leaders have been assassinated by conspirators who feel it is the best thing to do. These leaders died died for what they believed in. State the opposing side of your argument. Some will make the argument that these radicals are killing leaders for selfish reasons, but they are mistaken. In the grand scheme of things, conspirators who kill leaders believe they are doing so for the benefit of society, because that leader threatens what they think is best for the world, and conspirators try to remain honorable in their actions. Many assassins kill leaders because they believe that if they …show more content…
Booth’s original plan was not to kill Lincoln, but to remove him from power by kidnapping to help the Confederacy in another way. An unfortunate series of events caused him to force his hand. “Booth abandoned the kidnapping plot. He had no choice… Booth got it into his head that if Lincoln and his government were eliminated, there would be some sort of political revolution,” (Jakoubek 4). Many assassins of leaders lament that the death of a leader is the only for them to remove the threat they perceive to the greater good. Since they are working for the greater good of society, they are willing to do whatever it takes to protect that. If they were working only for personal gain, they would kill the leader without remorse, but since they are honorable they wish there was another way. Another set of conspirators who rue the fact that they must kill a leader are those in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Caesar’s assassins in his namesake play wish they did not have to kill him, but believe they must in order to help the people. “Oh, that we then could come by Caesar’s spirit and not dismember Caesar!” (Brutus, Act 2 Scene 1 Lines 171-172). These and many other groups of radicals would love if there was a way to remove the endangerment to the greater good without killing the leader themselves, but they unfortunately see no other way of going about it than to kill them. Their wish for the greater good outweighs their desire to keep their hands clean. Assassinating a leader is never a safe thing to do, but these people do it because they believe that it is what is most important for society and for the greater good. The reluctance of conspirators to kill leaders shows that their motives are for the protection of the greater
The final motivating factor that influenced Booth to assassinate Lincoln is that he did it for the good of the country. Booth believed that his country wanted the same as he did, although that was not the case. In Booth’s diary it states, “The country is not what it was. This forced Union is not what I have loved. I do not care what becomes of me. I have no desire to outlive my country.” In the statement he is explaining that since Lincoln has been the president he has turn the country “upside
The causes of the conflict were that the missionaries were trying to force a religion on the Cayuse tribe that they did not believe in and the missionaries were wasting precious Cayuse recourses and were bringing in so many emigrants that they were starting to completely overrun the Cayuses land. The people involved in The Whitman Massacre were the Cayuse Tribe and the missionaries involved in the Whitman Mission. The Cayuse Tribe was tired of the Missionaries taking over their land and didn`t like the fact that they were bringing more and more emigrants who were wasting their resources onto their land. They continually tried to get them to leave but they didn`t take heed to their warning. So, in an act of rage, the Cayuse
When Booth found out that the president was coming to Ford’s Theater on April 14th, 1865, he was very determined to kill him. In chapter one, it reads, “Booth heard the big news: In just eight hours, the man who was subject of all his hating and plotting would stand on the very steps where he sat now.” This is talking about how excited Booth was when he found out the president was coming to the theater. Instantly, his mind started forming a cunning plan to annihilate the confederate leaders.
One reason that people will follow a corrupt leader is that the people will look for anyone else to leave them other than their current leader. “All at once, Robert was screaming and struggling with the strength of the frenzy. Jack had him by the hair and was brandishing a knife behind him was Roger, fighting to get close. The chant rose ritually, as at the last moment of a dance or a hunt” (114). Even though Jack was hurting one of his friends, they still wanted to follow him because he could protect them and Ralph could not. Jack was also the only other boy who could lead them. A second example of this is “Why do you hate
“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.” Abraham Lincoln. Once you give a man power, it all goes downhill from there. In The Lord of the Flies by William Golding, there is one group of boys on an island. The boys elect one chief, Ralph, but another bigun thinks he’s a better chief. So the other boy, Jack, leaves and forms a new tribe with most of the boys. After a little bit of time, the groups start to fight resulting in a couple of deaths. Why would people follow a corrupt leader like Jack? They follow them because they feel like the new leader can help them better than the old one, they think that the leader can provide for them and it doesn’t matter who that leader is, they will follow them because there’s no one else to follow.
Some of the characters in the story wanted power but are not willing to do it the appropriate way. Without a doubt, these characters are devious, conniving, back stabbing people. Time and time after they did unimaginable efforts to gain power. More, Brutes and others slaughtered
Why did John Wilkes Booth want to kill Lincoln? Booth wanted to kill Lincoln because he didn’t liked how Lincoln wanted to let black people vote. But then he attended Lincoln’s speech and Lincoln was trying to back out of letting the blacks vote. After this John W. Booth was so mad that he was trying to get a group together to kidnap Lincoln. This then led to Lincoln’s assassination.(9)
When none of his attempts were successful, he set a new plan, one not quite like the others, this one-an assassination. According to Booth’s former friend Louis Weichmann, Booth set out this plan after hearing Lincoln deliver a speech about Negro Suffrage.
assuming in this case that there is a provocation, that there is some sort of “reason” for retaliation, yet Machiavelli takes more of a proactive stance on violence. Machiavelli informs his prince of leaders who have benefitted in killing their enemies before they have had a chance to do him harm. He mentions the duke, Alexander, who, “killed as many [dispossessed rulers] as he could lay hands on” (Machiavelli, Chapter 7, Page 28), and Agathocles the Sicilian who ruled his people so ruthlessly- killing the richest and
John Wilkes Booth, the murderer of Lincoln, had many reasons for his actions. This is very important to people because there still might be some unknown factors for why John Wilkes Booth slaughtered Lincoln. Booth thought that assassinating Lincoln was a good idea, but it really only turned him into a hated and despised
John Wilks Booth, an actor and hater of the south and blacks, makes plans to tear apart the United State’s government by planning his assassins timing to kill part of Lincoln’s Cabinet along with the president’s death. However, his original plan involved only capturing President Lincoln, then holding him hostage in exchange for confederate prisoners of war. But not long before his plans were going to take place,
Life in its ever-evolving glory seems at times to be nothing more than a serious of random events that lead us from one place to another. It takes many years of grace and wisdom to see that life is much more than that. Life is far bigger than any one person or group of people. Life is a lesson and sometimes lessons need to repeat. Life during the time of Walt Whitman was oddly and sadly similar
It's not everyday a person wakes up with the goal of killing an important figure in society. That's why there is so much attraction towards the mystery of assassination attempts and successes. When analyzing a murder, the most common conclusion to the crime is a longing for something better. Caesar's assassins wanted a better life, country, and ruler. John Hinckly Jr. only wanted Jodie Foster, which lead to the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagen. In both cases, the "better" that the killers wanted only offered more trouble than that which was around in the first place.
He thought that God had put him here to correct the tyranny of Lincoln. He felt the need to justify why he was fighting in the war so he starting taking small jobs for the Confederate Underground. It was during this time that he came up with the plan to kidnap Lincoln and hold him for ransom. He knew Lincoln was not protected and often traveled alone. So he thought it was more than feasible to carry out his plan. He recruited several co-conspirators to help him including John Surratt, George Atzerodt, David Herold, Lewis Powell, Samuel Arnold and Mike O’Laughlen. They had nothing in common except the fact that they all admired Booth. Two weeks after Lincoln’s Second Inauguration, Booth laid out his plan of kidnapping him out of his theatre box, tying him up and lower him onto the stage in front of an audience including soldiers and many police outside of the theatre. They thought he was mad. On April 3rd, the war was over. Robert E. Lee had surrendered and the kidnapping plan ruined. So Booth began to hatch another plan of assassinating the president. One the morning of April 14th, 1865, Lincoln awoke gitty and happy, Booth awoke late and to his amazement found out that Lincoln would be at the Ford
In his essay “Death of Abraham Lincoln”, Walt Whitman recalls the first time he ever saw the future president elect when Lincoln silently passed through New York City on his way to Washington D. C. Then Whitman remarks on the rapid succession of the well-known, recent, and still yet painful events of the Civil War. The strata of session sympathizers, the assassination of Lincoln at Ford’s theatre by John Wilkes Booth five days after the end of the Civil War, and the effect Lincoln’s death will forever have on our nation. Walt Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist-in addition to publishing his poetry- was a volunteer nurse during the American Civil War. The Civil war lasted from 1861 to 1865 and was the result of four