America's Original Sin White Supremacy, John Wilkes Booth, and the Lincoln Assassination [Audiobook]

In alternating chapters, America's Original Sin shows how, as Lincoln's commitment to emancipation grew, so too did Booth's rage and hatred for Lincoln, whom he referred to as "King Abraham Africanus the First." Examining Booth's early life in Maryland, Rhodehamel traces the evolution of his racial hatred from his youthful embrace of white supremacy to his final act of murder. Along the way, Rhodehamel considers and discards other potential motivations for Booth's act, such as mental illness or persistent drunkenness, which are all, he writes, either insufficient to explain Booth's actions or were excuses made after the fact by those who sympathized with him. Focusing on how white supremacy brought about the Civil War and, later, betrayed the conflict's emancipationist legacy, Rhodehamel's masterful narrative makes this old story seem new again. The first book to explicitly name white supremacy as the motivation for Lincoln's assassination, America's Original Sin is an important and eloquent look at one of the most notorious episodes in American history.