Dr. Terry Alford speaks about his upcoming biography of John Wilkes Booth: "Fortune's Fools."

Dr. Terry Alford’s upcoming biography, Fortune’s Fools is about the life of John Wilkes Booth, the famous actor and infamous assassin of the 16th president of the United States of America, Abraham Lincoln.

The Lincoln scholar has already written two books published by Oxford Press, made numerous television appearances, worked as a consultant for the 2007 film hit National Treasure 2, and helped found the NOVA Honors Program. He was recently awarded the 2010 Outstanding Faculty Award by the Commonwealth of Virginia. He is the only community college professor to ever receive the accolade.

Booth was apparently the Brad Pitt of his day and earned $20,000 income for acting alone in 1864. Only six months before he would take Lincoln’s life, he performed to a crowd of 2,000 for New York’s elite in Julius Caesar at the Winter Garden Theatre in New York City. Still, Booth could not escape the feelings of self reproach that increased as the Civil War deteriorated.

Booth lived in a rural community outside of Baltimore, Md. A Confederate sympathizer, Booth became unhinged at the capture of Richmond, Va., on March 25, 1865. Alford’s biography traces the tragedy of Lincoln’s murder through the lens of Booth’s experience, so the reader knows the events chronologically as Booth would. The novel also lacks a Lincoln deathbed scene, which — in the words of Alford — “has been done 500 times before.”

What makes Fortune’s Fools different from other books on the same topic is the humanity and color in each individual character. For specific details, Alford researches in a variety of places contain only parts of the story of Lincoln’s assassination.

Alford fits those pieces together to create a full picture, and much of what is in the book comes from firsthand eyewitness testimonies of people who witnessed the murder of Lincoln.

“That’s what takes so long, is finding all these facts and determining what’s credible,” Alford told the NOVA audience of 23 students and faculty. “Newspaper articles are good sources. However, people lie today like they did back then.”

There was a little-known connection between Booth and Lincoln. The medium Nettie Colburn Maynard who conducted the White House séances was also a friend of Booth. When her friend said that Lincoln should be shot, Maynard warned Lincoln that he should beware of crazy people who might want to do him harm in the capital. Later, a senator gave Lincoln a similar warning, and Lincoln replied, “That’s what I have been hearing.”

The biography is scheduled to be released by Oxford Press in 2011. Alford teaches history at the Annandale campus.

By: Annie Ryan

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