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When the John Brown raid occured, Booth left the Richmond Theater for
the scene of strife in a picked company with which he had affiliated for
some time. From his connection with the militia on this occasion he was
wont to trace his fealty to Virginia. He was a non-commissioned officer,
and remained at Charleston till after the execution, visiting the old
pike man in jail, and his company was selected to form guard around the
scaffold when John Brown went, white-haired, to his account. There may
be in this a consolation for the canonizers of the first arm-bearer
between the sections, that one whose unit swelled the host to crush out
that brave old life, took from the scene inspiration enough to slay a
merciful President in his unsuspecting leisure. Booth never referred to
John Brown's death in bravado; possibly at that gallows began some such
terrible purpose as he afterward consummated.
It was close upon the beginning of the war when Booth resolved to
transform himself from a stock actor to a "star." As many will read this
who do not understand such distinctions, let me preface it by explaining
that a "star" is an actor who belongs to no one theater, but travels
from each to all, playing a few weeks at a time, and sustained in his
chief character by the regular or stock actors. A stock actor is a good
actor, and a poor fool. A star is an advertisement in tights, who grows
rich and corrupts the public taste. Booth was a star, and being so, had
an agent. The agent is a trumpeter who goes on before, writing the
impartial notices which you see in the editorial columns of country
papers and counting noses at the theater doors. Booth's agent was one
Matthew Canning, an exploded Philadelphia lawyer, who took to managing
by passing the bar, and J. Wilkes no longer, but our country's rising
tragedian. J. Wilkes Booth, opened in Montgomery, Alabama, in his
father's consecrated part of Richard III. It was very different work
between receiving eight dollars a week and getting half the gross
proceeds of every performance. Booth kept northward when his engagement
was done, playing in many cities such parts as Romeo, the Corsican
Brothers, and Raphael in the "Marble Heart;" in all of these he
gained applause, and his journey eastward, ending in eastern cities like
Providence, Portland, and Boston was a long success, in part deserved.
In Boston he received especial commendation for his enactment of
Richard.
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