Is he dead?
How many (public) votes does it take to impeach?
How many votes does it take to assassinate?
Are you telling me that with both the Democrats and the radical Republicans they didn't have enough votes?
I close with a quote: "Lincoln would not have enjoyed the extravagant and pseudoreligious praise being offered in his name by so many Americans. But one suspects that if he could learn of the slush written about the suggested involvement of his secretary of war in his own death he would simply become angry." (Hanchett, p. 248.).
THEORY #3
LINCOLN'S ASSASSINATION WAS THE RESULT OF A CONFEDERATE PLOT
The idea that Lincoln was killed as part of a grand conspiracy of Confederates arose almost immediately after the assassination. Coded letters found in Booth's trunk back at the National Hotel tied him to the Confederacy. This theory has undergone a marked revival in the past 20 years. In 1977 a statement conspirator George Atzerodt made before the trial in 1865 was uncovered. In it Atzerodt told of Booth's knowledge of a Confederate plot to blow up the White House. The hypothesis of a Confederate grand conspiracy was detailed in 1988 by William A. Tidwell, James O. Hall, and David Winfred Gaddy in Come Retribution: The Confederate Secret Service and the Assassination of Lincoln. Further evidence was supplied by Tidwell in 1995 with the publication of April '65: Confederate Covert Action in the American Civil War. (Another work which stresses Confederate involvement, but lacks the detail of the aforementioned books, is Larry Starkey's Wilkes Booth Came to Washington). Proponents of the Confederate grand conspiracy point out that as the Confederacy's situation deteriorated, more daring and reckless planning was needed. Lincoln was viewed as a legitimate wartime target. This was especially true after the Union's failed Dahlgren raid on Richmond that had been approved by Lincoln himself and was evidence of Lincoln's increasing determination to take whatever steps were necessary to end the war.
Colonel Ulrich Dahlgren was killed in the raid, and on his person several documents were found, one of which said, "The men must be kept together, and well in hand, and once in the city, it must be destroyed and Jeff Davis and his cabinet killed."
Lincoln had hand-picked Dahlgren for the raid, and the Confederate government now believed the Union President had ordered Davis's death.
Confederate grand conspiracy theorists feel Judah Benjamin, the Confederate Secretary of State, was deeply involved in the plot to kidnap/kill Abraham Lincoln.
He burned all of his records before Richmond was evacuated. Benjamin escaped to England, and he was the only member of the Confederate government never to return to the United States. He practiced law in England until 1883 and died in Paris on May 6, 1884.
The theory of a Confederate grand conspiracy portrays Booth as a rebel agent working to organize a band of men to kidnap Lincoln. When Richmond fell, the plans turned to assassination. First, there was the failed effort to blow up the White House followed by the successful effort to kill Lincoln at the theater. Just as Lincoln may have ordered the killing of Jefferson Davis and his Cabinet by Ulrich Dahlgren and his men, Judah Benjamin and Jefferson Davis were involved in the plans to kidnap and later assassinate Abraham Lincoln.
The theory of Confederate complicity in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln is accepted by many of the current Lincoln assassination historians, scholars, researchers, and writers.
The actual trigger for Booth's actions was the April 10th capture of explosives expert Thomas F. Harney who was on his way to Washington to bomb the White House. Booth, knowing Harney's mission had failed, tried to make up for Harney's disaster by taking matters into his own hands and killing the President at Ford's Theatre. For the latest on this theory see the articles entitled "Who Ordered Lincoln's Death?" by James E.T. Lange and Katherine DeWitt in the June, 1998, edition of North & South magazine and "The Lincoln Assassination Revisited" by William Hanchett and "Risking the Wrath of God" by Edward Steers, Jr. in the September, 2000, issue of North & South. Confederate plans to blow up the White House seem to be confirmed by George Atzerodt's Lost Confession.
Other groups and individuals that have at times been implicated in Lincoln's assassination include Freemasons, domestic bankers, financiers and businessmen, Copperheads, certain Radical Republicans (either on their own or in concert with Edwin Stanton),
the B'nai B'rith, and the Knights of the Golden Circle. Major Henry R. Rathbone, John F. Parker, and Mary Todd Lincoln have not totally escaped suspicion. Speculation that Booth's motivation was to avenge the hanging of Confederate John Yates Beall is not proven (for details please see the November, 2000, edition of the Surratt Courier).
Although it's been nearly 140 years since the assassination, any kind of closure on all of the circumstances surrounding the event still seems a long way in the distance.
Judging simply by e-mail messages to me over the past seven years, the general public favors theories 2 and 6 mentioned above.
However, the preponderance of recent published material by scholars and writers supports number 3. The simple conspiracy theory has some very knowledgeable adherents, too.
Some experts would combine the two saying that, although JWB had strong ties to the Confederacy, the actual events of April 14, 1865, were planned by JWB, not Richmond.
Most everyone admits there is circumstantial evidence that ties the Confederacy to the assassination; the difference comes in the interpretation of this evidence. http://home.att.net/~rjnorton/Lincoln74.html