A Letter to John Wilkes Booth

It seems I have finally escaped the scarlet hand.

The hand which first crossed over the rivers and the seas to become one with nature and with all things beautiful, while it exacted a most precious price from those who could never quite understand.

And yet, even at this late date, who am I to suggest that the star you were born under twinkled less brightly than did mine?

The crackle of fire had taken the chill from both of our souls as we sat by the bed of our dying children.

With all due respect, I'd like to think you were also a child once.

Maybe you were just misguided by the sounds of poverty as they skittered like stones across a mossy lake, like coins tossed into the wishing well of good intentions.

Maybe you just forgot the simple principle. That to breathe the air of free men, we first have to learn how to share it.

I have no doubt that the hasty actions from which you are now running were originally conceived under the dim street lamps where you paced and paused to listen to a distant and magnificent choir.

And yet, we could have found ourselves to be compatible as friends.

We could have chatted over the fence while the sounds of guns came from the gray hills of larger than life circumstances.

We could have let the weeping belong to others for a short time as we opened our eyes and raised a glass
to the orchards of a sun-kissed dawn.

As you may finally see, I was never really to blame.

It was always in my nature to regard people as being great just because they are people.

Why should that not also apply to you?

Now I am deprived of my earthly vestiges; and yet, with the renewed sense of stature a final authority makes possible, I give to you an official pardon.

It is your inheritance. It is the inheritance of the world to which we so briefly belong.

Please do not spend your last moments regretting. As a gentle favor to me, spend them thinking of the lost lamb that wandered off and was loved most of all.

With all that Heaven allows, I now forgive you.

Sincerely,

Abraham Lincoln

(1865)