1. Is it better to be famous or infamous? Why?

2. Compare your experience of living through JFK’s assassination to what we know about Lincoln’s. How are they different? How are they the same? What role did the media, communications and medicine play? What has changed in the roughly 100 years between them? Would an assassination today be handled the same way as either one?

3. What did you learn in school about Lincoln’s assassination. What details were different/left
out and why do you think that is?

4. Lincoln had a plan for reconstructing the south. He said that we should embrace the
south. Do you think the healing process between North and South would have been
different, had Lincoln survived?

5. Both Boothe and Bin Laden have received “Wanted: Dead or Alive” posters. Do they
mean the same thing today? How are our search methods different, and are they more
successful today?

6. What were reasons for Boothe’s assassination of Lincoln?

7. Would an assassination be possible today? What other methods might
countries/leaders/groups use to oppose a significant figure in a movement/political party.

8. Did Boston Corbette shoot Boothe for the reasons he gave or did he have other
motivations? How does he differ, in that way, from Boothe himself and how might history
have differed if Boothe had lived or Corbette not been a part of the posse?

9. Would Boothe have killed himself rather than be taken? Would martyrdom had aided his
cause or changed his reputation in history?

10. Would we still revere Lincoln as much or consider him the greatest president if he had not
been killed?
Provided by the Pleasant Valley Free Library.