Word: stacton
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...SIGNAL VICTORY (224 pp.)-David Stacton-Pantheon...
...Judges of the Secret Court, by David Stacton. The author, a historical novelist (On a Balcony) of rare skill, writes a bitter account of the death of Assassin John Wilkes Booth and the trial and execution of the forlorn set of dupes and fools named as his fellow conspirators...
...Historical novelists seldom write in anger. In telling about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, his killer, John Wilkes Booth, and the near-farcical trial of Booth's fellow "conspirators," Author Stacton is clearly angry, but not at Booth; shrewdly enough, he treats him with pitying contempt. His target is the injustice that was done not only to Booth's largely duped friends but to the murderer's family as a result of his tragically stupid and criminal...
...story is familiar, but Author Stacton gives it dramatic freshness with a spare, stabbing style and attention only to the details that count. His few pages on Lincoln combine tribute and admiration with a down-to-earth recognition of the man's human vulnerability. But it is the peripheral characters who take on fascination, partly because they are pitiable, but also because they are victims by association. Booth's sorry hangers-on, with one exception (Payne, who did attempt to murder Secretary of State Seward), are merely frightened and bewildered. And poor Mary Surratt, kind, dignified and finally...
...Author Stacton has the knack of making even his novelist's liberties seem like living history. His John Wilkes Booth is all actor-shallow, vain and no more determined to eliminate Lincoln from the stage of history than to give John Wilkes a place on it. With his good looks, sonorous voice and flashy clothes, he could make himself attractive not only to women but to second-rate men who took him for a leader. To Booth, the cause of the South was the cause of gentlemen, and above all the little actor wanted to be recognized...