On this day in 1838, John Wilkes Booth was born. He is one of the great villains of American history. But I think I understand him. He was, after all, only 26 years old when he assassinated President Lincoln. And it isn’t at clear what he thought he was doing, given that the Civil War was over. But how he reached the point of thinking that it was right to kill the president is not so hard to understand. He got lost in his own vision of the world that was, tellingly, dependent upon Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. He saw Lincoln as Caesar—a despot that needed to be destroyed. I think it is also possible that there was schizophrenia involved.

Of course, there is a big difference between hating a man and thinking he is a tyrant, and setting about to kill that man. Booth’s behavior pushed him further and further away from his family. His older brother Edwin Booth was a unionist and supporter of Lincoln. By 1864, he would no longer welcomed his younger brother in his home. Shortly before John died, Edwin wrote to his sister, “Think no more of him as your brother; he is dead to us now, as he soon must be to all the world, but imagine the boy you loved to be in that better part of his spirit, in another world.”

So the assassin found himself more and more around like-minded people and they managed to whip themselves up to the point where the murder of a president seemed like not just a good idea but an absolutely essential act. It bothers me today because of Cliven Bundy and the militia people. They’ve all convinced themselves that Obama, rather than being just a president of the opposite party, is a despot that must be destroyed. This kind of thinking brought about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and more recently, and pointedly, the Oklahoma City bombing.

I’ve always felt sorry for Edwin Booth. He was a great actor who was on the cutting edge of moving Shakespearean performance toward a more naturalistic style. And the Booths were probably the greatest theatrical family in American history. John Wilkes Booth really screwed that up. Obviously, he did much greater harm to the Lincolns and to the country. But you are supposed to look out for your family. But when ideology gets out of hand, very basic things get lost like love of your family and respect for the law.

Anyway, happy birthday to the very troubled and horrible John Wilkes Booth.