User:TheLateGatsby/Lincoln Assassination Jesuit Conspiracy

Lincoln Assassination Conspiracies abound, but the most fantastical holds that the Society of Jesus played a major role in the plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln.

It was believed John Wilkes Booth had converted to Catholicism and had been encouraged by Jesuits to aid the infamous plot. There has never been a plausible explanation as to why Jesuits would want Lincoln dead.

Questionable testimony
A defrocked Catholic priest named Charles Chiniquy claimed that he had spoken to Lincoln on several occasions after the 1860 Presidential Elections, and that the President had reflected on the possibility that Catholics were conspiring against him. Robert Todd Lincoln denied his father said any such thing, and lamented that many people have attempted to put words in his father's mouth.

Booth's Religion
The conspiracy declares that John Wilkes Booth converted to Catholicism later in his life, and joined the Knights of the Golden Circle, claimed to be a lay Catholic Organization. This purported affiliation contradicts a New York Times article that describes the Order as profoundly anti-Catholic, with the intent to take over Mexico. After doing so, they intended to bar Catholics from office.

There is no evidence of Booth's conversion to the Catholic faith. John Surratt, one of Booth's confederates, and his mother, Mary Surratt, were Catholic but this is likely coincidence. Other conspirators were Protestant.

Veritas
John Wilkes Booth was believed to be in contact with a person code-named "Veritas"(Truth in Latin). The identity of "Veritas" was never uncovered, but the conspiracy theory assumes Veritas was a Jesuit, as Jesuits study Latin. However, "Veritas" is also the motto of Harvard University, which was founded by Puritans and did not admit Catholics until the Twentieth Century. Educated men often knew a small measure of Latin -Abraham Lincoln himself would have learned some phrases in the course of his law career.

Who buys into this stuff?

 * Jack Chick, who never read Anti-Catholic propaganda too lurid.