Sic semper

It was easy to identify the dead body of John Wilkes Booth, the man who killed Abraham Lincoln.

He had his initials JWB tattooed on his wrist. 

That body is interred right here in Baltimore, if you can dig it, at Green Mount Cemetery.

Whatever you do with this information, please, don't tell Lainey Litton about it.

Lainey is a little girl of three from down Tennessee way. She took a trip with her family to Washington, D.C. At Ford’s Theatre, she saw the exhibits concerning Lincoln's murder. Later on the trip, she recognized the statue of the 16th president at the Lincoln Memorial and has since developed a deep fear of Booth, the Confederate loyalist who did him in.

Her mom says,“We were at church one Sunday, and the preacher was talking about how Jesus loves us. She looked at me, and she said, ‘Mommy, I love Jesus.’ I said, ‘That's awesome. I'm glad you do,'" Cassie recalls. "She said, ‘Jesus loves us.’ I said, 'That's right.' She said, ‘You know who we don't love? I said, ‘Who?’ She said, ‘John Wilkes Booth.’ "

“It's not something that we tried to bring up to her, but she's aware that John Wilkes Booth was not a great guy.” 

Like any three-year-old, Cassie has a little trouble understanding that Booth, having taken his final bow in 1865, no longer presents any danger to her. 

In my own case, I've never feared Booth, and years of meditation helped me over my notion that Charles J. Guiteau, the disappointed office-seeker who shot President James Garfield, and Leon Czolgosz, the anarchist whose bullet ended the life of President Wm. McKinley, had ill intent toward me.

But I can't shake the suspicion that Elon Musk has my Social Security #.