"John Wilkes Booth was not a patriot of any sort. His aim was self aggrandizement. The war, to all intents and puposes, was over. He accomplished nothing but harm to the South. Stan"

One of the main goals in war is to kill the enemies president.

It is obviously American doctrine to try and kill the enemies president. Remember Khadaffi of Lybia and Hussein of Iraq? The US sent bombers in the middle of the night to bomb their houses. These could certainly be considered assassination attempts.

Also the Dahlgren Affair points to the fact that the US was trying to assassinate Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

Booth singlehandedly killed the enemies President, and he surely must have known this was a suicide mission.

To blame Booth on the harming of the South is to forget the fact that the US army under Lincoln had already murdered 50,000 southern civilians and rampaged their way thru the South attacking noncombatants and destroying entire cities full of women and children.