Talk:Abraham Lincoln assassination

Remove/rework Lincolns Premonitions

The section on premonitions seems to suggest that they were supernatural. The opening sentence- "It is widely believed that when he was president, Lincoln might have known of his assassination before he died,"- is particularly clumsy.

I'm going to change it to "It is widely believed that Lincoln anticipated his assassination," for now, to remove the absurd, the redundant, and the flimsy.

An expert on the assassination- preferrably one that has enough self-respect not to cite cable docudramas- should review the premonitions section. The new section might be relevant if it focuses on Lincoln's suicide ideation and entirely rational fear of threat from southerners. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.15.133.155 (talk • contribs) 18:26, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

I simplified it a bit. Please be polite when talking about other editors, even if you don't think they choose good sources. If you didn't see the TV program cited, you can't know what sources it used. --Auntof6 (talk) 18:47, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

Lamon and Crook's statements

I strongly suggest removing the "dreams" section from this article or at least having historians' view on this thing. As more clever Lincoln writers show, Lamon's story of the dream was not written until the 1880s, years after the assassination and his story has inconsistencies. As for Crook, as it has been pointed out, other accounts say that Lincoln was willing to go to the theater and that Mary did not want to go; contrary to Crook's statement that Mary wanted to go and Lincoln didn't want to. Author Ed Steers writes, "Historian William Hanchett has shown that these (i.e. Crook's) recollections and other reminisces Crook writes about fall into the myth category, related at a time late in Crook's life when there was no one left alive to refute them...Because of this Crook cannot be considered a trustworthy source on the events surrounding Lincoln's assassination." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.13.47.9 (talk • contribs) 17:28, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

If you cite Steers or Hanchett or the "other accounts" in the article, then you're more than welcome to put those points of view in as well. But please write in Simple English as much as possible. I have this page on my watchlist because it has been prone to conspiracy theories and things about the supernatural. The opening sentence of that section is a bit ridiculous: "It is believed that Lincoln knew he might be assassinated." Believed by whom? If the dreams were his basis for knowing, then it's not really possible that he could have known. Osiris (talk) 09:50, 16 March 2016 (UTC)