Ryan OConnor Mr.

Borrero ENGL 1102 13 April 2012 The Pitch Dear Executives, Throughout much of history, the people who are considered heroes and the ones considered villains make up most of the people who are talked about. I want the readers of my book Affirming Death to learn about the average people in history the ones on the sidelines watching as the heroes and villains receive all the glory and fame. The average persons perspective gives readers a sense that they are actually living in that specific time period. The readers of the book will be engaged with the main character of my book, Dr. Samuel A. Mudd, not because he is a similar person to the members of my audience, but because Mudds character and his actions will make my audience side with him. The interactions between Mudd and Booth on April 15, 1865 create vital decisions that Mudd has to decide. Also, while Dr. Mudd is persecuted continuously by judges and jurors because he supposedly conspired against the President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, the readers of my book will be the only people (other than Mudd) that actually knew that he was innocent. Telling the story of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865 through the perspective of an innocent civilian will persuade my readers to side with the innocent civilian because my audience will know that he is innocent. Although the court case involving Dr. Samuel A. Mudd was officially closed in 1865 proving Mudd guilty, I want my audience to feel like Mudd was completely innocent. (Chambers

Comment [RPO1]: The five skills I focused on in this revision are: 1.) Purpose for creating this concept (why it is unique). 2.) Context (research and background presented before going into any other aspects to help contextualize the rest of the piece). 3.) Describing who my audience is more specifically. 4.) Possible restructuring of paper (re-ordering paragraphs). 5.) Stop making assumptions.

Comment [RPO2]: Tried to be a little more clear and decided to take a more neutral stance when talking about Mudd because he is still controversial. I feel that my book should prove that he is not guilty, not my pitch.

p: 1-7) I want the people who currently believe that Mudd was guilty, to change their minds and acknowledge the governmental injustice. To some people, I want them to feel a sense of closure to the case by changing the outcome completely. I plan to bring forth the same controversy from the time period and show that the government reacted too harshly against the accused. Mudd was not the only person to be accused; he was just one of eight possible conspirers. Because the trial was held by Northern officials and most of the accused were Southerners, the actions and decisions made by the court were too impulsive. (Fireside p: 86-103) My book focuses on the events shortly after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865. John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of the President, flees Washington D.C. after the assassination and stopped at Dr. Mudds plantation house in Charles County, Maryland to seek medical attention for a broken leg. (John Wilkes Booth) The plot of my story is very character driven and the events gradually increase in severity as the story progresses. The book starts out by going through the average day in the life of a 19th century doctor Dr. Samuel A. Mudd. Mudd is the narrator because he is later faced with decisions that prove his guilt of innocence in regards to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Certain events during the day foreshadow what is to come later that same night. John Wilkes Booth stops by Mudds house late that night/early morning on April 15, 1865 for medical attention for a broken leg. Booth is an old friend of Mudds and he thinks nothing of the incident, but as the night progresses, Mudd learns about Booths assassination attempt and is torn between turning him in or letting him go. He has an internal conflict on whether or not he should turn a friend in to the authorities or letting Booth leave unquestioned. This decision is crucial for Mudd because he has a

Comment [RPO3]: Moved in-text citation.

Comment [RPO4]: Changed a lot to the end of the introduction. Tried to give more purpose to my concept. Centered my concept around the government injustice that occurred.

Comment [RPO5]: I tried to give a little more context about the event. I stopped assuming the people who read this pitch read my Historical Inquiry Paper. I also tried to set up what I already wrote (the rest of the paragraph) so that it would have importance. Adding some context solved a lot of problems in this paragraph.

good feeling that Booth just carried out an assassination; so by not turning Booth in, Mudd would possibly be an accomplice of murder but Booth was a long friend of Mudds and Mudd was not 100 percent sure that Booth was a criminal. Mudd eventually decides that he needs to turn his friend in, but when he mentions his plans to Booth, he is forced to let Booth go through death threats made by Booth and because Booth had a gun with him. Altogether, the whole night plays a significant role in the rest of the story. Dr. Mudd is apprehended by authorities and has to stand trial for co-conspiring with Booth in assassinating the President. (John Wilkes Booth) This is where my audience would become really engaged with Mudds character as he struggles to fight against the injustice. The trial is held by Northerners that assumed that every accused person brought forth was guilty. It feels like the whole world is against Mudd, yet the readers of the story and Dr. Mudd know that he is completely innocent. The rest of the story plays out exactly like it actually did Mudd was sent to jail along with many of the others that were accused. He escapes the death penalty by one vote while some of the others accused were executed. The story is not supposed to have a totally different outcome than that of history, it is supposed to convince my audience that Mudd did not aid in the assassination of one of the most popular Presidents in U.S. history. It also points out the rash decisions made by the Northern courts (possibly as a whole) at the end of the Civil War. The characters in my story are the reason why it may be enticing to a great number of people. The main character, Dr. Mudd, is a somewhat typical gentleman that I believe my readers could relate to. Mudd is a wealthy, slave owner who owns a large farmhouse in the suburbs of Washington D.C. His personality is what you would expect a wealthy gentleman would have outspoken, respected, friendly, and hard-working. I
Comment [RPO8]: I explained the rest of my plot and tried to explain the purpose again in more detail. This book could possibly be a paradigm to how the North reacted when it came to Southerners and Southern actions during the Civil War time period. Comment [RPO7]: I somewhat changed my plot to signify that Mudd chose to be innocent of being an accomplice. Comment [RPO6]: Explained why Mudd was torn with this decision.

purposely made his character a protagonist because I want my readers to like him and feel like they actually are Dr. Mudd as they are reading my story. By reliving the story through the eyes of Mudd, my readers will easily understand the setting of the time, the social issues of the time (mainly the Civil War and grievances between the North and the South), and the judicial unfairness between Northerners and Southerners. The other main character more often seen as the antagonist is John Wilkes Booth. He is a very interesting character because he is secretly devious. He often gets people to do evil things for him without knowing what they are doing. Booths personality is twisted, evil, and sick, yet he portrays himself as a gentleman. He was a very popular Shakespearean actor in the 1850s but was secretly a spy for the Confederacy. His roles in the plays he performed were always characters that killed a tyrant. (John Wilkes Booth) The two characters, Booth and Mudd, and their interactions with one another, drives the story forward because the bulk of the story talks about the night that they meet. There are clearly other characters in the story but they do not have much significance to the overall concept. In my book, these smaller characters would play such a small role and only have maybe a few pages where they are included. These characters kind of blend into the setting of the story and make it feel like the story is more complete. By this point you are all probably asking yourselves What is the point of this? Why would I want to read this book? Well, not only will you enrich your understanding of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, but you will also be hypothetically dropped into the story as Dr. Mudd. You will feel like you are him and you will feel similar to what is felt when reading The Crucible a book that has a somewhat similar plot and underlining meaning. In The Crucible, the main character John Proctor is wrongly accused of being a
Comment [RPO10]: Implemented factual research to reinforce Booths personality. Comment [RPO9]: I tried to explain why embracing Mudds character is important to the rest of the story and why he is the narrator. Mudds perspective easily highlights the social issues of the time. One of the main issues unfairness and intolerance of Southerners in Northern courts during the Civil War time period.

witch because an already accused witch says that he is. He is hanged even though he was completely innocent. The meaning of my book is very similar to this book it is not supposed to have the best ending, the struggles and conflict within the story is why my book should be successful. Although I obviously want everyone to buy and read my book, I know there will be a specific group of people that this story would appeal to. First and foremost, I believe that my book would be beloved by older aged men (probably within 40 to 80 years old) because older men tend to be more interested in history books and especially books during wartime. Older men would inevitably flock towards my book because of the social issues brought forth during wartime. I feel that historians and Civil War buffs tend to be older aged men but I want the book to be more engaging for younger men and maybe some women of all ages. To do this, the text in the book would be written in a more dramatic fashion, somewhat Edgar Allen Poe-like but without the rhyme schemes. I also think that people that live closer to where the events in my book actually happened would absolutely love my book because it can help them learn about the history of where they live. But people far away from the events that occurred in the book, for example, California, would not be very interested in events that took place thousands of miles away. So I feel that the demographics of my audience would be dispersed from the central marketing point Charles County, Maryland and trickle out north, south, and eastward. By focusing our marketing on one specific region of the country, it could make the book widely accredited and famed because the people in the area would inevitably like the book. I hope that not only would I appeal to my intended audience older men interested in major historic events, wars, and rebellion, but I also want professional
Comment [RPO12]: Although my audience is somewhat general, I tried to explain exactly why my audience would be appealed to my book. Comment [RPO11]: I related my book to The Crucible more. I showed the parallels between the two books.

historians to read my book. I want them to read the book so that they could acknowledge that Mudd was innocent. If enough historians accept that he actually was innocent, then history could be rewritten. Also, this would tie back into my purpose: hopefully these historians would highlight the judicial injustices better than they are highlighted already. Altogether, I feel that my book will be very successful because of the detailed plot of the story, the polarized characters, and the ingenious marketing strategy. I hope that much of my readers will feel like they are actually in the book as they are reading it. I want to bring forth Dr. Samuel A. Mudds innocence through his engagement with the reader. This will ultimately lead most of my audience to believe that Dr. Mudd is innocent and therefore, completely change what is accepted history while bringing attention to the intolerance of Southerners in Northern court cases during the Civil War time period.
Comment [RPO14]: I tried to emphasize my purpose better. Comment [RPO13]: I showed that I wanted my book to be informational yet purposeful.

Works Cited "Booth, John Wilkes." UXL Encyclopedia of World Biography. Encyclopedia.com, 2003. Web. 20 Feb. 2012 Chambers II, John Whiteclay. "Civil War (1861-65)." The Oxford Companion to American Military History, 2000. Web. 20 Feb 2012 Fireside, Bryna J. The Mary Surratt Lincoln Assassination Trial. Headline Court Cases. 2001. Print. 23 April 2012