The Lincoln Assassination In American History

This book describes the people, events, and the conspiracy that led to the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in 1865. It traces the lives of both Lincoln and the man who killed him, John Wilkes Booth. Highlighting the tensions and political divisions of the Civil War era, the story of the first United States presidential assassination is told in great detail.

Finally, a compelling narrative history of the Lincoln assassination that refuses to ignore John Wilkes Booth's motivation: his growing, obsessive commitment to white supremacy. On April 14, 1865, after nearly a year of conspiring, John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln as the president watched a production of Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre. Lincoln died the next morning. Twelve days later, Booth himself was fatally shot by a Union soldier after an extensive manhunt. The basic outline of this story is well known even to schoolchildren; what has been obscured is Booth's motivation for the act, which remains widely misunderstood nearly 160 years after the shot from his pocket pistol echoed through the crowded theater. In this riveting new book, John Rhodehamel argues that Booth's primary motivation for his heinous crime was a growing commitment to white supremacy. In alternating chapters, America's Original Sin shows how, as Lincoln's commitment to emancipation and racial equality grew, so too did Booth's rage and hatred for Lincoln, whom he referred to as "King Abraham Africanus the First." Examining Booth's early life in Maryland, Rhodehamel traces the evolution of his racial hatred from his youthful embrace of white supremacy through to his final act of murder. Along the way, he considers and discards other potential motivations for Booth's act, such as mental illness or persistent drunkenness, which are all, Rhodehamel writes, either insufficient to explain Booth's actions or were excuses made after the fact by those who sympathized with him. Focusing on how white supremacy brought about the Civil War and, later, betrayed the conflict's emancipationist legacy, Rhodehamel's masterful narrative makes this old story seem new again. The first book to explicitly name white supremacy as the motivation for Lincoln's assassination, America's Original Sin is an important and eloquent look at one of the most notorious episodes in American history.

The assassination of President Abraham Lincoln remains one of the most prominent events in U.S. history. It continues to attract enormous and intense interest from scholars, writers, and armchair historians alike, ranging from painstaking new research to wild-eyed speculation. At the end of the Lincoln bicentennial year, and the onset of the Civil War sesquicentennial, the leading scholars of Lincoln and his murder offer in one volume their latest studies and arguments about the assassination, its aftermath, the extraordinary public reaction (which was more complex than has been previously believed), and the iconography that Lincoln’s murder and deification inspired. Contributors also offer the most up-to-date accounts of the parallel legal event of the summer of 1865—the relentless pursuit, prosecution, and punishment of the conspirators. Everything from graphic tributes to religious sermons, to spontaneous outbursts on the streets of the nation’s cities, to emotional mass-mourning at carefully organized funerals, as well as the imposition of military jurisprudence to try the conspirators, is examined in the light of fresh evidence and insightful analysis. The contributors are among the finest scholars who are studying Lincoln’s assassination. All have earned well-deserved reputations for the quality of their research, their thoroughness, their originality, and their writing. In addition to the editors, contributors include Thomas R. Turner, Edward Steers Jr., Michael W. Kauffman, Thomas P. Lowry, Richard E. Sloan, Elizabeth D. Leonard, and Richard Nelson Current.

Blood on the Moon examines the evidence, myths, and lies surrounding the political assassination that dramatically altered the course of American history. Was John Wilkes Booth a crazed loner acting out of revenge, or was he the key player in a wide conspiracy aimed at removing the one man who had crushed the Confederacy's dream of independence? Edward Steers Jr. crafts an intimate, engaging narrative of the events leading to Lincoln's death and the political, judicial, and cultural aftermaths of his assassination.

Lincoln's Last Days is a gripping account of one of the most dramatic nights in American history—of how one gunshot changed the country forever. Adapted from Bill O'Reilly's bestselling historical thriller, Killing Lincoln, this book will have young readers—and grown-ups too—hooked on history. In the spring of 1865, President Abraham Lincoln travels through Washington, D.C., after finally winning America's bloody Civil War. In the midst of celebrations, Lincoln is assassinated at Ford's Theatre by a famous actor named John Wilkes Booth. What follows is a thrilling chase, ending with a fiery shoot-out and swift justice for the perpetrators. With an unforgettable cast of characters, page-turning action, vivid detail, and art on every spread, Lincoln's Last Days is history that reads like a thriller. This is a very special book, irresistible on its own or as a compelling companion to Killing Lincoln.

Louis J. Weichmann, one of the principal witnesses at the trial of the conspirators in the assassination of President Lincoln, tells the story of the plotting that took place in the boarding house where Weichmann lived.

It is a tale as familiar as our history primers: A deranged actor, John Wilkes Booth, killed Abraham Lincoln in Ford’s Theatre, escaped on foot, and eluded capture for twelve days until he met his fiery end in a Virginia tobacco barn. In the national hysteria that followed, eight others were arrested and tried; four of those were executed, four imprisoned. Therein lie all the classic elements of a great thriller. But the untold tale is even more fascinating. Now, in American Brutus, Michael W. Kauffman, one of the foremost Lincoln assassination authorities, takes familiar history to a deeper level, offering an unprecedented, authoritative account of the Lincoln murder conspiracy. Working from a staggering array of archival sources and new research, Kauffman sheds new light on the background and motives of John Wilkes Booth, the mechanics of his plot to topple the Union government, and the trials and fates of the conspirators. Piece by piece, Kauffman explains and corrects common misperceptions and analyzes the political motivation behind Booth’s plan to unseat Lincoln, in whom the assassin saw a treacherous autocrat, “an American Caesar.” In preparing his study, Kauffman spared no effort getting at the truth: He even lived in Booth’s house, and re-created key parts of Booth’s escape. Thanks to Kauffman’s discoveries, readers will have a new understanding of this defining event in our nation’s history, and they will come to see how public sentiment about Booth at the time of the assassination and ever since has made an accurate account of his actions and motives next to impossible–until now. In nearly 140 years there has been an overwhelming body of literature on the Lincoln assassination, much of it incomplete and oftentimes contradictory. In American Brutus, Kauffman finally makes sense of an incident whose causes and effects reverberate to this day. Provocative, absorbing, utterly cogent, at times controversial, this will become the definitive text on a watershed event in American history.

*Includes dozens of pictures of Lincoln, Kennedy, and other important people, places, and events. *Explains how Booth's plot against Lincoln evolved and the political circumstances that compelled Kennedy to make his fateful trip to Dallas. *Covers the aftermath of both assassinations, including the manhunt for Booth and the investigations of the Kennedy assassination. *Discusses the conspiracy theories surrounding the Kennedy assassination and the similarities and differences between Kennedy, Lincoln and their assassinations. In the annals of American history, few moments have been so thoroughly seared into the nation's conscience that Americans can remember exactly where and when they heard about an earth-shattering event. In the 19th century, there was the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and in the 20th century there was Pearl Harbor and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Until April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth was one of the most famous actors of his time, and President Abraham Lincoln had even watched him perform. But his most significant performance at a theater did not take place on the stage. That night, Booth became one of history's most infamous assassins when he assassinated President Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. Although Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia had surrendered days earlier, Booth believed the war was not yet over because Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston's army was still fighting the Union Army, so he and his group of conspirators plotted to kill Lincoln and other top officials in a bid to decapitate the federal government and help the South. Perhaps not surprisingly, the actor's flair for the dramatic came at a cost to the plot. It took almost no time for the shocked public and the federal government to begin unraveling Booth's conspiracy, which had mostly faltered from the beginning. Following the shooting, America's most famous manhunt commenced, which itself became the stuff of legends. November 22, 1963 started as a typical Friday, and many Americans were unaware that President Kennedy was even heading to Dallas, Texas. John and Jackie arrived in Dallas in the morning, with Texas Governor John Connally alongside them and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson due to arrive later to meet them there. As the First Couple rode with the Connallys in an open motorcade en route to a speech Kennedy would deliver later. As they waved to the people lining the streets, around 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time, Governor Connally's wife turned around to the first couple and said, "Mr. President, you can't say Dallas doesn't love you." Moments later, the most controversial assassination in American history took place as a series of shots were fired at the motorcade. The indelible images provided by the Zapruder film of Kennedy being hit in the throat and head, followed by Jackie crawling over the backseat toward the trunk are now instantly recognizable. Within minutes, the news of the shooting began to spread from Dallas across the nation, and everyone's worst fears were confirmed when the President was declared dead about half an hour after the shooting. In the wake of the shooting, Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested, proclaimed his innocence, and was then murdered himself by Jack Ruby two days later. The day after that, the President was given a state funeral and procession. The unbelievable chain of events that took place in those 72 hours understandably left the nation shell-shocked. Killing The President chronicles the two most shocking assassinations in American history, the chaos that ensued in the immediate aftermath, and their similarities and differences. Along with dozens of pictures, you will learn about the assassinations of Lincoln and Kennedy like you never have before.