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Summary
Summary
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"A terrific narrative of the hunt for Lincoln's killers that will mesmerize the reader from start to finish."--Doris Kearns Goodwin
The murder of Abraham Lincoln set off the greatest manhunt in American history--the pursuit and capture of John Wilkes Booth. From April 14 to April 26, 1865, the assassin led Union cavalry troops on a wild, 12-day chase from the streets of Washington, D.C., across the swamps of Maryland, and into the forests of Virginia, while the nation, still reeling from the just-ended Civil War, watched in horror and sadness.
Based on rare archival materials, obscure trial transcripts, and Lincoln's own blood relics Manhunt is a fully documented, fascinating tale of murder, intrigue, and betrayal. A gripping hour-by-hour account told through the eyes of the hunted and the hunters, it is history as it's never been read before.
Author Notes
James L.Swanson is the Edgar Award winning author of the New York Times bestseller Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer. In 2009 in Newsweek magazine, Patricia Cornwell named Swanson's Manhunt and Truman Capote's In Cold Blood as the two best nonfiction crime books ever.
In 2006, Entertainment Weekly magazine named Manhunt one of the ten best books of the year. Swanson has degrees in history from The University of Chicago, where he was a student of John Hope Franklin, and law from the University of California, Los Angeles. He has held a number of government and think-tank posts in Washington, D.C., including at the United States Department of Justice. He serves on the advisory council of the Ford's Theatre Society.
His other books include the acclaimed photographic history Lincoln's Assassins: Their Trial and Execution, as well as Chasing Lincoln's Killer, and adaptations of Manhunt and Bloody Crimes for young readers. In 2014 his title, The President Has Been Shot!: The Assasination of Joh F. Kennedy, made The New York Times Best Seller List. James L. Swanson was born on Lincoln's birthday.
(Publisher Provided)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In the early days of April 1865, with the bloody war to preserve the union finished, Swanson tells us, Abraham Lincoln was "jubilant." Elsewhere in Washington, the other player in the coming drama of the president's assassination was miserable. Hearing Lincoln's April 10 victory speech, famed actor and Confederate die-hard John Wilkes Booth turned to a friend and remarked with seething hatred, "That means nigger citizenship. Now, by God, I'll put him through." On April 14, Booth did just that. With great power, passion and at a thrilling, breakneck pace, Swanson (Lincoln's Assassins: Their Trial and Execution) conjures up an exhausted yet jubilant nation ruptured by grief, stunned by tragedy and hell-bent on revenge. For 12 days, assisted by family and some women smitten by his legendary physical beauty, Booth relied on smarts, stealth and luck to elude the best detectives, military officers and local police the federal government could muster. Taking the reader into the action, the story is shot through with breathless, vivid, even gory detail. With a deft, probing style and no small amount of swagger, Swanson, a member of the Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, has crafted pure narrative pleasure, sure to satisfy the casual reader and Civil War aficionado alike. 11 b&w photos not seen by PW. (Feb. 7) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
One of the more kinetic renderings of the Lincoln assassination, Swanson's synthesis of the sources is bound to be a cover-to-cover reading hit with history lovers. The author strategically confines his chronology to the hours surrounding the crime and the ensuing pursuit of the perpetrators, contrasting with Michael W. Kauffman's American Brutus (2004), a biography containing every iota on Booth. Swanson has Booth and his confederates disperse from their final conspiratorial meeting, gulping a last whiskey and proceeding to their dastardly deeds--except for George Atzerodt, who ran from his assignment to murder Vice President Andrew Johnson. After the scenes of Booth's assault, theatrically calculated to ensure his notoriety whether he eluded capture or not, Swanson relates how he and accomplice David Herold bluffed their way out of Washington and linked up with rebel sympathizers. Artfully arranging Booth's flight with the frantic federal dragnet that sought him, Swanson so tensely dramatizes the chase, capture, and killing of Booth that serious shelf-life (plus a movie version starring Harrison Ford) awaits his account of the assassination. --Gilbert Taylor Copyright 2006 Booklist
Kirkus Review
Compelling narrative of John Wilkes Booth's desperate final days, from the co-author of Lincoln's Assassins: Their Trial and Execution (2001). Instead of the comprehensive treatment of the Lincoln conspiracy offered by Michael W. Kauffman in American Brutus (2004), Swanson focuses closely on the 12 days between the fateful pistol shot in Ford's Theater and the cornering and killing of the crippled, charismatic Booth in a Virginia tobacco barn. Relying on primary-source documents, and displaying all the avidity and single-mindedness of Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, the manhunt's director, the author identifies and limns all the chief pursuers and those who wittingly or unwittingly aided the fugitives. He traces the flight and capture of Booth's accomplices, notably Lewis Powell (Seward's attacker), Mary Surratt and George Atzerodt, who aborted his own portion of the conspiracy plan to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson. Swanson skillfully marshals the evidence against Dr. Samuel Mudd, viewed by some historians as blameless, and firmly establishes the doctor's willing collaboration. But star billing here goes to Booth, just as he would have wished. A succession of fortuitous breaks and aid from Confederate sympathizers enabled the actor, accompanied by faithful acolyte David Herold, to avoid detection for almost two weeks, enough time for the magnetic mastermind to reflect on his deed, to read the immediate newspaper reviews of his "production" and to almost stage-manage his own death. By killing Lincoln, Booth believed that he'd avenged the South against her foremost tormentor. Instead, he ensured his own infamy and turned a much-criticized president into Father Abraham, a secular American saint. A meticulous account of crime and capture makes a distinguished and worthy addition to the legend Americans can't seem to read enough about. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Attorney and Lincoln specialist Swanson offers a you-were-there account of the hunt for John Wilkes Booth. The publicist promises that this will be huge. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Manhunt The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer Chapter One "I Had This Strange Dream Again Last Night" John Wilkes Booth awoke Good Friday morning, April 14, 1865, hungover and depressed. The Confederacy was dead. His cause was lost and his dreams of glory over. He did not know that this day, after enduring more than a week of bad news and bitter disappointments, he would enjoy a stunning reversal of fortune. No, all he knew this morning when he crawled out of bed in room 228 at the National Hotel, one of Washington's finest and naturally his favorite, was that he could not stand another day of Union victory celebrations. Booth assumed that April 14 would unfold as the latest in a blur of eleven bad days that began on April 3 when Richmond, the Confederacy's citadel, fell to the Union. The very next day the tyrant, Abraham Lincoln, visited his captive prize and had the audacity to sit behind the desk occupied by the first and last president of the Confederate States of America, Jefferson Davis. Then, on April 9, at Appomattox Court House, Robert E. Lee and his glorious Army of Northern Virginia surrendered. Two days later Lincoln made a speech proposing to give blacks the right to vote, and last night, April 13, all of Washington celebrated with a grand illumination of the city. And today, in Charleston harbor, the Union planned to stage a gala celebration to mark the retaking of Fort Sumter, where the war began four years ago. These past eleven days had been the worst of Booth's young life. He was the son of the legendary actor and tragedian Junius Brutus Booth, and brother to Edwin Booth, one of the finest actors of his generation. Twenty-six years old, impossibly vain, preening, emotionally flamboyant, possessed of raw talent and splendid élan, and a star member of this celebrated theatrical family--the Barrymores of their day--John Wilkes Booth was willing to throw away fame, wealth, and promise for his cause. Handsome and charismatic, he was instantly recognizable to thousands of fans in both the North and the South. His physical beauty astonished all who beheld it. A fellow actor once described him: "Picture to yourself Adonis, with high forehead, sweeping black hair, a figure of perfect youthful proportions and the most wonderful black eyes in the world. Such was John Wilkes Booth. At all times his eyes were his striking features but when his emotions were aroused they were like living jewels." Booth's passions included fine clothing, delectable women, and the romance of lost causes. Booth's day began in the dining room of the National, where he was seen eating breakfast with Miss Carrie Bean. Nothing unusual about that--Booth, a voluptuous connoisseur of young women, never had trouble finding female company. Around noon he walked over to Ford's Theatre on Tenth Street between E and F, a block above Pennsylvania Avenue, to pick up his mail. Accepting correspondence on behalf of itinerant actors was a customary privilege Ford's offered to friends of the house. Earlier that morning Henry Clay Ford, one of the three brothers who ran the theatre, ate breakfast and then walked to the big marble post office at Seventh and F and picked up the mail. There was a letter for Booth. That morning another letter arrived at the theatre. There had been no time to mail it, so its sender, Mary Lincoln, used the president's messenger to bypass the post office and hand-deliver it. The Fords did not even have to read the note to know the good news it contained. The mere arrival of the White House messenger told them that the president was coming tonight! It was a coup against their chief rival, Grover's Theatre, which was offering a more exciting entertainment: Aladdin! Or His Wonderful Lamp . Master Tad Lincoln and chaperone would represent the family there. The letter, once opened, announced even greater news. Yes, the president and Mrs. Lincoln would attend this evening's performance of Tom Taylor's popular if tired comedy Our American Cousin. But the big news was that General Ulysses S. Grant was coming with them. The Lincolns' timing delighted the Fords. Good Friday was traditionally a slow night, and news that not only the president--after four years a familiar sight to Washingtonians--but also General Grant, a rare visitor to town and fresh from his victory at Appomattox, would attend, was sure to spur ticket sales. This would please Laura Keene, who was making her one thousandth performance in the play; tonight's show was a customary "benefit," awarding her a rich share of the proceeds. The Lincolns had given the Fords the courtesy of notification early enough in the day for the brothers to promote their appearance and to decorate and join together the two boxes--seven and eight--that, by removal of a simple partition, formed the president's box. By the time Booth arrived at Ford's, the president's messenger had come and gone. Sometime between noon and 12:30 p.m. as he sat outside on the top step in front of the main entrance to Ford's reading his letter, Booth heard the galvanizing news. In just eight hours the subject of all of his brooding, hating, and plotting would stand on the very stone steps where he now sat. This was the catalyst Booth needed to prompt him to action. Here. Of all places, Lincoln was coming here. Booth knew the layout of Ford's intimately: the exact spot on Tenth Street where Lincoln would step out of his carriage; the place the president sat every time he came to the theatre; the route through the theatre that Lincoln would walk and the staircase he would ascend to the box; the dark, subterranean passageway beneath the stage; the narrow hallway behind the stage that led to the back door that opened to Baptist Alley; and how the president's box hung directly above the stage. Booth had played here before, most recently in a March 18 performance as Pescara in The Apostate . Manhunt The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer . Copyright © by James Swanson. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer by James L. Swanson All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
