Chasing Lincoln’s Killer

Swanson, James. Chasing Lincoln’s Killer. 2009. 194p. ISBN 0-439-90354-8. Available at B BOO on the library shelves.

In April 1865, the United States had been at war for four years. Union and Confederate soldiers fought on battlefields throughout the country in a struggle that by this point the Union was clearly winning. By April 3rd, Union troops had occupied Richmond, the Confederate capital. On the 9th, General Lee had surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia. Everywhere the Confederacy was on the ropes. There were still ardent supporters, however, who would not surrender and sought to continue the struggle for the South.

On April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth, a Confederate sympathizer who hated President Abraham Lincoln and had conspired with others to kidnap him, entered the Ford theater box where Abraham Lincoln, his wife, and another couple sat, and fired a Derringer pistol at the back of Lincoln’s head, mortally wounding him. Booth escaped the theater and rode south, leaving Washington, D.C. and entering Maryland, with hopes of reaching Virginia and Confederate support.

What followed was the largest manhunt in the country’s history up to that time. Quickly identified as Lincoln’s assassin and easily recognizable, Booth thought that the decapitation of the government would rekindle the conflict. Instead it disgusted most Confederate supporters. As an injured Booth moved through Maryland and Virginia with the help of willing and sometimes unknowing accomplices, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton led the operations to find and capture Booth, but the assassin was eventually cornered in a tobacco barn and shot by a Union soldier.

Lincoln’s assassination changed the course of history and transformed the President into a beloved figure. The tale of this manhunt will interest any fan of history as well as of fast-paced criminal cases.