By 1865, at the age of 26, Booth had much to lose: a loving family, hosts of friends, adoring women, professional success as one of America's foremost actors, and the promise of yet more fame and fortune. Yet he formed a daring conspiracy to abduct Lincoln and barter him for Confederate prisoners of war. The Civil War ended before Booth could carry out his plan, so he assassinated the president, believing him to be a tyrant who had turned the once-proud Union into an engine of oppression that had devastated the South. This book gives a day-by-day account of Booth's complex life--from his birth May 10, 1838, to his death April 26, 1865, and the aftermath--and offers a new understanding of the crime that shocked a nation.
When John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre, his friends were stunned--not only by the murder but by the thought that someone they knew as fantastically gifted, successful and kind-hearted could commit such a crime. Fortune's Fool, the first biography of Booth ever written, is the life story of this talented and troubling individual.
All of the known writings of John Wilkes Booth are included in this collection. Of this wealth of material, the most important item is a previously unpublished twenty-page manuscript discovered at the Players Club in Manhattan. Written by Booth in 1860 in a form similar to Mark Antony's funeral oration in Julius Caesar, it makes clear that his hatred for Lincoln was formed early and was deeply rooted in his pro-slavery and pro-Southern ideology. Also included in the nearly seventy documents are six love letters to a seventeen-year-old Boston girl, Isabel Sumner, written during the summer of 1864, when Booth was conspiring against Lincoln; several explicit statements of Booth's political convictions; and the diary he kept during his futile twelve-day flight after the assassination. The documents show that Booth, although opinionated and impulsive, was not an isolated madman. Rather, he was a highly successful actor and ladies' man who also was a Confederate agent. Along with many others, he believed that Lincoln was a tyrant whose policies threatened civil liberties. --From publisher's description.
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.
Now an Apple TV+ Series “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.
Written years after the Murder of Lincoln...A True Story of How Booth lived and lived years after he was supposed to be dead... In the preparation of this book I have neither spared time or money, since I became satisfied that John Wilkes Booth was not killed, as has been supposed, at the Garrett home in Virginia, on the 26th day of April, 1865, and present this volume of collated facts, which I submit for the correction of history, respecting the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, and the death or escape of John Wilkes Booth. Personally, I know nothing of President Lincoln, and knew nothing of John Wilkes Booth until my meeting with John St. Helen, at my home in Texas, in the year 1872. The picture which John St. Helen left with me for the future identification of himself in his true name and personality, was first identified by Gen. D. D. Dana, of Lubec, Maine, as John Wilkes Booth, January 17, 1898. The second time by Junius Brutus Booth, the third, of Boston, Mass., (he being the oldest living nephew of John Wilkes Booth), on the 21st day of February, 1903, at Memphis, Tenn. The third time by the late Joe Jefferson (the world's famous Rip Van Winkle), at Memphis, Tennessee, on the 14th day of April, 1903, just thirty-eight years to a day from the date of the assassination of President Lincoln. I here make mention of this identification because of its importance. Among the personal acquaintances of John Wilkes Booth none would know him better than Mr. Jefferson, who was most closely associated with him for several years, both playing together on the same stage. I know of no man whose knowledge of Booth is more to be trusted, or whose words of identification will carry more weight to the world at large. While there are many other important personages equally to be relied upon that have identified his pictures there is none other so well known to the general public, having identified the picture taken of John St. Helen, in 1877, as being that of John Wilkes Booth-thus establishing the fact of actual physical proof that John Wilkes Booth was living in 1872, when I met him under the name of John St. Helen, as also when he had his picture taken and left with me in the late winter or early spring of 1878, twelve years after the assassination of President Lincoln. It is well in this connection to call attention to other physical proofs of the identification of John Wilkes Booth by referring to the deformed right thumb, just where it joined the hand, and the mismatched brows, his right brow being arched and unlike the left. The deformity of the right thumb was caused by its having been crushed in the cogs of the machinery used for the hoisting of a stage curtain. The arched brow was caused by Booth being accidentally cut by McCullum with a sabre while they were at practice as the characters of Richard and Richmond, the point of McCullum's sword cutting a gash through the right brow, which had to be stitched up, and in healing became arched. And especially attention is called to the identity of these marks in his pictures more particularly the one at the age of 64, taken of him while he was dead and lying in the morgue. During life Booth carried a small cane between the thumb and forefinger of the right hand to conceal that defect; observe this cane in his hand, in the picture of him at the age of 27. These physical marks on Booth's body settle without argument his identity. However, in all instances of investigation I have sought the highest sources of information and give the conclusive facts supported by physical monument and authentic record. Wherefore, it is by this authority I state the verified truth with impartiality for the betterment of history, to the enlightenment of the present and future generations of mankind, respecting the assassination of one of America's most universally beloved Presidents and the fate of his assassin.
Leading the reader through a series of amazing coincidences and details, this book presents startling evidence that John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Lincoln, was never captured but escaped to live for decades, continue his acting career, marry, and have children. Compelling and revealing information in the form of papers and diaries has recently been found in private collections—materials that provide greater insight into the events leading up to the assassination of Lincoln as well as details of the pursuit and capture of the man the government claimed was Booth.
NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author James Swanson delivers a riveting account of the chase for Abraham Lincoln's assassin. Based on rare archival material, obscure trial manuscripts, and interviews with relatives of the conspirators and the manhunters, CHASING LINCOLN'S KILLER is a fast-paced thriller about the pursuit and capture of John Wilkes Booth: a wild twelve-day chase through the streets of Washington, D.C., across the swamps of Maryland, and into the forests of Virginia.
Was John Wilkes Booth a spy for the Confederacy?Was he an agent for a secret organization?Was he just an American zealot defending the U. S. Constitution?Were any of the conspirators actually innocent?Were there others involved besides the eight who were convicted?This book contains evidence that supports all of these questions. It tracks the day to day movements of John Wilkes Booth and places them in relation to other occurrences happening around him. Derived from researching books, military records, Courthouses, newspapers and other sources, this book is a compendium of the life of John Wilkes Booth.
