The most enigmatic of the associates of Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth, Confederate soldier Lewis Thornton Powell, using the alias Lewis Paine, was a key player in the postwar attempt to undermine the Federal government. On the night Lincoln was shot, 20-year-old Powell burst into the house of William Seward and attempted to assassinate the secretary of state. Captured shortly after the assassination, Powell stood trial for his crime and was hanged three months later. Powell and his role in the conspiracy has been the subject of debate for many years. Who was this man? This biography attempts to unveil his true character.
The first-ever narrative history of African Americans told through their own letters Letters from Black America fills a literary and historical void by presenting the spectrum of African American experience in the most intimate way possible—through the heartfelt correspondence of those who lived through monumental changes and pivotal events, from the American Revolution to the war in Iraq, from slavery to the election of Obama.
The assassination of Abraham Lincoln is a central drama of the American experience. Its impact is felt to this day, and the basic story is known to all. Anthony Pitch?s thrilling account of the Lincoln conspiracy and its aftermath transcends the mere facts of that awful night during which dashing actor John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln in the head and would-be assassin Lewis Payne butchered Secretary of State William Seward in the bed of his own home. ?They Have Killed Papa Dead!? transports the reader to one of the most breathtaking moments in history, and reveals much about the stories, passions, and times of those who shaped this great tragedy. Virtually every word of Anthony Pitch?s account is based on primary source material: quotes from previously unpublished documents, diaries, letters, and journals. With an unwavering fidelity to historical accuracy, Pitch provides confirmation of threats against the president-elect?s life as he traveled to Washington by train for his first inauguration, and a vivid personal account of John Wilkes Booth being physically restrained from approaching Lincoln at his second inauguration. Perhaps most chillingly, details come to light about conditions in the special prison where the civilian conspirators accused of participating in the Lincoln assassination endured tortuous conditions in extreme isolation and deprivation, hooded and shackled, before and even during their military trial. Pitch masterfully synthesizes the findings of his prodigious research into a tight, gripping narrative that adds important insights to our national story.
divC. Vann Woodward was one of the most prominent and respected American historians of the twentieth century. He was also a very gifted and frequent writer of letters, from his earliest days as a young student in Arkansas and Georgia to his later days at Yale when he became one of the arbiters of American intellectual culture./DIVdiv /DIVdivFor the first time, his sprightly, wry, sympathetic, and often funny letters are published, including those he wrote to figures as diverse as John Kennedy, David Riesman, Richard Hofstadter, and Robert Penn Warren. The letters shed new light not only on Woodward himself, but on what it meant to be an American radical and public intellectual, as well as on the complex politics and discourse of the historical profession and the anxious modulations of Southern culture./DIV
