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Most Americans are aware that their sixteenth president was mortally wounded by a man named Booth at a Washington theater in April 1865. These are facts that nobody can dispute. However, a closer look at this history-changing catastrophe raises questions that have still not been fully answered. The passing of the 150th anniversary of the United States' first presidential assassination is an ideal time for students and scholars to consider these questions.The Lincoln Assassination Riddle explores the persistent mysteries of the assassination with contributions from leading experts-Burrus M. Carnahan, Joan L. Chaconas, Michael S. Green, Michael Kauffman, Betsy J. Ownsbey, Edward Steers Jr., Tom Turner, and others-who approach the crime from a variety of perspectives. Each focuses on one controversial or compelling topic-among them the extent of the conspiracy to kill President Lincoln, whether Lincoln can be regarded as a martyr to voting rights, a new analysis of John Wilkes Booth and his relationship with the Confederate government and how it affected the plot, the forensics of Lincoln's death, and whether modern medicine could have saved the president. Also included are important discussions of Booth's escape route in southern Maryland and its effects on the assassination. Controversial figures like Louis Weichmann and Mary and John Surratt are profiled and the evidence against them examined.There is little doubt that the assassination of Abraham Lincoln changed the course of American history in ways we are still dealing with today. The course of racial justice in the United States was for- ever altered by Booth's bullet. This volume will challenge and delight readers who are interested in getting to know everything they can about this epic and tragic event and in untangling the riddle of the Lincoln assassination.

Sujets

Histoire

USA

True crime

History of the Americas

États-Unis

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Publié par	The Kent State University Press
Date de parution	13 mai 2016
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781631012068
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

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The Lincoln Assassination Riddle
TRUE CRIME HISTORY SERIES
Twilight of Innocence: The Disappearance of Beverly Potts · James Jessen Badal
Tracks to Murder · Jonathan Goodman
Terrorism for Self-Glorification: The Herostratos Syndrome · Albert Borowitz
Ripperology: A Study of the World’s First Serial Killer and a Literary Phenomenon Robin Odell
The Good-bye Door: The Incredible True Story of America’s First Female Serial Killer to Die in the Chair · Diana Britt Franklin
Murder on Several Occasions · Jonathan Goodman
The Murder of Mary Bean and Other Stories · Elizabeth A. De Wolfe
Lethal Witness: Sir Bernard Spilsbury, Honorary Pathologist · Andrew Rose
Murder of a Journalist: The True Story of the Death of Donald Ring Mellett Thomas Crowl
Musical Mysteries: From Mozart to John Lennon · Albert Borowitz
The Adventuress: Murder, Blackmail, and Confidence Games in the Gilded Age Virginia A. McConnell
Queen Victoria’s Stalker: The Strange Case of the Boy Jones · Jan Bondeson
Born to Lose: Stanley B. Hoss and the Crime Spree that Gripped a Nation James G. Hollock
Murder and Martial Justice: Spying, “Terrorism,” and Retribution in Wartime America · Meredith Lentz Adams
The Christmas Murders: Classic Stories of True Crime · Jonathan Goodman
The Supernatural Murders: Classic Stories of True Crime · Jonathan Goodman
Guilty by Popular Demand: A True Story of Small-Town Injustice · Bill Osinski
Nameless Indignities: Unraveling the Mystery of One of Illinois’s Most Infamous and Intriguing Crimes · Susan Elmore
Hauptmann’s Ladder: A Step-by-Step Analysis of the Lindbergh Kidnapping Richard T. Cahill Jr.
The Lincoln Assassination Riddle: Revisiting the Crime of the Nineteenth Century Edited by Frank J. Williams and Michael Burkhimer
The
Lincoln Assassination Riddle
Revisiting the Crime of the Nineteenth Century

Edited by Frank J. Williams and Michael Burkhimer
THE KENT STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Kent, Ohio
© 2016 by The Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio 44242
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2015036108
ISBN 978-1-60635-295-3
Manufactured in the United States of America
L IBRARY OF C ONGRESS C ATALOGING-IN -P UBLICATION D ATA
The Lincoln assassination riddle : revisiting the crime of the nineteenth century / edited by Frank J. Williams and Michael Burkhimer.
pages cm — (True crime history series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-60635-295-3 (hardcover : alk. paper) ∞
1. Lincoln, Abraham, 1809–1865—Assassination. I. Williams, Frank J., editor. II. Burkhimer, Michael, 1973– editor, author.
E457.5.L738 2016
973.7092—dc23 2015036108
20 19 18 17 16 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Preface
Frank J. Williams
1 The Baltimore Plot: Was John Wilkes Booth Involved in the First Conspiracy to Assassinate Lincoln?
Michael J. Kline
2 John Wilkes Booth’s Confederate Connection
Edward Steers Jr .
3 Guilt by Insinuation: Law and Illusion in the Lincoln Conspiracy
Michael W. Kauffman
4 The Wound of Mr. Lincoln
Blaine V. Houmes
5 The Men Who Caught Lincoln’s Assassin: How Twenty-Nine Men Succeeded Where Ten Thousand Searchers Failed
Steven G. Miller
6 The Mystery of Mrs. Surratt: Did She or Didn’t She?
Laurie Verge
7 John Harrison Surratt Jr.
Joan L. Chaconas
8 Lewis Powell: Alias Paine—Confederate Guerrilla Freedom Fighter or Terrorist?
Betty J. Ownsbey
9 The Weichmann Enigma
Steven J. Wright
10 Mary Lincoln and the Lincoln Assassination: Grief Unbounded
Richard W. Etulain
11 Robert Todd Lincoln: The Grieving Prince of Rails
Michael S. Green
12 Shattered and Altered Lives of the Lincoln Assassination
Hugh Boyle
13 Abraham Lincoln: Voting Rights Martyr?
Michael Burkhimer
14 The Law of War, General Orders No. 100, and the Military Trial of the Conspirators
Burrus M. Carnahan
15 What Goes Around Comes Around: Americans Interpret the Lincoln Assassination
Thomas R. Turner
Contributors
Index
Preface
Frank J. Williams
A S A NATION , the United States has experienced threats and terrifying acts of assassinations dating from at least 1835, when an unhinged housepainter confronted President Andrew Jackson with a pair of pistols, which, luckily, misfired. In darker times and places, guns have altered American politics by both potential and successful assassins.
This book reflects a sense of the periodic violent eruption—most notably the assassination that occurred on April 14, 1865—and seeks to understand its causes, individual agents, and legacy. The hope is that such knowledge might mark a path, no matter how incomplete, as to how such bullets have preempted ballots. Though the phenomenon of assassination has been with the world almost forever, Americans came to it relatively late.
And Americans came to it differently. Before our time, assassins calmly killed public figures out of clear political motivation. Typically, they were cool, relentless, often organized into terrorist teams, and perfectly willing to die for a cause; contemporary terrorists seem to emulate these assassins.
But America’s assassins broke this pattern. They did not habitually band together for their tasks, nor have they shown interest in low-level officials, in contrast to the frequent phenomenon in other countries, with massive killings of low-level civilian officials, as well as women and children by both domestic and foreign killers. Nonetheless, most remain attracted to the president or similarly striking figures. Yet they kill fairly rarely: from 1919 to the present, one American president was slain (despite unsuccessful attempts on FDR, Gerald R. Ford, and Ronald Reagan); compare this with thirty-nine heads of state slain elsewhere in the world. Genuine cases of conspiracy, prevalent elsewhere in the world, are absent among American assassinations.
Assassination ordains the death of a leader and disrupts public order. The people who govern us are thrown into turmoil; policies shift as the political system is reexamined and likely modified. But most of all, the assassination—so sudden, unexpected, terrible—traumatizes the consciousness of ordinary people.
Is it possible to understand the phenomenon of the assassin? To answer this question, we undertake the chronicle of the Lincoln riddle. Ultimately, the hope is that this book might shed some light on the mystery of why Americans kill their leaders.
Perhaps the unique characteristic of the American phenomenon is that the assassin misunderstands the policy he tries to violently disrupt; the assassin is a poor historian, though he believes the opposite. Extreme linear and insular reasoning contributes to a delusional fantasy. For example, John Wilkes Booth believed that he could eliminate the great threat to the South, yet Lincoln’s death instead led to tight-lipped radical Reconstructionists—latter-day inquisitionists—whose policies still divide the nation. If the assassins survive their dastardly deeds, they confront further miscalculations: they ignore the avenging angel—a sergeant who slays Booth, a Huey Long bodyguard, a Jack Ruby.
Yet surviving assassins insist their acts have righted fundamental wrongs and that they behaved in accordance with America’s ideals. Coupled with the toleration, even veneration, for violence, that paradox sinks deep into the dark hearts of American assassins. In John Wilkes Booth, it pulsated incessantly.
This volume explores this ongoing “riddle” with contributions from those who approach the assassination from different perspectives. Each focuses on one controversial and compelling aspect of the event, including the extent of the conspiracy to kill President Lincoln; whether Lincoln may be regarded as a martyr to voting rights; John Wilkes Booth’s relationship with his family and its effect on him; the forensics of Lincoln’s death; and whether modern science might have saved the president. Other discussions cover the escape route in southern Maryland and its effects on the assassination and Booth’s escape. Controversial figures like Dr. Samuel A. Mudd, and Mary and John Surratt are also profiled against the evidence measuring their innocence or guilt, as well as the legality of the trial of the conspirators pursuant to the 1863 Lieber Code (General Orders No. 100). Moreover, this entire Lincoln assassination story also considers the effect of the assassination on Lincoln’s family members—especially the reaction of President Lincoln’s oldest son, Robert, and Mary Lincoln’s continuing decline from the night of April 14–15, 1865, to the ongoing torment over the loss of her husband, which lasted until her death.
As with any controversial topic, the authors do not necessarily agree with each other on everything. It is ultimately left up to the reader, however, to make up his or her own judgments on the issues discussed with the evidence provided. This book relies on newly discovered data for accuracy while avoiding the publicity-seeking that many conspiracy buffs typically indulge in.
Abraham Lincoln was buried in Springfield after the greatest display of public mourning in American history to that point. Moreover, he was the object of an 1876 kidnapping plot. His remains were to be held for ransom, but the plot was discovered and the perpetrators imprisoned. Finally, in 1901, Lincoln’s $75 coffin was buried under steel and concrete, before which, it was opened for the last time. Lincoln seemed to have changed very little in appearance. What had changed was America itself; the world’s first grand experiment in democracy had murdered its first president. As the Illinois State Register reported on April 15, 1865, “The effect of this terrible blow cannot now be estimated.” It was easy to hold the South responsible for Booth’s act, but it was impossible to regain the republic’s innocence. In the years that followed, it became lost forever in the mystery of democratic government.
CHAPTER ONE

The Baltimore