About book Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase For Lincoln's Killer (2007)
This book solidly succeeds in the genre of works that promise to be of compelling reading to the non-history-minded reader while being based on solid historical research. James L. Swanson, a historian and attorney in Washington D.C., shows his knowledge of everything Abraham Lincoln. He provides a new twist to the subject of Lincoln's assassination and aftermath in a field which is jammed to the rafters with Civil War/Lincoln books. Swanson's twist in writing of this period of national distress is his use of a style akin to that of a crime reporter. He doesn't sensationalize as much as he uses a narrative style designed to keep the story moving and the reader engrossed in finding out how events unfold to the ultimate conclusion, when Lincoln's assassins were brought to justice. The title, "Manhunt", says it all. This is as compelling a chase story as "The Fugitive," only it's over a hundred years earlier, and based on real events. It is no secret that the book no sooner took its place on the best-seller list than speculation began spreading about who would play the parts of the characters in a movie based on it. It was rumored the main pursuer of the criminals would be played by, guess who, Harrison Ford. Even Swanson has joined in, with his wish to have Johnny Depp play John Wilkes Booth. Making the pursuit of the killers of Abraham Lincoln the focus of the book places Booth in the central role. Swanson provides biographical background on Booth, as the upcoming popular actor son of the century's most famous actor, Junius Brutus Booth. John Wilkes was a southern sympathiser during the Civil War. He spent time plotting grand crimes against the federal government while he toured the country as an actor. He used his considerable persuasive skills to enlist a group of co-conspirators who would meet in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia. A meeting location was Mary Surratt's tavern, and one of Booth's confidants was her son, John. Booth hatched a wild plan during 1864, while the Civil War raged, to kidnap President Lincoln and deliver him to the Confederate government, in an effort to demoralize the North and possibly end the war. That plan never reached fruition, but Booth's hatred to the North and toward Lincoln only intensified, reaching its climax at the end of hostilities in the spring of 1865. General Robert E. Lee had surrendered Confederate forces and the South's capital of Richmond had been captured. It was only a matter of time until Southern President Jefferson Davis and his cabinet were captured, and the war would be over. Public displays of triumph and relief of the end of the war were being held throughout the North, while southerners were left to think about their fate. Booth had already decided. He would decapitate the leadership of the federal government by killing the Secretary of State, William Seward; Vice President Andrew Johnson; and the President. Booth's plan, audacious as it was, succeeded in its most important element and only failed to succeed due to his associates' lack of ability to perform their tasks. You have to admit that Booth almost couldn't ignore devising some sort of assassination plan, what with his hatreds, and the president's publicized desire to attend the popular Laura Keene play at Ford's Theater in Washington. Booth knew every inch of the theater and was known and trusted by its staff as a great actor who had performed there. The assassins' plans were to simultaneously kill the vice president at his hotel and the secretary of state at his home, where he was recuperating after a serious carriage accident, while Booth stole into the almost unguarded private box of Lincoln at Ford's. George Atzerodt lost his nerve and didn't attack Johnson, while Lewis Powell bluffed himself into Seward's home and savagely attacked him. Seward miraculously survived his wounds but Booth was successful in shooting a bullet into the back of Lincoln's head and seriously injuring an army major in his box with a knife before escaping the theater.There is so much that happened after the attacks, and Swanson is up to the task of keeping us glued to the pages as Booth slipped out of a Washington still guarded by military sentries and made a run on horseback, with his young associate David Herold toward Virginia. The conspirators would spend time living in a pine thicket while arranging with sympathizers to cross the Potomac River into Virginia.Swanson relates many details of how this story only gets more interesting with age. There is the injured Booth, running sometimes ahead of the slow-moving news of the day, hoping to open a newspaper describing him as a hero; the great American tragedy of Lincoln, unconsious but struggling for an entire night in a bed while slowly dying; the Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, who spent every minute of that night by Lincoln's side, while, already, using his considerable wartime powers to commandeer all of the available resources of the U.S. government to hunt down the killers; the southerners, who knowingly or unknowingly aided Booth until he arrived at the farm of the Garrett's, who were unaware of what he had done; Booth's defiant refusal to surrender inside a corn crib at the Garrett farm that had been set on fire by pursuing soldiers, and his being shot, against orders, by a soldier named Boston Corbett; the life-long lasting celebrity status of Corbett for shooting Booth; Booth's night-long death watch on the Garrett porch, mirroring the ordeal he had put Lincoln through less than two weeks previous. It's possible that Booth could have been captured alive there, (Herold did surrender), but he knew by then he was in the last act of his own tragedy. Stanton's dragnet later captured all of the conspirators. They were found guilty for their association with Booth in a military tribunal. One of the most interesting scenes of Swanson's to me was the dispatching of Major General Winfield Scott Hancock, a true hero of the Civil War, to the Old Arsenal Penitentiary with the death sentences of Lewis Powell, Mary Surratt, David Herold and George Atzerodt. The spirit of revenge against anyone remotely associated with Booth led to the arrests of numerous other people. Farmer Garrett himself was thrown in prison. Also jailed, for a time, was Ford's owner, John T. Ford. He was released after thirty-nine days, but Stanton ordered his theater confiscated and its interior gutted. The marvelous restoration of Ford's Theater in the 1960's meticulously reproduces the theater's appearance from the night Lincoln was killed. It had been used for years as a government office building (Ford was reimbursed for the building by the government in 1866). Unbelievably, the excessive load of tons of government office equipment caused all of the floors to collapse during 1893, killing twenty-two workers and injuring scores more. The most publicized case of alleged collateral guilt by association with Booth concerns the case of Dr. Samuel Mudd. Booth arrived at the Mudd farm with Herold while in flight from the assassination. Mudd set Booth's broken leg and arranged for a local carpenter to build a set of crutches; both fugitives rested at the Mudd home over night and left the following day. Mudd was later arrested, tried and convicted of conspiracy for aiding Lincoln's conspirators. Mudd narrowly missed receiving a sentence of hanging, and instead was sentenced to life in prison. He served his sentence at Fort Jefferson in the Gulf of Mexico, near the Florida Keys. His heroic efforts of saving inmates and staff of the prison during a yellow fever epidemic in 1867, taking over the prison's medical responsibilities from the dead prison's doctor, won him release from confinement by President Andrew Johnson in 1869. Mudd's grandson, Dr. Richard Mudd, has spent decades trying to prove Mudd's innocence and obtain a presidential pardon for him. The Mudd family's position was reflected in a 1980 movie, "The Ordeal of Dr. Mudd", starring Dennis Weaver in what I believe was the best performance of his career. The viewpoint portrayed was of a doctor who followed his professional ethics in setting a leg of a person in need, without being told how the injury occurred. Dr. Mudd's predicament was very moving but, in Swanson's opinion, a little too disingenuous. Swanson points out that Mudd had had contact with Booth in December, 1864, in Bryantown Maryland, near the Mudd farm, when the Lincoln kidnap plot was being hatched. He also met with Booth a month later in Washington. Investigators who followed up on Booth's activities prior to the assassination found out about these meetings. Mudd gave a sworn statement admitting his November meeting, without admitting any ulterior motive, and omitting his December meeting with Booth. Just as damning was Mudd's failure to notify authorities in Maryland of his involvement with Booth after newspapers carrying the assassination news and Booth's identity were being circulated in his town. These deceptions were enough to convict him of conspiracy; Swanson doesn't buy the revisionist version of events from the Mudd family.We know that Abraham Lincoln was elevated from great leader to folk hero by the manner of his death. Swanson's book sets the record on his killer, Booth, who committed a despicable act and yet became a legendary dramatic figure who continues to captivate readers of history. Many people wish he had never lived, while, Swanson notes, there are those in the South who still celebrate his life. Even the restored theater which commemorates the crime against Lincoln also serves as a Booth museum. Such is history's disdain of neatly wrapped endings.
After finishing our tour of Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. in the summer of 2013, my sister and I characteristically lingered in the museum bookstore. The clerk there, seeing us pause over a stack of autographed copies of Swanson’s Manhunt, launched into the most emphatic endorsement of the book, telling us how excellent it was and how it read like a fast-moving fiction mystery. Intrigued, my sister and I each bought a copy. The store clerk’s endorsement was no exaggeration: Manhunt is a very thorough, well written, exceptionally well paced account of Booth (& Co.’s) escape from the city and attempt to evade capture after Lincoln’s assassination. Also, it is always surprising to read a history that you thought you knew -- or at least learned in school -- and realize that your education (or what you remember of it) is missing huge, critical, chunks of information. For example, I had no recollection that Lincoln’s assassination was part of a much larger plot to assassinate several important leaders, which itself was also an updated version of an earlier plot to kidnap and ransom those same leaders. As it turned out, Lincoln’s actual assassination was as much a crime of opportunity as it was the product of this longer plot. Also, I have no memory of ever learning about the attempted assassination of Secretary of State William H. Seward that same night. Swanson gives full time to the Seward attempt, documenting in riveting detail a night of jaw-dropping violence that came shockingly close to success.Swanson cogently sets the context of the assassination plot -- recent military victories on the part of the North, the impact of the war on the President and his popularity -- and does an especially excellent job of sketching the character of Booth himself. Relying on Booth’s own writings, contemporary interviews with people who knew him, trial records of the assassin and his co-conspirators, as well as on letters and a memoir by Booth’s sister, Swanson builds a portrait of a man who was deeply convinced of the rightness of his actions, shocked by the lack of support for him in the aftermath, and frequently undone by his own often-inflated sense of self. One memorable incident recalls Booth, wounded and weakened after more than a week on the run, with Union soldiers swiftly closing in, stopping to take the time to write a snide letter to an erstwhile sympathizer who -- exceedingly rudely, in Booth’s view -- failed to offer him appropriate food and shelter. Booth even made a point of including several dollars with the note, an indignant expression of his refusal to accept as charity such feeble and grudging assistance as that which the man had provided.Manhunt is indeed a fast-moving, thoroughly absorbing read, hard to put down and easy to finish. My sister read it in little more than a weekend right after our visit to D.C. I didn’t get around to reading until a year later, finishing it up, as it happens, 2 days before my annual trip to Washington, D.C. As my partner and I were planning to drive South from D.C. after our stay there, I insisted that we follow the same route out of the city that John Wilkes Booth and David Herold had taken. We started off at the Surratt Tavern in present-day Clinton, MD, where we took the excellent tour of the house offered by the museum staff, who were dressed in period costumes and answered every one of our many questions in detail. After that it was on to Samuel Mudd’s farm (open for tours only one day a week, so we missed that) and onward to sites of other farms where Booth and Herold sought help and support. There are historical markers at all of these sites, including at the edge of the pine thicket within which Booth and Herold hid for a week from soldiers and police hunting them down, and at the approximate site where they crossed the Potomac. Apart from the Surratt Tavern site in Clinton, all of these places are still in fairly rural locales, so it’s possible to stand in relative silence on the edge of the pine thicket, for instance, close your eyes, take a deep breath of the damp piney air, and imagine what it looked and smelled and felt like to be hunkered down in these woods in 1865. The Potomac crossing site is conveniently located near a couple eateries offering fresh Maryland crab, which also makes for a nice pause. The site of the search’s climax, the Garrett farm in Virginia, has long been an empty patch of land, so there’s little more than an intellectual reward in getting to the final marker, but the other main associated site, Port Royal, VA, is worth a longer stay as well. Now just a sleepy hamlet of cottages and town buildings, all with historical plaques, laid out on a tiny, tidy grid, it’s hard to imagine it was once a key port on the Rappahannock River.[Postscript: Should anyone be interested in following this route, I found the following sources (and a GPS unit that can handle longitude/latitude coordinates) extremely helpful:-- Booth escape route marked on map. Descriptions are limited, but coordinates are exact, and some clickable location names link you to state historical marker pages: http://www.communitywalk.com/john_wil...-- Narrative overview of the stops on the route by a travel blogger. Excellent written summary of stops, but less detailed location help: http://myamericanodyssey.com/manhunt-... ]
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I read this as a follow-up to Sarah Vowell’s Assassination Vacation, but whereas that was history mixed with humor, this was 100% history that read like a detective/adventure story. I was definitely on the edge of my seat in spots, especially at the end. Earlier in the book, however, I had a more perverse reaction: I found myself actually rooting for John Wilkes Booth to keep evading the manhunters because I didn’t want the book to end. Mostly though, I am thankful to say, I hated him as much as he deserved. A professional actor, he was at least as motivated by the desire for fame and glory as ideology. He actually believed he was doing a service to the country! His own writings are really outrageous!I highly recommend this book, along with Assassination Vacation for starters. Sarah Vowell will give you the background with some snark thrown in, and this book fills in the details. John Wilkes Booth did not act alone, but constructed a much broader plot to cripple the newly victorious Union. It’s not something I remember learning about in school, but it’s something every American should know. Both books together have been an excellent education, and I’m grateful for it as I don’t think I’m quite up to the 800-page Team of Rivals. Oh, well. There’s always the movie, though.
—Kressel Housman
I was impressed by James Swanson's book, Manhunt: the 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer, but unfortunately not favorably so. To begin, Swanson treats his subject in such light and casual detail that any serious student of history or anyone with an academic interest in Lincoln's assassination would be poorly served to waste time with this book. Swanson's intended audience is strictly the retail public.Swanson begins his book with "a note to the reader" in which he makes the claim, "This story is true" and that all the words in quotation marks are taken from original sources. A careful reading of the text exposes this bold claim as a dubious piece of obfuscation. For example, on page 29 Swanson quotes the text of a letter given by John Wilkes Booth to an actor friend John Matthews (the text of the letter appears in italics). However, later in the text (pages 148-149) Swanson relates how Matthews panics after the assassination and he burns the letter from Booth. In the notes Swanson admits that the letter he quotes was not the original (since it was destroyed) but rather a recreation based on Matthew's recollection and based in part on the manifesto in Booth's diary. I suppose one might argue that since the letter appears in italics and not within quotes, it is subject to a greater degree of license, but that logic really falls flat in this reviewer's estimation. Swanson ruins his credibility as a writer by failing to make clear in the text that this letter is not an original but rather a recreation. Furthermore, there is no conceivable reason for glossing over this important detail except to make the story somehow more dramatic. Swanson should take note that this story does not need his added drama.There are several uses of literary devices that range from inappropriate to downright offensive. Swanson has the lamentable habit of attributing to characters in his story motives that he cannot possibly substantiate. Consider the contrasting motives of women attending the deaths of Lincoln and Booth respectively. On page 84 actress Laura Keene is described as a brazen opportunist who ruthlessly insinuates her way into the presidential box for the sole reason of achieving some kind of fame for being a part of history. In all due fairness, no one could really speculate on what Laura Keene's motives were except Miss Keene herself. The book's end notes do not indicate Laura Keene ever claimed that she was a self serving opportunist, and it is unlikely that she would have even if it were the truth. It appears that for whatever reason, Swanson does not like Laura Keene and has decided to portray her in a pejorative light. On the other hand, Lucinda Holloway who ministered to the mortally wounded Booth on the porch of the Garrett farm receives favorable treatment. When she procures a lock of hair from the corpse of the murderer, Swanson denies that she is "craven relic hunter who lusted morbidly, like so many others, for bloody souvenirs of the great crime". One might ask why she is not to be considered a morbid relic hunter. Instead, Swanson portrays Lucinda Holloway as a tragic and romantic heroine, giving comfort to the misguided assassin in his last moments. Swanson seems perfectly comfortable with his portrayal of Holloway as a romantic heroine even when in the next paragraph she interferes with the investigation by stealing the dead actor's field glasses. It appears that in Swanson's estimation, bringing a pitcher of water to the side of an assassinated president is opportunistic, but stealing property from a dead murderer and tampering with evidence is a romantic adventure. This reviewer considers that the author has no factual basis upon which to base these characterizations, and that furthermore it represents a distorted view of moral values.And speaking of distorted moral values, this reviewer was disturbed by Swanson's obvious and inappropriate infatuated sympathy with the murderer John Wilkes Booth. On several occasions, Swanson draws parallels between John Wilkes Booth and Jesus Christ. For example, he repeatedly refers to Willie Jett as a "Judas". Also, on page 336 when Booth is shot and captured, David Herold attempts to maintain Booth's alias by insisting his name is Boyd and Swanson characterizes the ruse as "In captivity, the assassin's disciple denied him thrice". A few pages later on 341 the wounded Booth is on the porch of the Garrett house and is thirsty. Swanson writes, "As strangers at Golgotha did for Christ on Good Friday's cross, Lucinda answered his plea..." In this reviewer's humble estimation, Booth as a murderer has little in common with Jesus who was not a murderer, and drawing parallels between the two is patently absurd and even offensive. This is not literary license; it is more like literary licentiousness.While reading this book I made notes of a number of other shortcomings in the text, such as on page 320 where Swanson describes Booth holding his pistols in his hands and then contradicts himself a paragraph later by writing that he is reaching for his holstered pistols. Or in the epilogue where Swanson suggests that Booth has been forgiven for murdering the most popular president in U.S. history. Suffice it to say that a complete catalog of all the lamentable characteristics of this book is not included in this review.The most appropriate way to describe this book is to quote Booth's last words: "useless, useless". Swanson's preference for florid melodrama and casual disregard for accuracy in detail ruins the book for any serious student of Lincoln history. And his obvious sympathy for the murderer rather than his victims is likely to leave an unfavorable impression for the casual reader seeking an introduction to the subject. There are already two excellent books on the subject that should appeal to all audiences, serious academic and casually curious. These are Blood on the Moon by Edwin Steers, and American Brutus by Michael Kaufmann. To say that Manhunt is superfluous under the circumstances would be too much of a kindness.
—JD Carruthers
This was positively Shakespearean. Not in the poetry, but in the sheer drama of it. The plotting, the conspiracy, the murder. Swanson does a terrific job of cobbling together a stunningly complete and compelling narrative of Booth's time on the lam while armies hunted for him, all from interviews with the subjects, court transcripts, newspaper accounts, and other books written by those involved at at the time. He reveals the roots of Booth's motivation, and his ego, along with that of his co-conspirators and those who hunted them all. Just a great yarn here.Just before I finished it, I was in Washington, DC, and while I'd never much thought of it before, this time I couldn't resist a walk up 10th Street to Ford's Theater, where Lincoln was shot. It was closed for renovations. But just across the street is the narrow home where Lincoln was taken just after he was shot to avoid the ignominy of dying in such an immoral venue as a theater, and on Good Friday at that. The room where Father Abraham died was about the size of the newsroom cubicle I share with my editor.One final observation. One of the subtler revelations of this book is the intimacy of Washington in Lincoln's time. In Swanson's description, it was like a small town where everyone knew everyone and could approach anyone. Only some of the residents happened to be the President, the Secretary of State, the Vice President, the Secretary of War. People would call to Lincoln from the White House lawn, and he would open a window and give a quick speech. All that stands in stark contrast to the barricades on Pennsylvania Avenue today.Of course, it was what happened to Lincoln that spoiled that small town intimacy, and all the trust that went with it.
—Matt Chittum
