I admit it. 'Manhunt' left me rooting for the bad guy.
If you’re the type of person who reads a book and can’t help rooting for the bad guy then you’ll love "Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer" by James L. Swanson.
"Manhunt" (William Morrow, 448 pages) begins in one of the wildest months in American history – April 1865. That month marked the fall of Richmond, the collapse and surrender of the Confederacy, the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln and the greatest manhunt in American history.
From April 14 to April 26, 1865, Lincoln’s assassin, famed actor John Wilkes Booth, led Union Cavalry troops and the country’s finest police detectives on a chase that began at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. and ended in a lonely farmhouse deep in the woods of Virginia.
Booth, one of the most famous actors of his generation, is the book’s central character. (In my mind, Booth’s act of assassination would be equal to a modern-day assassination of George W. Bush by an actor like Sean Penn or Tom Cruise at the Kennedy Center in D.C.) Booth was a Confederate sympathizer and a member of a well-known family of actors.
None of that stopped him from throwing away his wealth, fame and future for a chance to take part in a scheme to murder Lincoln, Vice-President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward. (Booth was the only conspirator to carry out his part of the plan.) After Lincoln’s murder, Booth led manhunters on a chase that lasted nearly two weeks, and the details of the chase make up the bulk of Swanson’s book.
The book is noteworthy because Swanson, an attorney and Lincoln scholar, spins a gripping, hour-by-hour account of the manhunt, an account that’s based on rare archives and trial transcripts.
"This story is true," Swanson wrote. "All the characters are real and were alive during the great manhunt of April 1865. Their words are authentic. Indeed, all text appearing within quotation marks comes from original sources: letters, manuscripts, affidavits, trail transcripts, newspapers, government reports, pamphlets, books, memoirs, and other documents. What happened in Washington, D.C., in the spring of 1865, and in the swamps and rivers, and the forests and fields, of Maryland and Virginia during the next twelve days, is far too incredible to have ever been made up."
I thought the book was entertaining, and I couldn’t help pulling for Booth and his cohorts. They spun a web of lies and tricks at every turn and relied heavily on a number of secret Confederate agents as they tried to make their way into the deep South. If not for a broken leg and loose lips on the part of handful of people, Booth probably would have escaped his eventual captors.
Will this book be read 100 years from now? It’s very possible because Swanson is the first author to provide a detailed account of the hunt for Booth. A better version of the tale might be written in the years to come, but at the moment, you’ll be hard pressed to find a more detailed book on the manhunt for Booth.
In the end, I enjoyed the book, and I recommend it to anyone in the reading audience with an interest in American history, the Civil War, Lincoln or Booth. I think the book is also a great work of "true crime" and will spark the curiosity of anyone interested in how the police operated during the late 19th century. On a scale of 1 to 10, I give the book an 8.0.
"Manhunt" (William Morrow, 448 pages) begins in one of the wildest months in American history – April 1865. That month marked the fall of Richmond, the collapse and surrender of the Confederacy, the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln and the greatest manhunt in American history.
From April 14 to April 26, 1865, Lincoln’s assassin, famed actor John Wilkes Booth, led Union Cavalry troops and the country’s finest police detectives on a chase that began at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. and ended in a lonely farmhouse deep in the woods of Virginia.
Booth, one of the most famous actors of his generation, is the book’s central character. (In my mind, Booth’s act of assassination would be equal to a modern-day assassination of George W. Bush by an actor like Sean Penn or Tom Cruise at the Kennedy Center in D.C.) Booth was a Confederate sympathizer and a member of a well-known family of actors.
None of that stopped him from throwing away his wealth, fame and future for a chance to take part in a scheme to murder Lincoln, Vice-President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward. (Booth was the only conspirator to carry out his part of the plan.) After Lincoln’s murder, Booth led manhunters on a chase that lasted nearly two weeks, and the details of the chase make up the bulk of Swanson’s book.
The book is noteworthy because Swanson, an attorney and Lincoln scholar, spins a gripping, hour-by-hour account of the manhunt, an account that’s based on rare archives and trial transcripts.
"This story is true," Swanson wrote. "All the characters are real and were alive during the great manhunt of April 1865. Their words are authentic. Indeed, all text appearing within quotation marks comes from original sources: letters, manuscripts, affidavits, trail transcripts, newspapers, government reports, pamphlets, books, memoirs, and other documents. What happened in Washington, D.C., in the spring of 1865, and in the swamps and rivers, and the forests and fields, of Maryland and Virginia during the next twelve days, is far too incredible to have ever been made up."
I thought the book was entertaining, and I couldn’t help pulling for Booth and his cohorts. They spun a web of lies and tricks at every turn and relied heavily on a number of secret Confederate agents as they tried to make their way into the deep South. If not for a broken leg and loose lips on the part of handful of people, Booth probably would have escaped his eventual captors.
Will this book be read 100 years from now? It’s very possible because Swanson is the first author to provide a detailed account of the hunt for Booth. A better version of the tale might be written in the years to come, but at the moment, you’ll be hard pressed to find a more detailed book on the manhunt for Booth.
In the end, I enjoyed the book, and I recommend it to anyone in the reading audience with an interest in American history, the Civil War, Lincoln or Booth. I think the book is also a great work of "true crime" and will spark the curiosity of anyone interested in how the police operated during the late 19th century. On a scale of 1 to 10, I give the book an 8.0.
posted by Lee Peacock at 4:41 PM
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