{"id":17011,"date":"2025-07-17T18:34:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-17T18:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/17011\/"},"modified":"2025-07-17T18:34:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-17T18:34:08","slug":"new-book-sheds-light-on-lincolns-misunderstood-killer-hes-not-that-person-at-all-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/17011\/","title":{"rendered":"New book sheds light on Lincoln\u2019s misunderstood killer: \u2018He\u2019s not that person at all\u2019 | Books"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scott Ellsworth\u2019s new book, Midnight on the Potomac, is about the last year of the American civil war and \u201cthe crime of the century\u201d: the assassination of Abraham Lincoln<\/a> by the actor John Wilkes Booth at Ford\u2019s Theatre in Washington on 14 April 1865.<\/p>\n

Asked how the book came to follow The Ground Breaking<\/a>, his acclaimed history of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, Ellsworth said his thoughts focused on two areas: historical parallels to the modern-day US, and the true crime genre.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne thing that was driving it was the sense that in the past few years, the nation has never been that divided in my lifetime, and I\u2019m old enough to remember the late 60s and early 70s,\u201d Ellsworth said. \u201cAnd the only other time we had been so divided was in the 1850s and 1860s, so that was a natural draw right there.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I was thinking about, \u2018What was the crime of the 19th century in the United States? And it was clearly the murder of Lincoln. And once I dug in and started to turn up some stuff, I realized there was something there.\u201d<\/p>\n

A professor<\/a> in Afro-American and African studies at the University of Michigan, fascinated by the civil war since childhood, Ellsworth knew full well Lincoln is one of the most-written-about<\/a> figures in history. But Ellsworth is not your average professor. Having been described<\/a> as \u201ca historian with the soul of a poet\u201d, and having won<\/a> a PEN\/ESPN award for literary sports writing too, he knew he could tell the story his way.<\/p>\n

Photograph: Penguin Random House<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m trying to reach a broad audience,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m trying to reach readers who wouldn\u2019t necessarily, or very rarely, pick up a piece of nonfiction, certainly history. And I was lucky in the sense that I had this surfeit of material that is so great and so dramatic, the question is just how to put it together. Story is very important.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve got some early responses from folks who\u2019ve read a lot on the subject and said, \u2018I never really thought of it in these ways.\u2019 I think I managed to turn up some stuff that most civil war readers aren\u2019t aware of.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the popular imagination, Booth has come to be seen as a dysfunctional personality turned lone assassin, the first in a line that includes Lee Harvey Oswald, who killed John F Kennedy in Dallas, Texas, in 1963, and Thomas Michael Crooks<\/a>, who tried to kill Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, just a year ago<\/a>. Ellsworth set out to shatter that idea.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the image of Booth, I go into detail about the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, everybody calling him this genius \u2013 people getting turned away by the hundreds from his performances, women trying to storm into his dressing room. The popular conception of who he is [is] just wrong. He\u2019s not that person at all.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt lives on today. On Broadway right now, there\u2019s the show, Oh Mary!<\/a> [about Lincoln\u2019s wife] which is very raunchy and very hilarious. But in that, again, Booth is this kind of loser. That\u2019s ingrained in us \u2013 that\u2019s who he was, a disturbed loser. He wasn\u2019t. He was a star.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd so if I can help change your mind and open your eyes to a different version of Booth, then you can start to see him in a different light.\u201d<\/p>\n

Booth did not act alone. Confederate conspiracies ranged wide, from planners in Richmond, Virginia, to agents in Canada and in northern states with whom Booth schemed. In November 1864, agents attempted to burn down New York City<\/a>, an incident Ellsworth recreates vividly. Confederate agents plotted first to kidnap Lincoln, then to kill him.<\/p>\n

Last year, as Ellsworth worked, the national spotlight found the Confederate plot, when the leading Trump ally Steve Bannon told a reporter<\/a> Trump\u2019s frequent use of the word \u201cretribution\u201d on the campaign trail was a nod to codewords used by the plotters.<\/p>\n

Events during the plot are familiar too: a near-miss<\/a> as Lincoln rode from the White House to the Soldiers\u2019 Home in northern DC<\/a>; Booth\u2019s presence in the crowd for Lincoln\u2019s second inaugural on 4 March 1865, visible in a famous photograph<\/a>; the actor\u2019s response to remarks Lincoln gave<\/a> on 11 April, the promise of citizenship for Black men prompting Booth to tell associates: \u201cThat is the last speech he will ever make.\u201d<\/p>\n

But among aspects Ellsworth holds to new light is a much less-known near-miss, on a frigid night in January 1865 when Lewis Powell, one of Booth\u2019s co-conspirators, hid in the shadows outside the war department, close by the White House, and waited for Lincoln to show.<\/p>\n

A statue of Abraham Lincoln Photograph: Brian Rimm\/courtesy of President Lincoln\u2019s Cottage.<\/p>\n

Ellsworth writes: \u201cHere was his chance. A well-aimed shot, even from behind the bushes, might work. That, or a quick dash for one at close range.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnly he had not counted on the second man. Probably a bodyguard, and more than likely armed. And then there was the ground itself.<\/p>\n

\u201cCould he even run on it at all? What if he fell? Powell hesitated. The two men walked away. The moment was lost.\u201d<\/p>\n

Follow Ellsworth to his extensive notes, and they reveal a 1907 memoir<\/a> by David Homer Bates, one of the first military telegraphists in Lincoln\u2019s War Department. That obscure volume and another, on Civil War Weather in Virginia<\/a>, furnish key details.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere on Ellsworth\u2019s wide canvas, a little less obscure but no less fascinating, is Lois Adams, a Michigan newspaper reporter who worked as a government clerk in Washington and sent detailed letters back to her state, which Ellsworth uses to enrich his picture of wartime DC.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was this wonderful librarian at Central Michigan University who discovered Adams\u2019s letters and put them together in a book<\/a>,\u201d Ellsworth said, referring to Evelyn Leasher. \u201cI ran into the book, and the more I read, I just thought of Adams, \u2018She\u2019s just dynamite.\u2019 She is a keen observer of lots of things \u2026 about Washington during the war. She added such a richness to things, and she saw through things immediately.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd so I kept inserting her throughout the book, because I think she adds such a fascinating perspective but she sees she\u2019s really undeservedly forgotten. She needs a lot more attention.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ellsworth also presents the stories of the former slaves who followed the Union armies to freedom as the war neared its end, and of African American leaders who sought to seize the chance of liberty, the remarkable Henry Highland Garnet<\/a> prominent among them.<\/p>\n

Arlington National Cemetery Photograph: Kevin Carter\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

After Lincoln\u2019s killing, Booth escaped into Virginia. After a 12-day chase \u2013 the subject of the recent Apple TV miniseries Manhunt<\/a> \u2013 the killer was killed in turn. Lincoln\u2019s body was taken back to Springfield, Illinois, the funeral train retracing his journey to Washington<\/a> in 1861. Ellsworth concludes his own story at Arlington National Cemetery, across the Potomac from DC, on the grounds of the home of Robert E Lee, the leading Confederate general.<\/p>\n

In doing so, Ellsworth asks readers to look beyond the death of Lincoln, to the country he left behind, the \u201cRebirth of America\u201d of the subtitle to Ellsworth\u2019s book. At the cemetery, in section 27, people once enslaved lie with Black and white soldiers who died for the Union cause. Ellsworth said he set his final scene there in order \u201cto remind Americans of the glories of our past, and of the incredible Americans that have built this country.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne thing I want people to know is how close we came to losing our country to the Confederacy, of slavery surviving in some form, for a while at least. It\u2019s just by the skin of our teeth that the Union is held together, but it was held together by this remarkable coalition which we\u2019d never really seen before, in the US, of men and women, Black and white, native-born and immigrant people putting aside differences to come together, ultimately, to work for a common goal.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to honor the courage and grit that these loyal citizens showed, to endure those four years of hell. One out of every 50 Americans died during the war. Every family in the north lost somebody, and they were able to hang in there through it all. I want us to recognize that, and to recognize that we have plenty of heroes in our past, and I think it\u2019s helpful to look toward them as some of our institutions are under attack now, and remember that they paid a very high price.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe runaways, the formerly enslaved, the Union soldiers, they could not have imagined the America that we have today. But we wouldn\u2019t have it, had it not been for them. They helped to build it, and we owe them something.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scott Ellsworth\u2019s new book, Midnight on the Potomac, is about the last year of the American civil war…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17012,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[223,88],"class_list":{"0":"post-17011","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17011\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}