Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer is a captivating novel that depicted the horrific assassination of Abraham Lincoln. James L. Swanson wrote this gripping tale and is an attorney and Lincoln scholar as well as the Edgar award-winning author of works such as Lincoln’s Assassins: Their trial and Execution, and Bloody Crimes: The Chase for Jefferson Davis and the death pageant for Lincoln’s corpse. Manhunt is a bestselling book that offered the reader insight to what motivated Booth to murder the president as well as the hunt for his murderer, John Wilkes Booth.
At first glance, Booth may have seemed like a magnificent charismatic man. He was remarkably talented and was born from a family of well-known actors. He had luscious black hair that swept across his forehead and the deepest darkest eyes that gleamed with emotion. Yet, behind his angelic ebony eyes laid more nefarious thoughts. Booth was a radical supporter of the Confederacy. He despised the Union and the idea of Robert E. Lee surrendering his troops to the “tyrant” Abraham Lincoln depressed and enthralled him. H...
The book Chasing Lincoln’s Killer is about the world famous story of assassinating President Abraham Lincoln. This book takes the reader into the lives and minds of the four main conspirators responsible for the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the attempted assassination of the Vice President, Andrew Johnson , and the Secretary of State, William H. Seaward. Not only will the reader learn about the details of the planned assassinations but the background of all conspirators involved, each one of their motives for committing the crimes, and all the differences between the actual killings and what was supposed to happen if everything went according to plan. In this gripping novel the writer, James Swanson, takes the reader through a key point in American history in order to learn the truth of what must have happened while chasing Lincoln’s killer.
It is 1865, and the war between the states has just ended. Booth’s rage is peaking as he recalls Union General Ulysses Grant’s participation in the fall of the Confederacy….
“Chasing Lincoln’s Killer” was a true story about the assassination attempts of Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth president of the United States. Lincoln was president during the Civil War, which was a war between the Union and Confederate. Most everybody got to choose a side to root for either the Northern policies or the Southern cause. Although John Wilkes Booth worked in the north, Booth was an unyielding supporter of the Confederate cause. Booth execrated President Lincoln and what he stood for. John Wilkes Booth was a famous actor, and could have had many assassination chances, including Lincoln’s second inauguration. Wanting the south to win the war, he never wanted the punishment of assassinating the president of the United States. Being
Booth had got the news that the president would be at the Ford’s theatre. This was great news for john both Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln will be there in the same place. “Booth heard the big news: in just eight hours the man who was the subject of all his hating and plotting would stand on the very stone steps here he now sat. “Booth began to plain his assassination without having to hunt for Lincoln. John had a deep hatred for Lincoln, he had hated the state that our country had been in.
Booth assembled his men;the men he met over the years who were filled with southern pride and anger at the new nation. His conspirators in Lincoln’s assassination and escape were: Lewis Powell, David Herold, John Surratt Jr., Samuel Arnold, Michael O’Laughlen, and George Atzerodt.To prepare, Booth packed his weapons of choice: a .44 caliber pistol and a Rio Grande camp knife just in case. When Abraham and Mary Lincoln arrived at Ford’s Theatre, they were met with loud applause, even though they didn’t send word of their arrival;the crowd never thought that this would be the last night they would see Abraham Lincoln
The book begins with an in-depth explanation of what happened in the latter stages of the Civil War. Major battles like Sayler’s Creek, High Bridge and Richmond are described through detailed language. For instance, at High Bridge, “Each man wages his own individual battle with a ferocity only a life-and-death situation can bring. Bullets pierce eyes. Screams and curses fill the air. The grassy plain runs blood red.” (page 61). All of these iconic Civil War battles led up to the Confederate surrender at the Appomattox Courthouse and the inescapable rebuilding of a new nation Abraham Lincoln had to deal with. Next, John Wilkes Booth is introduced and his pro-Confederate motives are made clear. His conspiracy to kill the president is described and his co-conspirators like Lewis Powell, David Herold, and George Atzerodt who also attempted to kill Secretary of State Seward a...
When the Civil War erupted, Wilkes was in his early twenties- still very young and naïve. Booth’s family mostly supported the Union. On the other hand, Booth was a supporter of the Confederates. As a child, his father’s farm had been operated by slaves, which influenced his views on the subject of the Confederates. Malicious and harmful emotions and opinions materialized from the war that led Booth to start creating schemes against President Lincoln. By 1864, at age 26, he created a plan to keep Lincoln hostage and planned to release him only if the Confederates in the war were freed. The plan began to crumble, so Booth decided to reach out to others who felt the same as he did. He met with several conspirators. The most crucial meeting was when Booth and a few others met at a woman named Mary Surratt’s boarding house in Washington D.C. to come up with a ne...
Booth also took part in politics. He joined the Know-Nothing’s, an anti-catholic and anti-immigrant political party. He was a die-hard confederate, and worked as a secret agent for the confederates during the Civil War.
heart” (116). Booth has adopted the idea to stab Lincoln “from Shakespeare 's Julius Caesar,
From his early life, one could imagine John Wilkes Booth was a simple young man, only looking to follow in his father’s footsteps as a master actor. However, one must look deep within John’s origins to truly understand the mindset of America’s most well-known assassin. He was born as the ninth son of Junius Booth, a nationally beloved actor and a domestically known drunkard (John Wilkes Booth 1). His fellow actors went as far as to describe him as insane (John Wilkes Booth 1838-1865). His mother, Mary Ann Holmes, was largely absent throughout John’s childhood. John and his nine siblings lived on a lavish ranch in Bel-Air, Maryland. Booth received an excellent education in acting, following in his father’s footsteps. Booth turned out to be an excellent actor, and in 1858, he became a member of Richmond Theatre. Clearly John didn’t value his family name, as he quickly made sure to establish the stage name of “J.B. Wilkes.” This early life was plagued by a political rift within his family. Booth was a native to Maryland, a border state that just barely sided with the union. Much of his family favored Lincoln’s stance, but Booth made it very clear he was stanchly against Lincoln’s initiative. However, Booth swore to his mother that he would not enl...
———. The Ethics of Living Jim Crow: An Autobiographical Sketch. New York: Viking Press, 1937.
Without any question, most people have a very clear and distinct picture of John Wilkes Booth a in their minds. It is April 1865, the night president Lincoln decides to take a much-needed night off, to attend a stage play. Before anyone knows it a lunatic third-rate actor creeps into Lincoln's box at Ford's theater and kills the president. Leaping to the stage, he runs past a confused audience and flees into the night, only to suffer a coward’s death Selma asset some two weeks later. From the very moment that Booth pulled the trigger, the victors of the Civil War had a new enemy on their hands, and a good concept of whom they were dealing with. A close examination of the facts, however, paint a different view of Booth, a picture that is far less black and white, but a picture with many shades of gray.
After viewing Killing Lincoln from author Bill Oŕeilly and read part of Manhunt written by James L. Swanson, clearly Manhunt is a more reliable source. First of all, the purpose of writing for both authors is very different and helps viewers to realize the more reliable source. James L. Swanson graduated from the University of Chicago with a degree in history. Even though, Bill O'reilly also graduated with a history degree at Marist College he focuses more on entertaining than historical facts. The article ¨Bill O'reilly Makes A Killing¨ states ¨The whole point of the Killing books is that they aren’t like works of real history¨ Swanson´s purpose of writing is to inform all ages of readers about what historical events happened to Lincoln and
“Glory”, the excellent war film about the first black regime, showed how a group of black men who first found bitterness between each other, rose above it and became one to form a group of black men that marched with pride not animosity. When dealing with a great film that involves African Americans, the roles have to be filled by strong black actors. Edward Zwick falls nothing short of this. The two black roles are filled by Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman. This war film seemed to be just like every other war film. Meaning that mostly all war movies have the singing among troops and playing cards or in this case, craps. This helps the viewer see past the soldier, and see the real person and notice their human as well. This paper will show how Zwick used different characters, racial wars, music, and camera to portray what really goes on during a time of war.
If Civil Wars could be represented by a single person, the personification of the struggle in the United States between the North and the South would be a frightful individual to behold. Unfortunately, for Jefferson Davis, his life and temperament came close to embodying the gruesome inward fight of the American Civil War (or at least the Southern part). As men go, he was labeled an enigma. He was both a contradiction and a confirmation of himself, unpredictable yet foreseeable. His insecurities were major weaknesses. Without the special skills of a “people person”, he was thrust into a position of leadership over unorganized and untrained men. Despite these things, Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy, attempted to overcome all of it. In this way, he exemplified the Civil War and the further internal strains of the American South.