On April 14, 1865, at a play at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., John Wilkes Booth, a famous actor and Confederate sympathizer, fatally shot President Abraham Lincoln. This attack came only five days after General Robert E. Lee surrendered his army at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, which basically ended the American Civil War. The assassination of President Lincoln would set off one of the biggest manhunts in America’s history.
James L. Swanson’s Manhunt The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer, uses original sources to piece together the timeline of how events unfolded during this trying time. Swanson describes the atmosphere of celebration after Lincoln’s reelection, however not everyone was happy. John Wilkes Booth was willing to…show more content… Swanson showed the process in which the detectives finally found Booth and all of his accomplices. Booth might have been egotistic, but Swanson showed many times a different Booth than one of pure ego. He told Jones that he murdered Abraham Lincoln, that he didn’t regret it, and that was that. Booth’s sister, Asia, knew a man that was tender and passionate. Booth made sure that his mother had a letter, preparing her for his death, for his sacrifice for the Confederate cause. John Wilkes Booth was shocked and disgusted when he read in the newspapers the attempted assassination of the Secretary of State Steward’s sons. Powers was to kill the Secretary of State but panicked when his sons came to their father’s rescue. Powers stabbed the sons and harmed Steward’s daughter in the process. Booth had no problem with killing for a cause, but not killing innocent people. The irony in which Booth was shot in the same area of the body as Lincoln and the fact that he did not die instantly, but lived several hours to know that he had not accomplished the comeback of the Confederacy had Booth almost sorry that he had killed Lincoln but not because of the initial assassination, but because he would not go down in history as a hero of the South but as a villain who tried but failed to overthrow the federal
